Yesh, the rumors are true. My disappearance is very much the work of aliens. But not to worry. Just when they thought they got their grubby paws on me, I fished out my CD of Disco Dancer (1982) — Tarzan (1985) — Kasam Paida Karne Waale Ki (1984) to counter the alien goop thrown at me. News reports state that they were last seen scuttling towards their mothership clinging onto their earmuffs. Oh yesh, Bappi’s music. As the Amex people will tell you — Don’t leave home without it. It can come in handy at the most unexpected times. Anyway, Area 51 is a long way off from home, and so while I’m in transit, here’s a pointless verse about the real reason for my being gaayab from my blog.

By the way, curious koschan. Is it Kasam Paida Karne Waale Ki, as in ‘I swear on the one that gave birth‘, or Kasam Paida Karne Waale Ki, as in the ‘belongs to the one who gave birth to Kasam‘? If it is the latter, then who is this Kasam and why the sense of belonging? Oops, gotta go. I spot an alien.

*exits dancing in shiny silver tights singing in Salma Agha’s voice*

Ye raat mein jo mazaa hai <toink toink>
Mazaa ye kuchh nayaa nayaa hai <toink toink>
Ki tumko aaj kyaa huaa hai <toink toink>
Ki jhoomta hi jaa raha hai ..
Jhoom jhoom jhoom baba~aaaa ..
Jhoom jhoom jhoom baba~aaaa ..
Jhoom jhoom jhoom babaaaaa~aaa aaaaaaaaa ooooo!

They hide behind the closet door, shivering in fright. Peeking through the gap, they see the big bad guys on the prowl. With their leather and their long overcoats, walking around, total gali ka dada style. With a deep sigh they resign themselves to their corner in the closet. They know they don’t stand a chance until next summer. Move over tanktops and sandals. The jackets, gloves and boots have arrived and like a typical uninvited guest, they are here to stay!

Yep, ladies and gentlemen, brrr weather has surely come to town. And it is not even Novembrrrr yet! Sheesh. The thermostat shows a nice 36°F outside as I write this. That’s 2.2°C for you metric-minded folks, so be nice and stop heckling me. So it looks like this is going to be another painfully long and cold winter. And my dear readers, we all know what that means. Yesh, lots of meaningless posts and rhymes from me complaining about the weather, the snow and all of its assorted joys. Yay.

Was tagging some old photos and came across this one taken back in March taken at the New England Spring Flower Show. The clichéd writer’s block has afflicted me so I decided to put it to good use and post a photoblog instead. Oh and another thing — I’ve noticed that there’s something about my posting pictures of tulips that invariably gets me started on griping about the weather. Weird, no? Wonder why?

Oh, by the way, the title of this post comes from a track from the 1978 album The Man Machine by the German electronica group — Kraftwerk. We likes them very much.

‘Look at all these newbies that dot the landscape’, he thought. ‘Not even one of them has my charisma or my style. Or my gelled 80mph haircut. Or a dancing daddykins. And above all — a high-profile soap-making sister.’ Depressed, he sat in front of the computer humming ‘nikamma kiya is Bollywood ne ..’ ‘Ooooh! Let me Google myself!’, said he. Everyone’s allowed a vanity trip, after all. Firing up a browser, he typed in — ‘Tushshar Kapoor’. ‘Damn that Vashu Bhagnani and his numerological fundas‘, he muttered.

One of the results was a blog. He eagerly clicked on the link only to be rudely shocked. ‘What do they mean I cannot act?! And that if I was the last man left on earth with the last woman, she’ll mutate and split into two beings rather than be with me?! They can’t do this to me! I shall teach them a lesson!’, he thought, picking up his phone and pressing the speed-dial button 1. ‘Daddy! Somebody doesn’t like me! I wanna sue him!‘.

Tomorrow, that blogger could be me. And Tusshar Kapoor could be .. well .. Tusshar Kapoor.

I may be indulging in my usual silliness, but this is no laughing matter. This is more of an issue to be hopping raving mad about. I am sure, most of you have already heard of the recent appalling developments in the blog world about the IIPM matter. I could write an irate rant about it, but there are others who have said it much better. For those of you just catching up, Amit has a complete roundup of happenings, Neha takes it international at Global Voices, and our folks at DesiPundit are tracking all updates.

It’s a lot of links but please read them all, if you can. And if you are concerned about this topic’s ramifications, please link to it on your blogs and help publicize it. This distasteful issue needs more MSM attention and as bloggers and blog readers we can do our part in spreading the word. Kudos to Gaurav and Rashmi, and a big pat on the back for the blogosphere’s solidarity.

They say a million monkeys with a million keyboards can generate a masterpiece. A million monkeys did a lot more than that. Yes, nicely timed with the Dusshera season and all — a million monkeys also helped wipe out the big bad guy, and we can do it again. So what if this time around he has a ponytail?

How does one flirt with a blogger? — asked a friend and blogger recently. No, the question was not about flirting with me, so don’t get all terribly excited about living vicariously through my online love life. That day too might come, but this is not that day. Now one thinks of herself as the supreme expert on all matters of pointlessness, so one couldn’t possibly just say — I don’t know. So one thought. And since one couldn’t come up with a good list of do-s, instead one thought of a bad list of don’t-s. Things to avoid during the getting to know each other song-and-dance routine. The men, I’m sure, have their own take on this. All names are fictional, including mine.

• Hello, I am Bhuvaneshwar Chandra Shrivastava — When introducing yourself, don’t use your middle name. I understand that mommy named you with a great deal of love and daddy is very proud of his sonny boy, but the girl in question is not going to be impressed by the length of your name. In this case, size does matter. The prospect of talking to her might seem as formidable as a job interview, but it is not one. And if she is a prospective boss, you probably shouldn’t be hitting on her in the first place.

• Hello, I am a boy — No no no! NO! Don’t explicitly state that! Let it be apparent from your email. And if you have to state it, for the love of God, please do NOT refer to yourself as a boy. A guy maybe but not a boy. Boy is not macho. Bond didn’t set his martini down, turn to the drop-dead gorgeous babe next to him and say ‘Boy. I am a boy.‘ Yep, there was a darn good reason for that.

• I would like to make friendship with you — The most famous of all cringe-worthy sentences. Credit her with the sense to realize that you are not sending her an email to discuss the price of tomatoes. Unless she is a tomato-farming blogger, in which case that might be a good way to start a conversation. But I digress. The intent to know her more is already apparent in the sending of the email. You are writing to ‘get to know her’ not to ‘make friendship’ with her.

• Hello Swati, I would like to be friends — What is wrong with this one, you ask? Nothing, except that it was a mail sent to Megha. Yesh, I understand that the same email is being sent out to forty-six women. Higher probability of success, power in numbers and all that. But if you are going to do such a poor cut-paste job that you forget to change the name of your object of affection .. tsk tsk.

• What is your good name? — I remember my granddad telling me this was the polite way to ask a lady her name. Fair enough, but over the years it seems to have acquired a creep factor it did not have in dadaji times. Very lecherous A K Hangal types. Most disturbing. So pliss to skip.

• I’ll w8 4 ur reply — This one’s a bit unique. I personally don’t get too excited about the shorthand SMS way of speaking. It’s okay in SMSes but it bugs me in an email. But I know women use it as much as men, so perhaps this one might help you connect with the gal in question, provided she uses it too. And may God bless the union of such like-minded souls.

• Email me pleeeeeeeeeeez???? — Argh! Drop the desperation, it is most uncool. No I am not asking you not to be desperate. By all means be so. But please to not make it apparent to the girl in question! She will write back if she wants to. And if she doesn’t want to, I highly doubt she’s gonna say “I wouldn’t have ordinarily replied, but since you said please (with eleven Es and four question marks) I decided to make an exception in your case.”

• OK? Byeeeeee!!!!!! — This one I seriously don’t get, no matter which way I look at it. What is the guy trying to say with the OK? OK, I hope you understood that I am trying to hit on you? And what’s with the byeeeeee? Cheerful wave from a distance? Pretence of coolness? And the multiple exclamations are to indicate how excited he is to be writing the email? Gaaah!

Before we make ourselves scarce, a few words of wisdom. As some of you know, we take the advice of our guru Ajmeri Baba rather seriously. And he once told us that our USP is our special brand of mindless nonsense mixed with pseudo-seriousness. Pliss to notice the pseudo part. So keeping with tradition, this is yetanudder of the ‘have blog, will blab‘ type posts. In this case, one hopes that one has given her readers enough lines to read so they will not have to resort to reading between them. OK? Byeee!