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.