Friday, July 11, 2008

Bits of unrelated and random notes

Missing mouse pointer. Today my computer mouse died and became a ghost. So while I could see things getting highlighted and cursors magically appearing when I clicked on text pads, I could not see the actual mouse pointer. This kinda of thing *might* be fun if you have nothing better to do than to play "guess where the mouse pointer is". Unfortunately, I did. I heaped only about 2 million imprecations on Bill Gates' head while I rebooted my laptop which as usual, restored sanity. Aargh and double aargh.

A song. Very nice, this one. I read somewhere that looking at it from a Carnatic music angle, Harini has not sung it properly. But I don't care - the song is just so soothing and I love listening to it.

Height of sycophancy. I thought our Indian politicians would be the recipients of the best sycophancy in the world. I was wrong. Have you heard the lyrics of this song from Dasavatharam? Even with my not-so-strong lyrics deciphering skills, I heard lines like "Tamilnadu is so proud to have given birth to you", "You are a great artist and ever youthful", You can even understand Freud" (wth) - really, I am not making any of it up. If anyone plied me with even a fraction of the praise in that song, I would probably die of embarrassment.

Most spurious argument ever. Ah, you don't get it! followed by a "Hence proved" look. Got reminded of this after n number of Kamal fans offered this statement as argument whenever anyone expressed not-so-favorable views of Dasavatharam. That phrase conveniently substitutes logical argument with a flaky presumption that you have to be in someway gifted to be able to understand something. Which is a very poor argument as arguments go. Oh, I have used this non-argument before. Once when I was explaining why I thought Calvin and Hobbes was funny to two non-fan friends, I smugly said, "You just don't do get it do you?". The look that I got that day will forever keep me from thoughtlessly uttering those words again.

Fireworks. After five years of living in the same city, I finally decided to go to the local city park to see their 4th of July fireworks display. I dragged my parents along too - a slice of Americana I said (hahaha, Americana in the Bay area - that's a good one). The road in front of the park had been blocked off. We joined the happy crowds as everyone made their way to the park. The display was simply awesome. It all ended with a fantastic finale. Gets a complete five star rating for the atmosphere as well as the actual display.

Latest crush. WALL.E. How can a robot be sooooooo darned cute? Especially one which is so rusty and looks like a dabba** from all possible angles? The folks at Pixar must be hogging approximately half of the creative genes in the world I think.

Enthu beans. Talking of creativity, even software engineers can be creative. Yesterday, as part of an exercise during training for some software development process, we had to design a travel brochure for an imaginary company offering tours for Martians visiting Earth. I was pretty surprised by the creative, interesting and fun inputs from everyone (all hard core software developers) in the team. Software engineers are not always from the stereotypical nerdy and boring mold, I tell ya.

SATC. I finally watched the SATC movie a couple of weeks ago. Watching the movie reminded me all over again why I liked the series. The bond between the four female leads is believable and true to life. Thus Carrie walking practically all the way across NYC to meet Miranda just because Miranda felt lonely did not seem dramatic but an entirely plausible scenario. Thank God for female friends. BTW, though I enjoyed it, I thought the movie was just average.

Cute lyrics - These lyrics "nadanthu kondey parandhu sellum azhagu*" sound super cute, no? It so vividly captures the image of someone happily skipping across.

Mandatory rant. Apropos of nothing, I hate singer Madhushree's voice. It puts me on the edge and I feel like yelling "shut up, shut up" into her ear whenever I hear her singing. Kinda sad since these days she gets to sing a lot of otherwise very nice songs. I assume someone out there likes her voice - can't see why else she gets to sing in spite of going "gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan" as soon as she opens her mouth.

TGIF folks :-)!

** box
* sorry, you got to know Tamil. Translation will take away the charm

8 comments:

Vishesh said...

ha i loved the song too ;) and yes the pleasure of telling ppl oh! you don't get is one of the best :)

Anonymous said...

GOOD ONE....But I wasn't able to play the song.Can you put up the song title in words.So that I can get it from my sources

kurrodu said...

Enjoyed your post, hilarious!
With you on WALL-E creators

Robbie said...

"Ah, you don't get it! followed by a "Hence proved" look. Got reminded of this after n number of Kamal fans offered this statement as argument whenever anyone expressed not-so-favorable views of Dasavatharam".
Hahaha! well I have written two different blogs on Dasavatharam and what I "got" from it. Hope my argument isnt as spurious as that of some of other kamal fans. I liked the movie for its concept and I would accept that it is pure masala. But who in the world these days watches movies of excellence like Hey Ram???? It bombed the first week it was released atleast Dasa is raking in the moolah!

nourish-n-cherish said...

Oh...I hated Dasavatharam - I think he should have paid us for watching it, instead of the other way around!

I blogged about my recent theatrical experience - I did not mention the movie name, but Dasavatharam it was. The only thing good about the movie was the title - he thought of the title, and just cooked up 10 roles for himeself. While at it, why didn't he do Asin's role too?

With a Rajini movie, you expect masala, and you get it. But with Kamal - you still yearn to see some good stuff, and when what get is this movie, it makes you want to take a flight and talk some sense into him!

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Hit upon your blog by chance and liked your blogging style.keep going!

-Archana
(yep its the same:) )

Sayesha said...

You have a crush on a robot? Hahahaha! :D

Archana said...

Vishesh - which song? I referred to three of them, no? Ya, thats true though!

Lepus townsendi - I was referring to the "Kurai ondrum illai" song in the Arai 305 movie.

Kurrodu - thank you :-D!

Robbie - Ah, innum full-aa padikalai. I will read and then tell you if you fall into the "you dont get it" slot or not :-P!

Saumya - lol :-D! I was wondering too why he had to be so plastickly made up when other folks could have very well played those roles without distorting the story. They shd have just chopped off Asin's role altogether - the movie would have ended in about 20 minutes then!

Archana - thank you :-D! Welcome aboard!

Sayesha - did you see WALL.E :-)?