Movie mania

These days, I am on a super binge of movie-watching; have watched more than 10 in the last week only. As such, I have an appetite for all kinds of movies, but recently, have been watching too many thrillers.

It all started with Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan movies - Patriot Games and Clear And Present Danger, real pop-corn crunching stuff. Followed it up with another Ford thriller, Presumed Innocent, just about passable fare. Then, there was the Clive Owen-Jennifer Aniston starrer Derailed, which was more like a Bollywood flick than anyone of the rest. Followed it up with another mediocre attempt, A Murder of Crows. And finally, watched Spy Game yesterday.

Ah well, I also thought of writing a blog about the movies, and the result is Movie Watchers, where you can find me and Bloomiboy spouting crappy reviews about movies. You might like it or you might not, but you just can't stop us from ranting on and on. So, check it out at your own risk.

And if you are one who takes risks, you will find that we do watch some really whacko stuff, and even our recommendations can be absolutely might-bending. But then, what else did you expect from a couple of crazed fellas?

An unearthly experience

The past couple of days have seen my health go a bit down and up, no thanks to a mild bout of flu. A day off from work coupled with a cocktail of medication seem to have brought me back to my best, but then hadn't really planned for the associated fallouts - the grogginess and the daze.

Anyway, everything seemed fine, except that I was having a sleepless night yesterday. Perhaps, an effect of sleeping all day, or maybe, due to the new non-drowsy cough syrup I was trying out. So, there I was looking at the minutes ticking away on my alarm clock, trying to catch at least a few winks of sleep before daybreak.

I finally seemed to have dozed off when I was awakened by some sounds from the living room. The clock showed 3-49 and I realized that there were just another three hours of possible sleep left. I almost drifted off to sleep again when I heard the sound of the shower running. Now, was it from my bathroom, or was it so silent that I could hear the sounds from my adjacent apartment? A minute or two of soporific thought and I had to dismiss the latter idea as some creative imagination from a hyperactive brain. Still, the thought of getting up to check out the source of the sounds was a bit too much for me.

As I lay in my bed wondering what to do next, it suddenly hit me that there might be someone out there. Now, blame it on a sedated mind or the horror-buff that I am, my first thoughts weren't about any burglars or thieves. The very next moment though, I laughed away at those fantastic ideas. And then, I sensed something was really wrong.

As I suddenly turned around to look, a white specter passed my bedroom door. In a jiffy, the sleep from my eyes vanished and I was wide awake. As I jumped off from my bed, I found him at my bedroom door looking straight at me. The ash-white skin and blood-red eyes presented a spine-chilling spectacle. And suddenly, life had become a horror film in itself.

"Calm down", he said and surprisingly, I somehow managed to soothe my nerves. "I used to live around here...", he went on as I found the room suddenly turning frosty and unable to concentrate on what he was saying. The words just sounded like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo until...

"...before death came in". Damn ! Those were the last words I wanted to hear. So, this spooky-faced, ash-skinned fellow said he was a ghost. Now if he really was one, he wasn't doing anything scary at all. Other than appearing uninvited in the middle of the night, that is.

"Can you fly?" I was embarassed the moment I blurted out those words. But at that instant, it seemed to be the only plan that I had of getting him out of my house. And well, the words simply came out the moment I thought of them.

With a smile, he slid out the open windows and hovered in the air. But before I could even think of closing the windows, he was back in. And my mind simply blanked out. He started on with his stories once again, but I was in no position to grasp a word of it, and I guess I must have simply passed out.

The fresh sounds of the morning woke me up and to my bitter surprise, I found him sitting next to my bed and still babbling on and on. I looked at the clock and it was 6 am, but the daylight seemed to have no effect on him. Slowly and stealthily, I slipped out of my bedroom, ran out onto the stairs and out of the building. Well, I guess I wasn't really successful as he was there right next to me.

As luck would have it, I found some of the morning joggers near the entrance and quickly scampered towards them. He followed. What was strange though, was that none of them were alarmed by him, even when he simply flew over them. In fact, nobody even noticed him. And that got me thinking all over again.

Was I simply imagining this? Flying phantasma and ghostly apparitions! Hey, these are not supposed to exist. Was my mind playing tricks on me? Did my mind finally give way to the stress of a high-pressure job day in and day out?

I turned to look at him again and there was no one out there. Oh boy, guess it was time for me to see a psychiatrist... damn, but I had never felt schizophrenic at all. And this was a first of its kind experience too. Was it because of lack of sleep, or was it because I had really lost it? I just stood there at the entrance to my building wondering...

...when my train of thoughts was broken by the alarm clock going off. As I opened my eyes and looked at the bedroom door, try as I might, I couldn't even imagine seeing a ghostly specter. When it came to dreams, this really had to be the weirdest of them all. Guess Sigmund Freud would have something to say about it.

And yeah, the non-drowsy cough syrup seems to be seriously muddling my brain. I was better off with the usual one. It at least guaranteed blissful sleep.

Hungry kya?

Continuing with what I have been doing out here, well, here's a sampler. Not that I am much of a poet, but this was one of those days when I was hungry and tired and down and out and still trying to keep up with my deadlines. This one's kinda dark; not my usual style, but spontaneous nevertheless. Anyway, here we go...

As the night darkens
and slowly eats the day away
I stare at my monitor
Trying to work & keep my hunger at bay

The angered dragon in my guts
Gnawing inside me
Images pass before my mind's eye
Of life sucked from me

I am numbed by this hunger
Unable to feel any glee
The emptiness within
Making my life an intolerable misery

As I am slowly being
Consumed by this famishment
I wonder whether this work is
Just for the devil's amusement

Yet I am supposed to finish my work
Coz that's why I am here
Though sometimes I do feel
That it's just bringing the end oh-so-near

Bitten by commercialism?

Made some changes on this blog. Nay, there are none, you might say... but for the trained eye, there are many.

For one, I have listed all my blogs out there on the left, and yeah, as you would have guessed, all of them haven't had much to show, of late. Anyway, I just thought that it might be useful if you happen to be like to read what I write (okie okie, too much of optimism, but then, you see..I am an optimist).

And then, there are some links to some of my friends' ramblings. These are some of the blogs that I do keep reading from time to time.

And finally, just couldn't resist checking what Ad Sense was all about. Frankly speaking, I ain't here so that all of you could click on those links and earn me some dope. Also, you would never catch me divulging all my tax info to Google, so that they can give me a few cents. So, I ain't going to earn anything here. But then, thought of giving this a try...just to see how it really works. :)

Also, got indexed on Google Sitemaps and Google Analytics. (Yes, a Google fan I am.) Haven't got a clue on the kind of statistics these tools generate, but then you see...I am in the mood to check out things.

Previously, had got listed on Google and AJ's crawlers...though it seems that they just link to individual pages here rather than the main page. How does it matter anyway, coz I am here just trying something new?

So, does all of these mean that I am back with a keen interest in blogging frequently? Ah...who knows?

Resurrection or just the after-life !

Been almost nine-months since that last post promising more dollops of history the next day... hmm... guess the next day never came...:)

It's been a super-long time since I scribbled something here and I could churn out a variety of excuses for that - busy times, long schedules at work, a mortal fear of the carpal-tunnel syndrome...okie okie, that might sound a bit far-fetched, but you gotta give it to me for creativity at least. :)

So, what is it that brings me back here today? For starters, I realized that there are actually real people out there who take time out to read all the stories that I put in here...nine months is a long time indeed and still, there are these friends of mine who ask me why I haven't written anything new. Maybe, they are just guessing or maybe, they actually visit here even when there has been no activity for nine months. Wow!

And then there is this old classmate of mine, who tracked me down through this blog. Whoa, that was kinda awesome! :)

Perhaps, that was just the motivation I needed...or perhaps, I have got all the time in the world now...whatever be the case, here I am cooking line after line of plain folderol.

So, what have I been doing all this time? Well, everything from watching movies like crazy (around 500 movies, I guess) to traveling around the country (been to the Grand Canyon too) to shopping for whacko accessories for my iPod (the latest is my nano-integrated Nike shoes) to gambling in Las Vegas (considering that Grand Canyon was on the list, Vegas was pretty much a giveaway) to still not getting tickets for Shakespeare In The Park (those darned lines never seem to end) to getting a taste of IMAX (wow, it's one helluva experience, IMAX 3D is still better!) to building snowmen (one of them was a five-footer!) to swimming at Jones Beach (and I admit that I still can't swim) to getting a cryptex from Google (yeah, was a finalist on The Da Vinci Code contest and no, I ain't selling it on eBay) to scoring a 100 in bowling (nothing much to gloat about, but for the simple me, even that is an achievement in itself :)) to exploring the pyramids, to finally being able to ride an airplane on the outside...

...oh well, I seem to be getting carried away here and I wouldn't call the last couple of lines exactly true. But the point here is, that I have been so busy all the time...maybe some day, I will write about all of these activities too.

Or maybe, I won't.

To tell the truth, I must have been telling myself so many times that I would start this blog again... it's just that I never wrote anything and this blog was as good as dead. So, is this the start of a new season, or is it just another one of those days? Maybe, this is the day that this blog was resurrected, or maybe there is life after death.

Only time will tell.