The Immortal

I'm The Immortal. I have just passed my 31st hour without sleep since 5:00 P.M on 26-3-2006 and am yet to feel sleepy. My mind has transcended mere mortal shackles of slumber and rest, and has passed into an elevated state of uncaring existence, going beyond the portals of the cranium which kept it contained in its constricted surround and merging into the ultimate scheme of things, the greater good of it all, and becoming one with the universe itself...

Given above is the Text of speech running through an insomniac's mind as he made his way form the place of his dinner to the place of his residence at 12:08 A.M, 28-3-2006

bnfiefhi oldsfhb nsadvvrerkoeorererjkerqef eoijfasfklkjls dfhsfdjklasdkojvebkiw dofenflekjflekqoiqnfq ihokfnlkfnq knw dqkwnj dknw nwdjqpwijqwkfn

Text of speech written by the insomniac as he crashed on top of his Laptop's keyboard.

Sad.

It's a very sad thing. (Yes, this is going to be one of my socially responsible posts, with deeply meaningful messages for the youth of this country, so those of you who just want to read nonsense, go here...) Coming back to the point, there is a very disturbing trend, call it a fad if you will, spreading alarmingly among the pre-college teens of our country, and it stokes up a mixture of astonishment and consternation that something could be so addicting.

No, it's not drugs. Or cigarettes or booze. Those will come only in college. No, it's this simple "social network service", launched on January 22, 2004, developed by a Google employee as an independent project. This Google employee is a Turkish software engineer. And he has a strange name. No, not Keyser Soze of The Usual Suspects fame. But someone who's had just as much an impact on so many people's lives staying just as anonymous. Yes, his name is Orkut Büyükkökten.

(Disclaimer: ESPNStar wishes to advice that the athletes in the following program have had professional training and none of the actions seen should be imitated at home)

(Actual Disclaimer: This post is not a call-to-arms against Orkut. I myself have spent many a lazy night going through scrapbooks, reading in delight the "Hey, I see that the third letter in our second names is the same... wanna be friends?" or the "Hola, buenos dias! Como esta este manana..." or the Scrap conversations like, "You online?". "Yes". "Cool". "Yes". "What doing?". "Nothing". "Wanna be friends?". End of conversation.)

So anyway, this Keyser, I mean, Orkut, has invaded the lives of people at levels that you would not have thought possible. School kids, in the age group 15 and above, are on Orkut, writing detailed "About Me" or whatever that column is called and scrapping each other like crazy. In all honesty, I will accept that I did not know About Me till I was 19. (SURELY you didn't expect that I'd admit I STILL don't!) So how in the world can those 15 year-olds know??? And this scrap-crap. It's some kind of a race, as kids see it. Hey, I got to 300 scraps before YOU did. Wow, what an achievement, and at such a tender age too! The kids are just growing smarter by the day...

It's been barely two years since the inception of Orkut. And I suddenly feel like I'm from a different generation when compared to the Orkut-savvy school-goers of today. I mean, 2004, I hadn't passed out of school either. And yet, I did not even know the concept of Orkut, or that you could do a "How was Physics?" or "When is Maths?" scrap in the middle of the friggin Board Exams! COME ON, people, you're gonna meet your classmates for the next exam anyway, or at the end of it all for the Big Lunch or Dinner or whatever. Surely your curiosity is not SO insatiable that you really HAVE to know how the Physics paper was for the person that you met barely an hour ago in the exam hall...

A valid question in this context would be How do parents let their kids stay Online so long anyway??? Agreed that it does not take Rocket Physics to put a "Maths was easy" scrap, but ten to twenty scraps a day would surely require the investment of a considerable amount of time... that too online. Don't parents notice at all? Or is it the classic both-parents-working-leaving-no-time-for-child case? In that case, well, someone needs to talk to THEM!

I'm not against the whole concept of the "taking a break between studies" thing. I know that Boards is a pretty big thing, in fact, the FIRST big thing in a person's life, if I may. I know that it needs people to be calm, relaxed, not go overboard about the seriousness of the whole thing. I know staring at 150 pages of NCERT's rambling about Azo-Dyes and Chemistry in Everyday Life can be terribly monotonous. I know all this because I watched Titanic in Tamil, the day before the first exam, Physics. I daresay I did satisfactorily in the Boards nevertheless.

What I DO feel srongly about, is the WAY these "breaks" are being spent. I don't remember what I did (yeah the Titanic, of course) during the multitude of breaks that I gave myself between studies. I have a very short attention time, barely an hour. After that, my eyes will unfocus and I'll just blankly stare at the book. And so I would... yes, I would go out with my tennis-ball and bowl it at my house's gate. Or I would switch on the TV and watch the Swat Kats take on the Metalli Kats. Or I would pull out an old Tinkle Digest from my bookshelf and curl up with a Lay's Magic Masala. But the point is, these are all necessarily just half-an-hour activities. The bowling will tire you out, Swat Kats will get over in 30 minutes and if you read a Tinkle for more than 20 minutes, BOY, you must be slow. So once the break is done, you're back with your Chemistry. Orkut, on the other hand, does NOT tire you out, does NOT get over in 30 minutes and does NOT have a "Tinkle tells you Why" section...

I know it's their lives and they can do anything they want with it. I know that they are all informed, educated, nearly-adults who know what they are doing and going to do. I know they will all (HOPEFULLY) clear the Boards with flying colours.

But it's just a sad thing to see a 10th Class kid, scrapping a 12th Class kid, "Hey, My Math just got over. Was easy. When is yours?", instead of going up to his Mom, all smiles, and saying "Mom, I did my Math very well" and the Mom beaming with pride, with a hint of a tear at the edge of her eye, that her child is so clever...

Pah!

MY LIFE

My name is William Jefferyson Clineton. I was the President of the United Sovereignities of Andulasia, USA for short. I became President easily enough. The total voting population of my country is a gargantuan 51 people, of which 27 are my relatives, or my wife's relatives... or 'her' relatives. So anyway, mine was a clear mandate, I won 49-31 on the vote count. The election officers were slightly perplexed. There had been totally 103 votes polled, so the missing 29 had to be accounted for. Then they figured that those people had probably been electrocuted when they pressed their finger into the electrical socket of the Extremely Vile Machine (EVM) rather than into the button beside my name... So yes, as you can see from the Math, it is pretty clear how I became President. However, this story is about how I UN-became President...

"Shall we tell the President?" is the name of a book by Jeffrey Archer. It featured Edward Kennedy in the President's role in the original version, but was replaced by Florentyna Kane in later versions. THAT however, is not why I brought that sentence up... I'm saying this because that was the line I overheard when I was passing by my Chief Security Officer's room in my Presidential Mansion, The Off-White House. Nevertheless, I carried on to my own room, the ellipsoidal-heptangular-tetra cuspidal hypocycloid... also called the Oval Office for convenience, feeling sure that my Officer would come and tell me whatever was bothering him. And sure enough...

He came in and took the seat facing across from me. I gave him a cup of coffee to soothe his high-strung nerves. He finished the coffee, but still seemed extremely shifty and uncomfortable, even more so, if it was possible. "Mr. President", he began, still staring straight down as if he'd just figured out how shoes fit perfectly around the feet thanks to those wonderful things called Laces. I was really beginning to lose my patience now.

"Mr. Edward, it's all right, you can go ahead and say it", I coaxed him. No one used his full name, Edward Shit. Which was quite unfortunate really, because it was HE who had to sign all the official memos to the armies- the ones which cut down on their holidays, increased their training periods and placed a limit on the amount to be bet on Barrack-fights between Captains and Privates... Invariably, the reaction to such memos was "Aw, this is SO Shit E. man!"... and so was the signature...

"Mr. President", he began again, and looked up and saw that I was really getting ready to blow. So he hesitantly stretched his hand and asked, "Can I have another cup of coffee?"

I was taken aback by this request. It felt as if someone had just driven a piledriver through my mid-section. For all his life, Edward had never asked for a second helping of ANTYHING. Even in the parched sands of Irania, where we had fought together during The Bay War (no one called it the Gulf War anymore), Edward had been offered only a thimble-full of water at the end of a long day, an amount that would have barely quenched the thirst of an ant after a marathon. But Edward had stoutly refused another thimble-full, and had marched on the next day sprightly as ever...

I handed him his second cup of Coffee. He downed it in a single gulp, drew a deep breath and began, "Mr. President..."

"Oh for God's Sake, call me Bill!" I snapped.

"Bill, we have a crisis. The Central Reserve Army of Promenia (CRAP) is revloting against their dictator, Am-Ul Dhoodh. Promenia is the second largest exporter of oil to our country, and right now they're trading a barrel of oil for a barrel of sand... apparently, they want a beach in their county, but all they have is oil and no coastline... so anyway, it's a profitable trade for us, and if Am-Ul is toppled..." his voice trailed off, leaving unspoken the terrible calamities that could befall my country as a result of such a disastrous act.

"What are our options?" I asked in my most everyone-asks-this-question-in-this-tone tone.

"One very good one, actually. The leader of CRAP, Amino Acidov, is willing to continue the same oil-sand exchange with us if we do not speak against his revoulution in public and if we pass him some weapons on the side... like we always do"

"Excellent then, what's the catch in this?" I asked incredulously.

"He wants you to come over to Promenia, alone, and sign an agreement to such an effect with him and his associates. He's crazy, I told him so. The nerve to expect that we'd let you go..."

"Nonsense, Edward! I've been in the army too, you remember? Of course I know how to handle myself in hostile territory. Now, no more arguements. Chalk up the rendezvous details and arrange for my transport" I ended the conversation with a finality befitting a President.

So there I was, the President of the USA, all alone in a dark alley in the capital of Promenia. I wasn't sure how Amino would show up, fully-armed and heavily guarded or defenceless like me. Either way, he was on home gorund, so he had the advantage. At the end of the alley, I could see the headlights of a car shining right at me. As they dimmed, I saw that it was a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, complete with tinted glasses, bullet-proof body armour, puncuture-resistant tyres and a 6-litre, turbo-charged V8 engine... or so I thought. As it drew closer, I saw it was a battered 1920s Ford, with the bumper hanging loose and the front windshield missing.

And a woman driving.

The car pulled up closer and stopped. The woman, in full military dress (it was amazing how severely cut men's clothes looked so great on women), walked up to me and said, "Hi... I'm Amino."

"Wha...???" was all I could manage to get out of my larynx as my brain raced as fast as it could to catch up with proceedings... and my eyes tried very hard not to stray below her face.

"Yes, I know," she smiled, "Promoenian names can be gender-confusing. We believe in an equal society, you know." She smiled again, "The agreement is in the car, you can sign it there."

She was getting straight to business. Which was fine by me. I squeezed into the passenger's seat, read through the agreement, noted that the words 'oil' and 'sand' were exactly where they should have been with more than a degree of satisfaction and signed it. She leant closer to check my signature, and I could feel her perfume lifting me. She took the agreement from my hand, and in the process, her hair brushed against my face. She put away the agreement and turned back to me. The rest, as they say, was Chemistry.

I had never had that experience in a car before. She smiled at me as she slid out through the driver's door to tie up her hair. She was still smiling when I heard the unmistakeable clicking off of the safety latches of sub-machine guns. I turned forward and saw four gunmen, with their Uzi submachines pointed right at me through the boken windshield. Immediately the reason behind the boken windshield became clear to me. She was still smiling when I stared at her numbly, with my eyes asking Why? She was still smiling when the gunmen gently squeezed the trigger of the four Uzis...

So you see, God, I have done nothing wrong, personally. It was all circumstances, as always they are. So if you could please get me out of this horrible place that people around me are calling 'Hell', I'd be very grateful. God! You don't know how hot it is in here!

This was a Creative Writing piece. I got disqualified for the 'shit' and 'crap'

Pah!

What the Fudge??!

Yep, I can't say it. The four-letter word. Because this is Blogspot. And that would be a profanity. And then it would be wrong. What is the point? Why should you always be in control, in your senses? How will you know what it is to be free if you've never tried it?

BAH!!!! I CAN"T EVEN BLOG!!!!!!!!!!

I can't even write something funny!!! SURELY the world is going to end...