s! the outlaw torn

whoa.. and i thought mondays are bad! but i think i have mentioned tuesdays have also had issues with me in the past.. this tuesday started off like all regular days, and little did i suspect it was going to do a Jekyll/Hyde and haunt me!

was up till 4 writing up the thesis draft for the first couple of chapters.. then finally passed out cos i had to submit that at 9 in the morning.. but when i got up at 8.. the faucet was dry! apparently the blokes upstairs had bust a pipe.. gah! showered and stuff at our new apartment (yes, we’re moving.. more on that later!) luckily the meeting with the advisor went off very well.. he seemed quite impressed, it is a skill i have been developing over the years: making a little work look like lots!

the new semester has started, and since the weather has been decent (how i will regret those words later in the day!) all the girls are back from summer break in their teeny weeny clothes (can they really be called clothes when they seem to be made of random pieces of string?) showing off their suntans (you can really tell the ones that came out of a bottle!).. but before i can get carried away with oggling the eyecandy at the library, i have a million people asking at the Circulation Desk for books and papers and what not.. gah! alas, good old summer days when the campus is deserted like a strip mall on a weekday morning are gone..

hey! i got promoted to Student Co-ordinator! and a measly raise of $0.25 per hour (no snide comments please!!).. but here’s the catch, because of a goof-up with some of my documents, i can’t work after tomorrow! and the wonderfully efficient (note the sarcasm!) Kenyan embassy in DC haven’t made my new passport and it’s been two months now since i sent in all the papers!

so got home at 8 and we were working on finishing all the remaining packing and stuff for the move.. and then ka-bam!! Hurricane Katrina rolls into town.. actually this is her fading away, so she only brings strong winds and buckets of rain. prayers go out to all those in the South ravaged by the floods.

anyways, we did manage to move out all our stuff and clean up the old apartment last night.. just that we got soaked to the skin.. and only barely managed to keep everything dry while we moved it using tarps and plastic sheets! the house looks like an evacuation zone with everything in boxes all over the place.. i think i’m gonna use the whole Labor day weekend to sort the place out! and then i woke up in the morning and found that all the stuff we’d left out in the covered porch almost drenched cos the tarp on it got blown away.. *sigh*

how many times have you come across a street painter, and stopped to think to yourself, “wow, this bloke certainly knows his colors”? what if you came across Englishman Julian Beever (hehe, cmon, you gotta smile when you come across a bloke called Mr. Beever!!) and his paintings, and saw that he’d painted this:

yes, this is a painting!! a 2-dimensional painting! go look again!! it’s an artform called the anamorphosis view, whereby a 2-D image when viewed from the right angle looks 3-D! go to his site and check out how he does it!

yes, i have had some absolute mind benders in the last couple of weeks, and over time i have noticed that the harder i think, the wackier the dreams get when i sleep. short of the exam periods earlier on in college, i guess i’ve never used the mental faculties this much before.

this dream was quite interesting actually.. the scene was kinda like this, only a little foggier i guess.. i was with a few friends too. the water was very blue and very inviting, so we made our way down the side of the cliff towards the shoreline. as we got closer, i noticed a really strange thing – there were alligators swimming in the water.. some really big-ass ones!! and there were some folks in black scuba gear swimming around!! finally we descended to the water in a small sandy cove, and i saw that the scuba folks were all Japanese, and they had the words ‘Crew’ in white across their chests!

anyways, as soon as they saw us, they told us to step aside, and drew out these whistles, like the ones referees use. a couple of shrill blasts later, and wonder of wonders, all the gators started waddling out of the water, in organised single file, towards the foliage! holy crap!! and as they passed us, they gave us these mean and hateful glares, like when older kids get chased away from the playground by the teachers so that the smaller kids can play!!

other dreams i’ve had have involved rock concerts, liquid nitrogen, mexican food, and stuff i can’t remember now, but all pretty wacky i must say! i’m really working too hard, i don’t see what else it can be! here”s the thing, some of the things are stuff directly out of my life, but some of it is just way wild eccentric! hehe!

wait a sec, those of you thinking these dreams are all just chemical-induced hallucinations.. i don’t do drugs! i quit the holy herb! a few months back!! unless these are residual THCs in the system.. hmm.. now that’s a thought!

NB: for the newer readers, this is the 13th in a series of the so-called blue post collection.

ahh, finally a movie set in Kenya that has actually been shot in Kenya! John Le Carré’s novel ‘The Constant Gardener‘ has been adapted for the large screen, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. i watched her talk to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, and she was talking about how they shot the movie in Nairobi, and then in the Turkana desert while living in tents and stuff..

my biggest gripe with movies shot in Kenya, or anywhere in the Third World for that matter, is that the natives are made to look like a bunch of befuddled idiots, and nothing can be more galling!! this kind of colonialist mentality has to go! be it ‘The Ghost And The Darkness‘ and ‘Out Of Africa‘ [Kenyans], or ‘Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom‘ and James Bond’s ‘Octopussy‘ [Indians], or ‘Dances With Wolves‘ and ‘The Windtalkers‘ [Native Americans].. the local people were in some form or another made to look either uncouth, uncivilised, or the villians or a combination of all the above!

we await to see how Hollywood’s latest offering treats Kenya when the movie releases on Aug. 31st.

i’m starting to really like this show on FX Network.. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.. it has more than its fair share of inappropriate humor! catch it at 11pm Eastern on tuesdays!

haven’t cooked anything different in a while, so decided to try out some new stuff today.. baked lemon pepper chicken and baked veggies!

hehe, yeah i know y’all are waiting to hear about mine.. but this post is not about mine! this one is dedicated to my buddy gprx.. this is a man who totally partied and slogged his way through UB.. he got a great job and finished his thesis too – buddy, you are an inspiration to us all still left here!

he came back from his posh job in Raleigh to defend his thesis today.. and threw a great party too! butter chicken, naan and jack n’ coke – very nice! well done dude.. here’s to good times.. and even more ahead!

in case you haven’t noticed.. this is a pretty drink-fuelled post, and only strengthens my resolve to finish what i started.. bring on that goddamn thesis, there hasn’t been much that s! has started that he hasn’t finished in style yet.. see you all soon at my graduation party soon!

after slogging my ass off as i have been, decided to take a break and chill out at Buffalo Bills first home game of the pre-season. we played the Green Bay Packers and steamrolled them 27-7 too!!

got there in the early afternoon for the tailgate parties happening, only to find that people had started in the morning for what was a 6pm kickoff! that’s us just starting off, the stadium is far off in the back.

playing catch, the more we drank the better we kept getting!

knocking back the last few before gametime..

welcome to the Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the Buffalo Bills, full house 72,000!

the Bills (in blue) about to score a touchdown.. (click image for video) by the way, that is my hoarse voice calling the running play too.. man i’m good!!

even the cheerleaders were having a great time! (click image for video)

and here’s the post-game tailgate..

this weekend turned out become one helluva alcohol-fuelled party.. friday night: Jamaican Juice, Embolism & Dewing The Captain cocktails, beer then tequila shots.. and then saturday’s tailgate, and going pubbing later at night.. and sunday a couple more beers to wash away all signs of hangover.. now back to work and the thesis tomorrow!

NB: bonus points for identifying me in the pics!!

with the hard earth rushing up to embrace the jet in a crushing hug, the pilot flicks the cover off the ejector button, and mulls over the option of just bailing out. it would all be so easy, to just check out of reality.

well, if people were willing to get rich or die tryin’, our inveterate optimist pilot wasn’t really gonna give up this plane so easily now was he? kicking back on the pedals, he toggled the joystick to the left to correct for the weight loss and the damage to the flaps. and just in time too, as the plane skims the tops of the trees as it levels again. he might still salvage this one, let’s see.

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so it’s been a good week. i got a lot of work done, and even though i had the option of ditching the thesis, converting it into a project and getting out of college, i chose to stick with the thesis.. i know i can do this!

one of the original brownies, vip started work in detroit this week.. he’s coming down for the weekend, that should be a blast! the Buffalo Bills play the Green Bay Packers tomorrow.. and yes, the brownie boys will be there in full voice – yeeha!! and sunday we’re gonna have one of those huge-ass barbecues too.. so stay tuned for lots of wanton pics and hedonistic stories of Girls Gone Wild.. umm, boys gone wild i mean!

thanks folks for all your support over the week, it was very heartening to come back to the blog today and see so many comments, and would you believe it, the stats tell me that most of the faithful readers were here everyday! i *heart* you all!!

the F-16 wings through the skies, the last afterburner spurt almost emptied the gas tanks, but now it’s all secondary, as there is enough altitude and spare jet fuel to carry the fighter plane back to the home base. the azure is unbroken from end to end, dotted with woolly puffs of white cloud. the sun has gone down enough that the brightness doesn’t cause the eyes to water.

“this is homebase calling yeahbaby.. come in yeahbaby. we see you on our screens, have you home in a bit!“

the pilot leans back and exhales slowly, the last couple of hours were tense, weaving and ducking past the enemy fire. he lets himself smile, and think about after the war. get a decent job, travel some more.. BEEP! BEEEEEP! the tracking alarm goes off as by instinct he throws the plane into a roll with a flick of his wrist. enemy missiles have homed in on him and locked into place! he raps his LCD display with his hand, and tries to look over his shoulder.. where, who, what the fuck?!

he pulls up the joystick and gains altitude, trying to get rid of the persistent BEEP! that tells him that there is serious hardware headed his way. again he tries to peer round when WHAM!! the plane cartwheels on its nose and spirals downwards in a mad tumble. pieces of the fuselage sail downwards as, numbed by shock and fatigue, the pilot can only think about how close home seemed. the wind wails as the plane goes screaming down, the windshield of the cockpit no longer showing blue skies, but hard brown earth rushing up to meet him.

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i met with my advisor today. he very grimly informed me that i was doing nowhere nearly enough to get things done in time. i had thought that i would be finishing this thesis very soon, but he has very solemnly squashed any such possibilities. so i guess i will be reading those 50+ papers after all, and will be writing a dozen rough drafts to every chapter of the thesis, and will be spending a few wintry nights in the lab as buffalonian blizzards rage outside. the story above is a pretty accurate reflection of what is happening.

of course, all this means that you will see a reduced presence from me on your blogs, and your IM screens. i will not have forgotten you, nor will i have forgotten The Outlaw Torn, through which i met so many of you.. but i really need to fix up my life and get over this. take care, and thank you everyone for all your support, and i’ll see you soon when i level out and come humming in over the hedges and fields to land this plane of mine!