Warning: Stay away from “Family Establishments”. Like newly opened IMAX Theaters. Instead of watching a movie you’ve been desperately waiting for, you would be involved in hearing family quarrels erupt on adjacent rows (“Why can’t you take care of your kids?” “No, why don’t you take care of YOUR kids first?” “You do it! No, YOU do it.”) or hear kids scream or puke popcorn all over seats and their fathers talking to their secretaries and attending to their polyphonic-ringtone waala cellphones. Also the occasional loud belching, followed by a complaint to their wives about “too much gas”.

Jeez. I wish I were the Hulk. Heh heh heh. You wouldn’t like me when I get angry, puny movie-goers.

Hmm, the Hulk, eh? Mandatory rant – When big-shot directors have grandiose dreams about “interpretation”, they shouldn’t massacre 30 years of history to satisfy their creative urge. Ang Lee could have easily made a movie called “Jekyll/Hyde 2003” instead of this. Maybe the only things that resemble the comic book are :- The Hulk is green. Bruce Banner has a girlfriend named Betty Ross, whose father is the Hulk’s nemesis. And the Hulk smash!

Gamma-irradiated French poodles? Two generations of mad Scientists? Pah!

Once the action begins, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Shrek’s elder bro hurling tanks or swatting bullets or cracking open sidewalks, Kristina Lokken would suffice, or even Neo, if you give him “guns! lots of guns!”.

Neil Gaiman has this to say about the Hulk movie, and that’s IT. All that I wanted to say.

The fact that a lot of the journalists complaining about The Hulk movie were complaining about all of the things Ang Lee had done where he thought he knew better. All of the things Sam Rami did right I felt like Ang Lee did wrong. In the Rami film [Spiderman] the first thing that happens is that he gets bitten by a spider. Yes! Then stuff happens and then he’s Spiderman. You go to a Hulk film, you know that two minutes into the film Bruce Banner needs to be trying to rescue this kid out on the Gamma-ray testing field, get caught by the Gamma-ray bomb, and turn into the Hulk. That’s what has to happen a few minutes in, and it doesn’t. You just get this interminable movie, and he doesn’t turn into the Hulk until halfway through; even then you’re going “Why did I get all that plot and what the Hell was that about?” The places where they change things are the places where things tend not to work. Having said that, I think the biggest reason comic books are so successful in Hollywood is that studio execs do not have imaginations, and they’re not very good at extrapolating. So if they have pictures, they’re sortof like storyboards, and they can see things without having to imagine too hard, so they get very happy.

I just got this good article written by Tim O’Reilly, (publisher, O’Reilly books) about Online Piracy, and why it isn’t at all that bad.

I had obtained it from the textz.gnutenberg site, which is itself a pirate site.

I ask myself “Am I a pirate?” or “Am I indulging in Software Piracy/Copyright infringement?” And I try to answer my own question.

Music first. I got into mp3s because of three things:

• I was getting tired of the sequential format of tapes. If I like a song, I would have to rewind to listen to it again, whereas with mp3s, I click to play again.
• A lot of new stuff that would have cost me a fortune to dabble in. Yeah, “dabble” is the right word. I could listen to a song I wanted, and if I didn’t like it, I didn’t have to waste time ruing the fact that I spent 125 rupees for nothing.
• Quality consciousness came pretty late, but it crept in, all the same. I can no longer stand the irritating hiss in tapes, and sometimes ( that is now) even the flanging on certain 128-kbps encoded mp3s makes me cringe.

So fine, I have a huge stack of mp3s at my home, probably stuff I will never listen to in my life. ( Reba McIntyre? Gorefest? Children of Bodom? Naaaah! ) All neatly ( and in some cases, not so neatly) arranged in boxes and plastic cases and suchlike. I also copy cds, a lot of cds, mostly from my friends, because the stuff they usually buy is stuff that I need. In some cases, they get original cds from their friends, and I make copies for them, too.

I also buy cds from second-hand sources, and in grimy shops tucked away in dark corners for the sole reason that they are offering a substantial discount ( which can vary between 25% and 70% )

Does all the above make me a pirate? Should I choke with guilt everytime I see or read stuff about piracy? Will the RIAA sue me, someday?

That’s not all. My computer at home runs on an unlicensed version of Windows ’98. I also buy games, most or all of which are pirated. ( I think the only legitimate game I bought so far has been Baldur’s Gate, and that was at a 50% discount sale.) I have access to a lot of DivX movies, and copied VCDs, which I will get around to seeing, someday. The other day, I downloaded a demo version of Fruity Loops v3.56 for the sole reason that I already had a Crack to it, and I wanted to see if it works fine or not. It does, and I have it running at home. And about warez book sites, the less said, the better.

This might sound sick, but I don’t feel the least bit guilty about all this. The reasons?

• I also happen to be one of those compulsive CD-buyers. I mean, stuff I really, really want, I would never copy it, I would rather spend money to get it from some place. ( Of course, it’s much better when I can use a friend’s Music World discount card) For instance, if I find Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, or Peter Gabriel’s Passion, I would buy them Blindly, no thought. Except, of course, they shouldn’t be something more than the average market price.
• I have never, in my life, uploaded any stuff online. My stuff is mine, and my friends are free to take things they want, and I pass it on to them. Or at least make a copy. Not to faceless strangers, thank you. The Napster revolution passed me by, ( we RECians lived in a day and age when it was considered COOL when one could download a 600kb pdf without clicking “refresh” 8-9 times.) So I have never downloaded too much stuff either. The only album I downloaded was the Spiderman OST, and I got the cd as a gift three months later.
• Suppose I want to hear something real bad. One of those itches…like I have to listen to Meja’s All About the Money today or I will die. What do I do? First thing is, it would take me ages to find a cd on the market that contains the song, and secondly, will I really pay 350-525 rupees for one song?
• I wouldn’t get to hear all this good stuff, and appreciate them, if mp3s weren’t around. Nine Inch Nails in an Indian shop? Phish? The Bram Stoker’s Dracula OST? Where the heck do I get them?
• Games and software. OK, so when I was a college student, I simply wouldn’t be able to afford money for a Windows license. Now that I am working, why don’t I get one? Main thing – of course – is money. I would rather prefer a buggy cracked version of Win 98 than a licensed Win XP, because well, the only things that run on it are Winamp, Fruity Loops and games. Also, getting Linux Drivers for Creative Surround is difficult, basically I wouldn’t have the time to configure everything. Laziness, remember?

Ok, so maybe that was a lame excuse.

• Games are highly overpriced in India. Again, I wouldn’t know if I would like a particular game before I played it, and there aren’t any sampling booths out here.
• Books: I buy loads of them. All second-hand/discounted. The warez sites are for those that I want to try out, or stuff that I haven’t found, or books that are at home, and I want to refer to it sometimes. As to why I buy only second-hand books, I think it’s better for them to have a nice, caring owner rather than being picked up by some oddball who wanted to give it a “try”. Frankly, I think those kind of people should stick to Chicken-Soup books.

So. Am I a pirate? Even if I am, I am keeping all my stuff. And getting more. Please don’t let me get arrested, God.

Addendum: Read This, too.

Last night, I was supposed to go and help two friends who were moving into a new flat. And what happens? It was a dark and stormy night, and laziness reigned supreme. “We can move tomorrow”, I propounded. “Let’s go for a movie instead.” – was the response as to what we should do instead of packing and straining our cumulative muscles. And since that was on my mind all along ( I mean, it was Odin’s Day, and I hadn’t seen any movie other than Bruce Almighty ), off we went.

On Sunday night, I got an SMS from another dear friend, which read “just saw 3 deeware. (sic) Kukunoor is god,da.”
I have to say – I agree. Wholeheartedly, at that.

The only flaw with the entire switch-plans-in-favour-of-movie was :-
1) I had to wake up early in the morning. 6:45 AM ( after going to sleep at 2 AM) is so early in my book, it’s freakin’ criminal!
2) Go to their place and help with the packing. OK, so most of the packing was already done, so I had to sleepwalk around the house holding sealing tape and scissors. I hate it when the end of the tape sticks back on the roll and I gotta scratch around to get hold of it.
3) Load aforementioned packed stuff on two lorries.
4) Tag along.
5) Unload aforementioned stuff.
6) Come back home and get ready for the office.

Did I just say only flaw?
To be fair, I wasn’t the only one doing all the work. But I feel like cribbing a bit, so there. :-)
It’s still not lunchtime, and I feel like singing – “It’s been a Hard Day’s Night, I’ve been working like a dog”

I found out that eating a pomegranate with honey is absolutely out of this world.

That was it. My exercise quota for the next six months is over and done with. In the “light exercises” section, I will have to remember not to take the lift, two days every week. That is, only when I am headed downstairs.

Yesternight I was showing Mons a demo of Max Payne, the opening cut-scenes and the prologue, and I suddenly realized it’s been quite sometime since I completed that game. So after dropping her home, I sat down to play it again. It’s FUN! I had forgotten most of the details, and I found that it’s quite hilarious at times, like when the goons run away and I can hear them talking down the corridor –
Goon#1: “Hey, it’s Payne. Go and shoot him.”
Goon#2: “Why don’t you go and shoot him?”
Goon#3: “Let’s all go shoot him.”

Or a TV show, which is playing a French medieval love-story.
Dashing Guy:”Oh, my love, do not leave me. I have come to take you far away with me”
Harried female: “No, my lord, I have to tell you something.”
(Kissing sound)
Harried female: “No, my lord, this is not right.”
Dashing guy: “Why, oh, why?”
Harried female: “My lord, I …I am your sister”

Heh heh. Though not as fun as the NOLF conversation about the monkey.

A list of games I have to play. Most of them (‘*’)I already have ( as in, possess), but laziness, and till late, a lack of proper hardware stopped me from playing these. I have completed a few levels of nearly every game I have.

1. Clive Barker’s Undying.*
2. No One Lives Forever 1*&2
3. Enter The Matrix.*
5. Nocturne.*
6. GTA3*
5. Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.*
6. Postal 2.*
7. Batman: Vengeance.*
8. Black and White.*
9. Escape from Monkey Island.*
10. Age of Mythology.*
11. Half Life 2 (when it comes out)
12. Serious Sam 1 and 2.
13. Unreal 2003/Unreal Tournament 2003
14. Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
15. Baldur’s Gate II*

Hmmm. I need time. I need to be less lazy. And I need to take better care of my eyes.

Last night I finally figured out how to make Fruity Loops work! But except for stupid trancy loops, I can’t seem to make any music. No creative sparks. I think I should listen to Making Music a couple of times. ( Ha ha, nice joke. )

Read Andrew Vachss’ Dead and Gone over the weekend. “Dark, “Rivetting” and “Gut-wrenching” are a couple of cliches I might use for this, but I will end up sounding like one of those back-cover blurbs. Which, just for the record, say all of the above, and more. My favourite Vachss-blurb happens to be “Vachss makes Hammett, Chandler and the rest look like choirboys”.

This is Vachss’s thirteenth Burke book, and I guess my eighth. Always loved the character, although the last one I read ( Sacrifice ) made me feel like Mr V was getting stuck in a rut. This brought things back to a whole new level. The book starts with the death of a major character and an attempt to kill Burke. Which he survives because of sheer luck.( and a Kevlar jacket) Loads of character-driven prose, I see more of the man Burke was – he has always dropped hints about his dark past, and this is the closest he’s come to revealing everything. Cool!

An Andrew Vachss novel available online is A Bomb Built in Hell. Written way back in the 70’s, this could not get published because the protagonist ( an antihero named Wesley) did something which publishers felt was “too gruesome”. I read ABBiH, and it was chilling. The kind of stuff that comes closest to giving me nightmares. You feel morally corrupt after reading it. I am not joking. Wesley later turned up in the Burke books, as one of Burke’s friends. This is what www.vachss.com, his official website has to say about the book: – “A Bomb Built in Hell is Wesley’s story, intended, according to Vachss, to be “a doctorate thesis in criminology without the foot-notes, exploring such ideas as the connection between child abuse and crime, and the desperate need of unbonded, dangerous children to form ‘families of choice.’”

Something I read to offset the “seriousness” of Dead and Gone – and whoopie, was it funny – was Noel Langley’s The Land of Green Ginger. A son is born to the lovely Empress Badr-ul-Badour and the Emperor of China, Aladdin. But this is not Aladdin’s story, it’s the tale of Prince Abu Ali and his quest to find the Land of (what else!) Green Ginger, a country that travels by itself, having been created by a Wizard who wanted to have a Ginger garden in his backyard, wherever he travelled. (The Wizard has been transformed into a button-nosed turtle, by the way, because of a spell that went a little awry) Abu teams up with the Djinn of the lamp ( or rather, the son of the Djinn of the lamp), named Bomballaka Wee. And a mouse-that-was-originally-supposed-to-be-a-donkey. Onward!

Finished it in a night. And it was hilarious, to say the least.

Am reading something called Pump Up The Volume, which is a history of House and Garage music. Electronica, so to speak. It’s pretty interesting so far!