Friday, August 21, 2009

Robin Hood and the Miracle of Nottingham Castle

PJs are the order of the day. Well at least they were a while back, dunno about now. In college, I was the joke guy - I used to entertain people during our laboratory classes by narrating one poor joke after another, mostly ones I came across. I use the word 'was' because many people aren't really entertained by it anymore. That sort of helped me to get started making my own. If I may say so myself, I have been successful in creating some unbelievably nauseating and gut-wrenching such 'jokes' and simply love to see the reaction on the faces of the people who realize they just wasted two or three minutes of their life on THAT. Anyway this is perhaps the first real elaborate one I came up with. I think it has a better effect when told in person, but most of my friends already know this and the others I don't think I'll have an opportunity to narrate to in person. So, here goes...

[ NB : Please don't question the logic, as there isn't much of it. Also, you need some basic Bengali vocabulary, just basic. ]

Situation:

Robin Hood and his merry men are at war with the Sheriff of Nottingham. The war has lasted 2 days. On the dawn of the 3rd day Robin wakes up early and finds the castle in ruins. Another 12 hours of sustained attack will do it for them.

Suddenly he spots a sentry on a turret of the castle and thinks, well I'll take care of this SOB. He prepares his bow, finds that he's out of arrows! One of his merry men, who incidentally was Bengali, steps up and gives him an arrow. Robin thanks him but the Bengali guy stops him and tells him the speciality of the arrow he offered. He says "Robin, this is indeed a very special arrow. It is sacred, we Bengalis consider it a female unmarried arrow and hence it is holy, it's bound to do the trick." Robin goes "WTF?!" But thinks, this guy's from India, they have all these weird traditions and stuff so he doesn't make much of a deal.

He aims and shoots, and lo! he misses! The arrow misses the sentry by a whisker and falls inside the castle. An hour later, the castle is miraculously repaired, all their hard work undone. They lose the war.

How did this happen?

[Scroll down a bit]





Solution:

The arrow - tir (Bengali arrow)
But it wasn't a tir.. it was female, hence a tiri...
It was unmarried too, hence a miss-tiri.
So if you send a mistiri flying into a castle you can guess what will happen...

Monday, August 10, 2009

10 things which may not seem so but are oddly satisfying.

This is not a tag, I've been meaning to write this ever since I managed to do #4 on this list a week back. No order or anything, the list is numbered randomly.

#1. Getting the last seat on the bus to college.
A really good feeling although I know that I'll get screwed later, since the last seat is always at the rear and getting off the bus when it's full isn't that easy, especially when you are carrying a football in a plastic packet.

#2. Seeing the 'Free Space' of your hard disk increase after burning stuff into a DVD and subsequently deleting that stuff from your HDD.
Well this doesn't seem that odd but when your DVD writer conks out 5-6 times in as many months, trust me, it is a sight to behold. My HDD's capacity is 120GB but there was a point of time a month or two back when I had just 3GB or so free. So you can imagine.
I get a similar feeling when I hear the rusling sound when I empty my recycle bin (in case I forgot the Shift button when I was deleting stuff).

#3. Doing a perfect Neck Stall.
I like showing off by doing tricks with a football but I do look like an ass sometimes because I haven't perfected them. For those who don't know what a Neck stall is, it is simply kicking the ball into the air and catching it on your neck. Awesome feeling when it works perfectly...

I'm not the guy in the picture by the way.

#4. Shelling a boiled egg and obtaining two pieces of the shell.
Normally when you shell a boiled egg you look for a crack and then pick at it, ultimately getting about 100 small fragments of shell. Getting just 2 pieces is hard, try it.

#5. Seeing the football field almost completely dry during the rainy season.
When you hate playing football in the mud as much as I do, you'll understand.

#6. Waking up early in the morning, checking the time and realizing that you can afford to sleep 2-3 hours more.
This is anything but odd and everyone has felt this. I had to include this because I love sleeping and sleep an average of 8-9 hours per day.

#7. Start of the new English Premiership season.
The months of June, July and August can be rough every alternate year as there are no good football matches on TV. Take this year for example. We had a week or two of the Confederations Cup and then, NOTHING. Regular football on weekends (watching at least) has become a necessity in my life. I can't wait for 15th August...

#8. Pouring out just the right amount of Chili Sauce / Tomato Ketchup.
This one is nice. It's basically realizing you had poured out just the right amount of sauce (so that you don't waste anything but also don't have to pour again) as you're having your last piece of French Toast or Chicken Cutlet or anything for that matter.

#9. Receiving an attemped 'missed call'
No one really does this anymore but a few years back people used to bug each other, during a boring class for example, by continously giving 'missed calls' to their friends. I was on the receiving end (pun intended) a number of times and simply loved it when I managed to answer the call, costing the caller a buck and making sure he didn't bug me again, temporarily at least.

#10. Walking on a clean pavement and seeing a person throw rubbish into a proper bin instead of on the pavement.
This may sound silly but when you hate littering as much as I do, it's not. I like to see my city clean. Although the 'non-litterer' is actually doing what he should be doing, it feels good to see people who don't subconsciously make the city dirtier and then complain about it.

Wow I actually finished this in one sitting. Anyway more weirdness later...