staying.cool

having watched this, the question that i came up with is: what would you do if you discovered you were 14000 years old?

[87 mins of sheer movie-enjoyment. to be taken with a huge dollop of imagination and open-mindedness. please.]

more later.

4 years = 602 posts.

602 posts = 1388 comments (2.3 comments/post).

1388 comments = 5 (minimum) blog-friends, 4 of whom i have never met. plus finding friends in people i didn’t know for 4 years of college.

1 friend = (just one of the results) severeanomaly.org

severeanomaly.org = 3 years (and running).

3+ years = 8.33% of my life.

8.33% of my life = a master’s degree. a phd (still in progress) . RAIT. the difference in india and UAE.

a phd = fewer posts (2/day to 2/week).

fewer posts = fewer comments.

fewer comments = irrelevant.

irrelevant = extraneous.

extraneous = neglected.

neglected = this is getting silly.

[an advance blogiversary post]

there are many ways in which one says they’re the king of the world. reaching a world record. winning a world tournament. reaching a world no.1 spot. and many other things that have ‘world’ in the title. watching 2 men hunched over their arcade machines in the back of a garage somewhere.. attempting to hit a record score, is something in itself.

i have never been a great gamer. i game, but not to levels of perfection, not as a very good one. there are 2 types of gamers: the casual uninterested, aka average gamers. and those who know intuitively when the next monster will attack you. or the next disaster will hit your civilization. aka, the great gamers. me, i need to replay levels over and over.. and i eventually figure out what comes where. i have replayed battles 7 times over, in an attempt to get through it perfectly. and even then on the 8th time will screw up completely. ‘max payne’ is great that way, you can enjoy the different variations of slow motion more everytime. ‘far cry’ is not, the enemy is too smart to repeat itself
meanwhile, my friend has finished both ‘half-life’ and ‘half-life 2′ in that time.

the net is abuzz with the latest google move: google chrome. people are trying to figure out why ? what ? how ?

i type this post from chrome, and i see: a combo of ie8 and firefox3. to go. with bits of safari and opera all thrown in. even this review is just thrown together from initial impressions.

disclaimer: i firmly believe that firefox 3 is the best browser around.

back to the show.

we have speed dial. we have the ‘omnibar’. we have privacy. we have cool animations when you move tabs out of windows, for urls on pages, previews, search etc. we have download managers. we have auto-bookmarking. we have combined features from 3 different browsers which attempt to integrate together. and they do, somewhat decently.

however, i don’t like the philosophy.

i’ve always dreamed of making movies.

not acting, not composing.. actually making them. i’ve imagined placing the camera at that corner, and have it pan across the scene as it happens in my life. i have played out endless chase sequences, millions of scares and too many fight scenes to count. with very distinctive and yet realistic sound effects. there have been times i have wondered what life would be like were i star of my own truman show. there have been other times i have wanted to recreate a car chase down to the smallest detail.

but i don’t have the money.

it never stopped me thinking about them though. my sequences were grandiose, my scenes were spectacular. any battle of my gi joes with the evil forces of evil never ended on a tame note of the leader being knocked over. no, there were long drawn out battles… with many mini-battles happening within them. the evil overlord took a lot of killing though. there were never enough bullets or missiles to do it. it took a couple of hundred explosions to get parents riled up about all the sound that was being made though.

i have formed ideas for movies, formed trailers, formed whole acting careers about these movies. the genius that lay in every one of them had to be seen to be believed. no-one ever saw. i gave voice-overs, i acted, i directed.

i have a list of movies to watch that never seems to diminish. it doesn’t take a lot to get on the list, just the fact that the movie might exist has sent me on insane hunting sprees. i indulge it, it is a mania that i enjoy. the movies always deliver. there is the final takedown sequence in ‘the dark knight’, the final attack of the lions in the ‘ghosts in the darkness’, the velociraptor in the kitchen of ‘jurassic park’, the horse race in ‘ben hur’, the war from the ‘lord of the rings’… the list goes on.

which is why when i watch 2 guys start with a camera, some duct tape and some streamers and end up with ‘ghost busters’…. it means a lot. thinking up the angle of the camera so that you can shoot a pianist playing his final song… blowing up a mini-city to simulate king kong — it doesn’t matter.

its all possible.

as the movie closes to a captive audience watching a projection on a screen.. applauding every dialogue, believing everything they see.. it shows you the magic.

the magic the movies have always had. and always will.

From Be Kind, Rewind.

–
The Las Vegas flights are known for the unavailability to book flights at the last minute. Most of the airline’s tardinesses makes it possible for one to get seats on Orlando flights and even the flights to London.

india has been victim to a blast roughly every 2 months for the last 2 years. the blasts are happening more frequently now, and more blasts have being threatened by those who have done it. in 2008 alone: rampur, u.p. - terrorist attack. jaipur, rajastan - 8 blasts in 12 minutes. bangalore, karnataka - 9 blasts in 14 minutes. ahmedabad, gujarat - 17 blasts. the word ‘blasts’ seems innocuous now.

as i write this post i keep checking the news sites as i write, dreading another news item. greatbong pretty much summarized it. we live in india with terror as a way of life. people praise the ’spirit’. the ‘resilience’. the ability for people to get up after an explosion and keep moving. live life as though nothing has happened. is it really worthy of praise? we talk over dinner, mention the fact that [city] is already back on its feet. we make statements with a quiet pride about how quickly people were back to work, back to running around their daily routine, back to life.

seriously?

we talk about how nothing has been done. how the system has not managed to get anything done for any of the victims. how none of the criminals have been caught. that this is why people have learnt to keep moving on from one blast to the next. we deride the lack of effort taken by the police, the politicians, the press, anyone. we say that we in india have no spine, we do not care enough, that we are not fit to do anything about anything. and then we continue eating and start discussing ‘the dark knight’. i do this all time, and every time i finish it hits me like a body blow.