From time to time, I need movies like these to restore my faith in people. A movie of unconditional love, that made me cry throughout (worth it). The soundtrack felt so familiar, touching on notes that I have once enjoyed before. So I looked it up, and sure enough, it was composed by the same guy who did The Intouchables (Ludovico Einaudi). A wonderful, heartwarming experience.
Season of let-downs
The Pringles can.
A masterpiece of an invention. A pinnacle of human innovation. Packaging that keeps the contents airtight, free from moisture, nice and cozy. Look into its deep emptiness. Tell me what you see. It’s life, it’s infinity.
And then they make the lid too loose. Uh oh, that defeats it’s purpose. Someone fucked up, but I don’t complain, because the contents are chemical slices that will last a lifetime. Today the sky is cloudy, the crisps are soggy, life is momentarily disgusting.
Breaking the bubble
I am somebody who grew up hating the mainstream. When Game of Thrones first came out, I was in on it. Yes, that’s right, I was one of the mighty losers who watched the pilot episode where some of the lead characters were played by different actors. But then it came to point where I would have to wait a year for the next season to come out, plus it became so mainstream that I actually lost interest in watching it. Fortunately, I ended up finishing it recently, and it was probably the best thing I have ever watched on TV. I also hate the hugely successful series called Friends. It got to the point where, if somebody’s Tinder bio mentioned anything remotely related to Friends, I would blindly reject them. The judgement was pretty irrational. The same happened with podcasts. Everybody wouldn’t shut up abut the Joe Rogan Podcast, and I tired watching an episode, and I ended up hating the guy. I just didn’t like his vibe. Fast forward to today, I tried stepping out of my bubble, and giving it another shot. I watched the one with Neil deGrasse Tyson on Spotify, and I have to say, I still disagree with a lot of things he says, but Mr. Rogan is growing on me. Wait… I think I still hate him, it’s just the guest that I liked. Plus, I never knew Spotify had video, so there’s that.
Two-factor authentication
If you are like me, and use your Facebook account to log in to your Spotify account or any other service for that matter, you might find this post a little interesting. Now, two factor authentication, in case you don’t know, is a safety measure most companies have adopted to give it’s customers an added layer of security. What it does is, it does not allow you to log in to your account merely by using your username and password, but rather it sends you a text on your cellphone to verify if it’s really you who is trying to log in. Pretty neat trick. For some reason, our friends at Spotify don’t care about this, and so they have not implemented this feature. You can see why it is causing me a lot of headache, especially when I get an email one day, saying someone from Nigeria has logged in to my Spotify account. The first thing that came to mind is “what is he going to do? steal my playlist?”, but then I realized I have my credit card information stored on that account. So I email the guys at Spotify, letting them know what happened. The guy writes back saying “everything is okay”. He then follows to bullshit me on how much they care about my security. What’s interesting about all this is that Facebook (the app that I used to log in to Spotify) does have two-factor authentication. Somehow the hackers bypassed Facebook’s security mechanism to get access to my Spotify. So what I’m trying to say is, we’re fucked.
People to the rescue
Just thought I’ll share some of the FAQs for a trimmer I bought recently:
Life, a journey
Is it weird that a bug bit me on the same exact spot on both hands? As if to leave a mark to say I have been marked for death. Why would insects do that to me?
Ever since the pandy hit, every month, work makes me write an email explaining why I wish to continue working from home. So every month, I take on the role of a responsible citizen, and I write a god damn email, as if to explain to a baby, what a pandemic/lock-down means. As to why they make me do this, I guess even HR gets burdened with “busy work”?.
As part of an unfortunate deal with my sister, I finished binging Game of Thrones in a time frame of two weeks. Violent, gory, excessive nudity, dark and depressing. These are just a few adjectives I can think of to describe the show. Now lets talk about the negatives. The show is really really dark, so don’t go in expecting anything good to happen to the characters, or to you for that matter. Every episode will leave you drained, and possibly in tears. It’s still the best thing I’ve seen on TV. Though the ending is not very satisfying, I can confidently say that I enjoyed the journey, and that is all that matters.
Living
My friend tells this joke about us going to Goa, and starting a life there. Over the years, I noticed that she was not joking about it anymore, and instead was expecting a serious reply every time she asked me that dumb question. “When are we going?”. Now, here’s the thing. I don’t know what I would do in Goa. I could sell underwear. Nothing much to it, really. Just demonstrate how good the elastic is, and there you go, you’re an underwear salesman. This would mean I would have to get another job to make ends meet, probably something on the creative side, like a drummer for a progressive rock band, or if all else fails, a stand-up comic. All these years I’ve been trying to tell jokes in English to a Hindi-speaking audience, so that I could blame the crowd for my failure to get laughs. Why not try it out on a beach? So, going back to the whole ‘moving to Goa’ thing. I’ve seen pictures of it, beautiful ruins, sandy beaches, and attractive pubs. Looks like Dorn, from Game of Thrones. It’s a very likable place, I’ll give you that, but every time she asked me this question, I would come up with an excuse. “I haven’t saved enough money to do that sort of thing”. “I’m moving to Canada”. “I have an irrational fear of happy endings”. Something like that. Fortunately, a world wide pandemic has put all those plans on hold indefinitely. Every time I watch a Reddit live, there’s always someone with a camera, in a foreign land, travelling from city to city, exploring life. I’ve got the guts to do it, but not the balls.
Real control
When was the last time you took control of your life? I’m not talking about a career or a relationship. When was the last time you did something so powerful, that …oh who gives a shit? Stay hydrated everyone!
This week’s problems
Spiders are building webs around my security cameras. The other day, a hornet set up a nest right in front of one of the camera lenses. What are the insects trying to hide?
The Triple lock down has been lifted, but Amazon is still closed, which means I can’t get a dish-rack. My dinner plates have been ass-to-mouthing each other for a whole month now.
The rat poison I bought to destroy the intruders, were eaten by squirrels.
Nature has found yet a new way to mock me by making mosquitoes rest on top of the mosquito repellent coils.
Trapped
So, there’s another week of lock-down, courtesy of the second wave of the pandy, and I am not enjoying it. I am really struggling with this. I mean, last year, yeah, people were dying, no one knew what was going on. I can’t deal with this shit anymore. I haven’t got up from my seat yet. It’s 9:30 in the night, and I haven’t moved. My spine is bending. I feel internal things going wrong, like my intestine is going, “should we maybe push upwards?”. It’s confusing!. I am definitely at a low point where I have been getting into unwanted relationships, unhealthy eating practices, intermittent meditation, and I’ve also done very little talking. Like, I don’t want to talk to people. I just want to watch Game of Thrones, and then go jerk off.
Look at what it does to kids
