Virtual Reality

So after many profound brain things inside my head I'm back on Facebook. While my angst against social networking is not entirely gone and now that there are a million others claiming their individual superiority and new nifty applications that get sued by toy manufacturing giants, I've decided that a known evil is better than an unknown possibility of a good time. Yes, I humbly accept that that makes no sense. It wasn't meant to.
And thus I'm back on the wild world web having decided to let nifty little applications determine my social life. Of course there's also the fact that compared to the real world, the illusion of the matrix is pretty good.
Anyway profile updated and random socially acceptable likes and dislikes are in situ and I can go back to ignoring the site.
In interesting news Madagascar 2 has finally arrived in our fair part of the world and much as i would like to see it... again... for the fourth time I think I shall pass. I can now recite King Julian's new and improved insanity when woken up from a dead slumber. I feel, deep inside, that it will not be appreciated by the hoi polloi around me. So I shall continue to watch it in the privacy of my laptop. Streaming is so cool. As are cheap dvds of the streamed videos. Except of some time lag in the audio which was, after much wrestling, fixed.
But as I wanted to say but as usual got sidetracked, Madagascar 2, some say is not as funny as the first installment. Nay. I refute thy claims, critic. King Julian of course has been put on steroids for his mental condition and it's worsened. The penguins are a trip.
Alex, Marty and this time even Gloria and Melman go into the usual sentiment trip and considering this time it's in Africa, some much self-discovery and emancipation and yada yada happens that serves only to distract us from the real hero.
Bernie Mac will be sorely missed.
Go watch. Watch it. Maurice, you naughty little monkey, shake my arm.
In other such things the Mekaal Hassan Band (which I remember mentioning) and Shafqat Amanat Ali's solo album (Tabeer) and to say the least very good. I'm not going to go into the cool production, the mature fusion of hindustani and rock and the very excellent voices in detail but you get the gist. Some disappointments though especially with Tabeer. Dum Ali Dum and Naina in particular lack any kind of substance. But like always it's worth a listen and some songs will stick on.
So there it is life in a nutshell. More whenever.

PS I'm back on facebook because some mental plans for ganging up and consuming insane amounts of alcohol are made and propagated therein. It's just easier to plan the hangover thus.

Vista.

So it comes to pass that my dad got himself a suitcase disguised as a laptop. Or a laptop disguised as a suitcase as the case may be. It said 15 (inches) but looks 17 (like most of the women I meet nowadays, I mean what is it with precociousness(?)) and runs on Vista. While I agree that Vista is pleasing to the eye and when given enough time, space and energy, performs like none other, but who has 40GB of harddisk space and 2GB of RAM to spare. And spare is the key word. If you have 2GB and you have Vista, then even Solitaire, which I strangely cannot find, doesn't move the cards like it should. But it looks good. That I have to give the boys at MS. Clean lines, transparent windows and good hardware intensive animation effects on opening, closing and copying and deleting. But the hyperactive security that apparently makes Vista so much more safer to buy things off of Ebay and the like is the one thing that bugs the life out of me. Any new software, anything deleted, any internet activity is questioned close to 3 times. And I don't yet know how to turn that off. I'm sure some smart ass somewhere is smirking and saying, "Dude, if you turn that off it becomes XP with cool graphics?" And considering I don't really give two hoots for cool graphics I think I'm going to stick to XP for a while. Call me old-fashioned but I think Vista in my life shall wait a while.

In other things, watched Die Hard 4. Full paisa vasool only. Bruce Willis quips and shoots his way through a million bad guys and one bad girl (maggie Q, I like.) and does stuff that would make the Boss (you know which one) look with a raised eyebrow and say, "I want an F35 to jump off a 20 wheeler truck onto whist some freeway all around me in collapsing. And I want it to look good."

Overall I'd give it about 3/5 for decent effects, good screenplay (what soopar whistle evoking dialogues) and bruce willis. Some sentiment gets dished out at random points through the movie which wasn't quite there in the first 3 movies but hell everyody gets old...

Also watched Dogma and came up with the conclusion (again) that Bennifer and Matt are brilliant and that movie in the midst of all the jokes hits a hard lesson home. Watch it if you haven't yet.

And finally the techies at my source of great internet connectivity this north of the Vindhyas set up a hardware firewall to prevent others such as myself from downloading copious quantities of someone else's intellectual property. And like the builders of that labyrinth, they can't bypass it. So many megabits of bandwidth lie unused and underutilized and I bleed...

Elektra..

Didn't think I'd be writing again so soon but it turns out that there are ideas brimming. At least there's one. Some random channel surfing got me to watch Elektra - Assassin last night. Ok I'll confess I knew it was coming on star movies but I did look at all the other channels for something better, and there wasn't anything worth watching. In retrospect neither was this but that's giving away most of the post isn't it. Something about tv on saturday night. The programming is aimed at people who aren't out painting the town maroon and the programming aims to make them feel a tad more miserable that they're sitting around watching tv instead of doing the aforementioned painting.

Anyway I'm a sucker for comic book adaptations. Constantine, Hellboy, all the -men (x, bat, super, spider), fantastic 4 and now Elektra. The comics themselves are pretty good. Some neat artwork and a significantly convoluted storyline make them worthwhile. This movie, on the other hand, is disgusting.
I used to be under the impression that any woman in a catsuit doing freaky stunts with sais and equally freaky gymnastics would be cool. Sorry, hot. You get the drift. Jennifer Garner unfortunately is probably the only actress I know who fails that. She's pathetic in the movie. One reviewer has even said, "Whereas the comic book character was Angelina Jolie', the film character is very much 'Jennifer Aniston'!"
Tragic waste of energy it was.
Another interesting thought about the aforementioned Garner that's been plaguing my mind is the whole Ben Affleck connection. Ben was dubbed Bennifer after that whole JLo thing (bejewelled toilet seat what was he thinking... I know it's a rearend to be proud of but still), and strangely that blew over and he's still bennifer.
That could cause a problem... Imagine then in the throes of ecstasy screaming each other's names out and Ms Garner suddenly says, "Ben, I'd really appreciate it if you screamed my full name out when in the throes of ecstasy..." Thus "say my name" becomes a very unromantic "Say my last/full name..."
But Ben Affleck, he's smart (he co-wrote good will hunting and acted in dogma) can't see why he's do this to himself.
Love, I suppose, is blind... deaf, insensate and anosmic too.

The importance of having Vaastu

Remarkable that I'm writing again with such short notice but it turns out that an idea, if left stewing for too long, gets over cooked. So when it's al dente and perfect we'll dish it out to the world for consumption. But before I start into the grouse of the day, the last post seems to have been spared by the vultures who hover in anticipation over the blog waiting for that one opening to swoop down and claim their pound of literary flesh. This of course might be inviting trouble but I'm almost beyond caring. (Note : Almost)

Currently eating a piece of blue (yeah like the beast or nightcrawler) candy sugar from Nepal. Trippy stuff. But that isn't what we're talking about today. It's my abode, my home, the roof over my head, the architectural wonder that forms a large part of today's discussion. The lesser part is as usual occupied by the Provider. Considering I live in the back of beyond in any case and it's a joy and wonder that I have electricity and running water, security was an issue when we first shifted in. It's still an issue if you thought development would have caught up. So it was decided that apart from the regular locks that doors come with, the front door would be fitted with a technologically advanced "Godrej" Lock. This of course is notwithstanding an Alcatraz style metal door that reinforces the front.

The point of all this is that the lock costs just about as much as the GDP of a small African country and within a month of buying it it refused to lock or unlock from the inside.

So yesterday the Provider locked yours truly in by locking this Vertibolt 2C or whatever instead of the other lock. So what's to be done but find another exit which the house thanks to vaastu or feng shui or whatever the architect believed in then, has plenty off (about seven at last count).

What is with these vaastu people? I'm wary enough of them not to hunt them down on wiki. They might decide to change the direction my life is headed without me even knowing. Take a couple of houses that I had stepped into my mistake. 3 storeyed but since the mad man had decided to put a room at every floor AND in between and exits facing every direction except South by South West... Or was it North by North East. Don't remember now but it's the same as the movie. Some third floor balcony has a staircase. Good if there was a fire in the 2 and a half-th floor I guess. And they wanted us to live there. And pay them rent. And drive the car into the garage, between which and the rest of the house there is no wall.

Watched the Code last night. I had the options of that or standing out in the cold outside Forum (yuck. The forum, not the cold). I wasn't paying. And I didn't for some average yet exorbitant meal at Fiorano the new ristorante. Ok place. well made up and all but pretty expensive and unfortunately sunny's still has both the best bread and the best cheesecake.

Anyway The code. Anybody who's anybody in hollywood is there... Gandalf, Dr.Octavius Octopus, My good friend Chaucer, the quintessential french fellow (from godzilla, ronin, mi, etc) and still it was but average. Overhyped, that definitely killed it. And for a movie where you could be sure that over 50% of your audience has read the book, why make an exact replica? Both jurassic park and godfather that way were far better adaptations, though the lizards eat everything in the book...

So wasted yesterday with the wooden Tom Hanks and the oh not so sexy irritating french accent lady. Haven't even bothered to find out her name. She's not on the list of people I want to know or have pictures off. Then again neither is the one who shall not be named and i have both. Perhaps we'll run a images.google of Audrey Tautou after all...

To end today, three movies I need to watch over the next month. Superman Returns (purely for nostalgia), Pirates of The Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest, and Over the HEdge.