A Goose Egg

Cave Creek Chili Beer

2008-07-04T00:29:00.008-04:00

I think I finally found my beer. It is called Cave Creek Chili Beer. It combines the two loves of my life which are beer and spice. This is a spicy beer. I mean, it is actually spicy as in chili hot. The beer bottle itself contains a chili pepper hanging around in the beer like a drunken worm. I love the taste of this beer. Many a times have I wondered how to get drunk and satisfy the spice sensors on my tongue, both at the same time. I tried downing tequila shots followed by a spoonful of Andhra style hot lime pickle, but it did not hit the spot as I had hoped. Something seemed to be amiss. But when I drank this beer, the spot that had not been previously hit was not just hit, but blown into shreds. This beer helped me achieve my objective of getting spicily drunk. I like this beer and if you are Indian, Mexican or ancient Incan, you will like this beer too. The evil snobs at Ratebeer.com appear to think that it is a cruel joke perpetrated on the beer loving community by the Mexican mafia and are quite vehement in their criticism of this product. One guy even noted that the beer bottle contains "some sediment, perhaps dirt and chili pepper particles". I am sure the same guy would waste no time in praising a Belgian manufactured beer as "being earthy", and since we know that the earth is mostly composed of dirt and chili pepper particles, it would be a classic example of double standards.

But anyways, the long and the short of it is that I liked this beer. Go get some and let me know if you like it too.

PS : I forgot to mention that the motto of the brewery is "We drink all we can and sell the rest".

Also, do not eat the drunk chili pepper worm inside the bottle. It tastes like Sir Francis Drake's corpse.

Gay

2008-07-01T13:15:00.011-04:00

You know, oftentimes it so happens that even though you might be extremely liberal in your social outlook and of the opinion that whatever people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms should be no one's business but theirs and of anyone else watching their archival footage, and even though you are all for homosexuals being treated like everybody else and being given their due rights, still, when you encounter somebody whose last name is "Gay", you cannot help but wonder and desperately hope that somehow, could this set of circumstances possibly lead to a humorous turn of events?

But usually nothing of the sort happens and you are left disappointed and frustrated, questioning Mother Nature's intention behind bestowing the moniker "Gay" upon someone without having anything funny to say about it.

And then just as you are getting ready to resign yourself to the incredible monotony of life, today, you read this (via PZ). Apparently, a sprinter whose name is "Tyson Gay", won the 100 meter dash at the US Olympic Track and Field trials. The American Family Association (or NAMBLA), a right-wing organization, reported on the event. Now, the AFA apparently feels that the word "gay" is an undesirable euphemism for referring to people who rightfully should be called what they are, namely, homosexual. I guess this is to preclude the younger generation from making any kind of subliminal association between homosexuality and happiness (being gay). Therefore, towards this purpose, the AFA appear to have added an auto-word-replace macro to their web-publishing that replaces the word "gay" with "homosexual" in every article they publish. You probably see where I'm going with this. This is the article the AFA published on their website :

Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.

Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.

His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. […]

Homosexual didn’t get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead. He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday. Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: “A little fatigued.

So I guess that is it. Your wish for some guy named "Gay" to have something funny happen to him has finally been fulfilled. You may move on with your life now and look for funny elsewhere. I know I will.

comment

2008-07-01T12:27:00.002-04:00

Quite possibly the best comment I have ever received on this blog. An alternative explanation of "maadi" from an anonymous commenter :

"in punjabi " maa-di" has a very different connotation. The correct usage is "teri maa-di". It can be used to start as well as end arguments. It can also be used in the middle of an argument just before fistcuffs replace vocal cords. It is a very versatile phrase and can also be adapted to other situations - greeting, salutation, frustrations. But mostly it is a a unhappy and angry phrase, that blames 'yo mamma' for all that is wrong in this world."

Maadi

2008-06-26T14:49:00.002-04:00

My sister, while signing off from an email conversation, called me a maadi. I am aware that in marathi, this word translates to "child-bearing female". Hopefully it means something else in Bangalore.

Bragging

2008-06-26T09:51:00.009-04:00

I think I am getting too vain about my biking prowess. Last weekend I did the Schuylkill trail again and it left me overflowing with vanity. Luckily for me, I was able to release some of this vanity into the atmosphere by bragging about it to my friend zambezi who unfortunately for him, called me when I had just completed the trail and was scarfing sambal shrimp in Penang. But there was still some amount of residual vanity left because the call ended prematurely before all the vanity had a chance to be vented. The disposal of this residual vanity had to wait a couple of days.

So then the other day, I was in this furniture store that was having a going out of business sale and I was looking at this table and the Chinese saleswoman asked me if I wished to take this table home today. I said that I couldn't because I had biked to the store. She said really, where had I biked from? I replied that I had biked from home, which was off Bob's road, did she know Bob's road? Apparently she did know Bob's road and she Ohed and Ahed and she looked damn impressed with my biking abilities which fucking irritated me. My frustration was due to two things. One, I had just completed the Schuylkill Trail the previous weekend, a distance of thirty miles which had filled me with vanity. And two, here was this woman getting impressed and complimenting me for a stupid biking excursion from Bob's road to her furniture store, which might have been three or four miles at best. Her getting impressed at three miles of biking was an insult to my vanity. I felt like I had just invented a perpetual motion machine but been awarded the Nobel prize for my other invention of toothpaste.

So this created a combustible mixture inside of me, which was just waiting to burst out. Which it did. I said to the furniture woman, "Bob's road, oh, come on, Bob's road, no that's close, very close. Very close, for me that is. You see, I bike a lot. I bike thirty miles every weekend. So Bob's road isn't a huge distance for me. I love biking." There, I had said it. She was now free to legitimately explode in admiration for my skills.

She asked me, "So are you interested in this table?"

Actually I was, because it was a good-looking table so then we measured it and I went back home and found that it was the wrong size of table. Too wide. This weekend I will do the Perkiomen Trail and go see a different table.

MGS4

2008-06-12T14:19:00.001-04:00

I want. Somebody give. Vishnu will bless.

Wikimulch

2008-06-12T00:02:00.014-04:00

Sometimes I wish the wikipedia didn't exist. Blogs would be so much more interactive than what they are now if wikipedia did not exist. Let me give you an example. Mulch. I see mulch everywhere. Wherever I see flowers, I see mulch. Wherever I see ardently landscaped trees, I see mulch. Where grass is lacking, I see mulch. But what is mulch? From personal experience, I have this much to relate. Mulch is a soup of rotten tree parts, cut into bite sized pieces for convenient consumption. That is mulch. So now I know what mulch is. But what is mulch for? Where is the place of mulch in the soup of life? Is mulch the carrots? Is mulch the peas? The broth? Or is mulch those chunks of nicely tenderized human flesh floating ever so squeamishly?

It is not just because I see mulch every which way, wherever I ride, but also because mulch has a personal history with me. I found mulch here, underneath my deck. It was a stray orphanized bag of mulch, deliberately left by the previous owners of my house in order to torture me. They knew that I did not know what the heck mulch was. I was a real estate n00b. Mulch who? I do not know why they seeked to torture me though, since I paid them above-market price and did not haggle (sorry mother, it is true, fish is not real estate).

Now. About mulch. What is mulch is what I have to find out, let's say. Also, why mulch? Now here I have two options, okay. One is to log on to the wikipedia and ask the wikipedia, hello sir, good morning what is mulch, thank you please. The other option is to log on to my blog and after entering my shitty login and shitty password, ask the air, hello air, what is mulch, thank you please, and thank you for being so invigorating today after two days of 90s and 100s.

Wikipedia would have given me my answer in about 5 seconds, 2 of which would have been consumed in trying to find if my blog was referenced in that wikipedia article. And then what? I would know what mulch is, but where is the social interaction? Where is the personal bonding? Not here. Not here, it ain't.

But where is the bonding? It is here, in the blogs. For if wikipedia had not been born, if wikipedia had been aborted as a fetus, or if papa wikipedia had remembered to wear a condom while fucking mama wikipedia, the world would have been a different place. A better place. Oh, so different. For, if I had woken up this morning, wrought over the question of the mulch, I would have gone straight to my blog and asked of you, my twenty or so intentional readers, hello readers, pray, what is mulch? Are you in the USA? Are you of sane mind? Are you of ample vision? Are you ambulatory? Then, what is mulch? What, for God's sake, is mulch? And, what the heck is it for?

And you would have answered, mulch is ...... this, and mulch is....that, and mulch is.... you know, whatever. And I would have contemplated your answers, formulated my own follow-up question, maybe something like, hey, but why is it called mulch and so forth, and you would have replied, hi gawker, sorry, but this is all the time I have, it is summer and it is now time for me to go swimming with my girlfriend, and I would have said, sure, go, who the heck is stopping you, I have nineteen other intentional readers, who the fuck cares, and then I would have asked you, you there, in the corner, you, pretending to read CNN on the other Firefox tab. Yes, I would have asked you. Why mulch?

And you would have told me. You would have guessed, or you would have lied. Either way, there would have been an interaction, a bonding. There would have been a conversation, an exchange of ideas, a give and take of viewpoints. The foundation of society as we know it.

But now there is wikipedia. So I won't ask you. I already know what mulch is. It's a stupid answer in bulleted form and quite predictable. And I had kinda guessed it anyways. So no blogposts about mulch. No personal interaction. No enlightening conversations.

Which is why, fuck wikipedia. The next time I have a question, I will ask you. And you better be ready with an answer. It's okay if you make stuff up. After all, it's all about the interaction. And the comments. And the follow up replies. Mulch? Mulch could be a Seattle-based grunge band. It could be an ice-cream flavor. Or it could be a pornographic position.

Mulch is whatever you tell me it is.

Helpful replies

2008-06-05T14:34:00.003-04:00

On the Amazon.com COD4 forum, some guy with a considerable amount of wishful in his thinking, asked the question,

"Will Call of Duty 4 (a PS3 game) work on the PS2?"

Some of the helpful replies he received from forum members were :

" Will my DVDs play in my VCR?"

"yes, but you have to mod your ps2...1st you have go buy a ps3, then you pretend its the ps2 and batta bing....it'll work.

" Will Uncharted work in my Dishwasher?"

"Will Assassin's Creed work in my blender?"

" Will Halo 3 work in my frying pan?"

You can clearly see why these forums are so popular among advice-seekers.

End

2008-06-05T13:44:00.002-04:00

Fuck, it's only 1:43 pm?
Fuck, it's only thursday?
Fuck, I'm only 32?

When will it end?

Another Garden update

2008-06-04T14:01:00.003-04:00

Lately, I have been taking an active interest in my garden. With the appearance of daylight and decent atmospheric conditions here in the mid-Atlantic, various things have begun to sprout and grow. The funny thing is that all throughout winter, not a single thing that is currently growing was visible. It's as if plants hibernate underground during winter just like fish and women.

A rose plant has appeared and it already has a yellow rose hanging from it. I never did anything to facilitate its growth. I remember back in India when my dad had to lavish a considerable amount of time, water, fertilizer, affection and rogor on our five hundred and sixty seven rose plants before a single one graced us with a flower. Here the roses do not appear to require any human intervention to prosper and celebrate life. In fact, they appear to be prospering in spite of my presence which, historically, has been to the detriment of plant-life. Neither of my thumbs is green.

And then there is another plant right by our doorstep which has also appeared out of nowhere and is now partying like it is 1999. This organism has assumed the appearance and demeanor of a rain-forest and has annexed most of my driveway to its kingdom. Currently, it is bearing about thirty-forty huge pink bastards and these bastards are so gigantic that due to their weight, the plant is forever lying prostate on the ground. I don't know what breed of flower this plant is. So the other day, I asked my neighbor, who appears to be knowledgeable in this area, if he knew who or what these flowers were and if they came from a decent family.

"Yes, they are called panties", he replied.

"Can you spell that for me please", I requested.

"Could you use it in a sentence", he countered.

"I have panties growing in my garden", I replied.

"P-E-O-N-I-E-S", he said.

"Oh yes", I said. "You mean ponies."

My other neighbor has the lushest, greenest, thickest backyard I have ever seen. It is in stark contrast to mine, which is a weed infested mess with a few blades of grass trying to make a decent living but having very little success. There is a well-defined boundary between my backyard and my neighbor's where the grass ends and the desert begins. It is so bad that the rabbits on her property have erected a fence in order to keep my rabbits from crossing over to the other side. They say the nibblings better over there.

I do not know what she did to deserve that kind of lawn on her property. I wanted to find out. So naturally, my first step was to guess. After spending a lot of time guessing, I made a list of things that I guessed were responsible for the superior health of her lawn. I then went to Lowe's. I purchased a weed killer. I purchased grass seed. And finally, I purchased grass fertilizer. Since I wanted my grass to de-weed, sprout and grow all on the same day because in this part of the world, summer only lasts for a couple of months which go by so fast that they seem like a couple of days and sometimes hours if you are playing the PS3, I mixed together weed killer, grass seed and fertilizer and applied the mixture to my lawn. The next day, my lawn disappeared, weeds, grass, earth and all. In its place was a deep hole, the bottom of which I could not see and through which I could faintly hear a number of voices speaking in a Chinese dialect.

Repeat after me. Patience is a virtue. Grass takes time to grow. Your neighbor's grass will always be greener. Weed killer, grass seed and fertilizer are not friends.

Is everybody asleep?

2008-05-30T10:09:00.005-04:00

How come in my absence, I did not receive a single request to blog, if for the only reason that it would be the first step towards taking towelguy off the main screen? It appears to me that all you people must be closet towelguy fans. Anyways here's to the few among you who did wish for towelguy to be removed, but were hesitant to openly request it due to peer pressure.

Bye bye towelguy, your moment in the limelight is over.

Towelguy

2008-05-05T10:27:00.006-04:00

Dear Bollywood,
???

Eagerly awaiting your reply,
Sincerely,
gawker.

(link)

Garden Update

2008-05-01T09:47:00.026-04:00

My deck gave birth to a litter of cilantro plants yesterday. I must tell you, cilantro babies don't look like cilantro adults at all. When they come into this world, they are all like two tiny leaves and one tiny stem and they are barely green and so helpless, they don't even wave when you blow wind in their face. But when you pluck off those tiny leaves and taste them, you can feel the cilantro spirit not yet surging, but definitely germinating inside them.

They took a long time waking up. I first planted them in an old pot, a pot full of dirt left over from the previous owner. I called up my mother and told her, "Hello mother, prepare, for once, to be proud of your son for he is now helping the world meet its food-production needs."

My mother said, "what are you food-producing?"

I said, "Cilantro, mother, cilantro." I come from a family of cilantro fanboys. "Are you excited for me?"

My mother replied, "Yes, yes, I am excited. Did you break the seeds before planting them?"

I allowed a stunned silence to elapse for about a minute and a half.

"Break the seeds? Why?"

"Well, you have to kind of break coriander seeds before you plant them in the dirt."

"Okay mother, I will talk to you later." I had not broken the seeds.

I went and prepared an additional pot for cilantro-planting. Again, an old existing pot. This time I broke the seeds. Alright, that should appease the fussy Cilantro Deity.

But it didn't. I waited and waited some more. It didn't help that the weather suddenly turned cold. A week went by. Not a lot happened. I did improve my COD4 rank from 41 to 51 but that's another story which I could narrate again if you were to so desire.

I decided that it was the old dirt that was the root of the infertility. So I went and bought a fresh bag of dirt from the grocery. My suspicions were confirmed. The dirt manual told me that dirt only lasts for three months or so. Dirt comes with a manual. Long live Western Society. So I went and prepared a third pot for cilantro plantation with all the new dirt I had just purchased. I broke the seeds, used new dirt and watered the pot. Conditions couldn't get any more perfect than this. And then I waited.

And waited some more.

And finally, just as I was about to give up my agricultural dreams, two of my pots went into labor. It happened while I was at work so I couldn't share in the joyous moment but when I came home in the evening, I saw the cilantro babies and it was one of my proudest moments since the time I achieved rank 52 in COD4, but that's a different story.

The funny thing is, the two pots that first gave birth were full of old dirt, including the one with the unbroken seeds. I appear to be breaking new ground in cilantro cultivation technology.

Secondly, I have also planted tomatoes. No progress there. Tomatoes fussier than cilantro. Also, experience has now taught me that a farmer needs to be patient with his crop.

The other day, an Indian kid, claiming to be one of my neighbors, came by and offered to mow my lawn. "Really, does it need mowing," I asked him. I could barely see him through the grass so I asked him to shoot a flare so I could find him.

He answered yes, that in his professional opinion, my grass did indeed require mowing. I haven't been able to start my mower yet. I think it needs gas and I am waiting for the war to end for gas to become affordable again. So I said wokay, son, please do the needful. As I was watching him work on my lawn, he noticed that I was looking at my plants with pride and said to me," You know those are all weeds, don't you?", and he pointed towards basically everything in my garden.

The news stunned me. For a number of days, I had been watering those plants with love and water. I felt betrayed, like a prison guard who's discovered that the convict he took under his wing was actually stealing money from him. I was unconvinced.

"Are you sure? Is this a weed?", I asked, pointing to a small pretty yellow flower, a lot of which were scattered throughout my lawn.

"Yes", said the kid.

"What about this one", I said, indicating the tall thing with the crown of white things that disintegrate and blow away when you blow on it.

"Yes, that one is the worst", replied Dr. Greenthumb.

"Okay", I said with resignation. I had weeds.

The kid offered to rip them up for me but I declined the offer. They were my weeds. I had raised them and I would put them to sleep. So I bent down, began to uproot those ungrateful suckers and arranged them in a big pile.

"That is not a weed. It's actually a tulip", said the kid who was still hanging around like some kind of tomato fungus. I handed him the tulip root I had just pulled out of the ground and told him, "Okay, YOU do the weeds. I will be inside playing COD4."

I am ranked 53 now, but that is another story.

General

2008-04-29T09:59:00.004-04:00

On the PS3 manual as well as on the manual of its six-axis controller, there is a warning which basically cautions you that while you are playing, if your hands begin to hurt, eyes begin to itch and turn red, if you feel dizzy, start vomiting, have blurry vision, begin to think that Mariah Carey's music doesn't suck or experience similar bizarre symptoms, to immediately place the controller down or, if your hands have formed a claw-like grip around it, to immediately summon a loved one or an emergency first responder of your choice and request them to pry it out with a plier or a similar tool.

And stop playing the PS3 till such a time as these symptoms disappear.

When I read this particular instruction, my first reaction was, "Really? Do people actually get so addicted to video games that it actually turns into a health issue?"

I had this amused reaction well before this weekend when heavy uncontrolled PS3 gaming was something that happened to other people and thus, was something to be ridiculed. And then, this weekend, Call of Duty 4 released 4 new maps and declared that all weekend long, players would earn double the experience while playing online.

About this experience business. Each time you play COD4 online, you gain XP or experience points that allow you to rise in rank. You start as a private, moving on to sergeant, captain, lieutenant, general and finally, at rank 55, you become a commander. As your rank increases, you get better weapons, upgrades for your existing weapons, camouflages, etc. XP is the currency of online COD4 play.

On friday night, I downloaded the new maps and that was the beginning of my dark XP-addled journey to hell. Honestly, I cannot remember what I did all weekend that did not involve holding a PS3 controller or a beer can. I do remember that I started out with rank 41 and by the time the weekend was over, I was 51. I was a 4 star General. Although I didn't vomit or have blurry vision and despite my continuing hatred of all things Mariah Carey, my eyes did blossom forth into a variety of multicolored hues. It is only today morning that they went back to being boring white.

But fuck your eyes, get a PS3 anyways.

One Month later

2008-04-18T15:37:00.009-04:00

Having owned the PS3 for a month, I have discovered the following.

I appear to be what is known as a PS3fanboy. Although this term is derogatory in nature when applied by members of the general public towards PS3fanboys, when applied by PS3fanboys towards each other, it is a symbol of the brotherhood created through a common goal of defending our 400 dollar investments into PS3 consoles against the enemy of wallet regret.

The code of the PS3fanboys declares, in no uncertain terms that it behooves me to prowl the interwebtubenets and the various forums contained within in search of postings by rival XBox360fanboys and, in the event of encountering a single word against the PS3, spoken, breathed or thought even, return the favor by hurling a generous amount of choice invective against the XBox 360. Various talking points and items of polemic have been made available for my use such as the fact that the XBox cannot and will not ever have the requisite firepower necessary for the really great forthcoming next-generation state-of-the-art games to call it a home, that the XBox 360 is already so far behind the times that the XBox 720 is rumored to be in the works, that the PS3 has won the HD format war nya nya nya nya nya nya and that 2008 is the year for the PS3 to finally break through due to the release of some huge-ass games that will be exclusively available on the PS3. And my personal favorite : XBoxes have a 16% failure rate whereas the PS3 has a 1% failure rate. So there.

I can say with a fair amount of confidence that playing Call of Duty 4 online is more addictive than crack cocaine. And if that is not the case, then goddamn, I've got to try this crack cocaine shit.

n00b tube : Apparently, this is a grenade launcher attachment for a gun used by online n00bs playing Call of Duty 4 for firing grenades at opponents. It is called a n00b tube because it allows a player to inflict maximum amount of damage while exposing his ass to a minimum amount of danger, thus making it compatible with n00b philosophy. The code of the PS3fanboys and also the XBox360fanboys states that using a n00b tube should be frowned upon, discouraged and vilified. It is perhaps the one single thing that unites these two warring nerd factions. I am glad to report that I have coasted through my n00b stage without so much as giving a passing glance to a n00b tube. For this, I deserve special credit which I will now give myself and accept it on my own behalf.

And that is what I've learnt in my one month of PS3 ownership.

Medical announcement of the day

2008-04-18T08:42:00.001-04:00

It's probably a bit late to call it breaking news, but here it is. This goes out to all men. Offered without comment.

Woo-freaking-hoo. I mean, achoo. I have a bad cold.

Okay, no comment, starting NOW.

By the way, the article is from 2003, so I don't know if there's been any new research that contradicts the findings in that one. I am guessing not. Research doesn't carry itself out and I am sure the team did not have a lot of time in the period between 2003 and 2008 to do it.

Perkiomen Railroad

2008-04-14T10:16:00.015-04:00

This one's for me so feel free to look away and count blue cars, photograph coconut trees, eat sunflower seeds or whatever it is you do when someone asks you to look away.

I found this amazing website on the Perkiomen branch of the Reading Railroad. This is the long abandoned railroad line on which the current Perkiomen Trail (one of my favorite biking trails) was built upon. This guy, who calls himself a ferro-equinologist (a railroad archaeologist), appears to have traveled over and retraced the entire route of the original railroad line which is no longer there, houses, weeds, the trail and the 21st century having crept up over it. He even created a mapelogue of it, just like I partially did. This ferro-equinologying stuff, by the way, is something that I've often dreamt of doing, and probably will do sometime in the near future.

He's also discovered and photographed various hard-to-notice artifacts of the original railway line that are still standing on or near the trail, such as old rails, rusty signs, signals, old stations, coal feeder trestles, etc. What's funny is that I have often passed and spotted many of these structures on the trail and always wondered about them.

Here's something else he's done on the website. He has some old pictures of the railroad line and based on those, he tries to figure out the locations of the train stations (long gone) in the current landscape. For example, here's a portion of the trail I was biking this saturday. It's in a village called Salford. He has this old black and white picture of the station in the village and a new current picture of the location, and matching the buildings in the background, he figured out where the station building used to stand. This is all very interesting stuff for me, a huge fan and a frequent user of this trail and also a certified railroad lunatic.

Probably not that interesting for you, though. Look at you, all wrapped up in your sunflower seeds and coconut trees.

Farming

2008-04-11T15:09:00.005-04:00

Winter is gone and it is time for farmers like me to start planning for the growing season. As you might remember I have a brand new deck to do my farming on and the previous owners of my townhouse kindly left their flower pots scattered all over the place in various states of neglect. I'm not a farmer, I lied. This will be my first foray into agriculture.

This year I am planning to grow my own food. Towards that end, I took the first steps yesterday. It was a warm day and when I had to turn on the AC in my car for the first time in seven months, I realized that it was spring and time to begin planting. So I went home, took a fork from the drawer, moved the dirt around in one of the flowerpots and filled it up with coriander seeds. I also watered it. Soon, I hope the seeds will wake up with a boner, have sex with their neighboring seed and give birth to seedlings which, in turn, will grow up to be at least 99 cents worth of cilantro.

I am starting out with cilantro because I have a lot of cilantro experience. Back in India, I used to grow cilantro in our garden and I had a lot of success. Lesser success was achieved with plants like lady finger (okra) and beans. I remember harvesting one okra pod and one green bean at a time and giving it to my mother to cook for dinner, basking in the warm glow that comes to men who've managed to put food on the table for their family.

So I am starting out with cilantro and I hope to move up to mint, maybe a green chilli here and there. In a mad fit of optimism, I purchased a packet of tomato seeds two years ago and it still lies unopened. Perhaps this will be its year of emancipation. And with a little bit of help from the grocery in the form of onions, hopefully this year my family will be well supplied with salsa.

The Skippack Trail

2008-04-10T10:20:00.004-04:00

Biking began last weekend. This is an annotated mapelogue™ of my bike ride with zambezi on the Skippack-Perkiomen Trail.

View Larger Map

Fusen Gum

2008-04-07T16:25:00.009-04:00

I don't know if anyone remembers this stuff called Fusen gum we used to get in India during the 80s when we were kids. Maybe you still get it, I don't know. But I had totally forgotten about it. The other day I was in this Korean supergrocery and I saw this packet of Chinese looking gum on the counter and I said why the heck not and bought it. And when I opened the package and saw the words "Fusen Gum", it was like someone had lit a bulb in my brain after leaving the gas on. My mind exploded. And the memories rushed in.

Fusen Gum was this expensive bubble gum, costing about 1.50 rupees when the average gum used to cost 50 paise. But it was fucking worth it. For one, there was a rumor that this gum never lost its taste, no matter how long you chewed on it. And I think it was true. Secondly, it was soft gum, even luxuriously so. It did not harden during 10th hour chewage like most other gums. Also, it did not taste like every other gum either. It was kind of fruity without being effeminate. Thirdly, this bubble gum compensated in performance what it lacked in size. You could blow some amazing bubbles that would cover your entire face. Fourthly, these bubbles never stuck to your skin and hair. And fifthly, the back of the wrapper was a tattoo applicator so with a little bit of spit, you could give yourself a temporary tattoo. This tattoo even smelt great. I'm telling you, this thing was way ahead of its time.

I feel that in order to do adequate justice to the glory of this gum, it is imperative that I link to this random guy I found on the webtubes who appears to have penned a loving tribute to the Fusen Gum which includes a detailed step by step fully illustrated tutorial for beginners on how to enjoy this gum.

Wiffleball

2008-04-04T09:13:00.022-04:00

The 2008 wiffleball season officially kicked off yesterday in my company. Before you bombard me with emails (assuming you hire a private investigator to find out my email address, but you didn't have to do that, you could just have asked me) saying "uh...wiffle what?", rest assured that I am already on the case. I asked my colleague to explain wiffleball to me in immigrant terms. He replied, "It is baseball, but with a plastic bat and a ball with holes." And to make doubly sure that I understood, without a hint of of irony, added, "It's like cricket but not so fucking weird".

Wiffleball games are played on weekdays during the lunch hour between two teams comprising of company employees who still retain adequate control of their motor faculties and hand-to-eye coordination since these are basic prerequisites for playing wiffleball. This narrows it down to four people. Lets call these people Me, Irritating Guy, Bagel Guy and Russian Guy.

Irritating Guy is so named due to him being a non-stop irritant in my otherwise contented professional life. Here he is, bugging me to use the fake wax phone in my office to make a phone call to my boss. Here he is, preying on my not-unlimited stock of chewing gum. And here he is asking me questions to which there can be no possible answers. There are other undocumented, yet equally egregious irritants attached to his persona such as his frequent sneezing "Achoooo" which is unfailingly followed by a long-drawn-out "Aaaaah" which brings up unnecessary visions of various bodily fluids exiting his various bodily orifices. And then, his worst trait, which is the act of being startled each time anyone enters his cubicle and speaks to him, the manifestation of which takes the form of a yell "WOAAH....Woooaah...woooaah......wo....you startled me". So let's just call him Irritating Guy and be done with it.

Bagel Guy is so named because there was a time when Bagel Guy, out of his good nature and curiously, of his own free will, used to bring us a bagful of bagels and cream cheese on fridays. After buying a house, having two babies and adopting a dog, he gradually ceased to engage in this admirable practice. But we still call him Bagel Guy in order to shame him, remind him of his previous philanthropy, hoping that the pressure of this honorary title will encourage him to resume bagel delivery operations.

Russian Guy is an enigma. He is Russian and hence the name. He is rumored to pledge allegiance to the Russian mafia, which, in turn, is rumored to exist. Russian Guy is good looking and an avid skier. He is the heart-throb of numerous ladies and especially well-beloved in upstate New York, specifically the Finger Lakes region. Russian Guy eats a lot of bananas at work.

So these were the chief wiffleball participants. Two teams were formed and assumed playing positions on the field. The wiffleball triangle was our parking lot, which is bounded by our office building on one side and two creeks on two sides. To my disgust, I was paired with Irritating Guy, which meant that today would not be my chance to finally vent out years of pent-up hostility towards Irritating Guy by hurling a plastic ball with holes at him. But hey, there would always be tomorrow.

My team pitched first. I decided to pitch, being fairly confident in my pitching abilities. In India, I used to be a crafty fast bowler in cricket, having a long run-up, a vigorous tossing action and when the batsman was quaking in fear, I would throw his timing off-kilter with an extremely slow ball. That was my technique and I stuck to it, every ball, every game.

I used the same time-tested technique to try and dispatch my wiffleball opponents. I don't know if my colleagues had made a trip to the local library and studied archival footage of my old cricket games but they all appeared to be pretty well-equipped to deal with my crafty balls. I got dispatched mercilessly. Two runs were scored in the first inning before I got them all out.

Irritating Guy batted first for our team. He appeared to have lost control over his limbs which appeared to be swinging erratically and without purpose. He got out after a mere two pitches, both of which resulted in direct hits on air. I walked in, quietly confident. Bagel Guy was the pitcher. After studying Bagel Guy's pitching, I was positively sure that I could do a lot of damage. And my confidence turned out to be well-justified. I made contact on the very first ball. I hit it hard and it went out of the stadium. I moved to second base with a double. Now, as you know, baseball is a funny game in that once you have a hit and you move on to the next base, you lose the bat and it is now up to the next batter to make something of your previous hit. In my case, since the next batter was Irritating Guy, that had virtually no chance of happening. Irritating Guy made good on his promise to do nothing by doing nothing. He hit air again a couple of times and the inning ended with no runs being scored.

Russian Guy started in the second inning. During his previous stint, Russian Guy had assumed a conventional batting stance with two hands on the bat, but had found it severely lacking. This time around, Russian Guy decided to throw convention to the wind and modified his stance. He held the bat in one hand like a club, more in the manner of someone who would not be averse to hitting the pitcher, were the ball to be out of range. Irritating Guy, who was pitching, seemed somewhat terror-struck. He pitched wildly, hitting tree branches, shrubbery and ants. When he pitched more accurately, Irritating Guy didn't fare any better. He got dispatched worse than me and suddenly I didn't feel so bad. Five runs were scored, making it 7-0 before the inning ended. We needed eight runs to win.

Irritating Guy batted first. Surprisingly, he did a good job of scoring a hit and putting me in batting position. This was my chance to make India proud.

Unfortunately, Russian Guy, who was pitching, had a craftier ball than mine. His technique was to make the ball appear slow and lethargic and it would waft up to you and you would be having a casual conversation with it and then suddenly, it was in your face and whizzing by, leaving you saying "where... what?"

To make a long story short, I hit air. It was embarassing. So much so that I did it twice. I was out. And then, I did it again during my next at-bat. Russian Guy owned me completely. We lost the game. Russia 1, India 0. I was ashamed for bringing wiffleball disgrace to my motherland.

Well, both teams get friday off in order to allow us to recuperate and enjoy what the rest of this city has to offer. The season continues on monday. I hope to practice hard through the weekend. Unless of course Irritating Guy turns out to be my opponent on monday. I am fairly confident of beating his ass blindfolded and drunk.

Stocks

2008-04-01T12:52:00.006-04:00

I learnt today that the stock market in the US will be diving along its nose in the next three days. I heard this from a reliable source. Some Indian guy who was sitting in the table next to mine in the restaurant. He looked like a stockbroker because he had hair parted in the middle even though he was bald. That takes a devil-may care attitude which embodies a typical stockbroker. Perhaps you should heed his advice and start selling off your portfolio starting today afternoon like he was and no, I don't want any stocks. But don't do it all at once. We do not want the market to collapse. At least, not yet. I will let you know when it is the proper time. The tandoori chicken was delicious.

NCAAB

2008-03-28T10:19:00.005-04:00

We have an office NCAA basketball sweepstake. I drew Western Kentucky (12), Villanova (12), Temple (12), San Diego (13), Mississippi Valley State (16) and Tennessee (3). All but Villanova have been eliminated. Mississippi Valley State? What the fuck is that? Anyways, the good news is that I won the prize given each year for drawing the most no. 12th ranked teams. I would like to thank my parents, God, Richard Dawkins and the number 11.

All my no. 12s except Temple made it through the first round. I sent off the following celebratory email to my colleagues. This was also a threat disguised as stupidity.

"No matter how many No. 12s get eliminated from my team, I will still have a few more left. Go No. 12."

Then the second round began and UCLA kicked out Western Kentucky (ranked no.12). But despite my respect for the number 12, the highest hopes I had were from Tennessee. Tennessee, ranked at no. 3 was my best option. But last night, against Louisville, they really ucked it up, both s and motherf. At one point, Tennessee did not score a single basket for about ten minutes. Perhaps they have bigger baskets in Tennessee. The cheerleaders continued to cheer for their team but it was like watching the orchestra continue to play on the deck as the Titanic went down. Except Tennessee was like a small fishing boat, captained by George Clooney and being savaged by the Perfect Storm of Louisville.

Today my only remaining hope, no.12th ranked Villanova will be playing someone. I think it's no.1 ranked Kansas. It might be someone else for all I know. I don't know and I don't care. As it is, I can barely stand watching basketball. But 100 dollars worth of change is involved so I am trying to keep up.

It's good that Villanova is my final hope. If they lose, I can always drive to their campus and shout obscenities in their chapel. It's a beautiful chapel. Very peaceful.

No

2008-03-28T08:28:00.003-04:00

There might come a time when I say yes, but for now it is still no.
(via Sadly No).

The fake blur

2008-03-18T15:25:00.018-04:00

There was this huge news story that broke in the Indian media over the weekend. A Belgian model was walking down the catwalk and suddenly she had a wardrobe malfunction. Her wardrobe door fell off. And then, her top slid off her shoulders, exposing her breast.

On Saturday, I spent thirty minutes watching a Star Nyuz anchor analyze, in excruciating detail, the physics, the math and the free market economics behind the sliding of the top. I was also treated to innumerable consecutive television replays of the fateful moment. Except, every time, the replay would end just before the top actually fell off and despite the absence of on-screen areola, they still blurred the screen. I can imagine the discussion that must have ensued in the Star Nyuz studio just before they aired the clip.

"Okay, so it is decided, we will show her top falling off and then we will blur her breasts."

"Excellent. Congratulations, people, good job, good show. These blurred breasts will ensure, at least for the next week or so, that there will be food on the table for our families."

But then, a sour note.

"Hold on sir, what about Bal Thackeray?"

"What about him?"

"He does not like breasts."

"We are not showing breasts. We are blurring them."

"He might gather all the pieces of the blur, match them together in Photoshop and break our windows."

"Yes, our insurance policy does not include Bal Thackeray liability. Alright, cancel the blurred breast pictures."

"But what about our viewers? We have to think of them too. If we fail to show them blurred breasts, why would they continue to watch this channel?"

"You're right. My wife just purchased a new I-Phone. I need this job. That blur needs to be broadcast."

"Alright folks. Here's what we will do. We will run the video upto a point just before when the top falls off. And then, we will blur the picture regardless. Our viewers will mentally undress this fake blur and recreate a naked breast out of thin air. And no matter how much image processing Bal Thackeray performs on the video, he will not manage to piece together any nudity and stay in a window-friendly mood."

"That was some mighty quick thinking Varma! You are hereby promoted to Chief Blur Executive."

Why Varma? I don't know, seems like the kind of name a dynamic Blur Executive might have. A Chopra might have capitulated to blur anxiety.