How to piss me off: 101

a) Cross me in traffic. And drive like an idiot in general, like hugging the wrong edge of the road and going straight, instead of turning like a sane person. Well, it does increase the fluency with which I curse in Kannada.

b) Cut my hair like a retard. Seriously. Request anything more complicated than short cut, medium short or laang, and they look at you as if you're trying to converse in Aramaic with a Tambrahm from Thanjavur. I may not have ripped a lion in twain or killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass when I still had my hair, but I've lost it now, superpowers and all. Friggin' retards.

PS. I'm baa-aaack. Well, maybe. We'll see.

No one can help Sgt. Jimenez.

What the fish? I thought I'd posted this ages ago. Anyhou, here it is.

As it turns out, Staff Sgt. Jiminez Alex Ramon is a real person. Of the delta company, 4th battalion, 31st regiment, 2nd brigade combat team, 10th mountain division of light infantry. Hailing from Lawrence, Massachusetts, he was really in Iraq.

And then he went missing on May 12, 2007, during an ambush on the 4th Battalion somewhere in South Baghdad. His body was found earlier this year (a few months ago, the news reports seem to have conflicting dates, so I cannot say for certain when,) and returned home.

So I wonder why the good fellow who sent me that e-mail used this particular name. Maybe he started using it while the soldier was still missing, maybe? To attract even greater curiosity? Or was there an implicit assumption that it would be unlikely in the extreme for me to know anything about the real seargent? I'm very much aware that I might be over-thinking it, but I've never stopped for that reason alone.

Anyhou.

The tracking software on my blog told me something rather interesting last week. Someone from the town of Wetter, Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany visited my page by searching for "spcjiminez@live.com". Which, as of right now throws up only one result. I'm assuming that if it were someone who had also got the same mail as me, he or she would've left a comment there.

So. Sgt. Jiminez's shade seems to be resting in some nondescript li'l town on the Franco-German border. And in retrospect, has picked up a German influence in the written English grammar that he uses. In German one capitalizes all nouns, irrespective of position in the sentence, something that can potentially explain the ease with which he's capitalized things here and there in the mail.

Lemme know if you have analyses more interesting than my own.

Can you help Sgt. Jimenez?

Here I thought that all the Nigerian princes who wanted to get out of the country with millions of dollars had all managed to do that.

Apparently, some of them had the misfortune of coming to the US, becoming Hispanic, and then getting enlisted in the US army.

One of them was clever enough to get a hold of my e-mail address and contact me.

Dear Friend,

Good day and compliments, i know this letter will definitely come to you as a huge surprise, but I implore you to take the time to go through it carefully as the decision you make will go off a long way to determine my future and continued existence. Please allow me to introduce myself I am Sgt. Jimenez Alex Ramon, a US Marine SPC. Serving in the 3rd Battalion, 25th US Marine Regiment which Patrols the Anbar province, Iraq .

I am desperately in need of assistance and I have summoned up courage to contact you.I am presently in Iraq and I found your contact particulars in an address journal, I am seeking your assistance to evacuate the sum of $12,570,000 (Twelve million Five Hundred and Seventy Thousand US dollars) to the States or any safe country of your choice, as far as I can be assured that it will be safe in your care until I complete my service here. This is no stolen money and there are no dangers involved.

SOURCE OF MONEY:
Some money in various currencies was discovered and concealed in barrels with piles of weapons and ammunition at a location near one of Saddam Hussein’s old Presidential Palaces during a rescue operation and it was agreed by all party present that the money be shared amongst us.

This might appear as an illegal thing to do but I tell you what, No compensation can make up for the risks we have taken with our lives in this hell hole. The above figure was given to me as my share and to conceal this kind of money became a problem for me, so with the help of a German contact working with the UN here (his office enjoys some immunity) I was able to get the package out to a safe location entirely out of trouble spot.

He does not know the real contents of the package as he believes that it belongs to an American who died in an air raid, and before giving up trusted me to hand over the package to his close relative.

I have now found a secured way of getting the package out of Iraq for you to pick up. I do not know for how long I will remain here as I have been lucky to have survived 2 suicide bomb attacks by Pure Divine intervention.

This and other reasons put into consideration have prompted me to reach out for help. If it might be of interest to you then endeavour to contact me and we would work out the necessary formalities but i pray that you are discreet about this mutually benefiting relationship.

Contact me via my private box: (spcjimenez@live.com) so that I can furnish you with more details.




Respectfully,

Sgt. Jimenez Alex Ramon
United States Marine Corps. IRAQ

-----------------------------------------------------------------
本邮件通过35企业邮箱发送

:D

I love the words "Pure Divine intervention". Which could even double for some Jehadi group when translated to Arabic. =) And heh, the random chinese characters at the bottom of the e-mail.

The sender's address is funny as well.
FROM: Sgt.Jiminez@usmc.army.mil spcjiminez@live.com
The account name is the fake e-mail ID. So devilishly simple. And I would've never seen it unless I had asked gmail to "show details".

So, will you help the poor man?

For the sake of a post.

Hello. I'm alive and well, in case you were wondering. I have a lot to blog about and possibly enough time to do it, but somehow I am unable to. And I'm tired of giving excuses. So here's a post for the sake of one.

Lifted from The Wertzone.

The rules:

From Box Office Mojo's list of Top 48 Sci-Fi Films Based on a Book (or Story) (1980- present).

Here are the rules.

- Copy the list below.
- Mark in bold the movie titles for which you read the book.
- Italicize the movie titles for which you started the book but didn't finish it.

1. Jurassic Park
2. War of the Worlds
3. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
4. I, Robot
5. Contact
6. Congo
7. Cocoon
8. The Stepford Wives
9. The Time Machine
10. Starship Troopers
11. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
12. K-PAX
13. 2010
14. The Running Man
15. Sphere
16. The Mothman Prophecies
17. Dreamcatcher
18. Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
19. Dune
20. The Island of Dr. Moreau
21. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
22. The Iron Giant(The Iron Man)
23. Battlefield Earth
24. The Incredible Shrinking Woman
25. Fire in the Sky
26. Altered States
27. Timeline
28. The Postman
29. Freejack(Immortality, Inc.)
30. Solaris
31. Memoirs of an Invisible Man
32. The Thing (Who Goes There?)
33. The Thirteenth Floor
34. Lifeforce (Space Vampires)
35. Deadly Friend
36. The Puppet Masters
37. 1984
38. A Scanner Darkly
39. Creator
40. Monkey Shines
41. Solo(Weapon)
42. The Handmaid's Tale
43. Communion
44. Carnosaur
45. From Beyond
46. Nightflyers
47. Watchers
48. Body Snatchers

Nobbad. 5 out of the top 10 and 9 out of the top 20.

Home.

There's this conversation in the movie Garden State that really hits home.

Andrew (Zach Braff): You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in... isn't really your home anymore. All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you put your shit... that idea of home is gone.

Sam (Natalie Portman): I still feel at home in my house.

Andrew: You'll see one day when you move out. Just sorta happens one day, and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist.

Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know? You won't ever have that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself. You know, for... For your kids. For the family you start. It's like a cycle or something.

I don't know. But I miss the idea of it, you know?

Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.

Sam: Maybe.

I don't think I myself have reached that state yet, I can still feel at home when I go back to Bangalore. It is still too early to refer to it as my parent's place. Nevertheless, these past four years I couldn't help but notice that there was a small amount of disconnect between the idea of home and the house I grew up in. Maybe it was this that made me go back ever so often, four or five times a semester, more if I could manage it.

And now. Now I stand at the threshold of going somewhere much farther away, to some place from where I cannot keep running back whenever I feel the disconnect grow. And I know that I will not be back (except as a visitor) for another eight or ten years. Perhaps I will be lucky enough to make some place my home before then.

The disconnect with Bangalore is more evident though. The home city of my dreams now seems temporal in nature, and I am unable to identify with the dust, the smoke and the glitzy buildings that greet me when I go back there. Don't get me wrong. This isn't a post about how the city's gone to the dumps in these past few years, where the good citizens no longer go to bed by 10 at night and wake up by 6 in the morning to Kausalya supraja rama purva sandhya pravartathes and go to discotheques and pubs instead. As sad as that certainly is, enough people have opined on the subject, and in a more timely manner.

It's just about me expressing a sense of loss of the Bangalore of SM Krishna - during the early days of the IT industry, which I have since come to know as my 'home city'.

A new home I may find. You know what they say. Home is where the heart is and all that. But a new home city? That would certainly be more unlikely.

One more day.

A lot has happened over the last month. Usually it's not much coming from me, 'a lot' gets redefined here all the time. But this time around it was really a lot.

I turned 21. Amidst little fanfare, thankfully. Is 21 too early to start feeling too old? Is it? I can see myself starting off on the Gone are the halcyon days of my youth... vein already. Methinks there is something very, very wrong with me.

The blog turned 1. As the author forgot the anniversary himself at the time, he feels large-hearted enough to let his readers off the hook for having done so. 40 posts in a year. Not pathetic, but not great either.

I learnt a lot about myself in these past few weeks. Not things which have irrevocably changed the course of the rest of my life or which have made me an alarmingly nice person, but some obscure, insignificant li'l things that I did not know before. I have also changed a lot in these past few weeks, past few months.

I found out that my Tamil isn't as terrible as I'd thought it would be. I was wa-hay better than the other two in using Tamil in Kodai. And later on in and around Madras when dad and the brother came over. I also found out then that I am far better a host than people give me credit for. (In my opinion, at least.) And my tamil is way better than dad's as well.

I am also fitter than I have any right to be. If one were to go by the time I spend in physical activities here (moving your fingers across the keyboard and bearing the weight of your laptop doesn't count, dang,) I shouldn't have lasted for more than half a day on the trek. Yet I managed the 4 day thing with ease. *Is unbearably smug*

Notwithstanding my own ill-conceived smugness, I should say that 40 year old aunties and 50 year old uncles also managed the same.

At this point I am also incredibly apathetic to just about everything academic. Usually that prized apathy was reserved for courses and classes alone, but now it seems to have spread to lab work, application work, you name it. Extreme apathy and extreme laziness. Frightening combination. Also, I had the good sense to pick up a new vice - DotA. I honestly thought that I did not have enough vices to spend all the time this semester has to offer. Idiot. The only way I am different from all those degenerates who game all night is that I game all day instead. (Good people who will help determine where I end up by this time next year - please don't read my blog. Pretty please?)

I have also forgotten how to write. Let alone write things even remotely funny. This post is so freakin' lousy. But as long as it increases the count...

I've used a record number of 'I's in this post. How kewl is that?
(OMG no he didn't, yes he did, I stooped to the level of using the word 'kewl'. And went on to use lolz 'OMG'. Just when you thought I could sink no lower.)

Everyday this past week I have been telling myself that I'll start work in earnest after just one more day. I really will! God promise. I just need today for goofing off, that's all. You know, to get it out of my system. Only this one day. Just one more.

Friday, January 18, 2008.
Addendum: (There seem to be quite a few of these nowadays.)

I am still following the Just one more day routine. Had a thesis review today. Met my advisor after more than two months. Heck, I hadn't been to the department since the fifth of December. I have vowed (to myself, I make no promises to anyone else,) that I will start work from Monday. Really, I will.

Death by cancer

DEAD AT 79

cancer

WHY YOU DIE? 56% cancer 24% car accident 13% loneliness 5% drowning of the lungs 2% wounds

You have 21221.0 days left on this earth.

You've already lived 27% of your life.

Hopefully, there would be better cures for cancer by then. That would mean that I would die of a car accident, of course. What fun. Not as good as death by firing squad, but still.

In other news, I'm home! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
That's one 'e' for every day I'm staying here. wOOt!

Bite me if that's one too many exclamation marks for your liking.

Addendum:

I really liked this Lovecraft quote.

" That is not dead
Which can eternal lie,
Yet with strange aeons
Even Death may die. "

Note to self: Pick up one of his books soon.

O Bliss, where art thou?

Ignorance is bliss. Yet knowledge seems to have this seductive quality to it that beckons you to seek it, however much you might end up miring yourself in misery. We are drawn like moths to the flame, dying a thousand deaths, happily kissing the blinding white every single time.

Running over the same old ground.
What have you found?
The same old fears.

The scientist in us kills all the negative reinforcement. As if there is some subconscious force pushing us all to transcend beyond the results of Pavlov's experiments. Each time we hope that we remember, and learn by the next time. Yet each time we fool ourselves into thinking that knowing is better than not. But is it better than never having asked the question in the first place? Nay, it cannot even compare.

Ignorance isn't not knowing the answer to some question. Ignorance is not knowing the question itself.

What are we, if not our pride?

Sometimes I despair of existential conversations and those that are held in quest of answers to universal questions.

What is god? Should a benevolent god demand worship? Is the concept of a personal god self-deception? Why do we live? What happens after we die? Existential angst cannot withstand such relentless persecution. We think, therefore we are. We are, so we know not what to do but think. What is the purpose of our meagre existence? Isn't it good to live in a hedonistic fashion rather than look for some ultimate purpose in everything? Isn't happiness all? Quests eternal.

Not that I despair of futile quests. Just of the futile quests that aren't my own. :)

What I said initially isn't true. I don't really despair of existential conversations. The despair is directed solely towards the notion that the conversation needs to culminate in some divine consensus, or an unarguable truth. The ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth. The quests are pointless per se. It is what you draw from them, that makes all the difference.

You could staunchly follow Nietzsche's ideology. Or perhaps subscribe to Kierkegaard's less-nihilistic views. Or dogmatically to a self-concocted mixture of ideas. Or keep yourself flexible and modify your theories about the world at large with time and the number of wiki pages read.

Doesn't matter. Not to me, at least. I like getting involved in existential conversations not because I think I will get some new insight into life, the universe and everything (which I may, on rare occasions. Besides the point,) but because they tell me about how minds other than my own work. It is an opinion, an idea, that is far more beautiful than the truth. It just so happens that the idea appears even more so when it coincides with the truth.

I am essentially an introverted person. Not introvert in the sense that I keep to myself and bad in starting conversations and am very shy (albeit not necessarily in the coquettish way). That's only in part. :) But in the sense that I draw most of my conclusions and arrive at most answers by thought directed inward, rather than by listening to someone or something. And yes, I am more concerned about my own mental life than anything else. Which, again, is not the point I am trying to make.

What I am trying to say is that I delight in discovering ways or patterns of thought wholly alien to my own. And express even more delight when an apparently alien pattern turns out to be similar to my own. The same information, the same object, but a refreshingly different point of view. It's like the thought about colours - Does everyone see the same colours in the same way? Will you see the world in exotic new hues if you happened to see through another's eyes? After all, colour lies only in the eyes of the beholder. If mere colours could be different, imagine the thoughts!

A hundred billion neurons. More than a quadrillion synapses. Three odd pounds of greyish goo. The human mind.

What are we, if not our pride?