Egotism ....a lifelong romance

Monday, March 29, 2004

The "bloody" letters

To paraphrase my friend, “got that mailbox of mine to better utilitarian value at truly minimal cost”.

Yeah, I am one of those that has a hang-up about deleting emails from my mail box, threatened every so often (by people that purport to be my friends) with an inconsequential and shamelessly huge zip file or a word attachment that goes to lengths to describe humanity’s impending trip to mars, about which, quite honestly, I care a rat’s ass. (I’d rather have mars or venus or better still, jupiter come crashing down on earth sending humanity and all that’s in it to its ultimate and irreversible doom).

Okay, that said, and apologizing in advance for an outrageously long blog, let me introduce to you the characters below as my pals, A, B, C and D (to preserve identity, as the discussion to follow might instigate a normal human being to wreak assault on such grotesquely hilarious characters).

(All the characters henceforth mentioned are alive and kicking, and NOT on drugs. They just tend to go into these discussions on certain topics that the rest of humanity doesn’t give a damn about--to paraphrase Dave Barry-- somewhat akin to the policymakers in Washington, that the rest of America does not give a damn about).

It all started one bleak winter day in February '02, when A decided it was time to be explicitly philosophical about one of the most common habits of human kind.

Quoting A (with absolutely necessary modifications; it’s assumed that A’s inherent problem with diction will be excused, in light of the rather insightful thinking).

“ok, kuming to tudays issue...if u guys are still with me and this mail ain't in the trash yet.........................
this line is from a poem ritten by a friend of mine...........

why water(tears) attempts
to take the shape of grief
it can't ever fill?


and it set me thinking............on the futility of teers...... not to mention greef.......
we all cry. Period. (its almost a default criterion to be human......so 'E' you are in too, by default !)
yes, teers are futile, never propotionate to feelings.........
wat konstitutes them? mere water........
why did the all omnipotent , omnipresent , omniscient , of all compounds chuse water for teers.....................
let’s say we shed teers of blud ( of kourse, that wud literally and figuratively b “eratha kaneer”)...........

For one, i kan think of atleast 3 peepul on the list who wud b severely anemic........

and poets wud sing "the ruby drops of red that gently trickled down cheeks, soft as rose petals"

am sure sum of us in this list remember nites of krying ourselves to sleep and upon day break the tears of nite forgotten, though the heaviness of the heart remains.......and the pillow just a silent witness to the nite’s happenings....... but imagine how dramatic it wud be to wake up to a crimson red pillow that u remembered spotlessly white b’for you drifted into sleep?

One thing’s for sure, it wud have to be laundered or chucked...... perhaps an incentive to kry less........a beggining, at least !

and guys wudn't slash their wrists to proclaim their love......how futile that wud be, when gurls cud shed blud thru their eyes..........

and no billet doux ritten in blud.............

ok, now throwing in sum physics and dynamics of fluid (makin sure the email caters to everybudy).......
blud coagulates.......
blud flows thru lachrymal glands and blud has viscosity unlike water.......and it wud form perfect spheres ........ so how wud stokes law be modified for the rate of crying?
wat abt the gurls who wud go booooo at the snap of a finger.......wudn't her rate of teer flow defy stokes law........
and the blud reeching the exterior coagulates and the outer rim of the lachrymal glands wud soon have a lining of coagulated blood (mostly for the boo cases, cos of too much blud kuming)..... this in the course of time wud reduce the diameter of the lachrymal gland with more deposition of coagulated blud, which in turn shud be directly proportionate to the rate of krying and ofkourse, the frequency of bursts of tears........
so u have coronary artherosclerosis being mimiked in the lachrymal glands........
but hold....... how dus the clog back fire?........u wanna cry and u can't (literally and figuratively, we have experienced it and if we cry teers of blud the third dimension of science wud also be satisfied ). dus this clog grow in size and clog your brain , that u die of brain hemorage (oh i luv nan-glish, cudn't have got dat brain damage ever rite in inglish) or wud it leed to the heart and u die of heart failure ?!!!!
dunnot no the route of lachrymal glands, but for god’s sake they need to empty sumwhere into the interior just as the open into the exterior.......

next, wats gonna substitute teers on tabloid... without doute, tomato ketchup, probably diluted..... if it wurked for psycho(the famus shower scene- AH used tomato ketchup) , sure bollywud and tollywud wud resort to it...

and wud gurls and wumen be chosen by evolution to kry less becos already theres an alloted slot for it every munth?

so there r a lot of unanswered questions....... wen it kums to futility of teers.....
but if teers were blud, indications r u cry less......

so perhaps the futily of teers is a paradox in itself ..... cos it ain't futile after all ...
atleast we dunnot bleed ourselves to tears which wud b bleedin ourselves to death!!!!
hey guys isn't that a lot of positive thinkin goin into futility of teers!!!!"

B responds (wouldn't take an einstein to figure out who THIS is!):

"and while i pretend to b unoffended by the fact that i was not included in the inhuman category with E (i take this opportunity to officially re-introduce the robotic unemotional B of yore), i decide to credit my dear friends rantings with the true objectivity expected of a rand-ian, firstly cos i have nothin better to do and secondly bcos my friend will be greatly distressed if she does not hear my well-sought-after opinion on her thoughts. and since she surely is one of the people that she purports would end up with chronic anemia, i decided i wasn’t goin to be the cause for her ailments, cos she is hard enough to deal with as it is...
without further ado (like 8 long lines wasnt enuf ), i shall delve into the basics of bloody tears....
i think its a fabulous idea...first, the pros--
imagine, jus how easy donating blood would be ---no painful needles---(and the girls score better on this than the men, for a change)...all you have to do is feed the lady an anticoagulant and tell her she looks ugly and bingo, u can have all the blood u want!
and then, the dramaticism---and the things it can achieve....come to think of it, most of my childhood accomplishments can be attributed to tears--i got all the stuff i wanted, all the things i wanted to do..... cant even begin to imagine how much easier life would have been if the tears were blood...i mean, nobody wants you streaming blood all over the place.... it ain’t good for you, it ain’t good for the house and surroundings.....
so those are the pros...
as for the cons...
the coagulating! yes, A, that would be a huge problem...but i betcha like nature thought of everything, she would have thought of that as well ...there ought to be some natural anticoagulant that would allow the steady flow ........
and then the anemia....the solution for this would be simpler...the more u shed tears the more u would need to eat ! doesn’t that jus work to our advantage?! or maybe we could try this...collect the blood in buckets and drink it up! * puke *
but just another thought--- I was wondering what would happen to li’l babies! I mean, imagine---they cry all the time, much to my disgust, and if they lost all that blood crying! jeez..they are too much of a pain as it is...
and i love the idea of getting up to a bright red pillow! we will never need to go on a drive in the snow or have our car burn in front of our eyes--life will be james-bond-like, jus waking up!
anyways, shall leave the physics musings to the physicists in the group....shall take your leave, with but a tear...."

C writes:

"Just saw the flurry of emails on this topic that was so eloquently initiated by our dear friend, A. I think it almost can be classified as science fiction. Very well written indeed, not to mention a very fertile and bloody thought process.

As for commenting on B’s reply......one of the pros missed out was......the easiness with which our dear friend can collect blood for HIV research with the inherent "cons" associated with it.

And as for the comment on a child crying and it being bloody.....one could regulate the lachrymal glands such that it turns out to be "developmentally regulated under the control of an erythrocyte promoter". This way it gets turned on post-puberty !!!!

Just a thought.....

flames accepted....."

D writes:

"if we were then to take the point a little further and say - suggest replacement - blood takes the place of water and water takes the place of blood (after all why stop with tears)
......imagine the result to the vast body of communication, and not to say laws of physics that would occur......to start naming a few items that come instantly to mind.......
it would make tom sawyers and huck finns oaths of blood pale a little in significance if they could cry out their oaths........
and the whole idea of bleeding transparent fluids would lose the immediate visual sense.......
swimming in a sea of blood!!!!!

moses turning water red!!!!!!! (sic?) (that famous scene featuring Mr. NRA)
what about blood being thicker than water...............
those are the cons
and the pros.......
and poets wud sing"the ruby drops of red that gently trickled down cheeks, soft as rose petals" - which reminds me instantly of lines from "Happy Prince"
`When I was alive and had a human heart,' answered the statue, `I did not know what tears were, for I lived in the palace of Sans-Souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the Great Hall. Round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about me was so beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I died. And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot choose but weep.' "

Thursday, March 25, 2004

A tribute to the Idiot box...

Wouldn't be fair if I didn't commemorate the color tv on its 50th anniversary.

So, here's my commemoration:

A feel-good winter evening, curled up on the couch with the heat up and the comforter around me, the idiot box unfurling one bout of Friends after another, the aroma of falafels and hummus filling the air. 'God bless the chickpea' as George Clooney is saying right now on television....

Ah, bliss....

But, for chrissssake, how am i s'pposed to savor all that delightful food while maintaining my prostrate position ?

there's just no pleasin some people....