keepin' it real

i switched on the tv last night expecting to see Hillary recite paeans to the democratic donkey and barack. for a moment i was startled to see jerry springer introducing a group called the dc cowboys. as 7 men started to square dance, i thought to myself, god what has the DNC turned into. my shock subsided as i realised it was the tuesday night episode of 'america's got talent'. this is what comes out of having a garishly decorated stage with multiple large LCDs at a political convention.

reality shows are the fake swiss army knives of television. they fill in the empty void of the idiot box during summer, help americans learn how voting works (you start by flipping a cell phone open) and are incredibly dull . from choosing the chef most capable of cursing at his/her employees while garnishing foie gras to dogs that show character in the face of a trumpeting elephant, everything goes on today's reality shows. here are some ideas that show producers haven't thought of yet. they will get to these eventually (they have buildings full of rooms full of monkeys on typewriters). i am just speeding it up a bit

big fish little phelps
different shark species are trained by olympic coaches to perform synchronized swimming routines. the final winner gets to swim with michael phelps and compete for 4 of the 8 olympic golds. no fish will be hurt during the filming of this show. we cant give the same guarantee about phelps though. this will be judged each week by guo jingjing, manju bhargavi and eight cephalopod judges from oceans other than the ones that the sharks came from to avoid partiality.

this is real! really!
reality show producers compete with each other to produce the ultimate reality show. each week they will get a set of people on whom they will film a reality show and find out more inventive ways for at&t/verizon to suck people dry ..er.. maximize revenues. season 1 has clowns competing with iphone app programmers who are fighting with folks who think they can beat jim kramer..literally. notice how i cleverly left out a set of reality show producers thus avoiding the infinite loop it would have caused. this one is judged by the geico gecko and the aflac duck. who better to judge a reality show than a talking lizard and a duck that does not know how to quack.

3 AM
we are already watching this one. it is aired once every 4 years and lasts about 2 years. it starts with the donkey team and elephant team steadily eliminating one candidate after another till only the richest is left on either side. however this is the least real of all the contests. most of it is scripted to avoid a slight chance that one of the candidates utters the truth. variable such as a vulnerable diebold voting machine and random chads on will be available to add suspense to the proceedings. the show producers are seriously considering introducing cell phone voting as they found that american idol gets more votes than the population of the united states. the winner gets an alarm clock that will wake them up at 3 AM and a lifetime supply of rechargeable batteries. you can be the judge of this one.

an easy route to heaven

just so i make things clear, this post has nothing to do with religion. rather it has a lot to do with that philosophical place in everyone's mind that is referred to as heaven. it means different things to different people and i found mine relatively easily. all that was required was an awesome visit to india and then returning with suitcases loaded with sweets. i am getting ahead of myself

here then is the proper route to heaven. the ingredients you need are as follows ( somewhere between the title and now, the route became a recipe but the destination er.. objective remains the same)

1 superduper trip to india (getting married while there is optional..if you ask me i would like to get married on every trip)
1 suitcase full of adhirasam ( preferably the ones that were made as part of the wedding, or grand sweets at adyar makes equally good ones...murukku, mixture optional)
1 additional suitcase with backup adhirasam (some moron at the airline may reroute your adhirasam suitcase to San Diego, though the barcode clearly scanned for ORD)
1 microwaveable plate
1 microwave
1 fridge - 2 teaspoons ( i kid, i kid. everyone knows u need at least 3)

first frantically open the suitcase that has been delayed by about 48 hours to make sure your adhirasam packets are safe and then carefully, lest they crumble, transfer those ghee-fogged packets straight to the freezer. then, (this is very crucial) sleep well and lose the jet lag. now you are ready.

transfer one adhirasam carefully to microwaveable plate.if u dont have one, feel free to use the microwave's rotating plate. but please clean it first. more crucial steps follow so pay attention. once in microwave, set the timer to 30 seconds or lesser BUT dont let it stay there for the entire 30 seconds. if you did that you just created a veritable hockey puck/discus . rather after every five seconds, remove the plate and gently ( i didnt know how else to make this sound decent) assess the ahdirasam for softness. when sufficiently soft, remove plate from microwave. wait a few minutes, then when you cant take it anymore, break a piece of it and place it on your tongue. there. you just reached heaven.

monumental visage

kamal could've added just one more element and boosted dasavatharam to another level. instead of the introductory ilakkiya tamil sorpozhivu he engages in at that horrendous rendering of a stadium, he could've requested aby baby to do a voiceover. i'm guessing amitabh's tamil would fit between junoon tamil and khalifulla's ridiculous diction. so more unintentional fun for the tamil folks and instant love from our hindi speaking brethren. even better, kamal should've thought of a 11th role as amitabh but then the title wouldn't have fit.

apparently surveys done a few years back revealed that aby baby had the highest recall among desis. thus his face or voice is on nearly everything you use on a daily basis. he is on for some hair oil, pens, chocolate, suits, tvs, banks and so on. soon a stage will come when a kid watches sholay and will remark to his appa that jai looks strangely familiar to the thatha who was hawking bubble gum in the ad break that just ended. i think the indian govt should declare him a protected monument and levy fees from anyone wishing to use him (100 times more for foreign companies). in return, the ASI would give him therapy to keep his voice in shape, shave and shower him about once in 10 years and if needed conduct reconstructive plastic surgery. the simplest alternative is to invent cloning. that makes 2 folks i am recommending for cloning - 1 specializes in jooming, the other in selling.

kamal goes decimal

what does one do when in india for an extremely short amount of time, that too for a wedding - spend 3 hours at a multiplex watching sivaji's competition turn up a year late at the finish line and still manage to finish second. kamal spent 2 years making dasavathaaram, about 1.5 of which i am sure were spent putting his masks and wigs on and then removing them.

kamal plays god/fate of his own story as he unleashes several threads (10 to be exact) and then weaves them back into a small yet somewhat complete ladies handkerchief (what else can you weave with 10 threads). the magic of kamal is such that he manages to completely disappear in some of those threads letting the character take over the screen. balram naidu for one was outstanding. khalifulla on the other hand looked (and sounded) like one of the masked sivajis from uthama puthiran. with most of the characters donning prosthetics, kamal's vivid expressions were missed quite a bit. body language and voice only go a certain distance.

the story is indeed novel for a tamil flick and kamal does a fine job walking the fence between the mass and the elite. keywords (chaos theory anyone) are sprinkled to pique the interest of the elite while the mass is entertained with some good fight sequences and for a while by an ex-cia agent / part time stripper/full time killer who in addition to fluent tamil also knows the way to heaven. seeing her talk tamil was like watching jackie chan speak tamil in the afternoon star vijay movies (for those who havent seen police story in tamil, it is very similar to shriya speaking tamil in sivaji).both sections of the crowd are however bound to hate asin who screamed like a banshee whenever she opened her mouth. the music was a huge letdown. kamal could've at least courted illayaraja for some tunes.

all in all, a jolly ride. one of the two main aims i had when coming to chennai is now fulfilled :)

post flight postcard post

international flights have their share of contradictions. 6 foot 2 economy class passengers (me) are expected to squeeze into seat spaces measured in cubic inches, yet the petite air hostesses struggle to reach up and close overhead bins on those humongous 777s. i requested and got the emergency row seating on each leg. it's next to the toilet and usually a lot of screaming kids but it cant be beat for the comfort. put in an excellent on-demand entertainment system and i am all set. 3.75 movies were taken off my to-see list.

back in madras for my wedding, i am enjoying this trip more than any in the past. the weather is awesome, bhelpuri from shree mithai and mango duet from aavin complement it very well. my body composition is slowly changing from tofu and black coffee to paneer and filter coffee.

i'm finished

after nearly 3 years during which my senthamizh vocabulary grew by a smidgen, i am done with 'ponniyin selvan' [links to a review of the english version]. i rushed through the first 3 parts like an express train heading towards central but like the very same train hitting the maze of tracks at basin bridge, i slowed to a crawl for the last 2 parts. a small part of reading this was for gimmick ("hey look i am reading a tamil book"). but i started reading it because it is a historical retelling set in my own tamilnadu and is told in a language i love. a language that i am still not fluent enough to write in..hence this post in the step-mom tongue.

my next tamil book is a collection of crime stories by sujata. with any luck, you can expect a post in the summer of 2010

level-o-levelu

so what have i been up to while not writing this blog..reading this one mostly:

Doing Jalsa and Showing Jilpa

go read it and then bookmark it..you will get a full serving of laughter and more. enough said

also when not writing this blog, i turned my attention to what i call my deficient photography skill and attempted to improve on it some more over the past couple of months. the rather flat improvement curve has been sufficiently captured by a somewhat random posting of photos on my flickr account (yup the one i paid for and then regretted on this very blog). once again, click below.

oh and the 1st level and the 2nd levelu in the title refer to the jilpaman's blog..in case you mistook my photos to be level

(insert clever post title here)

many movies over many weekends

bheema - awesome movie..NOT.they could've utilized the budget to produce a 100 PSAs to carry the message that one has to die by the sword (or unmarked pistol) if one lives by it.instead the insane torture that the movie inflicts is enough to push the most peaceful human being into violence.and i am not even going into the display of man-love that vikram and prakash raj put on. it was probably conceived by the director as a different kind of relationship but it came across quite awkwardly. you still want the story? vikram admires prakash raj, a honest rowdy..then everyone dies. i consider this the most wasteful 2.5 to 3 hours of my life..not counting the 2.5 i'd already spent on kaalai - a flick i shall not review.

happy days - was the wasabi to wash out any remaining thought of bheema. and it worked rather well. the movie is a rather simple story about college days..engg college to be more specific. friendship, love and a hot lecturer (female) make up the main themes as is the norm with college flicks. the lack of old comedians playing college students was surprisingly refreshing..i half expected ali or brahmanandam or charlie to pop up.i sincerely hope it is not remade into tamil with jayam ravi, charlie,murali and dhamu

billa - the new version is a 2.5 hour ad for suiting, shirting and gel shoe implants. the characters walk the walk for roughly 1.5 hours of the movie with a cool techno inspired tune from YSR. then they all stop on cue and pout/glare at the camera. one cant question the story since it's a remake but several questions remained unanswered - how many sun glasses were broken during shooting? how many were not returned by the actors?how does nayantara run in 8 inch heels?why does she climb up and walk on a car clad in stretchy latex while walking on the street and standing still were viable options?why does billa swim with a cell phone in one hand?did he take the battery out and dry the cell phone before he receives the call from a fellow drug smuggler? who gave prabhu those chocolate bars? does he really need them? can we stop walking, ranjith just pulled a muscle back there and is searching for iodex? i'm just too tired to stop and explain the story..it's not worth it. i'm walking away from this movie.

the departed partly rescued me during the week only for me to laugh myself to tears over jodha akbar.those two will come up later..like i said i am too tired.

oh one more thing. if you were filling overwhelmed by the number of videos lined up on youtube, add to your overwhelmence by heading over to hulu.com. a few old movies in full length with minimal ads and lots of SNL sketches including one of my old favs:

Ran (1985)

armies have lined up on hills for a long time to gain a strategic advantage. while having the high ground helped tactically, spreading one's forces across a line also gave an impression of a much larger army. none of the great commanders however saw their own armies in cinemascope. kurosawa makes this sight and several other war scenes look so glorious in 'Ran' that soldiers would've stood by and applauded if not for the advancing foes. the movie is a visually delightful adaptation of King Lear.

a warlord father turns over the reigns of his fiefdom to his 3 sons only to find out that he is no longer wanted by 2 of them and the one that he kicked out before is the one who really loves him. the characters of the warlord and his ruthless daughter-in-law who manipulates his sons are the ones that stand out. the outstanding acting of these 2 make you want to empathize with them. kurosawa also employs a jester like character who through an occasional song and dance routine helps the viewer spell out what they may be thinking. weirdly, this kind of reinforcing was somewhat reassuring to me and made me appreciate the movie some more. and i havent even started on the visual yet. the scenes depicting the siege of a castle give the CGI battles of LOTR a run for their money. the man had an uncanny ability to come up with a perfect visual accompaniment to really good storylines. the wikipedia article[wikipedia.org] for this films even has a storyboard that shows the planning that went into the castle siege scenes.

the war scenes instantly reminded me of sundari kannal from thalapathi[youtube.com]. as many on the net point out, mani was sufficiently inspired by kurosawa(and i think this particular movie) to picturise rajni as a samurai warrior on horseback but i have to wonder which of his muses made him cast shobana as a desi village belle. this chronological and geographical mismatch is however rescued by illayaraja's brilliance - soulful love ballad one moment war drums the next.

p.s 'ran' in japanese apparently means chaos..'ranam' in tamil means something similar..the languages probably share a root somewhere..

mughals in melody & triplicane

jodhaa akbar's music is out and it's good. google's servers will be busy for a while trying to keep up with word geeks looking up urdu words and their meanings. this post was going to be about how movies based on mughals have a couple of things in common - melodious music and a tragic storyline. turns out that out of the 3 films that i thought were mughal melodramas, only one was (mughal-e-azam). the other 2 i stereotyped purely based on their urdu names (pakeezah and umrao jaan). besides i havent seen any of them and i would never pretend to know more than i do (heh heh). so i guess all i am saying is that i thought i had a post but never mind. i'll go back to listening to jodhaa akbar.this one is clearly mughal and has some melodious numbers but is it also going to be tragic?

i am still listening to the sounds rather than the words but these piqued my interest enough to be looked up.. from 'in lamhon ke daaman' pakeezah means pure, kalma means word and was likened to om in one website or the 'word' as christians know it. at least a couple of the words in 'khwaja mere khwaja' can be referenced back to other rahman numbers - khalbali from rdb and rehanuma (apparently meaning guide) from udhaya - listen to 'thiruvallikeni rani'. (a nice song despite sukhwinder's attempt to once again mangle thiruvallikeni's fair name..apparently it was once thiru-alli-keni..due to a pond(keni) filled with lillies (alli) and became thiruvallikeni before the british with a slightly better tamil pronunciation than sukhwinder changed it to triplicane. wonder how rahman's hindi sounds to seasoned northy ears..doesnt sound all that bad to me.)

groovy, baby!

for the next few days i will not be able to shake your hand. neither will i be able to write properly and this post is being dictated to apple's dictation software. the reason for all this is screwdriverosis, the main and probably only symptom of victims of an IKEA trip. millions of carpenters all over the world are cursing ingvar kamprad for the DIY* madness that he has unleashed on the rest of the world while millions of hapless individuals happily succumb to this not so fatal disease in their hunt for bargains

we had a sofa set that had a black wooden frame and some sort of plastic intertwined over the frame forming holes of a multilateral shape. (btw we just stepped back about 20 years if those 2 'had's didnt give it away). we also had a dining table with a sun mica top made to look like wood. needless to say my family had no part in assembling either. when the plastic intertwinings gave way and started sagging after i had jumped on it a few hundred times, an intertwiner would be called up. he would take a seat in our hall and when plied with enough tea (and cash) restrung them to tensile strengths capable of bearing a jumping 8 year old. we later moved on, to a bigger flat and to a better sofa (ie one with no plastic). along the way we acquired a shoe rack that was so nicely crafted in expensive wood that it became a partial dresser and a solid but shoerack-like shoe rack that was wide enough for 4.67 shoes. both created under the influence of my mom's tea by a carpenter and his seemingly more talented apprentice. expert worksmen that they were, they even created a bookshelf with the remaining wood and added it to my room where it housed some computer books that i never read and a super-power memory book.

but none of these wooden marvels had ever had my fingers laid on them except after they were varnished and lacquered and in most cases also dried.

when i finally finished last night, the screw count was close to 2 scores. on the flip side my house is now home to pieces of furniture with exotic european names. in one corner vika curry and vika amon coupled to become the desk that holds my powerbook-monitor-keyboard-mouse-wires entity while flarke posed with grace befitting any tv stand, despite having to bear a non-lcd, non-hd, non-cabled TV. i've done what every budget-minded person does in these united states - put together a veritable menagerie of ikea furniture and have done so without making a single cup of tea. if i were more intelligent, i would start a deIKEAting institute where for a price, recent ikea victims can choose any piece of furniture and unscrew and dismantle to their heart's content. however no such thing exists. so, for a while, don't mind it if i refuse to shake hands next time we meet. it's nothing personal.

*DIY is short for Do It Yourself. in case you've always had others do your things for you or are living under a rock
^ IKEA stands for Ingvar Kamprad(the founder) Elmataryd(farm where he grew up) Agunnaryd (his home village)..or so says wikipedia..no wonder he shortened it, would've cost a lot of money for a super bowl commercial otherwise.
^ Here is an interesting quote from a woman who names the furniture:
"For bathrooms, it's Norwegian lakes. Kitchens are boys, and bedrooms are girls. For beds, it's Swedish cities. There's a lady who sits there and comes up with new names, making sure there isn't a name that means something really ugly in another language. But it doesn't always work. We gave a bed a name that means 'good lay' in German." if you have the time read the complete guardian article

what's up, doc?

after 16 years i realized that mahesh bhatt was an inspired man. dil hai ki manta nahin was not a movie i particularly enjoyed watching but watch i did, for whatever aamir khan touched those days was gold..actually it pretty much is today as well. i watched movies of his that no one else probably did - awwal number, love love love, daulat ki jung to name a few. and so it was that dil hai ki manta nahin was watched. i dont remember much of the movie..there is a watermelon song as my sister put it. and a kind of funny (then) hitchhiking scene where aamir tries and fails to stop a car while pooja succeeds with a display of her (shapely?) leg.

fast forward to a couple of nights back and i'm watching the exact scene unfold in black and white as claudette colbert stops a car while clark gable and his defeated thumb watch in amazement. this was in 'it happened one night'. the scene appears halfway..so,yes, it did not strike me till then that 'dil hai..; was a hindi speaking evil twin of 'it..'. i should've guessed as much. isnt he the same one who gave us criminal, which despite an alluring manisha, was still a straight lift from fugitive? someone please review his other movies and let me know where else i've been fooled.

a bit of trivia i gleaned from the wiki is that the hitchhiking scene, where gable chews a carrot while explaining the nuances of asking for a ride, is also one which inspired friz freleng to create a carrot chewing bunny named bugs...amazing , eh?, the amount of mutual inspiration film makers share.

a flickr of speech

i've never paid for someone to keep my stuff except during the early days of grad school.

back then a few hundred golts and fellow tamils invaded a university en masse and caused the "senior" grad students hosting us a lot of grief. our moms, deeming it necessary, had sent along a microcosm of india in 2 humongous bags fittingly called india pottis. so to add to the 10 or so parasites er.. new students being hosted in each one bedroom apt, several mini indias encroached the corners,sides and middle portions of all the rooms. when, one day, the hosts found that the bathroom had been rendered inaccessible by the great wall of india pottis, they decided to fight back. they rented some storage for us to keep them till we found apartments of our own. my 2 tamilnadus were in the first batch that were sent there. i thought that would be the last time i paid to store my belongings. how wrong was i?

an india suitcase at least has some substance to it (actually there is a lot of substance..ask the cranes that are used to lift them). what i am paying for now is a bunch of pixels..they are colorful and all that but they weigh next to nothing and in most cases carry not a single packet of grand sweets mixture or adhirasam. yet here i am touting their existence so i can get a few more hits and justify the $24.95 fee. damn you flickr!

here is what i said about this before and here is a sample that also doubles as a rather large hyperlink.

is it just me

or does timbaland's 'apologize'[youtube.com] sound a bit like new york nagaram[youtube.com]?

i've been wrong before though..

Letter to the Sculptor

dear madame tussaud,

kindly apologize our rude interruption of your wax modeling session. as you must already know, you recently held a vote to choose the next bollywood star to enter your museum and ended up choosing that poor boy salman. we dont know if you wanted to save the expense of making a wax shirt or you mistakenly thought his doll would make a good pair to that ash doll( you are reading an old edition of filmfare..ash is married to a banana tree, happily). our concern, as true tamizh fans, is that you are missing the big picture.

one of the greatest stars of our time is spending his life in relative reality while he is actually the one worthy of standing unmoved in your great hall. no we are not talking about the south indian superstar you might've also heard about. we're referring to the other superhero par super, the man who can freeze ice itself..the one and only captain.

we kindly demand that you start creating a wax figure for him. with two guns. like this. we realize that you might not have the requisite amount of wax to model him..such is his girthness and greatness. not to worry though. we solemnly pledge that from now on every true tamizh fan of the captain's will donate all the candles from his/her birthday cake so you will have a never ending supply of wax for the rest of your figurines.

please do the needful.now please go back to your waxing.

sincerely,
true tamizh fans of captain

p.s we just realized captain is a man of action..immobilizing him is a rather difficult task..we thought we'd warn you.

Azhagiya Tamizh Magan

ATM is out. Valayapatti and Nee Marilyn Monroe are my current favs. rahman remixing Ponmagal Vandhal was a shocker. For a moment people turned back the tape cover to ensure it was not a product from Yuvan or Mani Sharma. However I see that aslam is rapping for him in this song. At least I hope its him. Wonder if Lakshminarasimha Vijaya Rajagopala Seshadri Sharma Rajesh Raman fell out of favor.

valayapatti gets props due to the ragam mentions. ok ok i have no idea how to spell ragam but i'm still vaguely interested if only to act knowledgeable if i ever visit chennai during dec. kelaamal sounds a wee bit like 'aagaya vennilavae' from arangetra velai [youtube.com]. (the video deserves its own post, especially to describe prabhu's break dancing in the second half of the song).

going by the songs alone, looks like vijay is yet again a student. however i sincerely hope that the 'ella pugazhum' song is one that he sings to his kid as he sends him off to the first day of lkg classes. one can still dream.

gravity sucks (i obey inverse square laws)

after trying for about an hour to get a screenshot that

a. didn't reveal completely what i was doing but did enough to pique your interest
b. seemed to somehow show that i was frightened,excited or had an adrenalin rush
c. made me look good

i gave up

c is out of the question..skydiving is not makeup or plastic surgery. b didn't really happen..ok maybe i was excited just before and for a brief 2 seconds after i was pushed out of the plane.a is not possible either - human nature dictates that i brag about this so i don't really care about hiding things and piquing interests.

so you get the pic below..the all revealing, rather frightening image of me falling down with another guy strapped to my back. a minute later he saved me from going splat by opening the chute strapped to his back. the float down was a complete let down after the first couple of seconds of free fall. kind of like the scooter rides from childhood when you were made to stand in front.

so by all means go for a jump. it's kind of expensive. like many other things its hype exceeds reality and for god's sake remember to keep your mouth closed or you'll get an image like this. the video - i plan to sell it to parents as a scare aid to be used instead of the bogeyman or boochandi as the case may be.



p.s you dont know it but you just had a narrow escape.i was going to start this by explaining how i once fell from a mango tree sans parachute.but the screenshot extraction process frustrated the nostalgia out of me.

saroja saamaan nikalo

i run..now and then. a mile or so. my usual schedule is a long run over the weekend followed by 2 or more weeks of intense whining that my ankle / calf muscle / stomach / (insert muscle name here) has been sprained / inflamed / ooh..aah..ouched. but i've come to enjoy it so much that i go out and try it again as soon as i feel better. the person mainly responsible for this is my runner roomie and now he has started blogging on his runs and more here:

http://stridewrite.wordpress.com

written in a conversational style, it is quite informative (unlike this one) and is updated whenever he runs..which is like every day or so. (you can say that about my blog as well. the update frequency that is). so mosey over and give it a shot.

oh and the title - in my opinion, the best running song. it is always the last in my playlist so i gain an additional boost for the last 4 minutes 15 seconds of my 5 minute runs.

the fruits of labor (day)

3 day weekends rock..4 day work weeks are better

naan avan illai , the new version, is a horrible way to waste time. the lead is played by jeeva who is a con artist who tricks women, marries them and escapes with their jewels. my take - his insipid dialog delivery wouldn't have fooled any crow into dropping its vadai, let alone tricking 5 women. the story unravels through court scenes in which, lest you forget, they make him repeat the film's name about 276 times. finally the judge decides to let him go and some random woman kills him. the director tries hard to con everyone into thinking it was a good movie by (literally) filling the screen with distracting visuals of namitha. i heard quite a few fell for it and managed to make this a hit. if you are going to watch it, go directly to the last 3rd of the movie and save yourself some time.

urchagam [raaga.com] sees ranjith barot back after a long time. none of the numbers reach the heights of minnal oru kodi from VIP but they are all pretty good. i liked veyil and naram pookal. the other soundtrack that's been getting some play time is kannamoochi yenada [musicindiaonline.com] by yuvan. typical yuvan sans the rap piece and a complete koothu piece. of 5 songs, sanjaram is a nice number. isnt there something similar to proofreading for lyrics? in sanjaram madhushree makes pani (snow) sound like paani(thats hindi for water in case you scored 68 in your 10th board hindi exam) and thangi(stay) sound like thaangi(support/bear). my guess is that it was caused due to the transliteration into english. does anyone know how that process works - getting north indian singers to sing in tamil that is? do they get the lyrics in english or hindi or do they just make them up as they go?

finally i read next by michael crichton. its rather similar to state of fear. this time he takes up genomics. through a thin storyline, various technical papers and articles he tries to teach us about the science and ethics of genetic science. as a story its not that gripping but he does discuss some rather pertinent points about gene therapy, cloning and the likes. while it reads like one long opinion piece, its still quite absorbing. the fact that it is very relevant at this point in time is obvious. just this morning bbc had this article.

i think i said finally by mistake..there is still ooh la la la that i've started watching thanks to current. if u havent heard of it, it is a pretty decent band search tv program that is being telecast on sun tv. they are streaming it for free and legally at oohlalala.in (click on the Videos section). some of the original compositions were awesome and so were some of the remixes. take a look if you have the time.

that's it..i'm done..u can go back to work or whatever else u were upto. thanks for listening

a word of action

ever noticed how superheroes have adjectives and adverbs built into their names. like the costume they wear, it makes them different from their alter egos. making them appear more powerful while at the same time describing what they can do so there is no way you are caught unawares. when spiderman swings down to rescue you, you can be rest assured the ride is going to be kind of sticky and will involve some swinging.

now swing the cameras southside..i mean south of india side. captain. one word that encompasses all the adjectives,adverbs, nouns, pronouns and prepositions in any language, mainly tamil. its mostly a verb though cause when said aloud each syllable screams action. and no silly costume for captain. the occasional colored contact lenses and a police uniform maybe but he doesn't need a cape. there are no masks or trickery involved either. he is just captain. did you notice there is no indication of what his powers are? that's cause he can do everything. one would need the entire dictionary to describe his special powers.

with so much going for him, there is still no comic book...when amateurs like peter parker naturalize themselves as pavitr prabhakar, why this discrimination? someone start a publishing company and start one for him already.i guarantee it will be a collectible even before the first page is printed.

p.s
for those unfortunate enough to have never known the captain click here [youtube.com]

past posts on this topic: Accentually Speaking