????????????

The lines you see below are the lyrics to Porcupine Tree's song called 'Nine Cats' from the album 'Insignificance'. Prizes for paraphrases. And ooh, a bonus video at the end.

The butterfly sailed on the breeze,
Past a field of barbed wire trees,
Where golden dragons chased around,
Pampered poppies on the ground.
Two silver trout sat way on high,
And watched a royal samurai,
Plant two black orchids in a box ,
And strap it to a laughing fox.
A minstrel bought a crooked spoon
He gave it to a blue baboon,
Who filled it full of virgin snow
And watched it in the afterglow.
Fat toad stood in his ballet shoes,
Teaching sixteen kangaroos,
How to skip across a lake.
They found it hard to stay awake.
A pharaoh played a merry tune
And watched nine cats dance on the moon.
I didn't know what all this meant,
I didn't know why I'd been sent.
I threw 5 clocks down on my bed,
The chimes danced out on golden threads
And turned to footprints on my wall
Sequined tears began to fall.

Caught on tape...

The first videos I made with my new guitar. Not very good, but not very bad either. I'll be posting more soon, so watch out!

Arbit

Little Kenny thinks a penny
Is too steep for these lines.
I tell him sonny, don't be funny,
Or I'll stop being nice.
"You're really bad, I'll tell my dad!",
The imp, he says to me.
"Run home and tell, I'll show him hell!",
I yell defiantly.
So the yellow laddie gets his daddy
To throw a punch or two.
But the stupid git just couldn't hit,
He didn't have a clue.
One punch I threw, it went straight through,
And hit his solar plexus.
He fell to the ground, victory I'd found.
Then I went home in the next bus.

P.S. And hey, check out the cool Simpsonmaker widget right at the bottom of the page, and also the wordfinder widget. Nice huh?

I, Ibanez!

Whoa!


I can hardly say anything else. I now own an Ibanez V72E acoustic guitar. You'll probably see it splashed all over my orkut account, and I've even made it my gtalk custom message, but the fact remains that I now own an Ibanez, which is light years above the Givson 150 that I used to play on. It cost me INR 8650 for the guitar plus the works- gigbag, capo, strap and an extra set of authentic D'Addario bronze strings. A fortune, I agree. But I'm not complaining.

About this particular guitar, it has a spruce top, mahogany back, sides and neck, and a rosewood fretboard. It comes with a handy on board tuner.

And I've found out that a list of famous Ibanez users include:

1. Michael Einziger of Incubus
2. Gareth Davies of Funeral for a Friend
3. Brad Walst and Barry Stock of Three Days Grace
4. Terry Balsamo of Evanescence
5. Chris Broderick of Megadeath
6. Brad Delson and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park
7. Mike Deowolf and Steve Richards of Taproot
8. Ed Faris of Adema
9. Tom Fischer of Celtic Frost
10. Martin Hagstrom of Meshuggah
11. Dexter Holland, Greg K and Noodles of The Offspring
12. Steve Holt and Mike Whitney of 36 Crazyfists
13. Sean Kipe of Course of Nature
14. Munky and Fieldy of Korn
15. Mike Mushok of Staind
16. Josh Rand and Corey Taylor of Stonesour
17. Matt Roberts of Three Doors Down
18. Mike Thomson and Paul Gray of Slipknot
19. Dave Weiner, and Steve Vai himself!
20. David Williams, with Michael Jackson
21. and a lot more.

Here's hoping that some day, someone buys an ibanez and makes a list like this and it has my name on it, cheerio!

Potter and Carpenter, and the Mystery of mysteries!- Episode 1

"Guitar string.... number 5.... Karuna Musicians... world... end... die... aaaaargh...." were Dr. Bumblewindow's final words.

Teen super sleuth Hardy Potter and his faithful sidekick Nancy Carpenter stood by him and watched him die. It was a painful moment for both of them. Dr. Bumblewindow was like a father to them. Like all other fictitious teen heroes, Potter and Carpenter were orphaned at the age of two, when their parents were dismembered and disemboweled right before their eyes by the evil villain Lord Nag. Bumblewindow took under his wing and nursed them. He watched them grow from toddlers to brave, adventurous teenage sex symbols, with considerable pride.

But now, our teen heroes did not have time to mourn their saviour's passing. They had to save the world from Lord Nag's evil scheme. And Bumblewindow's cryptic clues didn't make sense either, until Nancy suggested, "Hey Hardy, I have Karuna Guitar String Number five in my trusty kitbag!"

"Excellent!", replies Potter, and adds, staring into the camera, "And kids, that's why you need a super hot sidekick with a trusty kitbag."

Carpenter turns pink and gives Potter a loving punch. (The rest of this scene is cut out in theatres, for the general public, but can be caught on youtube, at least till before they remove it, or on rapidshare.)

Our exhausted young detectives now try to fathom the Doctor's clue. "Hmm... I wonder... aaah!", says Potter.

"Are you onto something?", enquires Carpenter.

"Not yet, but maybe looking up 'immitation' in Sleuthing For Dummies may help."

"Good idea. You're so clever!" (try Youtube or Rapidshare again.)

The next morning, Potter is at the breakfast table with his newspaper and his cereal, and Carpenter makes her entry.

"I just borrowed Sleuthing for Dummies from Holmes and Watson next door", she said.

"Such a cute couple they make, don't they?"

"Yeah. And they're strangely indifferent towards Brokeback Mountain."

"I know. Watson says it doesn't have enough... umm... passion. He pored through Youtube for weeks, and then through innumerable blogs searching for rapidshare links, but couldn't find one, you see, for the missing links."

"Oh... I see. But hey, look up that word now."

"Oh yes, the word... hmmm, aaah! Here it is."

Immitation- from "imminent" and "castration", meaning imminent castration. Will lead to the destruction of male population, ergo eventual extinction of humankind.

"Oh no!", cried Potter. "We're done for this time. Nag will destroy us!"

Carpenter, however, had a determined expression on her face. "Not yet, Hardy. Not while we're there to ruin his plans of world conquest."

Will Lord Nag succeed in immitating the world? Or will our superheroes be able to, once again, foil his evil scheme? Find out on the next episode of "Potter and Carpenter, and the Mystery of mysteries!"

Help!

Please, please, someone give me an internet connection!
My long hiatus should not be mistaken for laziness. In fact, I churned up enough material in my head to fill pages, but alas, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited has reduced the creativity in the universe, and doesn't even bother to make an excuse.
My family shifted to a new bigger home (incidentally, next to the taj palace hotel). Everything's fine- bigger rooms, cooler, and of course, ipl keeps me occupied, as does the heap of dvds that i burnt back at college. But my life, and everyone else's, is incomplete without a net connection.
So we wrote to MTNL to shift the line to our new address. They called up one fine morning and told us that it's up and running. All happy and smiling, I switched on the comp, waited for the green light to blink and then stabilise, but nothing- no green light. Switch off-switch on... nothing.
So I registered a complaint at their automated complaint centre. A guy came, switched on the comp, refreshed the desktop a few times, deleted all the temp files and said that the problem's in the phone line.
So I registered another complaint-this time about the phone line. Another guy came the next day, dialled a few numbers on the phone and told me he'll be right back. I never saw him again.
I registered another complaint two days later- amazingly the whole process was repeated.
How in the name of hell does MTNL have customers?
We are switching to airtel. They have a nice little Rs 599 scheme- unlimited download, and although the max speed's only 256 kbps, that's still a lot of downloads.
My suggestion, request rather, to anyone who still has an MTNL connection is- please, don't let this happen to you!
My next post will be from an airtel connection. I hope they pay me something for all this publicity!