Rock Off

Gaah! Help! Oxygen! Water! Something! I just watched Rock On on MTV!

As a non-fan of MTV’s current programming, I have conditioned my reflexes to switch channels quickly while channel-surfing to avoid hurling due to unintended exposure to Roadies or Splitsvilla or whatever other crap they have on nowadays. However, I do admit to having some morbid curiosity in the possibility of a TV talent hunt being some good, despite all empirical evidence to the contrary. Besides, its rock. Could it be all that bad?

I do not remember who, but it was a very wise person who said, “there’s a sucker born every minute.”

So, I watch a full thirty minutes of some folks doing a training/practice montage, doing a decent (and I stress that word) rock rendition of a Bollywood number on stage, and then getting verbally assaulted by the judges. And, it may be because I’m stupid to have expected one, but I fail to see the point of it all.

My favourite part was the judges, each of whom genuinely seems to wish they were elsewhere. Ram Sampath, who I used to adore as part of Colourblind, seems to have turned into a snobbier-than-thou prick who can’t appreciate anything. Kailash Kher seems positively fruity when he tries to diplomatically tell people they suck. As such, he’s the only bearable one. The real surprise, for me, was erstwhile cool dude Nikhil Chinappa who, for some reason, seems to be growing more and more bitter with age, losing no chance to savage any performance for cosmetic reasons.

So, if I don’t like it, why don’t I just switch channels, you might ask. Well, I did, once I heard this intriguing quote from Nikhil (to perhaps the crappiest band that I saw) while expressing disappointment at their performance: ‘You guys are among the fifty best musicians in India, give or take’. Really? Really?

Anyway, to recover, I have some rock that’s both good and untouched by MTV: I finally got my hand’s on Avial’s album. Yaay.

My Name Is… What?

As I’ve mentioned before, I hate to see a missing month in the archive list. So, I’m recylcling an oldie that old friend, ex-colleague and long-time roommate Akru and myself came up with a couple of years ago. The current surplus of free time brought back this till-then repressed memory of a less-complicated time.

Back when we were working, and work we did, we’d find our ways to ‘productively utilize’ downtime by finding creative ways to goof around (he was the creative one, I was the goof). This was one of them. We started compiling a list of names that would be interesting for someone of a mixed religious heritage. We got the idea, of course, from Malayalam cinema which has given us such gems as Cherian Nair, Mary Thampuratty, Simon Nadar and Bilal John Kurisinkal.

The idea was that in the unlikely event that we or anyone we know would ever make a movie, we’d never be at a loss for unique names. Also, these email ids will pretty much always be available. So, without further ado, I present to you:

Unique names for children/movie characters  aka doing our part to ensure communal integration

Latheef Namboothiri
Mohammad Aravindan
Habeeb Nair
Madhavan Chacko
Shafeeque Unni
James Moideen
Kunjamina Fernandez
Pathumma George
Scaria Nair
Zulfath Warrier
Alex Potty
Alamelu Xavier
Joseph S Vaidyanathan
Shajahan Nambiar
Jason Hameed
Zubeida Samuel
Melvin Kumar
Krishnan Mathai
Palathingal Madhu Paulose
Shahid Eapen
Fathima Iyer
Sajid Pappachan
Mary Keshavan
Beeran Philip
Sufiyan Panicker
Majeed Alexander
Abhilash Koya
Ashraf Thomas
Shukkoor Thankachan
Zaheer Perumal
Imran Thomas
Raman Chandy
Avirachan Pillai
Eldho Marar
Laila Nambeesan
Steve Raghavan
Nixon Mahadevan
Tinku Namboothiri
Joji Namboothiri
Sunny Rasheed
Kareem Gopalan
Marimuthu Kochouseph
Mujeeb Pithambaran
Imran Das
Shaguftha Peter
Mandira Beevi (the Mandira Bedi of Koyilandi)
Cherian Pillai
Padmapriya Jaleel
Moosa Bhadran

This list is pretty Kerala-specific and therefore may not be very funny to non-malayalees. Unfortunately, most malayalees don’t find it very funny either. Am I really that sophomoric? Whatever. I’d love to see a pan-Indian version of this list.

Please feel free to send in any interesting ideas you may have, if you feel particularly silly today.

PS: We stopped doing this list when we found out that there was a person in our company named (and I kid you not) Hamsa Ananthapadmanabhan [last name modified]. Truth stranger than fiction? Not yet. The best part: it turned out this Hamsa was a woman. Entamme!

Life’s A Game. Have Cheats Handy.

I like videogames. Not so much as to be one of those hardcore gamers who spend every waking hour playing World of Warcraft, but just enough so that, when I like a game, I spend a few (sometimes in double digits) hours a day obsessing about it till it ceases to interest me. Sometimes, some of these games are so interesting that I spend weeks on them. This is when they invade my subconscious.

No, that doesn’t mean I hunt down people with chicken wire and plastic bags Manhunt-style in my sleep, just that sometimes, when I sleep, I see images of crowbars, Doom imps and Minesweeper squares. I also sometimes see them when I’m awake but just about to fall asleep (a condition known as daydreamus procrastinous).

The purpose of me weirding you out with this revelation is to warn you that its finally happened. I think this affliction has moved to the next stage and has started taking over my conscious as well. Let me explain. I am a big fan of the Grand Theft Auto series of games. I like to spend hours playing, exploring and generally creating mayhem in the fictional, yet quite lifelike, game environment. And I think its affected my real world activities as well. The other day, when I was driving (in real life), I accidentally scraped the car against an oncoming autorickshaw (I don’t remember if I was imagining myself playing GTA at the time, though that would be both totally awesome and totally creepy). There wasn’t much damage, just a little give and take of paint on both sides.

Later on, while inspecting the damage, I actually caught myself thinking, ‘No problem. Just reload an earlier save game and…’ Oh dear me, I guess the chicken wire is going to come out sooner or later. So I thought it fair to warn everyone right now. If you see me walking down the street, just wave from a distance. Unless I happen to be carrying a sniper rifle or something.

PS: I realise that my condition is really not that bad yet. I remember The Curious Case of Benjamin ButtKrack, who once, after a long session of playing Counter-Strike, sat up in his sleep, held out his hands as if wielding an AK-47 and cried, ‘Kill the Russian M***erf***ers’, to the consternation of roommate Ice-Tee, who, till then, was sleeping soundly. I don’t think he slept very soundly after that. Ever.

URL (UnRelated Link): Oldie but goldie. Crazy Turk goes on talk show claiming he can fly. They don’t believe him. He flies. Sort of.

In Transit.

Again.

Don’t expect too many updates for the next couple of months or so. Unless I happen to stumble into an internet cafe or something. Or if I can leech a wireless signal from a nearby house (unlikely).

You can heave your sighs of relief now.

Spamming Me Softly

I don’t really get a lot of email. Most of what I do get is neatly filtered away by the Gmail server to the spam folder. And I imagine good folks at Google are pretty good at blocking spam from entering my inbox. That’s why, when I received an email today from a Malaysian lawyer saying I had been chosen by lucky draw to inherit about $6 million of his late client‘s money, I knew it had to be genuine. Hey, if you can’t trust an unknown person offering you millions in exchange for your bank account number, well then who can you trust?

Of course, the offer carried a stipulation that the cash be used for philanthropic purposes. Perfect, because I just so happen to represent a worthy cause in mind that could use some money. So, I should contact this fellow and claim the money, right? Glad you agree with me. I might set aside a cheeseburger for you.

So, I’m drafting a letter, and I’d like your opinion first. Does this sound okay? I want to make a good first impression, you know.

Dear Mr. Fancy Pants Malaysian Lawyer,

First of all, thank you for your email. I’ve been hearing about the recent spate of Malaysian millionaire philanthropists that have been kicking the bucket and willing their riches to randomly selected recipients, and I’ve been wondering when it would be my turn. And its about time, I say. What took you so long? But, that’s not important. What is is that you have finally found the right person.

Before we start, let me congratulate you on your move from Nigeria to Malaysia. I imagine the move must have been necessary. I mean, just how many more diplomats and government officials seeking to move cash out of the country are there, right? I hope you find new the business just as good, and hope you have the best of luck helping dying millionaires finding people willing to spend their money, as I am sure their families do not in the least object.

So, where were we? Yes, the money. Well, here’s the deal. I see from your email that your client wanted the money to go towards a charitable cause. Let me congratulate you once again on having selected the right person because I just so happen to know a cause that could use the money: the JHBF (Jaskon’s Hungry Belly Fund), which works for the welfare of one very needy person (hereinafter referred to as ‘me’ or ‘I’). Luckily for both of us, your random selection process found me and not someone who would undoubtedly have used the money for his or her own selfish needs.

So that’s settled. Now, down to business. I can not give you my bank account number. I can’t give you the number because I do not have one. My previous bank account was frozen by the government on account of suspicious transactions between myself and certain manufacturers of cherry pastries and axle grease. Its a long story, one that I can hopefully regale you with at length when I have got my millions and we are sipping champagne in the spa of a 5 star hotel in Kuala Lumpur, being waited upon hand and foot by well toned, scantily clad Malaysian nymphets. You will join me in the spa, no? Just because I think we could, you know, hang out together. Really, no homo.

But, matters of R&R aside, I am prepared to catch the next flight to Kuala Lum, just as soon as you can advance me the money for a return ticket. Or better yet, I will be much obliged if you could provide me a boat for the trip, as I have reason to believe that customs agents and the Coast Guard are still on the lookout for me. A silly misunderstanding it was (who would have known about the trade tariffs on ball bearings in the Caribbean nations, right?), but better to be safe than sorry till I can get my hands on enough cash to bribe them for further trips.

So, once I get to Malaysia, I hope we can arrange for the money to be handed over to me in cash (preferably unmarked $100 bills). If not, a draft in the name of ‘M/s ABC Ball Bearings and Pastries’ will do just fine. After which, it would be greatly appreciated if a fake passport could be made available to me, with a visa stamped for Disneyland. I shall give you the freedom of picking the name that appears on the passport. Just don’t make it anything too obvious like McLovin.

Then, we shall move on to the next phase of the plan. We shall build a jungle fortress and recruit locals and train them in weapons and martial arts. When they are ready, we shall inva- wait, my eleven year old cousin just told me that emails offering random people large amounts of money in exchange for bank account numbers and personal data are really fraud schemes. I can’t believe it. Mr. Lawyer, I really thought you were genuinely trying to help me. (Sniff) I thought we could be friends. Is this how you would treat a friend?

I am very disappointed in you, sir. You bring a great shame on the nation of Malaysia. Why, I bet even the Nigerian gentleman who emailed me last week is a scamster, then (Note to self: Smack self in the head for providing credit card information). Is there no honour left in the world? I must therefore inform you that, as of this moment, this deal is off. I do not want your fraudulent money and friendship. My charity will carry on without you, on the sale of deep fried cupcakes alone.

Though I’ll still hang out with you in the spa, if you’re interested.

Yours indignantly,
Jaskon

I really wonder if, somewhere in Lagos or Kuala Lumpur, some wealthy diplomat’s lawyer is sitting on a few million dollars, genuinely waiting for someone to reply to his email. Or this, in Russia:

Yeah, I wonder why

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