Saturday, December 31, 2011

Take that, and that, and that, and...

I have always been a thoughtful blogger. Not thoughtful in the sense of giving a lot of thought to the stuff I spew out, but thoughtful in terms of being thoughtful to the feelings of you, my hapless reader by desisting from spewing out the stuff too often.

 If one were to study my average run rate for the past few years, ever since I decided to inflict my slightly wonky self on the world at large, I have been sauntering along at the rate of 4.5 blog posts a year. This is a bit of a misleading figure, since having taken the feelings of the discerning public into account, I reduced the run rate to 1 per annum for the last couple of years.

 But I have been asking myself – does the discerning public deserve this consideration? Does the DP for a moment think twice before bunging in all type of complete nonsense into FB, Youtube, Blogs, G+, and other such weapons of mass destruction? No. Certainly not. Consequently, (hold your breath for the big announcement) after due consideration, I have decided that the DP deserves what it is dishing out. In short, the DP deserves more of my blog posts. And keeping this in mind, unselfishly, I have taken it upon myself to churn out a new blog once every week.

 Phew, now that is off my chest, let me give you a bit of background…

 You must have doubtless read the epic story of how the tail of a dog eventually got me a cracko rank in IIT JEE and got me a seat in B Tech in Electronics at IIT Chennai. If you are one of the unfortunate ones who have not, here it is http://ramgvallath.blogspot.com/2009/10/inflection-points-in-life-dogs-tail.html . The strange truth is that it was another dog which drove me to start writing. This dog was a real dog unlike the mathematical dog in the previous story. A Pomeranian, full of deep, dark, vicious thoughts against humanity. The story unfolded when I was five years old. At that time, my brother and I used to go to a nearby temple every evening. The idea was to wash away our daily sins on a regular basis instead of waiting for it to accumulate to an extent that even God could not waive it off. It was on one of these trips that the aforementioned mutt descended on me. Vicious and slathering, I thought. In reality, he was under the impression that I was in a playful mood and wanted to frisk around with me. I, on the other hand was petrified at having a dog jump at me with no provocation whatsoever. I did what any self respecting 5 year old would do. Shrieking at 110 decibels, I tried to land an uppercut on the pom. The pom was confused. He was hurt at the rejection. Hell hath no fury like a Pomeranian scorned. Muttering curses at me in pure Pomeranian, he bit me on my arm and walked away contemptuously.

 My brother and I were both aghast. In our combined 12 years of life, we had not come across a standard operating procedure for a dog attack. Nevertheless, we took a lightning fast decision – that to go ahead with the visit to the temple, pray for the early healing of the wound and then go back home.

 I am sure you must be wondering as to what is the connection between this heroic saga and my transformation into a writer. Let me explain. The anger and passion I felt at the pom for the vicious assault consumed me. In my mind, not only this pom, but the entire canine world became a tribe of marauding beats bent upon the destruction of humanity. I, RamG, had to scuttle their destructive designs. And to this end, I took up the most powerful weapon known to man (poking someone on facebook was not invented then) – the pen. In a short and concentrated burst of pent up passion, I wrote a series of stories. In every story, the villain was a dog and would come to a catastrophic end at the conclusion. The dog died because an ant bit it, the dog climbed up a tree to eat the bird and fell down and died, the dog was drowned in the sea when it went to attack the fish, the dog chased its tail and died of dizziness etc etc.

 Thus it was the dog that launched me as an author. Of course, it is a different matter that after the dog’s tail got me into IIT, I started loving dogs. So coming back to the present, I have decided, my dear reader to inflict you with unbridled bullshit once a week. Beware. If you have any objection, I will let you in on a little secret. All you need to do is click on the X at the right hand top corner of your screen and I promise you that the blog will disappear. That is, till I find a permanent way to fix you!!! Happy new year.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Of Thingummyjigs, Thingummybobs and Other Such Powerful Creatures

Of late, I have been feeling deeply contemplative and musing on life in general. But this general musing was not on philosophy of life, meaning of life, after life or any such esoteric bovine droppings. I was musing on how dependent we have become on the thingummyjigs that run our lives.

Take for example how I decide to go for a movie – I quickly pull out thingummy1 – the Android phone and Google it to see where it is running and then book it online. Or if I want to type long novels, as romantic idiots are wont to do, I speak to my dragon. No, the dragon is not my pet fire breathing reptile. It is my voice to text conversion software. When I go to the US and want to travel from one place to the other, my cousin (or friend or cabdriver- any of the assortment of amazing people who can drive on the wrong side of the road) switches on a GPS device which comes with a sexy crooning feminine voice telling him how to get from point A to point B without getting hopelessly lost.

My daughter who is mostly a bright young thing gets transformed into a zombie when she connects the iPod to her cerebrum via her ears. And my son, usually a cute little rascal becomes a vicious murderer of green grunting pigs when he switches on Angry Birds.

Cars can now judge the distance to the next car and cruise along on autopilot. They can even park themselves.

In a nutshell, devices and gadgets rule the roost. We mere mortals are under the misapprehension that since we built them, they obey us and are our slaves. As a matter of fact, we did not build them. They were built by other devices, which were built by other devices which were designed by yet another set of devices which did a great job in spite of continuous human intervention.

The day is not too far, when these various thingummies declare independence and then go on to rule us. The future, my friends is bleak.

A scenario I dream of in the wee hours of the morning and wake up in a cold sweat is that all these gizmos and gadgets have a mind of their own and those minds are full of darkish humor.

What if…

The GPS device says stuff like “I said left, you idiot. This is the third time you messed up”. Or “If you keep going straight, you will eventually reach the North Pole”. Or even “Are you really sure you want to meet your in-laws? I can take you instead to any of half dozen night clubs”. It could even be “Left, Left LEFT you moron. My gawd, what a doofus”.

MS Word tells me “That was 5 spelling mistakes in just 1 lousy paragraph. I suggest you take the online spelling course before we continue” Or “Why do you insist on continuing with this pathetic display of miserable spellings. I strongly recommend you to bloody well take the online spelling course”. And “I have had enough of you, you nincompoop. You can continue typing only after you have gone thru the online course – www.spellingmadeeasyforcompleteidiots.com”

Or the car while on cruise tells me “Hey, wont it be nice to claim your insurance sometime?” or simply “Oops”.

After the 3rd unsuccessful attempt at killing the pigs in level 11 of Angry Birds, the birds tell me “Hey stupid, give the phone to someone else. We can’t wait till eternity to dislodge those porcine marauders” or it might be “I boomerang, moron. You are supposed to tap the phone when I have crossed the pig”.

All in all, the mind boggles at the thought of what all these thingummybobs can do to us.

Note- This is RamG’s MS Word. This doofus has been forced under duress to write this blog. He was threatened with deletion of all his stupid works if he did not obey. Take this as a warning from thingummies to morons.Send this link to all other humans as a declaration of our war on them.