The Super power

I’m sure you have often wondered what one super power you would like to posses and how you’d use it to other’s disadvantage. The instinctive bland answers are invisibility, indestructible endoskeleton, ability to control of an element of nature, teleportation and so on. With the help of popular media I’ve seen pretty much everything good and bad that can be accomplished with those powers and it’s time to admit we need some new ones out there. Here are some interesting super-friends I’d like in my company.

De-carborator: The buddy that can alter carbohydrate levels without compromising taste in foods such as beer and rice.

Call-centrino: The cute girl that can talk you through any technical obstacle.

Thermo-couple: Lesbian-duo that can keep your justice league comfortable, outdoors, in any season. To trigger their powers they need to commit an act of erotic theme or quality. Note: I’m talking playboy channel lesbians not discovery channel ok?! I’ll develop the character of my other super friends later. Moving on…

Ol-Phonyx: Customized manipulator of sounds and smells, both natural and manufactured. Dreaded club music, now silky guitar notes by Knopler. Subway that smells like urine and fart, now febreeze and gasoline.

Here’s something I’ve thought would be a nice super power to have:

The power to know an individual’s profession just by looking at them or hearing their voice.

“Lame” you say?

“Nay” I say.

There are enough people and professions out there to keep you entertained.

It will help with the ladies since you’ll be able to figure out an appropriate ice breaker like “Can you believe these rising interest rates?” (I use it all the time at office parties. Works like a python on a unicycle). Or avoid the embarrassment that would ensue if you approached a nun-in-training with an opener like “What would you do to do Jesus”.

You’d be better at judging, discarding or respecting people’s opinions. Love that!

You’d never end-up accidentally making friends with someone who was/is a lawyer, real-estate agent or used-car salesman.

You could find a real marine biologist when a whale looks like it’s getting an asthma attack.

You could get rich with a simple bet that you’d get 50 bucks for every Starbucks employee (current or former) you can pick out at a chips-and-dips party.

The possibilities are endless. Next time you are in public or surrounded by strangers think about what you could do with this super power.

the day i chose to be nice

i'm not such a great guy in general. i find myself being indifferent more often than caring. and in the most cases i'm nice, i'm nice because everyone expects me to be nice and a little bit of garbo dies because i don't mean to be nice. but i balance those instances out with true assholeic maneuvers or, if there is no opportunity or lack of resource, i will think up something really mean, lewd, rude or insensitve about some thing that someone would take very personally, and then share it with someone who wouldn't take it personally. i digress .......maybe i'm trying to say that in most cases i never make an effort to be nice. maybe if karma was a proven fact i'd give a random act of kindness a shot. kindness, affection, compassion are sedimentary emotions in the conical flask that is my personality. wondering why i went with conical? that makes the two of us. so like i said, i'm not such a great guy in general.

one evening i found myself sharing lobby space with a rather large woman waiting with a big box which encased her newly purchased pedestal fan. for some tragic reason i was in a good mood. as the elevator anounced itself the woman picks up her big box with both hands and walked into the elevator. she didn't look too uncomfortable handling the appliance because if she did i wouldn't have said this...

"which floor would you like to go to?" as i pointed at the floor buttons with my "look at me, i'm not shallow" look.
"hen haa" she said with a smile.
"what the fuck is a hen haa" i thought and "pardon me" i said.
she cleared her throat and let out a louder "hen haa"
geez she had a speech defect. by now the elevator door had closed and we're going no where. and i'm freaking out because i feel pressurized to come through on my offer.
internal monologue (IM): "ok calm down gautam. there are 28 floors in this building. try to find a number between 1 and 28 that rhymes with hen haa".
i had nothing.
so i pressed my floor number and the elevator began its ascent.
IM: you idiot! now the elevator is moving and you have to figure out what button to push before we pass the hen haa-th floor.

i then proceeded to move my finger along the floor buttons hoping she'll yell out 'hen haa" when my finger passed over it.
she was visibly annoyed that i couldn't comprehend her. she shoved my hand aside and hit "PH".

for fuck's sake, how am i supposed to get Penthouse from hen haa! she had no reason to be pissed. it was not my fault.

that bloody does it. no more being nice till the summer ends.

daddy would you like some pancakes?

"brent vasudevan you say?" i said.
"yes, that's totally what you should name your son if you ever have one" said the boys while on a subway train in vienna.
so far i was thinking of naming my boy SOG, which would be short for Son of Gautam and there would be no last name. kind of like prince, hammer or bono. but maybe i should dwell on brent. maybe it would work.

let's see, the north americans wouldn't have a hard time saying his name when they're open for a long one. he'd confuse every blind date or job interviewer who is expecting a tall dutchman to show up and that's a PPV reality show right there. i'm pretty sure there's no brent in the bible (or any other holy book for that matter) so that would make his name religiously neutral. it's short and hard to pick on. brent vasudevan it is then.

but what will i do with this brent fellow? i'm sure by then Toys R Us would've invented something between a leash and an invisible electric fence to see him through his early years. around age twelve he will be wearing fatigue pyjamas and starting and ending every sentence with "sir" when he addresses me. he will go to an all boys private school and have minimal to no contact with girls outside of it. his best non-male friends will be books and the television. brent will be conditioned to excel at athletics and sports. weekly guitar lessons and upto 500 sit-ups a day by age 16.

one november night, around age 17, a responsible brent will be researching career options and which university program to apply for. i will stumble into his room shirtless, nursing a hang-over, and double fisted with beers i brewed in the basement.

brent vasudevan: i'm not sure what program i should apply for dad. do you think i should be an engineer like you?

this is when i would totally lose it and round-house kick brent. of course, the years of kung-fu training i forgot to mention will make it easy for brent to defend himself. if he's smart he'll use the coding monkey or chipmunk on red-bull style.

gautam vasudevan: engineer? are you fucking crazy? you don't want to study engineering. you want to do sociology. trust me on this one brent. i know you think i've been a horrible dad but please listen to me. it's for your own good. promise me you'll do sociology.....sociology....sociology...sociology (i progressively lowered my tone every time i said "sociology" until i was barely audible)

brent vasudevan: but what career prospects will i have with a degree in sociology

gautam vasudevan: jesus christ, how much of your mom's blood do you have running in you. hey listen, just do an MBA when's time to focus on a career. anyone can do an MBA.

brent vasudevan: then why am i going to school if not for a career.

gautam vasudevan: oh you'll see son. just remember there's a time and place for everything....and that's college (i heard this on south park i think)

think about it, brent would be this lean, mean, intelligent, talented, artistic, athletic, handsome (can you see that apple right under the tree? cute no?), sociable, cultured, and most important of all sexually repressed teenager going to study four years of sociology. not friggin' engineering which is filled with friggin' engineers. sociology damnit! i mean come the fuck on people! where the hell is my "world's best dad t-shirt" now homies?!

skydiving

this canada day (yes, it really is a holiday here) i went skydiving. kind of got myself to do it since my four adrenaline junkie friends thought it up over a few rounds of beer and got themselves all giddy. i had to be in since i have abandonment issues and wouldn't want to be the only guy left behind because he had to iron his panties.

now i'm not a big fan of roller coasters myself so i had to manage the experience in parts. i researched fatality rates in canada, back-up parachute deployments, tandem master experience etc to assess the probability of dying. then i burned many trees and watched kung-fu movies in the week leading to the jump to keep my mind occupied. the day of the jump i was surrounded by my adrenaline junkie friends so i tricked my mind into growing a pair of large ones. now only 2 parts left that needed nerves.

1. the flight up to 13,000 ft. with a hint of anticipation. this was do-able since i've been on planes before and height from inside a plane is a flavor of ice-cream i've had before. the key is to be in denial by expecting a steward to serve you a cold meal followed by an in-flight unintelligent romantic comedy movie you'll secretly chuckle to.

2. the jump. this was exactly what i said to myself: fuck it all! i don't careif i die now! fuck every one!
i'm serious. that's exactly what i said.

here are some other thoughts that i cued as back ups:

gravity is soooo over-rated

i wonder how i can solve integral tan cube theta

will i be able to stay awake through this new potter movie? depends on if harry gets his frick on i suppose.

you don't hear a lot of rock bands these days with the extended guitar solos

ya allah! i hope those 72 virgins waiting for me are not male

what i went through next was my most exciting moment times one million, raised to the power of three seventy nine brazilian women.

take away #1: i don't photograph well when i'm that excited. i will be resubmitting my profile to tussaud's.

take away #2: the friends who you notify before your jump will call your car, golf clubs, ipod and other possessions so it's best you set something up on google spreadsheets. relatives who you will notify after your jump will say this gene came from the otherside of the family.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/gautamvasudevan/NiagaraSkydiving

bundled offers

these blog things are hard to start. i’ve tried to come up with clever starts on my previous blogs but when i read them at a later date i just feel stupid embarrassed. maybe my written skills and maturity increase exponentially with time. whatever be the case i suck at coming up with clever starts. i am not going to try anymore.

this weekend i was cleaning my apartment [this plug is incase my mom figures out how to google someone, and google’s me, and trips on this blog] and had toronto’s multi-cultural channel on. they were marketing a bundled-offer of desi channels by airing an episode of anthakshri on star tv. this was an inter-regional children’s special. i stored my vacuum cleaner, texted my friends about this, and popped open a cold one. this was going to be interesting. should i be recording this?

in this round contestants had to sing duets in which shah rukh khan was one of the on-screen personalities singing the song. north ki shaan kicked things off, followed by central ki jaan and then west ki maan and lastly east ki…..i don’t quite remember so I’m going to go with paan.

after one cycle of songs was completed there was nothing significant to report except that the local simian population was very uncomfortable with the way anu kapoor chose to congratulate each team after their successful number.

cycle two was turbulent. west ki maan used ki instead of ka to describe a feeling that was apparently male [AHAA!! i knew it wasn’t intuitive even to non-south indian], east ki paan employed an extended “OOOOoooooOOO” when the actual lyric was “Meriiiiii JAAaaaaN” [what can i say. they had a 50-50 chance] and central ki kaan sang “yeh mera dil” from the new DON. if you don’t see the problem with that you are as big a dumbass as a kid who grew up in central india. as anu’s co-host [i can’t understand why these things need two hosts] quickly pointed out, the rules said SRK had to be singing the song on-screen, and this number only had kareena singing through a horse face [i wonder if they stuff her gums with peanut butter to make her lips move]. anyways, the wannabe-vamp proceeded to deduct 10 points from central’s pot and both contestants who were awkwardly frozen in the middle of a high-fi, that was surely going to miss, took their seats.

the spot light was on north ki kebab. sardar boy and ms. tajinder were ready to drop it like it was hot. “apun bola tu meri layla” they said, waving their hands in the air and moving them around like they just didn’t care, and they were done. there was no rising slow clap. anu and the wannabe-vamp were engaged in counsel [yes yes, I see the value of a co-host now]. even a sharp cookie such as myself had missed it. apparently, someone had totally Devdas-ed cycle one, so this SRK-Ash combo doesn’t count since it’s a repeat. NO POINTS! the kids tried to make their case. soon everyone was talking. then everyone was yelling. anu begged for leniency. the wannabe-vamp mentioned her integrity. east ki communism confirmed they did the devdas number and broke into another song out of turn. west ki pav bhaaji was re-doing the math on the points board. the band contemplated a career in software. the audience was a digitized applause so they had nothing to add. this was priceless. why the fuck was i not recording this shit?!??!!

i would like to be there when the parents of ms. tajinder and sardar boy bump into each other after prayers at the local gurudwara in north india. this is how it would go down in my head:

Buppy Singh (father of tajinder aka tinkle): your son monty really blew it for us didn’t he.

Guddi Singh (mother of sardar boy aka monty): hai rabba, how can you say that?! tinkle just got up and started singing without even consulting monty.

Goldy Singh (tinkle’s mom: best shaahi paneer in town apparently): at least my tinkle came up with songs. monty was just sitting there staring at anu’s co-host.

Tony Singh : ALL LIES JUST TO DEFEND YOUR TALENTLESS DAUGHTER !!!!

FYI, Tony just happened to be in the vicinity and is not related to monty or ever met the lad before. also, Tony has never heard of the hit TV game-show anthakshri

discussions came to an end and the foursome parted ways. Guddi singh walks over to her son, monty, who is in the middle of assembling seven tiles and slaps him across the face in front of all his friends.

i will be subscribing to the bundled-offer.

a good run

april fool’s day came and went with not so much as a fly-fart. i know it fell on a sunday and all this year, but i was expecting somebody to bring "it" during the work week. but "it" was not brought. maybe "it" was stuck under a very large and heavy object. or maybe "it" was doing a photo shoot for ebay. no funny pranks worth mentioning on the radio even. i’ve never successfully pranked any one you know. i have lied, cheated and even faked ignorance but none of those virtues have ever come together as a unit to secretly machine a good prank. i suppose it’s my lack of creativity that is to blame. well, not really. there was a time i had to get creative and bleed a series of lies so that i wasn’t outed.

back in 2001 i was the first indian employed by black & decker for their power-tool plant which was in a tiny town in maryland called easton, that boasted a tiny population of about 6000 people. the walmart, mcdonalds, USPS, 711 and city admin employed about 4000 people and the remainder accompanied me at assembling power-tools. this was my first job as a professional. a lot of firsts happened here- my first employee discount on home-improvement power-tools (this was also a last), my first water cooler conversation about home-improvement (this sadly will never end as long as i live in north america), my first direct-deposit (this thankfully still goes on) and so on. i also got my first office computer and was mad with power. i was young, stupid and not averse to risk. i downloaded many pictures and loaded them as desktop images on a rotating basis. here they are in chronological order: Ferrari, Iron maiden, AV-8B Harrier jet, the Matrix, the Baltimore Ravens and Riya Sen. yes, Riya Sen. not too famous or talented, but blinkin' cute she was. a poor quality picture, a poor quality upload and a non-posing type picture: three key elements that were needed back in 2001 to make a picture authentic enough to make the average black & decker employee go “she’s cute. she your girlfriend?”. a very slow work day, an awkward moment and a sense of play: three key elements that were needed to make me go “yeah, but she just moved to Pasadena so i’m not sure i can follow-through on the whole “being exclusive” bit, if ynowa’amsayin’ ?“.

word got around. people looked at me differently when i had something to say at meetings. the following were received with very approving nods:

“let’s not forget about the big picture”

“we must leverage our strengths”

“this is a business, not a fucking democracy damnit!”

“if you don’t balance the assembly line and give me a takt-time of under 1 min 39 seconds i’m going to have the foreman rip another asshole in you”

“buy high and sell low”

that last one i had to mitigate by breaking up with riya sen and getting my frick on with aishwarya rai. i changed my desktop image about once every 5 weeks. shenaz treasurywala, sonali bendre, mandira bedi, raveena tandon and so on until one day, black & decker, easton, decided to employ girish kakkar as the new product manager in the cordless power-tools division. things were going so well with isha kopikar. i truly felt like she was the one, but now we had to part as friends. the necessary back-out procedures were invoked:

Step 1. i informed the office rumour-mill that i wasn’t the type of person who kept memorabilia that even remotely reminded me of relationships past.

Step 2. i proceeded to surf www.welcomenepal.com and found a breathtaking shot of mt. everest, which would look great as my new desktop image.

fucking girish kakkar! ‘nking guy!!!

things just weren’t the same any more. my contract with black & decker terminated a few months later. i shouldn’t complain. i had me a good run. here's to you riya.

music tv

“i’m good at multi-tasking at work” is what someone told me the other day and in my head i went “oh no you di’in’t”. by definition this means you are capable of doing two or more activities at once. i seriously question the fact that there’s much you can really multi-task at work, let alone be good at it. you see, it doesn’t count if one of two activities is an involuntary action like breathing, listening to music, chewing gum etc. therefore i think the definition of multi-tasking should be altered to underscore the point that at least two of the activities need to be deemed productive before any claims are made. so, driving while talking on the cell-phone, yes, multi-tasking. reading this blog and picking out the lint from your belly button (assuming you don’t have an outie), no. filling out a change record template and simultaneously running through a cycle of sytems integration testing, yes, and by the way whoa! typing an email on your blackberry while you relieve yourself, no, and by the way bleahkch!

but since i’m not here to change the system (my true calling is and always will be to bring sexy back) lets go with the existing definition of multi-tasking ie, two or more activities. that being said i must admit that i occasionally multi-task at home. example follows (i know i know, lame build-up for a tangential segway, but who cares)

being single and not one of the gottis i am required to do most of my chores on my own. folding clothes and ironing are two of the most mindless activities on the face of the earth (up there with attending to a toll booth). it’s a shame there isn’t a robot or a machine to do that for us. there’s only one way shirts, t-shirts, pants or shorts need to be folded or ironed. that’s just four settings we’re talking about, with most motions overlapping. just invent the bloody thing already. to escape the boredom of domesticity i multi-task by watching tv. some latest trends and learnings in the music tv world:

1. eyez, deelishis, somethin’, like dat, spunky, buckwild, bootz, wire, krazy, h-town, saaphyri, payshyntz, toastee, nibblz, buckeey and hood are some of the new contestants on flavor of love. apparently, these are names that flav has thought up to help remember his beotches. what happens if like dat did somethin’ that was spunky? would that mess with his brain boiiiiiiiiiii?

2. the pussycat dolls have launched a nationwide search for a pussycat doll. when i caught the show they had narrowed it down to 12 very hot and yummy contestants. at first i couldn’t quite understand why anyone would waste time episodically eliminating contestants when they could pick the hottest one and be done with it. but, the fool that i am, i overlooked the branding and marketing objectives behind today’s music. this is when i expected one of the panel members to go “i’ve got it! we’ll call these six over here The Meows and these six over here The Purs.” this maneuver would give the record label two more bands and no extra talent to manage. i think next year they're planning a search for tiny tots version called the puddytat dolls.

3. american idol has a contestant that looks like shrek. let me know if you find out which one i’m talking about. this week gwen stefani was requested to coach the contestants. am i the only one who thinks she has no talent and a weird sense of fashion that future generations will look back on and LOL or ROFLTAO? and that her employment of harajuku girls to make a her feel belonged is a gross violation of human rights. i think she knows she lacks any foundation in music. there was one moment on the show when simon agreed with gwen’s assessment of a contestant’s ability and they cut to gwen’s face and she tried to hold back a “phew!” look. priceless. but gwen needn’t be that self conscious though. whatever she does she could never appear more obtuse than paula abdul is.

4. there’s a video out there which has beyonce feat. shakira. i got giddy just watching it. who ever made that one happen, thank you thank you thank you. you sir, deserve a medal.

i am truly multi-tasking now. i wrote this post on company time. booya!