Soccer Wars...

Amit 'India Uncut' Verma recently posted about a hilarious ad. don't (DON'T!!!) miss it!! click on that link! NOW!!!

Amazon.com is richer now!!

Because I just ordered some books and DVDs!! :)

My own movie collection now stands at a not-very-strong 20 movies... These are..

DVDs

Satya
Dil Se..
Bombay
Rangeela
Iruvar
LOTR extended versions (all three)
A Beautiful Mind
Crash
The Aviator
Million Dollar Baby
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrells
A Very Long Engagement
2046
In the Mood for Love
Yojimbo
The Shining
Dr. Strangelove

VHSs

Alaipayuthey
Farewell My Concubine
All about My Mother

so.. how does your list look?

Shakti aur Kshama

I promised in this post that I'll find Shakti aur Kshama and post it on this blog. Thanks to Jaya, the amazing Hindiphile who not only collects great Hindi poems (and posts them here) but also authors great stuff herself. Just a little email to her, and the problem was solved within 5 minutes!

The poem is by Ramdhari Sinh 'Dinkar' and I used to love it! Jaya told me that it is actually a part of Kurukshetra by Dinkar, and isn't a stand alone poem as I had assumed. So, here goes..

Slashdot fun for the day.

A discussion about the ISRO-NASA story is going on at slashdot. And this person came up with this....

...received from my Crystal Ball(TM):

"New Delhi, we have a problem."
"Thank you for calling Mission Control. May I be having your name, address, and current software version please?"
"The software has locked us out. We need you to make a course correction in exactly 20 seconds!"
"Certainly sir. If I could just be having your license number please."
"License number?! Just fire thrusters 2 and 3 for 4.5 seconds on my mark!"
"You're Mark? Thank you for giving me your name, but I am needing your license code too please."
"Our license number is going to be 3-D-E-A-D-G-U-Y-S if you don't fire the thrusters in--5 seconds!"
"If this is an emergency request, please be giving me your express service code."
"Express... Hey Buzz, crack the main hatch open for 5 seconds on my mark... NOW! We'll have to hope this works."
"I'm sorry sir, but it appears you have voided your warranty. Please be having a nice day."[click]

I know, I know.. As an Indian I should probably be offended by this... but it IS quite funny!! :P

Also, I LOLed at reading this person's signature -

Contrary to popular belief, ad hominem is not Latin for "that's mean!"

Ped, Papeeta, Pinku aur Prasoon

Have you heard the tongue twister song from Fanaa? I don't think I liked the music a lot - some decent songs, but nothing earth-shaking - but I like this song just because of the innovative tongue twisters written by Prasoon Joshi. Or at least I think they are written by him because I had never heard 2 out of the 3 that are part of the song (the Khadag Singh ke khadakne se.. one is quite old..)

These "new" ones are...

Chandaa chamkay cham cham, cheekhay chaukannaa chor
Cheentee chaatay cheenee chatoree cheeneekhor

and

Pakay ped par pakaa papeetaa, pakaa ped yaa pakaa papeetaa,
pakay ped ko pakday Pinkoo, Pinkoo pakday pakaa papeetaa.

I specially like the Chanda chamkay one.. the "chatoree cheeneekhor" part cracked me up! :)

Doctor Kotnis Mathur ki Amar Kahaani

Abhishek Mathur, one of my closest friends, is defending his PhD thesis today. YAY!!! That makes him Dr. Mathur within less than 4 years of becoming Abhishek Mathur B.Tech.

How the hell do people do such things???

What about me??? well......

*runs back to read more phdcomics strips*.

Beginning of the end?

Just read this.

I know the title of this post makes me sound like all those doomsday-predictors who keep predicting the end of the world every couple of years or so. But I wonder....

Then again, I think that if similar measures are taken here in the US, then we'll probably save enough energy to last us for a couple of millenia...

Google and Dinkar

Google's quote of the day for today is:

"What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do" by Aristotle.

I am impressed with this Aristotle chap.. he seemed to know his stuff.. :P Anyway, I liked the quote a lot and it reminded me of one of my favorite poems in hindi - Shakti aur Kshama by Ramdhari Sinh 'Dinkar' - that had a similar theme. In fact it happens to be one of only a couple of hindi poems that I still remember almost completely. Will try to find it online and put the link here. If not, probably I'll just type it out one of these days...

Update: I ran into this wonderful site about hindi poems. Don't have time right now to browse through the whole site but it doesn't seem to have Shakti aur Kshama.

Aakash is back

Aakash Chopra is back in England to play for his club side. And thankfully HT is continuing with his columns. Easily one of the better cricketer-writers I have ever read. Tells you everything related to a cricketer's life/perspective rather than the same old "X should take a break", "Y should be dropped", "Z should be given more time to perform"...

Read the latest in his column here and a previous post on this blog about his take on Veeru Sehwag is here.

Best movie soundtrack of all time?

Well, you can't argue with a cumulative rating like that, can you? :P

News of the day?

Try and beat this one!

(And no, I'm not going to change the title of this post or give you any credit in case you are thinking of pointing out the actual date on the article...)

news via slashdot.


Ok, seems I jumped the gun. As someone pointed out on slashdot itself, this seems to be another of those hoaxes. Sigh! Here is an article about this on the site of the journal Archaeology.