All about a dog

This being my first post in a blog 1(well that’s a good ‘dot’ to start with, in a sketch that is supposed to show my face, because by saying “This being my first post in a blog” I indirectly mean that I’ve been posting articles/reviews/rants/plain blandish comments/emails asking members to behave themselves 2(well yeah I own a yahoo group 3(hmm I don’t know if I can say that I own a group just because I have the membership status as ‘Owner’ in the group’s page; after all it’s a Yahoo group and according to Yahoo’s terms and conditions 4(which most of us don’t read before clicking on the “I Accept” button)4, they have all the rights to ‘confiscate’ it whenever they want to)3, that has no less than 850 real members 5(real members? Yes, excluding those who might have more than one ID in the group for whatever reasons)5)2, and none of this is new to me except that this time it’s officially meant to display my conceit and eccentricities)1, I would use it to tell you a bit about myself or narrate incidents and stories that would give you an idea about what kind of a guy I am. If you are here (meaning, you didn’t close the window saying “what the heck man?”, and have read till this line), am sure you would have realized that I tend to digress from the topic that I actually try to talk about. (I've colour coded them to help you out, and numbered them to help myself out to colour code them)

There are 2 main reasons for this:
(1) Nothing is singular and untied and hence cannot be understood without relating it to some other thing, which sometimes might only be understood by relating it to something else, like this very statement.
(2) Whenever I argue or posit something, I make sure that I let everyone(or just one) know that I gave all ‘those’ perspectives, perspectives that one might want to use to counter my argument, assuming that I did not take those in to account.

Blogs in my opinion is where you post your real experiences (yeah your feelings/opinions can be called as “experience(s)”). The problem I have with that is, blogs unlike - popular websites hosting forums - are hardly read by people you don’t know. You don’t just mail “someguy” and ask him to read your blog, but your friends, people who know you. That being the case you’re forced to be honest (at least to a certain level), you cannot just make up some story and use your new found language skill (oh yes, that’s something that irritates me. And should I say “new found” because it’d mean it existed in that person for a long time and he just happened to tap in to it? Or should I say “newly invented”, because such a skill never existed in him) to narrate it, because those who read would know it never happened. On the other hand experiences are engrossing or at least not boring only when they are different, different in a peculiar way. And unfortunately not all of us have such experiences to write about. Nevertheless most of the people in blogs do it anyway and that’s when it gets totally irritating.
“Today is Saturday. My car has been making this hip-hop beat lately, well the pioneer guy tries his best to rock the chamber but the engine’s pistons are too mechanical to beat” I go “ok so your engine is messed up and your car stereo is Pioneer, what a low life!”. Then again one’s experience however commonplace, is the most amazing thing for him, so the crime is pardonable I suppose.

But don’t worry, my experiences aren’t commonplace by any measure, they are extremely unique, some times they are so unique that you can’t relate to it and hence boring. I’ve been lazy and tardy all my life and those qualities have forced me to be brave and daring. I don’t know if you see the relation between the former and the latter. When you’re lazy you lose out on regular opportunities and now you’re left with ‘above-regular’ opportunities which cannot be utilized without a certain amount of fearlessness. I’ve never really reached an extraordinary (extraordinary by ‘normal’ standards) life so far, but the irony is that I’ve had to display extraordinary skills to get myself to an average position.
Example: When I was in my 6th and 7th grades, I studied in a school that was 4kms away from my house. An average 11 year old on an average mono-geared bicycle on an average Indian road (8 potholes/100 m) on an average south Indian terrain(4 cows + 12 dogs + 2 drunken autos/Km that get in your way, halting you to 0Km/h) would take 30 minutes to travel that distance. So if the school starts at 8.30 (and it did), one would have to leave home at least by 8.05 to reach on time, which would mean that he’ll have to wake up at least by 7.30 (assuming that you take bath, brush and do ‘all that’?). But I usually wake up at 7.50, by the time am dressed up and ready to leave it’s 8.20. So now I pedal at no less than 45Km/h, show amazing maneuverability to avoid all those potholes, 'steer' my way through those dogs and cows, and land at the school gate right on time. But this isn’t always successful. When it isn’t I take the fence, climb the tree that leads to my class’s window, drop my bag, then get in to the class through the entrance (the window was too small for me to enter), and tell the teacher “sorry sir went to toilet”. Of course there have been times when all these have failed and had to take it on my butt (by ‘it’ I mean a long bamboo stick, hey am not being figurative here!) or at times my palm (oh stop it you pervert, I’m saying that I got lashed).

*** end of example ***

This quality of mine never changed, it continues to exist in me. It’s not only physical extremities that I’ve pushed myself to, but mental too. Like I said, if you’re reading this you were probably my classmate in college and you know what I’m talking about, don’t you? If there’s any theory that I always follow before I do something, it’s the “worst consequence theory”, I don’t know if it’s coined by someone else before. What it means is that, before I do something I think about the worst that could happen (if everything screws up the worst possible way) and prepare myself for that. The best part is that I don’t just say it, I honestly get prepared for it and nothing could shock me then.

Most of my postings are simple hate speech about something (well not really, but saying so saves me from getting tagged by you!). People say I’m a pessimist, probably because bad things are all I talk about (in their view that is). The reason or the justification rather, that I give for that is “there are too many to talk good about it” ‘it’ being the subject of the matter. Yes I have a serious problem with the concept of ‘agreeing with the majority’. Some times I take my stance to a exact opposite viewpoint just because the people who I hate agree with me. Because of the ‘fact’ that anything that is cogent, logical, valid could be contested - if not refuted thoroughly - by an equally cogent, logical, valid argument, for all those attributes are relative.

Not all my posts are like this one, with each parenthesis having sub-parenthesis and so forth, no wonder I like movies like Memento and Pulp fiction. I could probably add more to this post but then again I could probably alter it by reducing its length or removing unwanted explanations, so before I think about anything else, I’ll just stop here.

I don’t know what kind of comments that I am going to get for this post, but I’ll say this anyway “I don’t care!” (Though am actually dying to read the comments and would visit my blog as often as 5 times an hour). Whether it’s true about me or not, it sure is true about a lot of other ‘cool dude’ wannabes that say “I don’t care”. It only reminds of that Lifebuoy ad “adhigama thinna gundaaiduva – I don’t care”

And one more thing, “Brevity need not be the soul of wit”. May be for one liners it is!


Suresh