My hair goop is reacting badly to Bangalore’s climate. The heat and the dust do not agree with the goop and now my hair has the consistency of barbed wire. Barbed wire having a bad day. Barbed wire having a succession of bad days. (It started with someone stealing the Barbed Wire’s mail, and ended with the Barbed Wire’s spouse running away with the toaster and most of the couple’s liquid assets.
(Bear with me. I’m at a creative nadir over here. I originally was going to write about nudist colonies. I’ve this mental image of a nude colonist jumping off of a ship claiming this land for the Queen and the freedom to feel the wind against one’s um…Mahjong Areas. (Thankfully, that mental image is pixilated.)(Mahjong could be the name of a porno flick. Really. Mah-Jong. The mind boggles.)(Shouldn’t pixilated mean covered by pixies?)(That mental image is a little bit freaky now.) (I’ve lost track of all the brackets.)(Brackets for the sake of brackets.))
It is a combination of barbed wire and concrete. Concrete wire with a bad temper.

No. I am not obsessed with my hair.

Well…maybe just a little bit.

I’d like to write more, but there’s that whole (presumptuously termed) creative nadir over there. So I will not.
That there was the perfect excuse. I’d like to do something. But I can’t, so I won’t. Somebody should be taking notes down recording these words for posterity. For generations of slackers to learn from and emulate.

And that is the first time that I have ever used the word emulate. It is a good word. One that should be used more often. Emu-late: A perpetually tardy flightless bird.

I apologize.

I’ll stop typing right now.

..that has me cheering.

The new version of Blogger in beta is dead!
Long live the new version of Blogger!
(P.S. The old version of Blogger is not dead, but it would like to retire for a little while… maybe go to Hawaii or play World of Warcraft all day? It begs you to let it play World of Warcraft all day.)

…Hachoo!

The creator of the phrase, “The birds and the bees” should be sued for false advertising. It is misleading. A speech about “the birds and the bees” to an audience of naïve linguistically challenged Ornithological Entomologists could have tragic consequences. The PowerPoint slides would cause considerable consternation. The audience members would be appalled and may shoot off angry missives to the organizing committee. They might even lynch the speaker (Ornithological Entomologists are notorious for taking the law into their own hands. The only thing scarier than a mob of angry Ornithological Entomologists is a herd of stampeding pachyderms. Unless the pachyderms are also Ornithological Entomologists. In which case you’re pretty much screwed. And not a ”the birds and the bees” screwing.).

How did the creator of that phrase come up with it anyway? What led him to make that logical connection?

“Look, there is an eagle, soaring majestically. That’s kinda’ like humping isn’t it?”

“Ouch! I got stung by a bee! It hurts. That’s kinda’ like humping isn’t it?”

“Oooh, Honey and Feathers. That’s kinda’ like humping isn’t it?”

…Well actually that last one…um never mind.

The inaccuracy, nay the sheer misleading nature of English phrases causes me a great deal of distress.

“Take it with a grain of salt,” is not a suggestion to improve the flavor of that rather bland soup. It has, and my chemistry is rusty here, so excuse any mistakes (That was meant for one very, very “special” person), nothing to do with sodium, potassium or chlorine. Apparently salt equates to skepticism. Why the fuck does salt make you to look at stuff with a jaundiced eye? “Ah just the right amount of salt, and I do not fucking believe a thing you say.”

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Not just misleading but potentially fatal! The only way it can keep the doctor away is if you use the apple to bludgeon the doctor about the head and shoulders to knock him or her unconscious.

“A little knowledge is dangerous.” Really? I know very little about sharks and venomous snakes. The little bit of knowledge I do have involves me keeping a safe distance from them. Is that knowledge dangerous? No. It keeps me from becoming a nice little snack for a ravenous Great White.

“Fit as a fiddle”. I’ve never ever seen a fiddle do twenty push-ups or run a seven minute mile. Some poor soul may have strings attached from his nose to his toes and then have a burly assistant rub a stick across those ropes? That’s just…wrong. And probably would show up in the “the birds and the bees” PowerPoint presentation.

“Laughter is the best medicine.” Refer to section about apple.

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Why? Fur? Meat? Sadism? Why? How do people even know that? In the dim distant past, did some budding Proverb-ologist go out and rip the epidermis off of blameless felines and thus prove to the masses that yes, cats could be skinned in multiple ways, head first, tail first, belly up, belly down…

“Rats desert a sinking ship.” No, they were trying to get away from that Proverb-ologist who had run out of cats. The cats being dead had caused the rat population to explode. The circle of life yada, yada, yada.

So yeah. The English language. Good stuff.

The British Airways website stated that my cabin luggage can measure 56 by 45 by 25 centimeters. It did not say how heavy it could be. So I called up the nice customer service folks.

“Pray tell me, how heavy can my cabin luggage be?” asked I, a gentle smile playing on my face. The person at the other end of the phone may not have been able to see my smile, but surely he could hear it. (It was a smile to behold. It was as smile much like the one that plays across the face of an intrepid Space Ninja Pirate when he is faced with a horde of green skinned aliens bearing down upon him. Bearing down upon him, armed with razor blades and superfluous ellipses, and with bloody murder on their minds (Surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, I have had nightmares of that. Really. Okay maybe not. But It would be cool if I had had.) The smile isn’t a rueful smile. It is a smile of quiet confidence. One that may play across the face of a Space Ninja Pirate when a horde of green skinned aliens is bearing down upon him and he realizes that as a Space Ninja Pirate, it behooves him to kick ass).

I smiled. Not because I planned on kicking ass but because I’m a pleasant chap.

“Pray tell me, how heavy can my cabin luggage be?” asked I. Not for the second time, because I fear that you, vapid reader, might have lost the thread after that minor digression.

“Fifty Six by Forty Five by Twenty centimeters” said the Oracle of the fleet.

“Thank you”, said I, Pleasant chap that I am. “Now how heavy can it be?”

“Hmmm. Let me check.” Said the wise Oracle. ”Whither flyest thou? And fromest wherest? Foul Varlet.”

The “Foul varlet” was uncalled for, but I let it slide. “To Bangalore by way of Heathrow, o dispenser of weighty knowledge.”

“Forsooth, rejoice mortal, for thine trip hath no restrictions on the weight of thine cabin luggage.”

“Really?” That’s me doing my well known impression of an incredulous Space Ninja Pirate (Still facing the green skinned horde, still smiling, but now realizing that in addition to his Katana-cutlass, he has a load of tactical nuclear weapons. And a copy of Wren and Martin (To subdue the superfluous ellipsis).)

“Yep…Foul varlet.”

“So you mean to tell me that if I could take a hundred and fifty pounds of cabin luggage?”

“That is correct. As long as you do not need help to stow it in the overhead luggage compartment.”

“Ah. So if I could shoulder press a hundred and fifty pounds,”…I can’t…”I’m cool.”

“Yep…Foul varlet.”

“But if on the other hand I’m a nice ninety year old lady”…No, I do not have issues with my gender identity…”I’d be totally and utterly screwed?”

“Um, yeah I guess so.”

“Not keen on being brotherly and helping the old are we, here at British Airways, eh?”

“Yep…Foul varlet.”

“Excellent.”

Coming back to my apartment after being away for the better part of a week, I find that my mail box is stuffed with junk mail. Actual physical junk mail. Like spam but not an email. It’s like someone had shove cans of inedible meat into my mailbox. Meat that had lain there in the damp, overcrowded mailbox and had mutated into a coagulated mass that chased unwary travelers down unwary roads and…Okay I promised myself that I wouldn’t have any mutated creatures from the Pits of Doom in this post.

So…Spam. Most of it went directly into the trash can placed right next to the mailbox. Except for one which was addressed to “Our dear neighbours…”, that’s their “dear neighbours”, that’s me. I’m pretty sure that my neighbours did not go through the trouble of mailing me. My neighbours consist of a nice Chinese family and a lady who drives a blue beetle. Going up to the post office wouldn’t’ make sense. They could slip a note under my door or throw it at me or something. The whole ailing it routine made no sense.

There could be only one explanation. Evil space aliens had taken them captive and from their base of operations in the apartment were sending me cloying letters. Letters which promised me that I could cut my debt by refinancing my home mortgage. It seemed like a good offer. Except that I do not possess a home or a mortgage. But it was sure kind of my alien nieghbours to think about me. It just goes to show you that being scaly, green skinned and covered with poisonous barbs does not make you a bad human being…uh alien being.

The safety certificate for an elevator (A hotel elevator, the hotel I stayed in, in Ottawa. If you were interested. If you weren’t tough luck.) had its safety certificate issued my the Ottawa Elevating Device commission. Elevating Device. Does that include magic carpets, and witch’s broomsticks? They elevate. They are devices. Do they need the certificate to be displayed in a prominent position? Will it affect their aerodynamic nature? (Someone said that elevating device could refer to illegal narcotics. I’m not going to go there.)

Lessons from north of the border.

· You can bar hop alone only so much before you start worrying that you are an alcoholic.

· The restaurant with the prettiest waitresses has the lousiest food.

· A beaver tail is not in fact a tail from a beaver. And despite this, it is delicious.

· Canadians like their maple syrup.

· Montréalers like their strip clubs.

· Driving at a hundred miles an hour, rolling down your windows and blasting cold air at your innocent, sleeping passenger can be disconcerting.

· You will always be a quarter short of your cab fare.

· There will always be a bad American Sitcom on the television when you turn it on.

· Canadians have the least impressive money in the known universe. (It has ice hockey players on it! It looks like a ticket for a ice-hockey game!)

I was installing something on my laptop that promised to take a half hour to install. It was late and I needed to sleep. So I shoved the laptop under my bed, turned of the lights and tried to sleep. Except that now there was this eerie glow oozing out from under the bed. It looked like a scene from a horror movie, the unpleasant kind, where the monsters below the bed are not friendly but are intent upon eating you. Perhaps with a tasty garlic sauce.

But if there were monsters under the bed, I suppose that they would diverted by the wonder that is the internet. And by wonder I mean porn. And by diverted I mean…diverted. How would a monster find porn on the internet? Googling monster porn? Or would they go to monster.com? How would they handle that disappointment? No monsters. What about truth in advertising?

Monster.com? “I need a job. I should definitely go to Monster.com. Because jobs are monstrous, and monsters are hiring?”

I was sitting in a sweltering basement waiting (That would be not half bad start to a horror novel, “I was sitting in a sweltering basement. I could hear the creature’s foot steps on the floor above my head. The half audible snorts and growls as it looked for porn on Monster.com”) for my Canadian Visa. My slip said B124. I naively assumed that this meant that my turn would come after B123 and before B125.

I was wrong.

(At this juncture, I need to ask you if you expected me to say that I was right, that the process took me ten minutes and I rode happily away into the sunset. Or took the train happily away into the sunset. Why do people ride/drive/swim away into the sunset? The sun is setting. Pretty soon you cannot see a thing. You might run over an unwary monster hunting for a mate. (This is one of those primitive monsters that has not yet discovered the internet. It finds the mates the old fashioned way. By jumping unwary travelers and shaking them down for information.) We need more inspired imagery. People riding away into a brick wall. A short ride, and then the rest is rest.)

They started at B104 and crept steadily up to B116. Steady progress. I approved. And then it all came crumbling down. From B116, they jumped to B142 and then to B183. And then they came back to B117. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was but a temporary lapse into insanity. Normalcy had been restored. The barbarians had been beaten back from the gates. B120 was reached. Champagne bottles had their corks popped. There was wild cheering. The proletariat rejoiced in the streets. A national holiday was declared. Somebody important gave a speech. People were moved. Good resolutions were made. Rainbows were born. Rabbits and deer pranced blithely. The chicken crossed the road. Tom-ay-to, the committee decided. Tom-ay-to and not Tom-ah-to. The Tom-ay-to faction lost all credibility. It’s leaders retired to the countryside to grow Tomatoes. Bereft of the Tom-ay-to-Tom-ah-to analogy, people everywhere had to improvise. “Potato-Cranberry”, “Alligator-Crocodile” were proposed. The people who proposed it were banned to the countryside, where they moonlighted as manure for the Tom-ay-to faction and tried with notable success to avoid the single Monsters that now plagued the countryside; the ones that sidled up to them and offered to buy them drinks.

I had cheered too soon. B120 led to B126 and then B129. Loud booing. The wailing of teeth and the gnashing of women could be heard. The barbarians returned to the gates, and this time snuck in while pretending to be Used Encyclopedia Salespeople (They were not selling used Encyclopedias, as one may think. They were Encyclopedia Salespeople who had been used…for assorted purposes. Usually as props in Knock-Knock Jokes and as stepladders.). And then they went wild. A vowel was introduced. B129 became I301. In hot pursuit of I301 was J42. this was followed by YOUREFUCKED27 and UPYOURS43. I began to suspect that the consulate staff was mocking me. Just a suspicion, mind you, the hints were far too subtle and I wasn’t quite sure.

And the next number was B124.

(Actually it wasn’t. There also was a riot, a parade, a monster’s ball and a discussion about the merits of chicken soup over Tomahto soup. But I’m lazy and I do not feel like typing that all out.)

I’ve never been a big fan of fortune cookies. They are barely edible and they taste like cardboard (No, I have not tasted cardboard. I’m used the analogy for dramatic impact. If I could have inserted a drum-roll and mood music at that point I would have. I’d have had the camera pan in to a close up of the cookie’s face, the cookie would then, in a suitably deep and heroic voice, say “Come and get it motherfuckers.”

It always is “Come and get it motherfuckers.” and not “Come and get it motherfuckers!”. You cannot be heroic with an exclamation mark. And cookies are notorious for being completely deadpan, even in the most adverse of circumstances. The cookies that went down with the Titanic went down calmly, smoking cigars and playing poker. (The chocolate-chip cookie won the last hand with an inside straight. It however was the dealer and the oatmeal cookie suspected that it (the chocolate chip cookie) had been dealing from the bottom of the deck. The oatmeal cookie had politely coughed to indicate that it thought that something suspicious was afoot. But before it could say anything more. The fucking ship sank…If you do not believe me, see any one of those fucking innumerable documentaries about the Titanic sinking. Try for one of those that tries to establish an atmosphere of suspense during the documentary. Every fucking person knows that the fucking ship sank. The efforts to build suspense could be better spent in a documentary about Paint Drying. (The Paint Drying documentary is very good! It follows the paint from early childhood to it’s last days, as it sits at the head of the dining table, the Patriach of a large colourful family. ))),and not even cardboard fresh from the oven, but cardboard that never turned out right. The kind of cardboard that did drugs in school, graduated to petty crime and spent most of its adult life in prison.

Not only do they taste bad, they also are a prime example of false advertising. You do sometimes get a fortune, “Business will prosper today” or “You will reap the benefits of an old friendship”. (I like that second one. I’m getting this incredible urge to say “Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink, say no more”) Those are the fortune cookies that try to stick to the straight and narrow. And then those are those lazy bastards who come up with gems, gems such as “Hard work will help you succeed” or “Exercise is good for health.” That isn’t a fucking fortune cookie. That wasn’t a fucking fortune, it was a statement. Those should be called statement cookies. (Speaking of exercise, today at the gym I was subjected to a “documentary” showing people exercising. And one person exercised and then said that they felt empowered. I have no fucking clue what that meant. “Crunches have fucking empowered me.” Yeah? How? No, really. How? )

But today, the cookies sank to a lower level. I broke one open, and this is what the “fortune” said:

“Good bakers always make plenty of dough.” Yeah, that left me speechless…well it would have if had been talking to the cookie. Or if I had been giving a speech. What’s next?

Insult cookies?

“You are dumb. Fuck off.”

“Loser!”

News cookies?

“Bombs exploded somewhere.”

“Armies invaded that country.”

Small talk cookies?

“How ‘bout that weather, eh?”

“How ‘bout that game/match/show last night, eh?”

Creepy cookies?

“Oh yes, shake those buns baby.”

“Have I got something baking for you?”

(Nicely done baking references over there I do think)

I’d like a fortune cookie. One with an actual fortune. One that says, “Here’s a billion dollars” and actually comes with a billion dollars.

(I’m sleepy and I’m not going to proof read or spell check.)

Read a sign at a restaurant that said, “The world’s best fries.” How does one judge what the world’s best fries are? There is no objective way of measuring it. you can say the fires are good, or that they suck. But best? I beg to disagree. There will always be one fry around the corner, the one which you have not tested which could be a better fry. It’s like Schrödinger’s cats, if the cats were made out of potatoes and deep fried.

Alternatively you could have the fried Olympics, where fries from all over the world competed to judge who was the best fry of them all. Fries in track and field events and in aquatics. Competing against each other, to judge the best fry of them all. And the winner of the main events, a triskadecathalon, would ascend the podium to receive his or her medal right after which he/she would be promptly eaten by one of the judges.

(As you may have guessed, these bracketed sentences are here for me to express my inability to write anything meaningful. I’m at a loss to even fill these brackets.)

You’d think a freak accident would involve mutated mushroom, a three headed antelope and Spiderman bumping into each other in a hallway and ending up in an ungainly pile. Freaks and an accident. A freak accident.

Sadly that isn’t the case. A freak accident is when a large spool of cable TV wire falls off a truck passing you in the opposite direction, and proceeds to completely mangle your front bumper. A mutant accident created in a secret laboratory by a mad scientist, a freak accident?