Prologue: I confess, i'm going to digress. The birth of Phaedrus was supposed to bring out new thoughts and discourses. But as with everything else in my life, the 'plan' is sabotaged by recent events --all inconsequential in the cosmic sense. I've been really busy and there was no time to talk to Phaedrus, and before i take too long a break from blooging (again), another impromptu post is in the offing (serious thoughts have gone into the issue, though).
VINI VIDI VVVVHAT? (I CAME I SAW I COULDN'T HEAR ANYTHING)
Confessions of Ceasar wearing a torn underwear
Friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. The precocious maveric that i am, early in everything including going to the bathroom every morning, i have discovered the drawbacks of experiencing the effectsof senility too soon in life.At the ripe old age of 24, i'm having problems registering sounds (without an iPod to blame for it). Now, as i would like to make myself believe that i'man active participant in society,this brings a plethora of problems when i actually try to communicate. The usual response i give when a person next to me makes an audible sound is Huh?!! ..followed by another -- huh?And for all u know, the guy was just burping, or most probably addressing the other person next to me (which i confirm when they start smiling and shaking each other's hands -- and i'm left trying to inhale back the escaped huh!! and start humming a just-composed huh-huh song to cover my embarassment)Couple this with my short term memory (read 3 seconds-long memory), you have a walking, huh-huh humming zombie lumbering around the place.And it's worse when i'm on the phone.........Now i usually blame my phone for this - A motorolla with a sound quality which would be perfect if you specifically asked for "the worst sound quality possible.". Apart from the phone, the only other thing i can blame is my adolescent days, when as a young kid, i used to frequent the river with friends, jumping into the water with nothing more than our birthday suits on (those were the days). And i used to get water in my ears very often. Now, remnants of those prehistoric water particles lying dormant for all these years must be starting to play havoc with my biological audio system, disrupting the path of sounds travelling inside the perfectly sculpted contours, peaks and crevices of this mucus-lined cavern that is my ears.These are the only scientifically sound deductions that i can conclude from my observations, and my diagnosis is that i'm probably half-crazy. The only thing that consoles me right now is that i'm wearing my favourite blue underwear, which is torn on one side.

The birth of Phaedrus

Some fools don't understand
others can't comprehend
People just walk on by
they just don't know what life's about
what argument can i put to you
to reason with you that there is a reason for you being here too

what rationale should i put forth
to let you feel the need to think things through
Is it about life and beyond
or just life, and then none?
or is it not 'just', but 'is'.
Life -- the reason, cause and product of everything?

He seeks for answers
searches for the path to reason
Phaedrus, destiny's own child.
The journey begins......

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. ~Ambrose Bierce

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

Rantings of a raving maniac

You had a bad day
You're taking one down
You sing a sad song just to turn it around.

I'm having a bad day....
three frigging bad days, to be precise.
Some days the odds are so heavily stacked up against
you that you wanna jump off a building even though
you know fully well you are no Superman...or
a cat with 8 spare lives.

I'm so frustrated (i'm not excluding sexual
frustration here, lol) i could cuss at a lamp post
just to let some steam off. I wanna shout, scream
and gesticulate in a completely incoherent and
meaningless way till every pissed off part of me
evaporates in the wide blueeeee yonder.

So on that happy note here's a semi-prose, semi-poem
that is delicately absurd and poetically pointless
which is an ode to the
(everybody-pisses-on-me-including-the-dog) Lamp post.


The Spondylitis of faith (Rantings of a raving maniac)

I'll swami your priesthood till kingdom cum
Pret-a-porter you to designer heaven
I'll pretzel you till you choke on my behalf
I'll swindle and swine you till you become porky enough to be buffeted on
I'll beseech you to the beaches of the Bahamas
I'll bowl you over with my bowel-enticing boogers
Bemoan your beauty till you blush and bloom
like a wild flower in the loo.
And laugh out loud when you're through
reading this baloney!!

If any of the above lines makes any sense to you,
better incease your medication and go see a psychiatrist.

Thought of the day-- where is the moment when
i need it the most!!

Its time to go back to flower power

I'm not the type to raise issues of 'larger interests/concerns'
(being intellectually lazy and a dodger of debates), but
when i'm interrogated before being allowed to pass
through the gate to my office and my bag is checked
as if i look like a brainwashed dodo about to blow myself
to smithereens, that's where i draw the line
and say - Burrppp..i'm so full my stomach is spilling out
on to the floor. No, wait. That's what i said after i've had
my dinner last night (deep-fried chicken).

What i really want to say is - this terror and security issue
is starting to be a real bugger, although i would rate
Hrtitik's, oops i mean Krissh's rubberband-like dancing
infinitely more irritating. I mean, what kind of superhero
with rippling muscles disco dances to woo a girl.
(Imagine Superman doing a moonwalk or prancing
around trees!!!) As Batman would
say - "It's the car. Just look the car."
NOT the breakdancing-in-shiny-cloths. goddammit.

Coming back to the terror issue, i believe we have
turned Samuel Huntington-ji into the new-age
Nostradamus, what with all his predictions about the
clash of civilisations being played out every day,
whether it's in a wider scale like the islamic jihad
against.... everybody, and the never-ending
Israel-Palestine conflict; or in a smaller, or at least
less conspicuous scale of perpetual tensions between
small tribes and clans in places like where i come
from (where you get poked in the butt with a militant's
gun while the Army prods you with their
gun-nozzle in the front).

With the most pressing concern right now being ideologists
who blow up like old unstable dynamite sticks,
I have a suggestion to stop the rampaging Humpty
Dumptys - Flower Power.
We must go back in time to learn from the wise men
and women who came before us- the baby boomers.
Because?? You ask. Because they were the
"Love Generation." The swinging sixties. The hippies.
Woodstock. Flower power -make love not war.
Cool cloths. Outrageous drug use.
The Beatles... free sex...

We must teach about their enlightened philosophy
on life (smoke pot till u're too stoned to think about
anything except the imaginary flowers bursting in your brains).
Imagine a suicide bomber-wannabe after three sticks
of Marijuana. He'd be grinning till the side of his lips
touch his ears and singing 'all you need is love' while
hugging everyone near him. The only alarm will be
if he's still got the bombs strapped on to his
chest when he hugs You.

Aliens do exist, and they love football

They are out there, watching. Literally
In what is a major vindication for alien cult followers and
fans of Stars Wars, one of the country’s leading dailies,
The Times of India (TOI), has come out with an endorsement
of what they have been claiming all along –that Aliens are
very much around. And what’s more, TOI goes a step
further by implying that extra-terrestrials go ga-ga
over the likes of Ronalo and Rondinho, bucktooth and all.

To show that they are truly moving with the ‘Times’,
the paper did an extensive coverage of the just concluded
football World Cup and even dedicated an editorial on it.
But they might have over-hyped it a wee bit.

First, to emphasise how important Wayne Rooney is,
the paper’s editorial on July 11th said that four red cards
were given in England’s game with Portugal, probably to
imply that sending off ‘Roo-nay’ was akin to
red-carding four England players.
Then came the more shocking revelation.
The world’s (purportedly) largest circulated English daily
goes on to say that 32 billion people watched the world cup.

Now considering there are around 6 billion people
in the world, it could be construed that the rest
of the 26 billion viewers must be from outer space—
maybe from faraway Andromeda galaxy,
or if Star Wars fans would have it-
planet Naboo or Tatooine, the home planet
of Jabba the Hutt (also rumored to be
the home of Michael Jackson).
Wherever it is, the TRP ratings must be pretty high up there.

Now considering that this is the editorial of a
respected (haha) newspaper, i suppose the facts can't
be disputed. MORE so because i haven't seen or heard
any single reader arguing about these startling 'facts'
with the paper through a letter or an e-mail.
In light of these information, a very important point emerges-
1. Football is indeed the most popular game in the
world..nay, the Universe (source-TOI).

But a few important questions remain-
1. Does anyone actually read editorials anymore? or are the
people who actually read them total idiots with no clue
as to what's happening around them (since there is no response
to the editorial)?

2. Who the hell monitors the TV ratings in outer space?

The real issue we should be protesting about

And so it begins...as it always does every year.
Well, it actually has been going on for some time now,
the confrontation between man and nature, between
the olfactory and the sweat glands. Of the senses
and the stenches. It's that time of the year again
where the cool morning breeze in your nostril is
replaced by the warm, redolent effluvium exuded by
many of our fellow beings who could easily be traced
for miles and miles through their scent alone.Not that
i'm blaming anyone in particular. Nature has bestowed
upon us this 'blessing'--the opportunity to percieve
each other and recognise one another by making use of
our olfactory organ instead of taxing our eyes. Of course,
all these attention-grabbing odour can be prevented
by using the greatest invention of mankind since the
discovery of the wheel- deodorant. But, sadly, inspite
of living in the information age, many haven't had the
good fortune of actually knowing WHAT a deo is.

The worst kind of situation is when someone actually
has just enough sense to spray him/herself with
some cheap perfume which has no role in decreasing
the tangy aroma profusely given out by their
generous body. The mixture of the two smell is
what i can best describe as --the exact opposit of heavenly.

So while my brethern in this hot, sweaty city are
debating and fasting on the issue of reservations,
on crime and their perpetual fetish with politics,
my heart lies in this unsung yet very ..um.. smelly
topic which i think should be looked into by all
the experts and the reason behind the ignorance
debated on national television.

My point being- with all media inundated with ads
on Deos and smelly armpits and with the stifling
heat and humidity, why oh why do most people,
even those who can afford to drive big expensive
cars or wear flashy jewellery can't spare a hundred
bucks a month to smell like a human being instead
of smelling like a wallowing hippo whose last bath
a year ago consisted of rolling around in a gutter.
I mean, i really wouldn't like to seat in a
reserved seat -- no matter how exclusive it
may be -- if it's next to a hulking gorilla.
well... a person that smells like one anyway.
It wouldn' help in the dark too. So all the the
power cuts we're all familiar with wouldn't help.
So amidst all the din made by all the zillions of
activists, what I want to say is -- Guys, guys..
let's take a step back and start
from the A in the ABC here. Let's look at the
real issue concerning us here. What i want to
say is ------ Giddup and go grab that deo..Bub.
Maybe then i 'll decide to join you..

Hello (scratch scratch)

Man, this place is almost crumbling. It's kinda strange to be back after such a long long break.
There are online cobwebs everywhere...hmm, wonder if all the other people are still blogging away..

Will have to check it out. First thing 2morow,,, or maybe the next.

GAYS AND GEISHAS
The film review that never was...(er..reviewed)

Oh my oh my, what have we come to. These are not my words.
My words would be more subtle and sober;
something like..."haha hehe..", somewhat on those lines.
You get the drift.
I'm referring to the reaction of conservationists.
..oh wait, i mean conservatives, on seeing some
of the Oscar-winning movies of 2006.

To be fair, one really can't blame these purists
toomuch for choking on their values when you see
grown men--and cowboys at that--winning accolades
and awards for humping each other in the middle
of the night; never mind even if it is under a beautiful
Wyoming forest night; and it's really cold to sleep alone.
"It's just not cricket, mate".

And Chinese actresses--traitors to the cause
(of hating anything that is Japanese, other than
Asimo,the Honda robot)-- playing all the leading roles
in a Japanese film; and Geishas at that.

Other than these obvious sacrileges, Brokeback Mountain
and Memoirs of a Geisha weren't too disappointing to watch,
backed with a solid script with obvious abundance of
creativity in their overall production; though both films
lacked something in one field or the other to bring one back
to see it again. Not blockbuster stuff.

Brokeback Mountain is of course, a film about two
gaylovers who do what most gay men do, behind their
spouses' back. And the Director got an Oscar
just for showing that. Heath Ledger's cowboy accent
wasn't convincing -his mouth too constraint when uttering
his lines. But he got an Oscar nomination for best actor anyway.
For being Gay. And kissing and humping another guy.

But i really really really loved the location of shooting.
The streams and forests and the mountain were an absolute treat.
I sighed at the scenery whilesome people probably
sigh at the nookie. But i don't judge. Let them sigh.

What basically happens in the film is that the two cowboys fall
in love while tending sheeps in the Mountains. They parted,
got married to 'women' and years later, met up and re-start their
r-e-l-a-t-i-o-nship. Every three months, both tell their wives they
are going fishing in Brokeback Mountain; but instead of humming
the jolly 'a hunting we will go' rhyme, they instead sing
'a humping we will go' and do exactly that, year after year.
Until one of them dies. The End. Oscar stuff.

Now i wasn't too sure about watching Memoirs of a Geisha,
because it sounded boring. But surprisingly, i liked it.
Maybe its because there's a 'Mills-and-Boons Genes' stuck
in my body somewhere. I'm a sucker for happy endings.
I almost undertook a fast unto death after Russel Crow
died at the end of 'Gladiator'. I mean, he killed the bad guy,
the people loved him, and he was going to get the girl.
But he Died??? That sucked.
I've had a grouse against the Director ever since.
Coming back to Memoirs..., a girl sold to a Geisha house as
a kid falls in love with a dude called 'Chair-man', although i swear
he is never shown making chairs during the entire movie.
What happens is like a typical love story-- they first face many
hardships but eventually end up together.
They also kissed. I Think?? Sigh.

I'm still not sighing at the kissing or the nookie; my object of
attention was the location again.The place where the last scene
took place. A park in Japan. Even my uncle Bush (Yes, the
President of the US of A) had been there when he visited Japan.
It's so...inexplicable.
So soothing. i think i would be perfectly happy for the first five
minutes if i am there. I would be too lost in amazement.
Stupified even. I might even die because i'd probably forget to breath.
Then again, maybe it's not just the place..maybe it's also because
Zhang Ziyi is there..(Hmm...Take note--Beautiful women can kill you).

Budget blues: no subsidies for heavyduty boogers

Ok, so the most important day in parliament has
come to pass, meaning--the budget proposal's
out. And FM Chidam-badam (almond-face) has,
with his eloquence , managed to present the budget
without letting the opposition parties indulge in their
favourite pastime, i.e staging a walk-out or taking
vocal lessons in Parliament by shouting what-who-cares
making the 'House' look like an auditorium where
hundreds of extremely un-talented half-breeds are
practicing choir songs together.

Since the BJP isn't biting and the left's not barking either,
the very important duty of whining is now left solely on
the shoulders of yours truely. So lets look into the
fine print of the big B to see 'what's boogers got to do with it.'

Cheaper small cars- Yeah right. Like i can afford it
or something!!!!! Bringing down the price by a little
over Rs 10000 isn't gonna help me much. Those who
can afford the new price can afford the old price,
and those who can't....And to top it, there's a threat of
increase in the price of petrol. So i say: Take the subsidy
and shove it up your a.......s.
I have a feeling i'm gonna keep on singing Janis Joplin's
"Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz" for a very long time.

No new taxes- Unless they'er gonna tax poverty, than they
can't touch me,haha. This piece of news doesn't
stir my Loins...They could hike taxes on underwear
for all i care..cause i can't even afford those.

No service tax on Lawyers-What! No tax for those
daylight robbers? you might ask. But, i agree with the
FM on this one when he joked in his press conference
that they don't provide any 'service' anyway..

Like every other thing, no matter how small or big, the
pundits and Turnips have come out with their analysis,
predictions and what they personally want- well they
can go smoke pot with Martha Steward cause that really
don't do nothin for us, does it? Here's MY demand to the
FM on the Budget- Since the govt's so gung-ho about their
employment guarantee schemes and helpin the poor
and stuff...So i say, officially register all of us bloggers
and pay us the minimum wage amount for making the
effort to write all the 'enlightening' pieces
like the one i'm writing now
in the name of blogging.Then we'll sing
Halleluiah in parliament house. Amen

it's been a while................

like a thief in the night
like a stealth plane on a reconnaissance mission
Like japanese ninjas in the imperial nights
like a cat on the scent of a mouse
and like the silent deadly farts inconsiderate people release in crowded places
i went away, i ran away,
i went over hills, and plains that stretched over lakes and meadows
i didn't let the word out, cause it was so sudden,
forget it was all planned, because it was always in doubt.
And i was only sure that day,
when my editor signed the red coloured application that say
i want a leave to attend my sister's weeding day.
what else can i say, i say!

Now that i'm back
hope i woun't have to show my back
to friends and foes,
and challenges that comes and goes,
hope you all are still here though
to read this ridiculous semi-prose.