Blue bottles

It’s been a long month. Long hours interspaced with frenzied reading. I’ve imbibed a bunch of crap this month. Including The Lost Laysen(The same woman gave us GWTW???). At the benign(malignant?) end of an godawful spell of horrific mindless literature, I’ve come to write my second review of the blog. The second one in six mois.

BOOK REVIEW: Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter series…

Ok. Dr Lecter is one the most finely crafted characters in the entire world of Humans with IQs greater than 185. He is intelligent. He is wise. He also eats your thymus and pancreas. Basically gut churningly chily. The two books that launched Dr Lector Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs potray the world reknown Psychiatrist/Cannibal as super spooky. Mix Samara Morgan and the Masked Hacking dude in Scream and you get shivers that fill the sixth finger of Dr Lecter. Chiilingly dispassionate and surprisingly lucid is the Doctor’s style. In each of these books you get an adrenaline driven and sleep-with-your-lights-on chills down your spine. However it is the author’s style to humanize the characters as much as possible. Why???

The books start with Dr Lecter helping out proteges Will Graham and Clarice starling to seek out frenzied psychos with the help of cryptic clues carved on mauve writing paper. These pychos are as heart-in-mouth freaky as they can be. Yet as you come nearer to the end of the famed books, they appear, well, too human. Gauche, motivated with dumb as hell impulses and plain stupid. Why??

Each of the proteges come out as usual smelling of the Villans’ blood. Hurrah! The world is saved. Our heroes, with there achilles heels’ exposed to the crafty Doctor, stay for some reason not as triumphant as one would expect. Why??

Clarice is a lot better than Will. She has gumption, strength and brains. Admirable. But it beats me why in Hannibal she, in the end, gets together with the psycho or sociopathic Hannibal Lecter. I’ll tell you why. ‘Cause the author had to humanise every villan. Make every black white. Make the horrified and disgusted readers adore the Killer Psychiatrist even though he fries brains and eats them garnished well. One thing he(the author) forgot. That Hannibal Lecter was not liked but was known and grudged respect because he was who he was. A killing demi-god.

There was no possible reason why the author had to make the ending Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Don’t get me wrong. I adore Happy endings. Love the bits where the Man walks into the sinking sunset with the Lady in question. But not when they are psycho thrillers and not when Stephen King drones on about how scary the whole book is. Really? It’s not. It’s disguised as some wannabe scary smut written to be made into a movie. Nonsense!

My advice… My bitter diatribe suggests incredulity at the inaneness of the plot. Read the first two books. Get scared. Then whem impulse comes to picking up Hannibal go wash your hair or something. DONOT trudge through 500 something pages of disappointment and wish you had never seen Hannibal the Cannibal that way. He was better when he was Satanic.

“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.” (Charles Schultz)

It was a day that she fell out of love. Out of life. As she stared at her own haggard reflection in the mirror, she saw something she never had….

It was like any other day. Began with a mug of coffee. Then a crisp morning newspaper that never really said anything. She answered a call that never really meant anything.

She met people she called Friends. Who never meant much. They didn’t see the quietness lurking in her. They never noticed how her Joys broke her smile into a thousand starbursts. They never saw….

She sat through the day. Life buzzed by. But her mind was empty of thoughts. Clear as the Day after the storm.

It was the day after the Storm.

She walked home. She saw a couple shyly smiling through First Love. Saw another(a couple she meant) walk away from the years that they had each other. She saw…

It was a bright day. Meant for laughter and birth. Meant for smiling over a frothy milkshake. Meant for something important.

In the putrid quietness of her mind a song wriggled out. It grew louder as she walked a step towards Home. Louder, Louder and even more so. The words swirled around jostling for prominence. A single word stuck. Refused to let go…

She had come home. The mental lethargy dissapeared leaving a sort of murderous calm. Something… a cat twisted it’s sleek body around her legs. she smiled absently, ticking it’s ears. It purred it’s displeasure and floated away. She turned to the mirror. As she stared at her own haggard reflection in the mirror, she saw something she never had….

It was a day that she fell out of love.

Out of life.

She thought of Him. She thought of them. She fingered the cool metal of It on her dresser draw. It wouldn’t hurt. Just a blast that would quieten the calm. Intensify. Sharpen the Living. Or Dead. It didn’t matter anyway. She then looked up and saw her image in the mirror. Refecting something that was intangible. Something temporary. But Something that mattered . She had fallen out love. With him. with them. But not with herself. She smiled. So close. Yet so far….

In three minutes there would have been blood on the carpet. She wouldn’t have liked that…

Here are some cool one liners that Dad sent me today. Thought it would be quite nice gracing the blogspace here.(Plus I have to finish 25 posts before the 17th)

Energizer Bunny arrested, charged with battery.

I poured Spot remover on my dog. Now he’s gone.

I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.

I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.( HE HE. MADE IN INDIA)

Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.

How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink?

Join the Army, meet interesting people, kill them.

Laughing stock: cattle with a sense of humor.

Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

Wear short sleeves! Support your right to bare arms!

For Sale: Parachute. Only used once, never opened, small stain.

OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

Corduroy pillows: They’re making headlines!

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm

Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines

I intend to live forever – so far, so good

I love defenseless animals, especially in a good gravy

If you ain’t makin’ waves, you ain’t kickin’ hard enough!

Mind Like A Steel Trap – Rusty And Illegal in 37 States

Support bacteria – they’re the only culture some people have

The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes.

When everything’s coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

I tried sniffing Coke once, but the ice cubes got stuck in my nose.

Grey, wet morning. The sun’s behind iron coloured clouds. My window is wide open. I stick a cold face out and look at the cell. Three messages and it’s not even eight.

Hmmmm. What I really want now is my mom nuzzling her warm face against mine and getting me some coffee. Warm not hot, sweet not too sweet coffee. In my favorite steel tumbler. I detest filter coffee in a ceramic mug. If there’s one nasty thing about being away, it’s that you miss the hugs and kisses and cuddles and the warmth. Friends make up for most of it. But it’s not the same. Afterall you can’t sit really close and snuggle up against the world. And you can’t really hold someone like you do your family.

A cheery morning message from Lucky Ramu. “Bloody hell”, it says, ” There’s no college.” I stifle a smile and think about the poor girl all dressed up and stuck in the rain. She’s as finicky as a cat about getting wet. So this woman, who got up at ungodly 6 am, had a bath in the freezing sub-zero temp got stood up by the institution. One consolation is that she’s going partying later today. The other two are from my mother informing me about some inanities. Like someone’s future education. Who cares?

It’s not time to get up yet. So I stretch to relax my body to curve it into a more comfortable ball. And I nearly fall of the bloody bed. I put my hand out to break the fall and fall smack in the middle of ice cold water that someone’s spilled and not bothered to wipe away. Eloquent swears in Tamil spill out. I always swear in Tamil in the morning. I finally settle in.

Just when a delicious dream smoothes it’s way in, the phone rings. Who changed the ringtone man? It’s as shrill as Karen’s voice. It’s Dad. OK. For this one I’ll be nice.

Yeah. Still in bed. Nothing to do. College starts in two days. hmmm. Uhhh. So? illa. Appron. Tchhh. Aiyyo! OK. Love you too. Bye.

Then he rings off. I then spy an interesting article in the Cosmo and I rack up my pillows to read it. Just as I understood why men are jerks, L.R breezes in wet and ready to re-account the wet adventure.

My throw gleams invitingly and the cushions are just right to curl into oblivion. Then she leaves with my sympathies. And I dive into the still warm bed, ready to catch a couple of z’s.

Just then, three incredibly loud people breez in wanting to pour their heart out to my roomie, who now awake looks like a truck hit her.

Can’t anyone get some sleep around here? I manage to shoo away the still cackling trio and lock the room. My roomie is grateful and slides back into La-La land. I draw the shades to block away the insipid sunlight.

Aaahhh!

Knock. Bang. Bang. Bang. Thud. Kapow.

Oh dear sweet Lord in heaven! It’s the rude maid with whom I have to hold conversations in Hindi. Double trouble . As her pugnacious chin enters my threshhold, i’m ready to battle out. Surprisingly, she’s quiet enough and leaves without a fuss.

I try resting now. No point in trying to handle fate. My phone rings. oh….!!!!!

I switch it off. It’s time for me to get up anyway. I had to go pay the fees. I’m ready and step out of the hostel. I’m at the gates of the college next. And there is a cloud burst and it’s pouring on my unconvered head and my forgotten-the-jacket-in-the-rainy-seasons-and-now-repentent shoulders. I brave the rain and walk a mile to go to the office which is closed. What?

An amused peon tells me a hartal all over Pune. All college closed madam. Paper you didn’t read? Oh my God! she tried telling me. That’s why her college was closed.

I find myself texting… Bloody hell! There is no college….