The Sitcom Syndrome

It's a producer's dream. Viewers dig it. They relate to it. They gobble up any shit you throw at them, feed the television ratings, drive up the advertising rates, etc. All this happening makes a show successful.

My grouch is with when people try to impersonate characters they like. No matter how obnoxious, unreal or far removed from the person.

I'm no Martin Luther King but...

...I had a dream. I wouldn't call it weird because you can't expect dreams to obey logic and physics and maths. Some do but not all. In that way they complied to the build and structure of most dreams. Since the majority are abnormal, abnormal is the new normal.

So I had a dream in which I reach Gokul for a class.
But it is cancelled. I meet the teacher, she's my teacher from school and she's leaving in a hurry. She has somewhere to go and she's cancelling class.
So I decide to chill.
I see a friend at table. Delighted I, go to join him. But he's had enough of drinks. He motions that he could puke anytime and he stumbles his way out of Gokul.
So I look around to see if anyone else I know is around.
I step out of Gokul, I recognize a pretty girl and wave out to her but she's too busy hailing a cab in the rain and is soon gone.
Dejected, I take consolation in the fact that I can still go back to bed.
Then i realized I have a job.
And that I couldn't just chill anymore.

I woke up at that point, and I had to get up and come here to work through the rain.
It just broke my fucking spirits.

Supersenses

All of us have senses. We see, hear, smell, speak and feel things.

Some, like Haley Joel Osment's character from The Sixth Sense sense things that aren't/ are there metaphysically. Like ghosts. The future. WMD's in Iraq. Great potential in Munaf Patel. Spider sense?

A friend of mine sees meanings and messages in body language, smells ghost farts (dramatic emotions accompanied), tells us about having sensed a person's/celebrity's impending a day before after the news breaks of said person's death. Amongst other paranormal phenomenon.

I call him a loon.

Poetry, in one, two, three

I think the Japanese contribution to the global society and culture in terms of technology and art forms is wonderful. Seriously, I'd give them a best civilization award for their role behind samurai codes, hand held video games, man made landscapes, earthquake proof architecture, anime cartoon style, the crippling of America's automobile industry among others.

Something I especially appreciate is the Haiku form of poetry. It is poetry without pretensions, a sharp observation, a wistful wish and something that lends itself to any subject. Moreover, it's something a brick brain like me can write and delight in.

My mind wandered while waiting for my train to work today. I know of a couple from where I used to live. They have been married for about 13 years I'll guess. It was a love marriage. The guy is from a small village. He came to the big city, got a low level job and it's all he can do to keep it. She was from a poor household, took up a job to help out the family, under-appreciated. The two met, found something common, fell in love, stood upto their parents. Now, they have two kids, not very well off but they're still very much in love. So this one goes out to them:

I love you a lot.
But my folks are not like us.
A love marriage then?

Retelling old tales in new ways

5 out of 9 working hours are spent trying to grasp execubabble, thus rendering it obsolete for the very purpose it was created: to describe complex processes with just a word/phrase.

Execubabble however lends itself very entertainingly for other purposes. From the gem of a class act here's a retelling of a classic.

Ramayana - Core Value Proposition

View more OpenOffice presentations from krishashok.

Vacancies filled

Despite the fact that I hate them from the bottom of my heart because they beat my team in the finals of the IPL last year, I've gotta admire the Rajasthan Royals for now have not one but two of my most highly rated players
Graeme Smith and Johan Botha
Both are definitely gonna be my henchmen when I become an evil overlord and assemble a crew worthy of a Guy Ritchie movie.
Smith will do the evil beating up and throat choking and lifting by the collars and generally not speak much except with his Uzi. Botha will handle the torture equipments, plant the car bombs, acrobatically steal the jewels and make the ransom calls

Warne will definitely be a associate, with his poker skills, tactical acumen, man management abilities, leg spin ( wrist spin at that!) and for his knack at being a excellent showman. He has however expressed his desire to be my food and drinks tester, you know, to check for poison and laxatives and such stuff.

Trump players = fail

30 points for fielding. Gave away 7 runs with a wide thrown in in the solitary over he bowled. A negative score for getting out on 1 when chasing a measly 119. When you've scored nearly 30,000 runs in top flight international cricket over 20 overs, you're expected to score in a T20 match against overweight Indians and overweight South Africans. NOT EPIC FAIL like you did yesterday!

Sanath Jayasuriya went one better and got out for a duck. My other trump player tries to rein in his natural game against a two bit attack after having slogged faster and better bowlers in earlier matches. And then he takes a dump all over a ball he should have let go. Senile Sri Lankan Sanath.

In the other match, thanks to my frenetic transfers in the earlier stages I was just a spectator. Roelof van der Merwe came in in place of i don't care who. My Trump Player blessings went to Praveen Kumar after a smirk at Kumble. His reverse acronym skipper KP held PK back too long and Roelof in the meantime claimed a wicket that would have been easy pickings for PK. How brilliant of you Roelof, now how about you you Roelof a cliff?

Kumble who I did not make TP picked up 2. At a very economical rate too. Figjam dinosaur. Kolkata continues their trend of under achieving to lose the match. The city of joy should change it's name to Laughing and then their team can be called Laughing Stock Riders.

The online picture editing tool joined the party too. It failed me. You can see the ghost of a fail behind the more massive expressive angry young man fail.

As I posted this today's TP Adam Gilchrist failed. This is not justice.

Brendon turns players against Dada

When Ganguly took his second wicket in three balls to send back Ravi Bopara, Brendon McCullum sensed that the Gang-ster might cunningly be building up the team's opinion against him.
Immediately with the help of co conspirator Brad Hodge and the scheming conniving Aakash Chopra who has a history of bad IPL blood with the ex- skipper, Brendon proceeded to S&M Ganguly to remind him who was captain of the day.

He also spanked greenhorns from South Africa and Punjab for a 16 ball with two sixes and a four in case anyone required any reminding.

The fake IPL player chose to focus on Ganguly's man management skills to the utter disgust of Brendon.

The name is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

The name has sometimes evoked curiosity. What does it mean, how is it different from a more popular version which has an 'h' somewhere in the middle. If it means nothing what kind of name is it?

Does a name have to mean anything? of course. Which is why I'm glad mine doesn't. It's clutter breaking. I like my name, it has a menacing, not to be trusted feel to it and and sounds like a very 'I'm gonna peck you to death with quick sharp stinging humour' kinda bad ass when uttered with a growl. Depending on whom you ask what my name means, you'll get different answers. if you ask me I'll give you the url to this post.

Let's go first to the people who supposedly named me: Dr. Dad and Madame Mom.
According to them I was born when the planets were so aligned my name should begin with the sound Cro/Kro. Kro was more east European than Cro so they decide to go with Cro. Now we've got some billion people in our country and there are enough names to go around to avoid confusion. Thing is that not names began with Cro and those that did were a bit old fashioned they thought I deserved better. I am after all, expected to go on to achieve greatness and the old names didn't look very cool in bold headlines on newsprint(the internet wasn't around in India then).

So they consulted two people who were a little more in tune with what was cool at that time. These two individuals were aged 5 and 12 at that time and they were more interested in getting a dog home instead of a crying, leaking, attention seeking baby. I did not realize it at that time but being named by 5 and 12 year old girls could have been very dangerous had they selected any name based on a cute quotient or some other girlie rationale index. Since I had not yet learned how to speak, I did not raise any objections.

The initial suggestions which were dog names altered to begin with Cro were thankfully rejected, after much consideration though I'm told. The ending nish was suggested which was a bit unusual at the time. To make it even more different, it was agreed that the ni would be a short e sound as in moanish and not an elongated ee sound as in knee.

Both the ni sounds were hotly considered and finally tested by placing me in the m iddle of the name. the shrill ee was tested first but I did not acknoweldge it. i responded to the short and chic sound in the only way i could, by crapping my diapers. That brought an hasty end to the meeting and since then I have been what I am now.

Another resolution passed at that fateful meeting was to not use the fashionable 'h' which would have made me Crowhnish; primarily to be anti fashion and secondarily to conserve alphabet stickers which came with new suitcases.

Second let's go to a class teacher of mine who was one of the many who pronounced the Cro as craw as in crawl. This irritating one once had a class when she decided to be cool and offered to tell all of us what our names meant. To give her credit she did know the meanings of names which were of Urdu origins and Catholic. good job, now try mine i thought.

My desk mate's name meant knowledge and wisdom in Urdu. Funny, I always thought it meant frog or amphibian. My name was cruelly mispronounced as Crawneesh and followed alternatively by intense squinting and gazing far off at a cobweb on the wall.
Finally a meaning was derived. Crawn as it was wrongly pronounced matched a word which meant silence. Ish is a common suffix which means God. Given my *silent* nature in class, my name was announced to be a very apt God of Silence. My claims that my name had been grossly violated by way of mispronunciation and hence this meaning was not valid were brushed away and I was asked to consult my parents again.

Third let's go to the Oracle of our times, Google. Ask and you shall receive about 11,800 results in under 0.28 seconds. The results vary from the predicted 'Ruler of Mind' to a derivation of 'To Admonish, i.e. to scold'.

I think it's coolest when it means nothing. Or something robot futuristic.

Get Your Cyborg Name

What runs in the family

My nieces make me proud. Three years old and already attempting jumps from twice their height. Not very successful as a cut lip suggests but daredevilry of the highest order for sure.

They are also taking it a few notches higher by decimating not just furniture at this stage but also electric appliances. I'm glad to see the flag still flying high all these years after my semi retirement years ago in pursuit of glory in other much evolved disciplines such as academics.