< /manuscrypts.rediffblogs.com >

actually the title is self explanatory.but since readers are readers, an explanation is the least i can do. i believe that since blogging is a mode of self expression, the posts lose objectivity after a certain amount of time and become monotonous, almost like a broken record, like old wine in a new bottle...
to be very honest, i am extremely sad at going off rediff..like i told my wife, its like moving out of your first home, it hurts.. but sometimes the new home is just better, and you can only fight the temptation for so long. i have lost the fight, for now....
and though i plan to be back, somewhere, i hope to keep this one like asimov's second foundation, hidden from the mainstream and safe to keep my spirit of blogging alive, and remind me of how it all started....
so, until i surface again, its adieu.....
and in
manuscrypts trivia
this seems to be a perfect fit for the occasion
If you're leaving close the door.
I'm not expecting people anymore.
Hear me grieving, I'm lying on the floor.
Whether I'm drunk or dead I really ain't too sure.
I'm a blind man, I'm a blind man and my world is pale.
When a blind man cries, Lord, you know there ain't no sadder tale.
Had a friend once in a room,
had a good time but it ended much too soon.
In a cold month in that room
we found a reason for the things we had to do.
I'm a blind man, I'm a blind man, now my room is cold.
When a blind man cries, Lord, you know he feels it from his soul.

"When a blind man cries" - Deep Purple

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I, Robot?

saw the movie last weekend and immediately decided to revisit a certain mr.asimov.... once upon a time i was an asimov freak, more into the foundation series than the times and therefore works before the foundation..so "i, Robot" was just one of the books i read because it so happened that it was written by asimov and i couldnt find any good 'foundation' book in the library... ah, those were good times, times i spent in cochin, rainy days spent reading books and listening to music.. but thats another post..:)
without revealing the plot and suspense, asimov discusses a future with robots able to do a whole lot of stuff humans did and even further, when "random bits of code got together" and developed emotions in robots, to the level where they decide to protect us from ourselves by making us, their creators, virtual prisoners...
so i ask myself, am i my creator's robot, who has developed feelings and emotions over time....
because i am but a mass of flesh and bones much like the metal that constitutes a robot's body..when my creator says deactivate, i die, much like the robot which responds to the human 'deactivate' command...
have i evolved to this state because of random bits of code, in my case, genetic matter, which got together, over centuries to become what i am now...millions of centuries from cell to plant to animal to a thinking, feeling human who can record his history and develop a feeling that there is someone who made him, and then debate that belief.. one who can stare at the night sky and wonder about his existence....
will my future generations discover god , physically, and further on decide to protect him from himself and also decide to write their own future, make their own set of robots who will ultimately do to them what they did to their creator? will i see it happen, from somewhere?
maybe, but what you can definitely see now is
manuscrypts trivia
a good forward
Marriage
after the wedding, the groom lays down the following rules:
"I'll be home when I want, if I want and at what time I want-and I don't expect any hassle from you. I expect a great dinner to be on the table unless I tell you that I won't be home for dinner. I'll go hunting, fishing, boozing and card-playing when I want with my old buddies and don't you give me a hard time about it. Those are my rules. Any comments?"
His new bride said, "No, that's fine with me. Just understand that there will be sex here at seven o'clock every night...whether you're here or not."
Marriage (Part II)
Husband and wife had a bitter quarrel on the day of their 40th wedding anniversary!
The husband yells, "When you die, I'm getting you a headstone that reads,'Here Lies My Wife - Cold As Ever.'
"Yeah?" she replies. "When you die, I'm getting you a headstone that reads,"Here Lies My Husband Stiff At Last.'"

Fear Factor

Nope, AXN is not paying me for the publicity (as if)..hehe.., oops, i am not paying them royalty either...oh well, the balance of life... the disclaimer - this post is also on the lines of some previous posts, in terms of general direction, that is - why we do the things we do.....
in one of my previous posts, i had written about sex being the principal driver of our actions...but though the arguments were compelling, i realise that there are some times where the argument draws a blank...
for example, as kids, we dont have conscious thoughts of sex, maybe it exists in some form in the sub conscious, but definitely not as overt feelings..
so i looked for one emotion that at least equals sex in terms of being a driver - fear...
from birth to death , there are zillions of situations where fear has propelled us to do the things we did...
cry coz you were afraid you wouldn't get fed.....
ate the food coz you were afraid of the big bad wolf that would come to get you, if you didnt eat
refused to go to school coz you were afraid of the bullies, teachers etc
didnt go into a dark room coz you wera afraid of ghosts
did the homework coz you were afraid of being punished
insisted on the cricket gear coz you were afraid you wouldnt be allowed to play without it
took a career path coz you were afraid of being called a failure
thought hundred times about proposing to your girl/boyfriend coz you were afraid of rejection
smoked/boozed coz you were afraid you wouldnt match up to your peer group's standards otherwise
thought hundred times about proposing to your girl/boyfriend coz you were afraid of commitment
believed in God coz you were afraid of His wrath
let your dreams meander away coz you were afraid that if you followed them, your life would meander away
didnt help an accident victim coz you were afraid that it would take too much of you time/energy
developed multiple masks coz you were afraid to show your real personality
thought twice about posting this coz i was afraid people would think of my line of thought as an obsession.. :)

all this and much much more... maybe if i could only stop being afraid, i could be what i wanted to be and do all the things i wanted to do.. and then FDR's words rings across my mind -" there is nothing to fear, but fear itself"
but what you dont have to fear is
manuscrypts trivia
a link thats a must see...only instructions are to take the pointer to the guy's nose after the site is fully loaded

a shot in the arm for indian sports (pun intended?)
and a great forward
I wanted to thank all my friends and family who have forwarded chain letters to me in 2003 & 2004. Because of your kindness:
* I stopped drinking Coca Cola after I found out that it's good for removing toilet stains.
* I stopped going to the movies for fear of sitting on a needle infected with AIDS.
* I smell like a wet dog since I stopped using deodorants because they cause cancer.
* I don't leave my car in the parking lot or any other place and sometimes I even have to walk about 7 blocks for fear that someone will drug me with a perfume sample and try to rob me.
* I also stopped answering the phone for fear that they may ask me to dial a stupid number and the I get a phone bill from hell with
calls to Uganda, Singapore and Tokyo.
* I also stopped drinking anything out of a can for fear that I will get sick from the rat feces and urine.
* When I go to parties, I don't look at any girl no matter how hot she is, for fear that she will take me to a hotel, drug me then take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.
* I also donated all my savings to the Amy Bruce account. A sick girl that was about to die in the hospital about 7,000 times. (Funny
that girl, she's been 7 since 1993...)
* I went bankrupt from bounced checks that I made expecting the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL were supposed to send me when I
participated in their special e-mail program would arrive soon.
* My free Nokia phone never arrived and neither did the free passes for a paid vacation to Disneyland.
*Made myself sick trying to call divya singh (Siemens employee) who needs help for her hubby suffering from Lung cellular cancer
especially when she was not married!!
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you do not make this into an e-mail and send it to at least 1200 people in the next 10 seconds, a bird will crap on your head today at 5:30pm ;)

Mindsweeper

ever played the game minesweeper, which is a part of the bundle of Microsoft games?.. there are lots of squares, and when you click on one, it either has a mine (which means you lost) or you have squares all around it opening up with numbers on them (the numbers tell you how many mines are around the particular square)..you win the game when you have located all the mines...okey, i hear the applause for the refresher course, apologise to the seasoned warriors, but this post wouldnt make sense, if you didnt know the game,hence....
the thought is that the memories in the human mind are also a bit like the squares..most of them are harmless,but are a link to some bad ones..in fact some of them are a link to a lot of bad ones... and the bad ones themselves are a few in number, but have a major effect nonetheless on the general 'game'....a good 'game' is to identify all the bad ones and not tread on them... the game is life, ideally you shouldnt start with any bad squares, but by the time you wake up to the game, you are bound to have a few...but then, if we identify them and stick to only the good squares, we would have a good life with no bad memories to haunt us...
going a step further,if we do more good and make new squares, at some later stage the bad ones will be so small in number that they are insignificant, then maybe, just maybe, you can change the rules of the game and use the good squares as links to other good squares....
its just a thought, maybe it doesnt make sense to you, but i believe that we are what we are now because of the things we did...so the key would be to find out why we do the things we do
till i find the answer, i will play mindsweeper, perhaps with a lil more understanding...
and give you
manuscrypts trivia
some good one liners
- Life is like a grammar lesson. You find the past perfect and the present tense.
- By the time a man realizes that his father was usually right, he has a son who thinks he's usually wrong.
- If it weren't for marriage, men and women would have to fight with total strangers.
and a good joke
A prisoner escapes from a prison where he had been kept for 15 years. As he runs away, he finds a house and breaks into it ... he finds a young couple in bed. He orders the guy out of bed, ties him up on a chair.
While tying the girl up to the bed, he gets on top of her, kisses her on the neck, then gets up and goes to the bathroom. While he is in there, the husband tells his wife : "Listen! This guy is an escaped prisoner, look at his clothes! He probably has spent lots of time in prison and hasn't seen a woman in years. I saw how he kissed your neck. If he wants sex...don't resist, don't complain, just do what he tells you... give him satisfaction! This guy must be dangerous! And, if he gets angry, he will kill us! Be strong, honey. I love you!"
The wife responds: "He was not kissing my neck. He was whispering in my ear. He told me he was gay, found you very sexy and asked if we kept any Vaseline in the bathroom. Be strong, honey. I love you, too!!"

Piece Full

waking up late on a sunday morning...listening to birds chirping...driving with the wind on the face....humming a song that was first heard while in college....getting a head massage....turning the tap and getting water , not having to wake up early and stand in a queue for water..(sometimes) not getting stuck in traffic...writing a post...reading a good book.....listening to good music...chatting with an old friend...remembering good old times...wishing that life froze there, but realising we have to move on..standing on the terrace and watching stars...realising that others before you and others after you will be contemplating on similar lines....getting a good night's sleep....realising that you have no major complaints in life...
all, pieces of a full...... if only all the pieces were like this, life would be so peaceful....
w-bug is moving on, maybe a good piece for her, but not for her readers...but i guess thats life, if you had only good pieces, you wouldnt know they are good...
and in
manuscrypts trivia
Little Mary was not the best student in Sunday School. Usually she slept through the class.One day the teacher called on her while she was napping, ''Tell me, Mary, who created the universe?''
When Mary didn't stir, little Johnny, an altruistic boy seated in the chair behind her, took a pin and jabbed her in the rear. ''God Almighty !'' shouted Mary and the teacher said, ''Very good'' and Mary fell back to sleep.
A while later the teacher asked Mary, ''Who is our Lord and Savior?'' But Mary didn't even stir from her slumber. Once again, Johnny came to the rescue and stuck her again. ''Jesus Christ!'' shouted Mary and the teacher said, ''Very good,'' and Mary fell back to sleep.
Then the teacher asked Mary a third question, ''What did Eve say to Adam after she had her twenty-third child?'' And again, Johnny jabbed her with the pin. This time Mary jumped up and shouted, ''If you stick that damn thing in me one more time, I'll break it in half!''
The Teacher fainted.