yes ladies, gents and other eclectic beings.. it’s thursday.. time to get half-nekkid again!! the wicked scar you see is from a biking accident.. a whole bunch of stitches along with other assorted gashes as happens when tumbling downhill through flora and fauna!
for newbies, this is what its all about.. and here is where you can see all the entries for the day!! (scroll down till you see Hiding Half-Nekkid This Week in the Back Row on the right!)
the telecommumications industry is in a tizzy right now.. devices that are supposed to make life easier are complicating things more, and all sorts of people are getting their hands on all sorts of things they should not have access to in the first place!!
early this spring garage doors all over the US started creaking open slowly.. seemingly of their own accord.. only later was it realised that the new radio frequencies being used by the Army were actually to blame. the Air Force has now asked a private company to step in to restructure the allotment of frequencies!
air-traffic-control transmissions are frequently interrupted by bursts of static and wailing babies.. apparently baby monitors are to blame. the same baby monitors have also been responsible for eavesdropping on phone calls!
ATC: “.. this is JFK calling Flight 234.. please respond.. “
Baby: “.. goo goo.. gaa gaa.. “
ATC: “Flight 234.. please respond.. “
Baby: “.. mmmmm.. “
ATC: “Red Alert! Red Alert!! Hijack alert for Flight 234!! Scramble the fighter jets!!“
Baby: “waaaaah!! uwaaaahhh!!“
ATC: “Inform the President! Shutdown Wall Street! Prepare to die!!“
two new devices completely kick-ass!! Cell-Block-R jams cellphones, preventing their use in restricted areas. cinema theaters will be one of the first to employ (and benefit!) this blocker! don’t you just hate people who obstinately refuse to switch their phones off in theaters.. and even worse, some people find it necessary to regale their friends with a running commentary of what’s happening onscreen on the phones too!!
the other is TV-B-Gone, which switches off all tvs within a longish range of upto 50ft, and fits on your keychain! it has been widely used to switch off tvs in noisy bars and crowded airport lounges quite undetected. i have particularly wanted this baby whenever i’m at Port Authority in NYC, cos they insist on showing the same news shows over and over and over.. grrr!!
finding your cellphone losing signal at home? blame your microwave. does your cordless phone get static whenever you’re doing laundry? try stepping away from your clothes dryer. and has your wi-fi speed fallen drastically since you got a new wireless keyboard? do we really need all this hi-tech?!
i come to you again today with a message.. encouraging you to enjoy and cherish life! so, to all you impressionable young ladies and gents out there.. Don’t Do Drugs!
before you start crying wolf, and start muttering words like ‘hypocrite’ & ‘phony’ etc.. i shall let it be known that i have smoked ‘illegal substances’.. but that’s all in the past. seriously! and there’s a lot to be said about quitting drugs, many positives..
my favourite thing about being clean now is that my brain power seems to have been infinitely improved! my memory is so much sharper!! before it used to be:
accompanied by a frantically slow checking of pockets, and not finding them (of course!).. and then half an hour later realising they were hanging off the carabiner on my jeans all the while. at which point i didn’t remember why i needed them in the first place!
nowadays, i just reach to my left and there are my keys.. and i tell you its a wonderful feeling that not every reflex action is an adventure. we used to toss the football (american football, for the rest of the world) when stoned.. and in my mind’s eye each catch used to be right off the set of the Matrix, or the highlight reels of NFL Today!!
another bonus is when i listen to Metallica now i don’t feel like the lead singer James is yelling into my ear like a man possessed! Lars’ drum section keeps a respectful distance and my thoughts don’t feel hassled into making snap judgements of time and place!
i enjoy my dinners much more now.. cos at least i can taste the little nuances that make a spicy Thai curry different from Indian tandoori chicken!! thank God not everything in my life tastes sweet like Hostess Twinkies & Cup-Cakes, and whipped cream on brownies!!
finally, since corporate America has decided that substance screening tests are going to be part and parcel of the recruitment process.. you might as well quit.. and drink instead! oh yes, the day someone tells me that i can’t enjoy my cold beer after a long day, or a Jack & Coke with plenty of ice.. then i’m afraid i shall have to put my foot down! cheers everyone!!
sometimes our biggest fear in life is not knowing what to fear the most! we have an inbuilt sense that makes us dwell more on threats that we perceive as more horrific, but statistically less plausible (shark ambushes, spider bites, terrorist attacks), and ignore the bigger threats to our daily lives, which kill many many more (heart disease, cancer, accidents).
the numbers are quite scary, we just have to keep a sense of perspective – the litany starts in the household, where approx. 300,000 toilet, shower & bath incidents sent americans to the emergency room per year! i shave with a razor (34,000 injuries), with hot water (42,000 injuries) at the sink (23,000 injuries). For breakfast i slice an apple with a knife (441,000 injuries) and pour juice in a glass (87,000 injuries). in all, there are around 30,000 home deaths a year, poisoning, fire and falls being the major killers. remember, the US population is nearly 300 million, i.e. a 0.01% (1 in 10,000) chance of you winding up dead! scared yet?
stepping out of the house for your commute, here’s some simple data (in deaths per billion passenger-miles): airplane-0.03, boat-0.6, bus-0.6, rail-0.75, car-4.6, bicycle-63, foot-89, motorcycle-159. still think flying is unsafe? how about another weird stat – 10,000 people per year go to ER for money-related injuries, 5 people are killed annually by falling vending machines!!
psychologists talk about a concept of risk homeostasis, a risk-balancing process we carry out in our heads. when cycling with a helmet, we take more risks since we feel safer. also, the feeling of being in control (at the handlebars of the bike) can lull you into a false sense of security. men, it seems, simply take more risks, from driving more rashly, to crossing the road at riskier spots, to sport activities like hunting and hot-air ballooning (hunting: 600 deaths per 2 million hunters = 0.03% fatality; ballooning: 2.6 deaths per 3,000 balloonists = 0.09% fatality, i.e thrice as dangerous!!
artificial risks are automatically assumed to be worse than natural ones – so people worry more about cell phone radiation giving them cancer, and then jauntily go off to the beach without sunscreen!! so after all these facts about death, if you feel that you’re just gonna lie in bed and take it easy today, wait a sec.. every year upto 400 people suffocate or strangle themselves in bed!
risk analysts have a pretty morbid sense of humor -
“the ultimate risk is life, which has a 100% chance of leading to death.”
have a great day everyone 
i am in no way promoting morbidity or being morose.. i love life lots.. and this was just supposed to be a humorous take on something i read!!
she can be an evil mistress, demanding all my attention, and all my time. and just when i think i have my life back, she beckons with her sultry “come hither” look, and i am helplessly drawn towards her again.
there is nothing that she doesn’t know; she can tell me anything about anyone, anywhere, anytime. i am left marvelling open-mouthed at her abilities. sometimes she frustrates with her stubborness, and other time she encourages with her innocence, and she always comes through. and i find myself giving up lots of things just to spend time with her.
she is always good to go, never too tired, never “not tonight, i have a headache”, never unwilling to go on, and on.. until i have no more energy, and i sleep off exhausted, too tired to even cuddle, having done nothing all day but be with her.
my life has been quite irreversibly changed ever since she came into it, mostly for the better, as she helps me with my research and stuff, and she hangs out with me at work, and we keep up to date with all that’s happening as she shares so many of my passions.. but at times it irks me that we do nothing but just sit around. like this weekend, despite the mountains of work i had, i just lounged. i would have gladly dropped everything to be with her, if she weren’t the internet.
so my buddy sank and i have this theory.. about how people sleep. this is how it goes – there are two kinds of sleepers, warm sleepers and cold sleepers.
the warm sleepers like to be slightly warm when they sleep, so they will turn the heating up a tad bit, throw on a warmer comforter, or maybe wear a warm pair of pyjamas when going to bed.
the cold sleepers prefer that the room have a slight chill to it, believing that it’ll all equalise in some time anyway. they’ll turn down the heating when going to bed, slide the window up a little bit, or sleep with a layer less.
me?! i just sleep in the buff!! 
)
for those of you who have no idea what this is all about.. go here!! the idea seems to have gotten really huge now, check out all of today’s HNT posts.. so pull out your cameras, and get snapping! this was taken on my lunch break.. i hadn’t really planned on being in this today.. so here’s my maiden entry! )
got tagged by Aparna.. this is one i don’t mind playing along with.. i love(d) books! the reasons for the past tense shall soon be made clear!
Last book I bought:
I just bought two books: ‘Cobain‘ (Rolling Stone), which is actually an anthology of all the articles the mag published about Kurt and Nirvana. Was flipping through it at the local Barnes & Noble, very interesting reading. And I also picked up ‘Journals‘ (Kurt Cobain), which are his diaries from the phase before Nirvana took off, it’s quite uncanny how Kurt just knew he’d be huge one day!
Last book I read:
Finished ‘State Of Fear‘ (Michael Crichton) recently, which provoked a post, and a couple of solid arguments with friends about the whole issue of global warming, and how we’re looking at it, or rather, how we’re being made to look at it!
Book(s) currently reading:
Have finally started ‘So What!‘ (Steffan Chirazi), a biography of Metallica, which the brownie gang here gifted me on my birthday (yes i know it was six months ago!!). No holds barred, no holding back, just like the band personify in their music!
Total number of books I own:
This is kinda incalculable, since i have held on to almost every book i have bought, going back to my childhood! I have three cartons of books safely stowed away in storage back in nairobi, two boxfuls in my grandfather’s house in calcutta, and another hefty bunch here too!
Books that mean(t) a lot to me:
Whoa! Another impossible kinda question! I think at different phases of my life, I have been influenced by different books. I’ve always been an insanely insatiable reader, and when i had access to the books (my own collection, my best friend Amrit’s collection, school libraries.. i have been known to read three-four books in a sitting). However, I have always preferred to read informal literature, over the classics, and over ‘serious’ books!
Even now, i just don’t seem to find the time (or patience!) to read books, preferring instead to limit my reading to stuff that isn’t over 100-150 pages long, printed on glossy paper, and has a sizeable number of scantily-clad women draped all over it! hehe!
In my schoolyears: Peter & Jane (Ladybird series), the Famous Five (and other Enid Blyton‘s works), the William series (Richmal Crompton), The Three Investigators (Robert Arthur), the Hardy Boys (Franklin W. Dixon), Nancy Drew (Carolyn Keene), their Case Files, Agatha Christie, Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, Alistair Maclean, Jeffrey Archer, Eric van Lustbader and i’m pretty sure i’m forgetting lots more too..
Later on i moved to Robert Ludlum, Michael Crichton, Robin Cook and P.G Wodehouse among mainstream writers, and Chinua Achebe, Elechi Amadi, David Maillu, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Arundhati Roy, Gita Mehta, Andy McNab and a whole bunch of others who i don’t even remember anymore!
I have to mention here that if i had to pinpoint any one book that really made a difference to my life, then it would have to be the legendary ‘How To Win Friends And Influence People‘ by Dale Carnegie!! I know it sounds really corny, but my grandpa gave me this when i was a shy, reserved kid in class 5, and it made a whole new man out of me!! basically it woke the devil inside me, but hey, my grandpa passed away happy that he had left the next generation of Mittra’s in safe hands.. muhahahah!
three weeks to the day since i last moved to a plane of higher consciousness, since i last altered reality, since i last slid into a parallel world. i feel restricted, oppressed.. by the powers that be, by the assholes that make laws such as mandatory substance screening tests for entry level employees!! isn’t that breaking the First Amendment, the freedom of expression?!
i’ve been slogging my ass off working at the library, then going to the lab and doing more shit.. don’t i deserve to come home and fire up a nice reefer.. or a small bowl, to go with my beer and dinner?!
read what Dr. Timothy Leary has to say, from ‘How To Operate Your Brain‘..
Think for yourself, Question authority.
by the way, did anyone notice the whole irony of it?! an anti-establishment writer, who promotes freedom of speech and thought, advocating the throwing off of mind controls placed upon us by authorities.. titles his book ‘How To Operate Your Brain’?? ohh the bitter irony of it all..
what is the truth?!