Utopian Disorder

Maybe every culture has felt it – the burning desire to have a hero to make fun of. A hero with muscles for brain and everything else. In the overwhelming ordinariness of our lives we are always on the look out for someone who can divide by zero, count to infinity, order a Big Mac at Burger King, get it and then drink napalm to quench the subsequent heart-burn.

We call him by any name : Chuck Norris, Vin Diesel, Mr.T or if you are from that tiny sliver of state in Southern India - Kerala, we call him Jayan

For the uninitiated, Jayan was the first hero who brought the gift of masculinity to Malayalam cinema(what is Malayalam?) Wide-lapelled shirts thrown open at the chest, bell bottoms that kicked bad guys' asses across borders and a rich full tone dialog delivery made him stand-out from other hero-material. Well known for doing his own stunts, he passed away while shooting an action sequence for a movie in 1980.

Jayan meme started appearing, probably a decade after his death when a new generation of film-goers, especially teens and college kids realized the untapped potential of his by-now famous dialogs. Majority of these one liners owe their existence to the collective brain of Kerala's(where/what is Kerala) college campuses. In that way the Jayan meme is probably older than Chuck Norris facts, which is essentially an internet meme that started circulating in the early 2000s. There are sites dedicated to Jayan jokes and related law suits and controversies. Heroes face the same fate everywhere :-P

Recently sajith made this post, which led me to realize that the world is in dire need of a Jayan desktop widget. I've a Chuck Norris widget on my desktop,thanks to this guy in France and Rainmeter. Every five minutes it illuminates my day with an important Chuck Norris fact which might elicit a chuckle or a smile from my work-fried brain.
( screenshot )

Btw I am a Rainmeter addict(What is rainmeter?), mainly because there were no cool things as Rainmeter when I was growing up. When we talked about connectivity we meant we had a bus route in our neighborhood. Thru' Rainmeter I get to live a nerdy teenage that I had missed.

Back to the subject, with some basic skills required to survive in the digital world(namely cut n paste, googling and a smattering of P-shop) I fashioned a Jayan widget out of Chuck Norris one.



( One more )

Now I am waiting for a pissed-off Mr.Norris's roundhouse kick to visit high heavens. In the interim from my desktop Jayan informs me how convenient it'd be for him if there was a wild fire because he needs to light his cigarette and other such important Jayan trivia every five minutes.

If anyone has a stash of Jayan jokes other than what is found here and here , please send them my way. If you are a Malayali whose rainmeter feels lonely without a Jayan widget, ping me. Or if you have time(30 min at the most) you can just beat the $%$#$ out of an existing widget and make an altar for Gabbar Singh or Rajnikant or Brucelee or your sweet boss.

Green summit? 1200 limos, 140 private planes

Among the personal jets will be Air Force One. US president Barack Obama’s £180,000 limousine, known as "The Beast", will arrive on a separate flight with a fleet of decoy helicopters, up to 500 security staff, six doctors, two chefs and his personal BlackBerry handler.


Heh!

I was not tense at all because I was supporting Sri Lanka,
Sehwag, after winning the nail biter yesterday, on being asked if was tense in the last few overs.

suchitra was telling me that the moment Ravi Shashtry asked Sehwag that question she was expecting him to give a bouncer of an answer and he didn't disappoint. His reason being this:

I've this superstition that whenever I support India, we lose. So I was supporting Sri Lanka here and was never tense,

Heh!

I got an e-mail alert from my card provider, and what an amount I thought, surely someone had hacked my acct. Went online only to find they were all legitimate purchases made by me;-)

India beat Sri Lanka by 3 runs

Man this would have been one nail biting finish. Phew! I had thought that with two overs to go Sri Lanka will surely win this, and just logged in to see by what margin they had won. When I did log in I found that match was still going on with 4 runs required to win. But 3 more wickets had been taken by then which did Sri Lanka in. If not they would have surely won!

Wow! Congrats boys!

Sri Lanka need 61runs in 49balls
354/5 in 41.5 Overs
India 414/7

Thankfully I am not watching this one in front of the TV.


This is how I am watching it;-)

Italian PM Berlusconi in hospital after attack in Milan

Finally some good news on the Italian PM!

The NY Times home customised to my requirement shows the Mangalore weather. The Hindustan Times page though will show you the weather of just about a dozne Indian cities which doesn't include Mangalore.

Volkswagen-Suzuki to roll out Rs 2.5-lakh car in India

So from Maruti Suzuki will it be VW-Suzuki?

Shutdown in Andhra, Rayalseema to protest Telangana state

Telangana echoes across country, chorus for new states gets louder

Why Andhra, the other dudes elsewhere now want Bodoland, Bundelkhand, Vidharba, Gurkhaland. And near here I believe that Coorgis want a state of Coorg. Though I don't really think they will be interested in agitating for it.

KCR of the TRS has been completely thoughtless in his mindless action which has taken place over a number of years. The reason given is that no growth occurs in Telangana. Hah! As if other parts of Andhra are flourishing like Shanghai or something. Imagine that Hyderabad comes under Telegana. So what happens when you get a new state? Do you get development? Hah! Not at all. You will get a guy like Koda who will get very developed!

Miles for Nothing: How the Government Helped Frequent Fliers Make a Mint

Well maybe not at the cost of the mint but at the cost of the airline or whoever else was in charge of the free miles offer. This is the thing, you buy $1 coins from the US Mint, it is delivered free of shipping to you [usually there is a shipping charge] and you use the credit card that offers you free miles [if you have one of course] and when the coins arrive drop it at your bank into your account [hopefully their bank doesn't have a a co...in drop charge] with which you pay your credit card bill when the coin charge comes later. And you now have free miles. Really free miles.

We saw the movie Paa starring Abishek Bachchan, Vidya Balan, Paresh Rawal and Amitabh Bachchan yesterday. 10pm show to be precise, deciding to go just yesterday afternoon on a spur.

The movie starts very unusually with Jaya Bachchan sitting on a series of steps as if for a amateur cam and reeling out the names of all the actors, and crew members [as their names appear on screen] when it ends she ends it with a childish giggle [that is the only part she plays in the movie, reading the titles aloud]. Odd but some people might like it. Personally I liked the titles of Guru far better [though I forgot to mention that in my review] that was made in a flip book style.

The promos of the movie actually completely spoils the real movie for us. As per the promos which everyone is shouting from the roof tops is that Abishek is the father of a progeria affected 12 year kid Auro who looks as old as a 70 year old [played by Amitabh] except that in the movie you realise that Abishek is completely unaware of this fact. For reasons you will soon come to know just a few more minutes later. Also those scenes of Abishek carrying Auro is at the time when Abishek is yet unaware that he is his kid. The direction btw is by the maker of Cheeni Kum.

Amitabh's acting and the make up is out of this world. Literally and figuratively. If this had been kept a secret you would have have had trouble trying to figure out who the actor was. Full marks for the camera work too, for making Amitabh not look as tall as he usually is. Vidya Balan who plays his mother is also out of this world. Arundathi Nag who plays the grand mother, and Paresh Rawal who plays Abishek's father have done a very good job too.

A very good job and a very watchable movie. Though I did think that one part where Abishek's character appears on Doordarshan was sounding too very untrue. See the movie and you will agree with me.


Direction, cinematography, concept, Paresh Rawal

Amitabh Bachchan, Vidya Balan, Christien Tinsley & Dominie Till [prosthetic make up]

Abishek Bachchan [Well he was actually very good, but pales in front of the above three]

Telangana on the boil as KCR fast continues, Section 144 imposed

Potti Sreeramulu died 16th December 1952 when he undertook a fast unto death for the creation of a state under linguistic lines. He had fasted for 58 days in Madras demanding an Andhra state with Madras as its capital. He died and eventually a state called Andhra was formed with Karnool as its capital. Later the region of Telangana was joined to it and Hyderabad was made of the capital of the new state.

Now Mr K Chandrasekhara Rao of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti has undertaken a fast unto death since about the last few days demanding that Telangana be separated from Andhra Pradesh.

Unlike in 1952 KCR has been hospitalised by the current administration [in '52 the Govt of the day waited till Sreeramulu died] but note the day on which Sreeramulu died is approaching ie 16th December!

BTW due to his sacrifice the states of Mysore [Karnataka] and Kerala were formed at no extra cost to any human life! A later almost all Indian states where formed on the basis of language. Well that sure beats forming a state on religious, caste or community lines. Gotta give it to Sreeramulu.

India demolish Sri Lanka to become number 1 Test team

Not bad guys, test win #101 brings us the #1 Test team status.

Lawsuit filed against Paa in Patna court

The moron in question her is Patna High Court lawyer Shruti Singh who says "I filed a case in the court demanding a probe into whether Paa violated the act or not,"

So this means she isn't quite sure if the movie did violate the act or not. I think we should demand a court probe to find out if Ms Singh has a brain inside her head or not!

Tiger Woods accused of five more flings

There should be many more I suppose, one in each city like the proverbial sailor.

This is a Jet Airways Boeing 777 in Gulf Air livery when it was on lease to them for 6 months. Note the Indian flag and the Indian registration VT-JEJ on its tail.

Last month I had told you all about Kavya's "I am cancelled!" x-mas dance project. The teacher had told Suchitra that she dances well, and that she would have loved to have her in that dance. Anyway she was in the school Annual Day dance for her class, and that she had done very well, so much so, that even though she was taller than the other girls she was placed in the front row by her teacher [confirmed later by her teacher].

Two days back Kavya comes home to tell us that her teacher has taken her into that dance project. So Suchitra tells her "You dance well, so which is why the teacher has selected you!" for which Kavay says "It is all your fault, since you had given me the 'teacher's pet' t-shirt to wear after the annual day dance was over!"

So as of now she is back in the X-mas dance with the teacher this time cancelling her cancellation;-)

Virender Sehwag 293 [254] caught and bowled Murali. Murali will sleep well tonight!

He was just 7 runs away from history!

Good show Sehwag!