{"id":509,"date":"2004-08-18T11:16:00","date_gmt":"2004-08-18T11:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2004\/08\/focus-my-man\/"},"modified":"2004-08-18T11:16:00","modified_gmt":"2004-08-18T11:16:00","slug":"focus-my-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2004\/08\/focus-my-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Focus, my man."},"content":{"rendered":"

I am a little worried right now. For the stupidest of reasons, at that. You see, I received 2 DVD packs, each pack containing six DVDs, episodes of an anime series called Rurouni Kenshin<\/b>. Why I am worried is, there should have been THREE packs. 18 DVDs in all. Damn, I have this mental picture of greedy scumbag Indian customs officers ( apologies to all customs officers and their brethren ) who paw through imported packages that come by mail and see three similar looking packages and decide that two packs out of three won’t be that bad, and so they take pack# 3 home for their kids. I know that shows just how much of a bigotted anti-customs creep I am, but I can’t just help it. I will probably wait for two more days before I begin to weep and wail.<\/p>\n

The same kind of paranoid thoughts crossed my mind when I was waiting for mrsgollum<\/a>‘s 10-kilo package to arrive. It did, after two months, and very safe and sound and neatly packaged at that, but I bet if you took all the bits of fingernails and toenails and finger-skin that i gnawed off ( um, my own fingers and toes, thank you) in breathless anticipation of whether and when it’s going to come, you could stuff a fairly decent sized teddy bear and still have a pile of prickly badly gnawed fingernails left. Needless worry. I bet this kind of thing is what will lead to my premature baldness, not my faithful radioactive-impotency-ray-emiting Nokia that stays permanently wedged inside my pocket.<\/p>\n

(Info: mrsgollum<\/a>‘s package contained a fair amount of graphic novels – V For Vendetta<\/b> by Alan Moore, Jinx<\/b> and Goldfish<\/b> by Brian Michael Bendis, Gaiman’s Stardust<\/b>, Frank Capra’s autobiography The Name Above The Title<\/b>, copies of Bill Sienkiewiescz’s Stray Toasters<\/b>, Peter Milligan and Brett Ewin’s Skreemer<\/b>and oh, precious, the first forty five issues of Swamp Thing<\/b>, featuring Alan Moore’s early work on DC Comics, an awesome body of work that helped bring in the Vertigo Age of comics. I got this some two Saturdays ago )<\/p>\n

Right. I need to stop worrying about petty details, and forgive customs officers everywhere, and focus on the positive things at hand.<\/p>\n

I read 230 pages of Simon Singh’s Code Book<\/b> last night, armed with pencil, paper, and the rare combination of sleeplessness and complete dedication that a really, really good book brings with it. I was supposed to fall asleep early, because I had just come back from a lightning-fast Chennai trip ( Landmark Quiz. Damp Squib, as always). Spending two consecutive nights on General Compartments of Charminar Express is not advisable, let me assure you. Your spine feels like a seperate entity altogether, and at about two AM, your ass feels like what Atlas (the Greek Mythology guy, not the bicycle) must have felt after all that sky-bearing. Instead of catching up on sleep, I ended up reading about the history of codes and ciphers – and I salute Mr. Singh for the brilliant readability of his work.<\/p>\n

The above portion was written yesterday, but I forgot to post it. <\/i><\/p>\n

Vineeth (not him<\/a> ) sent me a parcel that had TWO Far Side Galleries ( Volumes 1 and 2). And also some Conan novels, with exquisite pen-and-ink sketches by Esteban Maroto, whose work I knew only from Atlantis Chronicles<\/b> ( DC Comics, 1990), a Dashiell Hammett, and Pratchett’s Equal Rites<\/b>. Finished The Far Side Gallery Volume One<\/b> last night, and then read the complete first volume of Lone Wolf and Cub<\/b>. All this when the four-cd Collector’s Edition of The Cowboy Bebop Original Soundtrack was being downloaded to my hard-drive.<\/p>\n

One of these days, the circuits in my brain will overload, and they will find me in the morning with my brains splattered all over the bean-bag, my face frozen in an ecstatic grin. “Too Many Good Things”, they will converse in hushed tones, “you shouldn’t have too many of those damned Good Things. Just look at what happened to poor old Beatzo”.<\/p>\n

If there is any justice in the world, there will be a draft of wind just then, something that will chill the bones of those nay-sayers, and make the curtains in my room flap loudly, and make a sound that will vaguely sound like “Shhhhhhhhhhhite”.<\/p>\n

P.S The download ( 303 MB in all) completed today morning. With apologies to Extremely Jealous Girlfriend, I need to say this. Yoko Kanno, I love you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a little worried right now. For the stupidest of reasons, at that. You see, I received 2 DVD packs, each pack containing six DVDs, episodes of an anime series called Rurouni Kenshin. Why I am worried is, there should have been THREE packs. 18 DVDs in all. Damn, I have this mental picture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}