Rest in Peace "Sam" Patrick Swayze
18 years ago I tagged along with my Dad and his friends to watch “Ghost” at the theatres. Its more of a ritual for my Dad and his friends to go watch a movie on Sunday. Saturday evenings there would be a no-table conference at the street corner. Dad’s friends would come with all their reviews and ideas collected over the week and start deciding on which movie to watch on Sunday. Madurai is a small city and there was only one theatre that regularly played English movies. On this particular saturday, my Dad’s friends were totally wrong about what they thought about “Ghost”. They assumed its a horror movie and Dad immediately voted for it. He even agreed when I said that I (10 years old then) wanted to go as well.
At the theater, it turned out to be my first ever movie with Sexually explicit scenes. No matter how many times my Dad tried to push me under the seat, I was able to get a good glimpse and hear what was going on in the Blue Screen. I didn’t even know it was Demi Moore (until I watched Striptease, later with my friends), but I can still remember the embarrassing moments my Dad was put through. Thanks to Patrick and Demi. LOL!
18 years later Patrick is dead for real and will he come back (just like Sam in the movie) as a Ghost and whisper into Demi Moore’s ears that Mr Ashton Kutcher ain’t the right person for her? It will be a true Nightmare for Demi tonight!
Rest in Peace Patrick Swayze and let Demi live in peace. Don’t bother her. She is happy with her BoyKid Friend turned Husband, TrAshton Kutcher.
Generic Blunder
“India has won the world cup!”
“Brazil has lost to France in the finals!“
“World’s most beautiful woman!“
We see such headlines all around us everyday. Be it the newspaper or an online portal or an advertising banner, its omnipresent. But I have always been sceptical about the wording used in such headlines and news. Did the entire country and the people of Brazil fight with France and lost in the finals of some sports? Did you do a door to door survey of all the women in the planet to judge their beauty? I don’t think so. A team of selected players representing the country in a specific international event could have won or lost. It doesn’t mean that the entire nation has won or lost, literally. I would prefer the headlines to be revised. Its better to have then re-worded to something like “The Indian Cricket Team has won the world cup!” or “The Brazilian footballers lost to the French in the Finals”. Maybe if its a war or political issue between two countries, such headlines will fit in.
When some survey is conducted to judge beauty or talent, specific demographic title must be taken into account, IMO. Especially when you rank any such non-measurable / intangible criteria. The world’s most beautiful woman is not always the world most! Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Probably if you say, “The world’s most beautiful Hollywood actress”, then I can accept Angelina Jolie as the list topper. For sure the world is not entirely populated with actresses and definitely the entire list of women on earth have not been counted in for the race. Poets and writers are the only ones who are acceptable when they make such statements and definitely not some statisticians, market analyst or research analyst.
When mistakes are repeated over and over, it doesn’t convert to they right way of doing things. Its just the right way of doing the mistake again. I just don’t feel it exactly justifies or represents the feelings and sentiments of the entire world or a nation. Its sort of communal and separative in its own way and such relative news/analysis must not be made to apear generic.
Anyway, this is all in my opinion. I am neither offended nor bothered by such lines, just that I don’t feel it conveys the correct message. There may be some logical reasoning behind such wordings, which I am not aware of. If any, do let me know.
Some really Dumb reasons I could think of:
“The newsmaker is in love with the actress” / “Lack of space for lengthy headlines” / “Marketing technique or Branding cunningness” / “Catchy headlines to sell the news” / “… its a trend and people love it” / “just want to sell B.S. to the mass…”
Dell tagline – Screw to Survive
My Dell XPS laptop is helping me explore and discover a lot of Dell’s business strategies and most of them are unethical. My previous post would detail the problem I am currently facing with my Dell XPS M1210. I knew that Dell would not help me unless I pay them what they demand. But still I wanted to check my Luck Quotient. I called up Dell and the executive (Mr trained-Smarty-dell-mouthpiece) spoke to me for about an hour. Let me give you the gist of the conversation.
I have recorded this in my mobile. I will post the audio clip soon.
Once I explained the problem, he asked me to be on hold for a while, so that he could check what best he can do for me. He came back on the line and told me that he is going to give me a break-fix-warranty.
Now what is a break fix warranty for me? Pay for 1 year extended warranty + engineer visit + spare part cost. That will be 19,000INR in total. I told him, that this problem is not only with my notebook. Many people who have got the same model have suffered because of the design flaw. This is Dell’s fault and Dell must absorb the cost and replace it without charging.
He accepted that its a design issue with the GeForce 7400 gfx card and Dell has automatically extended the 1 year warranty to an extra year for all the product with 7400 gfx cards. My laptop has cruised past 2 years exactly (on March 8th 2009) so Dell will not replace it for free.
I was pretty shocked. Hang on! One year ago on March 2008, I called you guys and wanted to pay for an extended warranty and no one told me that I get a free warranty extension at that time. You guys sent me quotes and if had gone ahead with the purchase, I would have ended up paying for a free service.
He justified and rolled back his statement that, these free warranty was only for systems with fault. Yes, mine is faulty as well. Only that the fault came to light exactly after 20 days of expiry of the warranty + “so-called-free-extended” warranty period.
Dell… the greatest customer screwing machine of all time… Ok! I don’t want to drift off-topic. Now, I don’t care about extended warranty. A company like Dell must take responsibility for its mistakes and take back the faulty parts it has sold.
His point was, the company has extended its good-will gesture for one year and my laptop had no problems during that tenure and now I have to pay for it.
And so forth and so on… the argument was going nowhere. The business strategy I learnt is, sell a faulty product to the customer and sell it over and over to the same customer, when the product fails. Nice strategy to make money, especially during the tough times of recession. I am sure Dell would not face any economic strangles with policies like this in place. Even if I pay for the service and get the Motherboard replaced, it is bound to fail in another year’s time.
Shall I or Should I not?
Naakka Mukka – The Prose and Poetry
The cult track “Naakka Mukka” could easily win the most disgusting song ever made award, if the panel members were strictly 45+ old. But it has won the heart of many youngsters because of its racy tune and irrelevant lyrics. Finding and order among chaos has been the favourite past time of many. I decided to find or frame some sort of meaning to this meaningless song. Here is goes…
The poet takes us to the yogic philosophical aachaaram filled life style with the opening lines.
Maadu Setha Manusan Thinnan
Thola Vechi Mela Katti
Adra Adra Naakka Mukka Naakka Mukka
Yes its indeed 916 hallmark aachaaram-filled lyrics. The meaning is… when man eats dead cow (symbolically non-vegetarian/meat) he is nearing his end of days. You will ride your last procession on the shoulders of other (tholla vechi) with drum beats (mela katti adra adra) leading it. Hence control your senses. Control of taste buds (naakku) and olfactory senses (mookku) is essential for long livety. Now isn’t that yogic philosophy?
larrysona larrysona larrysonnaaareeee…
Yes indeed its the golden line which can be understood by laymen like lorry drivers… (laary = Truck / Sona = Gold)
panthaatom ulagam vachaan raatinam pol sulala vachan…
yera vachan irnaga vachan..sulalavitu mayanga vachaan..
mayagunavana yelupuda yelupuda… adingada adingada….
Now he wants to teach a bit of geography. The world is not a level play field anymore. Its a ball shaped earth. The god / supreme power made it so and he made it rotate like a Giant Wheel. Goes up at times and goes down at time. Due course this oscillation (rotation of earth) make people unconscious and loose their senses. Now don’t let your fellow earthlings loose control, so lets beat it man….
ponungala piraka vachan.. ponukula karuva vachan..
karuva vachanc karpa vachan…karpuvukule theeyavachan..
theeyavachu yeriya vachan…yeriya vachan… yeriyavacha….
madurai yeriyuthu .. anaingada..anaingada..anaingada..
This is turning out to be the most philosophical song of the year. I am getting goose bumps while writing this blog. Let me not loose track and complete the analysis.
He wants to teach a bit of culture, integrity and chastity. God made women and implanted the womb in them and created a theme called chastity especially for them. He lit the theme with fire and that has become an ideal characteristic of the ideal woman. The fire symbolizes woman and could burn down even an entire city. He he quotes some historical reference(kanagi who burnt Madurai) to showcase the power of woman.
Just a handful of such songs with such powerful lyrics can convert the entire generation X into generation V (V for Vivekananda).
Pothum…. ithoda niruthikuvom… kupura paduthu yosipangalo?
