Silly Points: Episode 5

LIMITS ON OFFICE ETIQUETTE

If you spend as much time in professional environment as I do, you got to be thinking about the right kind of office etiquette - what is a right- sized yawn or maximum allowable decibel of a snore from your power naps - you know, stuff like that. My latest muse on this subject is :

Is it a proper etiquette to ask your colleague to change his/her ringtone given that he/she gets frequent calls and that damn ring-tone music drives you nuts? In other words, can you blame your low productivity on someone's ring-tone?

No? Why not? Ok, let me give a situation.

Let's say you are in a dead-end job … right? Something like a fashion photographer in a mid-sized company that manufactures automobile parts. Still shots of greasy gears and pistons have become your specialty. Definitely dead-end. Right? You are slowly aging and you begin to worry about deeper goals that you set out when you were in college. Over the past week, you are beginning to get worried about getting stuck with photographing rusty radiator tubes and spark plugs. Today, you are really down and thinking nervously about your long-term career prospects and then his phone starts to ring - the same dirt-piece of cacophonous ring-tone for the 6 years you knew him !!! 6 years is a long time to get tired of any piece of 10-second music and you reach out to his desk, grab the phone from his hands and smash it to the floor.

Then, is it justified? Or should we control anger at all times?

FLAWSOPHY FOCUS ON FACEBOOK TRENDS

I don’t know about you, folks. But, whenever I comment/update anything on Facebook, every sentence I write must end with a sweet emoticon - either a ":)" or a ":P". It is very important, in fact, as vital as a good and a clean heart, that people perceive me as a cool guy who insistently says everything with an undiminished smile. Else, what's the whole point of the internet? Glad to know that Facebook is full of people like me. People with top class sense of humor always use the smileys over the internet. But, of late, I began noticing that some people use too many smileys for what seems to be a very average joke. For example,

I am the type of guy who thinks that the number of smileys at the end of your sentence ought to reflect the intended laugh quotient (LQ) of a joke. In the aforementioned example, one smiley would have been quite enough. 4 smileys (:P) is like forking your tongue out for a straight 5 human minutes provoking many social researchers to conclude that you could be creepy in real life too.

________________

This is a suggestion to all the guys who pose with guitars in their Facebook profile pics: Include two samples of your guitar playing. Here's why: I have a decision to make before I could "Like" your picture. Hey, the pic is quite good, but the problem with a pic containing you and the guitar is that anyone named Joe Strummer to Joe Satriani can look equally good posing with a guitar. There is also another reason for this: I spent close to $500 taking guitar lessons and can't play squat. That's why !!!

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I love the English language so much that if it must be destroyed, I want it to be decaying in the right direction and with the right intentions. I am, of course, speaking of the SMS-English that has caught up with the hipper kind of FB users. Since there is no going back, I have a couple of rules to make:

Number One. Listen, if you must use a different spelling for a normal word, make sure that you are at least saving 2 letters. Ok?

        "Gr8" for "great" ; "hols" for "holidays" - GOOD

        "oder" for "other"; "dere" for "there" -  BAD

What's the point of saving just one letter when you type "lyf" for "life"? Besides, if you spell "life" that way, can someone explain me why you deserve a good horoscope?

       
Number Two. This is for those people who don’t even save a letter but try to teach me a fancy spelling like "T-Y-M-E" for "Time". Now, this is just plain idleness. I would not try to learn anything from you till I can confidently differentiate between a fancy spelling and your failed first-grade spelling test. 

         

Besides you are on a full-sized keyboard, not one of those alphanumeric keypads, the cell phone companies ordered you to use for communication. So, please do this bit for saving the English language. Wokay?

THE MISCHIEVOUS PILLAR

Let me end with a prayer. Look at the innocence in the children's eyes. Look at their happiness about not knowing the evil that lurks right in front of them. Don't you feel like stealing their happiness by locking all the children in a room with a limited number of toys? - but the Cheshire Cat says it's not possible. You know why these beautiful angels are always gleeful? Because, they don’t know a thing. It's all media's fault. The 24x7 media, in the name of TRPs and ratings doesn't hesitate one bit about telling me round the clock on these corrupt politicians, the greedy businessmen, the lonely rapists and the loose-mouthed activists. Since the dawn of time, people have always been imperfect and corrupt. But, societies were held together and peace was preserved by carefully-planned oppression and Machiavellian control of information by the ruling class. Today, the fourth pillar of democracy is upsetting the delicate hypocrisy that held our society for all these ages. Who forced it to tell anything? - it could tell me the color of the clouds and the morning song of a crow and I would have thought that was the day's news - but it is trying to tell me the truth and here's the worst part : it's not even the WHOLE truth, most of the time. Let's pray that media stops being irresponsible by ruining the sleep of our generation.

Lead me back to darkness. Let me dream peacefully. Unbeknown of the evil powers that act as manacles chaining the goodness of humankind. Take me back to innocence. Oh Big Brother, where art thou? Take me back to 1984 ...

Screw the prayer. I have time for only a cartoon:

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It's all Zodiacal - "It seems they said, it's not what it seems. So What?"

 If you are thinking "Ah! here's yet another blogger who is ridiculing the new developments in the Zodiac", you may be right !!!

Last week spelled a disaster for a very popular industry worldwide. Yes, the daily horoscope column in the local newspaper suffered a huge set back on it's authenticity when an astronomy teacher from Minnesota told us that there is a urgent need for a 13th sun-sign. Experts say that this burgeoning industry even recently celebrated reaching the $1000/year mark before this pitiful news raised new questions on the veracity of the predictions.

For quite some years now, people who cared about the constellations on their birthday night sky instead of their on-going birthday party inside were being profoundly disappointed as their Sun-sign constellations were nowhere to be seen. For example, if you are a Virgo, ideally you ought to be seeing The Virgo as the most prominent constellation on your birthday night. However, you would have seen The Leo instead. Suddenly, this guy some Parke Kunkle from Minnesota Planetarium thinks that it’s about time the branch of astrology meets the rigorous demands of modern science. He explained that

"Babylonian zodiac periods were established millennia ago, the moon’s gravitational pull has made the Earth “wobble” around its axis in a process called precession. That has created about a one-month bump in the stars’ alignment". 

So, it seems that between November 30 and December 17  could be a new Sun-Sign named "Ophiuchus" because that's brightest constellation during that time and rest of the zodiac be adjusted so that people can see their correct constellation on their birthdays. So, the sun-signs are all haphazard now - all because this guy's  computer can display the second decimal place. Just what we wanted.

I hope none of you are taking this guy seriously. There are many reasons why 12 is a good number. First of all, it's neat math. Ok? 360 degrees in a circle; 360 = 30 x 12, implying that the sun traces 30 degrees in each Sun-Sign, approximately a degree a day and one Sun-Sign a month. Can YOU divide a circle that well when you have 13 sun-signs, MR. SCIENCE GUY? Also, 12 = 3 x 4; 4 Elements - Earth, Fire, Wind, Water -  with 3 sun-signs in each. Again, this neat multiplication helps in pairing the signs together for romantic compatibility i.e. Fire and Air get cozy a lot smoothly ; Earth and Water keep having a thing for each other from time-to-time. The whole goddamn structure breaks down if there is a odd number. Every Sun-sign had someone to hang out with. Number 13 ruins that dynamic completely. No prizes for guessing which sun-sign by the virtue of their very name will be left out, in case someone has to get hacked. Virgo - The Virgin!!! - Aargh!!! That's me. Also, every 5th grade kid and even the ones with a PhD in Applied Math will tell you that 13 is a goddamn, ill-fated prime number. Prime numbers are the most selfish of all numbers - you just can't break 'em up !!! Also, this trait of prime numbers are used extensively in something called "Public Key Cryptography" which is the technology behind credit cards among other things. So, prime numbers are being used to steal your money. Worry about that first.

So, let's admit that the 13th sun-sign is a dumb idea to begin with. There was a mathematically-neat, aesthetically-symmetric and a romantically-compliant system. What more do you want? Just when you thought we had a nice, friendly system in place that everyone is satisfied about, you can always count one of those scientist fellas strutting with their hand-held calculators to come and ruin everything. History teaches us that scientists have always been at the forefront as the public enemy #1 when it comes to upsetting a beautiful intuitive concept - they successfully ruined our concepts of God, the Solar System, the Universe, the evolution of life on earth, the space-time and many more. What next? Proclaiming that humans are endangering the planet by emitting too many green house gases? Starting with Copernicus and his Heliocentric ridiculousness, legions of scientists made it their life time preoccupation to dispel myths and destroy the beautiful mental images of creatures and super-powers we decorated our inner heavens with.

My dear Astronomers,

Stop worrying about astrologers. Do your calculations and go home. We know it's an approximate system and we have things under control. In fact, your anxiety about seeing the correct stars on birthdays is a sign that your Jupiter is very upset that your Moon is flirting with his girlfriend. Be careful about that !!!

Sincerely, [click on link]

But folks, fear not and beware. Most of the daily horoscopes in newspapers seem too vague and too confident. When they predict something like, "You will be the center of attraction today" - doesn't it sound suspicious that it could be 100% made-up? How does he know that I even have plans to get out my bed today? Often, they tend to be too impersonal and too generic. Hence, we at FLAWSOPHY created the daily horoscope that is best suited, especially for you. This one will never ever go wrong. It's a challenge. Check below what plans your stars have in mind for you:

Have a nice day !!!

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Something Milky ... Something Fishy ...

Let's patiently figure this one out. Presenting a completely made-up chain of seeming coincidences.

80000 years ago. On the brink of extinction and faced with numerous evolutionary challenges and a bad horoscope year, about 150 modern humans successfully crossed the Red Sea in East Africa to enter Asia - Each one of us today are a descendant from such a bunch that is hand-picked by destiny. Soon, these early humans traveled across the south coast of Asia and began settling down at convenient locations. If humans learned to share things they found with others, they would have probably been satisfied and would have settled in one place. But, alas, local politics and awkward romantic entanglements [citation needed] ensured that few of our super-grandfathers and grandmothers had to keep fleeing from the settlements and eventually, explore the entire planet.

Some settlers traveled along the south coast of Asia and finally entered the great land of the Indian Sub-Continent - with its splendid rivers and fertile lands. The first settlers built societies around the rivers having discovered farming. The thriving hydraulic-agricultural based economy led to a broader group consciousness and the emergence of a more sophisticated forms of identity in form of religions beyond the family and tribal ties and soon gave the world, the Vedas, Upanishads, rituals, customs, idol-worship etc.

Somewhere in between, we also discovered that a cow can be quite useful when exploited. It can be used to plough our farms, drag us wherever we wanted to go. Not only that, we quickly figured out that by stealing it's bodily contents, our life is furthermore enriched. We stole the cow's poop a.k.a. manure which can be used as a natural fertilizer as well as a good fuel. We also stole the milk from the cows as a direct source of protein. In return, the ancient Vedic society revered the cow and worshiped it dearly for it's services in sustaining our civilization by even promising not to kill it or eat it.

Around the time, drinking milk was pitched as a major leap in our evolution by the political and economic pundits of the day. But, there was a sad twist. Even if we had the milk, we couldn't have drunk it safely as a cow's milk has a sugar called Lactose which must be metabolized by our body using an enzyme called Lactaze to digest it. But, alas, our bodies were never designed to do that. May be nature didn't exactly want us to steal from a cow. So, we adapted our bodies through generations of natural selection to become Lactose tolerant - all because we can't get rid of drinking milk. We beat the odds against Nature. In fact, humans  becoming lactose-tolerant is often cited as the best example of evolution theory and natural selection at work even today. Thus, started the painful legacy that continues till today as mommies run around the house forcing the kids to drink their morning glass of milk before going to school. It also led to the creation of Facebook pages like, "TO THE GUY WHO DISCOVERED MILK, WHAT WAS HE DOING WITH THE COW IN THE FIRST PLACE".

So, here we are. Backed up by Lactose tolerance, milk and milk products like the ghee, yogurt etc. became an integral part of the local cuisines. We liked the milk so much that we automatically decided that even our Gods had to be lactose tolerant and would love milk. And we began offering milk and savories made out of milk as prasad (offering) to the deities. It did not stop there. Not long after, a few high-priests convinced the other folks that Gods indeed like to take bath in milk itself - not just consume it. The ritual of palabhishekam (palu = milk; abhishekam = puja, prayer) was conceived - the practice of bathing the idol with milk, honey, yogurt, ghee, sugar (panchamritham). It did not stop there. The twentieth century saw the form of worship extend to even demi-gods. Celebrities like movie stars regularly get a milk bath arranged by their enthusiastic fans. Rajnikanth gets it all the time.

Now, my main point here is that even politicians are being given Milk-Baths today. What's the deal with that? Does a meaning even exist for such a gesture? It is a good idea to remind ourselves that we do not have the actual God in front of us. So, we have to give a bath to his idol. But, if the politician is alive - why don't we just grab him, tie him to pole and pour  milk, yogurt, honey, sugar, ghee etc. on his actual body and leave him in the sun for several hours to dry off. Also, what's the criteria to qualify for a public milk-bath these days? Who's planning this stuff ? - after all, somebody should be involved! Isn't it fascinating that someone out there is uttering the exact words :"let's give politician X a milk-bath next week" ? You know what, my bucket list has a new entry:

#22. Sit through a local party meeting where a milk-bath for a local politician is being planned and budgeted ...

Imagine all that perilous Africa days ...  Imagine all that discovery of farming, milk and the whole lactose-intolerance episode ... Imagine all that Vedas and invention of complex social structures, rituals and lastly, imagine the conception of Palabhishekam ... After all the hard work ... after everything ... Isn't it amusing to think about the intelligence of our society & contemporaneous culture when this guy becomes eligible for a milk bath ?

This is the best we can do, folks ... History repeatedly showed us that we wrongly overestimate  us  on a regular basis ... Frankly, my only concern is how embarrassed Will Smith would be, to explain stuff like this in an alien warship on behalf of humans ... Mr. Rahul Gandhi - whose only recorded achievements till date include his dad falling in love with his mom & knowing by heart, his innocent 6th grade moral science lesson:  "All religions are "equal", All people are "equal", All animals are "equal" All things are "equal", All Universes  are "equal" and how everything is equal and must be shared by one and all and peace be on us for ever and ever and EVER !!!" ... Doesn't it seem that we are pushing the envelope on milk-baths, a little too far ?

One might say, "You have a problem with everything. What can he do when his fans put up a hoarding with his face and poured milk all over it?"
Exactly. I want him to rush into his helicopter ... make a surprise landing out there ... take out a mic ... and start screaming "NOOOOOOOO .... NOOOOOOOO .... STOP POURING MILK ALL OVER  THAT FACE ... WHY CAN'T WE KEEP THESE THINGS A LITTLE SECULAR FROM NEXT TIME " ... and the same party workers get all excited and pour the milk on his actual face and to be fair, that really drives any human N-U-T-S !!! ... Then he could calm himself down and SUSPEND ALL THOSE GOOFY PARTY WORKERS/FANS FOR LIFE - it would have been a day well spent than going around gossiping some conspiracy theories. He didn't do that. Did he?  Heh?

FUN FACT : Cleopatra, the unofficial miss-universe of her day, historically acclaimed the beautifying benefits of milk-baths.

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