Being a Dick

Sometimes having a dick and being a dick means the same.

Anyone who says 'Doesn't it always mean the same' is a big hairy rug
munching lesbian.
--
<

Tabasco

Tabasco goes with everything.
I love to add tabasco to everything.

In the morning I add a dash of Tabasco to the glass of juice at breakfast.
Surprisingly tasty!

All my apple slices get a dash of tabasco too!

Vanilla ice cream with tabasco - now that's a nobel award winning idea
-well at least a Pulitzer -if not a MTV Viewers choice award.

I never knew Tabasco goes with everything.

I bet you didn't either!

That's right folks ...Tabasco Goes With Everything!



What !?

Mc Ilhenny Co. won't give me a lifetime supply of Tabasco Sauce?

Just because I'm not a celebrity?

But what about the free tagline I've created for them?

No...I didn't steal it from any brand.

Wait! You guys haven't even heard the jingle...wait...picture
this,three frogs sitting on a rock in a lake.

They go 'Ta-bas-co,Ta-bas-co' get it?

You know they don't go ribbit,ribbit like all other frogs...

Hey! Who are those big guys with night sticks,and why are they wearing
uniforms...hey are they security???

Hey!Why are they lifting me up? Gosh Guys It wasn't that good...I just
want my lifetime supply of Tabasco Sauce...


Hey! Hey! You guys are going the wrong way...that's the exit...

Hey! Hey! Whoaaa!

Tabasco! Tabasco Goes with everything!

(I dream of Jeannie.Not really.These days I have dreams about ads.This
was an ad for tabasco.Well sort of a viral video for Youtube.I also
dreamed up a generic ad for either a cell phone or a cell phone
service provider, but the hitch is that it will work only in
hindi.Damn these dreams.I just want salma hayek topless in my dreams
once, not some stupid ads that I can make money on!)
--
<

Spring cleaning in december

I've begun spring cleaning in december.
I'm in brazil, about 80 miles from Rio.
Since we are in the southern hemisphere, the seasons are reversed.
We are having a very hot and sweaty christmas here.

What better time or place to begin your spring cleaning.

Out goes the old so that the new can come in.

I only post stuff that I've already let go.
These issues that I've posted no longer bother me.

But as I looked through some old stuff, I found that I hadn't let go
of some old things and somehow forgotten them altogether without
letting them go.

Which is why I searched my hard disk for all my old stuff.
I labeled these as old posts and after a cursory glance let them go.
I posted them, because it does not matter anymore.


This is my way of letting go of the past.
This is my way of inviting new thoughts and ideas for the coming new year.

I make no new year resolutions, apart from that of letting go of the
past and inviting the new.

This is my spring cleaning in december.

Merry Xmas and A Happy New Year.
(But if you are not feeling particularly merry,happy or gay, and wish
to be morose, then that's fine with me too.
So I wish you a brooding xmas and a glowering new year)

P.s. Our Xmas party is still going strong.
People have roasted a suckling pig and they have butchered many
christmas carols.
Filipinos are either good singers or good drunks, but not both.
(Strangely neither am I)
Karaoke and beer do not mix.
I repeat.
Karaoke and beer do not mix.
Oh, and you cannot sing like Mariah Carey because you are a balding
dude on the wrong side of forty.Come to your senses man!

--
<

Complimentary

Its true that men don't get as many compliments as women.
Its also true that as a result most of us are hungry and will take any
compliment that comes our way.

I remember once all us guys were together, waiting in line for our
annual medical check up.
You know, the one where we allow a complete stranger to cup our balls
and fondle them while we are made to cough.
(Hey, it's better than than someone poking a speculum inside me)

My friend who just got out of the checkup was looking unusually
happy.Happy in a 'grinnig-from-ear to ear' kind of happy.
Why was he so happy?
Hmm...?
We wondered if he got a prostate examination along with other vaguely
homoerotic medical procedures.
Spread your cheeks wide and relax your anus.This will not hurt a bit.I promise.
Relax it damn you!

We found out that after the doctor had cupped him, and ahem...checked
for...what do doctors feel for when they fondle with our balzacs
anyway?
Hernia, yeah right!(Balzac=ball sac.Get it ?)

Anyways, I don't know what the doctor found out, but as he was
checking out my friends family jewels, the doctor told him casually
that he should have been a

pornstar and not a seaman.

Is that borderline creepy or what ?

Hey Doc...Hey Doc...Leggo of me.Those are not meant to be squeezed
like that.Hey! Are you a nutcracker? Hey! Ow...Owww! Yes...I'm a
pornstar...thank you

doctor...owwww! Leggo of me....Nurse! HELP!


Anyways, the doctor did not molest this guy.He only paid him a compliment.
A compliment about his manhood, of all the things!

That too from a guy who squeezes nuts all day for a living.
He must compare sizes all day.

Hung like a mule.
Pencildick.
Weiner.
Hung like a pornstar.
Baldheaded Eagle.
Mr.Shortypants.

Dr.Nutcracker knows what he is talking about.

We men don't get too many compliments in general, so sometimes we will
take whatever we get.Even if it from a sixty year old white haired guy
who just cupped

you and made vague sexual innuendo.

My friend was so flattered that he went on telling everyone about the
doctor's remark.
Later that night, we heard him singing 'I'm a Pornstar'

The rest of us could only cringe and hope for an examination that was
less awkward.
(Spread your cheeks wide.It's just a finger, two at the most.You won't
feel a thing.I promise.
Brrr!)

Women are particularly stingy about complimenting guys.

The art of giving compliments is essential for every human being who
wants to be socially savvy.
Compliments are a much better social lubricant than alcohol.
I take pride in myself for inventing never before heard compliments.If
you listen to them carefully, they are not even compliments!

That being said, there is a fine line between complimenting and
kissing ass and brown-nosing.
(Have you ever wondered why american slang is so anally obsessed?)

It's true that imitation is the best form of flattery , but it is also
equally true that sycophancy is the worst form of flattery.
The art of giving compliments has to be learnt.
A few useful pointers:
1)It has to be unique.
2)It has to be a custom fit.
3)It must present a never before seen side of the complimentee.
4)As much as possible the compliment must also reflect you.

I get compliments from older women...

A lot of compliments.

Weird and creepy compliments.

A bunch of older aunts and assorted grandmas will at times viciously
compliment me to the point of extreme embarrassment.
One nonagenarian with hunchback once started squeezing me in
inappropriate places saying that I was the most manly thing she had
ever seen.
Yikes! Down Grandma...Down! You had your menopause four decades ago!

Another said my hairy arms were very sexy, all the while trying to rip
them off my shoulders.(she was extremely strong her her age and
gender)

Once a middle aged lady kept following me and then finally came up to
me and said that I had royal feet.
Royal Feet !
What the EFF Granny? (My feet are burnt badly and permanently scarred)

The only other type of females that overtly compliment me are
foriegners...I mean, when I visit another country, thats where women
openly compliment me, as

you've read before.
I have a theory for that.
When women know that they will never see you again, they tend to be
more aggressive and bold.I'm a foreigner.I usually don't tell them I'm
a sailor, but I

think they assume that I'm either a sailor or a tourist.So this might
be the last time they'll ever see me.
So what the heck! Lets tell the guy what he wants to hear.

But here's the kicker- It's men who compliment me the most.Even though
I don't want them to.

In china, the defacto english greeting for me was"You're so
handsome...How many girlfriends do you have?",
I used to replied,'Nihao! I have four and counting'

That's why I asked her once 'tell me, what is it that you like about me?
I wanted to know.
She didn't like the way I dressed(it's too loud),or the way I
talked(its too fast), or the way I walked(it's too straight),or the
way I ate(it's too much)...
So what DID she like about me?
I wanted to know.

She had no answer!
I persisted.

She then began babbling about how much her friend liked me and thought
that I was very smart...
I cut her off.
I don't care what your friend thinks of me.I've known that she's had a
crush on me ever since she first saw me.But I want to know what you
think.

She said,and I quote,'I dont want to tell you,It might just go to your head'.

Strangely mom and dad subscribed to the same fact.
Well son...It was good, but I know you can do better next time.

Bah!

Well son...It was good, but your friend did better than you.

BAH!

Even now, mom cannot give a direct compliment.

She said,'People keep telling me how smart you are.There must be some
truth to it.'

BAH!

Hey women! Learn how to compliment a man for a change.You've been
getting lazy listening to all the compliments.
Appeal to his masculine vanity a bit.Let his head float in the skies a
bit.You can drag him down later.
We men are vain creatures too you know.

Learn from the old ladies- and tone it down about 50%, and you'll be good.

Mom finally gave me a compliment.A true genuine, heartfelt one.
'I have to tell you.It's great that you have continued playing your
guitar all these years, even though you're so bad at it'

Gee! Thanks Ma!


--
<

Toothless Aggression (some old posts that I don't remember posting)

'Mom, I've got some good news and some Bad news'
"good news first...I'm coming home soon ma!'

'WHY, WHAT's WRONG WITH YOU?"

'Well ma, I fell down today and I'm missing a few teef!'

'CRAP!"

Isn't it cool when you can still make your mom swear?


'It's ok ma, look at it this way.

On my way to the hospital, I found out that the chief engineer on the
ship next to us had died.

Me?

I don't have a single scratch on me.Not a drop of blood, except for
two fractured incisors'

'I saw the body being carried off the boat.It was the same boat in
which I was supposed to go back to my ship.
The body was kept in the back.

I sat in the front, right next to the driver smoking his stinking
Gudang Garam ciggies.

Phew! They stink! They can be used to exorcise the undead.

So just in case the ghost of the dead chief engineer hovered around,
it would never come near me!'


Oh man! I was never afraid of dentists until now.

All my life, I never went to a bloody dentist because my dad was
stricter than Willy Wonka's dad.
As a result, I never got a single cavity, and since my family did not
believe in orthodontics, I never corrected my bunny teeth.(what's up
doc?)

SO, I didn't fear dentists.

Some of my best friends are dentists!

I don't remember much of my fall, or how it happened.

I only remember waking up from a dream which I could not remember,
only to realize that I was lying face down on the deck(that's floor to
you landlubbers) for god knows how long, and getting up with a
throbbing pain in my face.

There was a hole in my soul,
filled with an unnecessary hyperbole,
I had to use the word thole
just to rhyme this paragraph in whole

Actually, my tongue felt an emptiness, a void as it licked my upper lips.

And then I went...

Holy Shit, My Teef are broken!

I woke up, and searched for my broken tooth.Found it lying calmly besides me.
You bastard!How dare you secede?

As soon as I went ashore,I was sent to the doctor.The doctor called
his assistant, a burqa clad twenty-something girl.
They both pointed at me and began laughing.
My driver laughed with them.

I wanted to punch them because I didn't understand a word they said.

Then they took me to a dentist.

A thirty-something lady with two cute-as-a-button daughters frolicking
around in her office.

She made me lie down, and poked my gums with a sharp needle.

Needles.
I can handle needles.
I ain't no sissy.

Then came the pliers and the drill machine that went
'Whirrrrrrrrrrrrr' and a sledgehammer.

I can handle needles.
I ain't no pussy.
But c'mon, a sledgehammer?

The plier was on my tooth.
I stiffened at the sound of bones crunching.
I was holding onto the chair with a white-knuckled death grip.

'Meester!,

That's what she says, I swear to god,'Meester, you need to relax,meester'

'Hola, senorita, me no hablo espanol!'

She had exceptionally strong forearms.
It comes with the job.

The pliers clamped on the teeth once again.
She planted her foot next to the chair for support and braced herself.
With a herculean cry, she pulled out the tooth.

Owww-Arrghh-crap!

She messed it up and only a part of the tooth came out.

Out came the bigger pliers.
And the drill that went'whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr'
The sledgehammer was just for effect.

She let a warrior princess cry and 'CRAAACK!'I could hear my tooth
being separated from my jaw, and from my soul.

'Now meester,it ees over, no need to sheever, see!'

She handed me a mirror, and as I looked at it and something died inside.

I looked like a bloodythirsty vampire with blood dripping from my
teeth and an empty void that said'What Me Worry?'

I went outside and the driver tells me that the boat has been delayed.
It is carrying the body of the chief engineer.

So he asked me if I want to have a good time.

Sure! Why not?

Where's the nearest cyber cafe?


No No No! No have internet! Small City ! Only computers!No internet.

But have girls!
You want?
They very special?

How are they special? Do they have teeth in their boxes...
Do they have 4 titties? 2 kittys ?

No No No! Very special!
No have open place...Very Private, I call, she come.

Ah! Indonesia! I've even been solicited by a ten year old boy.
I felt pity and disgust at the same time for the boy.

I've also learned that moralistic replies are not comprehended.
A pimp trying to hustle will always try to bully you.

Try this reply sometime...

'I don't do those things.
I don't feel it is right.
It's not safe either.
Besides, she should pay me for the sex,
and not the other way around!'

...and you'll get laughed out of this solar system.

'Ok my friend, you no like girls? We get you boys for you, ok?'

'Hey, hey hey, I like girls, not boys...'

'So, you take this girl...no problem! Very nice, fresh...make you happy happy!'

'Arrgh...I don't do those things...'

'No problem, if you no like girls, I get you a boy.He special also!'


'Arrghh!'

So, I have my own solution...

I say

'I'm too drunk!And Little willie wants to sleep'

or say

'No have money my friend'


or say

'Fuck Off'(This reply should be used sparingly.You don't want them to
attack you)

SO I told him that I didn't do those kind of things.(for my
satisfaction), and told him that I was badly injured and wouldn't be
able to get it up, and he stopped pestering me.

I waited for the boat.It was delayed because it was carrying the
body.Once the body came, I went on the boat and went back to my ship.





--
<

Green Frog (Some old stuff that never got posted)

I had a green plastic frog once.
It was very realistic, with warts and green bumpy skin and a smooth
white underbelly among other things.
I used to squeeze it hard and it would go 'RIBBIT!'
(and not bud-weis-er)

It was my favourite toy because I could throw it on girls and make
them pee in their undies.
I used to do that a lot.

I don't have that frog anymore.Mom gave it away after an
over-caffienated spring cleaning binge session that lasted for nearly
two weeks.

I was distraught for a few days, and mom got me a new frog.
The new one was no where as good as the old one.Suddenly no one was
scared of my frog attacks.They all smelled a cheap imitation a mile
away.

I missed my old frog.

I missed it so much that soon I began using the image of my lost frog
in a self-referential manner.
In essence I became a frog to compensate for my loss.
But it was my little secret that I had become an amphibian.

I was also a frog because it took a princess to change me.
I am no prince charming, but no longer a frog either.

We both were in the process of transformation- a gradual metamorphosis
and in the process of changing ourselves, we changed each other in
more ways than anyone could have ever imagined.

I was a frog because it took a princess to change who I was.
But that's where the story ended.
But I wish I would be a prince charming some day.

Come closer children, and listen to me very carefully.
None of my fairy tales will ever end with 'and they lived happily ever after'.
I do not want to purport a myth or plant lies in your tender unripened
minds about everlasting happiness.Sad as it is, for most mere mortals
happiness is a fleeting sensation.
Take Grief and sorrow...now those can last, but happiness itself has a
curious way in which it evaporates.

Happiness-fleeting happiness
In it's essence
is effervescent evanescence

Kiddies,write that down somewhere.


I was a frog because it took a princess to change who I was.But that's
where the story ended.
No the story did not end.
The story teller decided to call the quits, and took a very long coffee break.

I hate to admit it but sometimes I have visions.
As a rational minded sceptic, I always dismiss them as Hallucinations.
Years ago, I knew about my future.
I would be a storyteller.
I saw myself, old and wrinkled, and telling stories that healed
people.That was my mission.
Thats what I was supposed to do in my Busman's vacation.

But I always dismissed these visions for what they were.
Hallucinations.

I knew I'd disappoint my parents when I woke up one night with a
strange dream of me chasing an owl which was wearing hornrimmed
glasses.It was injured and could not fly.But try as I may to catch it,
it would hop away and flop at some distance. Eventually I crushed it
to death by mistake.
To me that dream meant I would be an academic failure, and a major
disappointment to all the dreams and aspirations of my father.

I would not become what he had meant for me to become.I would never
become an engineer like him.

Another dream, a waking dream nonetheless, told me of my first love.In
that dream, I saw that when she had to choose between me and her
ambitions, she chose the latter.

Strangely , I also know about the girl I was going to marry, or how
many children I'd have.(see how I've already put the future in the
past tense)

Bloody hallucinations.

Sorry.

They can be so tantalisingly detailed.

When I met her for the first time,there was no surprise, there was no
recognition, there was no love...but there was acceptance.
It was as if we both knew even before we met.
It came as a surprize to no one else either.For everybody,our marriage
was the most natural thing that could have happened.
It was as if everybody knew even before they knew.

Hallucinations...I've deeply studied altered states of mind and
methods of inducing them , so that I could understand my own
visions,my hallucinations.

But I did not believe in them.They were only hallucinations.And as
such , carried no merit, but then realised their potency when I saw
again what I had seen before.
They were all coming true.

I was tempted to call it deja-vu.
Yes , I did call it Deja-vu and hallucinations and other things,
because I was a rational man and rational men did not have visions of
the future.


And I was a frog because it took a princess to change who I was.But
that's where the story ended.
No the story did not end.
It diverged.
Just as it happened before, and I was seeing again all that I had seen before.
It was inevitable.
The wheels creaked and events aligned themselves underneath and paved
the way for the Juggernaut.That was how the Juggernaut Universe rolled
forward.
Once the wheels were upon these events, the sheer weight of the
universe would imprint these events on the fabric of space and time.
The imprinting of events was permanent and irreversible.
The only things that could be changed were inference and illation, for
they were made of the very same stuff that dreams and nightmares were
made of and thus were wispy and malleable.

Kiddies,little children, I see some sleepy eyes amongst you, so let me finish.
Let me tell my story before the sandman claims you.

Occasionally you might hear people talk about my strangeness, of how I
could talk to animals or hold my breath for a long time or how in the
past I have narrowly missed death from all strange things not limited
to falling coconuts and/or speeding trucks.
There is also that idiot who keeps telling people that I had once left
my body and traveled outside to meet him.
Disregard all of them.
Especially that idiot.

I'm just a man.

An ordinary man.
I'm just a storyteller, because that was what I was meant to be.

I'm no superman,rockstar or a godman/guru.

People will try to mythologize me, but reject all myths.
I'm just an ordinary man.

Someday, people might tell you that I was a frog before.
That's true.
I was a frog because it took a princess to change me.
I'll be forever indebted to her for doing so.
I'll be always in love with her for doing so.

But that's where the story ended.
At least for now.

The future is still ahead of us.


--
<

Elegy (some old posts)

Death ends a life, but it does not end a
relationship, which struggles on in the
survivor's mind towards some resolution
which it may never find.
— Robert Anderson
I Never Sang for My Father

Call a man great if he can make you realize that you already know what
he is talking about, and that you've always known it all along.

Human life is full of experiences vastly different if you look at them
minutely through a microscope , but viewed from a telescope , from
afar,from an alien spaceship it looks mundanely similar.

You may be a doctor, I may be an accountant,you may be a singer, I may
be a janitor but our journey is etched with the same important
landmarks...that is we all are born one day through sheer luck and
fortuity (fortuity ?) (our birth is virtually impossible to be
replicated under normal circumstances, given the millions of
spermatazoa vying furiously to win the death-race to reach the egg and
fertilize it !), and then after a passage of time, be it minutes,hours
,days or decades , we die.
What happens in between may or may not be remembered by others ,
depending on the gravity of your deeds.

Tapping in to the vast reserve of human experiences is therefore
deceptively easy and exceedingly difficult as it looks.Great writers
have the ability to resonate with your deepest beliefs (or core
beliefs) and make it seem personal, like they were saying it with you,
for you.

As an old man, my teacher once told me..."I'm not here to teach
you.I'm only here to make you realize , to make you know that you
already know."
But he was critically wrong in a way.
No one can make you realize anything.
Realization must come from within...

I know... I understand that you've heard this aphorism hundreds of
times and believe that it is very cliched , therefore does not evoke
any response out from you , but believe me , you'll be jumping around
shouting 'Eureka !' when the moment of 'Satori' , the japanese term of
enlightenment falls upon you.

The trick is then to tap into an universal experience, or rather an
universal emotion and exploit it in any way you can, and milk it dry
.(emotions in my opinion are empty names to the multitude of complex
chemical physical and psychological action-reaction bombs exploding
within,and for example calling fear as fear itself would be
frustratingly inadequate when the first fear is because you saw a
cockroach and the second fear is because you are five feet away from a
hungry tiger about to pounce upon you )

And believe me, enlightenment is not atonement.It does not free you
from anything, but rather makes everything else meaningless, and thus
dealing with life becomes less of a hassle.
Buddha was lucky.
If we are to believe in his story,even though he had to wait for years
, enlightenment came to him as a whole package...but you and I are not
so divine and therefore we'll have to be content with our 'Mini
Satoris' and our once in a blue moon instalments of 'Aha ! 'moments
that make life worth living for another day.

As I've somewhere said before , we are never ready for what we are
about to face , until the moment we face it.All the mental
preparation, all the vicarious experiences will fall short of the
truth.
Then why as humans , do we seek out such experiences ? Is it because
as humans all we have is one life , and all the decisons we make , the
paths we take cannot be taken again ? Is it because whatever paths we
once choose , we cannot at a later stage erase those paths and
consequences out completely.

I believe that we implicitly know of our false illusion of immortality.

We know that we , or rather the 'I' or the 'self' does not persist
through eternity.
Whatever may be eternal(you may call it god for simplicity) , but
with the last expiration of air through the lungs, with the shutting
off of all vital organs , we know that the 'I' or our individuality
ceases to exist.

If 'I' don't exist ,
Then what does?
If 'I' don't exist
then why bother?
If 'I' don't exist ,
Then Who cares?

(This philosophy , I found out very recently is called
extinctivism,whose proponents believe that the soul is a figment of
imagination created by the mind that essentially is incapable of
imagining the lack of being)

So we choose to enrich ourselves with a lifetime of experiences in our
fields of interest and we become collecters of experiences.
But the tendency I've seen in people is that they stop at the stage of
collecting ,for they do not know how to proceed further.

It's funny to know that...Everybody's lost.

I've seen spiritual shoppers with hundreds of books in their
bookshelves but lacking even an iota of spirituality in their
souls.I've seen car enthusiasts who are forever stuck with their
magazines but without the slightest hint on how to enjoy their own
cars.

I couldn't read the last chapter of Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable
Lighteness of Being" in one go.
To me it seems like he saved his best punches for the last.
'Karenin's Smile' is devastatingly beautiful.Each line is masterfully
crafted to evoke the deepest emotions.
All the emotions associated with loss, I've found are more powerful
than the ones associated with any other emotion. Lust or jealousy or
even anger does not wield so much power as grief and Happiness is
frustratingly fleeting.

The grief of loss is truly an universal emotion , far more poweful for
it persists through ghosts and illusions , for it resonates and
infects every particle around it.

Buddha asked the distraught mother of the stillborn child to get him a
fistful of sesame (or some other insignificant thing, I don't
remember) from any house that has not experienced death and thereby
teaches her that loss is inherent , and the attached pain is but a
normal and valid reaction.

Am I obsessed with death?
I've seen fear in the eyes of the bravest when it came to facing death.
And it has made me curious, but I know its a one-way trip.

I almost lost my Moti.So I couldn't read 'Karenin's Smile' in one go.
I had to make brief and frequent stops to reimagine and relive my own
experience.Thus Milan Kundera had succeeded in making the chapter a
shared experience.
Someday I'd be like to write like him , only better.
Till then I have to be content at clutching and flailing and failing
to grasp the straws of truth.


(When I wrote this moti was still alive.)

--
<

Come to my cabin(some old posts)

"Hey !Later On , just come to my cabin Ok ?"

Was that a question or a statement ? I wondered , and also hoped that
he was not gay.

It's just one of my fears..Sure... go ahead judge me, go
ahead condemn me,go ahead call me a bigot but I admit it... I'm a bit
homophobic.Its not the thought that I can turn some man on that
bothers me.What bothers me is my fear that he will act on it.

(The very thought that some man can be turned on by me is not a
problem , but the afterthought that he might act on it that gives me
the willie-nillies.)

My friend gave me some advice when he found out that I was joining the sea.
He said , and I quote "Do whatever you want,but don't indulge in gaygiri !
Gaygiri is like dadagiri , but much worse!"


My friend was archaic and orthodox, and outmoded just like Indian
Penal Code which categorizes homosexuality with bestiality and
incest.(but no longer...being gay is legal in india now)
I think.

But my fears are dispelled when it turns out that he's
not gay.None of the seamen I've met so far are !
They display their heterosexuality blatantly with huge collections of
rock music and car and bike wallpapers and dirty-filthy jokes and
porn.
Tons of porn !
I mean c'mon now, what is a guy supposed to do out at sea when he is lonely?

A female friend once asked me if I had a girlfriend in
every port.

It seems almost all women would like to know your current relationship
status wheteher they are interested in you or not.

"Yes", I said," and you are number 37 !"

"No !", she was quick to retort, "I'm not your girlfriend", and then
tried to ramble on about the purity of platonic friendships...
I stopped her short...
I too want to be just friends...
She was too fat, and too stupid.
Deadly combination.

We shippys really don't have a girlfriend in every port we visit,
despite what you seem to believe.There isn't enough time and in most
ports to meet people and usually the other people we meet are men,
because sadly shipping is a male-dominated industry.
Right from the master of the vessel to the longshoreman on the dock ,
its all men.

Huge , hairy ,hirsute men...Yawn !

(the occasional mermaid we see out at sea is more of an old maid and
nothing like your dirty disney fantasies.Yeah, I know you wish Ariel
lost her conch shell bra once in a while, You PERVERT!)

Really though, some of these guys have obscene
amounts of porn !(pun intended!)-they boast of porn stashes in
gigabytes of harddisk space,
(porn should be aptly confined to harddisks and not floppies, if you
know what I mean !)

There one guy in our ship really takes the cake (and the
stripper hidden in it too ! bada-bing !) by possesing almost a
terabyte of porn.

C'mon, if there was ever a porn famine and they needed
emergency supplies of porn like say in Africa- hey ! He's your man !
But in many countries possession of porn is illegal and a punishable
criminal offence and sadly we visit many of these countries on a
regular basis.

So , our porno king has taken sufficient safety measures.His porn is
safely hidden behind a 128 bit bit encryption passkey which is a 24
character alphanumeric password which he changes on a weekly basis.(He
has read Dan Brown's Digital Fortress twice)This folder is also
innocuosly named "Theoretical aspects of Chromatic Spectrography of
Photosynthesis" and placed with other boring stuff like his scanned
documents and slideshows of his parents vacations.This is one dude who
really values his porn !

But really , its not the size of your porno collection , but how you use it .
I'm just saying that because I only have a very small sized collection :(

Yeah ! my porn stash is small.I admit it.
But it is functional, has variety and taste !(if there is any such
thing for porn).

Last time in australia, I was searching for MAD
magazine(Something I'm still mad about reading).Disappointingly it
was kept in the porno section of the book store.I then realised
something...I would never buy porn from a bookstore.

I'd never buy it because of all the guilt and shame associated with it
(also because tons of smut is freely available on the internet !)
I mean , I'd never be able to go to the counter and
look in the eye of a sixty year old grandma who is billing my copies
of 'Nasty College Nymphos' or my latest copy of "Dirty College
Sluts'...Its too embarassing !

I digress to the point where I should be flogged...so let's get back.

So I instinctively know why someone is calling me to his cabin.It's
just male bonding...but I remain wary.

Everyone has their own coping mechanisms.I've found that most
electrical officers bond with cadets, while 2nd officers go to the gym
and pump some iron.Masters and chief engineers watch movies together,
while third officers sit with chief officers and play bridge or rummy.


So , I know most of the time why some one's calling me to his cabin.He
has a new Russel Peters video on his laptop, or maybe he wants to
impart some wisdom on stocks and debentures or the art of managing
long distance relationships while living thousands of miles way on a
floating tin can.
But most of the times he's calling you because he wants some genuine
human interaction, one that he misses with the people that he loves
and likes.

Even though you are a poor substitute for what he misses, he tries to
make do with you because that's all he can get for the time
being.Although a habitual loner ,all I can do is oblige for the time
being.

Every ship has something new to teach me.My first ship taught me
diplomacy, my second ship taught me hard work, the third ship taught
me despair,the fourth ship taught me perseverence,my fifth ship taught
me self-understanding,and on my sixth ship , I realize that I'm going
to learn all about male bonding,whether I like it or not !

So although a habitual loner ,all I can do is oblige for the time
being.Hey ! , how bad can it be ?
Afterall It's Russel Peters...Somebody's gonna get hurt real baaaad !

Somebody !

Yuletide and dead pigs

Do you know how much eggs 21 guys consume in a month?
55 Doz
Pork?
13 Kg
Chicken?
70 Kg
How do I know this?
Its a part of my job description.

I've always dreamed of being an inveterate traveller.
It's in my blood to travel.
But what stops me?
Well, for one I'm a vegetarian.

But I've always been a vegetarian...
Well, not always.

I was a thin kid once upon a time.
So thin that the doctors pronounced that I was suffering from Malnutrition.
This diagnosis is a slap on the face of any self respecting
mother.Malnutrition alluded either poverty or bad parenting.In this
case , it hinted the latter.
But mom simply could not change my eating habits...I was too picky,
too finicky,too choosy...
I would not eat anything spicy or hot.All my food had to be mixed with
copius amounts of curd.I didn't eat salt or sugar.I would readily eat
fruits and vegetables but not touch fried food...
Relatives told mom that with I would soon become a monk if I kept
eating this spartan bland diet.

Mom took it as a challenge.
She would prove the others wrong.She was not a bad mother.So I would
have to put on weight no matter what.
She was not a bad mother.
She was not.
She's the best mother I've ever had , I tell her jokingly...the only
mother I've ever had , I add later as an afterthought.

As a drastic measure she decided on feeding me non-vegetarian food
which she thought was the quickest way to help me put on weight.

As I said before...I've always been a vegetarian.The only reason is
because the rest of my family is vegetarian too.In different
circumstances , I might not have been a vegetarian.
A lot of people get offensive when I tell them I'm a vegetarian.They
tru to disprove it, and then simply accuse me of lying to their face.
So let me reiterate:When I tell people that I'm vegetarian, I'm not
posturing moral superiority.
I'm not telling people that I'm better than them.
Sure, Brahmins are vegetarians, and once upon a time they boasted
their stringent practices as a mark of superiority , but those days
are long gone.
I'm a global citizen.I claim no caste,creed or religion.I claim no
superiority , moral or otherwise.

I've always dreamed of being an inveterate traveller.
It's in my blood to travel.
I can't stay in put in any one place for too long.The heart grows
restless,for it has not found.
I concur with Basho, when he says
'Every day is a journey,
and the journey itself is home'

It's a lonely heart,
on a lonely journey
so why do my eyes
still search for you ?

Musafir hoon yaaron
na ghar hai , na tikhana
mujhe chalte jaana hain
bas...chalte jaana

But what stops me ?
My block is my vegetarianism.
Imagine asking for a vegetarian balut...or vegetarian caviar or
anything vegetarian in most foriegn countries.
They shook their heads in Korea, laughed at me in argentina,and in
china they thought I wanted to eat meat uncooked and raw.They simply
did not understand the concept of vegetarianism!
But my vegetarianism is a mental block, a phobia to be precise.

For I can't do it.
Can't eat that stuff.

I've gone hungry so many times, because I could find nothing suitable to eat.
I can never taste the local specialities of the places that I visit.


But what is a phobia?

A phobia can be thought of as the paradigm case of psychological limitation.

A person who has a phobia made a decision,unconsciously,under stress,
sometime earlier in their life in the face ofoverwhelming stimuli.
They succeeded in doing something that humans often have a hard time
doing. They succeeded in one-trial learning.
Every time that set of stimuli comes up again later in their life,they
make exactly the same response. It's a remarkable achievement.
You change over the years, and despite external contextual changes,you
are still able to maintain that stimulus-response arc.
The thing that makes phobias sort of interesting is the fact that the
responses are so consistent.

So once again...
I was a thin kid once upon a time,and mom sent me to other people and
asked them to feed me small amounts of chicken and fish and mutton.She
hoped that I would like eating this and gradually eat more and put on
some weight.

It almost worked.

And then one day I followed dad around in his workplace.
He is an engineer.
A chief engineer ever since I can remember, and he had gone into a
meat locker in the refrigeration room for his monthly inspection.

I tagged along only to witness the most horrifying sight a 5 year old can see.

The meat locker was cold and frosty, and in it were hung thousands of
dead and mutilated animal carcasses.The air was cold and it smelled
like death.On various hooks , many dismembered limbs and headless
corpses hung with all the blood drained out and deathly pale.
I wouldn't speak for almost a day.

I'm sure that my five year old imagination had amplified much of what
it had seen on that day, but it left an indelible mark on the psyche.

I refused all dead animals after that day.

I was a vegetarian once again.
I think mom was secretly relieved.

Now , I feel like it is a mental block,an inner constraint that I have
to overcome.

But phobias are not that easily cured.You need to go slow.

I've decided to start small.
I've started with eating unfertilized chicken embryos, or as you
people call them ,Eggs..I can eat eggs without retching or heaving.
In fact I'm eating four everyday.People say four is too much.I like
them fried with the sunny side up.

With this I've realized that most of our limitations are self imposed,
or family or culture imposed.

Now that christmas is upon us, I've been force fed sweet xmas carols
everyday.Yuletide hangs heavily like thick fog curtains.People are
grinning ear to ear and are being nicer these days.

On xmas party we had Roast Suckling.
I offended some people by calling it as 'Dead Pig'.

It's not dead pig , they tried to explain ...it's a roasted suckling
pig...I failed to understand the semantic differences and rephrased my
original statement with the new inclusion 'Roasted Dead Baby Pig',
which infuriated them further.



Suckling pig-Dead Baby Pig...Same difference.

I say To-mah-toh,you say to-may-to...it's the same bloody difference.


I can tolerate ufertilized chicken embryos.
SO maybe with time, I too will learn to eat dead animals.

Till then, I will remain a Hungry Traveller
A Bhooka Musafir.

I have nothing against non-vegetarians or non-vegetarian food itself.
What I'm really bothered by is the cruelty and pain inflicted upon
helpless animals.
Really, Do you need to boil that lobster alive? Do you really need to
dip a live chicken in superheated water to remove its feathers?Do you
really need the blood to flow and drain from a live animal for the
meat to be halal? Are these the only ways to go about doing things?
If so, then I'm glad to be a vegetarian.



p.s. A note to all hindus:
Holy Cows make tasty hamburgers.

I know...Bad Joke.


--
<

Stand Up(Some Old Posts)

This was originally titled 'Why I don't deserve a Girlfriend', and was
a doctoral thesis on the role of testosterone in turning a man into
domestic swine, and why all women are goddesses and must be treated
that way.

This is an original one:

'He's a well read guy you know.Yesterday he had the alphabet soup and
today he's shitting shakespeare!'

I know my new year's resolution was to get me a girlfriend, but my
internal beliefs are in conflict with that desire.
I truly believe that 'I don't deserve a girlfriend', but I carry a
pack of condoms everywhere.
Hey mom, never ever open my backpack...especially the secret
compartment which also has some mad-money and some weed.
"Why?"
Just don't ma, just don't.

I thought I'd be a cool dude to be carrying around condoms.
You know , if I get lucky or something...

Aunt May once told me, 'with great luck, come greater
responsibilities.So peter, always play safe'
That was way before the radioactive spider incident.

With great luck, comes great responsibility.

I mean , you can get lucky, but also unlucky at the same time.
You've either caught something, or suddenly married to the mother of your child!
Man! That's one responsibility that's worth taking your time to decide.

I bought a ten pack.Dotted for pleasure.Extra large(they make great
water balloons).
Ten pack? That's gonna last me a lifetime.

In my world,funny dudes never get the chicks to hop in the sack.Chicks
like funny dudes because they make them laugh, but they'd rather shag
that starving musician who can touch their heart and make them cry.

(My honest attempt at Stand Up comedy)
--
<

Fact and Fiction

The great divide between fact and fiction is for young men, who still
have to deal with life. For the old, the
distinction is academic. What does it matter what is true and what is
false, what real and what
invented? In our mind's eye all of it, the half-lies and the truths,
are one continuum of personal history.

-Clive Barker

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Fact and Fiction
----------------

If you haven’t already noticed, all my books are about a lonely person
looking for some way to connect with other people.
In a way, that is the opposite of the American Dream: to get so rich
you can rise above the rabble, all those people on the freeway or,
worse, the bus. No, the dream is a big house, off alone somewhere. A
penthouse, like Howard Hughes. Or a mountaintop castle, like William
Randolph Hearst. Some lovely isolated nest where you can invite only
the rabble you like. An environment you can control, free from
conflict and
pain. Where you rule.

Whether it’s a ranch in Montana or basement apartment with ten
thousand DVDs and high-speed Internet access, it never fails. We get
there, and we’re alone.
And we’re lonely.

After we’re miserable enough-like the narrator in his Fight Club
condo, or the narrator isolated by her own beautiful face in Invisible
Monsters-we destroy our lovely nest and force ourselves back into the
larger world. In so many ways, that’s also how you write a novel. You
plan and research. You spend time alone, building this lovely world
where you control, control, control everything. You let the telephone
ring. The emails pile up. You stay in your story world until you
destroy it.

Then you come back to be with other people.
If your story world sells well enough, you get to go on book tour. Do
interviews. Really be with people. A lot of people. People, until
you’re sick of people.
Until you crave the idea of escaping, getting away to a . . .

To another lovely story world.

And so it goes. Alone. Together. Alone. Together.

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you know this cycle. Reading a
book is not a group activity. Not like going to a movie or a concert.

This is the lonely end of the spectrum.

It’s hard to call any of my novels “fiction.”
Most of the reason I write is because once a week it brought me
together with other people. This was in a workshop taught by a
published writer-Tom Spanbauer-around his kitchen table on Thursday
nights. At the time, most of my friendships were based on proximity:
neighbors or coworkers. Those people you know only because, well,
you’re stuck sitting next to them every day.

The problem with proximity friends is, they move away. They quit or get fired.

It wasn’t until a writing workshop that I discovered the idea of
friendships based on a shared passion.
Writing. Or theater. Or music.

Some shared vision. A mutual quest that would keep you together with
other people who valued this vague, intangible skill you valued. These
are friendships that outlast jobs and evictions.
This steady, regular Thursday-night gabfest was the only incentive to
keep me writing during the years when writing didn’t pay a dime. Tom
and Suzy and Monica and Steven and Bill and Cory and Rick. We fought
and praised each other. And it was enough.

My pet theory about Fight Club’s success is that the story presented a
structure for people to be together. People want to see new ways for
connecting. Look at books like How to Make an American Quilt and The
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Joy Luck Club. These
are all books that present a structure-making a quilt or playing
mah-jongg that allows people to be together and share their stories.
All these
books are short stories bound together by a shared activity.
Of course, they’re all women’s stories. We don’t see a lot of new
models for male social interaction.
There’s sports. Barn raisings. That’s about it.

And now there’s fight clubs. For better or worse..

For Choke, I sat with Alzheimer’s patients as a volunteer. My role was
just to ask them about the old photographs each patient kept in a box
in their closet, to try and spur their memory. It was a job the
nursing staff didn’t have time to do. And, again, it was about telling
stories. One subplot of Choke came together as, day by day, each
patient would look at the same photo, but tell a different story about
it. One day, the beautiful bare-breasted woman would be their wife.
The next day, she was some woman they met in Mexico while serving in
the navy. The next day, the woman was an old friend from work.

What struck me is . . . they had to create a story to explain who she
was. Even if they’d forgotten, they’d never admit it. A faulty
well-told story was always better than admitting they didn’t recognize
this woman...

...Telephone sex lines, illness support groups, twelve-step groups,
all these places are schools for learning how to tell a story
effectively.
Out loud.
To people.
Not just to look for ideas, but how to perform.

We live our lives according to stories. About being Irish or being
black. About working hard or shooting heroin. Being male or female.
And we spend our lives looking for
evidence-facts and proof-that support our story. As a writer, you just
recognize that part of human nature. Each time you create a character,
you look at the world as that character, looking for the details that
make that reality the one true reality.
Like a lawyer arguing a case in a courtroom, you become an advocate
who wants the reader to accept the truth of your character’s
worldview.

You want to give the reader a break from their own life.
From their own life story.

This is how I create a character. I tend to give each character an
education and a skill set that limits how they see the world. A house
cleaner sees the world as an endless series of stains to remove. A
fashion model sees the world as a series of rivals for public
attention.
A failed medical student sees nothing but the moles and twitches that
might be the early signs of a terminal illness.

During this same period when I started
writing, friends and I started a weekly tradition we called “Game
Night.” Every Sunday evening we’d meet to play party games, like
charades. Some nights we’d never start the game. All we needed was the
excuse, and sometimes a structure, to be together. If I was stuck in
my writing, looking for a new way to develop a theme, I’d do what I’d
later call “crowd seeding.” I’d throw out a topic of conversation,
maybe tell a quick funny story and prompt people to tell their own
versions.

Writing Survivor, I’d bring up the topic of cleaning hints,
and people would provide them for hours. For Choke, it was coded
security announcements. For Diary, I told stories about what I’d
found, or left,
sealed inside the walls of houses I’d worked on. Hearing my handful of
stories, my friends told theirs. And their guests told their stories.

And within one evening, I had enough for a book.

In this way, even the lonely act of writing becomes an excuse to be
around people. In turn, the people fuel the storytelling.

Alone. Together. Fact. Fiction. It’s a cycle.

Comedy. Tragedy. Light. Dark. They define each other.

It works, but only if you don’t get stuck too long in any one place.

-Chuck Palanhuick,Stranger than Fiction

P.S : The Story Does Not End Here.
Before writing for money, he was writing for passion, and for social
intercourse which I daresay is what we do, for this activity (that
consumes a lot of time )is all about connecting to people who share a
passion.

But how long will this go on?
Should we vest in other spheres of interest just in case tomorrow none
of this remains?
Create a safety net?
Not be too attached , for nothing is permanent?
Ten years from now, will we be still here,writing about our crappy
jobs,mangled relationships,ennui and discontentment?
Or our tiny little joys, fleeting moments of happiness, triumphs and
glory...real and imagined?

How about five years from now?

Two Years?

Tomorrow?

Writing is always about convincing people that 'this is what we are'.

The most frightening aspect of writing is the truth is it's
consequences (again real and imagined, and unforeseen and unexpected)
I have promised myself Radical Honesty many times over, and then
backed down, fearing it would hurt the people I loved, respected and
admired.I've created a saftey net of anonymity and ambiguity to
protect them,but it feels cowardly.

But more often than not, I have abandoned Radical Honesty in the sake
of self interest.
Could what I write be held against me, or hurt me, or show me in bad light?
These vexing thoughts bog my mind.

I'm no angel, but I'm not the lucifer incarnate either.
My life maybe punctuated with petty acts of selfishness and random
acts of kindness but it is largely dominated by pointless humdrum
mundanity.(Hey, So is yours. Admit it)

I'm not a rockstar-superstar-superhero that wants to save the world...
What I present to you is only what I Want you to see.

Objectivity, in my humble subjective opinion , does not exist.
As long as there is a subject or and observer, objectivity will exist
only as a theory, to act as a counterpoint, somewhat like what death
is to life.
No.
Exactly like what death is to life.
The perfect counterpoint that Bach would relish upon.

But we have stories to tell.
And willing eyes and ears ready to be lent.
And I will keep telling my stories until there is nothing left to say.
Or no one left to listen.

And then what ?

That's an entirely different story my friend.

But the story does not end here.

p.p.s : While reading Stranger than Fiction,I found what else Brad
Pitt and I have in common (apart from greek god looks,6% body fat and
kids from cambodia).

We both lick our lips.
Licking lips is my version of a nervous tic.I do it when I'm
stressed out(or so they say).
He does it (allegedly) to make his lips plump and pleasing.
(Try as he may,He's never gonna beat Angelina in the lips department)

p.p.p.s : The 'kids from cambodia' part is a joke.
Until and unless anyone slaps me with a paternity suit (and
wins), I have officially not fathered any child.
So is the part about 6% body fat.A joke.A big bad joke.Hahaha.
My body fat percentage is closer to 8 %.

p.p.p.s :Quantum physics and Buddhism both agree: you cannot describe
a universe without adding yourself into it. It was once
thought that reality was like a machine, very mechanical in nature and
could be broken down mathematically. Now, we know this isn’t
true. Any description of the universe is a description the person uses
to describe the universe. So, consciousness plays a big role, contrary
to popular belief, in that we can actually look objectively at things.
It used to be thought that we can sit behind a piece of
glass and look at the world without affecting it. That is not true. It
is more true that we create the world as we look. Consciousness is
reality and reality couldn’t have done it without you! Objectivity is
a myth. Every brain is built with billions of cells that have the goal
of focusing only on the familiar and what fits in the grooves of the
beliefs we hold. How is objectivity possible? It isn’t, I don’t care
if you have 900 diplomas; our descriptions of reality are based on
what our brains are capable of saying, not on the actual world around
us.

--
<

GUT

In school, during physics class I asked the teacher a question.
I wanted to know the weight of a light wave.In my mind light waves had
to be pretty light or otherwise they wouldn't be able to travel that
fast.
The teacher was a smart man who was smart enough not to lie to me.He
said that science did not have an aanswer to the question because we
still did not undersand the true nature of light.
E=mC^2
Everything is made up of frequency fields of energy. Einstein said it
through E=mc2
pronouncing that basically, everythingthat exists is energy.
Physicists are saying now that all matter is nothing but bundles of
trapped light. If this fact doesn’t change your life immediately, you
haven’t yet realized the deeper implications. Whether it is a
sound-wave, a smell, a feeling, or a sight, they are all
different frequencies of energy. They are all made of the same thing,
the difference between physical matter and a sound wave is the
difference between heating cold water in a microwave. It is the same
water, only at a different temperature. Your body is the same energy
as your favorite song but at a different frequency; same concept. This
digs
deeper into the notion of the spiritual ‘field’ of interconnection
oneness. A vast field of one living, breathing energy; you are like a
drop in this breathtaking ocean of a universe. All one thing. It was
the brilliant Ryunosuke Satoro who said beautifully, “Individually we
are one drop. Together we are an ocean.”

Comedian,ventriloquist Taylor Mason has a routine, in which he calls up god.
This is an interactive routine.
Very bold in its format and it will test your wit and limits.
He talks to god for a while and then asks for audience participation-
he asks the audience to ask any questions they have for god.Obviously
this is a comdey routine,so people won't ask about their dead poodles
or lost gold watches.
He does very well with snappy answers that are profound yet funny.

One of my favourites was the ever eternal audience question, "What is
the meaning of Life?"
And God says,(through Taylor Mason of course),"Are you Alive?"
"Yes"
"Then You know"

The audience bursts into laughter and at the very exact moment , a
precisley cued laugh track mixes and merges with real laughter.
Reality is effectively diluted with injected pre-recorded laughte.
But nobody knows to what extent reality is diluted,or if it is made
more potent.
Isn't is always the case.
This is how fruit nectars and juices are made.
Orange juice is orange juice concentrate, water, citric acid or
vitamin c (which is actually a preservative, but no one will tell you
that) and artificial sweetners and colour additives.
They use concentrates so that it is easier to transport them.They are
carried on tankers (or juice carriers).
An entire ship filled with juice concentrate.
After the ship is loaded, the ship staff usually gets a barrel of
leftover concentrate as a going away gift.The concentrate is so acidic
and corrosive that it is never used for human consumption.Instead they
use the left over concentrate to clean the decks.After one wash with
the concentrate, the grimy decks are squeaky clean and left smelling
like fresh oranges.

The race now (the word 'now' is misleading, since the race was on much
before you and I were born) in science to develop a Grand Unified
Theory.
To find that 'One Ring'that binds them all.
One theory that explains it all:the meaning of life,the secrets of
prime numbers or why your cat won't listen to you.

The path of excess leads to wisdom. (or surely a quick death).
Moderation is for people hankering for a long boring life.(like me)

The higher you go in any field, you notice that there is perpetual
osmosis with other fields.
Your golf swing depends on your mind's ability generate alpha and
theta waves and what you had for breakfast two mornings ago, and if
you are Tiger Woods, you cannot disregard anything that is a factor,
positive or negative.
Theretical physicists seem to go spiritual when they try to explain
quantum states or Large Hadron Collider experiments.
Top Chefs have to know about molecular chemistry and sometimes
freezing point of liquid nitrogen to be on top of their games.
The higher you climb on the knowledge ladder of one field, you find
that that the ladder bifurcates,trifurcates and the higher you go,
you'll see more paths leading towards obscure and uncharted paths.

Thus when people assume that there is a singular source to all the
knowledge, then getting to the source becomes of tantamount to finding
the holy grail.(Oh but this is much bigger than the holy grail)
Or to find the GUT , the Grand Unified Theory.
But to assume that everything converges into a singular point is to
assume that universe is finite, or once was.
But ah, finiteness has its set of problems.
If this universe is finite, then what's beyond it's finite boundaries?
Nothing?
Then we also have to know about Nothing in order to know about Everything.
In order to have a Grand Unified Theory (that is truly complete), it
must include a Grand Nullified Theory.
But how do you nothing?
Moreover...how do you know that you know nothing.
You can know something,but you cannot know nothing.(aren't you tired
of the same antics of the semantics?)

Here's the same problem viwed from the perceptual angle.
What is the meaning of life?
God asks,"Are you alive?" "Yes"

"Then you know"

If we are alive and yet not know the meaning of life,how can we know
everything while being immersed in it.

But what if we know everything but cannot articulate it? At least not
in a way that we'd understand (or for that matter anyone else)

What if we are our own Grand Unified Theories?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Soon after writing this, I began reading 'This Book is Not Real' by
Chris L Campbell.(Google it, for God's sake, Google it)
I was struck by the similarities in the views.I had never read the
book, nor heard of the author ever before.
Seven pages through the book, I realize that we share the same paths
and we are on a similar journey.
An excerpt:
"Back in my younger years, I use to be borderline obsessed with
psychology and had a very limited vision of life to go along with the
obsession. I was studying psychology books and getting a head start
for my ‘dream’ (thank God that’s all it was) to become a psychologist;
learning about how our minds work, how we live out our lives, and why
we make the choices we do became a passion. I was like one of those
weird guys that observed birds all day, except my bird was human (If
that makes sense…). Learning body language, basic NLP
(Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and psychological techniques I could
have told you the best way to approach someone (the side of their
dominant hand at a 70 degree angle), where to stand (parallel to
them), and how to use words and your body language to make them feel
closer to you (mirroring their posture, then leading them out of it),
while they had no clue why they were drawn to you. Did you know that
if you speak at the same rhythm of somebody’s breathing you will
connect with them instantly? The more rapport you gain from someone
the more drawn, subconsciously, a person is to you. Without knowing
why, or how, people never fail to respond a certain way to specific
stimuli based on their personalities. After testing these things out I
found out one thing; it was weird."

It was weird.I gobble up psychology books for breakfast.I reread
them,study and make extensive notes.It does not pay me, nor is it
directly related to my profesion.It is an obsession.Strangely, the
deeper I went inside psychology, the more I found it interconnected
with other fields anthropology,evolution,biochemistry , even art and
literature.

Chric Campbell further writes

"We live in a world of illusions. A trick of the mind we believe to be
real. Whether it is in our living rooms or in our brains in our living
rooms, it’s not as real as you thought it was. The main theme behind
This Book is nothing, and I mean nothing is as real as it seems. New
discoveries in science show us a crazy world operating behind the
scenes of the world we ‘see’ every single day. For instance, quantum
physics shows us parallel universes, objects being in as many places
as they want (even if you only see one of them), how even a brick wall
cannot be solid and how the mere act of looking at the world changes
it with every peep.
Biology shows universes inside of you, mathematics points out a design
of life, experiments prove our thoughts are living ‘things’ and
holograms show how we affect the entire world with a feeling. By the
way, if any of This Book bothers your common sense view of the world,
think of that phrase ‘common sense.’ Just because it is a common
sense, doesn’t make it right. This is why Einstein said “common sense
tells us that the Earth is flat.” This Book is about an unseen world
that we communicate with every second.Through our feelings, thoughts
and especially beliefs, we create the physical world around us.

His bibliography for this book is the books that I'd love to read
before I die, among others.

Another book to read is Rant by Chuck Palanhuick.The story spun me
around round'n round for a few days after reading it.

Reading gets me high.

Reading is like tripping with lucy in the sky with diamonds or being a
Yaqui Indian shaman soaring across the skies.
I'm sure you guys have had similar experiences.

--
<

Dance

The renowned danseuse Isadora Duncan once presented a theatre piece to
an audience filled with critics,intellectuals and common people, that
left them spellbound and speechless.
In the press conference held post performance, the reporters asked her
to elaborate on her dance: it's symbology,real world references,themes
and leitmotifs etc.

To which she replied 'If I could tell it, I wouldn't have danced it'

The language of poets, dreamers and artists is the language beyond
words,and hence it struggles when demanded to be reduced to mere
words.

To ask a painter what his paintings mean, or the poet,or the dancer
for that matter,is to ask them to transliterate their art into
accesible (yet highly limited in expository value) language, and in
fact to (sacriligiously) ascribe or supply new meanings to what they
are already trying to communicate with you , the audience, that
demands to be spoonfed.

The simplest answer the artist then can give is to say,
"Do you see it?
Do you feel it?
Then that's what it means.
Nothing less.
Nothing more."

--
<

Lowered Expectations

Lowered Expectations

Don Muthu Swami :A movie review

They say that the path of excess leads to wisdom.Is too many movies
the reason for all of this?

I dread watching movies these days.They seem hollow and empty.
The dialogues are woefully worn out,have characters with lesser
substance than cardboard, weak and waifish plots and predictable
twists.
Perhaps I'm numb.
Movies don't stimulate me the way they used to before.
Before watching a movie I dread all the wasted time if I found the
movie unsatisfactory.So much wasted time that could have been used for
something better-reading a book,exercising,meditating,talking to
friends,writing, and all other activities that I value more than a
poorly made movie.
I watch the movie with a twitchy finger on the FF button.Twitchy
fingers shoot faster.

The solution I've found is strict media fasting.Extended periods of
time spent without getting involved with mainstream media.Delayed
gratification to increase sensitivity.

So it was a long time since I had watched a movie.I thought, why not
watch the worst of the lot?
I had two options.
Deshdrohi and Don Muthuswamy.

I chose Don Muthuswamy, because I had to brush up on my south indian
hindi accent.

Ayyo Rama, tum kya karta jee?

Idli sambhar lelo swami...ayyo rama!
I do an excellent Bollywood south Indian accent, sometimes just to
convince people that I am actually from South India.(Somehow I have
acquired a faux punjabi accent)

Have you noticed something?
Bollywood movies exist solely on Punjabiland.Everything is
punjabified.Right from the mehendi ceremony to the obligatory balle
balle shava shava song number.

South Indians rarely exist in hindi movies, and if they do, then only
as gross caricatures, who repeatedly spout inanities.

Ayyo muruga!

Ayyo Rama!

For the record, I've never heard anyone in my city speak like that.I
come from a south indian city.

Don Muthuswamy, as the name suggests is the story of a south indian
don named Muthuswamy, played by Mithun Chakraborty, who can only be
called a south indian because he owns hotels in kodaicanal.(and has
married a south indian actress)
Would a real south indian play this role.My initial answer would be
No, but given enough money, even I would have played that role.After
all , I do have a killer bollywood south indian accent!

Don Muthuswamy can be summed up in a few words.Here it goes.
Don Muthuswamy:Poor man's 'Singh is Kingg'.
Surprisingly, although Don Muthuswamy has poorer production values,
and a less than stellar cast, is a better movie than Singh is Kingg.
Agreed that Don Muthuswamy does not have exotic locales, or a leggy
katrina kaif, or even Akshay Kumar's comic timing, but it does better
in a better layered storyline.

Don Muthuswamy is a B grade Singh is Kingg.They both have the same
grating sense of humour.They both have implausible plots (Mafioso
turning over a new leaf and the subsequent hilarious consequences),
but Don Muthuswamy is marred by lack of mass appeal.
If the Don was Baljit Singh and said 'Chakde Phatte' every now an
then, maybe it would have garnered wider interest.

Oh yes,Don muthuswamy is married and has a twenty-something daughter
(played by poor Hrishita Bhatt,she is reduced to D-list celebrity )
So both movies have the Love angle.

Even though I had lowered my expectations for Don Muthuswamy, I ended
enjoying the movie, and also brushed up on my bollywood south indian
accent!


--
<

Absolut Power

Absolute power never corrupts.

Doubt is the reason for corruption of power.When one doubts his power
over his dominion he wishes to test the magnitude of his power.
Kids who burn ants with magnifying glasses, bosses who make
subordinates jump through endless hoops,police and militia who rob the
common man's dignity,politicians who gamble on democracy,dictators who
commit genocide:they are all doubting their omnipotent status,checking
warily to see if they have in fact reached godhood- or absolute
power,and so they test the limits of their powers, and by doing so
they acknowledge their relative power and the lack of absoluteness.

Absolute power never needs to be tested.

It creates a painful paradoxical situation.
Nature abhors two things.One is vacuum, the other is a paradox.
In fact Absolute power can never be tested.

Think about it.
Can god create a stone that is too heavy to lift himself?

So absolute power never corrupts for it has no scope for testing it's limits.
But does absolute power exist?

I believe it does.
Absolute power exists over oneself and the universe that he creates.

And that's the only absolute power that exists.

We are Gods unto ourselves.
Amen.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
-Adolf Hitler

--
<

Blood is thicker than water.

Once upon a time, distance was literal.A thousand miles seemed more
than just a ...thousand miles.

Even ten years ago , the only affordable means of communication
onboard a ship was writing a letter.

Snail Mail , as they call it, took ages to reach from one place to
another, all because snails were not efficient swimmers.(haw haw)


Months of history and stories and memories and feelings were crammed
into as many pages, and then posted to a ship.Sometimes the letters
would find their way onboard.Sometimes they found themselves at the
bottom of the sea.The same would go for a letter posted from a ship.
Then , with the advent of GPS and improved satellite communications,
phone calls became cheaper.These days satellite phone calls cost upto
a dollar per minute at off peak times.Then came a revolutionary idea
of using HF for email.Email is basically a data packet , and being so
, they found the right method to transmit them across using HF.Thus
sailors got email on board.Any new technology must be milked
well,which is why initially email was charged at a dollar a pop.

When it was found that free emails would improve
employee morale , ship owners made this facility freely available to
all their employees.But they have their restrictions.As I've stated
before, all emails are to be less than 40 kb , and purely textual with
no attachments.

All of us use it religiously.

While I use it to post blogs and write occasional emails
others use it to keep in touch with their friends and families.As I've
noticed, it is the family that responds more than friends.
A case of blood being thicker than water ?

Kenny writes daily to his wife, sis,mom in an email of one sentence
stating his good health and praying for theirs.
Biddu writes to his dada,maa and bani and pagli.Goc-ong (I gave him a
new nickname 'Super-Saiyyan' and he loves it) writes to mydyr nako,
while clint writes to mama and princesskatara.

" What do you expect from a princess , clint ?
And should you forgive royalty easily for for failing to keep up with
expectations ?"... I ask."Failing sir ? Expectations Sir? "asks clint.
Clint failed to understand.
I didn't expect him to understand either.

I don't press him further. You see , I like
clint.He's the only guy my age.He works hard and studies hard.And
Someday he wants to be an officer.

I'd like to see that happen soon.So I try to teach what I know, not
really knowing whether it will do him any good.His biggest goal in
life is to be a third mate and that's it , he confides.

But I again persist.I ask. Do you write to your
friends .He tells me that most of his friends are too busy for
him.They tell him that being a seafarer , he knows nothing about the
busy life of being ashore.They cannot spare their precious time.Its
only his mama and his princesskatara who write to him.They write long
letters almost daily, dedicated to keeping alive that delicate but
intangible thread of emotional connection.

I agree.Its only my dad, who relentlessly writes to
me.He keeps me in touch with what's happening at home and what's
happening around the world.He sends articles of varied subjects of my
interest.How in the world does dad know all about my interests , I
used to wonder.Then I realised that he had been reading my blog
secretly to find out my likes and dislikes and write and send
accordingly.Thanks dad.You're the best.(I know you are reading this)

Then there's mom.Not too tech-savvy , nor too patient with new fangled
technology , yet she painstakingly crafts an email once in a while
that lets you know what's happening where you are not there.

But they do write.


All these years , I was content with having very less friends and
having very little contact with them.But ever since I've made a few
new ones(great people by the way !), I miss their interaction.

Am I asking too much ?

Am I expecting too much?
I've always told people that I don't expect anything from them.

I tell them I don't want anything from them.

Obviously it has been a lie.


I've been lying to my self to convince myself that I don't want
anything from them.

WE ALL WANT SOMETHING.

The biggest lie you can tell yourself is that you “don’t want anything”.

YES YOU DO.

Just about everybody who we interact with on a regular or semi-regular
basis, we have a need and/or desire that we would like to see
fulfilled and satisfied. What we desire can be something intangible
such as flattering attention or respect. It can be something tangible
such as a monetary favor or an offer of employment. Bottom line … very
rarely, if ever, do you approach a person “just for the heck of it.”

Then why do I keep repeating this lie ?
Because It seems like the enlightened thing to say.
But it is obviously untrue because I feel frustrated .

I don't feel enlightened yet.(Maybe the first step towards
enlightenment is acknowledging unenlightenment itself)
I need to be enlightened quick,and mean what I say or I'll end up
getting depressed.

What I want truly from you is to be a part of your life, even if a
mere fly on the wall.Make me feel included in your everyday
mundanity,your joys and sorrows,and show me your true self.
Not money,not status,not a relationship,definitely not sex- these are
not things I want from you.

Does it happen?Not often.

People these days are very choosy about who they include in their lives.

After a while, silences build up and ages pass by before a word is
exchanged and slowly but inevitably reality sinks in.
Broken expectations or not, the mind which initially refuses to
accept, wears down , giving way to resistance .Its gradual numbing
down of senses is a feeling akin to that a body experiences when
easing oneself into a hot-hotwater tub.
Immediately after the first plunge , the body screams 'Yoicks ! " ,
but after a while the water does not feel so hot anymore and you end
up comfortably numb.

All I need to do is plunge headlong into my work, go deeper, immerse
myself so deeply that everything else becomes a needless distraction,
a white noise. And although I don't want my expectations broken , I
end up comfortably numb.Peace Within.
--
<

Have your cake and eat it too!

Every morning open your eyes and look out to the world and say inside
your mind,"Piece Of Cake!"

That's how you have your cake and eat it too.

MERRY X-MAS TO ALL YOU GUYS!
Vikas

--
<

Its a jungle out there

A word of advice.
If you are going to wear a swimsuit , please reconsider your stance of
not gardening.
I know its a jungle out there, but I don't want to see your pubic hair
playing peek-a-boo from the seams.
Yes, Men Notice.
I do, unfortunately.
I know its a jungle out there,but please be willing to trim it.

--
<

Prison diary 3

The general consensus amongst the ship staff here is that our chief
cook likes to hump the eggplant casserole before

serving it to us.

Why?

Because his eggplant casserole always tastes so fucked up!

Our chief cook ought to write a book on weight loss.It should be
titled '101 ways to cook with capsicum and potatoes'

or in the ship staff's most favourite ,'How to fuck up food and get
cursed a lot' or the crowd favourite 'All you

wanted to know about culinary torture , but were afraid to ask'

Would his cook book work?

You betcha!
On mondays we have capsicum-potato curry
On tuesdays we have fried capsicum-potatoes
On wednesdays we have capsicum-potato broth
On thursdays we have boiled capsicum-potato combo lightly sprinkled
with salt and pepper
On fridays we have sauteed capsicum-potato lightly sprinkled with chilli powder.
On saturdays we have Gangbanged up the ass Eggplant Bukkake casserole.
Sundays are fast food days and we have Fuckin' soggy French fries
(pardon my french and pass the mustard please) and

capsicum cheese potato pizza.

You know how hard it is for me to gain weight?I had gained enough
weight for people to call me a fatso.And now...

Damn you.

DAMN YOU COOKIE!

I'll be back to my original weight before you can say 'Gangbanged up
the Ass Eggplant Bukkake casserole'.

Hey weight watchers! Hey fatsos! Hey anorexia addicts!
Try my chief cook.
Your weight will melt off faster than ice in the sahara!
You want a better analogy?
Your weight will melt off faster than a stick butter in an active volcano.
You want a dirty analogy?
Your weight will melt off faster than you can say
'Gangbanged up the Ass Eggplant Bukkake casserole'.

Today we stumbled upon the 'Law of Conservation of Problems'.This is
almost 'Dilbertian' in concept.

Two people signed off and went home today.
Someone remarked that those two people were the luckiest people in the
whole world, because from the time they

stepped off the gangway till the time they reach their respective
homes, they will be the only people who have no

problems.

We elaborated further.

It wasn't like these people didn't have any problems.All the problems
they had on the ship were simply transferred

to their relievers while all the problems on the homefront were still
on the distant horizon.So, for a brief period

of time, the people who signed off were in the so called 'Problem
Limbo', which is not to be confused with the

'Phantom Zone' or the dance in which inebriated people slide under
horizontal poles.(can a pole ever be horizontal?

Won't the pole lose it's 'pole-ness', when it becomes horizontal? Your
answers are welcome)

It wasn't that their problems had disappeared, but that the offsigners
were in a location where problems had not yet

found them.As soon as they reached home, these people and their
problems (wives,children,mortgages,bills) would be

united once again as a one big happy family.

But thinking that one could escape from his or her problems by staying
at the 'Problem Limbo' is an illusion.If you

stay in the 'Problem Limbo' for long enough, you change the properties
og the Limbo itself.Problems either seek you

or you seek out new problems.You must realize that problems and humans
are like soul-mates.We are bound to be

attracted to each other.

You go on a vacation to escape your problems, but if you overstay,
your problems will come in search of you, or you

will go in search of new ones.


Thus we fell upon the 'Law of conservation of Problems', which goes,
"Problems can be created, problems can be solved, but it is most
likely that problems will be transferred from one

person to the other"
x-x-x

Time is fluid.I keep telling this because you do not realize that time
is a man made concept.
Its been six months since I've joined,and the last few days will drag
out interminably.
The first few months flew like a sick sparrow, but now time will drag
like a limping snake.

WITH DAYS THAT FEEL SO LONG , HOW DID SO MANY MONTHS PASS SO QUICKLY?

Soon It will be time to sign off and I'll be dreading the day I'll be
returning home.
Its true,its like being in prison.Although you constantly yearn to get
out ,once you do, you want to go back in as

soon as possible.



--
<

Shoe Fetish

Shoe fetish and Learning to walk
--------------------------------
Lots of women like my shoes,or so they say.

Strange as it is,I don't give a damn about my shoes.

I just buy the most comfortable pair that I happen to see.

Most of my shoes are strictly sports sneakers and tennis shoes.

Sports apparel.Not fashion statements.
I like the support that they give me when I walk.

I walk a lot.
A lot.
And I need all the support I can get.

But in any case, most women like my shoes.
Or so they say.

But there is one girl I know who is a little different.
She is a confirmed shoe fetishist.
And a foot fetishist.

It's a funny thing to see her stare at me when I wear my shoes.
She looks at them like a fat hungry kid stares at a hamburger.

Her eyes are transfixed.Her face is blank.
She has lost track of time.

I see drool at the corner of her mouth, I kid you not!
And she's looking at me wearing my shoes.

She never misses an opportunity.

It's creeping me out.

My feet aren't pretty.They aren't supposed to be.
I clip my toe nails regularly but that's about it.No nail filing or
pedicures for me.

My feet don't smell, or so I'm told.
They aren't too hairy either.Maybe that's because I'm not Frodo.

My feet are a bit on the dainty side.
Size 8 on their best days, and size 7 on weekends,bank holidays and
most other days.I suppose I got it from my mom,

whose shoe size is 3.She has to search in the toddlers section for her
footwear.She's officially tired of wearing

sneakers with stickers of Mickey Mouse and Goofy on them.

BUt let me tell you something.Small feet only mean that the man wears
small socks.Nothing more,nothing less.If I

could only tell you what a whopper I had caged behind the
zipper...maybe some other day, and only if you ask nicely.

Oh I forgot.
My feet aren't pretty.

Four years ago I poured steaming superheated water on both my legs.


I'm not a masochist.

It was an accident.


I repeat.
I'm not a masochist.

I suffered second degree scald burns to such a severity that two
hospitals refused me.The third only gave me a shot

of painkillers so that I could stop howling in pain, and dressed my
burns up with Silver Sulfadiazine and sent me to

another hospital.

I spent two days in the Intensive Care Unit and a week in the Burns
unit and consumed five bags of plasma.In the

Burns unit, there was an eight year old girl bext to me who had an
accident with hot oil from a deep frying pan.

She was all wrapped up in gauze like a mummy.
No.
She didn't walk like an egyptian.
I doubt it if she had even heard of The Bangles.

I don't know what happened to her,but later the police showed up to
the hospital.They were alerted by the hospital

staff about the severity of the accident.
They suspected it was a college hazing ritual gone bad.

I explained to the inspector that I had been out of college for some
time now ,and this accident was entirely my own

fault.
The inspector gave me his number and asked me to call him if I had
changed my mind or my story.
Neither my mind or my story changed.

My nurses weren't sexy.They didn't wear short skirts.They didn't
lavish any attention on me.
They were middle aged, and acted as if they had seen all of this a
hundred million times before.
Maybe they had.

After being discharged I discovered that I could not walk.
Extensive nerve damage and muscle tissue damage, said my doctor.
My left ankle was twisted at an odd angle and the skin had hardened around.
The doctor explained that there would be some permanent damage and
some loss of function.
But it was difficult to assess the extent, he added.

My treatment was as painful, if not more , than the accident itself.

Saline solution to be rubbed on my raw skin.Twice every day.
Doctor's orders.

Ear plugs optional.

Talk about rubbing salt on your wounds!

And a high protein diet, for rapid regeneration.

I tried to walk after ten days.
Shooting bolts of pain from jangled nerves almost made me faint.

At this point it was easier to walk on all fours.

I was twenty one and was learning to walk all over again.

I was crawling on all fours for two days, before I got frustrated.
Learning to walk all over again is a lot harder the second time.

Gritting my teeth, and screaming with each step, I began walking.My
hands supporting and taking most of the

weight.Ten minutes on the first day.Fifteen on the second, I began
walking slowly,shooting stars of pain searing

lines of pain and etching them on my memories.

More salt was being rubbed on to my wounds.
Doctor's orders.

After a while the pain became a constant companion...a
friend,confidante,my guardian angel who let me know that I was

gloriously and riotously alive.
I ate,slept,shit and walked through the pain.
Pain, I realize is very beautiful.
Pain makes one realize how alive he is.It opens up the portals of
consciousness.In pain ,you regain your clarity of

vision and things suddenly become what they are and just that.Nothing else.
I was waiting for the pain to become so unbearable that my system
shuts down due to overload.The moment never came.
Pain is very resourceful.It was determined to see me suffer.

I was drifting away under waves of painkillers and sedatives.
But the pain still remained.Dulled, not so bothersome.But it
stubbornly remained.

I had refused painkillers until doctors convinced me that
anti-inflammatory drugs in the painkiller would hasten the

healing.

I'm not a masochist, but was afraid that I'd get hooked on to the painkillers.
I'm afraid of addictions- which is why I don't smoke,drink,gamble or
follow any ritual for more than 21 days in a

row.

Learning to walk the second time was much faster, if not harder.
Ten days later , I learnt to walk, just in time for my birthday.

But the scars remained.
My feet had strange black and white patterns on them.Ivory white skin
with melanin freckles on my ankles.

My left thigh sports a black spot that looks like the continent of Australia.

It looks like Aus-trah-lia.The land of Foster's Beer.
That's right Mate!

Er...I mean left.

On my right thigh, a pitch black Pangaea goes all the way from the
back of my knee to my kidney.Its easy to remember.
Australia,left knee,Pangaea -right knee to kidney.

My feet aren't pretty.Not even close.Brown scars and white mottled
skin shows all the way upto my toes.

And yet she loves to watch me slip on my black socks (I only own black
socks) on my feet.
She will not budge until I've knotted my laces and said my goodbyes.

Maybe she likes my feet.

Or maybe she is fascinated by the scars and grotesque patterns and to
grotesquery in general.


But after learning to walk again, don't care when someone stares at my feet.

After all,despite what doctors said,my feet still work.

Footnote:
The Art of storytelling:Comedy in tragedy
When I actually tell this story to someone else, it is nothing short
of a performance.
I aim for different effects and different emotions.
But if I'm bored, I'll make it short,cut and dried up.

But if I'm in the mood for it, the story will always be funny.

People have laughed till their tummies hurt with this story.It was a riot act.
I was clowning around, right from the beginning where I'm stripped
down buck naked in front of a very cute looking

intern to the later stages where I'm walking on all fours.

The only people who weren't laughing were my parents.They had gone
through it, and all those memories were stronger

than my story itself.
Theye were appalled by all the people who were laughing.They thought
people were being insensitive.To an extent that

was true, people were being insensitive laughing at my pain, but they
laughed because the story was crafted in a

manner to evoke laughter.

Of course, my parents forbade me from ever repeating the funny version
of the story.

--
<

Mr Big

MR. BIG

I was sitting in my office, cleaning the
debris out of my thirty-eight and wondering where

my next case was coming from. I like being a private eye, and even
though once in a while I've had my gums massaged

with an automobile jack, the sweet smell of greenbacks makes it all worth it.
Not to mention the dames, which are a minor preoccupation of mine that
I rank just ahead of breathing. That's why,

when the door to my office swung open and a long-haired blonde named
Heather Butkiss came striding in and told me she

was a nudie model and needed my help, my salivary glands shifted into
third.She wore a short skirt and a tight

sweater and her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause
cardiac arrest in a yak.

"What can I do for you, sugar?"
"I want you to find someone for me."
"Missing person? Have you tried the police?" "Not exactly, Mr. Lupowitz."

"Call me Kaiser, sugar. All right, so what's the scam?"

"God."

"That's right, God.The Creator, the Underlying Principle, the First
Cause of Things, the All Encompassing. I want you

to find Him for me."

I've had some fruit cakes up in the office before, but when they're
built like she was, you listened.

"Why?"
"That's my business, Kaiser. You just find Him."
"I'm sorry, sugar. You got the wrong boy."
"But why?"
"Unless I know all the facts," I said, rising.

"O.K., O.K.," she said, biting her lower lip.She straightened the seam
of her stocking, which was strictly for my

benefit, but I wasn't buying any at the moment.
"Let's have it on the line, sugar."
"Well, the truth is--I'm not really a nudie model"
"No?"
"No. My name is not Heather Butkiss, either. It's Claire Rosensweig
and I'm a student at Vassar. Philosophy major.

History of Western Thought and all that. I have a paper due january.
On Western religion.All the other kids in the

course will hand in speculative papers. But I want to know. Professor
Grebanier said if anyone finds out for sure,

they're a cinch to pass the course. And my dad's promised me a
Mercedes if I get straight A's."

I opened a deck of Luckies and a pack of gum and had one of each.
Her story was beginning to interest me. Spoiled coed. High IQ and a
body I wanted to know better.
"What does God look like?"
"I've never seen him."
"Well, how do you know He exists?"
"That's for you to find out."
"Oh, great. Then you don't know what he looks like? Or where to begin looking?"
"No. Not really, Although I suspect he's everywhere. In the air, in
every flower, in you and I--and in this chair."

"Uh huh."
So she was a pantheist. I made a mental note of it and said
I'd give her case a try--for a hundred bucks a

day, expenses, and a dinner date. She smiled and okayed the deal. We
rode down in the elevator together. Outside it

was getting dark.
Maybe God did exist and maybe He didn't, but somewhere in that city
there were sure a lot of guys who were going to

try and keep me from finding out.

My first lead was Rabbi Itzhak Wiseman, a local cleric who owed me a
favor for finding out who was rubbing pork on

his hat. I knew something was wrong when I spoke to him because he was
scared. Real scared.

"Of course there's a you-know-what, but I'm not even allowed to say
His name or He'll strike me dead, which I could

never understand why someone is so touchy about having his name said."
"You ever see Him?"
"Me? Are you kidding? I'm lucky I get to see my grandchildren."
"Then how do you know He exists?"
"How do I know? What kind of question is that? Could I get a suit like
this for fourteen dollars if there was no one

up there? Here, feel a gabardine---how can you doubt?"

"You got nothing more to go on?"
"Hey--what's the Old Testament? Chopped liver? How do you think Moses
got the Israelites out of Egypt? With a smile

and a tap dance?
Believe me, you don't part the Red Sea with some gizmo from
Korvette's.It takes power."

"So he's tough, eh?"
"Yes. Very tough. You'd think with all that success he'd be a lot sweeter."
"How come you know so much?"
"Because we're the chosen people. He takes best care of us of all His
children, which I'd also like to someday

discuss with Him."
"What do you pay Him for being chosen?"
"Don't ask."

So that's how it was. The Jews were into God for a
lot. It was the old protection racket. Take care

of them in return for a price. And from the way Rabbi Wiseman was
talking, He soaked them plenty. I got into a cab

and made it over to Danny's Billiards on Tenth Avenue.
The manager was a slimy little guy I didn't like.
"Chicago Phil here?"
"Who wants to know?"

I grabbed him by the lapels and took some skin at the same time.

"What, punk?"
"In the back," he said, with a change of attitude.

Chicago Phil. Forger, bank robber, strong-arm man, and avowed atheist.

"The guy never existed, Kaiser. This is the straight dope. It's a big
hype. There's no Mr. Big. It's a syndicate.

Mostly Sicilian. It's international. But there is no actual head.
Except maybe the Pope."
"I want to meet the Pope."
"It can be arranged," he said, winking.
"Does the name Claire Rosensweig mean anything to you?"
"No."
"Heather Butkiss?"
"Oh, wait a minute. Sure. She's that peroxide job with the bazooms
from Radcliffe."
"Radcliffe? She told me Vassar."
"Well, she's lying. She's a teacher at Radcliffe. She was mixed up
with a philosopher for a while."
"Pantheist?"
"No. Empiricist, as I remember. Bad guy. Completely rejected Hegel or
any dialectical methodology."
"One of those."
"Yeah. He used to be a drummer with a jazz trio. Then he got hooked on
Logical Positivism. When that didn't work, he

tried Pragmatism. Last I heard he stole a lot of money to take a
course in Schopenhauer at Columbia. The mob would

like to find him---or get their hands on his textbooks so they can
resell them."
"Thanks, Phil."

"Take it from me, Kaiser. There's no one out there. It's a void. I
couldn't pass all those bad checks or screw

society the way I do if for one second I was able to recognize any
authentic sense of Being. The universe is strictly

phenomenological. Nothing's eternal. It's all meaningless."
"Who won the fifth at Aqueduct?"
"Santa Baby."

I had a beer at O'Rourke's and tried to add it all.up, but it made no
sense at all. Socrates was a suicide---or so

they said. Christ was murdered. Neitzsche went nuts. If there was
someone out there, He sure as hell didn't want

anybody to know it. And why was Claire Rosensweig lying about Vassar?
Could Descartes have been right? Was the

universe dualistic? Or did Kant hit it on the head when he postulated
the existence of God on moral grounds?

That night I had dinner with Claire. Ten minutes after the check came,
we were in the sack and, brother, you can have

your Western thought. She went through the kind of gymnastics that
would have won first prize in the TiJuana

Olympics. After, she lay on the pillow next to me, her long blond hair
sprawling. Our naked bodies still intertwined.

I was smoking and staring at the ceiling.

"Claire, what if Kierkegaard's right?"
"You mean?"
"If you can never really know. Only have faith."
"That's absurd."
"Don't be so rational.
"nobody s being rational, Kaiser."
She lit a cigarette. "Just don't get ontological. Not now. I couldn't
bear it if you were ontological with me."

She was upset. I leaned over and kissed her, and the phone rang. She
got it."It's for you."
The voice on the other end was Sergeant Reed of Homicide.
"You still looking for God?"
"Yeah."
"An all-power Being? Great Oneness, Creator of the Universe? First
Cause of All Things?"
"That's right."
"Somebody with that description just showed up at the morgue. You
better get down here right away."

It was Him all right, and from the looks of Him it was a professional job.
"He was dead when they brought Him in."
"Where'd you find Him?"
"A warehouse on Delancey Street."
"Any clues?"
"It's the work of an existentialist. We're sure of that."
"How can you tell."
"Haphazard way how it was done. Doesn't seem to be any system
followed. Impulse."
"A crime of passion?"
"You got it. Which means you're a suspect, Kaiser."
"Why me?"
"Everybody down at headquarters knows how you feel about Jaspers."
"That doesn't make me. a killer."
"Not yet, but you're a suspect."

Outside on the street I sucked air into my lungs
and tried to dear my head. I took a cab over to

Newark and got out and walked a block to Giordino's Italian
Restaurant. There, at a back table, was His Holiness.
It was the Pope, all right. Sitting with two guys I had seen in half a
dozen police line-ups.

"Sit down," he said, looking up from his fettucine. He held out a
ring. I gave him my toothiest smile, but didn't

kiss it. It bothered him and I was glad. Point for me.

"Would you like some fettucine?"
No thanks, Holiness. But you go ahead."
"Nothing? Not even a salad?"
"I just ate."
"Suit yourself, but they make a great Roquefort dressing here. Not
like the Vatican, where you can't get a decent

meal."

"I'll come right to the point, Pontiff. I'm looking for God."
"You came to the Right person."
"Then He does exist?"
They all found this very amusing and laughed.

The hood next to me said, "Oh, that's funny. Bright boy wants to know
if He exists."
I shifted my chair to get comfortable and brought the leg down on his
little toe.
"Sorry." But he was steaming.
"Sure He exists, Lupowitz, but I'm the only one that communicates with
Him. He speaks only through me."
"Why you, pal?"
"Because I got the red suit."
'This get-up?"
"Don't knock it. Every morning I rise, put on this red suit, and
suddenly I'm a big cheese. It's all in the suit. I

mean, face it, if I went around in slacks and a sports jacket, I
couldn't get arrested religion-wise.
"Then it's a hype. There's no God."
"I don't know. But what's the difference? The money's good."
"You ever worry the laundry won't get your red suit back on time and
you'll be like the rest of us?"
"I use the special one-day service. I figure it's worth the extra few
cents to be safe."
"Name Claire Rosensweig mean anything to you?"
"Sure. She's in the science department at Bryn Mawr."
"Science, you say? Thanks."
"For what?"
"The answer, Pontiff."

I grabbed a cab and shot over the George
Washington Bridge. On the way I stopped at my

office and did some fast checking. Driving to Claire's apartment, I
put the pieces together, and for the first time

they fit. When I got there she was in a diaphanous peignoir and
something seemed to be troubling her.

"God is dead. The police were here. They're looking for you. They
think an existentialist did it."
"No, sugar. It was you."
"What? Don't make jokes, Kaiser." "It was you that did it." "What are
you saying?"
"You, baby. Not Heather Butkiss or Claire Rosensweig, but Doctor Ellen
Shepherd."
"How did you know my name?"
"Professor of physics at Bryn Mawr. The youngest one ever to head a
department there. At the mid-winter Hop you get

stuck on a jazz musician who's heavily into philosophy. He's married,
but that doesn't stop you.
A couple of nights in the hay and it feels like love. But it doesn't
work out because something comes between you.

God. Y'see, sugar, he believed, or wanted to, but you, with your
pretty little scientific mind, had to have absolute

certainty."

"No, Kaiser, I swear."
"So you pretend to study philosophy because that gives you a chance to
eliminate certain obstacles. You get rid of

Socrates easy enough, but Descartes takes over, so you use Spinoza to
get rid of Descartes, but when Kant doesn't

come through you have to get rid of him too."
"You don't know what you're saying."
"You made mincemeat out of Leibnitz, but that wasn't good enough for
you because you knew if anybody believed Pascal

you were dead, so he had to be gotten rid of too, but that's where you
made your mistake because you trusted Martin

Buber. Except, sugar, he was soft. He believed in God, so you had to
get rid of God yourself."

"Kaiser, you're mad!"
"No, baby. You posed as a pantheist and that gave you access to Him if
He existed, which he did. He went with you to

Shelby's party and when Jason wasn't looking, you killed Him."
"Who the hell are Shelby and Jason?"
"What's the difference? Life's absurd now anyway."
"Kaiser," she said, suddenly trembling. "You wouldn't turn me in?"
"Oh yes, baby. When the Supreme Being gets knocked off, somebody's got
to take the rap."
"Oh, Kaiser, we could go away together. Just the two of us. We could
forget about philosophy. Settle down and maybe

get into semantics."
"Sorry, sugar. It's no dice."

She was all tears now as she started lowering the
shoulder straps of her peignoir and I was standing

there suddenly with a naked Venus whose whole body seemed to be
saying, Take me---I'm yours. A Venus whose right hand

tousled my hair while her left hand had picked up a forty-five and
was holding it behind my back. I let go with a

slug from my thirty-eight before she could pull the trigger, and she
dropped her gun and doubled over in disbelief.

"How could you, Kaiser?"
She was fading fast, but I managed to get it in, in time.

"The manifestation of the universe as a complex idea unto itself as
opposed to being in or outside the true Being of

itself is inherently a
conceptual nothingness or Nothingness in relation to any abstract form
of existing or to exist or having existed in

perpetuity and not subject
to laws of physicality or motion or ideas relating to non-matter or
the lack of objective Being or subjective

otherness."

It was a subtle concept but I think she understood before she died.

- Woody Allen (Getting Even)
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Woody Allen folks...So what if he looks like a chicken embryo with
glasses.So what if the guy married his own

daughter.
This stuff is pure unadulterated genius.Riotously funny and pure genius.

I wanna write like this guy.

--
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