Angst In My Pangst

1) Big-time frustration. The Deadly Debug Blues strike again, when it was found that something that was supposed to work did not work at all. Much hasty patch-building was done, and lots of tests and test-scenarios were revamped. All this without the Big Guy around…..

2) Tried playing Age of Empires II for the first time. The actual intent was to install Baldur’s Gate II:Shadows of Amn from a four-cd pack, but my cd-writer, which also doubles up as a reader belched and burped and refused to carry on with the install. (My resolve to buy a new PC therefore grows stronger.) Caesar 3 was more of a lark, compared to AOE2, but this game is getting to me. Three unsuccessful nights in a row – I predict I will win a campaign tonight and Priom will bust a gut if he reads this. We had such hangups about these “sissy, tiny-critter, point-and-click” games, once upon a time.

3) Two green-reads in progress. Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, and William McGivern’s The Big Heat. The first happens to be a East-meets-West kind of pastiche with a load of laughs thrown in. There’s no coherent storyline as far as I can make out. Just a series of episodic hilariousness, with occasional, equally-funny flashbacks. Not that the book isn’t good, it just doesn’t make me want to go too fast. I started The Big Heat because I hadn’t read too much Crime fic in a long while. I am not touching my remaining Vachss novels until I have the time to buy them.( Yeah, I haven’t bought them yet, Dead and Gone and Pain Management, but they are available in Odyssey, so I just have to strengthen my will and my bank balance.)

4) Conducted a quiz yesterday at K-C. Hastily prepared, though well-received. I think. I seem to be getting really disenchanted with quizzes. For one, I am not interested in knowing oddball stuff about everything anymore. I don’t seem to have the time to think of good questions anymore. Actually, the definition of a “good quiz question” still escapes me. (My personal definition of a “good” question happens to be one whose answer matches my first guess. So you see….) And yes, I think the topics that turn up on quiznet are boring and pretentious and repetitive. The whole format needs an overhaul. But that’s just my opinion, of course.

5) I needed some laughs, and Guddu Dhanoa delivered. Three more movies like Hawa, and that guy can get himself admitted to the Forbes list of Top Ten comedians of the century. (By the way, is there a Forbes list of Top Ten comedians of the century? )Subhash K Jha actually has the nerve to say that Mr Dhanoa makes “Slick action thrillers”. Yeah, right. Like Ziddi. Throughout the movie I was hoping some random ghost gets the little imp who plays Tabuu’s elder kid and shuts her up for good. In my nightmares, I can still hear the kid screaming “Tramp. Tramp.” over and over again, like chalk squealing on a blackboard, or trying to chew on a dry strand of wool. Yeuugh!

And over the third viewing of Matrix Reloaded, I found out that I could lip-sync the Architect’s dia…umm…monologue in perfect harmony.

6) My mother’s coming to Hyderabad tomorrow. Along with my elder brother. Well, not exactly my elder brother, but close. I am going to meet him after a long time. After 10 years, in fact. And I am scared, kind of. What if he has changed so much that I don’t recognise him at all?

I find this funny. Also this. I draw a parallel between these and my lust for Brit-American comics, and it’s really …ummm…funny and ironic.