Copulatory Practices of Blood Sucking Organisms: A Practical Handbook

Some time back my buddy ac put a blog post about mosquitoes and suze put a comment about mosquitoes doing it and all and then vinod put an even better comment. So all this talk about blood suckers and it reminded me about this book that I came across once. It's called 'The Copulatory Practices of Blood Sucking Organisms: A Practical Handbook'. Now this book u see is very hard to find and very few copies exist now. A Romanian friend of mine called Vlad had it and told me lots about it.

This book is only available in hard cover to live up to its topic of discussion and there are no soft copies of it available on the Internet.

The book has a foreword appropriately titled 'Foreplay' written by the eVam Bats Theatre Quartet. These guys are famous for plays such as 'Sonar Yet so Far', 'Death at Dawn', 'A Cave Roof with a View'. They recently released a music video called 'Here Comes the Sun (I Gotta Run)'.They have also authored the wooden cook book called ' Steaks for Your Heart' which was a follow up to Ray Cadbury's 'Death by Worm Infested Chocolates'. The foreword should set u up for the rest of the book. As I am constrained by space I shall tell you about some of the interesting chapters of of the book.

There is this chapter called 'Lecherous Leeches'. Let me warn you that you should take whatever you read in this chapter with a pinch of salt or you will find yourself completely drained. This chapter really is meant for suckers.

Also present is a curiously titled chapter called 'Promiscuous Proboscis' which tells how a male mosquito manages to seduce a female anopheles mosquito without contracting malaria.

In '69 Ways to do It in a Coffin' we get to know about the techniques used by master vampires to do ...er u know what they do best – suck blood.

There are chapters on Indian Zamindars of yesteryear and how they festered wounds and fostered bondage. Also mentioned are tales of Indian politicians and Indian software companies.

You will be glad to know that a movie based on the book is already out in Romania and will be hitting Indian theatres shortly. A reviewer in Romania who saw the movie with his wife felt the movie was fast paced and his wife felt that the ending came too quickly and she was left unsatisfied as usual. Another reviewer felt that the movie is very well paced and reaches an astonishing climax which is sure to leave you breathless thought not necessarily speechless.

Following the climax is a song that features Limp Bizkit which makes sure that you don't watch the movie for sometime to come.

The distributors of the film in India want to only keep night shows of the movie but are scared of competition from the movie 'Copulatory Practices of Carbon Based Bipeds Living in the Third Rock from the Sun' featuring Jenna Jameson and based on the book of the equivalent but shorter name by Madonna.

Thats all folks. I gotta go eat and then watch Area 88

Microsoft does it again

mcall.com - EDS, Microsoft blamed for crash

looks like mine is not the only computer MS mangaed to f*** in the past few days. i reinstalled windows 3 times in 2 days and am totally pissed as i had to format a partition wiping out 8.5 gigs of songs and movies. aaaahhhh

fortunately all the important stuff was in another partition (whew!)

It's over

CAT 2004 is over. I thought the paper tested both how well a test taker was prepared (via the quants) and how smart one was (via the DI/LR). Absolutely brilliant paper. Just reinforces the legend about how difficult the CAT is supposed to be. I think this paper will just direct more business to the coaching institutes which is definitely not a good thing.

Anyways its done for this year. I don't want to hear anything more about CAT 2004 again and if any of you ask me anything about it be prepared to experience the full extent of my vocabulary of the bird variety.

You will find that there is a new link added to the side bar under the links section. I think the addition of the link should tell you how I did the test.

Until CAT 2005 then...

Home stretch && 15*2 minutes of fame && 69 && End of the wandering swordsman ( Not necessarily in that order )

Less than week to go before the CAT and even lesser number of days to go for the biggest academic farce ever envisaged – the Anna University exams. It also happens to be the largest money making racket since they charge you Rs 400 for re-evaluation and Rs 300 for a photocopy for your answer booklet when it costs 100 rupees a paper to write an exam and get that paper corrected and 40 paisa per page at the local 'Canon Xerox' shop which actually uses a Toshiba machine. That makes me wonder why they charge so much. Are they using industrial money printing machines to give the photocopies or do they get them photocopied at the local counterfeiter's. Some of my friend tell me they charge so much becoz they need to find your paper. WTF, if Google can find me a web page from 8 billion others for free why the f$%^ should the guys at the Univ. charge so much.

The 69^th Acharya got arrested a few days back on charges of murder. I have always wondered how people can claim to be messengers and incarnations of Gods and how other people actually believe that. I remember the time in first year of college, one fine day the Sankarachrya came a visiting with his deputy and entourage. In college whenever somebody famous comes they have to come only after college hours. So I was not surprised to find lots of people cribbing when they found out that the buses would leave late. Of course after the function was over I thought to myself that at last i could go home but they announced that people could take 'blessings' from the seer so to my surprise, amusement and consternation lots of guys who were cribbing about going home late queued up to fall at his feet and the queue took longer to clear than the function itself. Just when I thought things could get worse they actually did. See I have only one paternal uncle whom I see as rarely as Haley's comet sees the Earth and by some miracle of the Gods he was in Madras on that fateful day and came to visit but by the time I got home he was leaving. He was coming down the lift when I was waiting for it. So I got to meet him only for a minute instead of the hour and more I would have. I wanted to scream. I am not complaining about the seer's visit but about the attitude of the people who feel at his feet. For some reason lots believe in him but others... well. I should have expected it considering most of those people realise there is a temple in the college campus only during exams and the day the results come. You can tell something important is there in college by looking at the crowd near the temple. People's attitudes amaze me.

My favourite animé series Rourini Kenshin (Samurai X) got over last week on Animax. I am hoping they'll restart it quickly like they did with Get Backers so that I can watch the 1^st few episodes that I missed. Animax has done a good job of replacing RK with a with what seems to be a good show Area 88. Should be fun. Lot of my friends just don't get the point about animé. They think it should be like cartoons. The point is animé is not like a cartoon. Just because it is animated doesn't mean it has to be the same. Its different and that's the best part. I love cartoons and I don't see why somebody who loves cartoons should not like animé. Don't expect a cartoon and you'll love animé. Some others don't like the look of the characters with their big eyes. That missing the point completely. The eyes give the animé characters their emotions. The eyes shape and look changes according to the emotion. Without the eyes the characters would not have any way of showing what they feel. I'll write more about the joys of animé some other time

Can't wait for CAT to get over; then I can watch Animax for much more time, at least till next June/July. After that I will have to do one of 2 things. Start preparing for CAT 2005 or figure out how to survive 2 years in a place that'll let me sleep only 4 hours a day. I wish some one could tell me what's gonna happen on Sunday right now. Maybe the seer can help me.

Ps1: The telecast of 2^nd round of UC is on 18^th Nov at 10:00pm on BCC World. This bit of info is for anyone who wants to see me on TV. (I know its a shameless ad)

PS2: Hope the title makes sense now

Xbox: I couldn't resist the ps2 Xbox pj. Really sorry

Rediscover the web

Its here !!!!!!!!! Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9^th. If u guys haven't yet done so I suggest you guys get it. It simply rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For those of you out there who think that Internet Explorer is the only way to surf you guys are sooooooo wrong. It is the WORST way to surf. Blake Ross' baby has come to life and how. Its amazing this guy is still in his teens and has been the main force behind the browser that is now IE's biggest worry. Over 2 million downloads in 2 days. Its only 4.7Mb for the Windows edition.

I had been using Opera for a while now but for the past few weeks have been using Firefox 0.8 for almost all my browsing. Now upgraded to Firefox 1.0.

Its amazing what people can do when they come together. Forefox has been another stunning example that Open Source Software is here to stay.

As the GNU philosophy says ``Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in ``free beer.'' When Microsoft bundled IE with its terrible operation system it killed the Netscape Navigator and the freedom of millions computer users. It's a question of choice folks. Now you have the choice to use a faster,better,safer browser. I used to think few years back that what MS did with the bundling of IE was a brilliant business move and quite approved of it but I have come to realise over time that what they did was wrong and as a result lay computer users are stuck with what is a brilliant example of what a browser should NOT be. Think about it people if Tim Berners-Lee hadn't given away his creation without thinking about making a single cent, the World Wide Web would not be what it is today. Shouldn't you be using software that truly reflects the spirit with which the web was created, to access it?

Some Links:
CNET news articles
Google star of Firefox

Aiyo Ohio

Oh no!! not again. Dubya is back in power. When everyone thought that he wasnt gonna win he did And this time quite comfortably. That makes one wonder why he won. Now I've been watching all these analysis programs on tv instead of analysing CAT papers . No CNN this time due to CAS so had to make do with BBC and NDTV. People on these channels gave quite a few reasons like the Americans did not want to change their commander in chief mid way through a war and stuff like all the very conservative right wing religious types who don't like abortion and homosexual marriages voted for him(of course these people dont realize that homosexual marriages are the best form of contraception and abortion is not an issue with homosexual couples).

But if u ask me I have my own asinine theory as to why the undecided voters went the Bush way. I hope my intelligent readers would know that the Republican party symbol is an elephant and the Democrat party symbol is a donkey. Now an undecided voter to make up his mind asks his/her friend for advice

dude1: whom should i vote for

dude2 (a kerry supporter): vote for the ass

dude1: u sure

dude2: yeah

so dude1 goes and votes for Bush using his average American intelligence. After all u cannot get a more fitting representation of the ass. And dude2 goes and votes for Kerry.

I know this theory is as plausible as Mallika Sherawat coming fully clothed in a movie but stranger things have happened (for example Bush has won a second term).

Vinod has been reading a book about useless information but there is a piece of information that that book does not have. It was only in 1930 that scientists were able to determine the size of the brain of the average American because in 1930 was invented their most important tool -- the electron microscope.

I have been informed that they are still trying to measure the size of Dubya's brain. They are facing a practical problem when u try to measure the size of something – u have to find it first. They are still looking i have been told. And statisticians have said that there is a higher probability of finding Osama than finding Bush's brain.

In other news Yasser Arafat has died and come back to life googol times last night if tv reports are to believed. This morning they have settled for the safer 'in very bad health' line.

CAT is looming in the horizon. God only knows whats gonna happen.

Me going to watch match. Gambhir's already out. Looks like India is trying to do everything to lose by an innings

Counting sdrawkcab

Ever since man invented numbers and could count he started counting backwards as well. Now i am not going to dwell into the history and the geography and angiography of counting backwards in eras gone bye bye but i shall bore you with the significance of counting backwards in modern society.

See if we were not able to count backwards we would not have countdown shows. There would have been no Superhit Muqabla and Baba Sehgal would have remained the engineer Babloo trying his hand in building things. There would no Mirchi Top 20 on the new suck it channel Zoom. So where would I get my weekly dose of Yana (of course in Mirchi Top 20 they put as much make up on her as the weight of Vijaykanth's a** and try everything possible to make a beautiful woman look ugly).

What would our movies be without counting backwards. How would the hero save the day from the time bomb if it was not ticking down to 0. No fun in seeing a timer trying to reach a hundred (like our Indian cricketers... oh sorry they are trying very hard to go from 0 to 1) and then the hero stopping it at 99. The fun lies in the hero wanting to cut off the blue wire cuts the red wire because he is colour blind and the counter reads 1. Wah kya scene hai!

Science would not have progressed without the countdown. Just imagine a space shuttle being launched without the 3,..2..,1 ..... and lift-off. We would not have set foot on the moon without counting backwards.

Without counting backwards Europe would never have had their hit The final Countdown. Talking about final countdown reminds me...

See the most important use of counting backwards is its use in counting down the days to a special occasion. Without counting backwards Vinod would not have the Doomsday counter counting down the days to the biggest rat race of them all CAT and without such a tool how would anybody psych out sleep depraved capitalist libertarians with Hutch connections.

See people counting backwards is sine qua non to the survival of human kind in the modern world.