The other day an old lady in her crimson Japanese sedan gave me a ride just a stone’s throw away from my place to The Grounds. Hearing my good fortune (which i amply advertised), everyone went awww. Apparently, she’s a neighbor. We talked about Sanskrit in the 5-minute ride. She’s been to places and recently been discouraged to take Sanskrit lessons. After 5 minutes I had another devoted Sanskrit learner. Patanjali and Panini are jumping in heaven i guess.

I wish I had better luck with the free ride giving souls here. Not that the rides aren’t free, the buses are free. That said, Charlottesville is one goodtimes place. Although, yesterday the goodtimes mood got a bit soured among the folks here as we got beat 14 -26 by William & Mary in the football season opener. That too in front of the home crowd. Chants of “fire Al Groh”  will be soaring through the roofs if we lose to TCU next weekend.

I don’t like the bow ties though. The tie wearing guys in white shirts look like “preppy stuck up snobs” which of course is our nickname  to every other non-UVA Virginia college kids. Orange looks much better. In retrospect, the best thing Al Groh did was to introduce the Orange Tide and the marching band. But the same can’t be said about the sun dresses. Them sun dresses look good. The “gentleman” tradition in football games in UVA is one tradition we an live without. And thank God, it has been weened out. Well almost.

Speaking of football, one thing I’m really glad about is the school spirit in here. I feel I’m back in my high school days again. Though this time it feels weird to be in the “classy snobbish” institution. but we’re always underdog these days in football. All my school life I was in this perennially underdog school which used to kick butts of the big boys with “attitude”. And i LOVED it. Then in the undergrad years, the school spirit thing kind of disappeared. Because that’s how it is back there. And yes, how many stadiums do we have in India with 70,000 capacity let alone university stadiums? I can’t wait for the TCU game next week.

GO HOOS!

in C-ville. Devoid of much needed distractions (it’s only been 5 days) i’ve taken up studying of car bumper stickers. They are fascinating and American. One can say quite a few things about a person by the car he/she’s driving and the bumper sticker(s) he’s stuck up the butt of the car.

It seems Creigh Deeds, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee for the upcoming election is having an “enthusiasm gap”. In all 5 days I don’t remember noticing a single Deeds bumbep sticker. While I’ve seen almost a dozen McDonnell (Bob McDonnell, the Republican candidate) stickers. Even “women for McDonnell” ones.

This wouldn’t have been a problem for Deeds had this been rural Southside Virginia, Shenandoah Valley or even the Virginia Beach region. But this is Charlottesville we’re talking about. If folks in a county 3-to-2 Democratic and a 2-to-1 Democratic university town don’t go out there and take the effort to put a bumper sticker for you then you aren’t such an exciting guy to root for or, you seriously need to shake up your organization. Which is exactly what Deeds is doing supposedly by shaking up his top campiagn staff.

That Deeds is having trouble is evident by his campaign office in the Downtown Mall down here. There was only one guy standing outside the office in the middle of the day in a friday. It was probably lunch time but man, seriously. The bumper sticker story of Deeds affirms what I’ve heard in the political press. Deeds is having an enthusiasm gap. Maybe it will change in the next 3 months. We’ll see.

Although, the Blue underpinnings of Charlottesville can be surmised from the fact that there were cars with Obama/Biden ‘08 stickers.  I saw 4 yesterday. Even one Webb sticker (Jim Webb, the junior Senator to the US Senate and a Democrat) downtown.

The most interesting view was an African American dude driving a red Japanese made wagon. He had a Bush ‘04 sticker and a McCain ‘08 sticker. In an election where almost 94% of the Black vote went to Obama, that guy indeed is a standout from the crowd.

The first thing to hit me in the D of C is a violent streak of heat, almost as if I landed in Bhopal or Nagpur or something in the middle of summer. And summer it is down here in good ol’ Virginny. I think I heard this RJ of some DC station saying it’s the hottest day of summer. And to think of that, my AC was broke for the day. How Americanised I’ve become. I expect my AC to run 24×7 when it’s not even 35 degrees celcius. That’s another thing. I need to get used to the Fahrenheit thing.

The advantage of living in a university town is that you’re likely going to get most conveniences within a mile of where you live. Bank, McD, RadioShack, even an Indian restaurant called Milan. Although i don’t think i would be going there anytime soon. There’s Pizza Hut& Domino’s as well. 30 minutes nahi toh free.

So here’s the best joke I heard the arrival day. The same RJ. It’s so hot today I called up my ex-girlfriend to got a cold shoulder. That’s one good alternative rock-cum-everything station. Anyone coming to DC/northern Virginia area should check it out. 107.5 FM. Good music. Speaking of which, I already love Pandora radio. One can’t get it back in India or most places in the world for that matter.

Little lies. Those sweet little lies were always hilarious. In the end, it almost became too hilarious.

If you were to be a mythical creature, you would’ve been the fiery Juno.

Life is funnier when it happens to somebody else. Such sadists we are.

I have known for sometime now that you’ve been having peeks on this blog since i introduced you to it. Take today for instance. And you haven’t stopped visiting even after everything. Digital footprints we all have. I’m not surprised. Or maybe i am, in a way? I’m amused, though.

You didn’t tell me if you actually read every post, unless it seemed it was about you. You didn’t tell me if remnant of your childhood dyslexia was getting in your way of reading long winded blah. A lot of things were left unsaid but i guessed anyway. I’m not very bad at guesswork. Tell me i’m wrong this time. Knowing would be nice.

You know, growing up is a bitch. And such fun still ! In the end, it’s only causality that you were standing by the roadside while i went  on through the endless cycles of everyday catharsis.

The Top 10 played songs in my default jukebox application (in alphabetical order of artists) in the messy month of May. Maybe i should’ve listened to more sunshiny songs to lift myself up from the late night bad dreams?

1. Hate Me — Blue October.

2 .Maybe — Collective Soul.

3. Why? (Part 2) — Collective Soul.

4. Transatlanticism — Death Cab For Cutie.

5. A Bad Dream — Keane.

6. Porcelain — Moby.

7. Save Yourself — Sense Field.

8. Your Ex-Lover is Dead — Stars.

9. I Dare You To Move — Switchfoot.

10. The Humpty Dumpty Love Song — Travis.

The phone rings, it’s early, it’s seven o’clock.
He says sorry I woke you, but I just had to talk
You know last night, remember when I tried to choke you?
I didn’t mean it, I was drunk, it was only a joke.
You should know that by now,
when the checquered flag comes down,
no one no one no one has won the race

The next night he’s over and over and under
and after he’s finished she lies there and wonders
just why does she need him and why does she stay here
and then in the darkness she’ll quietly say Dear,
you’ve never really known that when the white flag is flown,
no one no one no one has won the war.

They’re complicated people
leading complicated lives,
and he complicates their problems
by telling complicated lies
He tells her he’s sorry, she tells him it’s over,
he tells her he’s sorry, she says over and over
You’ve never really known that when the white flag is flown,
no one no one no one has won the war……………

buzzing in my head for hours.

– by Barenaked Ladies [Gordon, 1992].

Here’s one nice youtube cover (lyrics are a bit off, though).

to nowhereland. The dreamlike directionless of the times is swallowing my insides like a starving Amazon Anaconda. Dreamstate is good. Directionlessness, not. Considering the past few days I have no doubt in my mind, none whatsoever, that I should’ve ditched the laptop and gone to Ladakh instead. Even as I type this in Windows Live Writer, which seems to be one of the few handful programs of use in the bloatware called Windows Vista, the emptiness surrounds me. Why is it so empty?

Don’t cancel plans the last moment. I always said that to meself. I should have gone alone. I really should have. D is of the opinion Ladakh is going nowhere. Of course it isn’t. As a matter of fact, June/July, 2010 would be a nice time for Ladakh-ing after a hectic freshman year at Charlottesville. But that’s not the point, is it?  I should have been a quarter of my way in from Manali to Leh by now in an off-roader soaking in the mountain summer sun. I mean, God, I’m still mooning over this shitfest. Unbelievable!

The electricity’s gone, as usual. Nothing seems to stay on in this state. There’s a crow squatting in the neighbor’s balcony for the last 20 minutes. He (she?) seems to be in a state of deep philosophical contemplation. Sigh. We grow older, people move away from us. I don’t mean death. Rather, they just move away once their interests have been satisfied, or when they get bored. I know I have. It’s a tragicomedy of time. We grow up, people move away and we get older. The cycle continues.

Something’s just not right. I can’t pinpoint exactly what but, something. I wasn’t supposed to be writing this post, for instance. I was supposed to be somewhere else with somebody doing something else and not just sitting here contemplating what went wrong. Everything happened so fast or maybe time is playing tricks on me.

Blogging used to be a way of catharsis. Even that isn’t working. Enough already. Nothing here excites me anymore. Wait for August I can’t.

i need some. i’m trying to numb down the extremes of the negative emotions i’ve gathered throughout May. Negative emotions, anger for instance. Does behaving like a territorial alpha male count as negative? In this case, i think so.

The time has come for getting some fresh air. Now that too is a no-go. I have resigned myself to fiddling with the new laptop and reading Lolita on a monsoon afternoon. Bad call i know. i should’ve ditched the laptop and gone to Ladakh instead. What a waste!

By Death Cab For Cutie. The Song, not the album’s been buzzing in me atrophying brain for the last one week or so.  It’s always so. There’s this song or that travels through the corridors of mind for days. Then, phoom. Gone. But this one doesn’t want to leave.

This song is poetry. Deep.

(the unofficial video is a tad too mushy, but, well made for an unofficial video. Fits the song well.)