tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62530319347586683032011-08-01T18:09:28.984-07:00Weirdly wilting willies Or Lovely lilting lillies; Pseudo scrappy soliloquies Or crude crappy colloquies ...DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.comBlogger341100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-27898238941430703842010-10-25T23:14:00.000-07:002010-10-26T00:21:11.915-07:00

Walk in the night. Lighted night. Positively brushed up the look of the street, the lights. Like a bunch of scam artists had sneaked in under the cover of dusk and touched it all up. He saw their handiwork. Glib lights and conspiring curtains. Quick, quick, hide drabby sun! Lone steps sound ahead. Thin frame, slow walk. The face still obscure, waiting to be seen. Wonder what his story was.

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-38921911150575344322008-10-03T02:21:00.001-07:002008-10-03T02:29:07.210-07:00

Warning: what follows isn’t poetry, even if it looks formatted that way. I remember I once entertained, quite honestly, the idea that I would make a really good music director,      (and look where I am now, with only a few days a month to scour      flimsy flash websites for the cheap thrills of a catchy desi tune,          (though, sometimes, in the trash, one does stumble upon rare

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-47849122324850111972008-09-29T14:14:00.000-07:002008-09-29T14:49:51.073-07:00

I am amazed to see how many times the word 'greed' has been mentioned when discussing Wall St and big corporations in the last couple of weeks. I simply don't get it. Isn't that the fundamental of a capitalist free market society? Even an every day deposit bank takes a fairly large amount of risk by 'greedily' loaning out huge sums of money in long-term loans while betting that most of its

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-16391203869358627862008-09-19T02:12:00.001-07:002008-09-19T02:17:41.121-07:00

        Watched Memento recently. Before this, I remember watching it once in grad school. Even now, I liked the same things I remember from that time. Mainly, how the reverse time concept is not just a neat trick to introduce a suspense angle to what is, in retrospect (pun unintended), a fairly straightforward plot line. In fact, I was almost disappointed  once I could fully understand the

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-48602142062111941782008-09-09T22:38:00.001-07:002008-09-10T02:22:46.881-07:00

He carries his proud, pale face with him, sitting inconspicuously at a corner of the street, peddling the frayed articles arranged neatly at his feet. They weren't of much value even before, but scarred by time, they are practically worthless now. He wonders idly if, at some point in the future, they could turn into antique objects of priceless merit. But he has never understood the mercurial

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-4423748572278502862008-03-17T18:15:00.001-07:002008-03-17T18:16:32.300-07:00

Was pinged for some music recos, so here are some Hindi/Tamil/Telugu picks from the last month or two. Plus, someone also commented that this was degenerating into a music/movies blog, so the obvious retort is to blog more of the same. :) And, if you are going to listen to just one song, let it be Lambi Judai (or the male version, Judai) in Jannat, which continues to showcase the amazing number

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-52107360274092109622008-03-05T23:35:00.001-08:002008-03-05T23:39:56.672-08:00

Been listening to Sonu Nigam's new album - Classically Mild - and found this gem amongst all the goodness. The beats mix elements of jazz and traditional tabla, the orchestration is almost overwhelming in parts and the lyrics cover the eternal Whys. Sochta hoon main khel yeh kya hain Insaan jeeke paata kya hain Sadiyon se yeh raaz chupa hain

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-1156778938136269102007-11-21T00:48:00.001-08:002007-11-21T00:53:06.620-08:00

The Kite RunnerI am not even sure how I heard of this book or how I built up this notion of it being something I had to read at some point, but like one of those insidious little bugs that worm their way into the home when the doors are a crack open, I did. So two days ago, I picked it up from Half Price on a random whim.And man, it was a huge let down. I mean, I know this thing about

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-43591243499430434202007-11-13T21:09:00.001-08:002007-11-13T21:11:06.925-08:00

Some gult music director took it upon himself to copy My Humps into Telugu, with fairly and expectedly disastrous consequences. Original English lyrics, including the title, mesh with Telugu poetry to make the ultimate long island iced tea you wish you'd never drunk. Vel has got to be the worst movie I've watched in a long while. Reminds you that masala movies have standards too and if you

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-49728254346051011732007-10-27T19:51:00.000-07:002007-10-27T20:02:27.852-07:00

Two small pieces I came up with some time when I was bored. Both sound vaguely familiar, but anyway ...

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-30549006702282146372007-10-25T18:39:00.000-07:002007-10-25T19:08:50.463-07:00

Watching this video is a deeply unnerving experience ...If you haven't heard already, Tehelka's been at their hidden-cam sting-operation stuff again. And there are allegations that this is being sponsored/doctored by the Congress, and Tehelka's journalism and the video itself treads the boundary between sensationalist hyperbole and a notable expose rather shoddily, swinging so much toward the

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-61704120230020960672007-10-24T19:26:00.000-07:002007-10-24T21:05:44.597-07:00

(No, I don't have any special information about ARR's debit cards etc, this is about Azhagiya Thamizh Magan, A R Rahman's latest movie. If you didn't know or don't care, goto Exit;)Much as I'd like to start off with "ARR's much-awaited music for ATM" or with "Vijay's much-hyped would-be-blockbuster", such flights of fancy will need to find their place on Yezha-ya Dalapati's fan sites. But I am

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-16898153168458677262007-06-29T02:01:00.001-07:002007-06-29T02:02:34.363-07:00

Sparing the spare set of my readers the obligatory dump on why I haven't been blogging so frequently, we (me and my other personalities) bring you a bulleted series of musings. At this point, we realise:I/we use bullets way more often than I should. All my emails at work are formatted to look like a precise action plan (which, I think, serves to entice people into thinking that reading this mail

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-68365699959647672872007-06-11T23:36:00.001-07:002007-06-12T00:06:29.540-07:00

More Telugu movie randomness now. Balakrishna (son of the late N T Rama Rao) stands poised atop a train and imagines himself a Moses before the Sea and much like Moses, who invokes the power of God to part the waters, he invokes the power of innumerable random historical Telugu figures and their legacy to command the train to move back. And guess what, if it works for Moses, it works for

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-85526017029115564832007-05-11T00:44:00.001-07:002007-06-12T00:06:12.582-07:00

Finally, things slow down enough at work for me to realise I actually have a blog and some pursuits other than kicking off builds and debugging random client issues. (By the way, I was working on this new plugin-addin-thingy for Microsoft Outlook that allows you to read Hotmail on Outlook for free. So when this thing releases in 2 weeks, all you Outlook users will have more folders to check mail

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-34213749626947186032007-04-03T22:45:00.000-07:002007-04-04T00:10:31.858-07:00

Spoiler alert: Some story/plot elements revealed.Ever know moments when everything suddenly slows down and feels hopeless, all of a sudden, like when that acquaintance at a party suddenly ditches you mid-conversation for a girl, leaving you alone, away from the crowd? Anyway, it felt that way Friday night, when tired and exhausted after having failed to get tickets to The Namesake the third time

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-62828409800396565402007-04-01T18:34:00.000-07:002007-04-01T19:44:46.319-07:00

Sivaji. The Boss. Rajnikanth, Shankar, A R Rahman, Sujatha.Lots of big names, standard silly-crazy hype (and of course, one of the hottest Telugu heroines Shriya). Interesting drama a week ahead of the audio release, when three of the tracks leaked out. Enter: the blog world. Crazy speculation about where these tracks were from was topped by an innocuous comment on this blog by someone called

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-54990992396494319862007-03-25T23:41:00.000-07:002007-03-25T23:44:51.655-07:00

Warning: One of those diary entries, terribly interesting to the protagonist and possibly horribly boring to the observer. But anyway ...It's been a calm day today. Started off with lunch with one of those loud, oh-me-me types. Actually, he was smart and interesting, but I don't give two hoots for people who cannot sit down and listen to someone else on a common topic. After all, life isn't

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-46148016544160862512007-03-09T00:10:00.000-08:002007-03-09T00:57:32.351-08:00

Oh, for what could have been! Ram Gopal Varma could have almost pulled that elusive flowery shape out of the clouds and created a real flower and oh, for how simultaneously true and fake art could have been. But clouds will remain clouds and silences will be what they are, boring moments lost in emptiness.Nishabd starts off with amazing chemistry between an aging yet handsome Amitabh and a

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-15268101862283403812007-03-01T00:58:00.000-08:002007-03-01T01:07:16.770-08:00

The first thing his eyes turn to when they get into his creaky black car, panting from the sprint through the rain to the almost deserted parking lot, is the backseat. He winces, almost instantly, embarassed at the thought. For, he considers himself staid and sober and dignified and this wasn't how gentlemen thought. He puts the thought out of his head and turns on the ignition, still shivering

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-76021810664631466032007-02-27T00:28:00.000-08:002007-02-27T00:41:35.128-08:00

Sizzling and grilling on the sands of TimeA nameless hunger, a drunken thirstYears of tempering and sweating in grimeUntil it hits, you are your own dishTender wrinkles and warts give the lieAnd you can deny it no moreAnd when the simmer finally runs dryYou wonder if your recipe was good enoughBut worry not, you still wina second karmic chance with YamaIn crackling oil and the fires of sinYou

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-41329228592310960792007-01-29T23:48:00.000-08:002007-01-30T01:54:47.409-08:00

Of all the songs I've been listening to the past week, I thought I'd pick some out. There've been quite a few decent ones ...Kadhal Vaithu - Deepavali, Yuvan Shankar Raja.Yuvan Shankar Raja sometimes has this uncanny knack of putting away his wannabe-American-pop-star self and coming up with a decently straightforward blend of his father's immortal simplicity and ARR-style modern instrumentation.

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-39754977048446622352007-01-29T00:25:00.000-08:002007-01-29T12:41:45.503-08:00

... and here's a random tune I managed to 'compose' all by myself! And I have no clue about almost any theory of music composition yet, so I see this as a sign of a budding Mozart or Ilayaraja in me ;)PS - I think I encoded the track at a very low volume, so if you don't hear anything, just turn up the volume (duh!) direct link for the Windows-challenged ;)Ok, I managed to 'compose' one more

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-15515309859815943162007-01-13T04:48:00.000-08:002007-01-13T04:59:44.952-08:00

The verdict: Guru disappoints. With Mani you expect magic, and when you see a magician wave his wand over a bunch of flowers to produce, well, a bunch of flowers, it is disappointing, however beautiful the flowers happens to be.What's good: Abhishek acts amazingly well. Reminded one of Kamal in Nayagan in parts, though, overall, he didn't get anywhere near Kamal's range. Mithun Chakraborty should

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-86224048327401606252007-01-08T19:40:00.000-08:002007-01-08T19:43:01.802-08:00

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all your Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.-- Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald.I like this one a lot. For some reason, I think of this poem together with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Which, put very very loosely, says that Entropy a.k.a Randomness in the Universe

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-42386497271783218882007-01-08T18:21:00.000-08:002007-01-08T19:32:29.011-08:00

I usually hate so-this-is-what-I've-been-up-to kinda posts, but for now, that seems like a good way to kickstart blogging, so here goes. What we did on New Year's eve ....The New Year necessitated appropriate hungama and revelry, so off went a group of us to a desi dance party nearby. $40 tickets to the party were bought, dinner plans were made and everything seemed set right. The first

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-39873820684367359902006-12-08T02:09:00.000-08:002006-12-09T23:11:35.666-08:00

@caffeinated: please don't read this.Driving her scrappy Corolla back home from work that day through the thick black rain and wondering why she attributed the color black to something as colorless as rain, she couldn't help but sense a woolly-blankety feeling smothering her. Something heavy. Not something she could put a finger on. But it was there, for sure. Atleast, as sure as one could be of

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-54889511066730010332006-12-08T00:18:00.000-08:002006-12-08T02:27:29.878-08:00

Ok, so here’s a story. It’s a crazy story, not all completely crazy like The Matrix or The Satanic Verses or something, but real-crazy. You know, like how life can be both real and crazy at times, weird disjunctions mixing, yolk-and-white-like, into a confused mish-mash, but entertaining nevertheless. You get it? You nod - maybe you do, maybe you don’t, people nod at everything. Anyway …So we

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-42474091367323321682006-11-18T01:51:00.000-08:002006-11-18T02:11:54.084-08:00

Pale dreamless facesand dark drab placesAll the color that was to beis lost in what is not to beAll we can do is wait and seeAnd accept Time's brooding legacy

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-5712882212046361892006-11-07T00:09:00.000-08:002006-11-07T02:57:56.282-08:00

Maximus starts at his first job, buoyant, hopeful and confident because, like the Roman generals of the past, he is armed with The Three Principles ...... (K for Knowledge) He knows binary trees, linked lists and quick-sorts.... (U for Unique) He is the only student from his university to work at TinySoft, the world's greatest and largest software company.... (N for Nice) His B.O.S.S. is so kind

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-54312262186204044032006-10-31T13:37:00.000-08:002006-10-31T15:33:30.424-08:00

Summary: 7 word 'stories'. Scroll below to read the stories and skip the shit.Once upon a time, very long ago, people were totally at peace with the concept of joblessness. Historians suspect that religion, with its thousand rituals and million edge clauses took birth around this time. At that time, there were stories and 1000 page novels and descriptive descriptions. Then evolution kicked in and

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-76087400413904842182006-10-27T20:18:00.000-07:002006-10-28T01:41:34.702-07:00

From the top of the first pageTo the end of the last dayFrom the start in your own wayYou just want somebody listening to what you sayIt doesn't matter who you areIt doesn't matter who you are- Coldplay, X & Y: Square OneColdplay rocks! And this isn't the first time I'll say it here.

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-87558483784687935052006-10-27T20:17:00.000-07:002006-10-28T01:39:55.121-07:00

Brokeback Mountain is the ultra-post-modern chick flick. The movie makers tried hard to camouflage this by painting the town gay and showing us closetted sights of two males desperately attempting to defy the natural laws of fornication, but the fact remains, Brokeback Mountain is a simple chick flick.You are most likely not convinced, so here's the story. Raj and Simran find jobs at a sheep farm

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6253031934758668303.post-26594280544152504572006-10-27T20:08:00.000-07:002006-10-30T12:22:25.511-08:00

The sands of TimeAre steeped in New BeginningsAs the nature of rhymeIs given to fresh imaginings

DufusMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11561900554622280695noreply@blogger.com0