The theory of improbable probabilities

(also known as the theory of free interchangeability)
Warning-Can cause brain damage due to its unending possibilities...

Those who have seen Pranav Mistry's insanely brilliant presentation at this year's TED talk in Mysore will be knowing the unlimitedness of human imaginations and possibilities. His 'sixth sense' invention is one of the greatest ideas that I've heard in recent times. Viewing that video yesterday night(and with some gentle reminder from a good friend on the phone), I remembered about the 'theory of improbable probabilities' that I developed in college. Its a pity that the guys at TED missed this idea considering its far reaching implications. This theory is as flexible as the elastic of a 1995 model 95 inch VIP frenchie and can be applied in any field.

It all took birth in my elephant sized brain about 3 years back on an exam eve. As usual, we started our studies on the evening of the day before the exam after a day full of teen comedy movies. The time was past midnight. There were almost 10 of us at Raja's home. Everyone was worried about the pile of notes remaining to be read. Some were half asleep. I was staring at the ceiling. Suddenly it struck me and before thinking much more on it, I blurted it out to the world for the first time- "Guys, What if today was tomorrow and tomorrow was today? Our exams are over now...Rejoice!!!" As they say, every great mind was ridiculed during his time. Socrates was stoned, Copernicus was beaten up...same thing happened with the brilliant me. But this didn't deter me. I came up with more theories on the same line which were well recieved with brickbats. Some more on the same line...

*"What if work was salary and salary was work? We would be getting salary every day and work only at the end of the month"

*"what if land was sea and sea was land?We would've so much more space to live and in turn real estate prices will be at their minimum, say 1 rupee for 1 acre."

*"what if India was pakistan and Pakistan was India? Today would've been Kasab's 1st death anniversary and lashkar would be referred in past tense"

*"what if rock music was carnatic and carnatic was rock music? Kirk Hammet and his likes will be sitting on the floor with a guitar on their laps and M.S.Subbalakshmi would've been headbanging."

*"what if face was ass and ass was face? Everyone would be a member of assbook. And kicking ass won't be a thing which everyone can do. And the dialogue- your ass looks so awesome- wouldn't get your ass kicked"

*"what if Bal thackerey was Manmohan singh and Manmohan singh was Bal thackerey during 26/11? Nothing would change. Maximum we can expect is a useless article in his yellow saffron mag saamna"


Many more applications of this theory are there. Not posting it because of its highly adult nature. Do contribute your own ideas of this theiry :P

your crusader Praveen

Sam Anderson: The Phenomenon

If you know malayalam, better read the Malayalam version of this post HERE.

It was some months back that we all heard about the brilliant actor called Sam Anderson. His dance sequences and breathtaking dialogue delivery has been floating around as popular forwards for quite sometime. Some months back I got the full DVD of Sam's one and only movie. Though I been planning to watch it for a longtime, I never got the courage to sit and watch it alone. Its in this scenario that I got an opportunity to watch it this saturday. Some of our old collegemates were here for a get together this past weekend. About 10 of them, who had arrived from places like Trivandrum, Hyderabad and Mumbai, had reached our flat o Friday itself. Thats when we had the idea of using them as guinea pigs for the Sam movie experience.

As decided by me, Raja and Praveen, we made an announcement on Saturday morning- "We are gonna play for you a superb new 'adult' movie. On hearing this, all the guys who were half asleep and lazing around, jumped up and shouted in unison- "Play it right now". So, we played for them the DVD of that classic Tamil movie then itself. Movie's name "Yaarkku yaaro Stepney" (who's whose stepney). Don't laugh at that crazy title. Its only towards then climax that you will realise the hidden inner meanings of this title (Provided you are alive at the time of the climax). The movie started with a song sequence featuring a heroine whose face can give nightmares to draculas. As the song gets over, her gold chain is robbed by some filthy looking robbers. Thats when our great hero Sam bhai makes his grand entry. He zooms in on a scooty and shattering with it all accepted norms of the looks of a hero. The robbers escaped. He rescues the heroine and starts with his superb dialogue delivery. The guys who were waiting to see an 'adult' stared impatiently at us. Some of them, who realised that this was our plan to fool them started making plans to beat us up. One guy who still hadn't given up his hope began fast forwarding in search of that elusive 'adult scene'. Anyway, in the end, we all decided to watch the whole movie.

The next 2 hours we all sat with wide open mouths watching Sam's adventures on screen. His acting is beyond the capabilities of a normal human being. There's no such thing that can be called an 'expression', on his face. There's only a constant 'rare' expression on his face. He's the only actor on the face of the earth who can deliver dialogues like "I love you", "She left me" and "I will kill you" with not a single change in facial expressions. When he delivers his dialogues, his eyes will be focussed mostly on the floor or the walls. He also has the habit of putting out his tongue occasionally. Also, his seals his mouth the moment he finishes his dialogue. In almost all the scenes, he appears by proudly projecting his big belly. He also has the habit of frequently staring at the camera. Sam's highlights are the song sequences. He has the ability to carry a whole song with his shoulders alone. This awesome dance step is known as "shoulder shake".

Now, talking about the movie, its even better. A guy called Joe stanley has handled the story, screenplay, direction, music, lyrics etc of the movie. When we did a search on him on the net, it didn't yield much results. My suspicion is that our Sam himself is Joe. Anyway, the whole movie is filled with moments which are brilliantly directed. I think the director just hung the camera somewhere and asked some random people to do whatever they like. The locations of the song sequences are praiseworthy. Its a ploughed up waste land which normal humans will think twice before using even as a toilet. In one of those scenes, you can even see a stray dog walking in the background. And the songs are even better. The song starting with "raasathi enn aasai raasathi" is on all our lips now. Sam's 'action song like' steps, the shocking smile and that stylish walk showing off the big belly adds to the beauty of the songs. Sam's character named David is an automobile engineer. He has hung several car designs all around his office, with most of the designs looking even worse than a nursery kid's crayon work. One of the 2 heroines always comes to his office and all these scenes start with the girl saying 'Hi David'. There are atleast 5 scenes like this. Sam's aim is to build a car costing Rs.70,000. Its being said that Ratan Tata came out with Nano after being inspired by Sam's movie.

In this movie, you will laugh at all scenes except those deliberately intended for comedy. The highlight of the movie is the climax. A girl whom Sam used to flirt with and later fooled, arrives with a stepney tyre. After rolling it towards Sam and his girlfriend, she says-"Stop seeing me as a stepney". Pat comes Sam's explanation-"You are the step which helped me to scale up the heights. Step nee(step you), step nee, step nee. I have never seen you as a stepney". God! we all really cried at that scene. After this, Sam and his girlfriend starts walking around his car imagining it to be the holy fire. After this, they head straight to Canada. By the time the movie ended, we all had become Sam Anderson fans. Most of them copied this movie to a DVD before they went back so that they could share it with their friends. I also joined in his orkut fan club. This film is a must watch for all movie buffs. If anyone has any doubts regarding whats acting, show them this movie. That will be the last time they will have that doubt.

PS-If anybody wants the DVD of this classic movie, contact me.

Don't miss these awesome clippings from the movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0iXYpHXWIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRPPCdatuPo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urN6mrM8iAw&NR=1

your crusader Praveen

Sadistic pleasures

One morning last week, I happened to read a forward on moments which make us happy. Dont know why, may be because of my sadistic mood, I didn't find it that much interesting. And that set me thinking on ways to get sadistic pleasure. Here are some of the ideas that I arrived at..

1. Tying together the tails of 2 dogs
2. Spraying petrol on to a cigarette being smoked by your neighbour.
3. Putting chilly powder in your friend's contact lenses.
4. Putting your leg in the way when your friend is running to catch the bus.
5. Dropping a big stone over the head of a sleeping beauty.
6. Putting a scorpion inside your friend's shoes.
7. Drawing a perfect replica of an underwear over your friend's pants(at the right place).
8. Dipping someone's toothbrush in the closet.
9. Pouring coffee over someone's new white shirt and saying "sorry, couldn't spread it properly"
10. Hypnotize your friend. Make him tell everything(about his secret affairs). Shoot everything on a high definition cam and send it to his girlfriend.
11. Cutting a big hole at the centre of someone's umbrella and nicely folding it back during rainy season.
12. Unplugging the spark plug of someone's bike and make them kick to glory. And then make them roll it slowly to the mechanic shop.
13. Increase the volume of the ipod to max and pplay death metal when someone is blissfully sleeping with the sound of light music in their ears.
14. Spray orange shell juice or onion drops into someone's eyes.
15. Pour some super glue into the steps of an escalator. (Contributed by my friend Nikhil)

PS- Just a fun post. Don't take it seriously. And don't try this at home. Am not responsible for any loss of skin or swollen cheeks.
your crusader Praveen

Cutting Onion without crying

This is a plain translation of my Malayalam blog here-ithihaasan

A question which has been on the minds of scientists, expert chefs as well as housewives for millions of years-how to cut an onion without crying. A housewife crying incessantly in the kitchen after an onion cutting exercise is a common sight. When we started cooking in our flat, we had to face the same problem. Even when my friend cuts onion in the other room, I used to make a scene howling, screaming and crying. So, you can imagine what will be the story when I do it myself. Its at this juncture, when onion cutting turned into a constant nightmare that my mind began thinking deeply on measures to be taken to fight this onion monster.

This thinking first led me to my black cooling glass. And one day I tried it. I put on the glass and started cutting onion. The only thing that happened out of this experiment was that the red onion appeared black. The screaming and crying remained as it is. Some more days passed. One day, when I was preparing to cry, my eyes fell on the towel that I use to dry myself after a bath. I didn't give it a second thought. And so happened my successful experiment in tearless onion cutting. The steps to be followed in this are-

Step 1-Take the towel that you use to bath. Please don't take thick towels. Better to have a light one with small small holes.

Step 2-Tie the towel around your head in such a way that it covers your eyes. Take special care to not make yourself blind by tying it around 2-3 times.

Step 3-After tying the towel, take a look around your surroundings. Make sure that you can see everything clearly as before.

Step 4-No more steps. Just take the onion and start cutting. (with a smile)

PS-While doing this, if anybody mistakes you for a taliban terrorist and beats you to pulp, am not responsible


your crusader Praveen

Message in a bottle

This happened some years back(I guess, its been almost 5 years). And this is the first time am revealing it to anyone. I had this weird idea which I titled "Message in a bottle". It was inspired from a movie I saw at that time. I wrote a message in a piece of paper. It went something like this-"To whoever is reading this,This paper comes to you from a place called Trivandrum, which you can locate as one of the bottom most areas of India in the world map. This paper carries no lucky charm. Nor would it liberate from all your sins. This is just a message of peace." And then I proceeded to write the english translation of the lyrics of A.R.Rahman's "Vellai Pookkal" from "Kannathil Muthamittaal", which I got from somebody. Then I added-"Please add your message of peace, your name and country and put it in the bottle. Then throw it into the ocean.From Praveen, India"

I tightly bound this piece of paper in a plastic cover and fixed it thoroughly using cellotapes. Then I put it in a tight bottle and wrote "the message" on the side of the bottle, using a marker. I went alone to the Valiyathura pier(kadal paalam) in Trivandrum and proceeded to the end point. Some people were standing there. I slowly took the bottle and threw it far away into the sea. Then I stood there for sometime watching it dancing over the waves. Thankfully for me, it was travelling to the horizon rather than towards the shore. After somedays, I completely forgot about this.

Today, after a long time, it somehow came to my mind. Now I wonder, where it might have reached, who might have read it and who might have added to it. Or did it end up at the same shore on the same day itself. One can never know. I would consider myself the luckiest person alive if someday I get the bottle back. Now am thinking of doing it again and add my e-mail address to the message so that those who get it can mail me and tell me what they added.

13-ophobia

This post is inspired by Dickson Abraham's post on Paraskavedekatriaphobia. If you are wondering, what the hell that is, its the fear of 'Friday the 13th'. Anyway, according to him, my fear can be classified as triskaidekaphobia, just the fear of the number 13. Am not a person who believes in such silly stuff. But there's a solid reason behind this particular fear. This happened when I was in 8th standard. My roll number for that year was 13. Usually my roll number for all years been numbers over 30, as my name starts with P. But mysteriously this year, I was 13th on the roll. But I din't give it much of a thought as 13 was just like any other number for me, back then. Things began changing when the exams and marks started coming. I was a bit studious till 7th standard and used to be in top 5 of the class till then. Suddenly, this year I found myself failing in exams and especially maths. I din't pass for maths that whole year. In the final exam, because of the teacher's kindness, I somehow got through. Anyway, after that year I was relegated[in my opinion, promoted] from ICSE to the state syllabus. All this maybe due to some other causes but even today whenever I see the number 13, it causes butterflies to flutter in my belly.

your crusader Praveen