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Of Mice and Men!

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:20:45 GMT

"The moon is definitely made of cheese....some spectacular well-aged sharp cheddar" he said quite grandly. "And those rich mice that live on the moon....they want to have us believe the moon isn't made of cheese so that we common mice who have never been to the moon don't ask for our share.' His whiskers trembled with righteous indignation as he addressed the crowd of mice assembled in the kitchen from his perch on the box of Frosties cereal. "If you pick me to lead us, not only shall I head to the moon, but I will kick out all the fat mice with arteries clogged from cheese...Together, we can bring change"

"And now my fellow meeses, join me in drinking from this bottle of 'hope' water as an act of solidarity" he announced, taking a big gulp and spilling it all over himself in the process. "Fortunately, we've been getting a lot of traction" he said as he wiped off the watery wetness from behind his curiously big ears with a handkerchief. "From the mice that live near the pot of mac 'n cheese, to our fellowmice on Juicy Peak, and right back to the footsteps of this cerealbox, the hope of unlimited cheese...the drums of hope if you will, resound!!!"

The crowd burst into thunderous applause. "Gosh...can you imagine what we're even going to do with all that cheese once it starts coming in from the moon" gushed Anony mouse to his neighbor. "I would love to pick him to lead our pack. But the missus has promised it's going to be liver for dinner every night for a month if i don't vote for that girl-mouse Felicia Domesticus"

'Meh, I dunno...I quite like that girl mouse myself' replied Dichoto Mouse. "She's so exotic looking too...with the thick soft fur, her sharp manicured fingernails and green eyes. Besides, she can even speak fluently in Cat-alan. That will come in really handy when she needs to negotiate with the enemy. Did you hear about her plan to send one mouse a day to the moon for an all-you-can-eat cheese buffet in her new 4MAN Grille 5000 rocket? I can hardly wait for my turn!"

"Yeah...she definitely does have a lot going for her." agreed Anony. My daughter went for one of her rallies and now keeps practicing that dance move that Felicia taught them...the one where she points at individual mice in the crowd and then smacks her lips...you've seen it on TV, right?"

"Absolutely!! I always get hot and bothered every time they play that clip! Rowrrr!!"

"I just hope she doesn't become leader of the pack and then steal our cheese like all our previous leaders" Anony said gloomily. "They all swear to share, but end up keeping not just the cheese, but the milk, cream, butter and every other form of dairy for themselves."

"Naaaah...we have nothing to be worried about" declared Dichoto. "The Domesticuses have always been generous with dairy. Don't you remember when Felicia's husband gave away his personal stash of cream to all the girl-mouse folk in his building when he was leader?"

Of Clock Skews and a Graduate Level Nap

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 19:11:41 GMT

My graduate level computer architecture class, the one defining class of my major, is held in a corner classroom of the Everitt Laboratory. The order in which students fill up the rows of seats is reminiscent of army formations in days of yore. The front-line of the army is armed with note-pads, calculators, pencils and self-raising right arms in case of a question. The ranks behind this have more sophisticated intelligence garnering devices such as laptops and PDAs which can efficiently switch from minesweeper and solitaire to chat messengers, online sportscasts, and in case of EXTREME danger, the lecture notes. The last few rows make up the army's dispensary. Some soldiers in these rows stare with sad hollow eyes at the screen. Poor victims of powerpoint poisoning. Their faces are tinged blue from the reflection of a thousand powerpoint slides. Others clutch their heads in death grips trying to protect their hung-over minds from exploding from all the noise being generated at the head of the army and by the professor's chalk on the board. They think of a happier time, being back at the bar-deen quad library, getting drunk on knowledge, while pretty sorority sisters flash their ids to check out books, and pot-bellied engineers smoke away the dubious distinction of being bad at business by cramming for Accounting 302.

It is in this melting pot of activity that I find myself at 1pm, twice a week waging a bloody, ghastly war against the need for an afternoon nap. Now normally, I wouldn't be such a wet blanket about giving in to the need for a nap, but the problem is starting to threaten my career. This classroom is a death-trap for anyone who has not taken five cups of coffee, with several shots of espresso each, within the last hour, intravenously. I am located exactly at the line dividing the dispensary and the intelligence accumulation squadron. I have lost these battles against the nap quite regularly over the past several weeks. Last Thursday, I fell asleep before the professor walked in. Today will be different. I slept for 12 hours last night. From recommendations of friends, I have made my seating conditions as non-conducive to sleeping as possible. I have installed several useless expired credit cards and coupons in my wallet located in my back pocket so that my right rectal cheek is highly elevated and in extreme pain. I chew on some ridiculously weird flavored gum and brace myself as the professor starts discussing timing issues in logic circuits. I look for ancillary entertainment sources to keep awake.

I notice an IITian with a very perturbed look on his face as if he has taken extreme offense to what the professor has just said. It is immediately obvious that he's concentrating. I decide to mimic him. I need to look mighty peeved. I try to remember something annoying that happened today to me to make my expression authentic. But I draw a blank...the day so far has been just peachy. I furrow my eyebrows into a uni-brow and flare my nostrils. I scowl like I just smelled something bad. Overall, anyone watching me would be convinced that I am very annoyed with Fishburn's 1992 IEEE publication about Clock skew optimization for current reduction. The IITian drops his fierce expression after some time and smiles in agreement. He's at peace with the world again. I relax my masterpiece expression too. I relax my tense, angry muscles... no sense in bearing animosity in your heart for too long. It can kill you.

The professor's melodic voice rises and falls....in perfect harmony with the trees outside, the dying air-conditioner and my deepening breaths. They resonate together to form the drum beats of Warrior Nap's victory dance. My eyelids crash into each other and hold on to each other for dear life. I sink lower into the plush seat. I assume the fetal napping position and succumb to the greater warrior. At some point, I wake up, look at my watch and realize there are only fifteen minutes of lecture left. I cuss quietly at how soon my nap will end and curl back to sleep. As I doze off again, I realize I have swallowed my gum.

Captivated by Sci-fi?

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 23:46:21 GMT

It was now 30 days since justice.google.com had sentenced him to six months in prison.Busted for sending large quantities of junk mail to over 300 gmail addresses about enlargement, reduction and removal pills. To the three hundred old ladies at the garden party who signed up for his mailing list, NO IT WASN'T FREE LUNCHEON MEAT THEY HAD AGREED FOR WHEN HE SAID SPAM.

Google prison was bad…worse in several ways than the brick and mortar prisonsstill used in the third world. He had stayed on the straight and narrowfor the last 10 years. His last offense on record was when his wife wasstill pregnant with nickie4313@gmail.com.G-prison meant that he had no access to any correspondence as his email account had been suspended. With no contact with the outside world, the walls seemed to close in on him. He felt caged and helpless.The Laundromat (a sister concern of google.com) where he used to work had removed him from the payroll after his paypal (a sister concern of Google.com) account stopped accepting payments, a definite sign that one had fallen foul of the law. The lack of a gmail login denied him basic amenities such as email accessibility, RSS feeds and Google News. No access to classified ads meant there would be no way of getting hired and the paypal account suspension meant no employer could pay him even if they did hire him.He lay miserably in bed, the misery heightened by the ambient noise inthe room: The wife, snored loudly. Poor victim ofsubliminal advertising. Even her snores sounded like GOOOOOOOooooooo-GLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLE.She would need all the rest she could get before she headed out into the Amazon.com jungle (a sister concern of Google.com) for her day's shopping. Outside, oversized cars sped by on elevated magnetic field strips. Since magnetic cars are silent and hence don't make the requisite amounts of noise, American car manufacturers had taken to covering the whole SUV with high-intensity LEDs to guzzle electricity and bother pedestrians. From across the hall, sounds of robots attending Mrs. Singh's vocal training classes to smooth out their mechanical voices wafted into the room.

Hopefully, tomorrow would be better...tomorrow, he would be eligiblefor his monthly conjugal website visit, albeit only to dirt sites approved by Google. As the Google ads said, it *was* better than the real thing.

He crawled out from under the covers and got dressed and grabbed his laptop to go sit out on the streets. Begging passersby on the street to click on the google-ads on his blog was the only legitimate way for him to buy food for dinner. Still, he thought…it could be worse. In countries where the sharia law is practised, it is said that they cut off a big piece of your bandwidth in public….and abandon you to live alife of pain and buffering….

Ode to a Dead Walmart Bicycle

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 05:58:42 GMT

Prologue:

For the first two years of my college life, I was so thrilled by the concept of a three month return policy on Walmart’s 40 dollar bicycles. Every third month, I would make a sacred pilgrimage to Walmart and return my bicycle and get a new one in exchange. The Walmart customer assistance never asked any questions and every bike I bought dutifully died within its three month returnability period. I even stopped getting attached to my bicycles because I knew that each bicycle was nothing more than a fling…in three months, I would have my legs wrapped around yet another Mt Fury Roadmaster. And then, one fateful sophomore year day, a Walmart bike forced its way into my life. I had washed the jeans in which the Walmart receipt for that bike lay, rendering it un-returnable. I screamed in horror as I peeled the wet remains of the receipt from my jeans pocket…it disintegrated in my hand leaving an ink smudge on my fingers that read…well, nothing. It was just an illegible splotch of ink. Never again would I know the joys of mounting a new bike I had picked up on a Friday night and riding her multiple times all weekend. The Casanova had settled down. I had ‘knocked up’ my bike.

The Day She Died:

It was one of those freak Chambana days on which the sun shines through your window and the birds chirrup at ur sill. You’re overcome by a sense of being one with nature until you open the window and get hit by a blast of icy cold wind, causing you to subsequently slam the window shut while mouthing ghastly expletives. I wheeled out my old jalopy and biked off in the general direction of campus. I was pedaling furiously because I needed to drop my homework off in class before the professor walked in so that I wouldn’t feel guilty about walking out in front of his nose. Two blocks from my class, I heard a snap. The bike stand had come loose. Ignoring it, I continued to pedal. The next couple of seconds all happened in slow motion…arguably because I can’t cycle very fast. The bike stand got caught in the back tire causing it to lock up. I flew off the bike, did a neat pirouette and landed squarely on top of the back wheel completely mangling it in the process. Nearby, a Chinese kid grimaced, a squirrel looked startled and an Indian kid grinned ear to ear.

I disentangled myself from the back wheel and started dragging the bike towards class. I couldn’t roll it because the back wheel was in no condition to rotate. Another block of dragging the bike and BLAM! Friction had eroded the back tire because I was dragging it and it exploded. Even more miserable, I trudged along reconciled to having to sit through the lecture. Just as I was pulling into the parking stand, my professor walks past me, looks at the bike and says quite sympathetically ‘Flat huh?’ I grin weakly at him and continue to drag the bike wishing I had had the quick-wittedness to say ‘NO 36DD, whadaya think????’

Open Heart Surgery:

I promptly called DEO, my roommate from the summer on my cell-phone to see if she could be rescued. If anyone could fix her, it was DEO, the man who’s been to bike school. It would be tough to convince him to operate on a 40 dollar Walmart bike considering the fact that his clientele was comprised almost exclusively of Canondales, Bianchis and Huffies. The best doctors only work on clients with great insurance.

Surprisingly, he offered to take a look. At 4.01pm, I wheeled her to the operating theatre. Dr DEO looked at her and immediately declared that she would need to have a back wheel transplant. A few more frantic calls and we had located a suitable donor. My friend AK had a similar bike with a bad front wheel but a salvageable wheel. The donor bike was locked to a speed limit sign on the busiest intersection of campustown. The doctor crouched down near the backwheel and pulled up the collar of his jacket lest he be recognized. As the doctor worked, I and AK reassured passersby that it wasn’t as shady as it looked…hard to convince them since we were a motley crew of two Indians and a Mexican hunched over a cheap bike trying to jimmy out the back tire. After a couple of passersby, I started asking them whether they wanted to buy a bike for real cheap. That got some shocked looks. A couple more people, and AK started asking people wearing nice coats whether they HAD a bike, and proceeded to follow them.

The frustration was beginning to show on Dr DEO’s countenance. Finally, in a fit of exasperation with a tough bolt, he asked me ‘Did u ever grease this thing?’ ‘Oh yes’, I reassure him… ‘I douse it with cooking oil every week.’ DEO almost chokes in outrage. ‘COOKING OIL?????’ ‘Olive oil, actually’ I offer helpfully. The doctor has had enough. He gets up, throws the wrench to the floor, dusts of his jacket and says ‘I m sure you can buy another 40 dollar walmart bike and start your cycle of cosmic return karma again’ and walks off into the sunset.

Epilogue:

I knew I shouldn’t have told him about the olive oil. Heartbroken, I dragged my poor unloved 40 dollar bike back home and, as a last sign of good will to all bikers, I parked her in an unsecured bike stand with no lock so that some person who wanted to use her for parts could do so without having to struggle or look shady while procuring the parts. She was gone the next morning. Taken to that big bike stand in heaven where all good bicycles go….a place where even an old disfigured walmart bike can find love

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Bombay from the Eyes of a Bloody Firang Guy

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 13:50:06 GMT

After 21 years of being an Indian, I finally made the sacred pilgrimage to Bombay the city that defines every existing stratum of society, defies every law of equilibrium population density and deifies every square inch of land available. And it was into this city that I announced myself in my New Balance shoes and electric orange U of I teeshirt assuming it would be useful to stand out in the crowd in case I got run over by a train catching mob and got separated from the family....scary things like this are known to happen in Bombay, and a bloody firang guy (BFG) must always be prepared.

My education of BOM101 began at the airport. Going to pick up our luggage at baggage claim immediately taught me two things. First of all, an orange teeshirt and sneakers with reflectors on them is exactly what you wear when you want to blend in, or are the last deer at a buffet for lions and are trying to go around incognito so long as you re in Bombay. Secondly, thinking up rambling analogies about teeshirts and reflective shoes means the whole airplane has beaten you to taking pole position around the baggage carrousel and you won't have a hope in hell of joining the 200 odd flourescent shirt wearing people who are milling around the carrousel gaping up its birthing canal waiting for their luggage to arrive. If you can't join em, appear disdainful of the petty crowding mentality. So, I reach into my pocket and fish out a piece of gum and proceed to chew on gum that definitely tastes like it had been in my jeans on laundry day. I watch sympathetically as a chunky father of three leaps over three luggage carts and flings himself at his newborn luggage on the carrousel lest it drift back into the orifice where unwanted luggage goes to die. He gently dusts off the suitcase and introduces it to his family. The kids grin broadly and have the 'U did it dad!!' look on their face and the mom has the 'I think we ll call her Delsey' look on hers. After several more luggage births, we finally pick off our stuff and head out the airport doors. My BFG danger sensors are on full alert. I look suspiciously at the sliding doors as they make way for me a little too willingly. I almost expect to be pitched a credit card offer from anything that smooth. I clench my butt to draw my wallet in closer in my backpocket to make sure I haven't been pickpocketed yet.

My brother's wife (she's new) has brought a shiny black Scorpio (Indian 4WD) for our BFG travelling convenience. I settle into the front seat of the Scorpio and almost lose my breath when I see the driver. He's a tall dark handsome male adonis with copper bangs, tight levis and leather boots. He casually flings our overweight baggage into the trunk in a single fluid motion and I realize its rude to stare. He jumps into the seat next to me and guns up the Scorpio. I suck my gut in lest I block his peripheral vision. Stupid hunky Scorpio drivers.

We begin the drive home and I get my first glimpses of Bombay. Its amazing how while driving around at 60 odd kmph, u can see abject poverty and fabulous luxury, stunningly hot girls and incredibly scary eunuchs, garish pink and green hotels and pretty marble houses in alternating bands every few seconds. Cruising around the city at an altitude of 3 feet afforded by the Scorpio, Bombay seems hardly polluted. The tinted windows seem to make the hovels and the street-crapping urchins seem almost endearing. I guess most of the pollution in this city is under the three feet mark. Above three feet, everything is chic. The skyline is breathtaking and the beaches seem oblivious to the pace the rest of the city is keeping.

Midway through the ride, I decide to remind everyone about my BFGness and announce that I m thirsty. Adonis promptly pulls into the right lane and slows down in front of a fresh juice stand, the best in the city, he promises. Adonis rolls down my window for me to place the order and I realize only too late, that my hindi will have to be on show. To make things more challenging, my family decides to order every possible permutation of the words mango, orange, lemon, ice, no ice, sugar, no sugar, chaat and no chaat. The guy taking our order seems mighty irritated at the lack of efficiency in my ordering process as I labor over the right word for each thing. He shifts from one foot to another as though his bladder is ready to explode and his bladderly health depends on my coughing up the order really really fast. Words of encouragement for my hindi come from the back of the car....'sugar is sakkar' and ....'chaat is chaat itself, like msn.' Surprisingly, the order guy gets every last request right and serves up some spectacular juice. After we re quenched, I wave a 100 rupee note at the order-guy with a benevolent 'keep-the-change' wave of my hand. Now the order-guy seems mad enough to strangle me. I slowly realize that I need to slap another nine of those hundred rupee notes to placate him after all the juice we downed. This is my third BOM101 lesson of the day. Bombay is expensive as hell and illusions of powerful foreign exchange rates just won't fly. The rupee may be weak, but in bombay, everyone has a lot of it.

We finally pull up in front of the apartment that has been rented for us. It is extremely fancy with fresh paint, flower-potted driveway and a perky security guard. As he helps us unload the Scorpio, Perky the security guard advises us to stock up on water as soon as we get in because they will stop pumping water in a half hour. I look around in horror, wondering whether anyone else is as perturbed about having to take a mug and bucket bath as opposed to a high-speed jet sprayed shower. My dad looks very nonchalant about the news...but I feel he's just trying to look non foreign-bratty. We get into the very comfortably furnished apartment and I pass out on the king sized bed. Somewhere nearby, construction workers are pounding away at a wall with gusto. I wonder what they could be building by beating on it so much. I hear my dad running from bathroom to bathroom hoarding water. He is in his 'Back in 'Nam' survival element. My minds a blur with all the information and color. My heart rate gradually settles into resonance frequency with the construction workers' thumps. I close my mouth as I drift off to sleep just in case my dad runs out of places to store water....

PMSing Myself to Death

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 09:36:59 GMT

After about 3 years at the U of I, I can now claim to display a fairly accurate gauge of which week the semester is in. Allow me to introduce you to my PMS Ratings (Pizza Munchers Stress)

Week 1-3: PMS Rating: 0/10

a) 'Mom' had to be taken off the speed dial because she got replaced by the new Antonio's Pizza.

b) I have subscribed to mass-mails of 'this week's events' for several departments so that I can hit a 'Ctrl+F' and do a keyword search for "free pizza' on them.

c) I get calls at 3 in the morning from friends who want an informed opinion on comparison shopping for deals between Dominos, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut and other smaller enterprises.

d) I walk out of my apartment and use phrases like "Somewhere out there is a pizza with my name on it"

Week 3-6: PMS Rating: 4/10

a) The variety in my diet is maintained solely by a morning bowl of cereal which makes me feel intensely virtuous.

b) I am now working on a mathematical equation of (quality of pizza*number of available slices)/(time wasted listening to boring seminar) to discern between optimal dinner options for the day

c) I m spreading word on the street about non-existent pizza parties to gullible and hungry ECE majors at Everitt.

Week 6-10: PMS Rating:7/10

a) The cereal bowl has been lying dirty in the sink for a week and I officially have no variety now.

b) I am convincing myself that if I have one veggie topping on the pizza, I will have satisfied the servings requirements from all the major food groups.

c) I go to bed each night saying...another day, another pizza.

Week 10-14: PMS Rating: 11.2/10

a) I dont feel guilty about lack of variety in my diet. There is nothing organic in my apartment except my roommate. I read somewhere that whales digest plankton in the water they inhale. I make a deliberate effort to take in deep wholesome breaths.

b) I have recurring nightmares that I have been in a bad fight, and I'm bleeding mozarella from all the wounds.

c) I get jittery and talkative when I hear the deliveryman is on the way.

c) I cry gently to myself before I work on a slice, and pray : "Oh greasy mother, once again, I suckle at thy pepperoni flavored teet'

But shed no tears for me, for soon, this semester too shall be done. I will detox for a month, stock up my fridge with fruits and veggies, find and clean my cereal bowl and subscribe to seminar invitations again.

Keep the Change

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 14:08:54 GMT

Its the fundamental fear of change.... its an all pervading chilly air that is all around us...that we breathe in gratefully in greedy gulps in the desperate attempt to convince ourselves that everything is under control. There is a control freak built into every one of us. With change comes uncertainty, and with uncertainty comes the real fear of having to relinquish control over what is happening around us. And to avoid having to deal with change or a possible loss of control, we try to close our eyes and hope that the unpleasantness will go away on its own...bury our heads in the sand to keep it dark. God forbid we get into a confrontation. It might snap that delicate thread that we call 'the usual'...and then what will we have left to hold on to? What will support our weight then?

Marriages of 40 years...where the husband is a drunk wife beater....or the wife is an indifferent social whore, college kids who are in a stereotypical major because its a path more trodden, and because pursuing their frivolous dreams meant not having a definite plan...

I don't feel well, but I won't go to the doctor. What if he tells me something I don't want to hear? Maybe I can outwait the malady.

What about the people who are stuck in dead-end jobs...living out their lives from Monday to Friday dreading the 8 hours to come when they wake up in the morning.

How about religiously buying the same brand of cereal week after week after week just because thats what you've had for as long as you can remember.

The wretched curse that terrifies us to have to deal with change at some level. Pupils dilating...noses twitching...hands clenching...GIVE ME ROUTINE OR GIVE ME DEATH.

Bah. Here's looking at four more years.

Yeah, Would you stay on the line a second?

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 15:38:23 GMT

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was the meanest leanest telemarketer demolition expert in all the west. Telemarketers trembled at the very mention of my phone number.

All I needed to do was whisper my telephone number out in public, and I could immediately find one or two pained winces of recognition. Heheh. Telemarketers.

I have asked them to hold on while I ask Ajith Alexander (non existent) to come out of the shower(non existent) and offer his opinion on whether his quality of life would be improved by the possession of a phone card that can call India at 12 cents a minute.

I have pretended to be a mormon and tried to make a deal with them so that they'll convert to mormonity in exchange for my annual subscription to Maxim as a good will gesture.

I have even once put on my most seductive voice with John Smith from HP Toners and asked him what he was wearing.

But all that changed. Two weeks ago to be precise. My roommate caught me in the act of telling a telemarketer to stay on the line while I fetched Ajith from the loo. Now, normally, I m not susceptible to sermons. They just roll off me like water off a duck's back. But this time, what he said actually hit straight home. These telemarketers are for the most part students like me just trying to make a few honest bucks to go out on the weekend or probably...they need it for even more pressing needs. I work part time myself and am extremely proud of the money I make. Its a big colossal joke to brag about your exploits with telemarketers and get a coupla cheap laughs. But those guys don't need to take that kind of shit. If you don't want what they're selling,just tell them that and don't waste their time. You probably wouldn't be laughing so hard if you had to put up with stuff like this at your workplace.

Sigh...And so...my telemarketer exploit days are over. Now, when they call, I immediately tell them I don’t want to apply for a pre-approved Mastercard. If they ask me whether I know anyone who could potentially benefit from this deal, I immediately give the phone numbers of all my friends I can remember. If they call for my roommate and he's not in, I ask them to leave me their number and then claw his ass till he calls them back. All in all, I m a changed person and I feel better for it.

Toystory 3

Fri, 14 May 2004 15:45:34 GMT

Cyndia was ten. She was in her room playing a very elaborate game of kitchen-kitchen on the floor of her playpen with her toys. Her latest toy that her uncle in Italy had sent her...a thin rag doll with black hair tied back in a severe bun had been placed in charge of the kitchen. She had just put her old favorite toy, Mr Atler Bee. the poetic wooden doll with rotating knees into her hospital with a serious stomach upset. His constitution didnt agree with Italian food at such an old age.

The clock struck 6 and Cyndia's mom yelled out from the kitchen that dinner was ready. Cyndia quickly picked up her toys and dumped them back into her two large toy boxes...the red Congruent Toymakers box and the blue 'Big Jumpin Playthings' box that Atler Bee came in. 'Talk to you guys later!!" she whispered as she walked out of her room. "Try to make friends with Sonya, the new Italian girl.

As the door closed, Atler let out a long meaningful sigh. He couldn't stand the new girl who'd been placed at the top of the pile in the Congruent Toymaker box. Everyone knew the best toy always went into the box last and so was always on the top of the pile. It irritated him that this prissy upstart who made ghastly pasta was Cyndia's latest favorite.

Ur fettuccini's from hell
And I dont feel too well
You re an awful calamity
You bitch from Italy..

he penned down in his book of poetry.So what if he was a bit old and his rotating knee kept falling off? He could still write some of the best verse in town. 'Cyndia is not particularly bright...thats why she doesnt appreciate my finer poetic skills.' he declared to the rest of the toys in the box. Chandler Bobbydoo peered over his laptop and grunted his approval. "She sure does think a lot about herself. I think I m going to write a shell-script to do a recursive kill on her one of these days."

'She has got to go' added Adoni, Atler's highschool buddy. We are Cyndia's favorites. We can't lose our power to that foreign trash. We shud start a smear campaign against her. We can have banners and commercials on TV saying "Cyndia's Shining cuz of us.' 'Thats kinda weak' said Atler...'but it just might work...you see...Cyndia isnt the smartest cookie in the jar.'

Meanwhile, in the Congruent box, Sonya had changed into something a little more Italian...gosh she hated following the dressing norms in this new place...and gone down to tea with Lulu and his wife Rubbery who she d met at work. After tea and scones, Lulu excused himself to go play with his cows. Rubbery was alone with Sonya. "Things arent like they seem, Sonya. They re plotting some real harm to u over in the other box" she said.

"Me?? But I thought they liked me...I cuda sworn Atler was coming onto me when I was serving him fettucini toda.." her words were interrupted by a thunderous crash as a stone with a paper tied to it broke the window and landed on the living room floor. In the front yard, Lulu was tending to a cow which had just got hit by an errant stone. Rubbery quickly took the rubber-band off the stone and unfolded the paper.

"Cyndia isnt big enuf for the both of us. The toys at the Big Jumpin Playthings box would like to challenge Sonya and her cronies in the Congruent box to a duel at 20 paces...at 7:30pm tonight. Bring all your army. The box of the toy Cyndia picks first when she comes back from dinner wins the right to rule over all toys." read the message.

Ah those scum...said Rubbery. Must be that vile pervert Adoni's plan. He knows that there are more toys in their box than ours. They can outnumber us on the battlefield so that Cyndia picks one of them." Rubbery said gloomily.

"Unless..." she said with a sudden gleam in her eye.

"psst psssht pssssssssst" she whispered in Sonya's ear. "Time is at a premium...do as I said and make sure everyone in their box gets some." Sonya scampered home to carry out her instructions.

The wall clock chimed 7:30 and both boxes stirred. All the toys from the Congruent box filed out and positioned themselves in strategic positions all over the floor. Atler Bee walked out his door and onto the field fashionably late by a minute...his men must already have assumed their positions. He could hear Cyndia's footsteps as she walked towards the room. But horrors of horrors...not a single one of his men was on the field. WHAT WAS GOING ON? WHERE WAS EVERYONE? The doorknob sqeaked. Atler's heart was beating so hard he thought his knee would fall off again. Adoni came running out of the box..."Sir ..sir...MASS TREACHERY....our men are all in the hospital with serious food poisoning and cant fight. They apparently got a late night shipment of fettuccini and fell sick after eating it."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO screamt Atler. THE BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCHHHHH.

Cyndia walked into the room, looked at all the toys scattered on the floor and picked up Sonya. 'Ur becoming quite famous with your new friends eh....guess thats the new girl syndrome.' Sonya looked over Cyndia's shoulder at Rubbery lying on the floor and winked. Looks like her Fettucini plot had worked.

I’m a frikkin villager at heart

Sat, 10 Apr 2004 13:24:11 GMT

Yesterday was really fun. We went to this little uppity restaurant in Champaign called The Olive Garden where they have fancy mood lighting, waitresses who re hot in the classy and super confident and charming and not slutty kinda way. We got a particularly purty waitress called Kathy for our table and right away, my heart was smitten.

So she comes up to our table and says…”Hi I’m Kathy…and I ll be ur ‘server’ for tonite.” Computer geek me….I promptly went purple in the face with imploding snickers at the phrase ‘Ill be ur server’….but yikes…that wasn’t a classy thing to do. I quickly rearranged my face and became sober again. Now I just HAD to prove my class to Kathy…which would make her fall for me over the five other guys at the table of six. I looked at her pretty face…professional notepad for taking orders….her bowtie…. AHA!! I had to have a bowtie. As luck would have it, I was wearing a sweatshirt. So while she went around the table getting orders for the drinks…I furiously fashioned a bowtie with the drawstrings of my sweatshirt’s hood.

And then, she looked at me and said…”And you sir? What would you like to drink?” WOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO she called me Sir…hmm...I think she liked me. I disdainfully looked at the wine list wishing I d read it instead of fashioning my bowtie. The drink HAD to be classy….and all I could think of was a soda. How do u make a soda classy?

I looked her in the eye…ostentatiously fingered my bow tie and said …”I think I ll have the Soda tonite.’ She flashed me her special classy-charming-confident-non-slutty grin and my heart skipped a beat. Maybe I should have referred to my drink as 'So ala da'. She left the table to get our drinks…and suddenly, I was calm again. No performance anxiety.

Instead, my attention shifted to the basket of complimentary bread sticks on the table. Seven breadsticks…six people. The task at hand was well defined. I’d have to extricate the seventh breadstick without appearing hungry and villagerly. But now, I was not performance anxious…Kathy was gone and I was thinking clearly again.

I started reciting a ‘priest rabbi and engineering student go to a bar’ joke and coolly used three breadsticks as props to represent the three people in my joke. When the joke was done, I casually dropped the rabbi, the priest and the engineering student into my plate. MUAHAHAHAHAH….not only had I got the seventh breadstick….I had EVEN stiffed the last guy at the table of his breadstick. The bread basket went around…and the guy who didn’t get one looked around embarrassedly as his stomach rumbled.

I ordered a ‘chicken marsela’ when Kathy came around again because I felt there was this certain’je ne sais quoi’ about the word marsela. I was hoping Kathy would think I knew what marsela meant because I smiled knowingly as I enunciated the word murSELLaaah.

But horrors of horrors. From there on in, some other dude started serving us. Kathy had been rudely removed from my life. Stupid dumbass male waiter. I ll bet he had his finger in my marsela. Ugh….made me sick. I felt like Devdas.

I ate my chicken marsela in stony silence occasionally making ‘mmm….tasty’ noises at the guy who was treating. But even as I smiled to the outside world….my heart was bleeding. My chicken marsella was no longer ‘fine slices of tender chicken served with a tangy Italian sauce with fresh tossed peppers and garden mushrooms’ as Kathy had described it to me. It was just ‘some chicken and vegetables I couldn’t care for.’

I was downing my sorrow by getting drunk on several glasses of my So-ala-da. Sigh…it was the last thing I had that Kathy had given to me. As we walked out of the restaurant, I looked hither and thither for signs of her…but she was gone.

‘The greatest thing in life is to love and be loved in return.’

I had nothing to look forward to now. We stood outside waiting for the bus on the interstate. I tried to hide my emotions by taking pictures of cars speeding down the interstate with my camera. Poor bastards probably got their respective bejeezuses freaked outta them when they saw a flashing camera behind their car.

But bah!...I d have to sleep this one off… and make a solemn vow to myself never to get emotionally attached to ‘pretty servers.’