Musings of a Retard

The Canaries are Dead

2005-05-18T14:28:00.000-07:00

Rewind -- Jan 1990 -- Norwich, UK.

The catalogues always intrigued me. Attracted me like a moth to the flame. I knew Dad didnt have the money to buy me the video game. I had a small video game, one that was affordable -- 5 pounds. But I wanted the bigger one. Like the one Paul had. But Paul was rich, and I wasnt. Paul's mom taught at the high school, and his Dad worked in a big firm. Paul even had a computer. I didnt know what a computer was, but it sounded fascinating. Once I even sneaked up the stairs and stole a look at it .. a big screen, a little pad and lots of buttons. I wished for a moment that my parents could get me one. Ten year olds can dream better than anyone else.

The winter had been, in typical english tradition, cold and rainy. Mom wore tattered stockings and always had a cold. Dad had to bike in the cold rain to work, because we couldnt afford public transport. Back in India, he drove a fancy car, and Mum had four servants at her beck and call. Everything comes with a price. We had moved to England, and the pound of flesh in exchange had turned out to be more than what they had bargained for. I, however, was blissfully unaware. Norwich bewitched me, enchanted me, amazed me, thrilled me.

--- to be contd. ---

The Death of Creativity and How a Trip to India Can Make Your Life Miserable

2005-02-04T17:59:00.000-08:00

Gee, let me think, two months off the face of the earth (buried inside someone's cleave or a book) and I feel like I've committed a crime. For which I should be punished (spank me yeah!!). And the saddest part is that creativity has ebbed in me. Writing is like using chopsticks, you see other people doing it with such dexterity that it looks easy, but when you get down to it, the dinner lands in someone else's inner wear. Quite a disgusting feeling, I must warn you.

Anyway, so I decided I absolutely MUST write something. If not for myself, for my millions of fans [a bow and flying kiss for all the folks ] and of course, for my very own ... my darling ego.

The SIA flight to India was at its shiny worst. The pretty airhostesses made me fidgety, and the hunky stewards made me feel like a blob of fat with five appendages, not counting my head, of course. To make things worse, the legspace was probably designed for a midget with amputed lower extremities. I scrunched up into a ball, thanking the lord for his foresight in endowing me with stubby legs. There was no sleep, however. The woman next to me had a bundle that she later explained was her baby. She had stowed it in the cabin compartment because the airlines charged full fare for babies. Personally I disagreed with her philosophy, she should have put it along with the checked in luggage, it would have had a much better flight. But I dared no argue. It was her baby, not mine. It didnt let me sleep, the raucus baby. Apparently, he didnt like the warm comfort of the overhead cabin.

... to be contd since I need to go get drunk on Friday night ... be back!!

The Importance of Anonymity

2004-11-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

The way this place has progressed from a bunch of intellectually connected people to a circle of friends has been a bitter-sweet experience. While on an emotional level it has been very satisfying, from a more intellectual perspective, it has been somewhat a not-so-healthy decline. So much so, that after writing the previous sentence, I paused to re-read it, and considered adding a qualifier to ensure noone was offended. That, I feel, may not augur well for a group of people who got together to exchange ideas and thoughts.

When I was a little kid, I loved writing, I wrote tons and tons of short stories, which I never showed to anyone in my family or even my friends. My father is a writer and a public speaker, and he would critique everything, from the essays in class, to the way I spoke at the dinner table. My mother, on the other hand, would fawn over almost anything I wrote; Which was great initially, but I realised, as I grew older, that her maternal affection clouded her intellectual judgement. I stopped writing soon afterwards, it wasnt any fun if you got no feedback anyway. And so the creative monster lay dormant in me for years, and mathematics and the sciences took over. The beautiful thing about math (which many of you wouldnt agree with, I am sure)is that, unlike the sciences, there can be more than one answer.And I know that's not what you are taught in school. But I digress, let me get back to the point. I had all but killed the literary side of me.

And then, sulekha happened. The blessing of anonymity. I was under a mask, safe from personal and emotionally tainted evaluations of me and my writings. Some of my articles were appreciated, some werent. Some were commented upon favorably, others lambasted by intellectually independent individuals. Some comments were obnoxious, some sickeningly sweet. And all put together, they left just the right taste in the mouth. I loved my new-found creative freedom. "Uber Goober" was now a writer in his own little way, free from the unrelenting criticism of his father and the blind adulation of his mother.

But somewhere along the way, I lost my self again. Dud Sea Scrawls happened. I got drawn into a group of intelligent people, who perhaps made the biggest mistake of deciding to throw away the mask of anonymity. I say "perhaps", because I might be wrong, and that we have chosen to do the right thing. But there is no doubt that it is strange that I had written almost 20 blogs in Sulekha, and post sulekha, I have written only 3 in almost the same time. The reasons, I believe, are manifold. I spend most of my time talking to people directly on the blog board. That is, in some ways, a more effective means of communication. But it is not the same as blogging. Also, as a result of getting to know all the bloggers, I can no longer be an entity behind a mask. Moreover, they know me and sometimes it is hard for them to write out their mind, and the same holds for me too, when I read their blogs/comments. My judgement is now clouded, almost the way my mother's was.

Whether I can ever get out of this and start writing more blogs with gay abandon (pun ABSOLUTELY not intended! ;) ) I do not know, but I hope things change soon!

The Little Comedian

2004-10-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

You'll grow up to be a fat ugly Comedian, my son .. she said :(

Masters and Apprentices ...

2004-10-19T21:15:00.000-07:00

I met Jibbu when I was seventeen. I was a first year student at the IIT, fresh and arrogant as ever about my academic prowess. We were supposed to teach high and middle school students as part of our first year curriculum. Many of the children were from the nearby Tharamani village, a slum on the outskirts of Chennai, just behind the IIT. We had volunteered to conduct tuition classes for the children in a run-down building in the middle of Tharamani, surrounded by small houses that were almost falling apart. It was raining that day, and it was slushy as hell. There were five of us that day. We sat and waited, expecting noone to turn up anyway. Three people turned up, Rani, Tamizharasan (never knew what meant!), and a short happy-go-lucky kid -- Jibbu Thomas. He was in sixth grade in the nearby government run school.

Jibbu looked around and sat down on the chair next to mine. to this day, I dont know why. I smiled at him awkwardly and asked him (in my ridiculous Tamizh) his name. He laughed at me and corrected my Tamizh. I was slightly annoyed at him for it, but his smile was so disarming, I couldnt open my mouth. I told him that I couldnt speak in Tamizh. We decided on a common language somewhere between English and the vernacular. He was a smart kid, but he didnt really care about studies. His father was a candle maker, and he wanted Jibbu to carry on the family business after school.We sat and talked about all the other things he did in school, from chasing cats to stealing chalk and drawing patterns on the walls of the houses. He reminded me of my childhood, which seemed so far away from me. Suddenly it was 6 o clock and time to leave. I hadnt taught him anything. But in retrospect, there are some days when you just let go, and this was one of those.

The next class, a few days later, I was waiting for Jibbu. He came in late, and I was almost disappointed and annoyed when he sat down to someone else. I literally dagged him out of my friend's section and made him sit in mine. I offered to drop him home and we talked on the way back. He showed me where he had hidden all his 'valuables' : a broken water pistol, a marble set, and his prize possession, a toy helicopter in perfect working order. I was jealous of his child-like happiness.

As the months went by, we became good friends -- master and pupil. He was good at math, and extremely bad at almost everything else. Secretly, I empathised with him because all my life it had been a similar story, stellar performance in math punctured by abysmal performances in every other conceivable subject. I promised myself I would make a mathematician out of him. There were other people in the class too, but Jibbu would always get special attention. I knew I was being partial, but I couldnt help myself.

I taught at the village office for almost two years, and then it was time to leave. I had too much other work to do outside the volunteer work. My last day at the Centre was pretty much the same except that Jibbu hadnt turned up. I was angry at him for not making it on my last day. I was about to leave when he did turn up. He had a little packet in his hand : "Anna, for you Anna". I took the packet, wished him luck and walked home. I opened the packet at home, and there were three candles : all handmade by Jibbu.

One, I lighted the day I learnt he cleared his board examinations. The second, I'll ask m mother to light up today, because I heard he got into college. The third, I will always keep with me, a reminder to myself of someone who, in a small way, made his mark in my life.

Sociable and Amicable Numbers ....

2004-10-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

Number theory is one of the most intriguing branches of mathematics. Three weeks ago, I ran into Ken Ribet, who was a contributor to Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem . I've sat in a few of Ken's classes, and his clarity of thought astounds me. Anyway, that kinda inspired me to think about some interesting 'early' number theory 'results'

1. Prime numbers: Nothing fancy about these little fellerz, except that for centuries, noone was able to determine an algorithmic way to obtain prime numbers. Even now, with the development of computers, although there are many algorithms to check primeness, there isnt any analytical method for obtaining prime numbers ad infinitum .

2. Perfect numbers: A perfect number is a cycle of length 1 of s, i.e., a number whose positive divisors (except for itself) sum to itself. The smallest such number is 6 : the divisors of six are 1,2,3, which add up to 6. The second number is 28 (1,2,4,7,14) whose divisors add up to 28. The third such number is 496. Interestingly, there is a hypothesis that claims that all perfect numbers are EVEN, and that there are an infinite number of them. A conjecture yet to be proved/disproved!

3. Amicable/Sociable numbers : An amicable "pair" of numbers is a cycle of length 2 of s., i.e., a pair of numbers each of which equals the sum of the other positive divisors; the members of amicable pairs are also called amicable. The smallest such pair is (220,284).

(sum of all the divisors of 220) 1+2+4+5+10+11+20+22+44+55+110 = 284
(sum of all the divisors of 284) (too tedious and boring to write down) = 220

Sociable numbers are sets if numbers with cycle > 2.

4. Fibonacci Numbers : This is perhaps the most commonly known of all number sequences. Fibonacci numbers are the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, . . . , each of which, after the second is the sum of the two previous ones. They are found in a variety of problems, mathematical and nonmathematical. Leaves are arranged on a stem in fibonacci sequences, and often flowers have numbers of petals equal to fibonacci numbers. Much has been said and explored about these sequences, which is why we mathematicians dont find it interesting anymore :D

5. The number of the beast "666" , as any Iron Maiden fan will know, is known as the number of the beast. It has some very very strange properties indeed! To list a few:

666 = 6 + 6 + 6 + 6³ + 6³ + 6³
666 = (6 + 6 + 6) · (6² + 1²)
666 = 6! · (6² + 1²) / (6² + 2²)
The sum of the squares of the first 7 primes is 666:

666 = 2² + 3² + 5² + 7² + 11² + 13² + 17²
The sum of the first 144 (= (6+6)·(6+6)) digits of pi is 666.

There is a lot more .. if you are really nice to me, maybe I'll tell you some more ;)

The Quick and The Dead ...

2004-10-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

Things I hate about myself ...

2004-10-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

Am in a self-deprecating mood today.. so here goes ...

1. I hate the fact that I am a liar. I dont lie all the time, but I still think I can be more honest about some things, which I am not, unfortunately.
2. I'm selfish all too often. I think I'm trying to change that, and hopefully I think I'm going in the right direction, but I still believe I cant look beyond my own interests.
3. I hate my lack of sensitivity. Case in example, my sister's marriage is on the rocks, and yet I feel no genuine sympathy. I mean ,yes I love her and I am sad that she has had to go through all of it, but I cant still EMPATHISE.
4. I hate my shallowness. I dont look beyond the grey cells, which is also shallow,cuz there's more to a person than how smart he/she is.
5. I hate my inability to make friends who last. I have lots of friends, but they keep coming and going. My life's like a taxi, people keep getting on and off all the time.
6. I lack strength of character. I know all you people are going to say, well it needs character to admit to your flaws, but let me tell you it is easy to do it in writing. If you asked me the same question in person, I wouldnt be half as candid.
7. I hate my complexion, I really wish I had a smoother complexion.

2004-10-06T09:59:00.001-07:00

Last night, I ran into D online. The usual pleasantries exchanged, she suddenly asked : "You been in touch with P? " "Nah, why? Anything up?", "Nope, not really, you guys were great friends werent you?","I guess we were", "Hey, Sandy, Can you call me for a bit?" "Sure".

I bought myself a phone card, and called her. Its strange how you can never forget some numbers. I used to call that same number every single day of the week for almost six months. I could close my eyes and punch the right buttons, I even remembered how it sounded on the tone-dial. Some things never change.

We hadnt talked on the phone for almost a year, but conversation flowed with almost alarming ease. We had had the worst of times when we were together, fighting about everything, misunderstanding everything the other said. And then there was the blame game at the end of it all, whose fault was it? Now, all that seemed far away. Too far away, in fact, to seem real. She hadnt changed one bit, and I had changed way too much.

I knew there was something she wanted to tell me. We yapped for a while, playing cat 'n mouse. "So, how are things between you and P", she asked. "We havent talked in a long time, but I think I'd still call him a good friend". "You should call him sometime". "I know, but ...". P and I were in the same dorm for our first year, but never really got to know each other during the time. We first ran into each other at a basketball tourney. He had gone to cheer on his lady love, and I was there to ogle at the women jumping up and down. As the tourney built up, so did our friendship, and by the end of the week, we were ready to die for each other. At the end of my first year, I had to move out, and we sort of lost touch. I'd run into him here and there, sometimes at a badminton game, sometimes at the dining hall. The strangest thing was we'd need about a minute to get into our 'best friends' mode. And so it went on, chance encounters which often ended up becoming long conversations. In our final year, we had a lot more time on our hands, and our friendship blossomed. So much so that many people doubted that we werent "just friends".

It was around this time that I first met D. We hit it off from day one, and call me romantic, I thought I had met the right person for me. Long hours with D, followed by extensive philosophical discussions about Love with P took up most of my time. I introduced D to P, and they became very good friends. Things were all hunky dory till graduation. I was leaving for the US, and D and I were having a really rough patch. To make things worse , I started suspecting that something was up between D and P. I accused them of having an affair behind my back. I broke up with D soon after and my friendship with P was scarred forever. We stopped calling each other, and moved on with our lives. The last time I had talked to him, he said something about dating someone from his office.

I woke out of my reverie. "Sandy?", "Hmm?", "I think you should call P up one of these days", "Why dont you stop playing games and tell me what it is?" ...... "Well? Hello??"... " Umm, Sandy, I'm getting married to him next month". "Oh".

It didnt hurt as much as I thought it would. In fact, it almost didnt hurt at all. I smiled to myself : Some things never change, but thankfully, some things do.

HTML tags and other such paraphernalia

2004-10-05T18:30:00.000-07:00

I'm lost. Lost in a maze of tags and curly brackets and begin-end statements. The back slashes have lashed out at me, and the semi-cologne stinks. There is HTML and XML and MML and XXL, I just dont know which is what. I never thought I would need any of it. My interest in the web has always been restricted to gleaning information (and pornography). And all of a sudden, I have entered this new world of bloggers who are web hacks. There are HTML sorcerors like buckwaasur, code wizards like void, photography paparazzi like funnycide, and the mother of them all : karma!

And amongst them is poor little Goober. A lost little child who knows as much about maintaining a website as Bush does about geography. And he's lost. He cant add tags, he cant have doodle boards, he doesnt even know how to put pictures. He's afraid he is going to disappoint everybody with his ignorance.... help him dear brothers and sisters :) help him!

Classroom Blues

2004-10-04T22:34:00.001-07:00

Had to teach a class today. I walked in. It was my first class with the graduate students. Was a bit nervous. I was about seven odd minutes early. There were four or five students in the class when I entered. I nodded at them and smiled. One of them forced a pale smile back at me, the rest looked away. So much for trying to be friendly. I've taught undergrads before, they are much more amicable. At least they smile back at you. Grad students are rather uncommunicative, and I always get the feeling they think they are wasting their time sitting in my lectures.

10:10 I started the lecture, 15 -17 students in the class. Very unresponsive. I dont know if it was me, or if it was them. But they were one helluva quiet bunch. I cracked a joke, just to lighten the mood up a bit. Silence. One girl tittered nervously. I dont crack bad jokes, in fact I think it was a very good joke. I dunno why they didnt laugh. These people were denting my self esteem dammit. To top it off, I didnt even know if they understood what I was talking about. Everytime I asked a question, half of them would look at me like startled deer, and the other half would focus on some imaginary insect crawling on their desks, and the third half would look out of the window.

I was frustrated by the end of the class. I really dont know if there's something wrong with the way I teach, or if it was just the class .. GRRRR ....

Till Death do us part...

2004-10-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

I heard about it yesterday. He was travelling from Bangalore to another town in an autorickshaw. A truck hit them at an intersection. He and his friend died. He was 24.

I didnt like him much when I was at school with him. He wasnt my kind of person, and I wasnt his kind. It wasnt hatred, it wasnt indifference. It was that malicious feeling in between, when you almost feel happy when he gets snubbed, when you smirk when he loses the election (he lost the hostel elections to a friend of mine), when you shake your head in disgust when you see his success. We even had an open confrontation once. About what, I dont remember. It wasnt very important I guess. At the time, it must have been important, why else would I fight with someone.

I heard about it yesterday morning from a friend. At first, I didnt remember his name. My roommate (who also went to the same school as I) reminded me who he was. It really didnt sink in until a few minutes later. I felt numb, thinking about it. I wondered if malice was really worth it. He isnt alive anymore, and all the ill-will seemed so childish, all the differences trivial, all our fights petty.

People say 'till Death do us part'. I wonder if that is true. Death doesnt part people, death brings them closer together. At what cost, I wonder ...

Poetic Justice

2004-10-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

I cant write poems
I havent ever tried
But I can still tell
that I couldnt have
Because, to write poems
you have to be creative
and I know I am not
So I have tried here
to write a sentence
and then just clip it
just here and there
To be honest,
I saw funnycide
and I saw the
funny side of
err Funnycide
And I saw a poem
I wanted to write
something that would
atleast look like a poem
and well, here you are!

Circle of Friends and Rigmaroles of Friends

2004-10-02T23:13:00.000-07:00

This one's a bummer. My best friend is in love with his best friend's girl friend. I am in love with my best friend's best friend who also happens to be my best friend's best friend's girl friend's roommate. Incidentally, my roommate is also in love with my best friend's roommate, who, by some strange coincidence happens to be my girl friend's best friend.

So today we were supposed to go a Dandiya (you know that place where people keep banging each other.. oops banging each other's sticks). So my best friend's roommate's best friend wanted to go, but her boyfriend, who also happens to be my roommate's best friend, didnt want to go. Now, without him, my roommate was also unwilling to go, which meant that my roommate's girl friend, who happens to be my best friend's best friend's girl friend also didnt want to go. But I wanted to go, and my girl friend wanted to go, but she couldnt go because her best friend, who is by some strange coincidence, my best friend's roommate's girl friend, was not sure about going if her boyfriend, who is, obviously, my best friend's roommate was not sure about going. So finally we decided not to go. Its a bummer.

Morning Wood or some such thing

2004-10-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

this is the third time i am writing the same thing. and thats why i aint even bothering to type in the caps. i apologize. its not me, its just this new website i've been conned into blogging in. just cuz some pretty damsel looks like she's had a bad hair (wow! you guys have hair, what are you complaining about!) day, i was suckered into joining. i hate being suckered. and i hate being woken up by uncles at 6 in the morning. which is precisely what happened today. i wanted to swat him with a sledgehammer, but not before i tied him up and hung him upside down by his balls. that would have certainly meant that he wouldnt need a vasectomy. but thats another story. so i hurled some well-contructed expletives at him. he didnt take it well i think. there was a strange squeak/grunt on the other side, and he sorta slammed the phone down. poor phone. i wonder if phones can think. i wonder my phone thinks about me. i wonder if phones can think about me. i mean, yes, for sure, phones can think. why else do you think you get bills ? but do phones think about what i say to them, all those kinky conversations with bella. hmmm... i wonder!

so i've been suckered into sharing the same blog space with the illustrious kakes, and another1. who is another1 anyway? is it a he or a she? is it a baboon, a raccoon or a maybe, wow, an earthworm! i've always been intrigued by earthworms. in my deepest darkest fantasies i want to be an earthworm. i mean, imaing being able to look at yourself in the mirror and not have to pay 3.95$ per hour. earthworms are lucky creatures, i dont think they realise it. i wonder if earthworms get turned on by themselves. i guess not, they dont have mirrors. but i wanna try this sometime. show an earthworm a mirror and see if they get an overdose of em hormones. okay, enough already, i can see you screeching! i'll be back hunnybunnies.

My First Kiss

2004-07-15T15:32:00.000-07:00

Before you start thinking that this is another verbalization of the usual mushy adolescent fantasies, let me forewarn you that this article has been written with the sole intent of educating my readers and fellow bloggers about the perils noveau kissers might have to deal with.

My story is set in a small town, a rainy little hamlet by the side of a stinky polluted river. It was, as usual, a rainy afternoon, and I had just come home after splashing about in the stinky polluted river. I plopped onto the sofa and picked at my nose. There is something so blissful about picking one’s nose. Ask any nine year old and he can tell you all about the joys of picking ‘em noses. So there I was, picking my nose and gazing at the telly, when the phone rang. I picked up the phone and it was Mrs Blimpety-Bopp. Mrs Blimpety-Bopp was a very handsome middle-aged lady. She was a good friend of my mother and they often went around spreading dirty gossip about the rest of the women in the village. They really were an adorable pair, my mom and Mrs Blimpety-Bopp. I loved spending time with Mrs Blimpety-Bopp. She was entertaining and made very good macaroni. In fact, that was the only thing she could make, but that’s a different story. The only scary thing about her house was her daughter. Charlene, for that was her name, was a five foot seven, thin legged, wide hipped, blonde haired, blue eyed, cherry lipped, pretty little monster. There is something about thin legged, wide hipped, blonde haired, blue eyed, cherry lipped, pretty little monsters that chills me to the bone. There wasn’t a thing I hated as much as I hated Charlene ( other than mashed potatoes, I guess). Now I was to take Charlene this evening to ‘The Store’. The Store was the hubbub of activity in the little town and Mr.Fillty-Writch, its manager, was the proud owner of the only refrigerator in all of J-ville.

As I skipped along to Mrs Blimpety-Bopp’s house, I felt a churning in my stomach. “Must be the worms I swallowed down at the river”, I said to myself. Charlene was standing at the door, looking pretty and prim. I felt a shiver run down my spine at the sight of her. The softer (and more optimistic) side of me tried to convince me that despite being so pretty, she might actually be quite nice after all under that gorgeous veneer. But the rest(most) of me loathed her and wished to run away. She offered me an arm daintily and I gingerly took her arm, cringing inwardly… t

To be contd…

The Password Dilemma

2004-07-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

And so it starts again .. I've tried maintaining a weblog so many times. Seems like a 'cool' thing to do ey? But everytime I do write something, one of two things happens ... ...(a) I forget the password, or...(b) I forget the password....I'm not trying to defend myself, but this whole signing up thing, has gotten to me. I wanna sign up for this, and I wanna sign up for that, and I wanna sign up for all of this and that. I have strong reason to believe that I have had more profiles of me put up on the net than copies of pamela anderson's infamous gobbledygook with Tommy Lee. And the sad part is, that even if someone did look up my profile (and was interested in me, hallelujah!), I'd never know, cause I cant log in again. Not that I think that anybody WOULD wanna look up my profile, unless he/she was planning to adopt an orang-utan with the IQ of a cactus that has just been run over by one of George Bush's war tanks. However, there are some rather gifted men/women out there with a penchant for hooking up with creatures with subhuman intelligence. ...Let me, however, get back to the more important thing here. I want to remember passwords. Its not that I have a bad memory, its just that I cant remember anything at all. I can remember almost everything else really, other than passwords. And to make matters worse, when I type in my passwords, I cant see them. How am I supposed to remember something I havent ever seen? So I decided to write my password on a piece of paper, and gave it to a friend of mine for safekeeping (since I kept losing the piece of paper). Unfortunately, I couldnt remember who I had given the piece of paper to, and I really didnt want to offend my other friends by asking everyone (They might think that I should have trusted them and not the-snotty-nosed-halfwit) about the piece of paper with the password on it. One of my more pragmatic friends suggested that I should write it on the wall, or something of the sort. I thought that was a great idea, except that in a moment of profound creativity I had decided to paint my room a shade of green-blue. So the writing was pretty much on the wall. And then I had the best idea of all. I decided to get a tattoo of my password on the rolls of fat on my stomach. (Well, when I look at myself, thats about the only part of my body I can see, so that made a lot of sense). Now I'm all set with my password, though by now I think I have forgotten what the username for this weblog is. Maybe its time to run along and get another tattoo!...Drat! Did I forget to fill in the title field now?! ...