Aa chhule Zameen!

This is how the French part in the chorus to A Tout Le Monde goes:

A tout le monde
A tout les amis
Je vous Aime
Je dois partir

And that second line actually sounds like Aa chhule zameen. Of course, you have to be looking for something like this to actually find it. That is why I'll state it right now that it was my sister who spotted it, not me. Either way, we can conclude that French is a funny sounding language. And even funnier when coming from Dave Mustaine.

So, the show. March 14th 2008. Early on, this band called Prestorika's up there and they're playing good heavy music. So I go closer to the stage, avoid a mosh-pit the smart way - go forward rather than backward. But then during the next song, the vocalist orders another pit and he points right in my direction. Now, I'm no mosher, but seeing people slowly edge away from me gave me a feeling of power. So I stayed still for another few seconds. I could almost shout out "I Have The POWER!!" - He-Man style. But then it hit me [not literally], when the fast double-bass beat began, when a shove came my way, that I wasn't powerful at all and I was at the mercy of the moshers, so I didn't even try to be smart, just dodged the pit sideways. But damn, that was close.

Enough of all that though. Motherjane, Thermal and a Quarter, Junkyard Groove, Pentagram, Millennium and even Machine Head failed to impress as we waited for Megadeth and would settle for nothing less. And when they did arrive, I started making my way forward. I wasn't gonna make the same mistake as I made with Maiden. [I jumped into the VIP area then instead of going forward, and though we got free drinks n stuff, we didn't get to see the gods up close.]

Here's showing how long it took..
Click on em to enlarge. Firefox users middle-click to open in new tab.
The beginning [after the easy part]
10 minutes later. And only now can you see that I'm actually closer.
One of the few pics that came out unshaken despite the zoom-in.
With people jumping vigorously all around me, I should get an award for such pics.
I was in the fourth row from the front by this time. Nearly half an hour to get there.

Around this time I could hardly move. So many fans packed in so little space makes for a tight squeeze. If I moved my feet, I'd invariably step on somebody else's foot. I couldn't get my arms below shoulder level as I'd have to fight for that space too. I just left em up there with my cam-phone, clicking away. Man, did my arms hurt. But then came a wave, not a mexican one, the one that's caused by an attempt at a mosh-pit in the distance. I went sideways by almost two feet[with everyone else of course]. Only my left shoe didn't. I almost knew that I could forget bout getting it back, but hey, I had to try. Simply asked people to move tellin em bout my shoe and in no time I was given space enough to find it and comfortably put it back on. Surprising to find such courtesy in a place like that.. From people who shout "Megadeth" in tune with the riff of Symphony of Destruction. Annoying as hell. JUST LISTEN TO THE SONG DAMMIT! A sample:
Listen around the 00:28 mark.

Anyway, here's a video of em playing Trust followed by a couple more pics..




Sidenote: Coming back out took about two mins.



To conclude, it was amazing fun, and this bit was amazingly funny
I actually had the following conversation with a friend over SMS.

Him: You still at the show?
Me: Yeah.
Him: Megadeth is performing?
Me: Yeah.
Him: Dave Mustaine is there?
Me: Duh, duuude!

I show the messages to my friends around and have a great laugh. I wont reveal the poor soul's name lest he die of shame, which he should, in an ideal world. 'coz he claims to be a Megadeth fan, and more importantly claims to be smart.

March of Exhaustion

Left.. Left.. Left, Right, Left.
Hut, Two, Three, Four, Hut, Two, Three,

How I detested any and all of that. I, as a left-brained person, have always needed a logical reason for all my actions. And try as I might, I simply could not find one for marching in step with lots of other drones around an empty grounds every Thursday.

But this blog entry is about somethin else. March 2008. It began with a bang, which is more of a gunshot-to-my-head bang than a celebratory fireworks bang.
1st March: Got a confidence-shattering rejection from Alliance Business School, Bangalore. [If these guys dont take me in, who will?] But after putting that behind me, I went ahead and made sure I passed the rest of the month livin' it up.

14th March: Megadeth and Machine Head at Palace Grounds. With a bunch of Indian bands going first. Was there quite early. Waited patiently for 4 hours with just a friend's friend for company. I should've tried getting more free passes. When Megadeth finally came onstage, I started makin my way forward. Cam-phone held high. Didn't care bout company then. The results of that[my shoe!] will be in another blog post. But it was memorable, fun and a bit tiring as well.

18th March: A friend's long awaited treat for getting placed. Heavy lunch at Punjabi Rasoi, RT Nagar.

19th March: Go karting. 7 of us. And 6 of us kart-virgins. Me being the exception, though I was only just comin out of a dry spell. 120 bucks for 7 laps. Almost all of us went twice. And ol' Laughing Gas Diablo, having realised that ol' Jeremy Clarkson wasn't kidding and driving fast around corners is actually fun, went four times. He used to wonder what it was like while watching all those Top Gear episodes, and found true happiness by impulse spending 480 bucks on that track. And also true fatigue having gone around a hundred and forty corners at breakneck [yeah, right] speed.
People going to Patel's inn, R.T. Nagar, note that cars 6 and 7 are the fast ones. I say 6 is better. But then again I didn't even try 7.

20th March: The Prince of Darkness himself invites us to help him spend his Gregorian-calendar-birthday climbing a big rock. And climb we did. And Diablo went radioactive in the Batcave, while Infinitiks played Brave Photographer. Details soon. ;)

20th March: I get home all exhausted and I log onto the internet only to find that another B-school didn't think I was worthy enough for 'em. IMI Delhi, for all who care.

Spent the next 3 days being spent. From the climb, not the (metaphoric, but no less painful) fall.

Then we started practice for the college fest's Western Acoustics competition. Songs were considered, shortlisted, practised and then completely discarded. Coz we heard better songs and I realized that Xay could sing along with the solo for Wish You Were Here a la the Delicate Sound Of Thunder version [Go listen, NOW, if you haven't ever heard it, you filthy scum!]. It boiled down to Little by Little by Oasis or Wish You Were Here. We went back n forth between the two and in the end, we picked one.

28th March: And in the actual end, we ended up playing both. Hehe. And of course, Xay wasn't the only one I was accompanying, there was the other guy... who came first by singing Home by Daughtry. I don't take any credit. Coz I didn't really have much to do during the performance. And of course again, there was the mystery guy who also went up on stage with me as accompanist.. Details soon. ;)

29th March: Day of the Rock Show and the Treasure Hunt. Though the organizers called it T-shirt day. How boring a name for a day as this. Somebody I know, I inspired and guided, performing as lead guitarist for a band is an event to be proud of. Even though the sound system helped screw it all up. Also runnin around seeking treasure [and being in the lead for a while] saps your energy, stretching you to your limits [Well, they were my limits, at least]. And if you waste time on not realizing which assets were being spoken of, and then coming 11th* instead of the first that you otherwise would've come, you start wondering if the girl that called you "a pig just like all men" the other day knew what she was talkin about. Exhilarating fun, but also exhausting like hell.

29th March: It hits me at my weakest time, this rejection business. THE two times I was most exhausted in this month are the exact days that a B-school tells me that 96.56%ile isn't good enough. You need to be a nice person, with a good sense of humor who brings them gifts and tell them how pretty they are while having a high-paying job. IMT Ghaziabad this time. The last one left. But there is hope... in the second and third waitlists every optimist seems to be expecting.. We'll see if the quintessential delusion that is simultaneously man's greatest strength and his greatest weakness shows results. meh.

31st March: I start writing this blog entry... (**)



* outta 50 teams, 11th is respectable. Besides, we even stopped for drinks in between.
** See how cool I'm tryin to be while I do the whole "the end is the beginning" thing? Are you just gonna let me get away with that? Come on, leave a scathing attack in the comments section, you filthy scum!

Good Friday

How do you wish somebody on a Good Friday?

Happy Good Friday? Seems like an obvious first choice, but look at the effect it's having on Wordsworth's grave.

Very Good Friday? Getting better. But only grammatically.

Merry Good Friday? Nah, I think Christmas has the copyrights for that.

Just "Good Friday"? Short and Simple.But it's the equivalent of saying "Saturday!" on a Saturday, "Holy ****!" on Holi or "Bring Your Antique Toaster To Work Day!" on Bring Your Antique Toaster To Work Day.

Jolly Good Friday? Ok, now it's getting ridiculous.

Many Happy Returns Of The Day? Ah, my spider sense is tingling. My sense of direction is being tickled. And my sense of humour [which thinks that it's otherwise very funny] is leading a mutiny against the powers that be, claiming them to be elitists. My Five senses laugh maniacally. They find it funny that my sense of humour is serious about this.

So yeah, Many Happy Returns of The Good Friday! One wish to rule them all.
And Happy Easter!
And, of course, "Holy ****!". And then, "Eggs! Run!".
With all due wishes of colour [Eggless for you vegans] to all.


P.S. The ****'s are muted by the Censor Board of Muting Stuff.

Several ways of Looking at a Thing

First of all, the thing - a bike crash. Mine. Jan 15th, 2008. I'm alright; stop worrying. What's that? You say you weren't worrying? Oh, that's okay, I wasn't expecting you to anyway.
I(t) went down like this..
Was comin home from R.T.Nagar in the evening around 6:30. It was dark but not stormy. Not enough of a cliche? Sorry, but I cant help ya there. I bring you the facts, the truth, even if you cant handle it. I was being extra cautious with the bike that day. That's coz the tyres were visibly misaligned. The result of a previous crash coupled with shoddy repair work. The problem had been escalating for two months only to be noticed by me on the morning of a holiday. [Another day, another festival] So I couldn't get it fixed, but I really needed the bike. So I decided to be very cautious all through that day. And I was, for the 20-odd kms I rode before the crash. Anyway, there was a conscientious gentleman driving some Maruti ahead of me. He didn't want to hurt the dog that teleported right in front of his car, so he hit his brakes. So did I, even though I was at a safe distance. He didn't skid. I did. Scraped both my knees and got bruises on both my hands. So I've been very uncomfortable this past week. So, that's the thing. My tyre alignment problem seemed like the only logical connect left between me braking and falling.. But was it?

Here's the first viewpoint. Fact: About 15 minutes before the crash, I was talking to a friend of mine about atheism, agnosticism and how people responded to non-believers. See, I'd recently realised that atheists are treated differently by lots of people for no reason other than their beliefs. At first, the probable number of people who behaved this way was surprising. But it didn't take too long for it to make some sense. But while I realized what this sort of behaviour explained [the holocaust and religious wars and stuff] , I still don't know what explains it. Anyway, the other fact required for this viewpoint is that I've always said that if I see proof of miracles, god, the Invisible Pink Unicorn [IPU] or the Flying Spaghetti Monster [FSM], I'd promptly turn into a believer.
So maybe this was it. This was probably Her Holy Pinkness trying to give me a sign. 15 minutes after a discussion about atheism, I crash. It can be taken to be a punishment too. Either way, it's a valid way of looking at the thing. And it also shows that miracles take atleast 15 minutes to happen.

Second viewpoint then, just as valid as the first. A day before the crash, I was talking to another friend of mine. [Yes, I have more than one friend] The topic here was my bike itself. Here's what I typed in:
"My bike hasn't been the same recently. It's dying.. I have to let it go. Besides so many new and awesome bikes have been announced recently that I feel encouraged to move on. "
Now my bike is a proud one. It thinks it's definitely male.and it believes that its muscular form is the result of hours of working out. Heck even I hold pride in its ability to smoke over 90% of the bikes on Bangalore roads in a drag. [Don't believe me? Don't know that 90% of bikes in India are either not in the performance segment at all, or are 150cc, 14 bhp bikes which I can beat?] So, my proud bike, when it heard me typing those words, took offense and decided to take its captain down with itself. Only it doesn't realise, it's not a ship. Ships are female. And my bike is gender neutral.

Third time then. I'll stop after this, don't leave. A month and a half before the crash, I had had another one [Was hit sideways by a speeding tractor - nothing major for me, the bike's swing-arm though, was bent]. Now this followed my giving the bike to a service center for repairs. They didn't do a very good job. The bend wasn't completely removed. It started getting worse over time and by the time I found out about it, the rear tyre was pointing in a wrong way. And by the time I was done crashing, the swing-arm was bent to quite an extent. It's at a lathe right now. Getting that bend out.

Now let's consider all these three theories and try to evaluate each theory's accuracy.
But first, let's take the assumptions. The ones everyone knows and most people accept go first in each instance:
* God knows all, sees all,... Omniscience, right? Fine.
* My bike can hear everything I type.
* God is just and fair. God punishes you only if you've wronged him.
* My bike is just and fair and tries to kill me only if I've wronged it.
* God does allow some innocent people to get hurt though, but that can be excused by those people's past lives or something.
* I have crashes even otherwise, but that can be excused by carelessness of the other driver or something.
* [this one might be a little hard to digest] When people on their bikes hit the rear brake harder than the front brake, the bike tends to skid, especially if the rear tyre is already tilted to one side.
[Hajmola, anyone?]
In cause-effect relationships, the most often seen case is such.. The most recent cause is accredited the status of primary cause. And the other suspects, if I may, are either discarded completely or just not bothered about as much. So, the primary case is the first one I presented, as the apparent cause in it happened the most recently. Pretty valid a theory even this statement was, no?
Thus the existence of the FSM is proved.


N.B. I was going at 50kmph (max) before I hit the brakes.

To Nocturnal Jay walkers

This is a public awareness message brought to you by me, The Rebel.

I wear a helmet with a tinted visor. This means that to protect myself from rain (or sleet or snow or dust or smoke or the various smells encountered in various places), I pull the visor down at the expense of some visibility. What this amounts to during the night, especially while it's raining, is that I cannot always spot you if you are dark-skinned, wearing dark clothes and/or lying on the road trying to surprise me. And I am not alone. My people also have a similar disposition and some of them will run you over. So, remember, don't look left or right before crossing the road (you wont see us in time anyway), look at yourself, and if you cant see anything, don't expect us to see you, or your cat. And thus, if you wanna live healthy, cross the street under a streetlight if you cant find a zebra crossing.


This message is also for you, you and you.

Yes, I work with images and Wikia sites. If I didn't, half of you wouldn't understand and the other half wouldn't return.


Just kidding Dappu.
[You can come under my bike any time you want]

Powered by ScribeFire.

THIS... IS... not what you thought I was going to say

This is actually my current wallpaper.

Made by comic artist Tim Buckley of Ctrl Alt Del - a comic strip based on gaming that me and some of my friends have been addicted to... Here for your viewing pleasure.
Comic Archive
Start at the beginning. Follow the storyline through over a thousand comics. Take your time. It's fun.

Angel Dust

Lets talk about metalheads. There are many varieties of these like True Metalheads, hardcore metalheads, die-hard metalheads, original metalheads, death-metalheads and of course fake metalheads. I belong to a rarely self-proclaimed variety - the humble metalhead.
Just like genres and about as useless, most of these varieties are spawns of a hormone called Luvtobragoxine which is found in large quantities in people suffering(?) from ASD. In attempts to gain ever-so-important respect, these poor souls wander from the path of righteousness, whatever that is, and start making up genres to define the spectrum of music they enjoy and titles to give themselves for being such ASS-es.

Some theories they have are:

• All {insert metalhead variety here} HATE hip-hop. And the dual and corollary somehow apply as well.
• Any metalhead that disagrees with another about any music-related topic is a fake metalhead.
  
• A metalhead who shows no interest in defaming a supporter of hip-hop/pop/bollywood/sufi/oriental music is of course fraternizing with the enemy and are marked Fake MHs with branding irons.
  
• Any person who knows not all genres of metal and rock isn't worth any respect.
  

It goes without saying that I've been reading online music forums frequented by 13 year olds.
Now, the point. Why have so few of these omniscient beings heard of Angel Dust? They're critically acclaimed, have a global fanbase, and sell pretty well but they aren't as well known as they ought to be.. They might not be as technically proficient and varied as Dream Theater or Opeth, but they certainly have as much if not more technical prowess than Metallica or Iron Maiden. Plus they're more original in their songs. No offense to either Metallica or Iron Maiden; I love both the bands and all their albums [well most of their albums - 'scuse me while I exclude St. Anger and Virtual XI], but I sincerely think that Angel Dust are better. But it's not my opinion that I rant about. Instances of when I pass around cd's of Angel Dust and they are enjoyed, passed further on and enjoyed by more people prove that it isn't that few people like this band. It is that few people know of this band. The only reason that I could think of why this could be so is that there's a tiny bug in every MH's head, planted by Opeth, that makes them unable to recommend Angel Dust to others. Every attempt leads to the words "Opeth is in a class of its own" being spurt out unintentionally. There that's everything explained.

Now we've got to change this because the intro to Bleed can convert pop fans to power metal(?); Never and Black Rain are optimal mixes of heavy and light music; Temple of the King hasn't been covered, it's been reinvented. And these are just from one album [Bleed]. The intro's to Let me live and Come Into Resistance can charge a tired headbanger to full headbanging capacity; the female vocals in Still I'm Bleeding and The One You Are give them an eerily pleasant feel; the choruses to songs like When I Die and Where the Wind Blows are as grand as the guitar solos in them; Beneath the Silence is more soothing than silence itself.

You think I'm exaggerating? Of course I am. How else do you think I'll get people to spread the good word? But I only exaggerate slightly. If I didn't, I'd be belching out approvals to Same Eyes, First In Line and Oceans of Tomorrow as well. And since I'm not doing that, I request YOU, whoever you are whichever type of metalhead you want to call yourself, to never give in to the bug and spread the word. About Angel Dust for starters, and it should be followed by any other band you think deserves attention. So much more productive than shouting out Slipknot SUCKS! or Nirvana's for fags! which are pointless coz most of the smart ones already know that.

hehe..



ASD- Attention Seeking Disorder
ASS- Attention Seeking Snob

Powered by ScribeFire.

When In General,...

... do as General Dreedle does.*
That is why I want this blog to be taken out and shot!

Inactivity is a sin, or it should be. And being inactive for almost eight months deserves no more severe a punishment than one given by ol' Dreedley. But since, as Colonel Moodus reminded General Dreedle, we can't shoot just anybody we want, we'll "let the insubordinate son-of-a-b**** go."

Normal telecast(?) resumes NOW.

credits to a certain beginner of a blogger.



*If you don't get any of this post, go read Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, you filthy scum!
And don't bother if you still don't get the title. Just know that my brain works at an entirely different level.