In Bad Taste

John Waters has come a long way from his days as the high priest of trashy bad taste and has almost crossed over to the respectable mainstream - after all, none other than John Travolta reprises Divine's role in the Hollywood remake of the Tony-award winning Broadway musical adaptation of Waters' 1988 film Hairspray. However, fans of the "Pope of Trash" and "Prince of Puke" need not panic just yet. Though he now describes himself as a filthy elder, he is still very much the quintessential enfant terrible, maybe not quite enfant any more, but certainly still very terrible, refusing to grow up and always willing to shock and provoke outrage.

A Date with John Waters is his Valentine's Day treat for all his fans, and has been described as 'a chance to curl up on the director's couch and let him touch you a little inappropriately'. While one could complain that the eclectic and bizarre collection actually reveals impeccably good taste, much like his previous compilation A John Waters Christmas, I would say that the cover photograph alone (reclining with a very come hither look and a dirty collar - the shirt came from a thrift shop - shot by Marsha Resnick at the Dovil film festival in France, circa 1976) makes this album a must-have. And the fact that he has promised to bring us Breaking Up with John Waters if this collection sells well.

For those of you hungry for a bigger piece of him than this meager blog post has to offer, here is Waters on Fresh Air, All Songs Considered, YouTube (reading from the record's liner notes), and a song from the album, Josie Cotton's "Johnny Are You Queer". Which, incidentally, would be a rather sensible question to ask one's valentine before things could get inordinately painful and somewhat messy beyond control.

Look, Ma, no Menus

Or, the more things change, the more they remain the same. The new version of Microsoft Office has done away with menus in an effort to upgrade and overhaul the now ubiquitous interface that involves clicking, pointing, dragging, and dropping. David Pogue, who double clicks through technology for The New York Times, discusses the changes with Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition.

SI: Where are they heading with this?
DP: There have been some interesting efforts. One clue is the rise of these instant search commands in both the Macintosh, and now in Windows Vista, where you type a few letters of what you are looking for, and up pops the thing, whatever folder it's buried in. And, if you think about it, that means that we needed a cry for help here because the folder thing was getting too unwieldy.

SI: Before mouses and icons and that sort of thing, people just typed a command into a computer. Might we eventually head back toward that system now?
DP: Well, that's what's cracking me up. That's what everyone pooh-poohs as the old stone age way of using a computer by memorizing and typing commands. But this is one of the most touted and beloved features of both the latest Mac OS and the latest Windows Vista, is you can start to do things by typing out little commands again. And the old timers are saying, 'Dude, didn't we do this twenty years ago?'

And what cracks me up is how The Next Big Thing is, more often than not, the same old wine in, if one is lucky, a slightly different looking bottle; little more than a forgotten and discarded leftover from the past, albeit reheated and touched up. Hooray for the shortness of public memory!

The Greatest Century

1. This is just part deux of my original Blogger's 100 posting. When I started the first one, I was initially apprehensive that I would never complete it; but I did, and the moment I did, I could already think of a couple more entries that didn't go in it. Thus the sequel.

2. At some deep dark basic level, I am quite convinced that I am totally incapable of being truly loved.

3. At the movies, I always want to stay till the final completion of the end credits. However, I almost never can, since most of my friends don't seem to share in that desire.

4. I find lonely people dining alone in restaurants almost heartbreakingly sad.

5. I am often vaguely intimidated by servers in upscale eateries or salespeople in fancy stores.

6. I don't think I have one favorite color. It usually changes with my mood.

7. Rosemary's Baby is my favorite horror film.

8. I will often do this kind of stay-in-one-place-spot-jump routine when I am really happy.

9. I will sometimes put off doing an unpleasant task till absolutely the very last moment.

10. The following is my most favorite knock knock joke of all time. (My friend Nina told it to me, and it is her mother's favorite joke too.)

"Knock, Knock..."

"Who's there?"

"Interrupting cow."

"Interrupting c..."

"MOOOOOOOOOO!"

11. I don't really like Italian or Mexican food all that much.

12. I would love to visit South America and Australia some day.

13. Stanley Kubrick is the only English language director that I completely admire. (Of all his films, only Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut don't leave me gushing one way or another.)

14. One of my professors in college used to say that we could think of groups as Algebraic animals.

15. I have an undergraduate and a graduate degree in Statistics, and a post graduate degree in Quality, Reliability, and Operations Research. However, I don't use almost anything from any of these fields in the kind of work I do right now.

16. I had to move four times during my first six months in California. During this whole time, I stayed in the same zip code, and just moved around a couple blocks each time.

17. I left my parents' home for the first time after I graduated high school, and have never really gone back to live there for more than at most a couple months since.

18. I don't consider Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese to be great directors; I believe they are very competent craftsmen and storytellers, but not great artists.

19. I believe that well designed movie posters and book jackets can be great art.

20. I cannot, for the life of me, parallel park my car. (In my defense, I live in suburban parking heaven, so I have never needed to learn how.)

21. When discussing movies, I want to use terms like mise en scene and auteur or even didactic, but I am never quite sure exactly how to say them.

22. I used to go to high school riding on my bicycle. I had almost exclusively used only public transport till I learned to drive after moving to California.

23. I pooped my pants one time in elementary school; I was too embarrassed to tell anyone, and wasn't found out till my mother came to pick me up after school.

24. I have felt deeply humiliated too many times in my life to even keep count.

25. I would much rather volunteer my time than pay money to a charity.

26. While telling a joke, I occasionally tend to completely murder the punchline.

27. I abhor almost all kinds of jewelery and make-up. However, I find some piercings and tattoos to be secretly compelling and attractive.

28. While I don't much care for the music, there is something that draws me to punk.

29. Your Catfish Friend by Richard Brautigan is one of my favorite poems. So is He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats.

30. I can sometimes be obsessively compulsive.

31. Sometimes, when I have too much to do, I will feel somewhat overwhelmed and will do absolutely nothing.

32. I have been told, "Why the fuck don't you belt up?" at least once in my life.

33. When I was traveling in New Zealand our car was broken into and every single scrap of identification I had ever possessed was stolen. (We later learned that most of the other cars in that parking lot were broken into that evening as well.) The police eventually recovered my backpack and the only thing missing was $400 in cash.

34. Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! and This American Life are two of my favorite radio shows.

35. I have often submitted unsuccessful entries to the New Yorker cartoon caption contest.

36. The Betrayal (#164) is one of my most favorite Seinfeld episodes. All scenes in this episode were played in reverse order with a caption indicating the time frame of the scene in relation to the previous scene.

37. I am a pug lover; I find pugs to be absolutely and completely adorable.

38. Once, in Tokyo, I tried to speak in Japanese with a post office clerk. However, I literally turned around and fled once the conversation turned into something far more involved than what I was equipped to handle with my very limited collection of tourist book phrases.

39. I have recently discovered that I really enjoy going to waterparks.

40. I recently took the SAT and scored 800 on the Math, 750 on the Critical Reading, and 740 on the Writing sections. However, my essay score was only 9 (out of a possible maximum of 12).

41. My friend Claudio used to say that the one characteristic he would look for in a lover was enthusiasm; a deep and varied range of interests and the urge to pursue them eagerly and joyfully, and an openness to always try out new things. I don't think I could agree more.

42. I think falindromes are wicked cool. (For all those of you who cannot be bothered to click on the link, falindromes are fake palindromes: although they cannot be read the same forwards and backwards, their peculiar structure make it appear as if they can.)

43. I have watched a complete full-length feature film on youtube.

44. My coworkers and I sometimes play with a 40-foot long rubber band in our office parking lot.

45. I can think of a few words in my native language that don't have proper English synonyms. (Linguist Christopher J. Moore has published a collection of such words and phrases from around the world in his book In Other Words.)

46. I used to be able to recognize Orion's belt in the night sky.

47. I am not a purist when it comes to cooking; I will happily use substitutes and time and effort saving shortcuts whenever I need to.

48. The fact that I've lost much of the full head of luxuriant hair I used to have upsets me occasionally, but not to the point where I obsess or agonize over it.

49. I think I can be really patient when I have to.

50. I have trekked in the Himalayan ranges while I was still in high school.

51. When my coworker Ryan drew superhero versions of everyone in the office, I was Flash.

52. My favorite vegetable is probably green beans. While I will happily eat almost any vegetable now, there were a couple like pumpkin or bottle gourd that I wasn't too fond of growing up.

53. I often go to the most ridiculous extreme to recycle even the smallest scrap of paper or plastic even though I realize that it is probably not worth the energy and effort.

54. When I was younger I could turn on the charm at will fairly easily and make myself desirable to people if I really tried, getting them to like me and making them want to be my friend, but I strongly doubt if I can do it any more.

55. Pornography doesn't really do much for me. I am usually bored out of my wits after the first couple minutes, and would truly read Playboy for the interviews.

56. Of all movie directors who are actively working right now, Wong Kar-wai is probably my favorite. I also greatly admire Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou of China, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu of Mexico, and Pedro Almodovar of Spain. I consider all of them to be great auteurs, with consistent bodies of work and distinctive styles that deeply resonate within me.

57. KQED is the local public radio station that I subscribe to, but I will also occasionally listen to KALW.

58. I find it very difficult to say no to people. I also often try to please everybody and, as a direct result of that, get into the most convulsively complicated situations ever.

59. Once, when I was stranded on a particularly rainy night in Tokyo, a homeless man gave me his umbrella.

60. I have figured out the infamous "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." sentence, which is a grammatically correct example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs, attributed to linguist William J. Rapaport. (The Tokyo dogs analogy does help.)

61. For the longest time I was absolutely convinced that 3D stereograms were an elaborate hoax, till the first one popped out at me rather unexpectedly a couple years ago. Since then, I have made it one of my life's mission to convert other non-believers.

62. Salil Chowdhury is my absolute all-time favorite Indian popular and film music composer, and Rahul Dev Burman is a close second.

63. Every time I write the word receive, I am afraid that I have mis-spelled it.

64. The first time I went to a KFC or a McDonald's or a Wendy's was in Tokyo.

65. I don't do well in large groups at all, preferring smaller and more intimate gatherings with close friends instead. At big parties I am usually found sulking in a corner, and this almost certainly comes off as being unsocial and conceited.

66. I find self flushing toilets very unpredictable and somewhat intimidating.

67. I had great fun pissing my friend Sid off by exclaiming "Whoopsie Daisy", an expression I picked up from the owner of a small breakfast place somewhere on the way to Wellington from Auckland, rather dramatically at any and every opportunity while we were traveling in New Zealand. (I tried to do the same with "Sweet, mate!", but that didn't quite stick.)

68. The first music CD I bought in the US was a Joan Baez compilation.

69. I have vertigo. That may be one reason why I have never been good at climbing trees.

71. I believe that the public library system in the US is one of the greatest triumphs of the free world.

72. I have always wanted to write a spoof version of the Beatles song "Hey Jude" that would begin "Hey dude".

73. According to me, "All mimsy were the borogoves" (from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky) is one of the finest and most perfectly amazing sentence fragments ever written in the English language.

74. If I had to restrict my fiction reading to just one genre, it would have to be science fiction. (Two intriguing authors I would encourage you to explore would be Joanna Russ and Samuel R. Delany. The former brings to the field her unique feminist perspective and voice, and the latter his "outsider" status as a gay African-American man.)

75. I had an almost life-size poster of Madonna (Louise Ciccone, not the virgin) on my college dorm room wall.

76. The literal meaning of my name is 'son of the earth'.

78. Growing up in India we measured temperature in Centigrade, so now I am constantly confused about how hot or cold it really is.

79. I have never had the confidence to approach people I really like, so all my life I have only gone on dates when I have been asked out. A couple times I have actually found out later that someone I had a secret crush on was also very interested in me, but we never connected because neither of us took the first step.

80. I was once told that I have the skin of a twenty year old. (I was way older than 20 at the time this happened.)

81. Life is undoubtedly often extremely unfair; however, I strongly believe that we can choose to be - in fact, almost have an obligation to be - happy nevertheless.

82. I avoid eating fast food as much as humanly and realistically possible. However, I do get the occasional craving for an In-N-Out burger, or a Lee's sandwich, or Popeye's fried catfish.

83. I used to think that Brie was a type of deli meat (probably because it reminded of the word brisket), and I was once quite upset and confused when the Brie sandwich I ordered came only with veggies and cheese.

84. I think I have discovered the perfect no-fuss snack: a generous hunk of Brie on a Nacho Cheese flavored Doritos chip. The contrast of the textures and flavors is quite amazing, even though my friend Sid says that just the culture clash alone would be enough to give him indigestion.

85. The thought that I may become too stiff to cut my own toenails when I am very old really frightens me a lot.

86. I don't know the names of any of my ancestors beyond my grandparents; in fact, to be very honest, I have even forgotten my mother's father's name.

87. Once someone asked me for the phone number to my college's admissions office, and I gave them my aunt's number by mistake. My poor aunt still occasionally gets phone calls asking the odd admissions related question.

88. I can never accept praise or compliments graciously; I start feeling extremely uncomfortable, and never know how to respond in an appropriate manner.

89. In January 1990, during the 13th International Film Festival of India in Calcutta, I watched five full-length feature films back to back in one day. I started with the first show in the morning, and attended various screenings at different theaters all day, finishing off with the last one at night.

90. While I am not even remotely religious, I generally have no problem accepting and respecting other peoples' personal faith; however, very overt expressions of religious beliefs, either individual or communal, do put me off quite a bit.

91. 'Teh' instead of 'the' is the most common typo that I almost certainly make multiple times daily. In my defence, I never really formally learned to type, and as a result, I have to constantly look at the keyboard instead of the terminal and mostly just use one or at most two fingers while I am typing.

92. I very strongly feel that monogamy, just by itself, should not be considered a virtue.

93. My friend Ryan says that fornication and food are my only two vices, but I don't agree with him. I don't think that either should be considered a vice.

94. I have been called both totally cool and totally bizarre. By the same person at the same time.

95. For a little while, my nickname in college was machine gun, but it didn't stick.

96. No one taught me how to masturbate. I figured it out myself, way before I reached puberty.

97. I have seven different e-mail addresses, five of which I regularly use.

98. Even though I know this to be untrue, I still believe that how hard or how many times you press the push button at an intersection determines how soon the walk signal turns on.

99. When speaking to myself, I never actually use my name, but often opt for the second person pronoun.

100. It only took me 73 days to come up with this list. That's 53 days less than what it took me the first time around. I must be getting better!

Novel Ideas

In November 2006, in honor of National Novel Writing Month, NPR asked fiction writers to explain the essence of creating a novel, from how they write to their approach to writer's block. For me though, the most entertaining part of each interview was when the author was asked to contribute a favorite sentence. Here are some of the delightful responses.

They were in one of the 'I' states when Zeke told Isaac he had to ride in the trunk for a little while. (Laura Lippman)

Ice is the past tense of water. (Rita Mae Brown)

All parents keep secrets from their children. (Scott Turow)

The sun broke golden on the surface of the pool, a thousand floating coins. (Lewis Buzbee)

Lyle is aware that he isn't right, and sometimes he feels his jaw, his face, making sure it isn’t becoming elongated in a cruel caricature of a sad man. (Kaui Hart Hemmings)

She stood, the water up to her ankles, and turned toward the sandy beach, toward the green sea grass and colorful umbrellas and blue smoke swirling from a beach fire and a boy selling cups of lemonade with ice chips, a woman in a purple bathing suit, and turned back to the blue water and pine trees on the far side of the lake, and behind that the green hills and white clouds against blue sky, the contrast a singular beauty; and now, somewhere behind her, a man was singing a song. (Nina Schuyler)

We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck. (M. T. Anderson)

Petra loved the stories filed neatly into the flow of train windows –- she had seen arguments in profile, mouths open with laughter or horror, noses squashed against glass. (Blue Balliett)

Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he killed himself, but not the second or the third. (Jodi Picoult)

By now she knew that this life, despite all its pain, could be lived, that one must travel through it slowly; passing from the sunset to the penetrating odor of the stalks; from the infinite calm of the plain to the singing of a bird lost in the sky; yes, going from the sky to that deep reflection of it that she felt within her own breast, as an alert and living presence. (Geraldine Brooks)

And wasn't sorrow a kind of slow death anyway? (Gail Tsukiyama)

It was late in the fall and the trees lining our driveway had turned red like a row of burning matches. (Jess Walters)

In the end, the survivor gets to tell the story. (Nancy Werlin)

To Jane's surprise, a grilled cheese sandwich with chocolate milk was exactly what she wanted right then. (Jeanne Birdsall)

In 1954, the summer before I entered third grade, my grandmother mistook Andrew Imhof for a girl. (Curtis Sittenfeld)

Leaves of Grass saved my ass. (Gayle Brandeis)

The boy had probably been praying to a distinctly conceived God not to lose courage; he must have been simultaneously aware of the rush of time transporting him to the explosive instant; the patrons were sprinting along the lines of their own thoughts and personal dramas, their love affairs, their work conflicts, their sporting enthusiasms; the youth probably found his field of vision tightly narrowing once he made it past the guard into the pizzeria; inside they must have known immediately why a youth dressed as an Orthodox Jew would be rushing past the guard; he shouted, "Allahu Akbar!" reported the wounded, failed, severely questioned guard; they didn't see him press the trigger; the boy pressed the trigger (in his pocket, beneath his black coat?); this was followed by an ultima of total clarity in which the bomber and his victims saw every detail of every aspect of their environment crystallized into that minute and second of that day in the month of August in the year 2002. (Ken Kalfus)

Fall in love whenever you can. (Alice Hoffman)

Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!

A poem composed entirely of spam (including the title), assembled in a last minute wave of pity before I finally hit the delete button on my junk mail folder.

In finite

my friend, you are in trouble
your girlfriend is very angry
breaking the ordinary things

stop fighting
open something new for yourself
we can change it

enjoy life
feel younger
be younger

get your ideal weight
do anything
watch your body change

this is the most modern and safe way not to cover with shame
it will take your breath away
make her worship you

this night will be the best in your life
it's a wonderful day
believe it

Bulging Trousers

Few things can be funnier or more entertaining than really good bad sex writing: robustly and lecherously purple, and valiantly, if somewhat unintentionally, hilarious. The shortlist for this year's Bad Sex in Fiction award (established by the Literary Review to celebrate truly cringe-worthy erotic writing and mark "the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel.") was impressive, but debut author Iain Hollingshead scooped up the prize for his novel Twenty Something, beating established writers including Irvine Welsh, Will Self, David Mitchell and American literary maverick Thomas Pynchon.

"I hope to win it every year," said a delighted Hollingshead (the prize's youngest-ever winner at 25), who received his award, a statuette and a bottle of champagne, from rock singer Courtney Love at a London ceremony. His use of clichés and euphemisms, and his description of "bulging trousers", sealed the win, the judges said.

So, here, without further ado, is the incriminating passage (you will find the complete set of shortlisted extracts here):

She's wearing a short, floaty skirt that's more suited to July than February. She leans forward to peck me on the cheek, which feels weird, as she's never kissed me on the cheek before. We'd kissed properly the first time we met. And that was over three years ago.

But the peck on the cheek turns into a quick peck on the lips. She hugs me tight. I can feel her breasts against her chest. I cup my hands round her face and start to kiss her properly, She slides one of her slender legs in between mine. Oh Jack, she was moaning now, her curves pushed up against me, her crotch taut against my bulging trousers, her hands gripping fistfuls of my hair. She reaches for my belt. I groan too, in expectation. And then I'm inside her, and everything is pure white as we're lost in a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles.

100 Years of Solitude

1. This is really just my own Blogger's 100. The contents of this post has almost nothing to do with the title.

2. I have an irrational and extreme fear of birds. I sometimes try to explain it by saying that I was attacked by a herd of swans who knocked me down to the ground and tried to peck my eyes out when I was a toddler.

3. I enjoy popping bubble wrap way more than I should.

4. When I was an infant my aunt used to have a dog called Katie and I have been told that I used to feed her (the dog, not my aunt) fistfuls of dirt. I don't remember any of this.

5. I have attended six different pre, elementary, and middle schools.

6. I am mediocre at many things. I think I would rather be really good at just one.

7. I have wet my bed exactly once as an adult.

8. I have been told a few times that I was found sleepwalking.

9. Driving, shaving, and shopping are the three things I hate most in life. And maybe having to wake up early in the morning.

10. I have never owned a house in my life and I am occasionally worried that I will become homeless when I am old.

11. All four of my grandparents are dead. I remember three of them fairly well. My mother's father passed away before I could have precise memories of him.

12. I have the worst allergies in the history of the Universe. My eyes are always watery, I have extreme anosmia, and I cannot remember the last time I could freely breathe through my nose. This is really unfortunate because, of the five senses, smell is my most favorite.

13. I am fluent in three languages: English, Bengali, and Hindi. I also know a smattering of words and phrases in Tamil and Japanese.

14. I find it physically extremely difficult, actually almost impossible, to cry. I remember crying just once due to an emotional reason in my entire adult life. However, I will easily sob at the movies, or while reading a book, or sometimes even listening to a particularly evocative piece of music.

15. I have a friend who used to say that tapioca is better than sex. But he was single then and may have changed his mind since.

16. I don't drink alcohol and drink very little soda. I don't smoke tobacco.

17. I believe that one has to be cleansed of all earthly desire before one can move to the next level after death. This means that you will get to indulge every single one of your unfulfilled fantasies in the afterlife.

18. I am not entirely tech savvy. I don't own an iPod or a digital camera, and my car does not have a CD player.

19. Many of my friends tell me secrets they would not easily tell anyone else.

20. I am excruciatingly self conscious. That's why I almost never sing or dance in public.

21. It is not at all easy to hurt me or make me angry, but I can hold a grudge forever if I am indeed actually provoked.

22. I adore children and am very good with them, but I am not certain if I want any of my own.

23. I think I would enjoy being a stand up comic or a movie director or have my own late night show on television.

24. My favorite cuisine would have to be Thai or Malaysian. I like Indonesian and Burmese food too.

25. I find it difficult to truly enjoy most things if I cannot share them with my friends.

26. I was born in the city that is now called Kolkata and grew up in various small towns. I have also briefly lived in Tokyo and the city that is now called Chennai.

27. I have lost contact with most of my high school classmates.

28. My coworkers and I frequently play the 'would you rather' game with death not being an option.

29. I can browse for days in a good bookstore. For the longest time, that was my idea of heaven.

30. Reading an elaborate recipe will usually lift my spirits if I am depressed.

31. I don't lie very often. I feel that lying requires a lot more effort than just telling the truth and sticking to it.

32. I find physical positions in which I lose my balance deeply unsettling. That is why I get sick on roller coasters and cannot do any inversion poses. My yoga teacher once told me that this is probably because of an experience in a previous life.

33. I think it's perfectly alright to ask for a doggy bag in a restaurant, even if one doesn't have a dog.

34. I cannot whistle or do a somersault, and this will occasionally upset me a lot.

35. I believe that I am anti-photogenic. There isn't a single photograph of myself that I like.

36. When dining out with a group of close friends, I would rather order family style than get individual entrees.

37. I love to cook, but not just for myself.

38. I like taking afternoon naps, but I feel very melancholy if it is already getting dark when I wake up.

39. I enjoy eating almost everything, but for the last couple years I have been making a conscious effort to cut down on meat and eat more vegetables.

40. I sometimes feel that some people take advantage of me.

41. I am quite fond of a good bargain. I may be persuaded to buy something that I don't really need if the price is attractive enough.

42. Every now and then I will have a strong desire to just quit everything and go work at the post office or at a grocery store or at the library.

43. Till recently, I was naive enough to secretly believe that all great artists and authors are also wonderful people. But then, I also believed that love was more important than sex.

44. My coworker Louise has a tiny little Michel Foucault finger puppet fridge magnet and I think it's the coolest thing ever.

45. If I ever went back to school again, I would probably want to study linguistics or social and cultural anthropology or cognitive sciences.

46. There have been a few times in my life when I have narrowly escaped almost certain disfigurement, and these moments haunt me constantly. I would strongly prefer death to becoming physically dependent on someone.

47. I once poured a cup of boiling oil on my hand by mistake. The scars have almost vanished now, but you can still see them if you look really closely and know where to look.

48. I don't remember having a favorite toy as a child. I think I was way more into books than toys in any case.

49. While I was often a very enthusiastic participant, I was never actually any good at any sport growing up.

50. Right now, I cannot even imagine my life without a cell phone or the Internet.

51. When I am driving alone I prefer to listen to talk radio, usually NPR.

52. While growing up in India I would listen to a lot of British and American pop songs, but now I almost exclusively listen to Indian music.

53. I am extremely clumsy. None of my movements are naturally graceful. (I suspect I am socially somewhat clumsy too.)

54. I believe luck is quantized; be careful how you use it because you only get so much. Good and bad luck cancel each other out.

55. I often try to be tongue-in-cheek with a straight face. Sometimes I succeed.

56. My first real relationship was a complicated, protracted, and painful affair. We no longer speak to each other.

57. I have had light crushes on some of my teachers in high school and seniors and classmates in college.

58. I expect my lover to know exactly what I want without my ever having to say a single word. Of course I also realize that this is impossible.

59. I don't believe in saying 'I love you'. I feel that having to actually say it completely defeats the purpose in the first place. The fact that I love you should be abundantly clear from my behavior, and not from my speech. Ditto for sorry. And thank you.

60. I have a burning man poster in my bedroom and a Marc Chagall print (an office-warming present) at work. That's all.

61. Every time I visit a University campus I come away depressed for days, with a strong feeling that I am trifling away my life.

62. I watch very little television, but if I had to watch only one channel it would have to be the food network.

63. I am deeply and constantly in awe of women. I cannot even imagine going through pregnancy and childbirth.

64. Even though I have many good friends, I think I am a loner at heart.

65. Cruelty towards animals and the elderly enrage and depress me.

66. I am fond of Junior Mint candies and Milky Way Midnight bars. I also like Jelly Belly jellybeans. Juicy pear is one of my favorite flavors.

67. Seems like at any given point half the people in my life feel that I am too enthusiastic, and the other half feel that I am not enthusiastic enough.

68. I suck at ironing clothes. That is why I only wear jeans and tee shirts.

69. I can never say the word immediate entirely to my own satisfaction.

70. I always feel that I am talking too loudly when I am on the phone.

71. I am overly fond of making lists, probably much more than I should be. Even though I realize the innate futility of limiting my favorite movies, or books, or songs to just 10, or 15, or 20, I often feel oddly compelled to do so.

72. I usually don't have too much trouble falling asleep. Waking up is not always as easy though.

73. I can make a popping sound using my right index finger and my right ear that some of my friends find entertaining and amusing.

74. People who are constantly completely indecisive irritate me; however, people who always know exactly and precisely what they want intimidate me too.

75. I have road rage. A lot of it. I use profanity and a hand signal involving a certain finger all too often while driving.

76. I have never formally learned to swim, but I can manage to stay afloat by randomly thrashing my limbs every which way in the water.

77. I am severely directionally challenged; it took me more than a year to figure out that San Francisco was north and San Jose was south, and not too long ago I left work in the peninsula one evening to go back home to the south bay but drove into downtown San Francisco by mistake.

78. A friend once told me that he had seen me in a serious mood only once in his entire lifetime, and that was right before our Linear Algebra final exam in college.

79. I have gone kayaking in New Zealand and dog sled riding in Alaska.

80. I absolutely adore the ellipsis and tend to italicize words far more than I probably should...

81. I have an occasional tendency, especially when talking with strangers, to speak almost entirely in impromptu and half-baked aphorisms that I make up on the spur of the moment. A recent example: Oftentimes people insist on a decision when they should be happy with just a possibility.

82. I am inordinately fond of blue cheese. My friend Ryan makes a cornbread crust pizza with Romanesco broccoli topping and blue cheese in every bite that is completely out of this world and to die for.

83. I have, on multiple occasions, been on the verge of complete panic thinking that my car was stolen, when, in reality, I was simply looking for it in the wrong part of the parking lot or even the wrong street.

84. I often wish I had the courage to drop everything and take a year off to see the world.

85. One Halloween, faced with a street full of enthusiastic trick-or-treaters and no candy at home, I turned all the lights out and pretended to be away for the whole evening.

86. I am rather fond of watching James Bond movies. However, I consider them to be somewhat of a guilty pleasure, and would be quite embarrassed to publicly admit that I enjoy them.

87. I was once at a Christmas party that went on till almost new year's day because no one wanted to leave.

88. A couple years ago my then room mates and I decided to go without television for a year, and now I don't miss it at all. (Of course I do have a set for watching movies on DVD or VHS, and the occasional late night Family Guy or Futurama rerun.)

89. I often listen to npr's Song of the Day while at work. (Thankfully, my office mate seems to enjoy it too, and hasn't complained yet.)

90. I try to go to the gym a couple times every week, but I don't enjoy it at all, so it helps that my room mate and I workout together.

91. When I was in elementary school, all of the students were chosen to be extras in a fairly big budget Bollywood movie. For about a week we had no classes; we would travel to location every day, and have to lip-synch with the stars as they sang. As far as I can remember, the picture, when it came out, didn't do very well at all.

92. I am usually always reading a couple books at the same time; that way, I can keep switching between them, and I actually end up finishing them much faster than if I just read them back to back.

93. Even when I know exactly what to get, I always end up spending way too much time just browsing at the video rental store. Or the book store, for that matter.

94. I am not sure if complex thoughts are possible without language.

95. I will very occasionally urinate in the shower if the urge is just too great and I cannot be bothered to dry off and walk to the toilet.

96. I often enjoy (and look forward to) the previews that precede the feature presentation more than the movie itself.

97. Even when things turn out really well, I am faintly dissatisfied that they didn't happen in some other way. The white noise from all the alternate realities are forever distracting me.

98. My fingers are not even the lightest shade of green. I feel that a plant left solely in my care would almost certainly wither and die.

99. I will sometimes turn the subtitles on when I am watching a DVD (even when I know the language the movie is in) so that I don't miss any of the dialogue.

100. This must make me some kind of a pathetic loser, but coming up with a hundred things about myself has been far more difficult than I had imagined it would be. It has taken me precisely 126 days to complete this post (and much of it was written while I was at work), but now I am done!

One of the World's Last Great Secrets

In the following passage from The Glass Palace, a rich, layered, epic novel set primarily in Burma and India cataloging the evolving history of those regions before and during the fraught years of the second world war and India's independence struggle, Amitav Ghosh lovingly describes a meal.

Ilongo left and another place was laid at the table, next to Alison's. Arjun seated himself and Alison began to pile his plate with food.

"We call this ayam limau purut - chicken with lime leaves and tamarind; and here's some prawn sambal with screwpine leaves; and these are belacan brinjals; and over there is some chinchalok with chillies - shrimps, pickled in lime juice; and this is fish steamed with ginger buds..."

"What a feast! And this is an everyday dinner?"

"My mother was always very proud of her table," Alison said. "And now it's become a habit of the house."

Arjun ate with gusto. "This food is wonderful!"

"Your aunt Uma loved it too. Do you remember, Dinu? That time?"

"Yes I do." Dinu nodded. "I think I even have pictures."

"I've never eaten anything like this," Arjun said. "What is it called?"

"It's Nyonya food," Alison said. "One of the world's last great secrets, my mother used to say."

Suddenly Saya John spoke up, catching them all by surprise."It's the flowers that make the difference."

"The flowers, Grandfather?"

Saya John looked at Arjun with eyes that were fleetingly clear. "Yes - the flowers in the food. Bunga kentan and bunga telang - ginger flowers and blue flowers. They're what give the food its taste. That's what Elsa always says."

Burmese food has always fascinated me too, and the following recipe (adapted from Under the Golden Pagoda by Aung Aung Taik) has become a recent favorite. Almost childishly simple to cook, it nevertheless results in a deeply satisfying dish bursting with subtle but complex flavors.

Nananpin Ngakhu Hin
Catfish Curry with Tomato and Cilantro

One 3-pound catfish, cut into 1-inch-thick steaks
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 yellow onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 teaspoon paprika
1 cup chopped tomato
8 sprigs fresh cilantro

Rub the fish steaks with turmeric and salt. Let stand for 30 minutes.

Heat the oil in a large, 3-inch deep frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, paprika, and tomato and saute until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the water, cover, and simmer until liquid is reduced by three quarters, about 20 minutes.

Lay the fish steaks flat in the pan; do not overlap the steaks if possible. Spoon the pan juices over the fish. Cover, and cook until the fish is done, about 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, sprinkle with the cilantro, and let stand, covered, for about 15 minutes before serving.

The heart's deliberate chambers of hurt

It is Frank O'Hara's birthday today according to The Writer's Almanac, but a little research uncovers a different reality: O'HARA, Frank (27 Mar. 1926-25 July 1966), poet, was born Francis Russell O'Hara in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Russell Joseph O'Hara and Katherine Broderick, who both came from strict Irish-Catholic families. O'Hara always believed he was born 27 June 1926, but his parents apparently lied about his birthdate to hide the fact that he was conceived before their marriage. Well, birthday or not, I still wanted to pay tribute to this "urbane, ironic, sometimes genuinely celebratory and often wildly funny" poet with one of his poems that is particularly close to my heart. O'Hara felt that poetry should be "between two persons instead of two pages" and sought to capture the immediacy of life, describing his work as "I do this I do that" poetry because his poems often read like entries in a diary. And yet, as Kenneth Rexroth noted, O'Hara's speech often manages to rise above its own colloquialism and is "moving in the way that only simple communication can be moving." This poem is from his collection Meditations in an Emergency published in 1957 and I can still recall the effect it had on me when I first read it in my freshman year of college; here was a voice that was at once urgent and wistful and I felt an immediate connection.

Poem

The eager note on my door said "Call me,
call when you get in!" so I quickly threw
a few tangerines into my overnight bag,
straightened my eyelids and shoulders, and

headed straight for the door. It was autumn
by the time I got around the corner, oh all
unwilling to be either pertinent or bemused, but
the leaves were brighter than grass on the sidewalk!

Funny, I thought, that the lights are on this late
and the hall door open; still up at this hour, a
champion jai-alai player like himself? Oh fie!
for shame! What a host, so zealous! And he was

there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
ran down the stairs. I did appreciate it. There are few
hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
only casually invited, and that several months ago.

42

It would be difficult for me to accurately describe exactly how I felt the first time I realized that rearranging the letters in ELEVEN + TWO would give TWELVE + ONE, but it is sufficient to say that the experience almost momentarily made me believe in a personal version of some kind of intelligent design. I have since then often pondered on what it is exactly that fascinated me so much then, and still does now; I mean, obviously, it's not just the case that we are looking at a particularly smart and surprising anagram, and I have come to believe my sense of wonder may have something to do with the delicate and elegant way this curious fact seems to tie up all of the three R's and attempt to bridge the gap between literacy and numeracy for one blazing moment.

In fact, I have always found puzzles that related words and numbers in unexpectedly intelligent ways particularly engaging. For example, try to explain the pattern and find the next number in this sequence:

3, 3, 5, 4, 4, 3, 5, 5, 4, ...

As you can probably guess, you will be wasting your time if you try to find a purely mathematical rule because all I have done is simply list the number of digits in the words:

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ...

Now, interestingly, 4 is the first number whose value equals the number of letters in it's name. But is it the only one? I suspect so, but I don't know if one could establish a rigorous proof for this assertion. In any case, it only makes sense to claim that the value of a number equals the number of letters in it's name as long as we talk about positive integers; the number of letters in the names of nonpositive integers and non-integers can never equal their value. I am certain this is a somewhat profound statement that will eventually lead us to the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, but I am just too tired to go down that route right now.

And besides, it's almost lunchtime.

Transamerica

Wonders will never cease. Who would of thunk it would be so easy? But... umm... I have a question. So why is it a gender changer if it is female to female?

Let Them Eat Cake

E-mail from Louise, followed by immediate response from Ben.

From: Louise
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 9:58 AM
To: Ben; Ryan; Krista; Amanda; Donald; Natalie; Jennifer; Partha
Subject: Ben's b-day

Hey guys,

Shall we do cake for Ben's birthday today? Does anyone know what kind of cake Ben likes? I figure we can't really go too wrong.

From: Ben
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 9:58 AM
To: Louise; Ryan; Krista; Amanda; Donald; Natalie; Jennifer; Partha
Subject: RE: Ben's b-day

Hey dudes,

Let's like, totally ask him.. maybe we could include him on a group email?

And, for those of you who were looking for a more nutritional post, here is some food for thought.

One Hand Clapping

Ben Neely, the extraordinarily talented inventor of the false rip, you are, like, totally my superhero, dude!

A Spoonful of Sugar

Time does not have quanta, Ben tells me, and I have to admit that it sounds quite deep at first. But then, how can we tell? How can we tell if anything does not have quanta for that matter? For isn't human perception, and even consciousness, quantized, just by definition? I mean, everything eventually boils down to that one synapse inside the brain, and that is a discrete, individual unit; which then, in turn, quantizes pretty much any and every human experience.

In fact, as I think about this, it seems to me that this is a version of Zeno's third motion-is-impossible paradox, which basically claims that an arrow cannot move from point A to point B because, in order to do so, its motion has to be both discrete and continuous at the same time. Examined at one instant in time, an arrow in flight would appear to be no different from one that is stationary. What is it then that gives one object motion and the other one stillness?

Which actually brings up what to me is one of the most fundamental and profound problems of human philosophy and science: the reconciliation of the basic dichotomies of the Known Universe. Discrete and continuous; particle and wave; body and soul; matter and energy; form and content. Diametrically opposite and yet irrevocably linked.

Prolix, Pretentious, Shapeless?

Mark Haddon has followed up his heartbreaking work of staggering genius, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which was named the 2003 Whitbread book of the year, with a collection of poetry, and the Guardian recently carried a scathing attack (I almost hesitate to call it a review) on it. Now while I will certainly be among the first to admit that The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea is at best a minor work, not much more than a hurried sketch done in a somewhat playful but pensive mood by an acclaimed master, I was nevertheless not a little surprised by the amount of vitriol in the aforementioned piece by Ranjit Bolt. I, for one, being firmly of the opinion that the possibility of genuine nonsense should surely be a cause for celebration, would like to respectfully disagree with Mr. Bolt. I definitely do not regret the time I spent perusing this slim volume, and I believe that admirers of Haddon's stark and sparse prose will, at the very least, discover in this book a voice that is rather different from the one that had so pleasantly surprised and delighted them.

Here are two poems that I have selected from the book. Tongue-in-cheek? Yes. Occasionally somewhat affected and sometimes mediocre? Perhaps. But tendentious and ghastly? I think not.

Dry Leaves

Horace Odes 1:25

Young men stumbling home from parties
don't throw pebbles at your windows now.
You sleep till dawn and that busy door
of yours now hugs the step. No one

asks how you can sleep when they are dying
all night long for love of you. Times change.
You're old and no one gives a damn.
You'll weep at all the men who have deserted you

as gales from Thrace roar down
that empty lane on moonless nights.
The hot lust which sends mares mad
will flare around your ulcerated heart

and you'll cry out at the young men
who love the ivy and the dark green myrtle
but who throw the dry leaves
into the East wind, that bride of winter.

The Facts

In truth, the dwarf worked at a betting shop
and wore an orthopedic shoe.
The ugly sisters were neither sisters nor, indeed, women,
nor were they remotely interested in the prince.
The plain librarian looked better with her glasses on,
the bomb had not been fitted with a clock
and when the requisitioned farm-truck shot
the as-yet-uncompleted bridge it nose-dived into the ravine
and blew up killing both the handsome sheriff
and his lovable but stupid sidekick, Bob.

Karma Chameleon

Ryan snapped his Achilles tendon last week putting his leg temporarily out of commission; he has already had surgery and is hobbling around on crutches with his leg in a cast, and it will probably be months before he can start putting any pressure on his right foot again. He is in excruciating pain, and even a little movement tires him out. So I am picking him up on my way to work every morning, and the plan is for me to also drop him back most days starting next week, when he will be able to manage a longer workday without being exhausted. 'Think of all the karma points you will be earning', he told me.

So that got me thinking. About those points.

How does this whole point system work, anyway? Do I get more or less, depending on how I go about it? What if I drive him to and from work, but don't hide my irritation at the time and distance it adds to my already long work commute? What if I feel the irritation, but don't quite make it public? Or, on a different note, what if I really, truly, sincerely want to help him, but can't, because of some genuine reason? Do I still get karma points?

I guess almost every belief system tries, in one way or the other, to get its followers to do good; but to what extent does the actual purpose factor into the calculation? What is the difference, if any, between doing good just because it is the right thing to do, or in the hope of a reward, or to avoid some kind of divine punishment? Can we just be happy with the action, or do we need to explore intent?

I will have to mull on all this for a while. But in the mean time, if Ryan (or some higher power) is reading this, I need to make it perfectly clear that my motives are completely and purely altruistic. So bring on those points!

The Shadowy Path

In A Strange and Sublime Address by Amit Chaudhuri, Sandeep, an only child living in a Bombay high-rise, spends a summer visiting his Uncle's house in Calcutta with his mother. On Sundays, his uncle sings aloud to himself during his leisurely preluncheon bath, the notes echoing in the enclosed space of the bathroom 'like rays of trapped light darting this way and that in a crystal'.

He usually sang old, half-remembered compositions that had been popular thirty of forty years ago in a Bengal where the radio and the windup gramophone were still new and incredible machines breaking the millennial silence of the towns and villages:

Godhulir chhaya pathe
Je gelo chini go tare.

Knocking on the bathroom door, Sandeep made a pest of himself by asking: " Chhotomama, what does godhuli mean?"

Lost in the general well-being of cleansing himself, his uncle replied patiently: "The word go means 'cow',and the word dhuli means 'dust'. In the villages, evening's the time the cowherds bring the cattle home. The herd returns, raising clouds from the road. Godhuli is that hour of cow dust. So it means 'dusk' or 'evening'."

As Chhotomama explained, his voice emerging from behind the steady sound of water, Sandeep saw it in his mind like a film being shown from a projector - the slow-moving, indolent cows, their nostrils and their shining eyes, the faint white outline of the cowherd, the sense of the expectant village (a group of scattered huts), and the dust, yes the dust, rising unwillingly from the cows' hooves and blurring everything. The mental picture was set in the greyish-red colour of twilight. It was strange how one word could contain a world within it.

Strange indeed! What is a word but a seemingly random arrangement of letters of the alphabet (which themselves are seemingly random shapes), or a seemingly random modulated sound? And yet, one single word can encompass whole Universes and more. The word godhuli does not just indicate a time of day, but conjures up a complete way of life.

Understanding words and phrases and the concepts they encapsulate brings us a long way toward understanding the people, and societies and cultures, who employ them. It's just amazing how, long after the dusk has given way to night, the dust from the cows' hooves has settled, and even the village itself has crumbled to dust, this word will remain, yielding its secrets to the deserving.

Finest Hour

I realize that it would be both unnecessary as well as futile to use this forum to sing the praise of public radio to the handful of amazingly awesome individuals known to occasionally frequent this corner of cyberspace; however, I do feel obligated to talk about a new show that I recently discovered almost by accident on KQED, which, along with KALW, is one of my local public radio stations. Radio Lab (from WNYC) is 'an investigation': each episode is usually designed to tackle One Big Idea which regularly turns out to be fairly ambitious in terms of its breadth and scope, and not only do they almost always succeed, the Radio Lab team actually manage to do so with verve and wit (and enough digressions) that keep the hour both engrossing and informative. From questions like 'How does the brain make me?' to exploring the nature of stress, from looking at the staggeringly complicated societies formed by bees and ants to examining the history and nature of time, Radio Lab is one fascinating journey where 'science bumps into culture' and 'information sounds like music'.

Season One of Radio Lab is archived here, and Season 2 begins April 14, 2006. I can hardly wait!

A Cycle of Love and Longing

Will it work? Or will this day too pass through what, for lack of better words, we call memory, and end up blurry and sepia circa somesuch AD (crumpled and faded, like those receipts in the wallet that went in the wash, the bar codes barely showing, the merchants' names all but vanished)? Will this weekend combine with a dazzling blue sky in an as yet unrealized future and bring tears to the eye and settle uncomfortably in the throat? Or maybe it will work. Maybe we will slip into the domesticity we dread and desire, growing old and fat and bald. And on a wet and gloomy day in an as yet unrealized future we will look at each other and sigh, wondering what it must have been like then to be thinking about what it is like now.

Another Nice Normal Family

The Singhsons. Check them out here. (Or, in case that link is dead, they are resurrected here too.)