If done properly, musical. Otherwise,...
Providing the "Definite Answer" from Sept '06
My friend: hey do u mind if i can use some part of our conversation (in a blog)?
Me: sure...
My friend: hey thnx
Me: I dont hold copyrights on my chats
My friend: hehehehhehe
Me: though I wont mind royalty
"Tom and Jerry" is violent, and so it is now being rewritten to show that Tom and Jerry are friends, solving mysteries together. They are also cutting out the blackened faces after explosions. I think Tom and Jerry will be sitting in their sitting room (a la Poirot and Hastings?), without smoking, discussing their cases, rather than chasing after one another. My laughter just died.
Enid Blyton is racist and sexist. So, the books are now rewritten with the names considered sexist (By children? Really?) changed to more neutral ones. And I thought Enid Blyton was about reading about a bunch of kids like you fighting crime and solving mysteries, being patriotic, brave and loyal to friends. A part of me which likes to read kids' books just took last breath.
A psychologist in US says, characters like Hermione Granger in Harry Potter books are making girls more violent. So, a girl who endures sneers from her batch mates just because of her parentage for six years, and explodes only once (to punch the boy, when she can do much more damage easily) in those 6 years, is a "role model" for girls who join gangs and kill people? My belief in psychology has just been declared DOA.
Nursery rhymes are being re-evaluated. So, Humpty Dumpty does not break (or in another version is put back together), and a rainbow sheep says "ba ba" now. I know nursery rhymes are somewhat traumatic, but still...
So, what next are we looking at? Children's' books like this? I would trade a Famous Five story for this any time... and the only way a Harry Potter book would make me violent is when somebody keeps it away from me when I want to read it.
I don't know about you people, but I am going to risk my child being brought up sexist, racist and any other ist, but I want him to read Secret Seven, Famous Five, watch Tom and Jerry, have fun with nursery rhymes and fairy tales, and most of all learn about some values like friendship, loyalty and many more from Harry Potter.
After all, when Dumbledore says "It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.", I may be wrong but I think he is not telling us that violence is the way to go.
When we were in 9th std., the school syllabus underwent a major change, and a lot of new things were included. And we were condemned to learn different types of domestic animals like bulls, cows, buffaloes, dinosaurs... (OK, maybe not dinosaurs).
Everybody learns types of vitamins, we learnt the diseases caused by lack and excess of it. Though that led to muchos fun... we had a friend, whom we used to stare at whenever teacher described a new disease, like he was a prime sample.
Anyways, to get back to the point (yes, there's a point to this post), after seeing one whole batch of student struggling with the animal lists (I mean, the students in city knew the difference between Buffalo and cow, not different types of them), the architecture of stables (we started with what is this thing) and the trauma caused by exposure to a lot of diseases at an impressionable age to us (we were not all going to be doctors you know), the whole part was dropped for next batch, and they went on with a reduced, healthy syllabus.
Now, the reason for my sudden bout of nostalgia (and nausea), is this post, and subsequent developments on that front. I mean, we used a few of our ever-decreasing memory storage for memorising the 9 planets, and now the next generation has need to only remember names of 8 (7 if this goes ahead).
Now that's what I call injustice...
Being a compilation of small incidents involving the Knights and those in our circle.
Two of my friends are waiting for the light to go green at one of the busiest squares in Pune. Signal goes green, but the uncle in front of them is not even seen trying to start his bike, and they are trapped in bumper-to-mudguard traffic. After waiting some time for the person to show some activity,
My Friend: Uncle, can you please go ahead? You won't get a better shade of green than this here.
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One of our Football Ignorant Friend (FIF) is watching World Cup with us and My Friend's Dad (MFD). There is a penalty from just outside of the box, and the team starts forming the wall.
FIF: Why are they holding hands there?
MFD (in all sincerity): So that they can make sure the person next to them does not run away when ball comes at him.
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We are discussing with one of my friend's wife-to-be (WTB) that we won't be able attend their marriage as all of us three (out of group of 4) are out of town (and country, in my case) that month. She gets angry and
WTB: We won't attend your marriages now.
My friend: That's ok. We will just dangle a bone in front of him1 , and he will come2.
WTB: That's not correct...
Me: Yes, that's not correct. He is in ortho. We will need a broken bone.
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We are discussing the looong lines to fill the engineering admission forms.
My friend: I was standing in one spot for so long, that my feet gathered lichen on them.
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One of our friend's cell is erratic. She is telling me and my friend who is a captain in Army.
My friend: You won't be able to dial his number. The "9" key is broken.3
Captain: That's easy. Just dial 5 and then 4, or vice-versa...
Me: Spoken like a true Army Captain and a son of mathematician...
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This can only happen on the round table... The Table has seen many such days, and will see many more in the years to come, when we know that "stomach splitting due to laughter" is not a fable.
We Are The Knights of The Round Table....
Footnotes:
1. Like the famed carrot in front of... you get it.
2. He is studying for his orthopaedic MD.
3. In India, all cell numbers start with 9.
Thank god, my interest in astronomy was around the time when we still had moons circulating planets and planets circulating stars.
Now, new planets are being added to the original list according to new definition, Ceres (earlier an asteroid), Xena (an object, whatever that may be) and Charon (Pluto's moon)
Does that mean that a planet (Charon) circles around a planet (Pluto)? Or does that mean we have a binary planet system (similar to binary stars) in our solar system? Crikey, those two must be facing quite an identity crisis...
We felt a dire need of ranking books read by us. As most of these books lie in either bestseller or unheard of categories, the rankings you can get from the different lists is not reliable. (I mean, how can you differentiate between "Angels and Demons" and "A Song of Ice and Fire" given that both enjoy bestseller status with 4 to 5 stars each?)
So, the idea of creating our own book scale was brought to the table, seconded and agreed upon. After a lot of research, the select committee of a writer (me), an ex-chief editor of a magazine (again me) a reader (yes, me) and a book critique(got it?) decided on a scale of 1-10, calling it Book(?)...err Scale. (The sarcastic reference due to the unique critical sense of humour.) The actual count on the scale is decided by a complex formula which essentially calculates whether the book in question can be called a book at all (in layman's terms).
So, 1 on the Book(?)...err scale would be a book you can't put down (think of "Great Indian Novel"), and 10, by extension refers to a book(?) which you cannot put down, but need to throw down hard. (Tough competition between "A Song..." and "Executive Orders"). The inverted scale is again thanks to unique critical style.
Music lovers might think of the scale as going from Asha/Lata's songs (1), through the voices of Shaan, Lucky Ali (insert your favourites here), all the way down to Himmesh with a sore throat (10).
A rough guide to the BES:
This is the blog where everything too small or too big to fit my main blog lands up... including background informations, links, jokes et al.
If talons scrape properly on the board, you get music. If scratched... I think you get it...
