s! the outlaw torn

one of the first things i remember hearing about when i came to the US was ‘credit history’. apparently, from when you get a Social Security number, every transaction you ever participate in which has a written record goes into your file. so for those of you buying porn using your credit cards, don’t think the Government (aka your girlfriend) won’t know you have a subscription to ‘Big Boobs Weekly’ just because it arrives packaged in brown paper. i hear the magazine can’t make up their mind if they want Lindsay Lohan in it, or not, or in it, or not..

anyways, getting back to the point, basically what happens is that every dealing you make, paying bills, buying groceries, bidding on ebay, buying weed, booze and cigs, health insurance, rent.. everything with records in one of your bank accounts is in your credit history, so that when you apply for a loan or a mortgage, the money-lenders decide whether they want one pound of flesh (or more) to go with its repayment, and whether it should be be from the rump steak region or from the spare ribs area.

most graduate students lived in poverty throughout undergrad – just that it never seemed that bad then. i would SMS my dad this:
me: “no mon, no fun, your son.”
hoping that he would catch my drift and cash would soon be on the way. without missing a beat, he replied:
dad: “too bad, so sad, your dad.”
where other feeble-hearted kids would give up, my thirst for knowledge (actually, whiskey) would lead me to mailing mom:
me: “hi ma! i was looking to apply to some grad schools in my specialization. they told me that they were very impressed with my qualifications, and i just needed to go through the preliminary application process, and i was a shoo-in for a scholarship.”
the next time the brown-suited postman came around room C-313, he would be a messenger bearing good tidings in the form of a cheque which got promptly converted to a more eatable and drinkable form.

so a lot of us were duped into going to grad school, with visions of milk & honey for some, and chicken wings & beer for others. however i find that life at the grad level is a delicate balance of credit limits and 13.5% APR, the latter number being the interest to be paid on the credit card. smarter folks have learned an advanced form of the 3-card poker (aka 5-card stud), with credit cards though, whereby you keep transferring and juggling balances throughout the three, interspersed with calls to the Help Desk for an increase in credit limit.

these calls to the Help Desk are a lot of fun, as mostly they are routed to Bangalore, India.. and a very nice feminine voice answers: “hi, thank you for calling **** (bank’s name withheld to protect my credit rating), this is May speaking, how may i help you?” at this point i am wondering if her real name is Malika, or Mayuri, or Mahima.. and whether she is breathing heavily into the phone because she likes my voice, or hmm.. !! but usually her name turns out to be Manjula or Madhushri or Mandodari, and she is as willing to increase my credit limit as she is to meeting me for coffee the next time i’m in bangalore. damn.

now you know why i am so desperately looking for a job when i finish, and not because i am looking for “a field where maximum utilization can be made of my academic training and research skills” (verbatim from my resume), but because i am nearing the credit limits on the cards, and the price of alcohol is increasing all the time, as if the stuff was distilled from crude oil, the cost of which strangely refuses to obey Newton’s law of gravity and come down.

i can do that.. hehe!!

season’s greetings to you all, have a great time!

NB: the ‘other’ gf has gone on the blink again, thereby once again ditching me when i needed her the most. she’s scheduled for some replacement surgery, and i will only get her back in the new year. *sigh*

the ‘other’ gf has been getting on my nerves again, whinin’ and bitchin’.. nothing’s ever good enough for her! sometimes she wants me to not push her so much, other times she’s all teary-eyed when i haven’t spoken to her for a few minutes.

the last couple of days she’s been bugging me, complaining of mysterious illnesses, even after i’ve bought her so much stuff. yes, like most needy gfs, this ‘other’ gf needs to be pampered with material gifts, and even then she wants more!

yes, there.. i said it! only that guys usually prefer to do their shopping online. or when the direst set of circumstances cause them to have to venture out to a store, they make it a smash n’ grab, hit n’ run kind of a situation. but when i get Timberlands for $40, New Balances for $20, Levi 501s for $25, ribbed polos for $15 and 160 Gb for $80, then i love me an xmas sale too!

winters are a very eerie time. if you take a walk in the dead of the night, it is very quiet. not just because everyone is cosily wrapped up and ensconced in their couches and beds, but because the snow deadens all sound, muffling everything. the snow covers everything with a blanket of silence. and as the wind whips the snow around, everything becomes a curtain of white, and the ground rises to meet the sky.

walking into snow being driven into your face is a very disorienting experience, as the snowflakes whizz past you, some hitting you and condensing on the exposed parts of your face, some pitter-pattering against the hood of your jacket. it gives the feeling of flying through space, ducking and weaving through the Milky Way, with stars, asteroids and comets hurtling past you.

what part does television play in your life? i use the word ‘television’ to describe the press in general.. how much of what we listen to, watch or read determines the extent of our knowledge? how often do we take an extra step to scratch beyond the surface, probe a little deeper than the skin?

a certain Senator Joe McCarthy and his witch-hunting policies in the early 50′s took advantage of the paranoia sweeping the country during the Cold War. read this for more info. a few men in the press decided to do something about it. these men worked for the broadcasting house CBS when there were just three big networks, ABC, NBC and CBS.

the movie ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ is a story about those pressmen, and how they worked to save the country from McCarthy. directed by and also starring George Clooney, this is a crisply-made movie, and definitely leaves you with a lot of things to ponder about. its a period-piece, and excellently done too, shot in black and white, with jazz music setting the mood of the film.

this film was not made for the masses, the population led in droves to the theaters like dull, witless sheep.. watch it if you want a thought-provoking film, that raises a few questions about the role of the press in our lives, and how much of it we can believe and how much is actually controlled by entities much larger than us, namely corporations. as the lead character in the film, Ed Murrow says, “it is up to us to make television an instrument of learning and wisdom, or else it’s just wires and lights in a box”.. wise words indeed, even much more so considering this statement was made in 1958!

there are a few things in winter that bring a smile of warm contentment to my face when it’s minus something something outside and snowy gales lash against the windows..

a hot home-cooked meal, cuddling up to watch old sitcom reruns, a tumbler of aged scotch on the rocks, classic rock playing on the stereo, sleeping warm and comfy in my bed.. wow age has caught up on me!

a couple of years back it was way different.. it was trudging through knee-high snow to a party, doing endless tequila shots, drinking gallons of beer, smoking up ounces of weed, headbanging to trance, then mellowing down to ambient, and passing out on the nearest horizontal surface available!

whats your favorite hot accent? what is the accent that turns your knees to quivering jelly and the rest of you into a pool of mush? i find quite a few accents particularly hot..

elizabeth hurley’s dulcet british accent totally puts me at ease, and makes me feel i could listen to her go on and on.. wait a sec, why would she be talking so much in the first place when there are better things she could do with her lips!

laetitia casta’s lilting and lascivicious french accent brings to mind sitting in a sidewalk cafe in paris, sipping coffee, and enjoying the ambience of the city as it goes by, the smell of freshly-baked croissants in the air, and the company of a beautiful lady too!

salma hayek’s lisping latina accent arouses unbridled lust, with thoughts of tequila shots, sucking lemons and the ripping of clothes.. and it inspires a thousand songs strummed on a guitar, and makes you wanna sway with the rhythm!

charlize theron’s faint south african accent is tinged with raw sexuality, a kind of animal magnetism that is carried across in her eyes too.. she manages to look both homely yet wild, and when she has that look, she just puts the two ‘o’s in ‘oomph’!

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!)