Stuff:

According to Google News the craigslist killer is Entertainment.

Susan Boyle sung a seriously sucky song. Supremely soporific.

Fareed Zakaria looks constipated - also apparently America is suddenly almost 50% liberal.

Ahmedinejad (?) sounds fairly rational when he says, "I have posed two questions over the Holocaust. My first question was, if the Holocaust happened, where did it take place? In Europe. Why should they make amends in Palestine? The Palestinian people had no role to play in the Holocaust. They had no role, for that matter, in the Second World War. Racism happened in Europe, but amends are made in Palestine?" - I don't like the Holocaust denying, but I do think that the Palestinians got screwed over by everybody.

A bio-degradable, racing car. If you get hungry, eat the steering wheel. "No gingerbread or jelly beans were harmed in the making of the car."

I don't get why criminal prosecution of the guys who framed the torture memos is a controversial topic. If there is a law against torture, and if that law was broken, then where is the controversy in making sure the people who broke the laws are prosecuted? How is it a left vs. right, Donkey vs. Elephant issue? Especially since there is precedent. Didn't the Americans prosecute the Japs and the Germans for torturing American/Allied POWs during WW2?

In the UK, people who take pictures of the police are reported to the police as potential terrorists? Hello 1984, goodbye 2009.

I have an ache near the base of my palm, where the fleshy part of my palm below my thumb meets the end of my life line. I also have an ache at (in? on? near?) my shoulder and my neck is sprained. All of these are apparently because of bad posture and too much time at the computer. And all of these, on and off, for the past 3 days. It gets better or worse depending on how I slept. Better today.

There is a guy on the other side of the room who blinks a lot. He closes his eyes really tightly every time. Close eyes, clench, release. Repeat. It looks really weird. I keep looking at him, wondering if I'll catch him doing it again and wondering if he'll catch me staring.

In Bruges, really good.

Sleep, also good.

Over excited consultants who don't seem to need sleep, not all that great.

Food. Bye.

Saw Frost/Nixon last week. Tried to see blah blah Benjamin Button. Also saw The Changeling.

F/N was good. The guy who played Nixon was fantastic. Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell were also great. The interplay between actual Watergate era recordings and the movie was also really good.

Benjamin Button was awful. Terrible. Boring. It should come with a self-strangulation warning. Caution: The contents of this DVD may cause you to choke yourself to death. Bleh.

The Changeling met expectations. Not more, not less. In a few scenes, Jolie wore hats whose brims cast shadows over her eyes and all you could see were her lips. Appa was very impressed with her. She acts! Apparently, he was biased by the constant presence of Brad Pitt by her side in all her photographs and everybody knows that Pitt can't act. She plays pretty much the same role she did in the Daniel Pearl movie. Different costumes, much different hair. Jewish wife missing husband in Muslim country in one, Single mom missing bastard child in conservative and crooked country in the other. Pedophile serial killer in one, Islamic terrorists in the other. Supported by Pakistani cop and Wall Street Journal Editor in one and Priest and Cop in the other. The crooked cops and psychotic psychologists were extra in this movie. Anyway, Go Malkovich!

weddings.

3 people I know are getting married on february 15.

2 people I know are getting married on february 6.

1 person I know is getting married on january 23.

There seems to be a rash of weddings.

Definitions of rash on the Web:

• any red eruption of the skin
• imprudently incurring risk; "do something rash that he will forever repent"- George Meredith
• a series of unexpected and unpleasant occurrences; "a rash of bank robberies"; "a blizzard of lawsuits"
• foolhardy: marked by defiant disregard for danger or consequences; "foolhardy enough to try to seize the gun from the hijacker"; "became the fiercest and most reckless of partisans"-Macaulay; "a reckless driver"; "a rash attempt to climb Mount Everest"
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

I don't have a problem with my friends or family tying the knot. But I am not a fan of weddings. Not even because of my dislike for dressing up, my hatred of crowds or the pain associated with awkward conversations with people I'm supposed to know.

These days, much of my disdain for weddings stems from inquiries made by well-meaning but annoying family members whom I barely know as to when I plan on getting married. "Never", "I have no such plans", "Not in this life" and "Are you fucking kidding me?" don't seem to be considered serious answers. They scoff, and then they say, "That is what they all say, but everybody gets married in the end." The End.

I don't want to get married. I don't want to have children. Unfortunately, I am a vadagala iyengar girl, of "good family". This means that at 26 (in less than a month, feb 17, mark your calendars) I am almost on the shelf (if I may borrow a term much used in Regency novels).

My mother has an theory. Marry at 24, have 2 children by 30 and the children will be old enough and financially able to take care of you when you are in your sixties, retired and infirm. Theoretically sound, practically, I DON'T WANT CHILDREN. At which point, the discussion veers off to voodoo science of maternal urges and body clocks. Exit stage left.

Maybe.

348 Posts, last published on Mar 25, 2008

How hard can it be to start again.
What will I write about.
Why now.
Should I first figure out why I stopped writing.
Or should I just stop thinking and start writing.

I have a problem. They say that recognizing that I have a problem is half the solution. I don't know what to write. I am writing for me, and yet there is a mythical you. That, I think, is half the problem. I want to write and be acknowledged, but some people know me, and some people know of me and I an worried about opinions and comments, said and unsaid, and more worried about the unsaid than the said. Shudder. I sound neurotic. I am spending way too much time with my mother.

Other than that, I am on twitter and facebook since a couple of days ago. With my real name. I have not used my real name here and I'm hoping that that will keep the people who don't know about my blog from finding out about my blog.

I don't know why I have decided to become cyber-social suddenly (or whatever it is called when one starts to use all these online social networking sites). Or maybe I do. I don't know many people outside of work in Rpt and this is going to be my post-work entertainment. Yay.

I'll be touch, dear blog. I hope you didn't miss me too much. I won't be gone so long this time.

I am 2 days old in my new job. And aching all over. I don't know if that is because of standing and walking all day or because of my cold and fever. Anyway. It has been an interesting 2 days. And so completely different from what I am used to.

So. What's up?

I'm tired, dirty and hungry at the end of work. Tired and hungry is normal at the end of work, but dirty is new for me. I have a factory job. Much fun. I'm learning chemistry and manufacturing and pretty soon I'm going to come in contact with labour laws, I think. I'm going to have periodic reviews, too soon and too close to each other for comfort.

When I come home and have to bathe and I ache all over, I feel like I have done something. Which is weird. I haven't really done much. I'm toting a notepad and following people, asking questions and eavesdropping on conversations.

Lets see how it goes.

So.

Saw Micheal Clayton, American Gangster and No Country for Old Men. Will see Juno when I get to Ranipet. Is 10000 b.c as bad the reviews say it is?

I'm watching Jurassic Park 3. The part where he says, "It is a bird cage", and the little boy goes whooosh. I can't decide who is more annoying - William H. Macy or Tea Leoni. (I don't know know how to make those accents). Billy just jumped off with the parachute that shouldn't work and is currently out flying pterodactyls. If they had pterodactyls, would some of them have gone off the island and onto Mexico or somewhere? This suspension-of-disbelief thingy does a lot of work in this movie. Don't raptor eggs break? There is always a shot in these movies where they show this wide pasture with a lot of herbivores just before something terrible happens. And another shot with someone with their arm inside a pile of shit. Bleah.

Ok. Enough.

Read anything interesting lately? I read Snow. Very so so.

A tiny bug flew into my eye, under my specs. It feels like there are still bits of it inside. Itch. Itch. Rub. Rub.

Did you know that there is a channel called Topper where they go over school stuff? Math and Science for classes 9 to 12. Monotonous and uninteresting. It is almost as if they are reading out the textbooks. I'm sure that there is a market for this stuff but can't it be made more interesting? The woman who does 11th Physics reminds of the woman who taught me geography.

Read - H.I.V.E, By Mark Walden - Artemis Fowl-ish
Reading - From Russia with love
Have, not read - In Her Majesty's Secret Service
Don't ask.

Going to watch - Jumper
Have, not seen - Micheal Clayton, No Country for Old Men, Juno - Will see tonight and tomorrow.
Yes, I know I should watch these and not stupid Jumper, but, I have tickets for Jumper and I have these at home and can see them any time. Social interaction. Yay me.

Amma is having a meeting in the living room (which is a very stupid name for a room, by the way). I was in the meeting. For a while. Made some very valuable suggestions, even if I say so myself. Now, I am in bed, it is hard to type when my elbows are resting on a pillow. Would be easier if I sat up. But then I would have to sit up.

I saw a manga version of Ramayana in the bookshop today. It was beautiful. Rs.1500. No thank you. I went through the whole thing there. Very nice. Very abridged, though. Totally unlike anything I have seen or read before. Take that Uncle Pai.

Yello.

Back. Don't know for how long. I've missed you all terribly.

Happy belated birthday to me.

I quit my job. They haven't let me go yet. I will be joining my new non-IT job sometime in march.

I saw Taare Zameen Par last night. I liked the kid. Aamir Khan was in tears in every consecutive shot. He would not make a very effective special needs teacher if he was the one in need of a hug all the time, would he? I loved the fact that the kid also had his hair standing up in the middle like Aamir Khan, in the last scene.

Also saw The Kingdom last week. It didn't have subtitles when the dialogues were in arabic. Idiots.

I bunked work today. Nothing in particular. My legs and my stomach hurt - like it does before I get stomach cramps. So I decided to stay at home. Just in case. Pre-emptive measures.I really have nothing much going on at work right now.

Anyway, new job is going to be 6 days a week. Torture. I hope I don't go nuts. And, intial training is going to be in my home town. You know what that means? I'm going to be living with my parents for a few months. Lovely. And my grandmother. I love them, I hope I survive. Death by overdose of family. Will send interesting conversation snippets. I hope to ban the M word as soon as I get there.

What else is new? What is going on in your lives?