Petty peeves

Now that Spring is here and the celestial bodies are behaving themselves, I decided to leave them alone and worry about the smaller things in life...

Would you please hit the freakin’ button!

You’d think in this fast-paced world, where bills get paid in minutes and google gives answers in seconds, the most obvious and fruitful thing to do when you got on an elevator would be to hit the door-close button. But no, some think the most fruitful thing to do is to remark on the lovely weather or worry about a lab mouse with cardiac arrest. That’s all well and good, but if you stand there any longer without shutting the door, Spring might just pass you by and your beloved mouse might not have a chance at resuscitation.

Don’t you start your car when you get into it? Don’t you turn on the light when you enter a room? Wouldn’t shutting the darn door be the natural thing to do in a 6-foot wide car that moves on a vertical shaft? On an elevator, people somehow seem to lose their earthly instincts. It’s either the screwed up gravity or the lack of oxygen. I couldn’t tell you, cos I happen to be in the minority – the I-hit-the-door-close-button minority (we have an affirmative action case going). And this is my official call to that small group of individuals that believes ‘the button’ serves a purpose and begs to be used. Some dismiss it as a placebo cos apparently it doesn’t do anything; I don’t care, I happen to be a pro-active human being and I need to hit it! Why? Bcos it is there, and the elevator door is open 5 freaking seconds after it needs to be shut.

If you’re a fairly observant human being, you would have noticed our kind – we are the ones that cling to the control panel, index finger on the mark and ready to go as soon as the last person is in; if we have the misfortune of being more than an arm’s length away we’d be gritting our teeth and clenching our fists, till someone finally reads our mind and does the needful. Boy, am I glad for my little clique! Quite like the glee that accompanies my chancing upon a fellow Maher-obsessor or die-hard steak-fanatic, my eyes light up when I see one of them enter an elevator. I heave a sigh of immense relief, resign to the rear, shut my eyes and lean against the wall, knowing full well that the job will be done...

To go cups have got to go!

One of the prerequisites of the northeastern American lifestyle is the ability to, at some point in time, use a torso and two pairs of limbs to balance your bag, an umbrella and a coffee cup for miles on end to nowhere in particular. It helps the process (and your posture) to have your bag zipped, your umbrella folded and your coffee cup securely shut. Unfortunately, much as Starbucks and the other capitalistic coffee makers out there are inherently gifted in the art of grinding beans to give just the right flavor to that caffeinated stimulant (sweet mother of all things good and pure!) they happen to be surprisingly unqualified to make a paper cup with a lid that fastens just right. Reason why, I've never had coffee from a to-go cup without it streaming down my hand or my choicest white shirt (the inherent klutz in me accepts a fraction of the blame). So, my point is (yeah, I do have one) that Starbucks should collaborate with Nissan and start offering coffee in plastic mugs with screw caps [yeah, two capitalist pigs might as well get together and screw us (pun unintended)]. Apparently Nissan’s mug can be tossed at any angle to any distance without spillage. I personally think anyone that treats coffee with such insult should be appropriately penalized, but often times it’s not really in your hands (but in the air). Here’s how: you’re juggling your keys, your cell phone and your wallet while stepping into a puddle of microbe-enriched water (another exclusive of the Northeastern lifestyle) and your coffee mug just happens to be the one that takes the plunge -- quite possibly your pride does too -- but then you could jus swoop down and pick it right back. I meant the mug, of course, your pride’s pretty much a lost cause after that.

Spring – not cool?

I mean figuratively of course. Literally, it isn’t supposed to be cool, that’s what we like about it...
So, yesterday was a fabulous 70 degree day and I was more than excited to finally go on a run that did not involve fleece or insulated nylon or mittens or headbands, or the process of adjusting, yanking or removing half or all of them midway through the trail.
But I’d forgotten that with Spring and Summer come the rest of life’s troubles -- three quarters through my usual 4-mile lope, my lungs wanted more air, my gut wanted water and my legs wanted a break. Only that wonderful thing called mindless and irrational will power saw me to the end, and the extra rush of adrenalin was oh-so-exhilarating, but I must say, my body wasn’t exactly pleased. It is all good when the 70% water your body is made of is as frozen as the river you’re running by, but when the sun’s vaporizing every ounce of liquid you drank the past week, you could inhale the river and it wouldn’t matter. So, in winter, I had to desensitize to the low temperatures – let’s face it, I had barely breathed in 0°F until then, much less run. And now, I gotta acclimatize to the heat - the tropical inhabitant of two decades of 90°F has to now acclimatize to the heat! In this energy-starved world, that just seems like an awful lot to waste. You’d think evolution would have thought of that and just made us all cold-blooded...

The Da Vinci Code hanked

Considering I think The Da Vinci Code is literally the best book ever written (this could be attributed as much to my current reading slump as to the peerless Dan Brown), I’m obviously excited about the upcoming movie, though I know from past experience that a movie adaptation is almost never nearly as good as a book. Someone got that adage all wrong -- a picture is worth a thousand words -- no amount of pictures could equal an eloquently written piece, IM-writer’s-O. In any case, I was still looking forward to this movie and hoping it would be the exception that was Jurassic Park, and wondering who could convincingly play the elite and suave (and in woman-speak, oh-so-delectable) Robert Langdon. And what did I hear? Tom Hanks! *Groan* No offense to ol’ Tom – I have loved him in almost every movie he’s ever been in, but this is clearly not a Hanks-job! The Harvard historian in his crisp white shirt and tweed jacket, who rattles off a million connotations at the mere sight of an innocuous piece of art, who couldn’t drive a stick if you put a gun to his head but could logically work his way out of a deathtrap using only his mind and who still manages to beat his peers at water polo.

After all this rambling you’re wondering if I have any suggestions. ‘Course I do. Johnny Depp!!! IMO, he’d fit the role to a tee. At least I could have sworn he could play Langdon in The Secret Window. With Hanks, we’d all just be Sleepless in Paris.

Afterthought
I've thought about it and I now think Tim Robbins will be perfect for the role (yeah, Sony Pictures is holding off release till I make up my mind). And he doesn't even have to change anything -- he just has to be Andy Dufresne (The Shawshank Redemption) or Dave Boyle (Mystic River), as is -- smart, sexy, tranquil, elite and oh-so-endearing...

When dates get convoluted

While watching the Burlington commercial for the weekend Easter sale, I happened to glance at an e-greeting from my folks back home. Wondering if they had now begun wishing me for the traditional American holidays (my mom is my most reliable source of info on Daylight saving time and long weekends), I clicked on it. The card proved to be an exercise in my native language -- mustering all of my unseasoned tamil from the forgotten recesses of my brain I unveiled a wish for New Year’s Day, celebrated around the start of the financial year all over India, albeit called differently and observed by a wide variety of creative rituals in different parts of the motherland...
When April 14th has come to largely represent DO YOUR TAXES for the past four years, it isn’t entirely my fault that the New Year needs reminding. To make up for it, I did go and pull out some sticks of unbelievably crispy cod from the freezer – a far cry from the manga pachadi of yesteryears, but till Bush delivers on his promise of delivering the mango, the fish will have to do....