The State of The Union

Hello and welcome to my first post of the year. Following in my usual tradition of being fashionably late, I decided to write something down to sate the minds of all the people visiting daily to check if I’d posted anything. All you people who kept checking, thank you. Even the two of you who got here by searching for “white man posh shower”.

To start with, the mother is leaving for India again in approximately six hours from now. This is dire news as I now have even less faith in my cooking skills than I did the last time around. Unless I survive off roadkill or something, I am seriously concerned about my chances of survival. Add to these woes the fact that I plan to buy a camera in a couple of weeks, meaning I’m stingy like a micro-managing pimp these days.

In more positive news, we recently went to Galle during the lit fest. Attended the free event, Readings at Sunset. Or something. It was at a hotel a bit towards Unawatuna. We had the misfortune of attending last year too, when we cycled to galle. This year would be different, we hoped. Alas, it was not to be so as we were yet again assaulted with wave after wave of what we were assured was “Great literature” and authors who were supposedly “The greatest writers in the country”.

I’ve read a lot of Sri Lankan “writing” on these here inter-tubes. I don’t think most of you would fancy yourselves professional writers and erstwhile gay fashion statements, but honestly, you lot write content that is far superior to what I was assaulted by at Galle. You are the USS Kennedy to their Titanic. The Great Wall of China to their parapet wall behind my house. The Murali to their …me. I don’t know, I’m the worst bowler I know.

It felt like the written form of Mahagedara being read out. I was literally falling asleep listening to some lady yap on about some freaky love triangle like it was the third world war. It was full of people in the audience chattering about this great person and that other scandalous man. Rumours and gossip was thrown liberally around like pasta at a 4 year old’s birthday party. Except 4 year olds usually have more decorum.

So yes, the lit fest events weren’t that great to us. On the bright side, Himal being the bundle of fun he usually is, entertained us early on in the trip by managing to tumble down the side of the fort ramparts, all optimus-prime-dying like. It was the funniest thing I’d seen all year.

It’s taken me nearly half an hour to write that child of a post. I have many tales to tell but so little time/inclination to do so. I also hope that I’ll have the energy to do so next time I decide to post, seeing as how I have no nutritional plan for the coming month.

Wish me luck! And lunch.

December, O December

The house is starting to smell of fruit cake again.

You know what that means, don’t you?

As I type, I’m so full of all kinds of eatables from brownies to marshmallows to condensed milk that I can barely kick the cat trying to curl up at my feet. It’s sufficiently cold outside that a fat man on the roof in a santa suit wouldn’t look out of place.

It feels like December. Christmas!

The year’s been a mixed bag, as usual. I doubt you get metaphorical bags full of only one kind when describing a year. Unless you live in the middle of the desert or something. Even then, you might suddenly stumble across a magic scorpion that’ll grant you three wishes, like unlimited scorpion concubines and all the Minute Maid you can shower in. But I digress.

January, I can’t really remember January. Through February it was mostly the same. Come March, I found myself employed again. Then in April I blah blah blah December.

December. Two days ago we celebrated by father’s 60th birthday. It was nice. My dad isn’t exactly the emotional type, and this was probably the first time I saw him actually touched by something.

Tomorrow I must go around the city looking for Chrismas gifts, apparently. Anybody have gift ideas? I’m very cheap. I have been known to gift things like cabbages. Wholesome and useful around the house at the same time. Treasured in homes from Sri Lanka to France to Lapland.

Have you noticed how strange the Scottish accent is? Imagine a local bus conductor, or your own parents using that accent.

“Jerrayh, go outside and chawp dahn the trees in the back yahhd will yah?”

“Save the planet, it’s Christmas”

“Stawp being a smahrt-arse if yew wante anythinghh tew yeat this Christtmass.”

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As my posts get more disjointed, I’m not sure I’m capable of writing a proper post again. It just doesn’t feel right. Went off to Mannar last Saturday eve. Will post to SinhalayaTravels soon. Keep eyes peeled.

A “Feeling-ey” Post

You know what I miss? The “good old days” of a few months ago. When I didn’t know who half most people posting on kottu were, and trolls were funny. I yearn for the days of laughing at the Whackster’s emo outbursts and Saint Fallen’s Miley Cyrus posts. Then there were the occasional weirdos that showed up and disappeared in a few weeks. Sometimes I thought that if sexual frustration could be harnessed, some of the blogs that showed up could power the country for a good six months. And then there was Papareboy.

Nowadays I don’t even get to read most blogs. I just never get around to it. Instead I spend my time on the internet doing things like downloading Katy Perry albums. I freely admit this because my manliness is as boundless as Chavie’s enthusiasm to post positive comments everywhere. I trust it further than I can kick a cat, which is quite far. Last time I tried I got an email from Gliese 581 cursing me to hell for introducing parasites to their pristine planet.

In other news, I am going to install a Linux distro on my laptop and see if I can use it as my main OS. I’ll have windows on for games of course, but that’s quite rare on the laptop so I don’t think I’ll need it much.

Cutlery

A few weeks ago I was looking for a spoon in the kitchen and couldn’t find one. I told my mom and she told me to go buy a few if I wasn’t happy with the number available. So I said “Fine, okay” and continued to stir my orange juice with a fork.

Just this morning, while I was mixing my chocolate sauce, she asks me when I’m getting the new spoons. I pointed out that I currently had a spoon in my hand, and thus, did not need one. She says I’m turning into an old grump like my grand dad. Who passed away a couple years ago. Then she calls me evil. I refrain from pointing out the virtues of buying what you need, and instead retreat to the computer with my breakfast.

I do not understand females sometimes.

Well, most times. They’re like french. I mean have you tried spelling that stuff? Sure, I’m not the best French speaker out there, all I know are three or four words such as… what was it again? Ah, yes, “fox pass” and “bongsure”. That last sounds a bit dubious though. But hell, tweens on twitter throw around phrases as if it’s a cool thing. Remember WWII? Yeah.

Anyway, this is the second post in my “keeping this blog alive” hoo-haa. I’ve already covered females and pretentiousness, so I’m not sure I have anything else to post about. We’ll see.

I Have No Love for Touchscreen

I was in the market for a new phone recently. My current Nokia S40 device has me on my last strands of sanity. So anyway, as I was researching new phones to get, I was bombarded on all sides with touch-screen devices. As you might have gathered from my imaginative title, I am not a big fan of these. My experiences with touch screens have been, at best, fishy. The idea is only cool till you put it to real use. Like people jumping into convertibles. Its pretty hit-and miss. Sometimes you end up in your seat, sometimes you find yourself sodomized by a car.

Touchscreens are cool. That’s about it as far as I’m concerned. When you actually want to do something with it, I just automatically look for the slide-out keypad. I don’t want to lose ninety percent of my screen to the alphabet. I certainly do not want to press buttons on screen and cover up part of it with my hand when playing games either. Don’t even get me started on retarded motion sensing games. An accelerometer is only to be used as far as you can throw it. And that is not far.

As for clicking menu items and things, it’s kind of like a mini game where you punch something with your finger and hope for the best. By the time you’re a few levels deep, the difficulty is increased by items getting steadily smaller and your screen becoming a smudgy mess for fingerprints.

Using touchscreens is just something that sounds cool, like applying an even layer of butter on your household cat. It looks cool for a while but then after a while everything gets covered in grease and you’re afraid to touch your food.

And you wake up in the mornings with butter on your face.

Always.

I merely do not get why people want to grope and slide their fingers around the screen, all the while twisting and turning their device a multitude of different ways to get the keyboard the right way around. This is not helped by Apple releasing their new iPhone iterations and people automatically drooling after it. Releasing standard features years after everyone else has them is not funny anymore.

Resistive screens suck genitalia. Capacitive screens are kind of okay but still lack the appeal of buttons. I dread the day when all phones are touchscreens and people are treated like senior citizens and get oversized icons and minimal interfaces thrown at them. I fear the time when everyone on the street is clawing at their screens trying to look normal while doing it. Even when phones with adequate rainbows and unicorns under the hood appear on the market and run their interfaces with a higher framerate than a slideshow, I’ll be looking out for a slide-out qwerty.

Right now the absolute best quality touchscreen is wasted on a phone which thinks introducing features everyone else had for years is a big event. One of the coolest OS’s I’ve seen comes in a criminally fat phone. Even if these two ever came together through some heavenly intervention and a magical touchscreen that shoots lazers and writes great blog posts in two seconds falls into my hands, I’d look to god with puppy eyes and go “but you forgot the keyboard, homie”.

I do not want to wait for a fly to go away on its own accord for fear of swatting at it and hitting a few buttons on the screen.

Ladies and Gentlemen; The Truth!

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Truth. This post will be that post you read and then print and frame a copy of. If you’re a man that is. If you’re a woman you’ll… I don’t know, what are you doing on the internet anyway? Get back to the kitchen or we’ll revoke your Praveena allowance.

I just read THIS post on Mathawaada by the Foxhound. It prompted me to first take manly swig of air in my lungs and roar like a lion having its tail caught in an elevator door. Then it prompted me to come here and jot down a clarification on what’s what in the world of terrorism.

This great big blue whale of a lie about men being wrapped around the little finger of these women “flaunting their stuff” is such a pile of Nokias* it might as well be a post by a female. A woman can shed pheromones like a rabid hyena in heat but no self-respecting man is going to envy the crevasse of a bosom like lemmings to a cliff.

I like to think of myself as a normal male. When I’m not running over vegetarians and throwing cabbages at feminists, that is. As of now I live in the sticks, study in the sticks and also work in the sticks. If it weren’t for other people I’d never see the inside of a Barista in years. So if anything seeing an attractive, intelligent female should be an event of celestial proportions for me.

And you know what happens when I do come across a member of the opposite sex who is both attractive and manages to “flaunt” her stuff? I usually start off by insulting them and then if they hang around I usually don’t drop to my knees and wail at them to allow me to worship at the altar of their feminine ways. No man not living in a basement and whose only idea of women is the product of a Japanese cartoonist being impaled by a dozen tentacles is likely to drool like a biped bovine.

And no, unlike the original poster, I don’t mind the risk of being called misogynistic. God knows you’ve had plenty of opportunity in all the previous posts.

*Refer this post for the Nokia thing.

Shopping

I needed new jeans yesterday. No I am not getting fat. People just buy jeans you know? Pondering the wonders of modern social media and leveraging the knowledge of the masses so easily, I tweeted a question and checked twitter a few minutes later for the replies.

Nothing. My dreams of social media guru-dom shattered, I tweeted again, this time more desperate sounding to jump over the hordes of lolcat pictures that had taken prominence over my jean quest. After a while a few lazy replies rolled in. I was sent an email with a flyer about a sale at Crescat. I feverishly read the short text. Huge discounts! Name brand clothing! Names that didn’t sound suspiciously like actual good brands! Names that weren’t “Adibas”!

After getting there and a brief exchange with the salesperson who was breathing down my neck the whole time, I saw them!

Unfortunately for my shallow pockets, the original price of these jeans happened to be high enough so that the significantly reduced price was nearing the price of lesser name-brand jeans. Hiding my acute displeasure at this revelation, I continued to flip through the rack pretending to be interested in it all. The attendant continued to stare at me with a “I know you’re not going to buy anything, get out of here before I throw you in the pit with the lions you vermin” look. After a few seconds of browsing, I left, giving the attendant a “You’re wearing ‘Nikey’ shoes, you don’t get to do that to me!” look.

So naturally I headed off to the House of Fashions, the home ground of many a Sri Lankan looking for clothes but not wanting to pawn a kidney in the process of getting some. Or the plain cheap. I will leave it to you to decide which category I fit into.

In there, I was surrounded by a world of utter chaos. It was like Jurassic Park in there, except with clothes as people. Nay, it was like Sri Lanka in there, with clothes as free speech! I found my way up to the third floor where the men’s clothing was.

After nudging my way through a few fat old men and a few fat old ladies, I found the jeans. Okay jeans. Jeans with dubious sounding brands, but still jeans that didn’t look like they’d been through a bad 80’s music video. I was looking through the selection when I saw a middle aged woman staring at me. She smiled. I smiled back and thought “Now which pair evoked that reaction?” so that I could steadfastly avoid it. After picking a few to be on my shortlist, I took them and asked the nearest attendant where the fit-on room was. He said there wasn’t one. But how could this be? Was he just saying it because he thought jeans-customers didn’t deserve the fit on room?

Deeply hurt, I went back to the shelves and put back all but the pair which seemed least likely to get me laughed out of a public meeting. I held it against myself to check the length. The woman was still hovering around the men’s section. I ignore her and loosen the top button of my shirt as I was feeling stifled. I turn back to my jeans and the woman suddenly jumps in out of nowhere and lands on the baskets full of clothes in front of the shelves, and lies across it.

“Radish meh!” she says.

Fearing for my life and not wanting to forever be afraid of vegetables, I run away, clutching the pair of jeans to my chest and screaming repeatedly “It’s ravish! You’re old! Rape rape RAPE!”

I end up at the counter, breathless. Cycling to Galle wasn’t this daunting. I quickly pay and exit. And run half a mile to a bus stop far away from there.

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And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am in possession of a pair of jeans that are just a little bit less comfortable than my usual size 32’s. Wonder if I should exchange it or just let it stretch or whatever it is clothes do as you wear them.

…most of it is fictitious, if you didn’t already realize that…

Busorama Part Deux

You might have heard about my love-hate relationships with buses before on these pages. The aluminium clad cans which are our own means of (occasionally) rapid transport.

First, a warning. This post is rated PG-You’reNeverOldEnoughForThisShit.

This scene repeats itself in countless buses on countless routes. Someone gets on a bus, finds a seat, and sits down. So far so good. But if the seat happens to be an aisle seat, that is, not the window seat, you are most probably in for a ride full of so much writhing and cringing it could be mistaken for a screening of Twilight at Cannes.

When I was little, my dad told me that I would face many injustices in life. Like the fact that women got us kicked out of Eden, yet get free pass into the best clubs. I mean, come on God! Really?

He also said “Son, by far the worst thing you will experience will be The Aisle Seat… the aisle seat… aisle seat… seat ….seat… seat… sea…” and walked slowly backwards before turning and running up the stairs.

But nothing he could have said has prepared me for this… this travesty that is the aisle seat of a crowded bus!

You must be wondering by now what I’m going on about. You must be wondering why you read this blog at all. You must be wondering if I’ve completely lost my legos. Is that the right toy? Non sequiturs aside, this post is about those times when some rabid beast of a man positions himself right next to your seat and… Does what can best be described as a war dance on your shoulder. I shudder at merely typing it! You know, when you’re sitting in a crowded bus, and sooner or later some male positions himself right next to you?

There are normal people, and then there are people who do this. They will slowly nudge themselves forward till they make contact with your shoulder. Then when you move away, squashing the person in the seat next to you, they’ll come closer. It is a complete mystery why this happens. I mean, if I were standing, I sure as hell wouldn’t be doing the Privates Salsa on some strangers’ shoulder.

The best way to get rid of these vermin, I’ve discovered, is a multi-stage process. First you stare them in the eye. Stare, not look. You convey a message of “Get your crotch away from my shoulder you vile creature, or face the wrath of my balled up fists of fury on your weakest point!”. If he doesn’t respond to this, gently nudge them with your elbow. No, not there. Creep.

If they still fail to react, then you are left with the firm push from your elbow. That’s usually enough even for the likes of Steven Hawking so stand straight.

There have been scattered reports of women doing this kind of thing for quite different reasons *cough*theWhackster*cough*, but that is best not discussed, lest I suddenly see the sky above my current position blackened by the hail of heeled shoes arching their way towards me.

@Halikazeez being assaulted by a female

PapareFAIL

Last Friday was failFriday. A series of unfortunate exclamations, if you must. Meet failboy, vileness and fallen at the Thummulla Barista. Fallen read some failpoetry to us which we completely ignore, preferring to discuss the baffling mysteries of why the outdoor seating things were made of wood. Baffled, we were. A ride from TMS later we were again at Eatmore restaurant. More fried rice was consumed as whacko had failpoetry spoken at him by fallen. Many heavy subjects were discussed, none of which were featured in the poem.

Later, we decided to go to the beach, since we were all broke and the beach was free. We also secretly planned to sell fallen to hairy old German tourists hanging around the beach but that didn’t quite go according to plan. And then this happened-

Scene: Last Friday, on a Moratuwa bus on the way to Mt. Lavinia.

Stfallen: Yeah Vin Diesel movies usually suck…

Whacko : Yeah there was that racing movie thing… what was it called? Ah Need for Speed!

After we convinced fallen not to tweet every single thing that happened, we got to Mount. Then whacko pointed out that there was a gaming cafe right there. We weighed our options. The beach. Free, sand and… well… nothing much else. Selling fallen would be difficult in this stretch. Games, well, that sounded much more fun. And we had just enough, counting all the ten rupee notes in our wallets, for an hour. We settled into playing when the greatest fail of the night happened.

Scene : At Venus gaming cafe at Mt. Lavinia. Fallen, whacko, failboy and myself are playing Call of Duty.

failboy : Dude I’m getting the hang of this!

whacko : *kills fallen*

fb : Dude! That was cool! This looks cool man…

me : *kills whacko*

fb : Dude I killed him! Haha!

me : Err… no, dude, I killed him.

fb : But it said “You killed Whacko” on my screen, and I’m getting pretty good at this now, I can kill you too you know!

whacko : *looks at fb’s screen* wtf? Dude, you’re spectating through Jerry’s player!

me : *look at scoreboard*

all : *Break out in laughter as we discover fb had been spectating all this time*

all : *point and laugh at failboy’s EPIC FAIL.

After that, failboy was too embarrassed to do anything so he just quit and created a Counter Strike server called “papareboy’s mom”. On which he again got killed repeatedly. Later was Need for Speed. Failboy fell back by a few thousand light years in the first lap itself so he decided to go the other way, intending to impede us by crashing into us. He didn’t. Not a single hit. Missed by miles, on roads only three meters wide. He learned the basic lesson that it is extremely hard to crash into someone head-on when your combined speeds are in the hundreds of miles per hour. Thankfully he didn’t try to go backwards in the Sprint tracks.

After we all thanked failboy for the entertainment, we all set off home. People, if any PC game thing comes up, just take papareboy. The opposing team will be too busy rolling on the floor laughing their limbs off to notice you killing them.

Four Types of Facebook Creeps

I’ve been on facebook a while now. I haven’t really done much on it other than accept the occasional friend request and comment on pictures of me, but I’ve noticed stuff. People. Decided to list a few types.

• The males that have a roundabout way of showing interest – I have a friend. She posted a few pictures recently. I went over to look at them, and while flipping through each picture I notice something strange. Along with the text like “2 comments” and  “In this picture:”, there is the ever present “x likes this picture, along with the thumbs up icon. On every. Single. Picture. I keep going and come across a few comments by the same person. “oh wow ur smile. it is so beautiful”. Way to go there casanova, freak her out by going on to click “Like” on every single one of her pictures and flooding her with notifications. Why don’t you just write “I love you” on her wall?
• The Drama Queen – Any gender can be this. The most recent example I came across was a male. A note is posted. With a bad joke. Snarky comments are made by me. Owner denies thinking up note(he didn’t). More snarkyness. And bam! I’m barred from seeing the note. Not even a “plez how do I make snarky comments lyk that to peepal” message. I’m offended. All I get is a reply to not comment or read if I don’t like it. I mean, I was in a state to write “I h8 uu!!!11″ on his wall! Hmph.
• Stalkers – Usually male. These teenagers, sometimes even grown men, will browse through facebook looking for people to add to their friends lists. No surprise that they’re usually female. They see some girl, say to each other “Isn’t she the sister of that girl who talks to the girl who sits at the back of the class in the class next to ours while she waits to be picked up after class?” and agree unanimously. Otherwise it’s “Isn’t that that dude’s girlfriend’s sister’s friend’s sister?”. Eventually half the population is on their friend lists.
• Me – I have a peculiar predicament. I used to get on only to confirms friend requests from people I knew. Which created a general impression of me not really being around fb much, the only activity generated being from my blog posts being sent as notes. Now I have a problem. I have this feeling that I should keep this image of me not being on it much intact, but it leaves me helpless when I actually want to add people to my friends list. If I send request around willy-nilly my image of being ‘too cool for facebook’, or ‘too uncool for more than 100 friends’ rather, is shattered. So I wait patiently till they eventually add me.

Why don’t females suddenly flood my inbox with “i really lyk your hair, can i touch it”? Why don’t females start writing poetry to random males? Why do people put LOL at the end of every damn comment, even when it’s not remotely funny? Why must my brain die a little each time I go on there and see what people say? Why are the comments sections turning into youtube comment sections?

I don’t know. I’m off to go change my profile pic and look at pictures of strange exotic girls.

I hear they want to “friend me”.