Today's Graffiti: (and I kept it short and simple)

Half-empty

Six Reasons why Bangalore Bites:

1. The existing airport is like a bus terminal. Now I know why its called an 'Airbus'. And, the new airport is a destination in itself. Getting there from home now sets me back by 1000 bucks and Two hours or more.
I know. Charming.

2. The dance floors are all closed, thanks to the Cops assuming that everyone wants to dance like they're in a dance bar. Sorry to disappoint you folks, but not everyone wants to be the Nation's next Chameli. Some people just need to have some fun after a rough week.
But that's blasphemy. Of course.

3. Because of (2), DJ Tiesto won't be coming here. Hyderabad, however, got very lucky. Just imagine. The whole country has clubs and the supposed 'Cosmopolitan' city can't even host a major welcome for the world's best DJ? Cosmopolitan, my sitting-at-home-on-saturday-bottom.

4. Live Bands can no longer play in some places. Wow. I didn't know Live Bands=Disastrous consequences for the community. If that's the case, Those guitars should really come with a statutory warning and an Age limit.
Oops. I shouldn't have said that. At the rate we're going, they'll probably actually enforce it.

5. Rules such as 'Cars with even-numbered license plates can only be driven on even days' are actually proposed.
People have conveniently forgotten that we're a democracy, and we DON'T have a public/Mass transport system that's to die for. We have one that actually caused numerous deaths.
Bravo, whoever came up with that. How clairvoyant. *Hmmph!!*

6. Educated, classy 'Bangaloreans' still litter.
What I'd really like to do, is to stuff all that garbage in their champagne glasses, their cars, in their shampoo bottles and down their pretentious throats.
Enough said.

I blame it all in 'Bangalore' being changed to the extremely unnecessary 'Bengalooru'. What is with the name changing? The Anglicised names have something to do with our history. Why attempt to change it? Its more a sign of insecurity than anything else, if you ask me.

One reason why I still love this place:
It's HOME!!!

V-D-Day!

Its all true, folks.

Yes, giving someone a teddy bear or a balloon or whatever with "I love you" written on it in red and white- that is the shit. True love. Like the million others that will receive the exact same thing. Because THAT will truly convey how special it all is to you. Well done.

Yes, heart shaped anything-that is the shit. Never mind that the whole world seems heart painted on valentines day, never mind that your irises just might become heart shaped after the extravaganza, never mind that the heart really isn't shaped like that, and god knows how pink got into the picture. Gag moi.

And yes, spending all your money on valentine's day- Way to go! Why surprise someone when you can take them out on the day when everyone taken everyone out? You simply must go out on a day when every place is flowing with more love-struck mongers, just so you can all look at each other and feel so privileged, for the lack of privacy, and for the love you all share in that crowd. In twos, of course.

Oh, and lets not forget- spending your pockets off is the only way to show someone you care.
Huh? What's that? Did you say something about spending time and being nice through the year? I didn't quite hear.

Now, now, don't worry. If you do feel like something's wrong, open up the mushy card with flowers and words written on it, and Know that this is indeed, what stuff from the love shack is made of.
Oh, so this card this year has red roses and last year's had white? Oh, I see.

Or, you can spend valentine's day, my way.
Go pamper yourself till your toes want to smile. Get a nice haircut. Get some retail therapy. Get a nice movie, some chocolate, a drink you'd never normally buy for yourself, or that one thing you've always wanted to buy.
Take a bubble bath. Turn up the volume.
Meet friends you haven't met in ages, or the ones you never have time for.
Prank call people (a group favourite).
Do something totally different for the person you love from the bottom of your toes. Surprise them when they least expect it.
Or give them some breathing space.
Shock your parents by doing something nice. And then get privileges you could really use.
Throw a party. God knows, your friends in Bangalore need one.
Think beyond red and pink.

Mr know-it-all Cupid is actually a baby, after all.

Also....No offense meant, personally, to anyone.

Not a hoot!

So...I have an Owl Problem.

Firstly, when people tell you an owl makes a 'Hoot' sound, you picture it as something friendly, maybe spooky.
They're wrong. Owls can sound like the voice you've imagined death to have.

Really. They screech like they're not-so-cute little owlie insides are being torn apart by some deathly force that we can't see in the night. You know, them being nocturnal and all. Its great that they sleep during the day, but how am I supposed to get some shut-eye when they scream like a dozen pregnant screams all the time?! You'd think it would stop for a few hours, but it doesn't. It goes on for hours and hours.

To make things worse, now lil' "Hell" (Thats owl's nickname) now has a friend. I'm assuming "blowhorn" (named oh-so-fondly after The blowhorn) is female, because otherwise, two Male owls talking and screaming every night for hours is just...gay. Imagine. I don't know about owls and their mating lives, but anyway..
So I live on the Eleventh floor and these two owls just won't go away. They sit on a higher level ledge and, well..they're there, screeching away all night. I know.
Simply Delightful.

I can tell you that I've tried everything. I've shone light on both owls for ages. Ive used many (hundreds) Of powerful camera flashes and this red laser light on them. I've screamed back. Ive left lights on. What I can only do now, is throw things at them. But I can't bring myself to (as much as I'd dearly love to whack hell and blowhorn with absolutely anything).

So, I did some research. Here's what I found.

- This pic with an owl's face superimposed on a pig's snout. Talk about optical illusion!


-It sucks that I'm here, in Bangalore.Because there are companies called 'Bird buster' and 'Bird-x' that make products and ensure that these pesky birds are gotten rid of in the most natural, non-harmful way possible. NO teary good-bye, though. Just...Hello sleep!!
I couldn't find a way to order the products and get service here though. Not yet.

-It turns out that owls don't like a change of location. Basically, they're leeches on wings. They find a place and stay there for upto 10 years or more!
Now, you can imagine how good this makes me feel.
-I also read-"They talk all the time- hooting, squealing, shrieking, whistling, trilling, grumbling--even barking. They are best known, however, for a call that sounds like, "Who cooks for you.. who cooks for you-all?"
Lol...No believe me, it sounds like...."CCCCCCCCCCCCRRRRRRRRRRRAWWWWWWWWW!!!!!"

-"Big owls have deeper voices than small ones."
Both these owls are huge and scream like There's no tomorrow to scream, too.

-"Owls are birds of prey and often hunt at night."
Then how come they're screaming throughout?? Why can't they atleast eat??!

-"Owls have held a variety of symbolic meanings in culture and have represented misfortune, death, wisdom and prosperity."
Right. Now...Didn't the same sentence have completely contradicting implications?!!

-Also, Online, Someone asked people the following question at a forum:
"How do you make an owl sound with your hands?"
Here are the responses:

1- Put hands together placing all fingers on right hand in the crevice between left thumb and forefinger. Put thumbs together and clasp left hand around top of right knuckles. Blow softly through the small crack between thumbs (just below thumb knuckles).
Once you have mastered a single note by doing this , you can make a waving motion with your left hand (still holding on to right hand) and it will waiver the note!

2-I don't give a hoot.

3-Stick your thumb
in its, er...tum.
(Beats me)

4-Simply make a fist as if to cough into your hand put your hand over your mouth and say the words hoo hoo ho hoooooo.
You can also go to walmart and purchase something called a hoot tube, it is used for turkey hunting.

I tried 1 and 4. They sound like something, not quite owl-like, but like a whooshing noise.

I'm going to go and try using it on the owls now! I'm secretly hoping the owls get scared or angry and leave.

I'm totally welcome to any suggestions on how to get rid of my Buddies, hell and blowhorn. And if you're asking yourself why I'm writing about owls, Just try sleeping with that noise and if you haven't bought a gun or blogged about it or complained incessantly, you're completely deaf.

The Aftermath

To put things mildly, I might write about college a lot. And mostly not very positively. It's hard for most people to think of college as something positive (anyone under VTU, anyway) and I'm usually pessimistic with a vengeance. Put that together and you get...Hell. Yup, Two days of hell, in sixth sem and I'm already so sick of it all, It takes every inch of my almost non-existent patience to keep from lamenting about the sorrow of being there. See, I'm the kind of person who NEVER gets bored in holidays. Being jobless is something I haven't associated myself with for the last four years, probably. So holidays are heaven. And after the second day of college, I can safely say that I'm experiencing an exhaustion that prisoners would be able to relate to.

Making yourself Pay attention in class is exhausting. What's actually even more exhausting (And I actually think so) is pretending to pay attention. Why not actually pay attention, you ask? In a word-boring. The day does all it can to remind me of why an MS degree is off the table. This science thing...For so long....Incredible. And under VTU...so incredible that you can't take it. So much so that attending all classes even on day one of Sixth Sem (code word -War six) was impossible. Ho, hum. To make things more dull...this whole thing suddenly makes me feel like I'm doing absolutely nothing with my life. I'm sure no one wants their epitaph to read "There she just sat, in class." I know I don't.

So once we got through the day (which did a considerable amount of mental damage, I can assure you) some of us couldn't just go home. We needed something. Something to seem like, after the war, we could make peace with our oh-so-bored minds. So we went to the BDA and had good old chaat and mithai and Sugarcane Juice. All for 25 bucks! Wasted around, walked around. And boy, student life is something else. There's just a certain joy in knowing you can eat some mouth watering paani puri for less than ten bucks. Having a lot of dosh is everyone's dream...but the mad delight of eating and travelling cheap and enjoying it...That's something everyone should experience. Then you can sit back years from now and talk about the good old days like everyone does. Ho, hum.

So it struck me....Maybe to enjoy the peace, the freedom, the aftermath...to truly, really feel that joy, we need the war. Maybe, to actually appreciate those precious few hours of fun, we need those hours of torture in class. Not want, but need. With the Yin comes the Yang, they say. Sad, but true. Relief is a spectacular thing, really. And its best felt in the smallest, teensy things. We do a lot of fun stuff...but the simple, unplanned things end up being the Best.

So the aftermath turned out okay. Back to square one, tomorrow morning, and every morning for the rest of this sem! But I'm going to try and take comfort in knowing that the aftermath...might just make it all somewhat worth it.

And the winner is....

Maybe this is why there's a writers' strike on in hollywood...*wink*
The only thing left to do, Is a Red carpet and Gown style ceremony for the writing world too!

The Fine Print

Ho, Hum. Why do bloggers blog, you ask? I'm sure you've asked that. Everyone has, at some point.If you havent' well...then you should. I know I did, many times. I never really got an answer to that. Then I started a blog. papoose-spruce@blogspot.com. I never really got very far. I wrote two posts. TWO. This blog is pretty new, not more than two weeks old or so, I'd say, and I'm upto 9 posts or more (I'm not very good at numbers). I don't want to jinx it, but what kept me interested this time, was that...I'd figured out why I wanted to blog in the first place. And suddenly, petty things didn't matter so much.

Blogging was suddenly something I was doing, for me. More than anything else. I'm totally and completely happy about the prospect of people reading it, of course, and a huge whoop-like THANK YOU to all the people (how many ever, two,ten or more) who've read the fine print(or not) and got my hit meter to cross the big 100. I won't deny that I get completely flattered if someone comments positively on a post...It makes my day! Maybe even my week!

I'd be lying if I said that others reading my doodles and scrawls and commenting didn't make a difference, but that hasn't become the ONLY or MAIN reason why I continue to Blog. It all digs a bit deeper than that. What sub-consciously happened, was that, once I'd started Blogging..I started to do something else that I'd never given two hoots about before - I started reading others' Blogs.

...And it was good. Really good. I mean it. You can learn from anywhere. From books, magazines, activities, events. Even movies, art, music. I've always considered myself an avid reader, and I've been reading ever since I was little. But the learning I've experienced by reading other Blogs....is learning like no other. It depends a LOT on the kind of Blogs you read, but once I delved into the fine print...I discovered things that no other form could bring to my notice. By that, I mean..learning from someone else's train of thought. The more blogs you read, the more posts you read..the style of writing of that person comes alive. You start getting their drift on things they haven't even posted on. You learn from their opinions, their lives. Its like an exchange program. You learn to value other's opinions. Once you actually READ the fine print, you figure out stuff that you wouldn't have figured out even on a date or lunch with that person. That's...pretty Big. In such a huge world with so many people. That's Big.

A lot of people don't even read the fine print. They read maybe, less than half a post. That doesn't really qualify as anything, in my opinion. You can't judge a book by its cover, a Blog by its template and a post by its title or opening paragraph. If you do, then you're missing out on a whole lot. You might as well not even look at the bits you do look at.

So Once I read others' stuff, I actually felt like writing mine. I felt like if I actually indulge in the same mind-speak others do, maybe I'd provide food for thought for a lot of others. Just maybe. Most of all, for myself. I can't begin to describe what its like reading older posts and going....What frame of mind did I write that in? For people who've been blogging for years, its like opening up a page of your life that you just typed away. Its funky! That's something even looking at old pictures can't give you. Ho hum, this was the person I was.

My take- Read the fine print. Even if you don't blog, no biggie. You'll learn a ton of stuff. You'll laugh at a ton of stuff. You'll draw parallels between others train of thought and your own. You'll understand all these things about human existence. In some cases (where its not, you know, so gosh-darn profound) you'll be really entertained (some people have blogs that can give you more laughs than you bargained for). If a blog is really bad (That's opinion based, of course), atleast you'll know what you should NEVER write like. You won't come out of it with nothing. I know I didn't.

Here's to everyone that Blogs, everyone that reads Blogs, and to all the minds out there who want a voice. At times Its severely unrewarding ( like when no one sees your stuff..you think...Man! I should just go watch tv. ) and at times it makes you want to go Yabba Dabba Doo like Fred Flintstone. No Shit!

The fine print has arrived, folks. And we all want it to reach somewhere.