Miscellaneous

A Complex and Dynamic Taste

[EWWW POST ALERT]

Reader Deepthi B sends me a link to a book named “Natural Harvest – A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes”. The blurb reads:

Semen is not only nutritious, but it also has a wonderful texture and amazing cooking properties. Like fine wine and cheeses, the taste of semen is complex and dynamic. Semen is inexpensive to produce and is commonly available in many, if not most, homes and restaurants. Despite all of these positive qualities, semen remains neglected as a food.

Deepthi thought I might find this WTF, but having never tasted semen, that is clearly a matter I can’t comment on. It might be an acquired taste for many straight women and gay men, and I certainly wouldn’t want to pass judgement on that. Also, if this turns out to be a semenal moment in culinary history and semen becomes a popular ingredient, it might prove to be a valuable diversion for young men’s energies, and crime rates might dip. The positive externalities of wanking, and all that. The possibilities are endless.

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Before you sully your mind by thinking of jokes related to semen cuisine, let me get this out of the way. Man sits at home by his phone, tapping his fingers, getting really angry. Finally he picks up the phone and pressed ‘redial’. The phone rings, and someone picks it up.

‘Hello, this is Urban Tadka, how may I help you?’

‘Dude, I ordered a semen biriyani from your restaurant one hour ago. It’s still not here. How long will it take?’

‘Not very long, sir,’ the guy at the other end says. ‘I’m just coming.’

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Well, I do have an Ewww Alert on top, don’t I?

The Three Kinds of Passion

Peter Griffin points me to an interesting post that begins:

The world seems to be split into roughly three different types of people: Those who have a passion for nothing, those who have a passion for one thing and those who have a passion for everything. This way of categorizing is not to cast a value judgement onto any particular group. My informal observation is that aspects such as intelligence, courage, moral fibre and wisdom seem roughly evenly distributed across all three of these groups although it may initially not seem that way. It’s always difficult trying to describe a group with an insider’s perspective if you’re not an insider but I’m going to give it a try… [link]

I think I fall in the second category: I have a passion for “multiple ‘one things’”. Two of them are story-telling and poker, and my passion for both could be considered, quite simply, a passion for understanding human nature. And that is so all-encompassing that maybe I fall in the third category. Whatever.

What about you?

Priorities

Mohit sent me an SMS a couple of hours ago informing me that this year’s edition of Gladrags Mrs India is sponsored by Unwanted 72. Isn’t that just delicious?

My Walking Stick Is Bigger Than Yours

The line of the day, which I want to see on a t-shirt before I die, comes from the great Mahinder Watsa:

Why have a walking stick if your own penis can oblige!

I especially love the touch of having the exclamation mark at the end of the rhetorical question. Immense panache. The quote is from here, and is part of a recent development in Watsa’s writing—he’s actually beginning to indulge in wisecracks. Consider his crack here about how he thought only frogs were green—or his advice here to “eat any vegetable you like best and with every bite think a sexual thought.”

The questions, of course, are as clueless as ever. Still, we’re over a billion people strong, and the stork sure didn’t bring them.

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Ouch. Did I just write, “Consider his crack here…?” Somebody hit me.

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Earlier posts on Watsa: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

The Joys of Petting

In an email conversation, the good Arun Simha points me to what he says “will surely be the sentence of the year”:

My own movables were subject to trespass.

Arun is right. For the wonderful Roger Ebert article it is taken from, click here.

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An aside: What would you call the practice of throwing a dog or cat at someone?

It Must Be Terribly Lonely…

… to be the only hippo in Montenegro.

Not as bad as it must be for the only pig in Afghanistan, but still.

And imagine being the only human in a country full of hippos. I can see you in a cage in a zoo, mournfully contemplating what might have been if humans were the dominant species, when the zookeeper hippo and his hippo girlfriend put on some music and start dancing outside your cage.

‘What are you doing?’ you ask.

‘It’s called the Hippo Hippo Shake.’

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(Pic courtesy Reuters)

Academics and Sex

I think most of us would agree that academics is boring. And that sex is exciting. So what about an academic study on sex then?

Well, consider the following quote from an author of one such study:

Understanding measures of arousal is paramount to further theoretical and practical advances in the study of human sexuality. Our results have implications for the assessment of sexual arousal, the nature of gender differences in sexual arousal, and models of sexual response.

I guess boring wins. I wonder what academics do on vacation.

Michael Crichton’s Fight Club

Michael Crichton has an engrossing piece up in Playboy on how to win domestic fights. He writes:

Here’s what I don’t understand. If you were going to spend your life in physical battles — bar fights, or boxing matches, or whatever — you would almost certainly get some instruction. You might hire a coach, do a little training. At the very least you would learn the fundamentals: how to punch, and so on. Such instruction would make sense to you.

But the same people who feel the need for instruction in boxing will instantly join in a verbal domestic argument without a moment’s thought about what they are doing, let alone any real training.

Yet verbal fighting, like physical fighting, is a skill. Domestic fighting can be learned. One can become very good at it — although almost nobody is, because almost nobody thinks it’s necessary to learn this skill. Many men don’t bother because they erroneously believe that women are more verbally skilled and emotionally nimble than they are. But whatever the reason, most men just jump into a domestic fight, adopting the fighting style of their fathers, or various people they’ve seen on television.

If this method has been working for you, then you don’t need this article. But if you find you are coming off badly in your fights — if you are uncomfortable fighting — if you avoid fights, or dread them — if you are afraid of seriously hurting your opponent — then you better read on. Because you need to get a little balance. Do a little roadwork. Build up your wind. Work on your mental attitude.

And above all, learn to win.

If you’re a man, I recommend you read the full piece. If you’re a woman, um, please don’t. You guys already whip us at this every time, and don’t need any instruction. Go shopping or something.

(Link via email from Peter Griffin.)

All Work Will be Confidential

If you go to Vile Parle station, you will come across the following sign stuck between two ticket windows:

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There is much to admire here, but I am particularly intrigued by “mobile bill queries.” Imagine the following scenario: A wife notices a suspicious number on her husband’s mobile bill. She hands it over to Prakash and Sunil to investigate who the number belongs to. Prakash delegates the job to Sunil, who calls up the number and says, ‘Madam, you have won a free Videocon Washing Machine! Please give me your name and address and I shall send it to you.’ The name and address is duly handed over to the client, who discovers that hubby dearest has been surreptitiously calling his mother.

One week later, the mother calls up Sunil and says, ‘Ok, where the fug is my washing machine? I fired the maid because you told me I’d get a free washing machine.’

The maid, meanwhile, is sitting with Prakash in a seedy cafe. She asks him, ‘Do you mean everything you say, my love? Can I really trust you?’ Prakash smiles. ‘Of course I do, dear. Why don’t you hire a private detective to find out all about me. He he he.’

(Picture via Mudra Mehta, who graciously blanked out Prakash and Sunil’s numbers so that they aren’t swamped with queries. You lot are a sordid bunch, I know.)