The Great Noodle

There was a resounding bang. It was the Perciatelli representative. She had knocked over the can of cheese that the cook had forgotten to put away. She looked around sheepishly, but the others had gone back to their loud and sometimes, violent, arguments. It was an eclectic bunch that had assembled this year. Some old, some new, some borrowed and some blue. The old ones, like the bearded Trachana, disapproved of the younger ones like the Scooby Do. They were, according to him, unnecessary. But unfortunately for him, the Cavatappi had been almost wiped out by the youngsters. The Scooby Dos were represented by the scruffiest person that the old Trachana had ever seen. His naturally occuring curves accentuated by the weird dyes he wore and where ever he went, he took along with him a most unpleasant Ketchup smell. Ketchup! Hah. The Ziti and their cousins the Zitoni had sent a common representative - an unpleasant and loud mouthed girl. She was stridently arguing with the Manicotti rep.

He was saying, "I really wish they would make slurping illegal. It is such an undignified way to go. We should form a lobby against slurping; if we have to die to feed these people, we should atleast have a humane death."

She snorted. "One, you are not human. Two, who will you lobby? It's not as if we have seats in the human government. And three, humans don't give a shit. You are a pasta, man. Flour, butter and egg. You really think they are going to worry about how they eat you?".

"You are really most unpleasant. I was just making conversation." said the plump, flustered man.

SHe said, "Get stuffed." and giggled. "Wait. You'd probably like that!".

"Insufferable".

"Ignore her, my good Manicotti. Tell me, who do you think will be elected the Pasta Boss this year?". This was the young and powerful Penne representative. Manicotti thought that he was really too young to be representing the Penne, the Mezze Penne, the Penne rigate, the Penne Zita, the Pennette, and the Pennoni families, who traditionally sent only one common representative. But that was the problem with the popular families; there were no old ones left. And the families that did have old ones left, didn't have the clout any more, to affect changes. It was very sad. While all these thoughts were flashing though old Manicotti's mind along with extreme displeasure at the sight of his old rivals, the Vermicelli and the Spaztle, ("Damn those worms!") at a speed considerably less than that of light, even very slow light, the Penne representative had moved away. He was now talking up a storm with the Mafalde and the Mafaldine, an unlikely alliance - one short and rectangular and the other long and ruffled and with tempraments to match.

Manicotti looked around. It was almost time for the voting to begin. Last year, the Farfalline had won the vote with the huge margin, mostly because of their sudden popularity with salad chefs. They were still very popular, so maybe it was a good thing that the Great Pasta Comprehensive Rule Book of Many Complicated Rules (commonly know as the Good Book) said that a family could not have a representative made Boss 2 years continuously. This, many felt, was a good rule. Mainly beacause overbearing and hideously rich Lasagne family would have been dicatators otherwise. There was no place for dictators in Pasta World.

Ah! More annoying youngsters. Alphabets! Alphabets? MAnicotti was enraged. In his day, Pasta cane as ribbons, shells, or noodles. Bowties were bad enough, but alphabets?! Disgraceful! And those colours? Ridiculous. What is wrong with cream? The world, if Manicotti had designed it, would have only cream. Maybe a little olive green. None of that ridiculous red and purple. What did they think they are? Breakfast cereal? Nincompoops.

The horn was sounded. Everybody gathered around to hear the candidates speak before the voting began. The Orzo candidate got onto the stage. It was embarrassing to watch him struggle up that high platform. He could hardly be seen over the crowd and Manicotti didn't even know when he had started to speak. He was looking at the Canelloni representative. They had sent the same man for the past four years. The Canelloni were unique in the Pasta World as they were the only ones who had never sent a candidate for election. They would always come, obediently, every year. Not say a thing, vote and leave. This year, their representative was fast asleep in the last row. His stout body looked even stouter, bunched up like that in his chair. The Orzo had finished sometime ago and the Anelli girl was talking now, something about unions and better work environment. WHat ideas children get these days. You are made, you live in a box, you die. When will they realise that whatever they do, they are going to die in a pot of boiling water some day, in the company of dead fish, cows, goats, or depending on where you are, even dogs. Unions. Hah!

They just kept talking. And Manicotti tried to listen to all of them. He really did. He remembered when he was younger and not so yellow, how he used to be interested in these things. Now he just felt responsible and tired. But his over worked civic sense never let him sleep during these meetings. And he always gave a lot of thought to his vote. You never know, someday it might mean something. What and when was anybody guess.

There were too many candidates this time. All the young ones were clamouring for a chance to speak. Fools. It was almost time to go. Ah. Finally. Voting time. They used a show of hands to decide who was to be the next Boss. First Orzo. Too insignificant. 3 votes. Then Anelli. Too radical. 5 votes. And it went on and on. Something was wrong. Nobody was getting a majority. This was bad. Penne jumped at Tagliatelle and punched him. Oh no. It was turning to something humans might do. Wait wait. WHo is that? It was fat old Pici. Bloody philosopher.

"All of you disqualified yourself from ever being good politicians just by wanting to be one."

"What the hell do you mean?", yelled Spaghetti, perpetually annoyed.

"You want power, you want recognition, you want to be famous. That is why you all stood for election. If you had wanted to make things better for any of us, you would have tried to do something before coming here. But did you? Did you?", Pici yelled, growing more and more animated as the crowed quieted down. "Pop psychology", muttered the young Penne, who apparently knew all about it. But the crowd just lapped it up. Pici was on a roll. "Whom amongst us has never wanted recognition? Who has never stood for election? Who has never been guilty of craving attention?" The crowd looked at each other. Many of the shrugged. Most of them looked lost. Pici was running out of steam when Macaroni yelled, "Canelloni!". The whispers ran hard and fast. Soon the loud whispers turned into shouts, yells and a lot of finger pointing.

Stretching and yawning, the Canelloni chose this moment to wake up. He found himself suddenly on the shoulders of the more exuberant youngsters and they were all yelling, "Canelloni for President!", "God Save The Boss!" and "I'm hungry". The last one was a baby Garganelli which had snuck in when everybody was too busy arguing to guard the door. No one paid any attention to him.

The Canelloni representative had no idea what was happening to him or why and more importantly, how was he going to explain to the others of his family? He was so dead when he got home. Sigh, at least he had had some sleep. It was getting so difficult sleeping at home. The children were getting into that troublesome age where you couldn't stuff them into a box and know that they'll be there and fine in the morning.

One of the youngsters had started up a silly chant. "Canelloni! (Thud Thud Thud) Is Dude! (Thud Thud Thud) Canellon....". "Fool", shouted another. "Canelloni is a noodle! Not a dude! Don't let the elders hear you. You know how much they hate it when we use human slang!".

"Sheesh. OK." "Canelloni, The Greatest Noodle (Thud Thud Thud) Canelloni The Noodlest Great....", and so it went on. He was drunk on pasta sauce.

The next morning, the children of the house were grounded for a month for making a mess of the kitchen. Though they never found out how they children had made a mess of this kitchen when they were in their grandparents' house on the other side of town. Some how, the box of Canelloni was on top of the other boxes of pasta and the cheese was on the floor.


LIst of Pasta

edit:

The next morning, the children of the house were grounded for a month and they had to clean up. They did so, all the while protesting their innocence. Their mother yelled at them some more for lying. What did they think happened? Did the cereals jump of the boxes themselves?

She wasn't as well acquianted with her kitchen as she thought.

One bag packed. 2 more to go. And tomorrow, I am off to the hot city. It couldn't possibly be hotter than CHennai. I went out at 7 this morning and in 10 mins, I was thoroughly drenched. It was not a pretty sight.

Ann Arbor people, congrats on gra-joo-ashun. Yeah, I got your mail Vish.

This morning, I spent an hour getting my papers together. I have to submit 10th, 12th, graduation and post graduation marksheets and associated certificatates when I join. How embarrassing. WHy can't they just make do with the certificates? Invariably, there will be a bunch of overachievers when I am submitting my stuff and they will all be comparing their grades and will make polite noises when I a)refuse to show my marks b)show my marks or c)kill myself in shame. I'll let you know how it goes.

I just printed out about 200 pages of 5 spreadsheets for my father. The first 50 pages are in portrait and the rest are in landscape. The first 100 pages don't have the column labels in each page and the rest do. Fortunately they are all in the same font and size. Thank god for small mercies. I hope I'm not here when he sees them.

Bye.

P.s. Keith. Noodle almost cooked. I still have to type it. It's all in my head.

I always have trouble with passwords. I have 4 passwords that I use whereever needed. The problem is that I never know which of the four I need for any particular account. It's not a problem with gmail as I use that the most often but everything else is hell. I have to try sometime 3 times before I get it right. And one password is very long, so I sometimes miss-spell it and I can't tell that I have miss-spelt it because all I see are stars and I end up thinking that maybe I have a 5th password too that I forgot about. It's insane. I once decided change all my passwords to one but that was the day that the local ISP wanted to change some routers in the campus and I could not use the internet. Fate.

Somebody called me "the world-famous Meera" today. I love it.

Ranipet is so hot it makes my eyes burn. And my skin.

A shiny new refridgerator came home today and we sent it back because it had a one inch dent on the door. So we are stuck with our 30 yer old Kelvinator; which works perfectly. So I don't know why they need a new one. My grandmother dosen't want to give this one up.

I saw War of the Worlds today and good print does not make it a better movie. I find Dakota Fanning (?) very annoying. I want to see a Donnie Darko kind of movie. I saw a Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman, J-Lo movie last night, called An Unfinished Life. It was good, with grizzlies and a 10 year old girl and a guy who beats up J. It wasn't good for those reasons. Anyway, didn't J-Lo act in another movie where she gets beaten up by her husband? Does she look like the sort of person who would be a domestic violence victim? Like they say in A Four Just Men, if you can tell if a person has criminal tendencies by just looking at the structure of their forehead and jawline, maybe you can tell a victim too?

I have to start packing. I don't know what to take. But I have bought towels, so I'm a Hoopy Frood!

This is hilarious. Apparently there is a negative correlation between IQ and religious faith and similarly between education and religion and so on. I got it off dilbertblog.typepad.com Even if you don't agree, it is a good read.

Saw Ice Age 2 today. WIth 2 cousins and their offspring. It wasn't as good as the first one but it still had me in splits (I typed in spilts first. Not completely wrong as most of the popcorn ended up on the floor). And yeah, Manny has a love interest. A possum. To figure that out, watch the movie.

How long do mammoths and sloths and saber-toothed tigers live anyway? In the last movie, it was the beginning of the ice age and in this one, it's the end! And they are still alive and haven't aged a bit. Pass me a bit of that Philosopher's stone.

V for Vendetta isn't here yet. Underworld - Evolution is and I'm wondering whether I want to see vampires and werewolves and a hybrid vampire-werewolf fight again. The first one was quite bad, but maybe that was the grainy print and the small screen of my desktop talking. Maybe with dolby and 75mm screen and popcorn the movie would seem better. You think? Nah.

P.s. I have hiccups and I have had water, suger, held my breath and said "Hic up hic down hic to the next town 2 hics and one cup and my hiccups gone" without breathing twice and it is still there. Help!

Ice Age 2 tomorrow. Just thought that you should know.

The sis is making something for dinner. With Eggs, some vegetables that were cut a while ago and bread. Should be interesting. I could have had pongal at my aunt's place, but I came back for this. Oh, well. Her stuff always seems to work out. I anyway go "Yay! Food!", whatever she gives me.

Bye.

I am not going to talk about my one hour at the dermatologist and my experiences with their laser. I leave you to figure it out with your underworked imaginations. Just let me say this - my face burns burns burns.

I saw The Terminal and Catch Me If You Can simultaneously (Star Movies & HBO) 2 days ago. I like Catch Me... better than The Terminal for reasons that are obvious. You know, story line and stuff. Though Terminal was good too. This was the first time I saw the whole movie. Almost the whole movie. ANyway, the sister's password to gmail and blogger are saved on this computer and every time I come online I have to fight temptation to not do something stupid. It is a pity that I am so scrupulous.

Preparations are underway here to facilitate my moving to Hyd. ANd by that, I mean that I bought towels today. Those thin cotton ones that get sopping wet when it get a little humid.

Ice Age 2 is coming soon! To a cinema near me! Soon!

Bye. I have to go download stuff for my mother.

I have been very busy doing nothing. It is soo tiring. I am so busy that right now, I am sitting in front of the computer, drinking iced tea and wondering what to write. Phew!

I have, in the past week, bought clothes, discarded clothes, watched TV, fought with the mother, seen The Goal (so-so) with a 12 yr old cousin (who said every goal in the movie was "Fake!"), played with my 3 yr old neice, watched 2 episodes of American Idol with a friend who lives up stairs (Ace is horrible), seen Scooby Doo - The Movie (yuck) and done many many more things, most of which are similar to what I have already said.

Last night, I went to pick up a cousin and her daughter at the Kamaraj International Airport. I was resigned to delays, to waiting till 2 am, to trying to keep my aunt from falling asleep on her feet and to drinking bad vending machine coffee. But, surprise of surprises! The plane that was supposed to come at 11.20 came at 11.15, they promptly got off the plane by 11.40 and were through customs by MIdnight. They had their luggage and were out of the airport by 12.20am!!! This has never happened before! We had left from home at 12, and had just got to the airport and in less than 10 mins, my cousin and her daughter were out. Miracles do happen.

Bye. I'll be back later with more miracles and other stories.

Bangkok is a very weird word, don't you think? Who ever came up with it must have had a very nasty sense of humour. How they get Bangkok from "Krung Thep" which is the thai nickname for the place? I say nick name because apparently very few people have the patience to say its whole name - Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. Those who do, sing it.
Enough about the name.

I loved the place. It was hotter than hot even though it rained a bit. I saw a lot of animals because my 18 month old neice is crazy about elephants. Everything was aanai this and aanai that. She was adorable, except when she screamed. Which she did very often, whenever animal planet was not on, or we were not including her in the conversation, or she didn't want to eat, or if she felt like it. Yay.

The view from my cousin's place is brilliant. Especially at night. And they have pink taxis. And blue and red ones. And the tuk tuks were very cute.

We went to a croc park and zoo on my second day there. They had a corocodile wrestling show there where 2 men would do all sorts of things - the usual, put their heads into the crocs mouths, pull the crocs by their tails, ride on the crocs back, and so on and so forth. The crocs seemed very embarrassed. They looked like they were just humouring those nutty humans. I wonder what they would have said to each other after it was over. "Atleast we got some fish out of this embarrasment" or "Anything to avoid being in a burger" or "I think they make me do this because I have skin problems and so won't make a good purse" or "Now can I go to sleep?". ON they way out we saw a fast food joint serving exclusively croc meant and right across that was a place which had croc leather stuff - belts, shoes, bags, the works. Poor them, they have to work even when dead.

The next day, my cousin, her friend and I went to Chathuchak market. It went on forever. We were there for 5 hours and we covered about 5% of the place. It was shoppers' paradise. We went up, we went down, we went sideways and then we went back. And at the end of it, all I had to show for it was 2 T shirts and a wooden frog.

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Going out now.. rest later.

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It has been a while.I have done so much in the past two days. MOre on that later.
Now back to Siam.
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Speaking of Siam, there is apprently a move to change Thailand's name back to either Siam or Krung Thep. They are going the INdia way. Sadly.

Anyway, I just sat at home the next day and saw a bunch of bad movies that they had. Catwoman, Agent COdy Banks and Daddy Day Care. YIkes. Sharon Stone was unrecognisable in Catwoman and why does Benjamin Bratt always get these wooden roles? I have no respect whatsoever for Halle Berry. Her ass went from 9 o' clock to 3 o' clock for every step. And they matched lip prints! What a movie!

Went to Safari Park the next day. Saw a lot of animals. They had kept the lions and the tigers in the same place. They were all fat and sleepy. Nice.

We went out for dinner that night to a place called Cabbages and Condoms. Apparently they were advocating family planning and safe sex and HIV/AIDS awareness. The whole place was decorated in wood and condoms; they had mannequins dressed in condoms, condoms blown up like balloons and condom lampshades. Brilliantly done. We were 5 people, and they brought 5 condoms with the bill. The food was great too.

I'll gripe about the poroblems of getting good vegetarian food there some other time.
The next day too was spent lying around in the house and either playing with my elephant obsessed neice or talking to her mother. Good stuff. That evening, I went to a department store with my cousin and we went by the shoes area. There was no even one pair that fit me. Not one. They were all too narrow and too small. It's a fact now. There are no large size people in Thailand. If I ever lived there, I'd have to send to India for everything from clothes to shoes. ANd rice apparently. They only have that weird sticky rice. My coiusin takes back 10 kgs of rics everytime she visits.

I left the day after. And here I am.