Star Trek - The Menagerie

I have begun to watch old episodes of Star Trek, starting right from Episode 1 of Season 1. The Full Episodes of Star Trek seasons 1, 2 and 3 are available on CBS.com.

I just finished watching a most interesting episode called The Menagerie, which also happens to be a beautiful piece of science fiction writing. If you have a couple of hours to spare, I encourage you to check out the following two-part video.

The story begins, quite unbelievably, with Mr Spock himself rebelling against his superiors and hijacking the starship Enterprise. This is the episode in which Mr Spock comes into his own and totally outplays Captain Kirk. His last line is just too good: "I see no reason to insult me, Sir. I believe I have been completely logical about the whole affair. That shuts up the smug Captain Kirk, alright.

The Menagerie - Part 1



The Menagerie - Part 2

Cilantro: Put It In Her Taco

"Cilantro cilantro" has been stuck in my head like an insistent song since last evening. This is the most awesome video I've seen in recent days. That's all.

Cilantro: Put It In Her Taco -- powered by Cracked.com

Tourist Spots around Bengaluru

This spreadsheet is so awesome, I just had to share with my readers. Visitors and residents of Bangalore city will find it very useful. It lists all the tourist spots and places of interest, from 50 kilometers to 580 kilometers from Bangalore. It shows the distance of the spot, what type of place it is, what facilities are available there, where is the closest petrol bunk (gas station in Americanese), best times to visit and number of days needed to see the place. Totally awesome.

Here's the link: Tourist Spots Around Bengaluru

We'll never understand women!

From the Marketplace radio program on NPR, the episode dated July 31st, 2008 (emphasis mine):

Professors at Villanova University gathered a group of college-aged women together and showed them ads featuring thin models. Then, as thanks for participating, the women were offered a pack of Oreo cookies. The overwhelming majority said no to the cookies, but they did say they would buy the brands and products that the ads featured.

One researcher said the analysis went something like this: That thin models make women feel bad about themselves, but they like it, and that ads using normal-sized models didn't affect womens' body image, but they didn't like the brands and products that those ads featured either.

This is the reason why us normal men will never understand women. Something makes them feel bad about themselves. So, they like it? They're crazy, man!

Wedding Attendance by Proxy!

By now, I am pretty much used to being assigned the photographer's role at various events I attend - company events, events at the local temple, events hosted by friends and colleagues, etc. Today might have been my strangest photography assignment so far.

My neighbor, who is alone in his house right now as his wife is on a visit to India, called me over to take a "family photo". I went over and found him dressed formally in a suit, as if he was attending a wedding reception. I was wondering how this guy expected me to take a family photo, while he is the lone person in the house right now.

Turns out that my neighbor's wife is in India for her brother's wedding. They want to take a full family photo at the wedding and they want the family photo to include my neighbor, who is here in the US. So, the idea is to take a photo of him alone here and email it to the wedding photographers in India. They will then paste him into the family photo they snap at the wedding in India.

I can't wait to see how the results turn out.

Double-tailed Lizard

See anything unusual about the lizard in the above picture? Yes, it is a double-tailed lizard! The end of its tail is split in two. In fact, the longer of the two split ends is growing another tiny branch. So, this lizard could be triple-tailed pretty soon.

I saw this lizard in my dentist's office in Bengalooru and clicked the photo on my Blackberry. Hence, the bad photo quality. Incidentally, this type of lizards are pretty common in Indian homes and shops, although I have never seen a double-tailed one before. They are pretty harmless to humans, and in fact, help by eating up insects.

Symbiosis: Monkey & Goat

Noticed this interesting sight during a recent visit to Chilkur, near Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh, India. There were a few goats lounging around, and this monkey coolly walked upto one of them and settled down comfortably in close contact. I watched in surprise and amusement as the monkey proceeded to pick ticks and fleas from the goat's coat and pop 'em in its mouth, while the goat continued to rest quite undisturbed!

Singapore Sling

I had four of this drink called Singapore Sling, on the Singapore Airlines flights from Los Angeles to India, this past weekend! I remember tasting it once before on a Singapore Airlines flight, but this time it really got to me. It is sweet, fruity, with not too strong alcoholic content.

Here's what the in-flight menu said about the yummy Singapore Sling:

Created in 1915 at the Long Bar of Singapore's Raffles Hotel. A concoction of dry gin, Dom Benedictine Cointreau and cherry brandy, shaken up with lime and pineapple juice, with a dash of Angostura bitters and Grenadine.

Webtender.com returns several recipes for the Singapore Sling search. But apparently, the above description is the Genuine Singapore Sling.

Apparently, this drink is popular with the other passengers as well. They had it pre-mixed in a pitcher on the food carts!

How to be the Perfect Girlfriend

Sexuality of Vegetarian Food

We don't give this much thought, but almost all the vegetarian food we eat is quite frankly sexual in nature.

Most of the vegetarian food the humans eat is comprised of fruits and seeds of plants. And these are the sexual organs of plants, the parts from which they reproduce. Even when we eat roots of plants such as potatoes and carrots, we are eating the parts from which these types of plants reproduce.

In contrast, most non-vegetarian food is comprised of the non-reproductive parts of animals. Except for eggs.

Humans are quite unique in their almost exclusive preference for the sexual organs of plants as food. Most other herbivorous (vegetarian) animals eat other parts of the plants, apart from the fruits and seeds. I find this fascinating in a weird sort of way.

Also fascinating is the fact that plants seem to store their best qualities in their reproductive organs. The flowers, fruits and seeds of plants are the parts which have the most compelling colors, textures, aromas and taste. They attract and invite us to pick them and eat them. We like them so much, we try to grow them in ever-increasing quantities. It's almost as if plants are using us to help them reproduce in higher quantities. Quite interesting.

I wonder if this excessive consumption of sexual food is what makes humans the most highly reproductive species in the world. I can't think of any other species which mate and have babies every second of every day, all through the year.

Google Lucky

A webpage is said to be Google Lucky if it shows up when you enter a phrase in the Google search engine and click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

A person is said to be Google Lucky if the person's homepage shows up when you enter the person's name in the Google search engine and click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

I am Google Lucky for the search phrase, "libran lover". When you enter it in the Google search engine and click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, you come straight to the homepage of this blog.

Apart from the homepage, this blog has at least two other Google Lucky pages. There may be more that I am not aware of. Click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for the search phrase, "dating Indian men", and you are presented with this page: Dating Indian Men I. Do the same for the phrase, "innocent flirting", and you get this page: Innocent Flirting or Mental Foreplay?

The above two Google Lucky pages on this blog are examples of making it to the top of the Google results based on the strength of the content. I did not consciously incorporate any Search Engine Optimization (popularly known as SEO) techniques into those pages.

Let me know if you discover more Google Lucky pages on this blog.

Oh, by the way, I came up with the phrase, "Google Lucky", on my own today. However, googling for that phrase, I did discover that other people have been using it before me. Now, let's see, if this particular blog post can get Google Lucky for the phrase, "Google Lucky".

Update on 7-May-2007: Found a couple more Google Lucky pages on this blog.

• "Causes of eve teasing" will take you to this page: Root Cause of Eve Teasing in India.


• "Som Mittal" will take you to Corporate Reaction to a Rape. I guess you could say that Som is Google Unlucky because that page is not his homepage, and it is certainly not flattering to him. Imagine his clients searching for him on Google, and this page coming up as the top result! It's a sobering reminder of how powerful a mere individual's webpage can be on the Internet.

Suppressing the Web? Try again!

Google Blogoscoped blog reports on a Digg Users Revolt:

The company that tried to suppress mentions of “09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0” now achieved the exact opposite: this particular key is now spread all over the web in a multitude of ways, including being sold on t-shirts, registered as domains, promoted in mockup graphics, and sent via ecards.

Companies should be really careful before they try to suppress the Web... or an individual on the Web.

He/She Ratio

Philipp Lenssen of the Google Blogoscoped blog has created a tool to find the He/She ratio of a site. The He/She ratio of a site is the ratio of the number of pages of the site containing the word 'he' to the number of pages with the word 'she'.

Here's the He/She ratio for this blog. Clearly, there's a lot of talk about women around here!

Shilpa Shetty & Richard Gere kissing controversy!

In February this year, when I was in India, Shilpa Shetty was constantly in the news. I was pretty surprised. I had been under the impression that she had already faded off into Bollywood history. Apparently not.

Soon after the racial controversy surrounding her participation in a UK reality TV show named Celebrity Big Brother, she seemed to have gained popularity and support from everybody on all sides of the world. All of a sudden, she was appearing everywhere - in the news, on Page 3 items, and at public functions, as well as being considered for a whole new set of roles in both Indian and Western movies! And then I read somewhere that she was in contention with none other than Aishwarya Rai for a movie named Unveiled, whose story revolved around a muslim women who has two husbands and a lover. It seemed like this was definitely the second coming of Shilpa Shetty. (BTW, Mallika Sherawat eventually landed that juicy role in Unveiled).

Things seemed to simmer down a little bit for Shilpa, but barely for a few weeks. Come April, as temperatures start to rise, she is hot in the news again. This time because of the Richard Gere kissing controversy! You can read the low-down on the controversy at that Wikipedia link. However, in this age of online videos, we don't want to just read about controversial events, we want to watch them. I have not been able to find a video of the "obscene kisses". If readers come across any such videos, please leave a comment and let us know. (Update on 3-May-2007: The video is available on YouTube; scroll down to the bottom of this post to watch it). Meanwhile, I did the next best thing I could - I looked for photos of the incident and gathered them together into a sequence which might give us a clue as to what might have happened. Before I say anything more, just take a look at the sequence of photos for yourself. Please excuse the low quality and uneven sizes of the photos. I had to cull them from diverse sources.






















Now, to the untrained Western eyes, these might look like the dashing white gentleman dipping and kissing the pretty oriental lady in the exotic saree. But even a child in India knows the truth... having grown up watching attempted rape scenes in numerous "wholesome, family" Indian movies, where the villain goes at the heroine as if kissing her is his one and only objective, like his very life depends on it, like kissing her is the raison d'etre for his very birth!

Don't the photos above seem to depict a man forcing himself on a woman? It is quite obvious that Shilpa Shetty was trying to keep up a sportive and brave appearance, despite her discomfort. She is even reported to have said that Richard Gere's stunt was a 'too much'. I don't understand why people have been protesting against her, burning her effigies, threatening to boycott her movies and serving a warrant on her. It is not always possible for a woman (or even a man) to defend herself when unexpectedly pounced upon. Another example of this is when Adrien Brody won the Best Actor Oscar award in 2003, and he celebrated by pouncing on his award presenter Halle Berry for a long kiss right there on the stage. There was not much Halle Berry could do to resist or escape that kiss.

I don't think that people should be harassed or arrested or punished for kissing in public. I don't think that kissing in public is obscene. But I also don't think that Richard Gere can pass off his actions as something 'fun' or 'no big deal'. What most probably happened is this: Richard Gere found himself on stage with this pretty actress looking all dolled up and exotic. She might have looked slightly retarded with that big-mouthed grin, but her tall, lithe sleeveless-blouse-and-saree-clad-body sure looked squeeze-worthy. And he seized the opportunity, using the excuse of demonstrating Aids-safe kisses on hands and cheeks, to get exactly that - a solid tight squeeze!

Richard must consider himself lucky that he is only being accused of obscenity. If Shilpa had not turned her face away and if he had ended up kissing her lips, he might have been facing charges of attempted rape in the land of Indian movies! Heh-heh!

Update on 4-May-2007: Of course, it wasn't gonna take too much time before the video would become available on YouTube. See below. Doesn't look so bad actually. And she does say soon after the kiss, "This was too much"!

Seinfeld Drinking Game

Here's something for people who are fans of the popular Seinfeld TV show and who also like to drink (guilty as charged!): Seinfeld Drinking Game!

This will ensure that you are drunk by half-time of the episode.

Lest that site or the page becomes unavailable on some future date, here's a copy-paste of the content (it is not my intention to infringe on copyright):

Here are the drink amounts for each of the following events:
- Bass line plays - 1 drink
- Kramer busts through the door - 2 drinks
- Elaine pushes someone - 1 drink
- Elaine says "shut up" - 2 drinks
- Bob Sacemento is mentioned (obviously by Kramer) - 3 drinks
- Jerry or George gets dumped by his girlfriend - 2 drinks
- Jerry does stand-up - 1 drink
- Someone has coffee - 1 drink
- Someone calls a line correctly - everyone else drinks 2
- Someone calls a line incorrectly - person drinks 2
- A comment is made about George's baldness - drink as much as possible, pour rest of beer on head
- Mr./Mrs. Seinfeld/Kastanza makes an appearance - 1 drink
- Mr./Mrs. Bennis/Kramer makes an appearance - 3 drinks
- Someone drinks alcohol - finish beer
- One of the characters gets laid - 1 drink for each character (e.g.-Jerry sleeps with Elaine - 2 drinks)
- A celebrity appears - 2 drinks
- The Newmen/Seinfeld confrontation - Everyone must say "hello Newmen" and drink 2
- Soup Nazi says "No soup for you!" - Everyone yells with him and takes 3 drinks

Make up some of your own rules....just make sure you get really drunk!

Radio Music Update for May 2006

These are the catchy tunes I like on the radio these days. I like these almost exclusively for the tunes. The lyrics don't have much good to write about and the music videos are not special either, being no different from the countless music videos already out there. You can watch the videos on Yahoo Music by clicking on the song title links below.

1. Promiscuous by Nelly Furtado. The first time I heard this song on the radio last week, the chorus made me think they must be playing some hit song from the 80's. But the song got my attention right away! I looked it up on the Billboard Hot 100, and found it rising rapidly. It was on rank 30 last week (and on 93 the week before, I think), and this week it is already on rank 9! It will continue to rise to become one of the top songs of this summer.
Update on June 9th, 2006: Wow! This song has been at No. 3 since last week, on Billboard Hot 100!

2. Buttons by the Pussycat Dolls featuring Snoop Dogg. I like the song, but we have to wait and see how big of a hit it becomes.

Other Pussycat Dolls songs I've enjoyed on Yahoo Music videos: Beep (my favorite PCD song), Don't Cha and Stickwitu (slower, romantic number).

Apart from their catchy songs, the main attraction of the Pussycat Dolls is their hot lead singer Nicole Scherzinger. Apparently, she is a Hawaiian-Russian-Filipino mix. But she could easily be one of those Indian supermodels who win beauty contests and then go on to movies. Nicole's photo on the Wikipedia link I have given here, does not do her justice (in fact, it doesn't even look like her!). You should watch the above videos to know what I am talking about.

3. Shakira's Hips Don't Lie is still going strong on the radio and on Yahoo music videos. However, it's moved down to rank 16 from it's peak of rank 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

4. SOS by Rihanna enjoyed a very brief No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and then went down to No. 3 the very next week. It is a catchy tune, but I think it will fade out this summer because of the other hits that are coming up. Of course, it is not near the class of last summer's big hit Pon de Replay. Everytime I heard Pon de Replay last year, I was amazed by the singer's talent, and was quite surprised when I learnt that it was her first hit. As per Rihanna's biography on Billboard.com, the only thing which kept Pon de Replay from the No. 1 spot was Mariah Carey's We Belong Together. Rihanna's Unfaithful is another song which is doing well (Billboard rank 14 this week). It is a slower song, nice to hear. The video for Unfaithful is not available on Yahoo Music.

5. Update on June 9th, 2006: Cassie's latest song Me & U sounds really nice and is on No. 7 this week, on the Billboard Hot 100. I love listening to this song on solitary drives in the evenings. Unfortunately, the video is not available on Yahoo Music. However, you can listen to the song on the Official Cassie site.

Hips Don't Lie

Shakira joins the ever-growing list of popular artists who draw our attention to swinging hips and bouncing booties.

The song Hips Don't Lie from her latest album Oral Fixation Vol 2 is fast becoming a major hit. It jumped from the 60th last week to the 41st place this week on The Billboard Hot 100. It's only gonna climb higher and higher in the coming weeks.

For the past week, I have not been able to listen to the popular radio stations for 15 minutes before this song starts playing. I am not complaining. It's a very catchy number, alright! The music video on Yahoo with Shakira's swinging hips and belly dance moves is equally entertaining. There is even a fun(ny) fans only version of the video which was the result of a contest.

Libran Lover is Internet (In)Famous!

Alright, now who has been out-ing information about me all over the Internet? Whoever did this or knows who did this, better confess or else...

"Libran Lover" on MSN Search: http://www.mymsnsearch.com/results.aspx?q=Libran+Lover&FORM=VJNNVFSobbgz

ENTIRE PORN COMPANY FOR SALE !!!

There is an entire porn company for sale on Ebay.com with a starting bid of $100,000!
Here's the link: ENTIRE PORN COMPANY FOR SALE !!!

If I were to buy this outfit, I would not spend any time or resources on the typical run-of-the-mill brainless porn. I would concentrate on:

1. Smart porn: porn with real stories, emotions and aesthetics. As opposed to the kind of porn which seems to be made for retards with no brains.

2. Porn for ladies and couples: most of the porn is made for the average male. A large market for ladies and couples is mostly untapped, I think.

3. Quickie Porn for handhelds: A set of 1-, 2-, 3- minute clips made exclusive for hand-held gadgets like cell phones, PDA, handhelds. Easily downloadable from my website for a small price. Designed for quickies.

4. Amateur porn: you make, we buy and distribute; on a one-time payment basis or royalty-sharing basis (special cases ONLY). Facial anonymity option available. Facial ONLY!

5. People next door porn: movies with "average-looking" (NOT ugly!) people. Not enhanced and artificial same old pornstar-looking people.

6. Porn-based reality series.

7. Tie-up with a gaming software company to produce porn-based games.

8. Introduce at least one new hottie (never seen before seen in the industry) every year.

I think that should give me a significant edge in the porn business.

Airport Pickup Misadventures with FOPs

The Indian Students Association of Arizona State University has a separate page devoted to picking up incoming students from the airport. It is very nice of them to offer this voluntary service to fresh Indian students, most of who would be landing in the US for the first time in their lives. There is one interesting and important passage in red in this airport pickup page:

If you have any relatives or friends at ASU or in Tempe or around, and they can come and pick you up then you are requested not to ask ISA to pick you up. We have had several instances wherein, volunteers get to the airport to receive the students and finally it so happens that their friends come to pick them up. Kindly cooperate to reduce the inconvenience to the volunteers.

Apparently, there have been "several instances" when FOP (fresh off the plane as opposed to FOB) students have requested the Indian Students Association volunteers to pick them up at the airport, and at the same time had a friend or relative come to the airport. This is poor planning and inconsiderate behavior on the part of such students.

Picking up FOP desis from the airport can be iffy.

Years ago, we had a colleague who was going to be our roommate in the US, ask us to pick him up at the airport, when he landed from India. We went to the airport and looked around for over an hour, without finding him. The airlines told us that he had indeed been on the plane which had landed just when we arrived at the airport. So, where could he be? We called home from the airport. It turned out that, our hero had met another Indian on the plane who had been going to the same location as where we stayed. So, he shared a cab with the other guy, without bothering to wait for us or look for us in the airport!

More recently, like the day before yesterday, we went to the airport to pickup another FOP colleague. Before going to the airport, I went into my apartment to get my car keys, while my roommate waited near the car at the apartment parking lot. During these crucial two minutes, when I was away from my roommate, the FOP colleague called him from the airport. The fact that I was not around when that call came in, would decide the outcome of the rest of the afternoon.

When I came to the car, my roommate told me that the guy had landed and would be waiting for us in terminal "24". Terminal 24? The airport here has only FOUR terminals. I thought my roommate might have misheard terminal 2 as terminal 24. You see, the colleague was coming by United Airlines, as per the itinerary he had emailed us. And United always lands at terminal 2 at the airport here.

Long story short, we waited and did several rounds all over terminal 2 looking for him, for over an hour. We even had him paged over the public announcement system. Finally, we asked the United Airlines desk if he had been on their plane. Were we surprised when we were told that he had not flown in on United at all. Instead, he had come by another airline which landed in terminal 4! Off we went to terminal 4, several rounds there, still no sign of him. Finally, we got a call from our apartment. The guy had taken a cab and come straight to our apartment from the airport! WITHOUT bothering to call us before leaving the airport! Three hours of our afternoon, our day and our lives lost!

We came home fuming. After several "sorry sir"s, we asked him why the heck did he not call us before leaving the airport. He tells us that he did not have coins for the public telephone! Could he not have gotten coins from the stores in the airport? None of them would break a $20 note to give him coins, he said. "You could have bought something at the store, a coffee or a juice, and gotten change! The company would have even reimbursed the cost of the coffee for you," I told him. Then I asked, "How did you get change to make the first call soon after you landed?" He said, "Some guy at the airport gave me 50 cents!" What about the itinerary, which said he would come by United Airlines? How did he come on a different airline? He has no idea! Between the time he emailed us the itinerary from India and the time that he actually started his trip, there was some change about which he does not seem to be aware, and we were never informed!

FOPs, I say!