Fakebook

I was talking to a friend of mine and to my appall I learned that few firms have fired people just on the basis of obscene pictures they have put up on their Facebook profile. This is yet another weapon these Firing Squads are using to their advantage. Zuckerberg did not only change the course of communication but the course of entire mankind. I remember the words of Piyush when I had just set my sail in the sea of social networking “Wyski, Facebook is not what you are, but what you pretend to be”. We take close-up picture and put it on the main profile because we don’t want people to see what out body looks like. We flash dimples on our cheeks so as to look cute. We photoshop our picture and make it more white because we what to look fair. We display gadgets, bikes, cars and our social groups in our pictures to show what and who we hang out with. Most of these consumerist bi-products don’t even belong to us. Most of the people smiling in our pictures usually smile only because they know they will be tagged in those pictures. There have been so many relationships that I know started, nourished and ended only on the basis of few Hypertext Transfer Protocols. One guy I know, he believes he is rich because he has too many Mafia Points to spare. Mafia Wars is another third party destruction after the mighty Farmville. There are more Farmville players on Facebook that there are farmers in America. Now we only pose in a picture for Facebook. Then we call up the author to remove the pictures that somehow managed to depict our real face.
Facebook registration should be as Morpheus recruiting Neo in The Matrix, “This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” And unfortunately if you on the registration page, you will take the Red pill. And then the day comes when you think, “Why oh Why didn’t I take the BLUE pill.” Facebook has become the Hotel California of internet. You can check in anytime you like but you can never leave.
Facebook has done some good to the less fortunate who, under any other circumstance wouldn’t have been able to talk to a member of opposite sex. Here are some approaching techniques:
1. “Like” the picture, video or status message of the target.
2. Comment on the picture of target, to like you are not targeting the target but other people or the backdrop in the picture. “Wow!!! You guys had a good party last night, damn I missed it (since I was not invited)”. “Wow!! Nice location, where is this?” (little bold to ask a question and very stupid to wait for a reply).
3. This is little tricky, comment on a picture that the target has already ‘Like(d)’ or comment on. This way you have indirectly let your smartness out. Since the target will get a notification of your comment, you hope you will get noticed.
4. You get a little smarter. You wait until you have few friends in common, then you send in a friend request with a message, “Your profile kept appearing on my suggested friend list, so I thought of sending you are friend request”. You could have also said, “I am really desperate”, end of the story.
5. Last one I can think of is on the top of the fake list, “I just want to remember the birthdays and anniversaries, so I am sending friend requests to all”.
I am sure Zuckerberg’s intentions were not to push the entire generation into an abyss but then again Oppenheimer also didn’t create the Nuclear Bomb just for the fireworks.
We still have hope, read a book, eat good food, drink wine, make love, get out of Facebook, show you are alive.

Domestic Violence

I was visiting my parents sometime back. I had a good time. It was all eating and sleeping for me in that house. The food is always brought to my bed, where I can eat and take a nap afterwards. Watch TV all the time and I even get to pick what I want to watch, that basically me surfing through the channels.

The last night at my folks was rather a sad one. I witnessed something I never thought I will, in our so called civilized society. There is a very calm looking couple living next door with two young kids. That last night at my parents place I was appalled hearing that lady screaming and shouting for help. Her husband was like a bull set free on a matador tied to a lamppost. I don’t know whether that guy was wasted or something else. I even thought he caught his wife cheating on him, later I found out it has happened before. Soon the entire neighborhood was an audience to the freak show. Some people interfered and put a period to it.

But was he actually pacified? Will he not attempt to hit her again? I feel sorry for the kids who had to go through all this. Later, the blame was put on the husband. Everybody had some suggestions and everybody said, “He is such an educated guy”.
But one question is still believe is unanswered to me. Is it entirely the husband’s fault? I am not being a male chauvinist here neither I believe that the strength of a man lies in his fist or his balls to be unloaded on the opposite sex. But this is as much the wife’s fault as it is of her husband’s. She has been sitting and taking the shit from her husband all this while. Do we talk about women education just for them to go to college and get degrees? Is “Standing on one’s feet” is merely a remark? This lady in the picture has a Masters in Law. When I asked, why the lady hasn’t taken any action yet, the answer was quite a cliché, “She doesn’t want her family to fall apart, she care for her kids.” I don’t really think their wagon is going any distance with one dysfunctional wheel, or both for that matter. As for kids, I am sure this isn’t the kind of education they need to have.

The only person who can end a violence is the one who is suffering from it. You (Ladies) put yourself on the other side of the knife and the story is all together different. You need to show that if you had ball they would have been bigger than the ones who slapped you. This is not about who is physically stronger, but who has a stronger heart. Its not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, it’s the size of fight inside the dog that matters. If you have strength to take all the crap for your kids, then have the strength for fighting back for your kids. They will know better how to stand against crime and violence.

Phonophobia

Heyyyy.. yahan Telephone ka ghanti bahut bajta hai!!! Bahut galat cheez banaya yeh telephone, Admi sochta kuch hai aur kehta kuch hai aur karta kuch hai – Vijay DeenaNath Chauhan


Udayan Khurana once told me that you need to have figures to put stress on facts. Not that I want to prove anything but still; India has 635.51 Million mobile phone users as of June 2010, which was 5 million in 2001.


I was having a random conversation with a female friend about how the entire species is held captive by the telephone. Mobile phone, which was one considered a status symbol back in late 90s and early 2000 in India, has now become the fourth leg of the necessity table. The other three being Roti, Kapda aur Makan (food, clothes and shelter). Your love can be quantified in terms of the time you spend on phone. You don’t need to do anything thing to prove your love but talk endlessly on phone. The ones who wanted to pluck stars from heaven for their love should keep their right hands safe for better things coz they will need the right hand for the lonely and erected. We are so dependent on our phones that one day without a phone and we are like soldiers with out the guns. Who created whom? Things you own end up owning you. We are trapped in a prison of our own.


I know there are many love stories that couldn’t have sprouted had there be no phones. Mine was unfortunately (or fortunately) suffocated by the radio signals and since then love has been a nightmare to me.


Whats worse than a cell phone? Grandfather's fart. And worse than that? Cheap calling rates. Yes. That’s Lucifer himself wrapped in technology. It is the devil’s weapon of choice against love, disguised as an agent of love.

My ex had this very weird definition of staying in touch. She wanted me be on the phone every waking hour, even sometime while I was sleeping. I have never had an opportunity of calling her in the evening and telling her how my day went. She use to be there on the phone all the fudging time. I had not disliked anything about her but her phone usage and that was the only thing she liked and couldn’t change. I thing she liked talking to me on phone more than she liked me. When I told her that I am done talking on phone, she dumped me.

I met another girl; she was crazier than the one before. One day I didn’t take my phone take my phone to office and when I came back, to my horror, I had around 80 missed calls. I was shit scared. I called her back and she said, “I was just wonder, why weren’t you picking up the call”. This second one even had a camera in her phone and she had to click picture of every damn thing she saw. She has even surpassed the Japanese in the field.

Most of the house parties are also a spoilt due to this. Every time someone will get drunk and he would want to know what his old crushes are up to. If you listen to these guys talking, they sound like someone took their balls out and slowly inserted a tampon. Then even few have sworn by their girlfriends that they will never drink, that doesn’t stop them from drinking, they just don’t drink enough to enjoy it. Yaar teri Bharjai ne sau’n khawai aa daru nu hath nahi lana.

Enlsh tk d bgst hit coz f dis culutre, ppl strtd 2 wrt n a vry odd wy 2 mk d txt msg lk hip, nd it bcme a cult. I hv evn rcvd msgs rltd 2 wrk in offc tht lkd lk ths. Soon, vowels and punctuations wll b xtnct, n-dngrd spcs.


Me being neat, slim and single doesn’t mean I am a gay. I am single because I so shit scared of being zombied by the phone calls. Abhay is so lucky to have an image of not being regular with his phone, he doesn't have any obligation to call people back. I wish Hallmark comes up with a “No Phone Day” just like it came up with Valentine’s Day and I might fall in love for a day. I hope we are able to segregate ourselves from the technology. I hope we will be free one day.

By the way, Abhay if you are reading this, call me!!!

Changing Lanes - The experiment

A beautiful picture. Now have a look at the traffic, anything is going in any lane.

Observation: Today I was riding shotgun on my way back from office; I realized my driver has a serious disorder. The Changing Lane disorder or Mylane-o-slow phobia. The victim always feels that the lane he is driving in is always slow. He keeps on changing lanes. He feels that there is a secret lane somewhere and if he land in there he can go supersonic. During busy office hours we travel more horizontally than vertically. I have noticed that this is a communicable disease. Once a victim is spotted changing lanes, people in the victim’s blast diameter also start doing the same, also popularly known as Lain Chain Reaction. Soon, the disorder spreads to the other parts of the city and within hours the city is the last half an hour of Resident Evil. The victims ego also plays an important role, when is observes another victim entered his lane right in front of him. He will try to go in all lanes in order to overtake the other victim. This disorder is mostly observed in drivers driving a car with yellow number plate.

Geographical Location: NCR, increases while moving away from the nodal city to satellite towns.

Cause: I am not really sure about this and the research work is still under progress, but I believe the root cause of the problem is frustration, most importantly, sexual frustration. If you carefully observe the subject, he is always trying to get a glimpse at the Catalyst. You may note the change of the skin color with increasing cup size. In some extreme cases you may also note the effervescence of a particular gas with extreme pungent smell.

Symptoms: Other than changing lanes, honking frequently and switching radio channels (more to be disclosed on this later)

Possible Solutions: Since the research is still in progress, infallible solutions are very difficult to state. But considering the disease is so stern some solutions have been proposed:
1. Legalize Prostitution- The one to suffer from the current prostitution scene is the Government. When it can squeeze out so much tax out of this profession, it is just spending money in trying to stop it.
2. Free Porn- The movie theater should have free porn shows for the less fortunate on Sunday night, so that other people can have a better Monday mornings.


Note: Point number 2 under Possible Solutions should be carefully monitored for dose. Excess dose can worse the victim’s condition and his right hand. Point 1 should be accompanied by a condom. The Experiment was conducted on male drivers, female drivers are still a mystery that will be unfolded after the mystery of Bermuda Triangle.

More to be explored on point 1.

Seinfeld

Off late I been a watching some TV series at home after work. I don't have a television so I have to watch it on my computer. That means I can, and I have, for that matter, seen more than one episode at a stretch. For me the Pilot of an episode is the first five six episodes and then I decided whether I should continue watching that series. The Pilot in a TV series is the very first episode that is shot and air on TV or live audience, and then depending on public reaction, more episodes are shot and it becomes a TV series.

Few TV series that I have seen and liked are Prison Break, Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Allo Allo! and Friends. Then after all this sitcom avalanche after my work hours I saw Seilfeld. I also believe that I have seen a few episode before, but I have never realised how intelligently funny it was.

Seinfeld's 9 seasons have been aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998 with a 22 minute episode runtime. Seinfeld is a sitcom that was shot in New York. Created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, Seinfeld revolves around the daily life of Jerry Seinfeld, a stand up comedian. He has George Costanza as one of his closest friend, Elaine, whom Jerry once dated and Jerry's next door neighbour, Cosmo Kramer, who almost live in Jerry's house, as the main charters. Additional support crew contains, Newman, the fat postman, Jerry's parents and Geroge's parents.

Jerry Seinfeld is a semi-fictional character played by Jerry Seinfeld himself. Jerry Seinfeld is a stand up comedian in the show and his real life. (The Character) He is a happy go lucky guy. He is a well established comedian who hardy have any problem getting a date or with money, hence no major issues as compared to his friend George Coztanza.

Goerge Costansa is played by Jason Alexander. George is Jerry's childhood friend. He is short, fat and bald. He dominated by his parents and finds it really hard to get a job and a girlfriend. He is loosely based on Larry David. The last name is however that of Jerry's close friend's Mike Costanza. George is a shown as a stupid and dim-witted person. He also referred himself as Lord of the Idiots, in one the episodes. His stupidity was apparent when, in of the the episodes, The Cafe, he has to take an IQ test and he ask Elaine to take it for him.

Elaine, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is Jerry's good friend and his ex-girlfriend. Elaine is generally smart atleast smarter than George. She is a serial dater and she hates smokers. Elaine is quite a loud character who gets angry very easily and quite dilettantish. She wears her usual casual cloths and formals at work. She has worked various steady jobs mostly as writer or editor.

Cosmo Kramer or simply Kramer is played by Michael Anthony Richards. Kramer is a real character. Kramer is Jerry's next door neighbour, although he eats and is mostly seen in Jerry's apartment. The character like George Costanza is slackly based on a real life character, Kenny Kramer, who lived across the hall from Larry David. Cosmo Kramer is not working anywhere but never had problem with money and usually stays in the building. He likes smoking Cigar and playing Golf. His high, curly and wavy hair and his outmoded wardrobe are important parts of his personality. He speaks very loudly and kinda sounds like Al Pacino. He always has crazy ideas, like throwing his furniture away and get steps in his apartment. He is a very honest and tactless person. Kramer has also at times surprised the audience with his uncanny knowledge about various things such as Miss America pageant and his ideas of coffee table book.

Seinfeld over all is a very smartly written and beautifully characterized series. The jokes are very intelligent. The episodes starts and ends with Jerry on stage doing stand up related the episode. The best past is still the end credit music played on bass guitar.

I really like stand up comedians. I wish I can be a successful stand up one day. But the job is really tough. The reason why most of us like stand up comedians is because they are able to crack jokes about themselves, their loved ones, their origin or their community. Cracking jokes is quite a tough task, but cracking jokes on yourself in front of live audience is really tough. But the tougher the task, the better it pays. If you ever feel not being able to cope up with the declining number of acquittance, try cracking jokes on yourself, that might make you feel embarrassed but you will find a lot of people liking you.

Out of Office replies

Here are a bunch of Out of office email replies you can you next time.


1: I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Be prepared for my mood.



2: I'm not really out of the office.I'm just ignoring you.



3: You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office .If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at all.



4: Sorry to have missed you but I am at the doctors having my brain removed so that,I may be promoted to management.



5: I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from vacation on 4/18.Please be patient and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.



6: Thank you for your email.Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first ten words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.



7: The email server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message.Please restart your computer and try sending again.'(The beauty of this is that when you return,you can see how many in-duh-viduals did this over and over).



8: Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queueing system.You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.



9: Please reply to this e-mail so I will know that you got this message.I am on holiday. Your e-mail has been deleted.



10: Hi. I'm thinking about what you've just sent me.Please wait by your PC for my response.



11: Hi! I'm busy negotiating the salary for my new job. Don't bother to leave me any messages.



12: I've run away to join a different circus.



AND, FINALLY, THIS ONE TAKES THE CAKE :



13: I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons.When I return, please refer to me as 'Loretta' instead of 'Steve'.

The Legend of Tony!!!

Frank Anthony was born on 19th February 1948 in Birmingham, England. A son of Italian immigrant family, Frank started playing guitar when he was a teenager. As money didn't flow easily for an immigrant family, Frank had to work in a sheet metal factory as a teenager. He also had a night job playing guitar in a pub band.

One day, when he was 17 years old, Frank came home early from factory as he decided to quit his job there and devote more time to his guitar practice. His mother didn’t like it. She asked him to go back and at least complete the shift. Frank went back. Tiered and de-motivated with the sheet cutting factory, he accidently let the cutting blade run through his figure and the tip of his middle and ring fingers of his right hand got chopped off. He was a lefty, but a lefty has to press the guitar strings to the fret board with right hand. Frank was devastated. He couldn’t see it possible, so he quit playing guitar. He had to, fingers don’t grow back. They are gone if they are gone.

Frank’s manager in the factory was aware of Frank’s night job and his enthusiasm for playing guitar. The manager gave Frank a gift. A record of Django Reinhardt. Django Reinhardt was a European Jazz artist who also lost two of his figures in a fire accident and still was able to play guitar. Reinhardt became an inspiration for Frank. He picked up guitar again. Frank strung his guitars with extra-light strings (using banjo strings, which were a lighter gauge than even the lightest guitar-strings of the time) and wore plastic covers over the two damaged fingers. He fashioned the latter himself, by melting plastic liquid-soap bottles into a ball and then using a soldering iron to make holes into this ball, putting his fingers in while the plastic was still soft enough to be shaped. He then trimmed and sanded away the excess plastic to leave him with two thimbles, which he then covered with leather, to provide better grip on the strings. Subsequent he got custom-made tips.

Frank Anthony or Frank Anthony Iommi is better known as Tony Iommi. Tony Iommi is considered as one of the greatest guitarist of all time. Tony was the guitarist of Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull. While playing for Black Sabbath, Iommi detuned his guitar from E to C# (3 half-steps down), in order to ease the tension on his fingers. As a result, Sabbath was among the first bands to detune and resulted in the technique being a mainstay of heavy metal music. The first two Black Sabbath albums are actually in E tuning, however, as Iommi didn't start tuning down to C# until 1971's Master of Reality. According to Allmusic, "Iommi is one of only two guitarists (the other being Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page) who can take full credit for pioneering the mammoth riffs of heavy metal." In 2003, Iommi was ranked 86th in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and, in 2004, number one on Guitar World's "100 Greatest Metal Guitarists of All Time".

Tony wouldn’t have probably been able to come up with power chords (these chords are considered as base of heavy metal music) had he not lost his fingers. His weakness became his strength. Had Tony not picked up his guitar, the head banging world would have been deprived of the monstrosity of Paranoid and NIB or may be even heavy metal.

I love You Man

I asked a friend of mine to suggest me a movie to watch, something I can watch at home. The first movie he suggested, Scent of a Woman (Al Pacino), seen, then he said I love you man. I though he meant to he really like me for not missing an Al Pacino movie and then he said Role Models. It all of a sudden occurred to me that when he said "I love you man" he was suggesting a movie. Next day I tried to tell a female friend the title of the movie "I Love You Man is a good movie, must watch", she got scared for a minute, really? scared? Well, that's what she said.

This movie is about a guy Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) who is having a good life, with good job and a girl friend. He propose her and later realises that he has never had a good male friend all his life, the one who can be a best man at his wedding. So his family tries to fix him up with some guys who can be his friends and they all turn up to be quite a disaster only for him to eventually meet Sydney Fife (Jason Segel), you must recall him for the TV series 'How I met your mother' (Marshal Eriksen) . Peter and Sydney hit off really well and happens to become really good friends without anyone having them set up.

Paul Rudd and Jason Segel also appeared together in a movie before this, Knocked up (one of my favourite movie) . I Love You Man is a very light movie, just like Knocked Up. No heavy drama or emotion, not a kind of movie where every thing will go wrong with a guy and all of a sudden by the end of the everything will falls in to place. A normal person can relate more to such movies than those heavy packed drama or thriller movies. Unless you actually think you are Spiderman or Batman everytime you walk out of a moive hall. I Love You Man wont leave an everlasting impression on your minds but nevertheless, its a movie you can really enjoy.

I feel lucky to have never ran out of friends. That's a perk you enjoy if you have lived in a hostel during your school or college. But it also made me thing of another thing, the perfectly knitted web of incidences that defines whom we are with. The series of events that connects us with people we know. We really cant set people to meet intentionally. They will meet if they have to. All our intelligence and smartness can be nothing if it is not meant to be. You can call it a plan of nature or destiny or whatever. It is inevitable and it works like a clockwork.

Whisky in the Jar - O

As I was going over
The Kork and Kerry mountains
I saw Captain Farrell
And his money he was counting
I first produced my pistol
And then produced my rapier
I said "Stand and deliver
Or the devil he may take you"

I took all of his money
And it was a pretty penny
I took all of his money and
I brought it home to Molly
She swore that she'd love me
No Never would she leave me
But the devil take that woman
For you know she treat me easy

Mush a ring dum a doo dum a da
Whack for my daddy'o
Whack for my daddy'o, there's
Whisky in the jar, o

(Lyrics are not complete)

As made famous by Thin Lizzy and later covered by Metallica in its Album Garage Inc. (more to discover on this album)

Whisky in the Jar is a famous Irish traditional song. I suppose like 'Jugni' is in Punjab, although I am not quite sure whether thats a good comparison. The song is about a Traveller (As I was going over The Kork and Kerry mountains), who robs a Military person to be later betrayed by a woman (Molly) he loved and ends up in jail.

There are many versions of this song where in the name of the mountain (Kork and Kerry) is different. Other names used in different versions, Kilmoganny, Gilgarra mountains are all after places in Ireland. Even the name of the girl Molly, is different in different versions.

This song was Thin Lizzy's first big hit. This song also earned Metallica a Grammy for the Best Hard Rock Performance in 2000. The Thin Lizzy Version is very soft and smooth like a smooth Whisky, and the Metallica version is a hard rock version some what like the aftermath of excessive smooth Whisky. The song, however, was hit before Thin Lizzy. It was made famous when an Irish folk band, The Dubliners, performed and recorded it.

It a beautiful song and shouts my name over and over again.

First Post

Hi People

This is my second attempt to write a Blog. The first one failed miserably when I was in college due to lack of interest, enthusiasm and most importantly, lack of content. I hope this time around I will have some little bit of enthusiasm while I work on this Blog. Following this post, I will try to tell you my view points on various topics including Music, Movies, GMAT, may be computers (I am a computer engineer) and other topics that relate to my work and the stuff people are up to.

Lets Roll