A year of “professional” life. Aaaaaah! How can I thank you, O beloved Company I work for? You gave me so much of good things, so many interesting people, a truly engaging environment to work in, and of course, a nice salary. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for making May 8, 2002 to May 8, 2003 one of the best years of my life. And I promise I will check-in a perfect Loadbalancer by Tuesday.

Debug-time!!! The most perfect excuse I can give is – “There ain’t no such thing as perfect code. It’s all illusion!”. The concept of Maya happens to be a standing joke amongst us server-engineers. “Sab Maya hai, bhai!” – when the build fails. Used to crack me up every time I heard it being said aloud. Now it’s my turn to say the same stuff to the QA gang.

eBay Time!!!! Thanks to the one and only 2fargon, I am now the proud possessor of —
Road to Perdition: The original graphic novel on which the movie is based. by Max Allan Collins and Richard Pers Rayner.

Sin City: That Yellow Bastard: More stuff from THE city and the kick-ass people in it. Frank Miller, who else?

Dark Horse Presents:#54-62: Sin City: The first stories about Sin City originally appeared in these issues of the acclaimed Dark Horse Presents anthology series.

Frank Miller’s Ronin: In 1983, this mini-series from DC established Miller as a guy who was willing to break rules. Featuring a storyline that borrowed heavily from Oriental mythos, the Manga traditions of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Komjima’s Lone Wolf and Cub, the films of Akira Kurosawa, and the cyberpunk works of William Gibson, Ronin was the stepping-stone that led to Frank’s enduring legacy for DC – The Dark Knight Returns.

Plus, two sets of Indie graphic novels, some of them signed by their respective creators. Most of them< i had heard of before, and I was especially surprised when I could get them at about 2$ each. Gilbert Hernandez – Fear of Comics: From amazon.com: “Fear of Comics is a collection of short stories from the acclaimed co-creator of Love & Rockets. Hernandez’s work has frequently been compared to the fiction of Gabriel Garcia Marquez…..Gilbert continues to prove that the comics format is an effective vehicle for Latin American-style magic realism. Several stories in Fear of Comics relate strange happenings in a small Mexican village: a tree dispenses spiritual guidance to a lovesick hunchback; the ghost of an irresponsible mother searches for the children she killed; the village is invaded by a giant “love gremlin,” etc. Short absurdist tales and some decade-old sf round out the contents.” Signed, baby, signed. :-D

The Complete Atomic City Tales. Vol. 1: from amazon.com, Imagine a world where men can fly–that’s a pretty basic principle behind many comics, so it’s fairly easy to do. Okay, now imagine a post-modern world where men can fly, the cartoonists who create them show up from time to time, and girls with extraordinary strength sell underarm deodorant. If you can get behind the concept, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of what things are like in Atomic City. Particularly, you’ll get an inkling of what it’s like for Atomic City’s newest super being, the rough-and- tumble Big Bang. With rockabilly good looks and an overabundance of good-time attitude, Big Bang is pretty fresh to the hero game, and pretty fresh to what appears to be unlimited powers….. Again, signed and numbered.

Jaime Hernandez. The Death of Speedy: amazon.com: Reading Gilbert’s brother Jaime’s work–most of which focuses on a group of Southern California Mexican American women–is like reading Tolstoy, if only Tolstoy had written about twenty- something punk girls. Love and Rockets has certainly earned its legendary reputation among the comic-book cognoscenti, and deserves to be read by an even wider audience….

Dark Town. No. 1. Blackley and Chong: Seems the movie Monkeybone, starring Brendan Fraser, was based on this comic. A story about a comic-writer going into a coma and being transported to a world of his own creation.

The Minotaur’s Tale. Al Davison: www.marsimport.com: In the original classic Greek myth, the Minotaur was a terrible beast, half-man, half-bull, who feasted on human flesh and was justly slain by the noble hero Theseus. But that is only one version of the story. There is also the Minotaur’s tale, as told by the Minotaur. ‘Banshee’ is a deformed young man recovering from a savage beating, when he is first given the Minotaur’s diary by a kindly friend. As a modern-day ‘monster,’ he finds it raises questions that he did not even know existed about his own life: Questions regarding myths and truth, ugliness and beauty, punishment and power. The book’s pages contain some of the answers to such questions, but ‘Banshee’ finds out even more: that not only does he have value, but also the ability to change things himself.

There is another eleven-graphic novel lot that contains a lot of esoteric stuff…..I think I will list that down next time….

Major disappointment: Lost out on a bid of a 30-issue lot of Akira, that sells on the market for 200-300$. The winning bid happened to be 46:05$,while my final bid, made 12 mins before the end of the auction was 45$. Shite, shite, shite, I kicked myself about this the whole day! This must fall into the list of beatzo’s greatest comics-KLPD’s of all time. Why couldn’t I wait until the last minute to bis? I had almost given up on the bid, thinking that it would go up to something like 100$ and finish in the night. But surprise, 12 minutes left, and only 36$. I bid 45, and the rest is history!

Never be complacent on eBay bids, beatzo!!!

My body hurts. We moved to our new flat today. My books – my poor, poor, back-breaking books – they will finally stay safe from dust and cobwebs – the new house has beautiful cupboards. I got the room with the balcoby, Abhishek took the room with the attached bath, and Rishi got the one with the full-size mirror. No one’s complaining.

Just now I got these weird albums from Sangeet Saagar – the only place where you can get weird, unthinkable albums. One’s MM Kreem’s private album Coffee and Kreem, brought out by Plus music. The company’s gone bust, and most of the good albums – Saaz, sardari Begum, Bhairavi, are now unavailable – so this was a major surprise. Another buy was the London cast recording of Chicago, available for a paltry 200 bucks, and with a running time of 76:23. This promises to be interesting, because it has part of the dialogues and lots of songs which weren’t there in the movie version.

Whooopeee! The New Guy‘s in town.