May 24, 2011

The two most powerful human emotions are said to be relief and love, and this was borne out with the closure of the EPL season this weekend. There is something pathetic, and at the same time endearing, about supporters going berserk because their team scores a goal that is neither the equalizer nor the winner, but is one which enables their goal difference to climb above that of their fellow languishers in the relegation zone.

Speaking of the EPL, I have persevered in the data collection process, i.e., I have the full 38 weeks' worth of match results fed into the predictor. Time for some analysis, and hopefully, insights. Stay tuned.

May 5, 2011

Listening to Harsha Bhogle's inane and faux cheerful prattling has always been an ordeal. I finally figured out a way to handle this (other than using the mute), based on a contrived answer to the question "Why is Harsha Bhogle so happy?" The real answer is, of course, that Harsha Bhogle is so happy because he makes shitloads of money, he's a celebrity, he's got a nice rug, and so on, but that's not the road we are going to go down. What if the reason for the overdose of cheerfulness is that he's not really happy at all, but that His Bubbliness' behaviour hides a dark secret? A secret never revealed to anyone, a secret that festers in his mind every single waking second, a secret that can only be kept at bay by focussing solely on the shining happy things in life, like the way the sunlight dances off Danny Morrison's shiny pate, like the significance of the fact that the number of stumps on both sides of the pitch are wonderfully symmetrical and equal, like how quaint and innocent is the fat lady screaming her head off in the stands when the camera is on her, like how wonderful it would be to have Kiss Cams in the IPL so we can catch geriatric couples expressing their undying devotion for each other before the entire world...

Sorry, I got carried away a bit there.

Anyway, getting back to the dark secret, if you listen to Harsha Bhogle with this backstory [*] in mind, your irritation vanishes completely, to be replaced by a tender pity for the poor man, and you almost want to pull him close to your chest, a la Robin Williams and Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting and repeatedly whisper "It's not your fault" (I said 'almost' because, you know, you don't want to get too close to the rug, considering that it will be just below your nose, with Harsha Bhogle discharging copious amounts of tears on your clean new shirt).

On second thoughts, maybe it was his fault -- I can picture him as a small child saying, "Uncle, do you think stars are God's puppies? Isn't it wonderful the way they twinkle 'Woof! Woof!' all night long? Uncle, why are you looking at me that way...?"

Man, I can't wait to watch the match today and put this theory to test.

[*] Since this is a family blog, I don't want to speculate on the dark secret, but being the sadistic bastard that I am, I'll just throw in the words 'uncle' and 'broom handle'.

May 3, 2011

Two comments from RI that sum up the Osama Bin Laden kill:

So Public Enemy 1, on the run for 10 years, allegedly responsible for the most heinous crime on american soil, is whacked last night/early hours of the morning, DNA test taken, then dumped off a boat the same day, before I woke up. Are you f*cking kidding me?

and

I'd like to throw out this scenario:

Let's just say that both US and Pakistani intelligence have known of Osama's whereabouts for a long time.

And for SOME reason they have thought it in the best interest not to act on this information.

And this man Osama has been very ill for a long time.

One day Osama suddenly passes away.

What would the US do?

To announce the passing by natural causes of Osama?? (this would be an unsatisfactory conclusion to the US public, I'm sure)

Stage an operation and claim that he was killed in said operation?

Dispose of his body to prevent a cause of death from being established?

Pure conjecture, I know.

Natty Narwhal is the suckiest Ubuntu ever. Not just because of the new interface, but from a general stability perspective. Two days' worth of freezes and I'm back to 10.04 (for good, probably; now I know why they have LTS).

Is it just me, or does anybody else get the feeling that the IPL team owners sitting in their special thrones watching the match is the epitome of the rich/poor, elite/plebe divide and all that's wrong with our country?