Regular readers of this blog will know that there are lots of kinds people that I hate, and somewhere in the top 10 are the folks that think the laws of physics are optional. I hate movie directors as it is, and when they get this “The laws of physics are more like guidelines” attitude, it just flips me out. Someone has told them they have the artistic license, and these directors have taken it as a license to murder common sense and logic, and they do it with unapologetic abandon.

I saw a spectacularly stupid example of film making recently when I went to watch “Wanted”. I mean, I’m not one to miss a movie with Angelina Jolie in it, but this absurdity of this pathetic excuse for a movie is is unparalleled, even in nearby parallel universes.

The premise of the movie is that there is this dude who has physics-defying shooting abilities. He can, for example, “curve” a bullet, much like Beckham curves a football. I feel like I should sit down with the director of this movie and explain to him aerodynamics, then drill into his tiny head the law of conservation of momentum, and make him work out the equations for the differential air resistance required on a rotating bullet to overcome the momentum of the bullet which, by the way, is about 64 Kgm/s and nearly impossible to do. Maybe then he’ll see the light.

But oh no, he goes on, gravity and momentum be damned, showing absurdity after absurdity, while half the audience gawks at the special effects and the other half gawks at Angelina Jolie, leaving only me with my constantly increasing blood pressure to wonder at how this director can have hung out common sense to dry out of the window like this. Sometimes I feel the government should tax such movies extra and use the money to start a “physics for dumbasses” course for movie directors.

Anyway, the director is obviously inspired by Rajnikanth movies. There is this scene where the bad guy shoots a bullet at the good guy, and our hero has to save the good guy. What does he do? Simple: He shoots at the bullet with HIS gun, and his bullet hits the bad guy’s bullet, knocking it out, and saving the day. Doing that requires a reaction time of 10^-2 seconds, which is not enough for his eyes to even capture the image (4×10^-2 seconds), let alone his brain to see, interpret, analyze and recognize the image, then decide, send the signal to his muscles, which have to co-ordinate and contract and relax, align perfectly, and finally press the trigger. Reminded me a scene from Ramanad Sagar’s Mahabharat where they did the same thing with arrows.

This kind of macho-super-human abilities work only for Rajnikanth (of who, for the record, I am a HUGE fan). I mean the 20-something kid in the movie is no match for our evergreen Rajnikanth, (they tell the story of this girl who starred as Rajnikanth’s daughter, later his girlfriend, and now as his mother, while Rajnikanth who has absolutely not aged) who executes these movies with his signature snazzy super style spectacularly. Rajnikanth is at least 2 orders of magnitude cooler than anything hollywood can produce, and their uninspired lift of a Rajnikanth movie leaves much to be desired.

And oh, there is no interesting scene with Angeliena Jolie either (if you know what I mean), so absolutely no point watching the movie.

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“You don’t do any work around the house!” the wife said, making no effort to hide her obvious displeasure.

A conversation that starts like this is rarely going to end agreeably, and at some level, I already knew that. But my consciousness thought it could squirm out of this one too, just as it had done for the last 25 years of its existence.

Regular readers of this blog will remember my brilliant strategies to avoid cutting tomatoes that has worked with reasonable success. Being lazy and avoiding work is a high risk strategy, because you may end up doing more work that you’re trying to avoid (I’ve discovered this through my extensive experience in this area), it is the morally right thing to do. As the great Socrates once said:

He who strives to be lazy,
Will live life nice and cozy.
Doing do work, that’s just crazy,
That’s the secret of life my dear rosy!

Translation: “Lazy == Good”.

I decided to take the path shown by enlightened souls like Socrates and Deve Gowda, and was ready to stand firm by the principles I believed in.

“No more excuses. From tomorrow, cleaning the dining table after dinner is your work.” the wife said.

This is one of the great injustices of life that nobody focuses on. A dining table takes costs a fortune to buy, not to mention the several years of visiting furniture shops. After doing all that for the dining table, you’d think the wretched thing would be grateful to you, but NOOoooooo! You have to clean that damned thing. What injustice! The media should be focusing on these real issues - issues that matter - instead of just going about hyping irrelevant things like Global Warming.

Anyway, I was in a no-win situation. I simply looked the other way and said “hmmmmmm……”

“You’re also going to make the bed from tomorrow”.
“I protest!” I say feebly, without any conviction in my voice whatsoever.
“That’s fine. You can protest all you want. But just get the work done.”
“I don’t want to make the bed. I don’t like to do that.” I said, trying to make a squeaky voice to gain her sympathy. I’m going to try and push my luck to see if something comes out of this conversation that is certainly heading towards a showdown.
“Well, that’s too bad.” The wife says, not biting my sympathy maneuver.
“OK, I’ll trade that with you. You make the bed and I’ll do some of your work.” Brilliant! I had found an opening, a way to wiggle out of this!
“What work of mine can you possibly want to do?” the wife says, in a deeply cynical voice.
“I’ll clean the table after dinner today.”, I say. Getting close… one more strike and…
“But I’ve already cleaned the table!” she says, exasperated.
“And whose fault is that?” I say, triumphantly.  SCORE!!!!

For the casual observer, it may seem obvious that this argument had gone in my favour. I could have almost said “Hence Proved!”, and the force of logic and reason was with me. But logic and reason don’t count in situations like this, apparently. The wife then proceeded to PROVE to me, in her own special way, that I was going to do both chores in the house for the next month.

This battle had been lost, but the war has just begun. I started to hatch my next brilliant scheme…

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Although during the last month, I was not writing about my usual misadventures with life, that does not mean that I was not suffering the various tragedies of life that so predictably come by my way. Yes, that means that I watched several movies during this period.

One of the movies that I watched was “Sex And The City”. This was the most mind-numbingly boring movies I’ve seen recently. For those of you that have not watched it, its a 2-and-a-half-hour long parade of 4 old aunties wearing really weird clothes (with bird feathers in their hats and stuff like that), moaning and groaning about their lives. In short, its a standard soap opera.

But that didn’t seem to stop the hundreds of people (me and the wife included) that showed up at the theatre. At first, I was shocked that so many people would want to watch pointless stories that don’t go anywhere, but then carefully observing the crowd solved the mystery a bit. I realized I could classify the crowd that had come to watch “Sex And The City” into three broad groups. The first group consisted of gangs of college girls, at who the movie was obviously targeted, and they predictable “ooooohhh”ed and “aaahhhh”ed throughout the movie. The second category were bored husbands/boyfriends that had been forced into the movie theatre, while their significant others were desperately hoping that their hubbies/boyfriends would learn how to treat a woman and how to buy presents etc… from the unrealistic depection of men from the movie. I mean, in the movie this dude buys his girlfriend a huge house just like that, and another dude buys his girlfriend a huge diamond. Now seriously, who does that in real life?

Anyway, the third category of people were the most disappointed. These were the middle aged “gentlemen” who knew nothing of the movie beforehand and had shown up at the theatre hoping this would be some sort of a soft-porn movie. Their day must have been especially ruined.

I also went and saw “Sarkar Raj”. Do any of you have Ram Gopal Verma’s email ID? I want to mail him and tell him that “color” cinemas have been invented about 50 years ago, and that he can now stop shooting movies in black-and-white. Seriously, this whole movie is black-and-white, and all the dialogs are in whispers. And by God, what a horrible ending he’s come up with. *Spoilers Ahead*. So, at the end of the movie, Aaishwariya Rai’s character  becomes the next don. But that scene is so horribly shown, that I couldn’t stop laughing. Now, what dialog would you expect from a new Don? “Kill him” or maybe even “Don’t call me babe!” or something like that. But do you know what Aaishwariya Rai says? She says “Chaai Le Ke aana?” That sounds more like she’s landed the job of a head-waitress in a beedi-chaai shop instead of being the next don! Absurd.

The one good movie I watched (yes, that’s very rare) during the last month was Iron Man. It’s a silly, comic-book-super-hero movie, but it keeps you entertained. But I might be biased in my reviews, because I’m a huge comic book fan, especially superheros. My idea of an intelligent conversation is discussing who would win in a fight between spiderman and batman. (More interesting than global warming, definitely). And oh, if you go and watch this movie, stay until the end of the credits. Something very interesting happens

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I am alive. I’ll bet a lot of you folks were getting worried that I had returned to my home planet and left you earthlings alone with the curse of global warming. But I’m not that kind of person, and I’m not going to rest until I solve this Global Warming thing once and for all.

So now, the question is, why did I ever stop blogging. I feel like I owe you an explanation. In fact, I can give you several explanations, and you folks can then pick the one that you like the most! Talk about choice!

Why I Stopped Blogging: Reason #1: I got kidnapped by Drinivas, Chitradeep Chetty and Gang.
The story goes like this: I was out on my daily exercise routine (jogging) when a couple of armed kidnappers, jumped on me from the back. They tried to put a big blanket over my head to hide their identities, but I bravely fought my attackers, and managed to land them a few punches on them (using the kung-fu skills I’d learnt in a previous life). But just as I had managed to overcome my attackers, I tripped over my shoelaces, hit my head on the pavement and because unconcious. The Evil Drinivas ans Chitradeep Chetty took this oppurtunity to kidnap me and take me to their secret hideout. They proceeded to torture me by making me watch “Kingdom of the Buffaloes” documentary on Animal Planet over and over again, until the image of the Buffalo king had deeply affected my mind.

Why I Stopped Blogging: Reason #2: The Wife discovered my blog on the internet.
This story goes like this: It had been a pretty good year for my writing career. I was writing funny stories on the web about my life. The blog was getting a little popular, when The Wife accidentally discovered all the stories that I’d written about her on the internet. That day, when I got home from work, she gave me The Death Stare From Hell (TDSFH), and I was turned into a frozen rock. For those of you unfamiliar with TDSFH, it is an advanced curse that lasts about a month, during which time the victim has to perform all household duties (like making the bed and folding the washed clothes). And that’s why I couldn’t get back on the web to continue to write my blog.

Why I Stopped Blogging: Reason #3: The Internet Electrons went on strike.
Taking a cue from the Gujjars, the electrons from the internet decided to go on strike against my blog. They were protesting the unfair representation of some casts of electrons on my blog. The allegation was that the Global Warming electrons and the Exercise Electrons were getting unfair representation on the blog. The Crappy Poetry electrons were also being promoted aggressively on the blog, but the Funny Electrons and the Cartoon electrons were completely missing out on all the action on the blog. So, they went to a strike. I promise to you that I was writing articles all through the month, but the electrons refused to stick to the blog and kept jumping away to a temporary camp they had setup at the Unofficial IPL Blog. The IPL blog was harboring the refugee electrons, and so that’s where all the action shifted to.

So there you have it. Three perfectly good, normal and sane explanations as to why I wasn’t blogging for over a month. Go on and pick your favorite reason. But anyway, I’m back now, and I assure you I’ll continue to write stories here.

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I get back from work one day and notice that the wife is in a very good mood. She’s singing and all, and generally in a happy mood. This instinctively puts me on the defensive, I smell a trap. But even after some time, when I don’t get assigned to cut tomatoes, I’m begin to think that she really is happy. She’s probably looking forward to something. Her general humming is making me very nervous, and I’m trying to rack my brain trying to figure out any obvious causes that might make her so happy.

None come to mind. She’s still humming, and asks me if I want any coffee. Oh my God! Something is definitely up. Did I promise her something? Why is she so happy with me? What have I done right? I’m trying to search all recent memory in my brain, but still nothing. Did I promise to watch a movie with her this weekend? Noo… I certainly wouldn’t do that! Aaaarrrghhhh! The suspense is killing me. I decide to try to “fish out” the information from her.

Me: “So……”
She looks up and looks at me, smiling.

Me: “Life’s all good?”
Wife: “Yes, yes! Very good! We’ve come a long way, eh?”

Long way? From where? Her office is only 5 minutes away.

Me: “Well, if you take into account the traffic and the buffaloes, the office does seem far away!”
Wife: “Hahaha!… You’re funny… That’s not what I meant, silly!”

She Laughed at my Joke!?!?! Something is not right! I’m starting to sweat now!

Me: (laughing nervously): “Heh heh! Yeah… So… where have we come?”

Wife: “Soon, its going to be a year! One year! It seems like yesterday when…”

What is she talking about? Just as I’m pondering over what the hell happened a year ago, the epic light of dawnling realization shines on me. Oh, crap! She means our wedding anniversary! How could I forget!

I have a tragic flaw in that when I’m thinking, my face becomes twisted in a weird way, and my neck buckles to make my face look slightly upwards, as if looking into the sky. Its a dead giveway that I’m in a conference call with my brain. The wife has learnt to pick this up, and has probably realised that I’ve forgotten our anniversary.

Wife: “You do remember, its our Anniversary this week, right?”
Me: “Of course, yes yes…. I remember! It’s our Anniversary on the….”

Is it the 5th or the 6th? Oh, gosh! My mind has blanked out. I think it was the fifth! No, but I was on leave since the 1st, which was one week before the wedding, so the wedding must have been on the 6th. But I remember the wedding hall was booked from the 5th. Oh man! Oh man! I have to say something soon…My brain instructs my vocal chords to say fifth!

Me: “on the fiiiiiiiiffffffff…..”

The wife raises one eyebrow. Oh, no! fifth is the wrong answer! Damage Control! Emergency Emergency! Abort instruction! Override!

Me: “fiiiffffff….a.aaaa.aaaaaachchooooooooo! AAaaahh! Excuse me!”
Wife is giving me The Look.

Me: “Anniversary is on the sixth!”

Wife: “Well, at least you remembered! I hope you’ve got me a thoughtful gift too!”

Whew! That was a close one. If I’d gotten the date of the anniversary wrong, that too on our very first anniversary, I’d be made to remember it for the rest of my life. Lucky escape! But wait! What’s the thing about the thoughtful gift?!? No matter… Disaster avoided for now…

Me: “Oh yeah yeah! I’ve bought a thoughtful gift! Its so thoughtful, so thoughtful that it’ll leave you thinking! Haha!”
Wife: “Well, that’s good! I’m so looking forward to the sixth!”
Me: “Oh yeah, me too! I’ll bet my thoughtful gift kicks your thoughtful gift’s ass. You’ve got serious competition lady! You’d better come up with some spectacular gift for me to match my super-duper-ultra-thoughtful gift!”

Regular readers will immediately recognize that this is my super-inflated ego speaking. I had absolutely no idea of ANY gift, leave alone a thoughtful one, but that hadn’t stopped my big ego from making unsubstantiated claims. This was going to get me intro trouble!

Now, where am I going to find a thoughtful gift!?!?!

To Be Continued…

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You’re all probably wondering why I’ve not been posting on the blog for the last couple of weeks. Well, it was because I’ve been holed up in deep meditation, pondering  one of my deepest religious principles - How to avoid exercising. As ya’ll probably know, I’ve been under tremendous pressure recently to start doing SOME exercise. Not satisfied with my current strategies, I’ve been trying to cook up a fool-proof, permanent strategy that will solve this problem once and for all.

And I’ve succeeded!

That’s right folks! I’ve now come up with a spectacularly brilliant strategy that will save me the pain of exercise for a lifetime! And I’m going to tell you how it works!

The strategy is centered around the somewhat unreasonable assumption that the pharmaceutical companies will soon invent a pill that will cure all diseases all at once. I think this is inevitable, don’t you? Soon, they’ll have a pill to reduce cholesterol, improve muscle strength, reduce fat, increase attractiveness to the opposite sex and make taking baths outdated. I did a careful statistical analysis of past trends, and I predict that this pill will be invented by March 19th, 2018. That’s close enough in the future, so its all good.

So, lets review the strategy so far. A magic pill will be invented that will make all the people that are exercising now look like fools. But lets say that this doesn’t happen. I don’t see how, but let us, for arguments’ sake, assume that this simple-enough pill doesn’t get invented. Then what?

This where the brilliance of my strategy comes in. To balance out the risk of not inventing the magic pill, I’m planning to short the stocks of pharmaceutical companies in the long run. Selling short is a technique of stock-manipulation that will make you money if the stock falls. So, if the pharma companies make the magic pill, then I buy it and become healthy. If they don’t make the pill, I short the stocks and become rich. And as we all know, being rich is somewhat better than being healthy, because when you are rich, you can buy yatchs and IPL teams and that sort of stuff, but all you can do when you are healthy is eat apples, because, you know, you don’t want to become unhealthy. It’s a brilliant fail proof plan! The ideal win-win situation.

I’m planning to patent this brilliant idea, so if you plan to use it, you need to send me some money. Rs. 5000 only. Think about it, you can’t get a more brilliant plan. As they say,

Short-sell stocks and hedge your health against exercise,
Become healthy or wealthy, but certainly not wise!

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There comes a time in every married man’s life that he is faced with the difficult prospect of having to cut tomatoes. If you have had any experience with vegetables, you’ll know it is a painful and difficult experience. I’m sure making someone cut violates some fundamental human rights, but I’ve not been able to find the relevant law yet. I’m still working on it.

In the meanwhile, I’ve come up with some innovative strategies that I’ve been using over the past few months to avoid getting assigned any work, especially cutting tomatoes. I call these strategies Pretty Effective Tomato Avoidance or PETA.

Strategy #1: The preemptive denial
The preemptive denial is a very effective strategy, but it needs to be executed very delicately. The core of this strategy is to avoid getting assigned the cutting of tomatoes in the first place by making oneself seemingly unavailable. And for this strategy, I must extend my most sincere thanks to Mr. Lalit Modi for creating the Indian Premier League matches. You see, the IPL matches are all highly optimized for PETA (Pretty Effective Tomato Avoidance). All matches are in the evenings, exactly during cooking time, the time when you are most likely to get assigned tomato duty.

Here’s an illustration of how to use this strategy:
Pretend to be deeply engrossed in the match while simultaneously keeping an eye on the tomatoes.
As soon as the Wife approaches the Tomatoes and is about to say “Can you please….” scream like this:
“WOOOHOOOO!!! Hohooo!!! WHAT A SIX! This McCullum dude is awesome! Did you see how he hit through the line by picking the ball of the bowlers hand and turned his wrists along with the anticipated spin on the up? Too much….”

It is important that you use the appropriate cricketing jargon so as to make it convincing that you are really engrossed in the match. If you don’t time it right, then this will happen:
Wife: “Can you please cut the tomatoes?”
If you forget to scream at this point, or if the wife completes her sentence, you will have to respond
You: “The Tomatoes? OK, I guess…”
GAME OVER.

Strategy #2: The negative learning variations
This strategy has existed for a very long time and is already widely practiced, but I have come up with some innovations of my own here. Basically, the strategy involves doing such a bad job that you don’t get asked to do it again. But this is not as easy as it seems. You have to be quite thorough and meticulous in doing the bad job. You have to do a good bad job, otherwise it won’t be bad enough and the tomatoes will come back again the next time.

To do a really effective and efficient bad job, you foremost need to have a calm mind and think clearly. The first strategy involves taking the Tomatoes, and saying that you just saw an amateur jugglery show on TV and have learnt how to juggle. You then take a few tomatoes and throw them into the air, and let them fall and generally make a mess. Bonus points if the tomatoes fall on the sofa, because if that happens, you won’t be allowed anywhere near a tomato for several years. Mission accomplished.

Another useful variant is to say that you saw a show on Discovery Channel that showed how to properly cut tomatoes using a food processor. Now, if you try to cut tomatoes using a food processor, it makes a royal mess (and some tomato soup, but no cut tomatoes). Don’t ask me how I learnt that you can’t cut tomatoes using a food processor. Anyway, when it is realized that you’ve made a mess, then you won’t be asked to do it again. Success!

Strategy #3: Gross incompetence strategy.
This is actually an extreme version of Strategy #2. In #2, you demonstrated that you can’t be trusted with tomatoes, but this strategy takes it to the next level by demonstrating that you can’t understand instructions. You have to act and behave like a complete idiot. Again, this is not as easy as it seems, and it takes a lot of will power and discipline, although it comes naturally to some people like me.

According to this strategy, when you are asked to cut tomatoes, walk up to the fridge and take out some cabbage. Then proceed to cut it. Experienced foodies will immediately realize at this point that cabbage and tomatoes are not very substitutable, and that annoys the hell out of the person in charge of the cooking. So much that they will do the cutting of the tomatoes themselves.

Another way this can be accomplished is to do the following. When you are asked to cut tomatoes, run down to the local grocery shop and buy 2 Kgs of tomatoes. Now you have twice as many tomatoes, and none of them are cut, increasing the ratio of uncut tomatoes substantially. It is my repeatable experience that this almost certainly leads to you not being asked to do ANYTHING again, which is really the jackpot.

Now that you’ve learnt all the PETA tactics, go ahead and use them. I wish all of you a tomato-cutting-free life!

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