Good Luck Swami

Looks like Berkeley Beedi is taking its toll on Swami. He called me today morning on his way to the hospital and said he was having some knife work done. He didn’t elaborate, so I don’t know what happened to him. I need to call his old lady to get the entire scoop.

Surgery is the last thing I want to be done on my body. You get cut, spend a couple of hours all dizzy in a recovery room, piss in a bottle, and end up sleeping in a hall sprayed with tincture iodine air freshener. If you are lucky, you get touched and squeezed nursed by a good looking babe nurse.

Swami will do OK. He is too mean to die, so I am not worried about THAT happening. But that knife thing isn’t going to be fun. But if he die... well, I'm gonna make a move for his book collection and that shiny black Mont Blanc pen of his. I will leave it up to his Nigerian neighbor, to take care of his old lady. He has always liked her. Someone needs to console her in her grief and I can't think of a better person to do it than that big behemoth of an Afro brotha. Well that should make my dear friend think twice about dying, won't it?

Anyways, Good luck buddy. If you need any help from me have a nice nurse call me.

Health Conscious

I was catching up on some blog reading. This one reminds me of a dinner with Swamiji at a restaurant recently. Swamiji, being a walking chimney, was profusely inhaling his favorite beedies when a fat female came up to him, and requested he stop creating tantric patterns of smoke.

Nothing chaps me worse than to have some fat glutton complain about second-hand cigarette smoke in a restaurant while she is eating enough food to feed an entire village. THAT'S a really health-conscious person right there, wearing a size 72 waist pants.

Story not over – Later from the parking lot, Om Swami ran back to the restaurant and retrieved the half burned cigarette he had to abandon there. As soon as he got back inside the car, he lit it up, inhaled a big puff, and shouted – “Second hand smoke, my aching ass”.

Question

Okay, here is a queschen.. This is not a trick question, just a standard ethics question.

You see six men at work on a railway track. And you see a train approaching, and since the workers have their back turned towards the oncoming train the poor guys have no sense of the impending danger. You see a leaver. You can pull the leaver to divert the train to another track, where there is another worker who will obviously die. What would you do?
a. Do nothing
b. Pull the leaver and save six people at the expense of one


Here is another situation:
You see six men at work on a railway track. And you see a train approaching them, and since they have their back turned towards the oncoming train the poor guys have no sense of the impending danger. Now instead of the leaver, you see a fat guy. You could push the guy on to the track and block the train and save the six men (let us assume that theoretical possibility). What would you do?
a. Do nothing
b. Kill the fat guy to save the six people

Award Films

I saw the movie Vanaprastham. Shaji N Karun lost his knack of telling a good story. A good story must have a beginning, a captivating story line and a great ending. Vanaprastham, to me, did not have any of it.

One of the best storytellers I have ever met was my school mate Roy Mathews. He was NOT a studious guy. Nobody has ever seen him read any books, but he could tell stories which could fill several. His stories had a solid beginning, a gripping story line and a whoop-ass ending. He never dragged on to lengthen a story; neither did he finish in a hurry. He allowed his story to flow, and in the process had an army of friends glued to his dorm bed, for hours on end.

I don’t know where Roy Mathew is today, but I am sure, he will make one hell of a movie maker.

The best films I saw in Malayalam were either from Padmarajan or Hariharan or Bharathan. The worst were those movies which open with a man walking from the left side of the screen, and three hours later I wake up and see the helpless guy still walking to reach the right side of the screen. Or movies, where the plot calls for characters to silently look at each other with a deadpan nonchalance, and where the “story line” is constantly invaded by squeaking crickets and lines of ants. I don't understand why they win awards though. To me, the whole logic seem reversed.

For all the award movie makers, let me give you a sound piece of advice. Learn to tell a good story and shut up when you're finished.

PS: I did like some ‘movies’ like Shaji N Karun’s Piravi and Adoor’s Mathilukal, Vidheyan.

Quotes of the day

Quotes of the day
"If someone did cover something up, then they should not continue to have their jobs."
- Speaker Dennis Hastert

"I don’t think people should use religious extremism to gain political mileage."
- President George Bush (At today's press briefing)

Kiran Desai
Heard last night on NPR’s BBC news, about the Booker prize. Just read 2-3 pages of The Inheritance of Loss on Amazon (“Amazon Surprise Me”). Good stuff !! Here are some excerpts.

The more pampered you are the more pampered you will be the more presents you receive the more presents you will get the more presents you receive the more you are admired the more you will be admired the more you are admired the more presents you will get the more pampered you will be—

Desis against Pakis
“Pigs pigs, sons of pigs, sooar ka baccha.” Biju shouted.
“Uloo ka patha, son of an owl, low-down son-of-a-bitch Indian.”
They drew the lines at crucial junctures. They threw cannonball cabbages at each other.

Nobel Prize

So far it’s been a clean sweep for USA. Of the four categories announced all four went to uncle sam. And three of those went to scientists from the Bay Area. (Two from Stanford, and one from Berkeley). That is mighty impressive! The literature price will be announced on Thursday, and peace on Friday. I hope they will not give it away to another inept figure head diplomat like Kofi Annan or to a murderer freedom fighter like cobra head Arafat.

I dont think it is going to be a clean sweep for US. It is very unlikely that an American will be named winner in either of these categories. Unless they pick George Bush and Michael Moore for literature and peace respectively.

Elizabeth kuruvilla strikes again!!!

Today around 6:04 in the morning, Elizabeth Kuruvilla stuck again. My spousal unit was asleep. So I could engage Ms.Kuruvilla in a long discrete conversation and I even managed to record it. Just in case she abandons me, worn out from love and desire, I wanted to have the taste of her in my ears. Check out this sound bite, take a listen.

WARNING - [Cut paste the following URL to your browser. Clicking may not work]
http://ekuruvilla.tripod.com/5.wav
http://ekuruvilla.tripod.com/6.wav

For those who don’t know Elizabeth Kuruvilla, here is a backgrounder.

Chikungunya

Down in Kerala, we grow mosquitoes the size of jumbo shrimps. They are specially trained to draw a pint of blood out of you in one sitting. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is - they attack 24-7. You are not safe, now matter what you do or wear. They can bite right through your Levis jeans; They laugh at your ‘Good-Night mats’ and ‘aama mark’ repellents. Those crap doesn't work. NOTHING DOES.

Few years ago my friend Sanjay and I visited another friend in Kochi. His place was a command central for mosquitoes. We provided an appetizing buffet for his “pets”. We must have lost a few gallons of blood that night to the mosquitoes, all of which probably flew off and died of alcohol poisoning. Sanjay had mosquito bites all over his body. Two weeks later those bites looked as if someone had burned him with a cigarette butt all over his body. The amount of mosquitoes we saw in Kochi was mind boggling; I was very alarmed that people were not doing anything to stop an impending epidemic.

The danger is no longer impending. IT IS HERE !!!. Chikungunya is spreading, assuming massive epidemic proportions. This is just a harbinger to much worse things to come. Mosquitoes are flying hypodermic needles capable of giving you fatal diseases such as malaria, chikungunya and if you so desire - a pair of giant glowing testicles.

Why this sudden raise in mosquito population in the last 15 years? My answer is:

• Rubber plantation. I know for sure that pervasive rubber plantation is one reason. You step into a rubber estate and you will be swamped by mosquitoes.
• Filling wet lands and farms for housing and perennial crops is another . Land fills cut off running water streams. This creates pockets of stagnant water bodies where mosquitoes live, thrive and reproduce.
  

Government and Individuals MUST take steps to reduce the mosquito population, and we MUST DO IT NOW, or we risk ourselves being eaten alive by the predator.

Fair and balanced

I saw the much celebrated Bill Clinton interview on Fox news yesterday, and I was appalled by what I saw. I was appalled at the “unvarnished truth” that was pouring from the spiteful, mango-faced, pissy little pretty suite fox reporter. It was a set-up, and I think Mr.Clinton did a good job holding his ground and speaking his side. Well, may be he could have gone easy on his references to the Richard Clarke book; nevertheless he did well.

This is a country where journalists like Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward raised the bar for journalistic excellence when they brought down a presidency (for the right reasons). American journalists should be proud of what they did. But that was 30 years ago. Today the standards of journalism seem to have changed, with the likes of Fox news shamelessly imitating Trotsky's Pravda. Fox news is nothing but “Mouthpiece journalism” at its best (or worst?).

Why is Fox news popular? People are too damn stupid to understand the news all by themselves based on the available facts. This is where Fox news comes to your help. They “interpret” the news for you, and make sure you don’t miss the point – much like what Deshabhimani does for our uneducated comrades in Kerala.

So if you are the most dense, ignorant, obtuse, dumbass and you want your lie-of-the day, tune in to Fox news. It is always FAIR and BALANCED.

PS: Here is the interview (There is a video link in the story)