Cuckooland, here I come!

Me: I have been tagged to write 6 weird things about me by mitr_bayarea.

My pal: Only 6? {sniggering} She doesn't know about you.

Me: Ofcourse, she doesn't know me. But how to get 6 weird things to write about?

My pal: Yeah, You are all things weirdo. Which 6 to pick? {guffaw} A difficult decision to make.

Me: Shut up.

My room mate passing by: Dude, Whom are you talking to? I see no phone. *

Me: I am singing, man! {hurriedly starting...."ta ra ra ta ta na na..."}

My room mate: {more hurriedly} okay, okay....whatever!

Seriously, I am baffled by this tag. What to write about?
And how is the weirdness factor measured? For me, many things are normal which are truly bizarre for some people somewhere in this world. Likewise I balk at many things that many people do effortlessly.

I am tempted to write things that go, "1. I am obsessive about cleanliness 2. I am perfection personified 3. I am fanatically punctual". But who am I kidding? I am not attending a job interview here. Has anyone observed how these interviews are conducted? There, one is always asked the standard question to list out one's weaknesses or failings. The interviewee should always come up with things like, "My weakness is I cannot stop working till I drop dead". Imagine an interview where after being asked this inevitable question, the interviewee answers, "Post lunch I cannot stop breaking wind all afternoon in office". Never happens, right? It may be the thing that he always does, but still it is impolite to brag of your real achievements. {No, It's not mine}
So I am gonna refrain from mentioning truly oddball things that I do. This is no confessional. Just my blog. I'll start now.

1. I like to brush my teeth daily. Not weird? Just ask all those animals. For this post, I approached a cow and said to her, " I brush my teeth daily, you know?". She remarked, "That's weird! Mooooo (that's boo in their language)". There you go.
Okay, okay, I will try to think weirdo stuff like a human being.

2. I like to have my tea with a chikki (peanut candy/kadalai mittai).

3. I dislike ties and suits and such formal stuff. I am more comfortable in what is comfortable for the human body. Sandals to smelly socks inside shoes, anytime.

Hmm....I've managed 3 points. 3 more to go. I have a doubt about the tag here. Weird things about me. Weird in whose perspective? Me or other fellow human beings? After my first point, I decided to stick to humans but now I am a little bit concerned on which human's perspective I should be referring to.
I've seen enough to say that nothing is weird to me anymore, eventhough I have not done most of them. If I were to base it on my perspective I cannot complete this post at all.
So I will continue to approach this tag from my fellow beings' assumed perspective.

4. I hate shaving on weekends. Does this count as a weird thing? I mean, even if I have to go out of my home, I don't shave.

Two more to go. Why 6 points? Why not, 4,5 or 7? Mitr_bayarea doesn't seem to be my mitr now.

5. I am never able to hold on to money. I don't know, but whatever money that I come across, I lose as fast as I get. I cannot save for the life of me. My friends regularly offer to save for me. But before I could hand it over to them, it seems to vanish! :-( It's becoming a serious problem. No, I neither drink nor smoke. And NO, NO, this is not my matrimonial ad. :-)

6. I hate those "realistic" movies depicting life as hard as it is. Weird, I can enjoy films as long they are funny and depict happier things in life. But once they get into real tragedies, I'm out. This doesn't mean I enjoy actors cavorting around trees singing. Positively revolting, they are.
I rest my case.

I'd love to pass on this tag, wanting to see how others tackle it. But I observe that writing as per a tag and then passing it on is not a fad anymore. Infact denouncing tags seems to be the in thing.Blogging is all about one's own thoughts and if one were to write on a given topic reduces it to a school essay, doesn't it? Or maybe with everyone tagging each other, defying tags is a way of standing out.

Whatever, I'd like to tag two persons whose blog personae are diametrically opposite. One is the King of abstract posts. Even his normal(?) posts being sort of weird, I'd love to see what he writes on things weird about him. The other blogger is as normal as anyone can be. Remniscing his motherland, yearning about long past childhood, poems and stories dominate his blog. He seems so normal, everything as they should be, so much so, that I'd like to see him revealing his quirkier facet, if any. But this being a weird post, I shall stop short of declaring a tag on them.

* just my imagination, this too! Go figure!

Will the real funny comic please standup?

Recently I have developed a fondness for standup comedies.
I have seen Jeff Foxworthy (read his book too), Larry the Cable guy, Adam Sandler, Seinfeld, Ellen Degeneres, Maragaret Cho (God forbid!), etc, etc.
And I arrived at the following conclusions:
1. An essential item for a standup comedy is sex. The more vulgar, the raunchier it is, the better.
2. Family is fair game, the more dysfunctional the more funnier.
3. The audience always have the mental maturity of a juvenile. So one should keep the comedy level always low, pretty low.
4. If you are not married, the more difficult and the more contrived will be your performance. Ellen, for example. She has a great voice but the topics are not always hilarious and she also seems to deliver the punch line with a reluctance.

But I have to agree on one thing, whatever their perceived drawbacks, standup comics provide much needed relief. I cannot but help comparing this to India where humour as a general doesn't exist in the society. We take ourselves too seriously, I think. If I am mistaken, please forgive me. Do not send an auto.

Ofcourse after seeing these American comics,even the British seem staid and tepid in their humour.

What is required to become a successful stand-up comic?
Self-deprecatory humour is a must, I think.
Sarcasm.
Then abilty to build up to a punch line.

Whatever! The ability to make a whole bunch of people laugh at one's jokes must give a huge high for so many people to go into that profession.

Pyrotechnics in prose!

Yesterday, I was surfing channels and suddenly came upon a Rudy Giuliani speech somewhere in NewHampshire. The man was mildly interesting with holes in his argument even I could spot. Next followed John Kerry speaking at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner stumping for Paul Hodes and Carol Shea Porter, the democratic candidates for the NH senate. That was some speech! The way he went about blasting the party in power and the vocab he used was admirable. The only downer was it was a prepared text and not extempore. For off the cuff fireworks, Clinton is the man, who pummeled down a caught in the corner anchor at Fox News recently.

Shards of soul

Ever felt like a bottle?
shattered to pieces;
jagged edges that hurt like hell.
Only to people who got hurt by it,
one would think.
Did anyone ever think,
how it felt to be the glass?
Not knowing why, for getting broken
in the first place.