1000 natural shocks

You know the end of the world is around the corner when these stories start getting press. The Daily Mirror also carries a picture in the front page, which I fully encourage you to go see. Not on the internet edition though.

It’s freakishly uncanny to say the least. Trust those rustics in the north to think it has something to do with Hinduism. Dude, get a grip. God, that poor animal.

Something to bleat about

By Easwaran Rutnam
Amid tension and turmoil a strange occurrence was reported from Jaffna where a goat has given birth to a kid with the facial features similar to that of a human.

Raised by a Tamil resident of Kumbilan in Jaffna the mother goat gave birth to the strange looking kid on Sunday and drew huge crowds who were flocking to have a glimpse of the strange animal.

“The kid has the body of a goat and the face with the eyes and a mouth strongly resembling a human face”, the owner Ariyamuttu Balachandran said.

The kid however died within minutes of its birth and the carcass was sent to the Jaffna University for tests.

Hindu devotees believe this strange occurrence may have religious significance as the birth occurred close to the Gnanavairawar Hindu temple.

thanks to our dear ol’ marduk, promoter of all things pink and *ahem* “alernative” shall we say, I began some weeks ago to watch American Idol. It started out as a time killing exercise till Mardy finished his laundry. And so began the steady decline of my already dwindling IQ.

Given that my days seem unusually long and dull lately, what with the departure of Marduk and Dog et al, I have resigned myself to being addicted to the mind-numbing reality shows for the time being.

The show, is American in every way, with the only refreshing abberation being the insufferable Simon Cole, who of course the show dictates all American viewers must love to hate. Being Asian and secure in the knowledge of my above American average intellect, I adore watching Simon lash out at the dimwit contestants.

Last week, one of them really outdid herself. It was the girls quarter final or something, I don’t quite understand the rounds yet, and they were to be pruned down to 10 potential “idols” from 12. It’s a slow moving show folks.

Kelly, her name was. From north carolina. (had to be the south) She had already annoyed me the previous week with a silly comment about *drawl* “squid, they call it calamani or something, I tried it for the first taaaime and I never want to eat it again.” */drawl* It’s like they’re shut up in bandboxes down in ranch country or something.

So this week, was a gem.

*note: the woman can hold a tune and has this perky quality about her which I find irritating but them Americans luuuurve, apparently. Big surprise there.

Kelly: *does her routine*

Ray: *usual banal complimenting*

Paula: See above.

Simon: I really don’t know what it is about you, you don’t even sing that well, but you really are a little minx and these people seem to love you!

Kelly: A what?

DJ host dude: A minx, Kelly

Kelly: *drawl* What’s thaaaat? */drawl*

Simon: A minx, attractive in a sort of a naughty perky way.

Kelly: Oooooh, wow. I’m a minK. YAY!

Ah, how gloriously self aware. Now somebody shoot it and make a fur, quick!

There comes a time in every girl’s life when there arises a need to own a puppy. I needed co-ownership however, since I could not keep a dog at Loki_Tingle homestead and fortunately, Mardy had been talking about adoption for some time now.

So it was that one dark and stormy evening in November, Marduk and Tingle took off to Katubedda in a tuk-tuk to fetch the creature home.

She was a flea ridden black fur-ball when we picked her up. Fat and practically immobile because of the creatures sucking on her blood all day, she would walk two steps and stop to scratch violently. It was amazing how much thinner she got once we de-ticked her. Finally she could nip at Mardy’s ankles without pausing to itch at three second intervals.

This was the picture that got Mardy smitten. Notice how it’s impossible to tell where her head ends and body begins. see what I mean? Ball_like. The other one is her sister, Ginger who was also adopted by a journalist about a month ago.

The name. Ah, that was difficult. After going back and forth several times and coming up with zilch, Mardy and I decided that Forge, being the sage among us, could properly endow his blessings on the dog by christening her. Forge happily accepted the assignment but things got a little out of control soon after.

At her first vet visit, two days after we brought her home, we needed a name on File 2704 at Pet Vet. (incidentally, Mardy thinks that the dog’s vet is hot and turns a violent pink each time she talks to him.)

Nice_vet_lady: So, what’s her name?

Tingle: *panics* er….we’re not so sure yet. err…we call her lots of things!

NVL: *frowns* you shouldn’t do that. You’re going to confuse her. Give her a name and stick to it.

Tingle: *tears hair out* oh no. but but….

NVL: *menacingly* decide!!

Tingle: oh alright. er. Shadow. Yup. Shadow.

*wonders whether Mardy will protest this unilateral christening*

[Later that evening.]

Tingle: Look Mardy, I made you chocolate chip cookies.

Marduk: oooh. yum.

Tingle: *ahem* so, like funny thing happened at the Vet’s today.

Marduk: yeah? Did she misbehave?

Tingle: Oh no. she was a hit. Everyone loved her and wanted to adopt her. Plays to the gallery, this dog.

Marduk: *makes cooing noises at “shadow”*

Tingle: so like yeah, *cough* I had to name her on the spur of the moment.

Marduk: what? why?

Tingle: *cough*the vet insisted that we do that so she could open a file. She also asked me to stop calling her different names because it would befuddle the puppy.

Marduk: So what did you say? *narrows eyes*

Tingle: Shadow.

Marduk: but but…she’s female!

Tingle: Yeah and shadow is genderless as far as names go…. Besides, she’s black and always underfoot. *helpfully*

Marduk: *contemplates* yeah alright.

He promptly forgot the dog doctor’s well meaning advice soon after and has ever since referred to Shadow as “da mutt.” Needless to say, Shadow is quite confused and only so often answers to her actual name. I have also tried my best to abandon calling her “pooch_pet” and “cootie_kins” since apparently baby talk can be damaging to a dog. I have never held with that theory in so far as theories go, but I don’t like taking chances with living things.

Her parentage is still fuzzy, but the vet is pretty convinced her daddy was a german shepherd. There were a few hair-raising days when both Mardy and I were convinced she had pomenarian genes, especially because she had spiky fur and showed an inclination to dig up the garden. I had visions of my aunt’s pom puppy stealing her underwear and burying it in the garden with just about everything else around the house he could get his paws on and I was ready to disown her on the spot. I hate small toy dogs. -shudder- Mardy however loved her unconditionally and cast it up to me whenever he could that I was cold and heartless.

Fortunately it passed and she’s getting much bigger now. Her paws are HUGE. Also her ears are starting to perk up in distinctly Alsation fashion, something I am not too happy about, but anything’s better than a pom. We love our little bastard, but it would be helpful to know exactly what breed she is so as to prevent any accidents in areas that might be vaguely fragile. We keep reading up on alsations with bad hip problems and it gives me the shivers because already the dog’s been dropped, stepped on and generally mishandled a couple of hundred times. Just this morning I saw Marduk playing wheelbarrow with her - something I am sure will not bode well for her back legs in the future. -sigh-

Most vet visits are coupled with several minutes of pointing at black dogs also visiting.

Marduk: Hey Mutt, does that look like yer daddy?

[Shadow looks blank. Shivers a little confronted with the hulking Alsation which is by now glaring at her. Curls up closer on Mardy’s lap]

*NVL rolls eyes*

As far as puppies go, she’s pretty well behaved. Will sit on occasion when asked to, unless of course, Mardy’s doing the asking, but that’s just because he refuses to assert himself a bit. She loves an audience and perfoms like an angel. We have been training to her to sit and give her paw etc - decided to start off simple. She does it fine when we ask her to, but uses her paw to hold our hands down so she can bite them good and proper, so usually ends up getting whacked or shouted at a bit. Then my cousin comes home last weekend and she sits on command and politely offers her front paw without once attempting to bite. The deception is scandalous. She’s also a bit of a slut and insists on exhibiting herself while sleeping or demanding that we rub her belly. Naturally, she runs our lives. Drives us both crazy on an average day and then does something adorable to make up for it, the little minx.

Technically, I suppose, the dog is Mardy’s, since it lives upstairs. However I am designated nanny and generally end up disciplining her as well. Has lately developed a fondness for wires and keeps Marduk in constant dread that she will one day get to his Thinkpad power cord. So far she has chewed through the radio wire and Marduk’s famous mosquito repellent gadget. Good riddance I say. Now hopefully he will resort to a king mat like a normal person. Been trying to convert him for months, the dog’s finally done it. I patted her in secret for it.

So yeah, we now have a fully vaccinated, little black dog running around the house threatening to make sure our lives are never the same again.

And that’s how Marduk became a daddy.

P.S. Yes, it is true, Tingle has no clue how to resize pictures. -sigh-

There’s this strange person I know that has me convinced he swallowed a thesaurus. Every word he says is a burp of some hideous semantic combination that boggles the mind.

It could quite possibly be a way detracting attention from the otherwise glaringly obvious fact that he talks nonsense - and that’s on a good day. Most of the time it’s just noise.

Yes, he is also very loud.

Listening to him drone on- pointlessly mind you - at one such meeting today my mind wandered to Joey’s attempt to write Monica and Chandler a letter recommending them to an adoption agency in the 10th season of Friends. While the final season left much to be desired, this was one of the better moments. In a nutshell, Joey (on Ross’ recommendation) uses a thesaurus to sound important and comes up with something along the lines of “They are humid, prepossessing Homo Sapiens with full sized aortic pumps” in place of the sentence, “they are warm, nice people with big hearts.”

really, it’s hilarious. But I guess you gotta be there. Anyway, this retard in office does the same thing every day. It gets tedious.

Meanwhile, excuse me while I go empty my head of phrases.

So one sunny day in September, Tingle is surprised by an invite from the all-knowing Lokster. The invitation was to join hi5 this strange friends network thing that I had cunningly managed to evade for months despite getting between two and three invites from less_respected acquaintances.
But one rarely associates email and invites from the Hobbit with regular infuriating missives from the masses, and Tingle, obligingly and much against her better judgement, gave in.

suffice to say, five minutes later I regretted it. This making friends online thing has never really been my thing and hi5 seriously jeopardises my thrived upon anonymity factor. Apparently, now my adolescent cousin’s schoolmates want to “be my friend.” To add insult to injury, someone I particularly dislike and would rather not be reminded of is on my *buddy* list. It also, annoyingly sends off invitations on my behalf to all my yahoo contacts urging them to buy into the evil_network.

Tingle was not amused.

Later that evening in the Loki_Tingle homestead:

Tingle: So like what possessed you to send me that hi5 invite anyway? What were you thinking?

Loki: oooooh. That was not a smart move. It was a moment of weakness.

Tingle: Indeed. I had been successfully avoiding all the invites thus far. But then I saw one from you and I thought reluctantly, well if she’s advocating it….I mean, you’re not known for promoting spam inducing web_widgets afterall….but nooooOOoooo….it sends me an invite, I am lulled into a sense of security and BAM! it’s all over.

Loki: Same thing happened to me. *Insert name of highly respected individual here* sent me one and I threw caution to the winds.

Tingle: took me down with you, did you?

Loki: it IS evil.

Both: *collective sigh*

And two days later, sweet revenge:

*Tingle receives email from irate loki*

“Why the f*** is your goddamn cousin trying to get on my hi5 buddy list? I don’t even know him!!”

awww I think I will convince mardy to get that puppy after all.

This was a vaguely interesting and occasionally humourous take on blogging. The journalism drop out part was mildly offensive.

Armed with mid-year resolutions to try and experience all manner of new things as a means of circumventing an intense abhorrence of change and a desire to be something slightly better than an arm chair journalist constantly writing about the state of the public transport sector without actually knowing the first thing about it, finicky tingle decided to venture out into the world and take the bus from one workplace to the other. The shuttling between being tedious and contributing heavily towards a massive hole that seems to have appeared in my wallet and bank accounts, I decided to try my hand at something new and jauntily hailed down a passing (empty) bus this sunny afternoon.

I have hitherto (and much to the disdain and often contempt of the Lokster) shunned public transport for a myriad reasons, not least of which is a
sensitive nose with strong reactions to sweaty, smelly armpits - by the hundred. Also, the conductors scare me sometimes and in Sri Lanka at least, buses never really stop - they just slow down long enough (if you’re lucky) to let you jump on or off. It’s a dog eat dog world, the local public transport sphere is, and this puppy feels much better in airy little trishaws with the nice obliging drivers who park down my lane. Unfortunately, they are also currently eating me out of house and home, in their nice, obliging way.

And so, in the spirit of broadening horizons, I am now proud to say I have made two journeys by bus - from Bambalapitiya to Colpetty and all the way back. The good news - it took an uncannily short time to get from point A to point B and (yay!) there are bus halts less than two minutes away from each of my offices and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected it to be. It also cost a grand total of Rs. 8/=.

Meanwhile, much we have learned from our experience. Observe the following:

(a) Never attempt character building exercises of this nature during school rush hour. The gawking, attempted groping and obscene comments will likely result in demotivation. Little boys do have raging hormones.

(b) Remember to turn ring tone volume DOWN on mobile phone unless soliciting stares from the entire bus is the intent. Let it be placed on record that commuters do NOT take kindly to Shakira’s “underneath your clothes” at ringing volume 5 during the middle of a work day.

(c) Standing decently at the bus halt as opposed to day-dreaming, playing with feet, obsessing on bird on electrical wire will most certainly ensure buses actually stop for you.

(d) Decorum at the bus halt will also ensure one is not mistaken for a day time escort and strange fellows in vans and cars will NOT slow down in front of you.

That said, we March 26thers are learning things. From all accounts, Loki has managed to drag Mardsy to work in the big bad bus one fine Monday morn and the boy is now hooked. He is also over the moon that his monthly transport budget will amount to no more than Rs. 360/=. ( Mardy used to pay something like ten grand a month to get to and from the cubicle farm in the airy comfort of a three-wheeler himself) Things are looking up.

On the flip side, I smell of bus and my True Star most certainly does NOT mix well with that.

-sigh-

Can’t have it all.

It seems Marduk’s entree into the Happening_Hood ™ has shaken things up in more ways than one. Preliminary vodka and cigar sessions aside, Marduk’s advent has heralded a new era of rodents in the vicinity, and worse yet, inside the old homestead.

Sporting a new look, this particular wayward rodent appears to be an entirely new species altogether, quite different to the usual pesky inhabitants of our humble abode. It sports, for one thing, a hideously strange snout - pink in colour at that- and a long (also pink) tail. Its movements are slow and uncertain and it spends most of its time indoors trying to figure out how to get out. Experts believe that the new species may belong to the hick-meeya variety, commonly found scampering about in gardens and making hiccuping noises and screeching banefully in the dead of the night should it encounter a predator.

Preliminary investigations point the finger of blame at Marduk himself, who in his eternal quest for fresh air to pollute, opens his balcony doors in the wee hours of the morn and/or the dead of the night to smoke. It is reliably learned that the rodents saunter in through the open doors and wend their way down the stairs and into the Loki_Tingle abode and soon finds itself trapped inside and unable to remember from whence it came. Rodents, experts speculate, are not overly bright, despite having survived several ages of man.

Fortunately for those afflicted with rodent phobia in the neighbourhood, they have a fierce and dedicated avenger. With one decisive sweep of her ancient broom and several well aimed spokes of her gardening spade, our Loki ensnared the wily rodent inside the bathroom and hacked it to a quick (we hope) and painful death. All we could hear outside the closed door were the last screeches and hiccups of the ill-fated rodent. And how
the throngs cheered her as she proudly bore the very dead meeya out of the loo and dumped it into the waiting garbage bag amidst loud applause. In honour of her courageous actions that night, she has now been christened Loki - the rodent slayer, by popular request.

Poison has now been strategically placed in nooks and crannies of both houses and Marduk has been summararily warned that if he lets any more creepy crawlies into the house, he would locked up in a dark room with said creepy crawlies for all eternity.

p.s. It might be mentioned that throughout the entire rodent_avenging escapade, Tingle stood on a chair screaming intermittently. Shame on her.