Simpler Times.
Remember those idyllic days of February? The world seemed a much simpler, rounder place in which to live. My daily foibles were accompanied by a bouncy Vaudevillian trio who would suddenly jump out from around the corner and sing a hilarious, yet appropriate ditty; the air smelt of daisies in a meadow and we all skipped about unabashedly like backup dancers in a Helen item number.
That was then.
These days, however, I find life's taken a rather disconcerting Bergman-esque hue. A state of pessimistic existentialism, if you will. There's an air of French farce, to be sure, but the primary mood is one of Mozartian comedy with a dark underbelly, energized by a dialectic of humor and rancid truth beneath the veneer of self-conscious laughter.
Bleh. Bergman overdose this past week.
Moving on.
It's been brought to my attention that doing a Google search for 'vangibath' causes this blog to turn up as the sixth search result. Apparently, it was as high as third a while ago, but after lapsing into a period of smug complacency, has since slipped down the rankings. If you are one of those people who've been cruelly misled into believing that you would find in these pages, some means of cooking yourself a nice meal and are now hurt and confused, I can only offer my deepest sympathies and direct you good folk here.
Not so long ago, I co-wrote a play for a desi show on campus, along with now constant collaborator and partner in crime, Shashi-san. Rehearsals were stunningly bad and caused the two of us many a horrific nightmare, including one where I was using a mind-control device on the audience to get them to laugh (the discerning reader might recall that a similar, albeit far more powerful device, was earlier used by the CIA to convince people that Whoopi Goldberg was funny). However, oddly enough, the final show itself went off splendidly - though I have a sneaky suspicion that our hilarious pre-show publicity drive somehow preconditioned people to be on our side before we'd even begun. But, I overanalyze - the cast did a super job, and if it wasn't for a minor argument between me and a pair of stairs (the stairs won), I'd be happily skipping about now (if that were the sort of thing I'd do when I was happy, which it isn't).
On somewhat similar lines, I've also recently rediscovered (thanks to a friend here, who now probably regrets this), the joys of the Crazy Mohan-Kamal Hassan combo. I've watched a bunch of these movies of late and am highly impressed by the terr(ific, ible) wordplay (depending on whether you consider the pun to be the foundation, or the lowest form of wit) and impeccable timing. Panchathanthiram, in particular, stuns me - the sheer density of jokes in that movie is mindboggling and I doubt I've caught them all, even after repeated viewings (to which aforementioned friend has also been ruthlessly subjected). In any case, I've since been heaping horrible jokes and cunning puns on everyone, and there are bleeding ears all around. Ear-ache-a, I say.
Erm.
Some linkage, to quickly distract everyone:
Edit: This the first time I'm using it, and I've only just noticed - how on earth does LJ's spell-checker not have the word 'blog' in it?
That was then.
These days, however, I find life's taken a rather disconcerting Bergman-esque hue. A state of pessimistic existentialism, if you will. There's an air of French farce, to be sure, but the primary mood is one of Mozartian comedy with a dark underbelly, energized by a dialectic of humor and rancid truth beneath the veneer of self-conscious laughter.
Bleh. Bergman overdose this past week.
Moving on.
It's been brought to my attention that doing a Google search for 'vangibath' causes this blog to turn up as the sixth search result. Apparently, it was as high as third a while ago, but after lapsing into a period of smug complacency, has since slipped down the rankings. If you are one of those people who've been cruelly misled into believing that you would find in these pages, some means of cooking yourself a nice meal and are now hurt and confused, I can only offer my deepest sympathies and direct you good folk here.
Not so long ago, I co-wrote a play for a desi show on campus, along with now constant collaborator and partner in crime, Shashi-san. Rehearsals were stunningly bad and caused the two of us many a horrific nightmare, including one where I was using a mind-control device on the audience to get them to laugh (the discerning reader might recall that a similar, albeit far more powerful device, was earlier used by the CIA to convince people that Whoopi Goldberg was funny). However, oddly enough, the final show itself went off splendidly - though I have a sneaky suspicion that our hilarious pre-show publicity drive somehow preconditioned people to be on our side before we'd even begun. But, I overanalyze - the cast did a super job, and if it wasn't for a minor argument between me and a pair of stairs (the stairs won), I'd be happily skipping about now (if that were the sort of thing I'd do when I was happy, which it isn't).
On somewhat similar lines, I've also recently rediscovered (thanks to a friend here, who now probably regrets this), the joys of the Crazy Mohan-Kamal Hassan combo. I've watched a bunch of these movies of late and am highly impressed by the terr(ific, ible) wordplay (depending on whether you consider the pun to be the foundation, or the lowest form of wit) and impeccable timing. Panchathanthiram, in particular, stuns me - the sheer density of jokes in that movie is mindboggling and I doubt I've caught them all, even after repeated viewings (to which aforementioned friend has also been ruthlessly subjected). In any case, I've since been heaping horrible jokes and cunning puns on everyone, and there are bleeding ears all around. Ear-ache-a, I say.
Erm.
Some linkage, to quickly distract everyone:
- On the complexity of songs. Donald (Knuth, not Duck) demonstrates a way of producing songs with O(sqrt(N)) complexity, an approach "...further improved by a Scottish farmer named O. McDonald" (priority disputed). Absolutely hilarious - it might be old news for some, but it's certainly new Knuth to me. PDF linked here.
- The Movie Timeline. Cutely arranges chronologically the events in film, from 4,000,000 BC to 865,427,810 AD.
- And I think I shall leave you all with The Plan59 Gallery of Demonic Tots and Deeply Disturbing Cuisine, featuring scans of vintage food advertisements showing kids leering at food with demonic intent.
Edit: This the first time I'm using it, and I've only just noticed - how on earth does LJ's spell-checker not have the word 'blog' in it?