My funny Valentine

It was Valentine’s day. Valentine woke up with a smile on his face for he knew the day was his. And he got out from the right side of the bed. Which was good as there was a wall on the left side of the bed. Valentine brushed his teeth as he always did on this day. Valentine had a hearty breakfast and it was very good. Valentine set out for work but his boss called to say he could take the day off as it was his day.

So Valentine hung around doing nothing for a while. That was a bit boring but then Valentine had a call from a film producer who said he was going to make a movie called “My name is Valentine” and the lead role would go to him. To Valentine, that is, not the producer. It was Valentine’s day after all, not the producer’s ! The locality hooligan said at first that he’d ban it – the film that is ,not the locality , though the hooligan wouldn’t have minded banning the locality too– but then the hooligan changed his mind as it was Valentine’s day after all.

Valentine received several cards that said Happy You Day. These Valentine replied with very gracious Thank You And The Same To Me notes . Valentine made a few investments and they instantly produced very happy returns. All this made Valentine very happy. They’d have made you very happy too if only you’d taken a few investment tips from Valentine. Don’t you just wish you’d taken a few investment tips from Valentine ?

All in all Valentine had a splendid day. At the end of it , Valentine penned down a couple of poems – on the occasion of Valentine’s day of course. They went like this :

Pledging My Love

Many are my jokes to have you all in stitches

Vast is the treasure trove of all my riches.

But sweet my love ! I shall give them all up for thee

On the 31st day of February.

Hey Tude

My very dear Gertrude

I gave you all my lovitude

Gave you very wide latitude

But the face you pull is longitude

And you mouth these platitudes

You show zero gratitude

And now you give me attitude ?!

Now , don't you just wish you'd made a hasty exit right after those investment tips ?

Constant Craving

“Why must news channels be so jarringly loud all the time?” I said to my neighbor Charlie.

This after a news station promo had shot out like a shrieking banshee from my rickety TV set when I switched it on , causing equal damage to both ear and equanimity.

“Ah, it’s the constant craving”, said Charlie. “Constant craving for audiences on the part of the media and for excitement on the part of the audiences. Keeping it loud works well for both. .”

Charlie is so used to the Important-If-It’s-Loud scheme of things that he turns up the volume to max whenever there are no big news stories on. This apparently helps make believe that there are terrifically big news stories on. Charlie has relented at times only upon Mrs. Charlie taking exception and that only at the fear of a lost plate of roast beef. (In Charlie’s newspaper , that would be a headline tragedy of epic proportion. Those familiar will know that Charlie and hot dinner are no frosty strangers.)

“Now all this talk of sub-par news media ? I don’t buy that. On the contrary I think what we have at hand is very balanced news coverage. Take global warming. For three months they covered nothing else. And now all we hear about is how the half the world is all snowed in.”

He’s a strange one , my neighbor Charlie , apt to blow hot and cold about things from time to time but with a guy like that ,you sure don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

It’s towards loud.

Bespokely,Holistically and Synergestically Yours

" Martha , i spot synergies in our core affinities .we should leverage these going forward and arrive at a seamless integration. i bring a best of breed , customer-centric philosophy to the table. this bespoke solution is a win-win. pls advise ASAP.Regards.John."

"John , this is no low hanging fruit so pls manage expectations. Your proposition is not scalable. Declining is a strategic imperative. Mike is the only talent that gets any traction with me ; in fact i think he's quite cutting edge. i'm eyeing a possible M&A there. Best.Martha"

"Martha , your evaluation was not holistic and missed the big picture. i urge an out-of-the box approach. pls consider a paradigm shift. John."

"John , my analysis is robust.here's some value-added insight : it's a no. Martha."

" Bitch !"

" Jerk ! "

Any colour you like

“White ! ” cried Charlie bubbly as they come.

I was quick to point out my utter lack of interest in the colour of his vest.

That clearly deflated poor Charlie’s enthusiasm . “ It’s so unfair !”, said Charlie “ The colour thing women were onto on Facebook. What about us men , what about something similar for us , like raising awareness of , er,..oh,lung cancer, for Pete’s Sake ! ” . It could hardly have been for , say , Paulina’s sake. That's Charlie’s thing,consistency.

I managed to calm him down. Tweeting him an update or a joke usually does it and it did now. Charlie lightened up a bit. Gradually he let on what was really troubling him. He brandished a copy of The Economist . It had to do with personal hygiene in 17th century Europe. “The thing is” , said Charlie , face clouding over “the missus has had the same colour posted on her FB update over three days running now. I’ve questioned her about it but she’s in denial mode and just refuses to make a clean breast of things ”. And i know that Charlie - who loves his dinner as dearly as the next man, perhaps even a morsel more - has to keep things closer to his chest than he'd like.

I assured Charlie that worse things have been known to happen. Such as having sheep thrown at you while you were having a bad day at Mafia Wars. I thought I saw Charlie nod in agreement but of course it might only have been somebody giving him a poke.

Acres Wild

My neighbour Charlie wants Facebook banned. Turns out his wife first spent all her time talking to her plants at FarmVille - which meant cold take outs for dinner - and then tried watering them. Charlie has to buy a new laptop now. He is livid. I clucked my sympathies. Money didn't grow on trees after all, i offered.

"Money ?" says Charlie "It's not money , it's time. Shopping for a new laptop will eat into my Facebook time"

FarmVille is growing in spades. Sure , many don't dig it. They think it's a soil on their screens. Others bemoan the spawning of a generation of vegetables.As somebody put it , it's only food for nought. Irritation not irrigation is how somebody else summed it up. Mad Plough disease , another critic screamed. FarmVille has certainly produced fertile ground for such debates.

On the other side are the die hards merrily throwing sheep at those debates. Just harvest it , goes their POV , make hay while the power light shines. It may be a cash cow for the developers to milk , they say , but everybody gets their just desserts. After all , it's not everywhere that you can read what you sow.

FarmVille is out of the barn now and into the highest echelons of both government and business decision making. Up next are parliamentary debates on FarmVille subsidies and suicide cases in developing countries with acute power shortages which prevent people from accessing FV.

And a Silicon Valley start up is close to releasing a technology that enables users to convert power from their PC cables into water to irrigate their FarmVille acreage. The Venture Capital guys have already put the team pictures into their My Best Friends collage on Facebook.

All a bit too late in the day for Charlie of course...

15 minute minutes , or less

My neighbour Charlie came around this morning to say his five year old son Chris had accidentally got into a space shuttle that had taken off and was now in orbit.

"The TV folks are covering Mrs. Nelson's missing knitting needles right now,Charlie - and besides people're pretty much going off Reality TV ,you know.", I said.

"Oh well, in that case , i'd better run along and get the little blighter off the attic. Goodness knows what a mess he must have made up there." , replied Charlie.

He looked worried ; and well he would.Five year olds left to their own devices are not especially known for leaving any of them intact.

A Nobel Green-Planet Thought (or - Peaced Off ?)

Nikkelendime Airways believes using aircraft toilets is green-unfriendly and energy-inefficient. So it asks passengers to dispose of unfinished business at the airport before boarding. Things went a bit far yesterday - though flight NK 123 evidently didn't,mind - when said flight reversed direction midway to fly back to the departure airport because somebody wanted to go to the bathroom. Must have really pissed off the passengers -especially as the pilot then took an extra 30 minutes to update his FB status.

Meanwhile , my neighbour Charlie says he is aiming for a Nobel Prize. I asked him what his specialisation was. He's a Fortune Cookie whiz ,to be sure, but I wasn't aware that's a Nobel field yet.

"I'll be taking a shot at the Peace." he says.

Contact your least popular news blog for advance autographs , shall be happy to oblige.

Love - and, of course , peace.

Inglourious Callcenterd

This phone conversation happened a few months ago.

ME : " Hello , I'd like to book an appointment with Dr. X for next Sunday"

LADY 1 : " Sir , would you like an afternoon or a morning slot ?"

ME : "Is afternoon available?"

LADY 1 : " No, sir."

Then this a couple of days later.

ME : "Um , I have an appointment with Dr.X for next Sunday......(etc) Can i reschedule it to Wednesday ?"

LADY 2 : " Wednesday...OK sir. Would you like a morning or afternoon slot ?"

ME : " Afternoon'd be great. Is that available ?"

LADY 2 : "No,sir"

Obviously , customer is king , customer choice queen and reading out from your Customer Service training manual algorithm an absolute God. Sweet !

And then this one happened today :

ME : "Hello, I'd like to book two tickets for Inglourious Basterds , 9PM , at X "

LADY 3 : ".......(details , etc)....Sir ,can i have your last name ? "

(Five minutes getting that it in)

LADY 3 : "And your first name , sir"

ME : " Bhaskar. That's B-H-A-S..."

LADY 3 (cuts in) : " B-H-A-S-T-E-R-D , sir ?"

We covered the bit about reading out from the movie list as being an absolute God ? Well, she did need to sound a whole lot brighter for me to attribute anything more to it than that. Or at least so i hope !

Stranger and more inglourious things can happen on a phone call than Herr Furher melting into his swastika in a cinema hall fire.

Status Quo Vadis (or - What's On Your Mind ?)

Sorry , i can't write this post. As i have to go update my Facebook status to say i can't write this post.

Love Minus Zero / No Limit (When not on song)

You've probably not heard of Ennuienthusiasts.That's a cutting edge- Sociology term for people who are so put out by the pace and excitement of our modern day life that they actively pursue boredom. It's a phenomenon that social scientists are uncovering across an entire gamut of activities.

Its cricketing manifestation is radical. It started off at first with a marked preference for low scoring games . It has since evolved into a demand for no scoring games. The winner is whoever loses fewer wickets . For example :

--> Team A : 0/0 after 50 overs - beat - Team B : 0/1 after 50 overs

Ennuienthusiasts can't seem to get enough of sitting through an entire day of cricket watching no runs being scored off 100 overs . Things went into extremes last week at a club game when a bowler had the misfortune of bowling a no ball. Which caused a run to get scored.

Rioting almost ensued.

Almost . But not quite , of course - as that would have meant excitement.

PS : as for the word "Ennuienthusiast", I wouldn't look it up in a dictionary. Not even a cutting edge -Sociology one.

The Woodstock look

Quite.

You can almost see the lice crawling out , right ?

Un-Ready Teddy

At my age you'd rightly be expected to have encountered enough bouts of boredom to be able to stifle a yawn or two when another one comes along. You've been there , yawned that , got the T-shirt, come out this side of alive.

Children's books though are a whole other ballpark. When the wee beloved hauls across her latest favourite for you to read out while you're trying to take in a half decent show on TV you don't break out in spontaneous dance.

You notice the sheer bulk of it. I mean 80 pages ? So you try opening it at page 65.

Fat chance. Wee beloved wants it from the begining.

Which is Goosey Gander , Georgie Porgie , Rock-A-Bye Baby and Tom The Piper's Son. These followed by sustained endurance thereafter of Teddy's Birthday Party , Teddy's Favourites , Teddy's ABC and a seven-page epic entitled Teddy Goes Flying that has you feeling like you're on an especially turbulent flight you decide you've earned the right to skip a dozen or so pages.

Dream on Daddy.

And know that there's no missing Uncle Sailor Bill . Nor anything else in that book.

You have nothing against either reading or reading aloud. Quite the contrary. What pains is the sheer absence of traction, grip , hook.

I mean take Teddy's Favourites. Hardly the stuff you've been dying to know all your life. Or Teddy's ABC - edifying but don't bet on it creating an intellectual breakthough to solve the planet's problems (of which Kid Lit by the way is no small component). Granted Hey Diddle Diddle has a certain surreal appeal but only to a point. The delight of knowing the dish ran away with the spoon begins to wear thin by around the nineteenth reading.

While these pieces can be read away within a reasonable couple of minutes each , things like Teddy Goes Flying are a far tougher kettle of fish. They are long. They are meant to be stories.

Huh ?

Teddy sees a bird and thinks how nice it would be to fly. He tries all manner of ways and can't. His Uncle Bill then gives him a ride in a helicopter. Teddy decides that is exciting enough.

The end.

Roald Dahl it ain't.

Nor an Agatha Christie whodunnit. Nor anything that dwells on the human condition. Why , not even on the bear condition. As I recall it , Milan Kundera in his Art Of The Novel wrote of the five or six stages in which a character or plot progressively develops. You wouldn't find half of one in Uncle Sailor Bill. And one shudders to think what E.M. Forster - author of Aspects Of The Novel (of which sad to say I couldn't understand a word) - would make of The Three Bears.

So there you go. It's not easy.

One thing it has to be said that does link your wee beloved's fav. books to some well known works of high art - like , say , Joyce's Ulysses or William Burrough's Naked Lunch - is the effect it has of decimating any trace of wakefulness within an inch of your life. No doubt the competent author of Grumpy Bertie Bear is in the reckoning for a Nobel and good luck to her.

The difference though is that with Ulysses or Naked Lunch you have a choice not to partake.

With wee beloved's treasure trove of Kid Lit , it's Fat Chance.

So Pigs Have Wings ?

Last time it was Bird Flu which , come to think of it , isn't such a big deal .


I mean , birds will be birds and they will fly.


And a good thing too ; probably wouldn't have got Norwegian Wood if they didn't.


But swines ?

The (brief) Return Of Sherlock Holmes

"Mr Buchanan's theory is not without its merits" , remarked Sherlock Holmes

It was a cold and gloomy afternoon as we sat in our Baker Street apartment watching the IPL on television.

" And what , Holmes , do you base that opinion on ?" , I asked

This took him by no small surprise.

" Well ", he ventured with some hesitation, "Er , ..that is to say ..., it is based on certain logical conclusions that I have arrived at by the usual deductive process of reasoning that you are aware , dear Watson, I hold much store by and indeed - and this at the risk of sounding immodest -have employed profitably in the past ."

Readers of my more recent chronicles would perhaps be aware of my growing dismay with this man's failings of late. Holmes' unquestionably great powers have been on the wane. What has made it pitiable is his attempts to obfuscate the fact with utterly unconvincing bluster , this Buchanan comment not least amidst many.

" Come come Holmes , this is hardly becoming of you " , i rebuked.

"But my dear Watson ! When it came to such aspects as the toss , for instance , multiple captains would spread the risks associated with the luck of any one individual over several and thereby average , as it were , the probabilities. For another , players would have more captains to look up to. Not to mention the fans' delight at having more than one captain to take photographs with and have signed autographs from. And what ,pray, of press conferences where multiple voices would provide a Surround Sound effect in keeping with the times which , incidentally, the IPL is all about. But just think of the commercial opportunities from that alone , man ! I fear , my good Watson , your thinking is much too rooted in the 19th century".

More obscurities that I was not prepared to suffer.

" And I take it you have deduced the outcome of the next Knight Riders game ?" , I asked with a strong tinge of sarcasm , almost scorn.

Holmes' pat reply - it made me to happy to note - had such a ring of confident authority as I had not heard in a considerable length of time : " They will lose."

Quit Pro Quo

We shall smoke on the beaches, we shall smoke on the landing grounds, we shall smoke in the fields and in the streets, we shall smoke in the hills; we shall never surrender!

So Churchill didn’t say that – cigar in his mouth possibly? – but that’s pretty much how it has been for a while.

Not good.

This piece I read suggested that you begin with an analysis of the habit and jot down on a clean sheet of paper the reasons why you smoke.

Why do you smoke? What is a smoke ?

It’s an escape, a seven centimeter-long vacation several times a day. It’s trading off the weight of the world for five mg. of a chemical with bad karma and worse PR. It’s a stimulant of thought, a reasoning aid, a sense maker, a sort out-er.

It’s an agreeable act of thoughtlessness.

It’s a dare. It’s the thrill of doing drugs without the hassle. It’s a natural compulsion to self destruct. It’s a liberating surrender to addiction, to irrationality, to Big Tobacco, to petty worries, to Yes We Can’t. It’s high style at less than two dollars a buy. It’s a boost of confidence, a paper rocket to launch into ash-oblivion whenever you’re bored. It’s a satellite to orbit the world of meals, beverages and coffee breaks. It’s a personality prop, a playmate for your neurons, a function for your fingers. It’s like breathing. You don’t jot down reasons why. You don’t quit breathing. You have to quit smoking.

Or you quit breathing.

Uphill this task.

Excuse me while I light another.

That’s the trouble with cynicism: always seeing the cigarette half unsmoked.