The Tap and Other Incidents

Isaac Singer woke up only to find it to be one of those days where it didn’t really matter when and if he woke up at all. So he went back to sleep.

But fifteen minutes later he was wide awake, it also happened to be one of those days he couldn’t sleep off.

Sitting up, he looked around the room. It was rather late in the morning, he could tell from the brightened colour of everything, and the angry pool of light that fell between his legs. Other than that the room was exactly as he had left it last night. Of course, that was to be entirely expected since Isaac lived all by himself.

Standing before the basin, Isaac wondered whether thinking what would be appropriate to think at a particular time, counted as a legitimate thought.

He set aside that question and turned the tap before him.

The Tap.

It was an ordinary tap. But so old that even after water stopped flowing through, you could twist it five times around. Seven times, if you really wanted to. It was what ‘arthritis’ did to taps, quipped Isaac. Of course, he could share this only with himself... He always only turned it around just so that the water would stop.

And then he splashed his face several times before wiping it dry. And while he did this he realised he’d never really cared for the towels. Ordinary towels and so old that a single drop could almost soak them. It was what being threadbare did to towels...

Once again Isaac found himself quipping.

Sitting by the corner of his bed, Isaac considered it hugely comfortable to already be in the clothes he could spend his day in.


Yes! Yes, Isaac Singer concluded after three or four minutes of fierce deliberation. His ‘thought’ for that morning was going to be that he didn’t really know or understand what it was that he should spend time mulling over.

He wasn’t stupid, Isaac Singer as a matter of fact, knew of many important things to consider, but it happened to be the sort of day where it would make no sense to abide by the logical. His predicament was essentially silly and Isaac Singer had come to terms with that.

Or had he?

No. That was exactly the kind of debate Isaac had no time for.

And hence a crowd of a thousand ‘irrelevant’ arguments and ‘futile’ recollections from the past were screaming in disappointment, begging to enter, but Isaac kept them out.

They wouldn’t be..

And then, all of a sudden, he noticed the creepy-crawly insect for the first time. It was a giant Beetle, Isaac guessed, though he couldn’t say for sure. It was definitely a large insect, half the size of his fist, albeit a small fist.

Immediately Isaac sprang up, bent over his bed and waved his arm across the blanket. The insect was flung into space and traveling right across the room in a single brilliant arc, it crashed its back on the floor. Bouncing and spinning, it proceeded to slide below the cupboard.

Ordinarily Isaac would pay this incident no further attention; beyond the disappearance of the beetle below the cupboard. But the insect had crashed rather loudly and Isaac was curious to know what became of it.

The cold floor touched Isaac’s neck, jaw, cheek and finally his ears; but by then the neck was warm once again. And then his jaw, cheek and again, finally the ears.

Stressing his eyes, he saw the insect.

Like Isaac Singer, the poor beetle was stranded in a ridiculous situation. It was lying on its back; Isaac vaguely remembered having read that beetles couldn’t return to their feet once they fell on their backs. He definitely remembered reading that this was a difficult job for them.

But then he couldn’t have read…

In this case even if it could, the insect wouldn’t be able to. There was only a single inch of space between the cupboard and the floor and the beetle was broader than that. All it could do was madly and in total futility thrash away its tiny legs.

What was the insect thinking then? Did it know it was going to die? What would it think if and when Isaac rescued it? Did insects think at all? Was that the only way to get around the absurdity of, inexplicably and most suddenly finding oneself trapped in that obscure fashion? If it had one, what would be its final wish?

Isaac got up. He knew there was nothing slim and long enough in his room to pull out the insect. Even though a simple newspaper would do perfectly.

***

"What a strange man! An idiot, actually."

“What does the day’s news mean to him??"

"Why would anyone waste his final wish on a damn newspaper and five minutes with himself in the same bloody cell?”

“Beats me! He also asked for his tap to get fixed!”

"At least, he didn't ask to eat lobster. They always do that. Bastards!"

"Ya, lobsters. But that would make some sense!"

Conversations with Cookie - Battle of the Species

"Finding Out Who Kicks Whose Butt Day"

Me: Done?

Cookie: Done. Dude, dogs kick human butts, like so hard!!

Me: We'll see about that... Shoot!

Cookie: In the US alone ferocious Rottweilers kill upto a dozen people every year!!

ehehehehee!!!

Me: In Malaysia they have a festival delicacy during the Gawai (harvest day). It's called "Pekasam Semalam" - basically they stuff their dogs with whatever grain they were harvesting through the day.

The next day, brutal as it may sound, they make the dogs purge and barf everything they were earlier fed; swinging them in circles by the tail. And then they collect the dog vomit and serve with salt. Of course there's also rice wine!!

Cookie: SHIT MAAAAAN!!!

Conversations with Cookie - On Earth Day

Cookie: Humans are such rotten animals! Yesterday I was watching that Inconvenient Truth movie and it made me so angry I could totally kill someone.

Me: Earth Day? It's so lame man, like all they can come up with is Gore.

Cookie: I Know!! Hmm.. Anyway!! How do you justify the criminal imbalance between what humans give to this planet and what they take away? How are you going to even begin to explain all this pollution to your kids?

Me: I don't know... I guess, who needs the wilderness if you have lots more ice cream, free music and Call of Duty XXI?

Cookie: Don't reduce everything to frivolous humour. It's our PLANET! We have only ONE! CO2 levels are the highest in 650,000 years. The 10 hottest ever years were all in the last 14!!!! There is a strong chance that a major ice sheet in Greenland or in West Antarctica will collapse in this decade! Either of which would raise global sea levels by over 20 feet, flooding coastal areas and creating 100 million fresh refugees!!!!

Me: Okay...

Cookie: If I were human, I'd stop worrying about the economy.

Me: But..

Cookie: You serve no real purpose on this planet. You have your fancy cars, and your fancy jobs and your bizarre and pointless space exploration and fucking stupid Bono. But to make your own lives comfortable and interesting you pollute. Like PIGS!!!

Me: Calm d...

Cookie: No!!!!

Me: O..

Cookie: FOR ONCE YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT SOME REAL PROBLEMS!!!!

Me: Like??

Cookie: Take for instance the fact that when the automobile driver uses his car, in effect, he saves a certain quantity of energy by not walking. The energy provided by food is then stored in the form of fats. As the driver accumulates fat (energy), the automobile wastes fossil fuel (energy). The automobile could in fact acquire its energy directly from the driver, solving at once, obesity, pollution and the energy crisis. An intimate reciprocity between man and machine. That is ALL you should think about.

Me: You are right, you know.

Cookie: I know.

Me: Say, how do you justify being a pet? All you do is rob the world of much livestock, cheese and mango... You do recollect, the Wikipedia page from last week? Your particular breed of dog, The Samoyed, is known for a loud bark, and hold your breath, a wide smile. And that most Samoyeds wont even make good sheep dogs because after a while the sheep lose total respect for err, a smiling dog. I think I'm going to get a pet I can eventually eat. An intimate reciprocity..

Cookie: *wags tail*

6 Awesome Torture Techniques (You Haven't Heard Of)

What’s with me and parentheses these days? (What the heck, though??)

Since the dawn of time men have absolutely hated each other. Throughout history, this mutual disgust has led to the discovery of one putrid torture technique after another.

Of course mankind has had other concerns too, namely a Conscience. Coupled with a matchless talent for heroic underachievement this sense of right and wrong led to the creation of the United Nations.

The United Nations, or the UN, or the UriNal, as it is respectfully known in North Korea (yeah, what can I say, Kim Jong-il and his primitive jokes) has in its typical bureaucratic elegance defined torture as –

“any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a male or female person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions.”

Continuous recitation or written reproduction of the above paragraph for only a few minutes is now a certified form of highly potent and severely unbearable psychological torture.

Of course it’s too soft a method (c’mon UN, will ya stop being so gay, like all the time??) to make it to the following, legendary, Hall of Pain.

1. Boiling is to torture, what the missionary position is to a good night’s rest. Quick, crude, lazy, yet highly effective, to the point, and will never be out of fashion. Of course, you won’t get full marks for imagination, but what the fuck?

Don't try this at home!!

It is unclear when boiling evolved from what we did to tea leaves to what we did to one another.

But I guess it all started when in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, the slave girl killed those thirty-seven thieves by pouring boiling oil into their hiding-jars.

Then the Romans were known to boil all slaves brought in for interrogation. Apparently a slave was not to be trusted until his brains were sufficiently cooked. Of course, the English took boiling to the next level. They experimented with medium, using oil, tar, tallow and even molten lead.

Cookie: *gasp*

What’s with pirates and torture? Cat o’ nine tails, caning, birching, walking the plank?? It’s like they do such things for fun!

Oh.

2. Keelhauling So one day you are being a normal, good-for-nothing, syphilis infested pirate with stale rum pouring out of most of your orifices and minding your own business. Then all of a sudden it’s your day to make up for the lack of TV, years without women and those cowardly Navy Seals shooting you with sniper rifles.

So what do your buddies do?

They tie you to a rope that loops beneath the vessel, throw you overboard from one side and drag you under the ship’s keel to the other side, very quickly.

Sound’s like a bit of drunken revelry eh? Not much torturing huh? Go back to your Pirates of the Caribbean; you’ll recall that the hull was basically covered with those darn barnacles! Our good friend would return with some super serious cuts.

Sometimes to make it more interesting, they’d pull slowly. The weight would lower the pirate below the barnacles, but then there was always the little technicality, of drowning.

Some guys have all the luck! (all the time!!)

And now dear reader, ancient Greece.

3. The Brazen Bull. A hollow bull cast of pure bronze. The poor criminal would be shut inside and a fire would be lit under it.

Before you could count to 33,000 the bull would be white hot, and the inmate completely roasted.

The Greeks weren’t really into getting the criminal to divulge stuff. All they wanted was a little torture before murdering the poor fellow. (In your face, Amnesty International!!!!)

Sketch from private [stolen {not by me (seriously)}] diary of a guard at Abu Gharib

So what makes this so sick eh?

Well the Greeks stuffed the nose of the bull with incense, so that the death gave off a pleasant smell. Then they engineered a series of locks and tubes into the head, so that all screams were translated into furious bull snarls. So, all in all, The Brazen Bull was fully Euro V and Bharat VIII compliant.

Oh and to, to finance all this tomfoolery, they sold the charred bones as bracelets!!!!!

Cookie: *shriek*

4. The Scold’s Bridle was an iron cage for the head with an iron spike projecting into the mouth and resting precariously atop the tongue. So as to cruelly torture the tongue if it dared stir.

It was inflicted on women who spoke too much. And so heavy was its demand that at one time it was believed to have singlehandedly driven the industrial revolution.

The French Version - Haute-Couture, but misses the basic premise of torture. (No tongue spike!!)

But then the fad died a natural death, probably because it started to kill the concept of impromptu oral sex. (Which, by the way, was pretty big in the Middle Ages, and then again, only in the 70s.)

5. Stocks were used to torture man through public humiliation since forever. I am talking about –

In modern times, with minor changes, these are BIG in the pornographic industry (Source: Wikipedia)

My interest in the above, is of course only scholarly, I hope you are with me on this one, dear reader? (Oh yeah?)

Anyway, the Brits used this by leaving people strapped in a Stock, in public, for days. Barefeet. Because apparently being caught without footwear was like the worst possible humiliation and all.

It is one of the reasons the Brits found the Stock to be completely ineffective on Indians during their rule. The other is that we totally eat a lot of garlic.

For my final entry dear reader, I leave you with a mental image.

6. The Punishment of the Picquet.

Imagine a stake in the ground with one sharpened end facing upward. The malefactor is, with one thumb suspended from a tree, while the opposite naked foot is balanced atop the stake.

The point of the stake on which the foot rests is sufficiently sharp to cause considerable discomfort but not enough to penetrate the flesh or separate bones.

By relieving pressure from his foot, the prisoner places all of his weight on the suspended thumb, whereas, by relieving tension from his thumb, the prisoner exposes his foot to the full effect of the Picquet…

A real situation dear reader, a real Catch. Catch 22. (The biggest there is, the only worth mentioning.) Eh?

Conversations with Cookie - On Wanting to Explode (Ok, Go Off)

Me: I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could explode,
I wish I was a sacrifice but somehow still lived on…

Cookie: “go off”

Me: I wish I was a sentimenta… Huh?

Cookie: It’s “go off”. I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off.

Me: Yeah, whatever.

Cookie: It’s a shame Pearl Jam was once accused of being a synthetic grunge band, now they seem as organic and principled a rock band as any. I love that they play every show like it’s the last.

Me: I only listen to Wishlist.

Cookie: I have more, totally valuable opinions on Portishead, Yann Tiersen, Dylan and of course your recent love, Mogwai.

Me: STOP GOING THROUGH MY IPOD?!!!!

Cookie: I wish I was as fortunate, as fortunate as me
I wish I was a messenger and all the
news was good…

Cookie: I’d make a supercool groupie. I just know it... *sigh*

Conversations with Cookie - On Being a Dog (Why it Sucks, Sometimes)

Cookie: Do you have an ALL-TIME favourite person?

Me: Mm Hmm.

Cookie: No?

Me: No.

Cookie: Okay.

Cookie: Canis Familiaris. Cookie Canis Lupus Familiaris is my name, hereby and herewith. A lover of cheese, mango and all types of meat. Also, avante-garde philosopher. The flamboyant symbol of the angst-ridden yet thinking Modern Dog. And in her spare time, a beacon of global peace and hope.

Cookie: Phew.

Me: Yes.

Cookie: Anyway, I have had enough of you and others of your ilk. I don't care whether you say anything or not.

Cookie: What I do care about is Beetroots.

Cookie: Beta Vulgaris. (Vulgaris, ehehehehee) Beetroot can be peeled, steamed, and then eaten warm with butter as a delicacy; cooked, pickled, and then eaten cold as a condiment; or peeled, shredded raw, and then eaten as a salad. The Romans used beetroot as a treatment for debilitating constipation, and also as an aphrodisiac. Which makes this humble root a kinky resident of the culinary world. Its use also threw up the phrase, 'take favours in the beetroot field' which hints at visiting prostitutes. Betacyanin in beetroot may cause red urine in some people who are unable to break it down. This is called beeturia. (Red urine, ehehehehee)

Me: Yeah I know. I love you too.

Cookie: Go to the beetroot fields.. For all of your life!!

Throwing Shoes

If you have been completely busy these last few days, doing something, having a life or just digging your nose and counting the stars then you might have missed this. Three highly trained, ultra awesome, super brutal Navy Seals shot dead ‘three’ Somali pirates.

Simultaneously.

And CNN will go on and on about this. And invite retired Navy Seals who will go on and on about how incredibly brilliant and kickass the whole thing was. What's with these people? Why are they behaving like its America’s first military success in almost a decade.

Oh.

Anyway If I ever see a pirate I’m going to throw a shoe at his syphilis infested ass, for being so lame, throwing a show now being the international symbol of pure hatred and/or ridicule.

I’d also want to throw a shoe on –

Barkha Dutt, again for being so lame.
Randomly, into space. Randomly.
Delhi, just so that I could be there to do it.
Amar Singh Ji.
HD Deve Gowda, to wake him up.
Anybody else who will return it.

So the elections began today. An election that will decide the fate of this country. The largest democracy in the world. An election that is not about development, fighting poverty, eradicating hunger, reversing unemployment, fighting terrorism, America, uplifting women, reducing the fiscal deficit or the nuclear deal. And yet an election that will determine each of these parameters over the coming future.

An election with 750 million registered voters. But one where only 250 million of them will punch in 400 million votes.

Btw, what exactly was the nuclear deal? I know that the Prime Minister said we’d lose everything if we didn’t sign it, and the Left said we’d lose everything if we did. But what happened?

Oh and I am not voting. And endless “Jago Re” campaigns shall have no effect. I have my reasons, but I will not lie, apathy and laziness top that list. Also the fact is, all three candidates from my constituency are certified criminals and endorsed assholes.

Maybe I’ll throw a shoe at them too.

Do you know that at one point dueling was an Olympic sport? Of course any activity, where the Silver and Bronze medals are always awarded posthumously, had to be fairly short lived. But then that was the last time the Olympics were interesting.

I think the time has come to inaugurate throwing shoes at each other as an Olympic sport.

Or shooting Pirates, with sniper rifles.

Someday, I want to see a tornado. Actually not really. Maybe if it’s just really cloudy without rain, ill be happy enough. That’s my favourite weather. Cloudy without rain and some breeze.

Oh, and if you thought the elections, or Barkha Dutt, or the Olympics, or even I was lame.

Navy Seals right? The Seal is for Sea, Air AND Land. Honestly.