The World Wide Web Has Crashed

The Onion has become a frequent haunt of mine these days, and this one is a classic. Although, I found this video via Lifehacker

This video is a humorous take on the crash of the Internet. Watch it and enjoy!

The Indian Summer in America: Part II

First time readers, kindly head over to Part I to fully understand and appreciate the essence of this two part series (which could even extend to a third part). Just to remind you, this could be a long, rambling post. Attempt to read only if you have completed every task on your daily chores list.


Last time round, when I posted my comprehensive analysis of American life for an immigrant desi, I made the mistake of not making it comprehensive. Some of the things I thought of adding got left out, and so I needed to put up another post just to complete my analysis. So here goes...

The Indian Summer in America

(This post comes with a reader warning in that it is really long and rambling. So beware! Other than that, on the title, see Indian Summer for the exact definition, although its context here is tweaked to suit a decent heading)


This post was long time coming. It is the obligatory post for a blogger who has spent a year in another place. Actually bloggers always look upon occasions or milestones as ideas for a new post. Idea droughts can happen to bloggers. Even the prolific ones who read 1000+ feeds a day. But this post is about me, just like many other posts in this blog, although I have been rather generous of late discussing real world issues. My purpose is to actually throw a little light on the experiences of a desi (grad student) in a foreign land - more specifically the US. These may be viewed by some other desi's looking to come stateside during the next few months, as tips or stuff to expect etc etc. However, what one shouldn't be expecting would be "tricks to get admission in You-Yes with 100% fully fundings (sic)" So there you go. Hope that's clear.

The Curse of the Social Network

I am not a very 'social' person. I take time to start talking or initiate conversations. Once past the initiation stages, my talkative instincts take over and then the pain dawns on the unfortunate listener. But I am not very social to begin with, although that hasn't stopped me from having over 200 friends on my Orkut list.

Happy Bloggiversary

Before the pikeyspeak faithful gets all bleary eyed and begins to lookup the date of my first post on this blog, I would assert that this day is neither the day I started this blog nor is it the first time I set foot on the lazily named blogosphere. It is also not the date I wrote the first post for my gayly named pinkfiles blog. It is none of that. Just a nagging feeling I keep getting from time to time that I've never found an occasion to actually celebrate a rather brilliantly named Bloggiversary. Lack of ideas for a new post coupled with the overwhelming urge of celebrating this red letter day - given, I couldn't wait until May, which is the actual month of my initiation - made me write this. I needed a date and here it was; I hereby declare 15th of March as a Red Letter day for "of cats and dags". So here's wishing happy bloggiversary. People please update your Google calendars so that you can remind me in the likely event I forget in future. For those who view pointlessly rambling writing with contempt, this is where you should stop and get on with your daily chores of going through other blogs of significance. Of course, Oscar acceptance speeches would make for a better use of your time. But given that my blog normally does not draw readership from workaholics (that's my hunch and not some magic statcounting software), I guess most of you lazy brothers (and sisters?) might as well read to the end of it and let me know if it was really worth whiling your time. Ah well! I was saying...

It is now three years to the imaginary date I have set myself and I can happily say that I am trying to grow stronger. Stronger and evil-er so that, had worpress.com allowed Google Adsense, Search engine optimization or any other form of blog monetizing services, I would have been foremost in the queue of what is a rather badly named 'A-list bloggers', following which I would have milked every ounce of my blog space towards ads blaring out irritating but enticingly congratulatory audio clips to the unwitting visitor proclaiming him winner of an Apple iphone, providing he clicks the link and completes an hour long survey, and enters his confidential information, and buys half a dozen products neither he nor the rest of humankind would ever use (which might lead him to ponder over the point of the whole exercise in the first place). And I would be Muhahaha-ing my way to the bank, after which I would sell off my domain name in exchange for a few million quid and settle down in the warm climes of Darfur listening to the uplifting tunes of gunshot in the sunset. But I have seen reason and learnt never to count moong dals before they sprout and so avoided the limelight and the ads and tried to concentrate on churning out posts that border on the banal and don't attempt anything above that. However, as a blogger, I was never always that wise.

Ever since the day I saw a sado-masochistic senior of mine, who I believe is no more an active blogger (unless he might have surreptitiously started a personal journal which is besides the point), I felt I could churn out a few gems of my own and who knows, I could become an author of a book in a year or two! (I am not kidding.) Now that I say that, it doesn't really speak all too well about my intellectual faculty, but what else can you expect from a brain that churns out the said banality. Anyway, my first blog (by blog I mean blog blog and not the oft confused solitary post) was all you would expect from a Rage Against the Machine inspired juvenile. My posts tried to be one of those, what I could now term, pretentiously honest ones and eventually landed me in trouble with a post that was so 'scathing' of the company that recruited me from campus that I not only lost that job, the 'scathe' was enough to cut a wound so deep into the heart of the placement coordinating professor that in a single act he banned me from sitting for placements that year while insulting my mild-mannered lineage! While the acerbic nature of the post was debatable, it was enough to end my premature rage against the system and, the juvenile delinquent that I was, I quickly reformed my ways; so much so that I set up a new blog with a pink template and writing so sugar coated that it might have put the Yash Chopra-Johar cartel/circus to shame. And yes! I forgot to mention, my first blog had my full name prefixing .blogspot.com!

So, while I eschewed a level of honesty with my second blog, there was still a part of me that wanted to be somewhere in between, which led to this blog being started (apart from the lure of Wordpress). Far from the finished product, it has some bloggers to thank for the traffic that it's generated so far. Especially it helps having someone link you and at the same time write a post that talks about streaming links for the Cricket World Cup. Some other search results (which Wordpress' blog stats tell me) that drag visitors this way is when people type "cats and dags" in their search window. My heart weeps profusely for the disappointment in their faces when they find nothing more than the title of this blog with nothing to do with Brad Pitt's 'dags' in Snatch (which, in case you haven't noticed, is the premise for the blog title, url and my blogging alias).

And before I finish off this meandering piece, there has been one more part of my blog that has spurred me on all this while, although it is a shameless confession. I have always been a comment junkie. Comments started out as instant gratification to the 'effort' I put into my posts and later turned out to a sort of an alternate discussion board universe, where some nice people found certain posts actually worth their two cents. It gave me a perverse sense of pleasure, however short-lived. I think I have definitely moved past perverse pleasures, but it still pleases one to see someone actually reading meaningless tripe, and respond to that requesting encores! Case in point: a commenter asking me to bring back the mostly pointless adventures of the legendary Riggit. I will do, but I need to work out some half a decent storyline to fit him in. So people, comment and pingback as much as you can (notice why I kept this till the end). This would be my rallying cry on this momentous occasion.

I hope to carry on posting the usual themeless stuff that is the very life blood of this blog. More half-baked reviews, more temporal irregularities between posts and last but not the least, the use of self-deprecation as the only tool of my 'Murderous Humor'. That way I only harm myself, and eventually when it hurts me beyond measure, I would choke due to lack of adjectives and invectives that might seem even remotely hurtful to fuel my brand of humor.

That will be the day I would hang up my keyboard and settle down in the Darfur of my dreams. But till then, I would brave the sunny climes ahead.

Unbearable Cultivatedness of Being.

Time passes, with all the precision that we come to associate with it. Its gait being ever so slightly hastened with that most meaningless of all farces also known as Daylight Savings Time. So an hour is what we lose (this time three weeks earlier than past years) but with Spring round the corner, the loss is highly excusable. The timing of spring break couldn't have been better erm... timed. At the end of a rather demanding week the respite comes like a pleasant dream after a hard day's work. So I reward myself by mucking about on my bed making that tough call between House and Transmetropolitan. A few episodes followed by nice sleep followed by terrible void (borne out of lack of activities) later, I summon up courage and make that brave move. I decide to shave.

A kid loves to grow up to wear that cool pair of jeans and earn that extra pocket money. A teen aspires to become the adult who can drive and enter a few bars (of course voting wouldn't really be top of his agenda). But ask most twenty year olds and they would love for time to stay right where it is. Male adulthood, the time when that extra slice of pizza comes plastered with the forewarning of fragrant flatulence, and the morning shower points to a bald future. The occasional look at the mirror hoping that the white speck on the scalp is some trick played by light and the grim realization that it is indeed a white speck. The travails of adulthood are well documented, but the one dire truth I eventually come to, is the glaring incompatibility adulthood has with my rather languid disposition. And the symbol of that incompatibility is the daily process of shaving. It is a cruel trick God subjects man to. While adulthood is typically marked by the time when the scalp suddenly decides to go for a stroll, leaving the beautiful hair that it held together for the past 20 plus years for a fall, the face cranks up into overdrive sprouting hair all over. Personally I don't think facial hair necessarily enhances a person's looks, a case in point being the rather clowny looking Big B (What, blasphemy? A white French beard! What was he thinking?). I don't buy the whole facial hair being a sign of manliness tripe. Yes, it is manly, but the manliness is merely limited to the ability to grow it. The process of shaving it all and getting the advertised smoothness is the other aspect of manliness... something your average Gillette ad will tell you.

Like all late teens it was a nice feeling being able to have a moustache only for the thrill to shave it off. But the whole process of face 'harvesting' is okay as long as it is done on a seasonal basis. The problem hits you hard with the dawn of adulthood, when increased facial fertility calls for daily culls. Something that is totally against my inherent inertness. At this point it would be wise of me to apologize for my fertilizer crop-harvesting analogies and get to the point. So diving straight, on an average day I look like those people who have gone through a life changing event and decide to take up Islam in a serious way, a week ago. (No offence meant to the religion, but I am trying to point out to those early days when baby faced Inzamam decided to dispense with his razor for good. And did they take a long time to grow! - which is a totally different issue.) Not everyone can pull off a Hrithik or a John Abraham with unshaven beard (not that I find them appealing), but I still respond to random requests to shave with an 'It's my new rugged look' tripe. It requires one of those flippant remarks to filter through for me to set it in my mental calendar, and on one bright afternoon after much deliberation I decide to go for it, and once I am done shaving, feel relieved that another week can now pass without that dreaded thought crossing my mind.

Ah! The curse of adulthood. While the teens and early adulthood are spent admiring and cultivating the hair on the head, the thirties and forties are spent covering the bald patches and said white specks that are now no more specks. After that one would have given up on cerebral hair. But the one job that remains until death is the daily trimming of that cursed bit of facial hair.

Note: Apart from filing this post under General Rubbish, under which most of my posts are anyway, it is also the first one to be filed under 'Murderous Humor'. Note the use of the word Murderous - signifies nothing short of Vogon poetry, doesn't it?