Waking up at eight in the morning, when you have promised yourself that under no circumstances you will do so before noon, is definitely not good cricket. (Good Cricket. Hah. Oxymoron!) Not on a Saturday. And I have this weird thing about sounds – I can sleep when there’s loud music playing – AC/DC, Sepultura, anything goes. Maybe I tend to wake up for a second if the music changes, you know, like when the Fleetwood Mac album just ended and Audioslave came up. but I cannot sleep when an alarm bell rings. Or my cellphone. Or the doorbell. Oh, yeah, those cars that play monophonic beeps of Fur Elise or Vaseegara when they are backing up.

Nothing much happened this week. Translated, this means – no, I didn’t buy anything, I didn’t make any major finds, I was working hard. Unless, you count GTA:Vice City, which has been keeping me awake until 2 AM every night. The only interesting thing that happened at work was the NFS tournament on the office LAN yesterday. I had insisted on a Q3 competition, but it seems racing attracts more participants. C’est la vie, and all that. I didn’t play. Was too busy configuring the pirated copy of NFS3 on the machines.

I seriously love my LJ-friends’ page. It’s like getting mails in my mailbox every morning, only the other person won’t stop mailing me if I don’t mail back. It’s kind of a selfish way of looking at blogs, I know, but what can I say? You guys give me my daily fix. Neil Gaiman chips in. So does Wired Magazine, with it’s daily RIAA-bashing.

Realisation of the week: Historical Fiction is so much better than Biographies. I never trust biographers. It’s usually somebody recounting the life-story of a person based on research and findings. OK, so if the person is somebody contemporary, the writer might actually go and talk to him and come to all kinds of conclusions that make him write a book about his conclusions. So eventually, the biography turns out to be not “an account of a person’s life”, as is the dictionary explanation, but a collection of conclusions based on available facts. That is, if the writer is a good writer.

Autobiographies are slightly better. You at least know, right, this is where the guy is fudging things a little to make himself look better, or – this is where he is in preachy-mode…..the problem with autobiographies start when you have a byline in the title. Something like “Why I am God” by Lucifer with Mephistopheles. You know what this makes me feel like? Conversations like –

M: Ok, so tell me something about your childhood.
L: Umm, well…..I ….umm…nothing too much..I remember school…a little bit of it….i was a good student…..er….I loved my parents….and….umm…..yeah, that’s about it.
M: (scribbles furiously) Rebel at school. Anti-Establishment. Problem with authority. Add Anecdotes.

That’s about it. Ghost-writers make me feel like the writing is all a dressed-up parody.

Actually, I was reading two books this week – one being a biography of George Lucas by a guy named John Baxter, and the other was Valerio Manfredi’s Alexander: Sands of Ammon. I absolutely hated the first one, but I think I will read it anyhow, I need facts, boss, and when I need facts, I can ditch writing styles and concentrate on facts. This book reminds me of the godawful things I have read or tried to read – the Biography of Lata Mangeshkar by Raju Bharatan, I kind of remember falling into a mindless stupor after the first 4 pages, the bio page of AR Rahman on every other fan website, in particular, an essay by some Cine Blitz writer.

The Alexander Trilogy is ab-so-freakin-lutely White heat. Ok, so maybe I am a little hysterical about books I like. I enjoyed the first part, and even though this wasn’t as compelling as Child of a Dream, it managed to get me to stick around. Inspite of being a translation. No pretentiousness. That’s pop culture for me. I hope I get the third book soon.

I am listening to this Winamp3 Radio station called Radio Paradise that’s playing one good track after another. Somehow, my office firewall doesn’t seem to block it. Bands like Counting Crows, Mandalay, Placebo, African Rhythm Hunters, Chemical Brothers, with Mark Knopfler, Janis Joplin, Inda Eaton popping up from time to time. Or the other way around.

Oh man, the song that’s playing now was the original of the Viju Shah number Halle Halle from Aar Ya Paar.