We share our planet with lots of weird species like nerds and geeks. As normal humans, we should make some effort to reach out to these folks so that we may understand their language and their culture. And so, to promote harmony with the nerds, I have managed to establish contact with one of them. To protect the identity of this Alien, we have to call him by his secret name, “Archisman Dhatra“. The following is an interview I conducted with Archisman.

Me: Hello Sir. Before we start, let me say that you look remarkably human. Do nerds always take the human form so as to not cause panic among regular human beings?
Archisman: “Please call me by my proper name: geek. Not nerd. There is subtle difference between a geek and a nerd and calling us nerds is a disgrace to our great forefathers. It has been statistically proven that geeks have 31.18% more chance of getting a date than nerds. I like to keep my chances optimal. But I am still single. I wonder why. Anyway, I digress.

Coming back to the point: Yes our goal is to try and not standout like a lone Lisp programmer in a JavaScript convention, but to blend in the way C blends into C++. This way, we can observe and study humans without causing too many compiler warnings, because, as our good old friend Atif would say, “The geeks will inherit the Earth.”

Me: My sources tell me that you got the 2nd Rank in 12th standard. That is 100% worse than 1st Rank. Is that a criminal offense punishable by death on your planet?
Archisman: Worse than that. We get a lifetime of community service on your planet, which explains why I am here. Painstakingly, we educate you masses about our alien culture so that you do not resist when we will take over your primitive society. So much for one small mistake!

Me: Us normal humans sleep with books under the pillow to make the knowledge from the book diffuse into our brains. What do the nerds do? Is it necessary to keep the book open for optimal transfer?
Archisman: This is where you kids go wrong. Reading a book is the process of aligning neurons in your cerebrum for knowledge persistence, and it is very essential to open the book before you start. Also, knowledge is power and

In other words, knowledge is basically forcing yourself to read lengths of boring text wasting your time. But remember that the lack of knowledge could be disastrous (You may recall your ‘I read Russian literature‘ incident) and the only way to amass this knowledge is to actually open and read the book.
But sometimes, when this is not possible, we just read the summary of a book and act as if we read the whole book. This works because it is impossible for a normal mortal to tell the difference.

Me: One last question. My sources tell me you are known as the super-nerd. Are you friends with super-man? You seem to be from the same planet.
Archisman: Pretty much. But unlike him I prefer to wear my underpants inside as a means of camouflage. This is aligned with the C-in-C++ principle that I mentioned before.

Me: Thank you, Sir for taking the time to talk to us normal human beings. We are glad to make contact with the geeks and hopefully we can live peacefully together.
Archisman: Thank you. And we’re going to take over your planet soon, so the peace thing might not work out.

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Our less-than-a-week old Chief Minister of Karanataka resigned yesterday. I mean, he hardly had time to re-arrange the furniture in his office, let alone transfer bureaucrats. Deve Gowda’s antics notwithstanding, I feel really sorry for our (former) Chief Minister. Doesn’t it seem that fate is playing a weird game with him? And like a sucker, Mr. Yeddyurappa keeps falling into the traps his fate sets him out.

I mean, think about it. First, Yeddyurappa’s Fate gets him the most number of seats in the election.

Yeddyurappa’s Fate: “Hey dude! Look, I won you the most amount of seats!“
Yeddyurappa: “Awesome! Can I be the CM now?“
Yeddyurappa’s Fate (snickering): “Not yet. You have to first do chamchagiri to the party that didn’t even get the majority.“
Yeddyurappa: “Bummer!“

And so, Yeddyurappa makes a pact with the JD(S), all the while still hoping to be the CM.

Yeddyurappa: “I made a pact with them. Can I be the CM now?“
Yeddyurappa’s Fate: “No, you have to let the other guy be the CM first for 22 months. Then your turn will come.“
Yeddyurappa: “OK, but I’ll become CM after 22 months right? Promise?“
Yeddyurappa’s Fate: “Sure, sure, why not, why not.“

22 months later, JD(S) asks Yeddyurappa to get lost.

Yeddyurappa: “Hey Fate! But you promised to make me CM!“
Yeddyurappa’s Fate: “I LIED!!!! Muahahahahahahaaa…..” (evil laugh)
Yeddyurappa: “Sob sob ;-( :(”
Yeddyurappa’s Fate: “There there. Don’t cry! OK, fine, you can be CM.“
Yeddyurappa: “Really? Yippie!!!!“

A week later, Yeddyurappa has to resign from the CM’s post.

Yeddyurappa’s Fate: “LOL! LOL! That was too funny… hehohehahahahoehehahahaha!“

I mean I’d hate to have a nasty fate like that. Sometimes I think my fate is also playing some nasty tricks on me, but your bad luck’s got to be pretty horrible to get a fate like Yeddyurappa’s. I mean, the only way it could get worse is if they have the elections now, and Yeddyurappa’s party wins 91 seats, and then they roll it back saying they won 19, not 91 seats.

Yeddyurappa: “How can it be 19 and not 91!?!”
Yeddyurappa’s Fate: “ROTFL!!!!“

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What is the deal with Sachin Tendulkar and the 90s? I mean, he seems to play really well till he gets to the 90s, and then boom -almost with clock like predictability- gets out. 99 the other day, 97 yesterday. I mean, what’s going on?

Most people seem to believe that there is a curse on him (like the curse of the Mummy), but I didn’t believe that. And so, to find the truth, I applied my super-hero reasoning skills to this puzzle, and came up with these possible explanations:

1. He’s trying to impress the chicks.
In politics, this would be called getting the ’sympathy vote’. I’ll bet he goes home after every match and says to his wife:

Sachin: “Ooo….booohooo…I didn’t get my century again today. Nobody loves me. :(“
His Wife: “There, there. Don’t be upset…“
Sachin: “Can you make me some Aloo Paratha today so that it improves my mood? I’d really like some Chutney with that too…You know, to make the grief go away.“
His Wife: “Well…….OK……“
Sachin: “And also, can we not go to that wedding tonight? I think it’ll really help the healing process.“

This is just speculation, I have not used these tactics myself. Really.

2. There is a cosmic version of the Y2K problem
Do you remember the Y2K “bug” that was supposed to send us back to the stone age? Supposedly, when the year 2000 came, computers would see only the last 2 digits of the year, “00″, and think we’re back in 1900, and all hell would break loose. I think there is a similar problem here.

Sachin has 41 hundreds in ODIs. If he actually gets another hundred, then he’ll have 42 hundreds, and the Universe will go into overflow and his number of hundreds will automatically reset to 0. Don’t believe me? Just ask Google what is the “Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything“. Co-incidence? I think NOT!

3. He’s using reverse Psychology
Sachin is using Reverse Psychology on his opponents. He’ll get out at 90 everytime, and so the opposition teams will get slack, and bowl easily in the beginning, thinking “We’ll get him when he’s in the 90s anyway“. Sachin gets 90 runs free, gets out, and the cycle repeats. Brilliant!

And then, when Sachin retires, he’ll say “90 is the new Hundred!“, and then he’ll have the most 90s and hold the world record.

Do you have any other theories about why Sachin is getting out in the 90s?

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This year’s Diwali came with much anticipation for all of us, especially for the Wife: We were finally going to get to watch Om Shanti Om and Saawariya. The Day couldn’t come sooner. The marketers of the movie were in overdrive, advertising the movie like crazy. It was almost like they wanted everyone to go and watch the movie on the first day itself, before anyone had time to publish reviews. Now why would they do that?

Finally the Diwali day came, and we rushed through the unimportant things - like doing the pooja and bursting crackers - and drove right to the theater. And there we stood, with 300 of our fellow movie lovers (read: poor, confused souls) eagerly awaiting to see Shahrukh’s 6-pack. Three hours later, I was a changed man!

Om Shanti Om is the most confused movie of the year. It’s almost like the scriptwriters took the scripts of some 4-5 old hindi movies, stuffed them along with some crackers, burst the scripts to pieces. Then, they sent out some interns to interview buffaloes on the topic of punarjanm till they had a 2-hour long movie. And then, half-way through the movie, they lost this script, so they put a 20-minute song, which is really an attendance call of bollywood’s so-called stars, which adds absolutely nothing to the already non-existent story line. They also recorded an old woman coughing like crazy, added some bits of drums, and passed it off as the background music. But most importantly, Shahrukh Khan delivers a drunk-monkey like performance in the first half, followed by a schizophrenic-with-one-personality-angry-with-the-other performance in the second half. The only saving grace of this movie is the ending - The realization that the movie is over and you are now a free man once more is worth a lot more that the value of the ticket.

Of course, my happiness was short lived, because we went to watch Sawariya soon afterwards.

To say Saawariya is a crappy movie would not be correct. Horrendously Ridiculous comes close, but it doesn’t really capture the essence of the absurdity that this movie is. After watching this movie I felt like tying up Sanjay Leela Bansali alone in a room, forcing him to watch a cockroach chase a spider round-and-round a water fountain for 3 hours. That too in blue light. Because seriously, that’s what this entire movie is. It’s two grossly untalented kids, who probably got kicked out of college for lack of attendance and ended up on this set to spend the rest of the day. And for the love of God, I can’t figure out why the whole movie is in blue! Maybe the director was trying to get every frame half-black half-blue so that the WinZip compression would work better to save some electrons, what with all the global warming and all. That’s the best explanation I could come up with, because nothing else can explain the lack of daylight (or plain light, for that matter) in this movie.

Sawaariya is one long song with some breaks for dialog. And by dialog I mean girly giggling by the chic and some punch-me-in-the-face expressions accompanied by pig-like grunting by the hero. One wonders if all the actors are the props and the set is the real star in this movie. I came really close to concluding that the bridge-over-the-fake-river is the central star of the movie, because everyone of the other actors looks like they were made of rock. And the rocks had moss growing over them. And the rocks were painted blue.

I have only a splitting headache to show after watching these two movies. But I would recommend both movies to all of you. Sharing your suffering and pain, they say, makes the healing process faster.

[Update: Since I found out that I had paid for the movie tickets, I've started a campaign to get SLB to return my money]

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I really don’t understand this Fashion Business. My tiny brain can’t make any sense out of it. I’m what you’d call a fashion-aethist. I just don’t believe in Fashion.

How can a Red Shirt not “go” with a Pink Pant? It smells of racism to me. Our forefathers fought hard for our independence and I will stand for the rights of the Red Shirt to go with whatever Pants it pleases. Give me freedom from the tyranny of “color combinations” or give me death, I always say. “Freedom to all the colors”, that should be our motto.

But my campaign for the right of various colored Shirts and Pants to co-exist has not gone down so well with the Wife. The other day, I was wearing a crumpled up shirt, and supposedly that’s not right. Apparently, it needs to be ironed before it can be worn. So let me get this straight: You’d torture the shirt with a burning red-hot iron, douse it with steam and remove all the lines and creases that define the personality of a shirt, all in the name of fashion? And not to talk about all the electricity that uses and global warming!

My theory is that fashion is just a mass delusion perpetuated by the big corporations. You just have to read one of these fashion magazines for proof. For the purposes of this blog post, I bravely opened up the “Vogue” magazine yesterday. All in the name of honorable scientific research, of course. What I found shocked me!

The Vogue magazine has 35 pages of ads before the table of contents. And I can’t figure out the ads at all. Your typical ad in the vogue magazine has a skinny, malnutritioned female with messed up hair, wearing what can be described best as “torn and worn out clothes” looking desperately into the camera. The only problem is that I can’t figure out if the model is saying “Buy this $10,000 Christian Dior perfume” or “Please feed me, I haven’t eaten for 3 days!”

Think about it for a while: The fashion industry is the only one where the companies tell you what you’re supposed to be wearing (i.e., what’s IN this season), and also sell it to you. They control both demand and supply.

I rest my case.

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Jet Lag is a common phenomenon. Lots of people apparently have trouble sleeping when they suddenly make large time-zone shifts. My sister even claims to feel jet lag when traveling from Mumbai to Bangalore (because of the 3-degree change in longitude, apparently).

Jet lag itself doesn’t seem to affect me much, but I suffer from what I call Food Jet-Lag. I’m surprised that other people don’t. My stomach has trouble adjusting to the timezone more that my brain does. That kinda makes sense, because my stomach is the center of my thoughts, and my brain is asleep all the time anyway.

So, I recently got back from the US auf A. The first day went by without any problem, I had dinner and went off to sleep.

Then, at 2:30 AM, I hear some strange noises. I wake up with a start. It’s my tummy growling. It thinks it is Lunch Time. The wife is sound asleep. And to make things worse, the voices in my head start talking too.

Voice #1: “I’m in the mood for Pizza!”
Voice #2: “Yeah. How about a thin-crust pizza with tomato and pineapple toppings, with a layer of cheese on top. And to finish of, some olives and paneer pieces sprinkled ever so lightly…Ah, the flavour…”
Voice #1: “Aaahhh! I can smell it already!”

The graphic description is just too much for me. I’m starting to feel *real* hungry now. I try to see if the wife is awake.

Me: “Are you awake?”
Wife (making a feeble attempt at waking up): “XwuiqaDuriTkjdOas?”
Me: “I’m Hungry!”
Wife: “……………”
She’s probably decided that I’m a bad dream and decided to ignore it. Well, I guess I’m on my own.

I wander down over to the kitchen and try to dig up something from the fridge. As I sit down with my cold food, I wonder if I should attempt to cook up something, but quickly decide against it, based on my previous experiences with cooking.

I start eating, and that gets me thinking: What causes Jet Lag? Based on all the evidence I’ve seen and heard from other people, I come to the most logical conclusion: Jet Lag provides a great excuse for slacking off at home from all your chores for the next several weeks. You can always claim that “This jet lag is very brutal. Can you please do <insert most hated household chore here> for me?“

You can then go and watch TV. If your wife asks how come you’re not asleep, you can quote the several scientific studies that prove beyond doubt that watching TV helps fight Jet Lag.

I think the person that invented Jet Lag was an absolute genius. Don’t you agree?

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“So, What are your hobbies?”

This is my most-hated question of all time. It is also the question that I get asked the most frequently. Usually, when you meet a new person, after the initial introductions and “where do you work?”-talk, this question inevitably comes up.

Have have never been able to patiently explain to anyone that I don’t have any hobbies. Everyone expects you to have meaningful hobbies that help you grow as a person - Like Carpentry or Reading Philosophy or studying the history of Stamps.

The closest I’ve come to a hobby is collecting comic books, but apparently that misses the whole “personal growth” thing. I inevitably get asked “How old are you again?” when I tell anyone I collect comic books.

I usually want to tell people that my hobby is: “I like collecting dried blood from dead insects that I like to kill with my bare hands“. At least they won’t ask any more questions after that. I tried this a couple of times, but I’m really scared someone will say “Me too!” and start discussing effective ways to dry dead mosquitoes.

The hobby question comes in different varieties - “What do you do on weekends?” or “What do you do in your spare time?” I think people who ask this question are really saying: “Tell me more about yourself, things that interest you and you are deeply passionate about”. Why don’t people understand that I’m a really shallow and superficial person? I don’t have any “deep” interests!

I think the world at large discriminates against shallow and superficial people. Have you noticed how all the bad guys in movies are shown as being really superficial? They’re only interested in money and don’t care about the “deeper feelings of Friendship, Empathy and Love for everyone?“. Oh Please. If you had money, you could outsource the “deeper feelings of Friendship, Empathy and Love for everyone” to someone else and focus on the “shallow joys of flying in your private jet“.

You know what, I’m going to make it my hobby to spread my ideas about “shallow and superficial living” to the world. I already have a religion to go with it. I’ve also thought up some catchy slogans:

“Meditation will only get you peace of mind. For a peaceful soul, gamble money at a casino!“

“Friendship and Love won’t get you to heaven, but Vodka will. Vodka: Anti-freeze for the soul!“

See Also:
- My Comic Book Collection
- My Toy Car Collection
- Adityaism - My new Religion (beta)
- How to fake Philosophy as a Hobby

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