21 December 2010

25 things that could happen to your mobile phone

This post/experience is dedicated to all honorable men and women, who hold on to That bruised, battered, why-did-it-switch-off-now, still working, sorry-excuse-for-a-mobile-phone mobile phones.
That means not you, M.K.Sarvesh Ghautham, who keeps changing mobile phones faster than Manchester City's starting 11 or you, people who own those nothing-cud-happen-brick-like-phones.


Now although the vice versa is true, why does everything have to be a her? So I, Vishnu Gowthem Thangaraj assume mobile phones to be a he. 
Covering as much as organisational behavior, attributes, ownership activities and physics as possible, 


1. For starters, Mobile phones love gravity. They are in a relationship with gravity infact. And like any guy, he just keeps falling over and over again. And the worst part is everything happens in slow mo as well... .. . 
Without any warning, the mobile slips out of your hand. 
Its in free fall. 
you extend your arm. 
you cry a muffled noooooo. 
you can almost feel it in your outstretched palm. 
You would think at some point you can surely catch it before it falls. 
But you cant. you fail.
And without any command, shitty dismantles itself.


2. Phones are like prophets. They try and warn you. I mean how often do you accidentally cut an incoming call, while coming out of the message inbox?! Not to mention the famous your-call-will-be-disconnected-due-to-insufficient-balance?! But again with too much money(balance), like any prophet, it turns nithyanandha and it lets you make that call you shouldn't have. 
Tut-tut.


3.Immaterial of the size, mobiles always get misplaced/lost. You leave them in all sorts of places. The bank you visited in the morning. The refrigerator you took iced tea from. The washroom time you spent pondering on world economy. Of course you could call it from another number and locate it. Its just simply too much work.
Its the washroom or wait till someone calls :) 


5. Your phone probably has a speaker or mic or some kinda opening and if no one told you, the bloody Besant nagar beach sand seeps in when its windy. Now I carry my thai mannu everywhere I go. Literally.


6. Handle cell phones carefully in a restaurant or a pub. Before you know it, there it is,  smiling at you from a glass of water. (And although imaginative, bubbles do not come if you call your mobile then)


Now, I understand talking over the phone while driving bikes. Its like we are hard pressed for time at that moment. And its not that dangerous if you are a good driver. The same can't be said for your mobile though.
Tips to use mobiles safely while driving rashly as you want : 
~
7. Never keep phones in your upper shirt pocket while driving. Keep it on the fuel tank between your legs if you wanna use them. Your thighs will protect it from jumping out. Fail to comply and the shiny mouse like thing speeding past your bike in the next speed breaker is your mobile phone sliding on the road! zzzzzooooooooooing.


9. And try reducing talking while driving during rains alone. Hands can get slippery and the damn phone slips. And falls on the mud. And if you are as lucky as I am, you get to drive over the poor little thing like a speed breaker. And if you are really as lucky as me, nothing still happens to your phone! 
~
10. Exercise aarva-kolaru people be careful of sweating. Mobile phones act like a battery-weak terminator as a result of sweat water. Stop running to the service center and put it on charge. The heat dries the sweat up and phone works like a charm. :)


11. Yes I have already established the mobiles's (ya ya I know its written wrongly. :P) relationship with gravity, now I m gonna talk about his mistress. Fate. Yes the ruddy thing falls down often. Where?
On the carpet, on the road, on you, on me, everywhere. But also on the dark theater floor once the lights go off or beneath the legs of a lady sitting in a restaurant, near enough that you could take it by yourself without asking her but also far enough that you could miss and grab her ankle and look like a pervert. Uh oh.

12. Mobiles and pride. The guy with the new mobile is undoubtedly a prick. He doesn't let sight of his mobile, gets a scratch guard from the bazaar, keeps it very safely inside the pocket like nestling a baby in a cradle, he licks it clean and does a lot of gay stuff too. After a few drops (mobile) , he turns straight.

13. Missing/Not working keys! This is perhaps the most normal natural calamity that can happen. 
That single key which has to be pressed harder than the others or the rare case where you cud use sharp objects (like a stylus?) inside missing keys to press them or that key which is responsible for going to the previous menu stops working and makes u press the total cancel key (red one) each time and start afresh are like your future kids. Small things that irritate you initially. But later you get used to living with them.

14. One fine day, you go to college and give your mobile to a friend, thinking you will be altruistic for a change. And the next thing you know, you watch him shout/insult/dare a customer care representative to bar your number permanently. classic.

17. Pragmatically, most Indians live with a fear that mobile phones will be stolen in a public place. So they try protecting that crappy 1100 with more effort than required to earn the money to purchase the mobile in the first place. In offbeat situations wherein their mobiles do get stolen, they turn all sad and gloomy. For a 1100? really?
psst, Incase its a 5k+ mobile post it in FML.

18. You could be a member of the fall-on-bed-ouch-what-bit-my-ass-oh-its-my-mobile club.

19. Mobile phones are bouncy objects. Like this one time, I was running really fast (yes running. yes fast) to board a bus and my mobile popped out of my shirt pocket, fell on the hard black tar road and amazingly bounced off a couple of feet from the ground. I caught it on the run and still managed to board the running bus. And applause! (Right. No one saw. Sigh.)


20. Look here dear. Straight into the lens. Smile now. Say cheeseeee. Crap. 

21. When the Canadian lady next to you on the flight, uses an Iphone 4, its best not to take our mobile out. Right. Mr.Embarrassment has finally arrived.


22. Certain All humans (yes we can call them that) who are in relationships talk hours over the phone with their inamorata. And at times when things get rough, certain people have a habit of venting out their anger by throwing things. And more than most its the communication device in their hand.
Note: beware of penny-pinchers in relationships, they just might get angry over their mobile. keep it in their pockets and throw the happen-to-pass you's mobile on the floor. "These women! cha", they bark and leave.

24. Mobiles can get very very hot on prolonged usage while charging. 
Solution? Mooditu, cut the phone call.

25. And the best worst thing that can happen to your mobile : Switches off itself and stops working without any reason or rhyme. :)

15 November 2010

Worry not, Wilbur's here

I have lots and lots of movies. But still get bored at times.
So, I go and do this.


Me : "Dai unaku ellam soodu soranaye illaye da"

Him : "Hi Friend"
The Man,
The Phenomenon, 
The Icon, 
The Legend.
Wilbur Sargunaraj.
Get a piece of him :
Facebook , Facebook Album,  Personal Site , Youtube , Google.

09 November 2010

Oh Obama Va..

I feel like Virendar Sehwag tonight. No, I don't have hair loss. Not Yet.
Its just that I wonder if he is batting sometimes and his thought pattern goes something like this, "I will hit the ball through that [hand gesture] direction, no matter how you bowl." 
Call it his willpower/confidence or his incorrigible adamance or plainly stupidity, it just won't matter. He will still move his padded, stiff feet and square cut a wide ball going way down leg. And probably gets out at times.
The point I m really trying to make is he sets himself to do something in a particular fashion and he does it, no matter what. Thats exactly what I m gonna do tonight. 
"I m going to write about Politics" 
Call it my willpower/blah blah blah or simply look me in the eye and go, "***** da nee", it just won't matter.
I m still gonna write about Politics. :-)


So whats new in Politics..
Tamil Nadu is taken over completely by its grand old man and his ever expanding family of sons and grandsons. (Every one of em always seem successful innit?) Its just a form of dictatorship that quite doesn't have a name yet.
They control the power lines. They control the elections. They control the traffic. They control the show business. They control everything what goes on around you. And as Goundmani puts it, "Ada divorce case kuda parkuranga pa.. Ore busyyy." 
Its just fuckin horrible with the powercuts and all. On the other hand, one of those hotshot grandsons is getting married next week, and probably we ll get two days of local holiday. Plans for a Fifa 11 marathon is on. So yay!


Somewhere else in India, Barack Obama, the US president has arrived to provide the Ayodhya case-disappointed, Commonwealth-conspiracy-disappointed, Endhiran-hype-finished, still-searching-nithyanandha's-sextapes hungry newsmongers something to write and talk about for a few days. And as diwali happened, he did just that in style, by putting up an impromptu dance with the students of some college in Mumbai. 
Appadi Podu Podu
And the amma dancing in the next picture is the First lady, Michelle Obama who seems to have a habit of dancing in shows she attends.[Source : Youtube] And she is great at it too, her husband boasts. 
Waka Waka
Amazingly amongst the India tholai katchigalil mudhan muraiyaga movies, this seemed to have captured the nation's eye too. Heck, it even convinced one of my classmates, that Obama came to India to celebrate Diwali!!!


Apparently the real purpose of his visit was to agree to some sort of billion dollar trade agreement, pay tribute to the victims of the 26/11 attack and talk on various other important matters with India. And like his predecessor Bushu and other US presidents, he too stressed the friendship of the two nations. (If it had been Chennai instead of Delhi, he would have surely called Manmohan Singh "Machi")
However, Obama reportedly had still managed to give one of his famous "change" speeches at the parliament,  addressing the state of Islams and the UNSC for India, which is frankly telling the Indian government how to do their job. 
Well no one cares, and certainly not me. 
Like lots of people who retweeted,
"Obama is President of America. Funny to see Indians asking him to do a lot for us. Why should he fight the Indian war?"
Anyways Obama leaves country tomorrow. And my mom dearly wishes she could give him some of her diwali murukku and sweets so he could give it to my brother in the US. But he seems to go further east to Indonesia, so all plans dropped.
LOL at the Iyer's Shoes.
The above picture was taken earlier in the US. Seemed to be a good choice for the occasion, so I put it up. 
Well..
Thats all from the news now. Stay tuned for more updates.

02 November 2010

Trick or treat?

Although the Anti-Vijay enthusiast in me jump up and down excitedly like Dobby the elf and complain it should be Sura this year, (compared to last year Halloween's S.J.Suryah), I just found this too terrifying.
Muhahaha!


Apparently as the above picture suggests, "Superhumans do exist!!" 

pssst : this is not a pity post to increase count for the year, although the inclusion of the page hit counter and the archive numbers suggest otherwise. :D
"I just wanted a decent post for diwali" 


Madhuri Dixit. 
I have scared you.
Happy Halloween guys. :-)


P.S.  this might have been an inside joke. 

29 October 2010

Naan KadavuL!

"You are an arrogant bastard and people still love you." 
- Probably one of the best compliments I ever got.


Sometimes people get crazy beyond the normal threshold of craziness, and when that happens they tend to become slightly philosophical. (No I don't mean when drunk. Yes, It happens while drinking too. But I dont mean it that way now) Likewise, I get occasionally high (No drinking again) on philosophy too.
Its not like a lecture-on-OBM philosophical or I'm-me-I'm-my-own-role-model philosophical. Its just something different. Not like a know-all or prick, mind you! There is a big fat line or sometimes a few register numbers separating prick and philosophy.
This is just pure gyaan. Minimalist. Non judgmental. Almost Zen like gyaan.
Just like the kid who tries to pee higher on a wall. Or like Peter Crouch taking a corner kick once in a while. Something different.


Now if you haven't heard already,
I m God.
Yes, I m God. No not you too. 
Just me. 
I ll tell you why. Remember the story of  "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens? well I don't. Not exactly. But what I misread or got out of it when I was young was that Expecting Something Hurts. Always
And thats how I have been ever since. I don't expect anything. blah blah blah.
And most of the time, I end up living life the way I want it to be. And at the rare moment something bad happens, I don't pin it on kismet, rather I just try and be as optimistic as possible. And at the rarer moment when all hope is lost, I just become too optimistic or in other words, attain Freedom.


Well what happened here to this good thing over the years is, I din't expect people to get hurt. I grew this thing of completely annoying or angering or hurting someone with absolute ease.
Say you were in a gang of 5, and I m also there. That makes 5-1(you)-1(me)=3 left in the group. And you were the topic of derision and humiliating mockery. Lets also assume you have a normal degree of temper, which was broken that time. And lets also assume all this happened in the morning and you are still angry. Now no matter what the 3 other people said or did, When you have to put it all on a single guy, I will be that guy. Hey I dint start It! But I m still the guy. 
I have just got that anger charisma. :D


Which reminds me of the Grinder story. We nicknamed a girl in my class Grinder, for the reason she starts grinding food the next minute the class gets over. Again it wasn't me who addressed her tat way. No! I wasn't even a contributor to the name, but I m pretty sure Grinder thinks its me. 
Another day, I try to be funny and give Grinder a pulippu mittai for my birthday. A few days later someone else gives Grinder a pulippu-mittai for his birthday, Grinder thinks its me who gives him the idea! Of course Grinder is a mokkai party, so I don't think why she thinks that way. But anyway yo get my point.


Now, As I was using the washroom today, sitting there when the PSP charge drained out and I couldn't play scrabble anymore, this big realization of my power to hurt people so easily, dawned upon me. 
I say something so simple. Bam! you're hurt. And again the people I hurt, still like me. (Of course except Grinder, but there was a time even when Grinder considered me as one of her best friend. Then she just got crabby) 
People still find me supportive. They talk to me well. They just like me. :)
The thing here is I really don't see them get hurt when it happens, but after they react its like crystal clear. Ouch. 
I did try once not to comment or speak sarcastically. But I simply could not do it. Sarcasm is something that comes whimsically to me. 
And you probably know, there is always something or at least one thing wrong with someone. Except the woman you love. :) 
Like Paul Scholes's tackling. Like Shankar's Endhiran. Maybe this is my Endhiran.


And So I think, Who do you like but also find supportive? Who also has the power to hurt you if he/she wanted to? (Remember the Amman movies. Btw, Palayathu Amman was Ramyakrishnan right? )
And I thought.
(The bulb in my toilet glowed brightly)
I m God.


P.S. Powercuts around 2-4 in my area. I take a poop.

22 October 2010

The Graduate - Where It All Started

If you are the type of person who would watch Star Movies or HBO movie-for-the-upcoming-month advertisements,
Or the kind of guy who would sneak a peek into the movie collection that one of your class girls has in her laptop when you are asked to use it for organizing an onstage event with the whole department watching on,
Or the sorry, i mean 'rare' breed of men who would download a specified set of movies and burn them onto a disk (at times with a pathetic readme attached) for your girl/woman/her friends to watch, 
then you must have probably come across a lot of "Romantic-Comedy" movies. (And chick flicks* too)


The Graduate is one such movie. Except that, it was the only such movie at that time.



Based on a novel of the same name, the plot goes something like this. 
Open scene. Benjamin Braddock, a recent university graduate (must be an under graduate) is dissatisfied with his family's way of socializing (which is a rich party at home with the friends) and has no clue what he is going to do next with his life. He gets seduced by an elder woman - Mrs.Robinson and Mr.Robinson happens to be his dad's friend. He later meets Elaine Robinson, their daughter. And the rest is history. 


Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock and Anne Bancroft as Mrs.Robinson put in two brilliant performances. Hoffman is perfect as being an innocent and confused young man. More importantly he has that subtlety in his acting, which forces the viewers to think it can happen to anyone. In other words, the guy in the picture is the perfect 'common man.' Mrs.Robinson is really seducing. dot.


The movie also has a brilliant soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel. 'Sounds of Silence', 'Scarborough fair' and 'Mrs.Robinson' are amazing pieces. It also has really good camera angles and shots for its time, I m told.


Now there must atleast be a thousand odd movies with plots revolving around affairs. But the Graduate is overtly significant in the fact that it was the one that led to those thousand odd movies. Releasing in 1967, it has largely influenced the art of film-making. Up-to a time when movies were all about cowboys and outlaws(Eastwood) or murders and thrillers based upon novels (Hitchcock), the avant-garde Graduate is said to have mirrored the happenings of the society in a bold and satirical way. Thats right. Hugh Grant wouldn't have been in movies otherwise now.


Now I compared this with the Tamil-movie industry in my mind. Tamil movie heroes rarely have affairs. 
We have a trend of Dada movies with aruvaals and sumo cars (Even a worser trend of movies with different areas in Madurai as film titles) We don't enjoy them. Thinking pragmatically, not even a bit. (unless Vijayakanth or TR does it, in which case its humor) But the stream of movies getting released sadly seem to be non-ending. 
Violence is okay for a hero. But not sex. (Oooh that would be perverted) 
Grow up people.
Why does every Tamil movie hero have to be a good guy? 
Yes he shoots. He kills. He steals. But he is a good guy. Why?
There were a few movies that tried. But until someone does a Graduate (where the hero has an affair with an elder woman) "successfully" here, things are going to remain still. 
And at that time S.J.Suryah will have a railway station named after him.


* Chick flicks are different from romantic comedies. Although the internet might not agree, in my opinion Romantic comedies that are slightly gay are chick flicks.

18 October 2010

Stop staring at me honey!

2.30 A.M

She was awake.
Waiting. 
Waiting for me as she had always waited in the past few days. 
She just sat there.
She felt cold or maybe I thought she felt cold. 
I switched off the A/C.
I went and sat next to her.
And I looked at her transfixed.
Just like the first time I looked at her.
It was just me and her that night...

And I kept looking at her not taking my eyes off her even for a second.
She looked angelic in a Persian blue attire. Her cheeks kept turning red as often as the number of times I wake up after 11 on a holiday - Always. 
Cute. 
She was slightly short, but she made up for it with her tall never-panicking aura of calmness that she always had with her. Although like the typical cynical lover, I tried to find something wrong with her, I just never could. She was practically perfect in all possible ways. 
And I kept looking at her, with nothing big in return, but just a slight nod of the head. Or the subtlest of signs in activity from her shiny smooth skinned body. (probably had it 'moisturized')
Sadly, she kept turning away though.
Ah she was such a 'fighter'!

I slowly moved my finger close to her.
She responded as my shadow fell on her. 
I didn't mean to scare her and I retracted my arm. 
She slowly turned towards me.
I saw her right in the eye now, through her 'contact glasses'. 
Eyes that said so much. 
She 'glared' at me. 
And she was sexy.

I knew she can never get angry at me. :-)
For she was not just any woman.
As a signal of concordance, she kind of 'floated' in the same place and she never moved away.
She shined brightly under the moonlight through the window.
Now it was her turn to stare at me.
And everything was calm again.


Say hello to Nemo The Third. 
Why third?
Well Nemo the first is Nemo from the movie, and we named a friend's girlfriend Nemo the second.
And All Nemos had their reasons. 

Nemo and her nemesis, Creative the speakerShe runs around scared whenever Metallica is on.
I run around scared whenever i clean her fish bowl (rarely when Viswa is not around to be bribed) . 
I just hope someday she is not gonna jump out shouting "FREEDOM!" :-(

10 October 2010

Sexy Laxy!!

First test : India vs Australia at Mohali.
October 5, 2010.
Day 5.
Cricket Cricket Cricket,
Australia needed a wicket.
Bollinger paced the ball,
Sachin tried to hit over the wall.


Dhoni came to the crease,
And he was removed with utter ease.
The Indians put up no fight,
And then they were down Eight.


All was gone except for one,
But Sharma was not to be undone.
The Aussies bowled a wide,
Laxman hit it on the offside.


The ball goes for four,
The Indians shoot for more,
Ojha gets a run,
And India has won!!! 

18 September 2010

I Give thee Caesar!

"Wonderful... Powerful!"
THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD


"Fascinating read... It'll keep you riveted till the end!"
THE DETROIT NEWS


"Gowthem has done it yet again... The best book of our ages!"
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW


"Winner of Dexter - Sci-Fi story writing contest!"
EUPRAXIA, SSN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
(Hey this is really true now. :D )


Long long ago. Not long ago, lived a really intelligent, cheerful, sarcastic, intelligent, arrogant, good natured, intelligent boy. Wisdom was a virtue by birth to him. He was the center of attraction to everything that happened around him. He was exceptionally great at gaming Fifa and eating chicken. He was, is and always will be a Manchester United fan. 


One day, along with two of his friends, he decided to attend an online quiz, conducted by a college. They downloaded the questions and sent answers to the ones they knew. A few days later they learnt that they had won the quiz. They were awarded 1000 bucks for their achievements. The wise boy also learnt that there were only about 10 entries for the quiz.
There was a online science fiction writing contest as well in the same site. Capriciously, he saw the details. He had 4 hours to conjure up a story. He calculated and found that he had a minimum probability of 1/8 of winning it.


So with the utmost sincerity and dedication,
Commitment and passion,
he wrote,
THE CAESAR STORY.




Download here or here.

17 September 2010

Someone Gimme a Kickkk

Inception in the blogging world?



29 August 2010

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Soul touching

"Valentine's Day is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap."
I, like a large number of people have found that reviews are most often not funny, unless they are critical. (That explains my yesteryear reviews on Vijay movies! ) And therefore tend to not write a lot of reviews even on the Tarantino, Nolan and Kubrick movies I absolutely revere or the romantic comedies/ heart warming stuff I come across. But this movie, the Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind had me so wrapped up, i just had to do it.




Jim Carrey acts in perhaps the only movie of his entire acting career, where he doesn't run around doing weird whatchamacallit faces or gibberish voices that are still funny at times (Liar Liar is THE greatest movie of all time) and yet he somehow does the perfect job as Joel Barish. Winslet in the movie, has weird hair, looks creepy like a die-hard metal fan and yet is lovely as ever as the Tangerine. I mean Clementine. 


The movie starts off as a narration by Joel. Then slowly switches to a events-actions type screenplay. I don't wanna give you the genre of the movie, for not knowing how it goes is what made me really get into it. The plot is not much. Its simple. (For those who have seen the Inception, this must be interesting. For this involves stuff about the mind as well. Neosurrealism baby!) Its the story of a couple who fall in love with each other after hating each other 'entirely'. 


Kate Winslet puts in a wonderful performance as the bubbly, fervid, free-spirited female lead whose hair color changes often. Carrey underplays and yet comes up trumps. Never knew he was so good at giving normal reactions as well. Elijah Wood does the role of a typical non-creative young man well. Don't expect anything like Sin City or Lotr if u IMDB'ed him. Kristen Dunst comes and cries for a short while too.


The movie has a brilliant screenplay. Not too slow, not too fast, but spellbinding. It also has an awesome soundtrack. The theme and the end song are too good. The intermezzi is great in places too. Nothing too great about the camera or the locations. The snow everywhere is nice though. :)


The biggest success of Eternal Sunshine perhaps lies in the way how with ease it makes the viewers identify themselves with the protagonist. Despite being an unconventional storyline, it has an emotional core amidst all. You find yourself as Joel Barish for a certain period of time in the movie. Especially, the scenes where Joel tries to keep his memories intact, you can't resist thinking about your own past. Or atleast thinking of how hard you tried. 
One of the best movies I have ever seen. :)