Some resolutions I made. I intend to stick to them, regardless of whatever happens.

1) No more CDs. Enough doth be enough. I already have too many. (A very vague concept, too many, but still….) The next original CD I buy is going to be, in all probability, Half Life 2, in October, and until then, NO CDs.

2) No watching bad movies. Considering that I spend money on autorickshaws, the actual movie, popcorn, chips, cold-drinks, and all that for a lousy concoction of half-baked ideas…I would rather sit at home and play NOLF or sit in the office and dream about eBay bids.

3) Buy books only if they are hard-to-come-by-again-types, or if they were on my Must-Buy list. No impulse buying. No salivating at every Elmore Leonard novel or Rolling Stone magazine I see. Comics are exempted, and I must make a mental note to go and get acquainted with the respective managers at Walden and Odyssey to find out they bring in new comics.

4) Less coffee. One cup every two days at the office. One trip to Barista’s/Coffee-Day every fortnight. Or less. No Qwiky’s. Qwiky’s sucks. More Coffee Day. Is cheaper.

5) A vitamin tablet per day. Must try to put on some weight.

6) No more trips to out-of-town cul-fests and quizzes. Absolutely NO NO NO.

If these were Mahabharata-type times, the skies would have opened by now, followed by a shower of flowers and assorted aromatic oils, accompanied by conch-shells and veenas. Maybe the gods would have changed my name or something.( Wonder if I would have a choice in it….love to have a name like Prometheus, or even Dracul. )

The earphones to my discman are busted. One of the phones doesn’t make any sound at all. That means, at the end of a month saturated with expenditure and needless buying, I need to spend some more cash.(Needless? Ha ha ha ha! )

For some funny reason, earphones never seem to last with me, even though I am a big fan of theirs. I mean, most people seem to have this problem of the earphones being too big or too small for the ears, they keep popping out ( never heard a case where they keep sliding in and got stuck inside the earhole, though.) I can’t handle headphones. The big ones give me a headache, plus, especially in the summer, they get my ears all hot and sweaty underneath. The smaller ones “leak”, you can’t put on anything at decent volume without half the world listening in, and face it, that tinny sound from someone else’s headphones is really too much, especially when you are in a public place and are talking to somebody. ( Believe it or not, I have civic sense, at least when it comes to music! ) But ok, like I said, the shelf-life of the average earphone-set decreases tremendously when I use them. Dunno why – my volume level doesn’t cross 6 (the average being 4).

I must have used some 4 sets of Aiwa earphones with my walkman, and now with the discie (does a word like “discie” exist?), this is the second pair to go bad, and both the sets were pretty good.

And I have my fads too. I can’t handle earphones with rubber muffs, they keep popping out. And no phones with equal left and right lengths for me, the best ones are those with a short left and a long right, perfect to wear around the neck.

I am using my blog to discuss designs of earphones. Jeezalouise!!!

Now where do I get the new pair from? Abids? Cheap, but won’t last too long. MW, Lifestyle, as usual doesn’t carry the ones I want in stock. Let’s see. Will have to check out some shops I know.

Thanks, rulinian, for the funny start to the week. :-)

Yesterday I kind of bunked office for the afternoon, to get some medicines for my mom. Rishi’s going home to Guwahati this weekend, and I am supposed to be sending stuff through him. Just to make sure how many tablets I need to buy, and which ones, I called up home. Mom was at home, and somehow, we ended up talking for nearly one and a half hours…with infrequent interruptions from my sis and would-be bro-in-law, both of whom also happened to be at Guwahati now.

Ma filled me in with a lot of gossip. :-) Hot news: my cousins are getting married. Some of them. Two girls and a guy, all of them being elder to me by a year….Hmmm, seems like yesterday, when I tripped Indraniba and broke her nose and specs and stayed hidden on the terrace the rest of the day. Had a BIG crush on the other cousin. All this when I was in the fifth standard. Crazy thing is, I haven’t met both of them for something like six years. Family feud. :-)

Medicines bought. Decided to check out the MR book exhibition at Panjagutta. My fault. Or my luck, depending on how you look at it. To think that a day ago, I was telling patrodz that I haven’t bought any books this month. Sigh!

William Gibson’s Neuromancer. (Finally!) Stephen KIng’s From a Buick Eight. (Finally!), Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors. (Finally! Finally!!!) Each at 80 rs apiece.

Also saw Two volumes of Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries on sale. Volume I wasn’t around, though. The guy convinced me that it will be available soon, and I convinced him that I would buy all three volumes when he gets them.

Now, at this critical juncture, a pattern begins to emerge. I got lucky here, I tell myself. That means, I tell myself again, I will get lucky at other places too. (Editor’s note: This line of reasoning may not be entirely logical, but whoever said I am logical? ) “So do we make the journey to Best Book Stall as well?”, we ask ourselves. “Naaaaah”, we replies. “Too friggin hot!” ( Editor’s note again: Contrary to popular belief, Beatzo’s inner urges are not completely in disharmony with the elements ) “Okie, Odyssey then?” “Yup, yup, yup!”

Right-o!

Odyssey yields more pleasant surprises. They have the trade paperback of Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that’s issues #1-6, with a neat blurb saying “Soon to be a major motion picture”. Wheeee! And it’s in the Sci-fi section. Two copies. I hope someone picks it up and gets hooked. The movie’s gonna be trash. I can feel it.

(Short enlightening, editorial note: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen happens to be the brainchild of a certain Mr Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. The premise: Victorian England. Four intrepid adventurers are brought together by the Diogenes Club, the secret arm of the British Government, in order to quell a threat against the Monarchy. The “Extraordinary gentlemen” happen to be an opium-addicted Allan Quartermain, Dr Henry Jekyll, whose fits of rage transform him into Hydeous you-know-who, Mr Hawley Griffin, presumed dead a long time ago, but of course, still alive and ..umm…invisible. Miss Wilhelmina Murray, who had had a scandalous affair with a foreign Count and keeps her throat hooded. An Indian Prince named Dakkar who calls himself the Latin equivalent of “No Name”. Together, they must defeat the a mysterious Oriental…and well, the movie’s going to be completely different from the comic, it seems. They have Americanized part of it, adding Tom Sawyer into the mix. Blah! The India-centric news is that Naseeruddin Shah plays Captain Nemo. The trade paperback collects the first six issues and is available for a paltry 500 rupees. )

The comics section in Odyssey is so sad!

Today’s the day, man!

Yesterday, I had noticed a particular new item in the vcds section inside Music World. Lifestyle.

Woodstock-3 days of Peace, Love and Music:The Director’s Cut. Includes 40 minutes of never-before-included footage selected by director Michael Wadleigh.

Hmm, end of the month. The alternative to buying it was to inform everyone I knew about it, with the hope that at least one of them would get it and spare me the trouble.

psasidhar: Next month quota starts only after 21st, i.e day after tomorrow. :-)

Oh, yeah, the credit card-funda he was telling me about.

Chandru: HEY!! That will be a cool buy!!! Get it for me!!!”

Bingo!

Bought it just now. That’s not just all. AS I was about to take it to the counter, some other cds caught my eye. Two John Wayne movies – The Sons of Katie Elder and True Grit.

This is what happened in the next five seconds.

Hmmmm…update information database. Eyes rove over some more cds. Hold on a second, that cover looked familiar….Back, back, back, where did I see it? And what did it remind me of? Oh, ok, there it is, the bald guy with the tilted head and brown-smoked-glasses. What the…..it can’t be! Please god, don’t let me be wrong….bend some more, heart pounding, yes, “The Oliver Stone Collection” written on it. Is it an ad? No. NO. NO!! It is a vcd. Pick it up, pick it up. Oh sweet Lord, it is the one!

Proud possessor of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. Something I been looking for the past two years. Maybe even more, but I will be modest with figures.

Jeez, I can’t wait to get home.

The next time I get a shock of this magnitude is going to be when I see a DVD of Ghost in the Shell for sale in Music World. I can feel it.

Mail from you-know-who talking about you-will-know-what:

Just read your Veerana entry at beatzo’s. Makes me go like Max
Payne…..(in a deep throaty manner) ” I am an entry in a weblog at
Beatzo’s”……” I am in a movie playing a wise-cracking side-kick to a
movie critic”

Hmmmm.

Stuff I don’t like about the office:- None of the morons who work in the building ( other than the people in my Company, of course ) know how to use the lift! Not one of those friggin morons have the sense to press the lift buttons just once! No! If they want to go up, and the lift stays at some floor, some intelligent guy will get the bright idea of holding down the button, or jabbing at it repeatedly. Better still, he will press BOTH the buttons, both up and down. End result: the lift stops at nearly every floor, adding to the chaos. At every floor, some guy will try to get in, then midway through the door, pause and ask “Yeh upar jaa rahaa hai kya?”, then, we say “Yes, it’s going up” (can’t you see that the up arrow just went off outside, you Rattagraggin moron?) “Oh! I want to go down”, and by that time, the lift doors try to shut, and there is an almighty crash as it hits the guy ( not too hard enough ), the door springs open again, and the lift waits for some more time. And if we are really unlucky, the same guy goes and starts jabbing at the same button again.

And the lift intself seems to be possessed with a mind of it’s own. There must be some kind of algorithm at work that seeks to maximize the wait time for every individual button pressed.

Running up six stories eight times in a day makes you rave and rave more….

Armaan? Or Haasil? Or both?