Enlightened?

If you noticed, I have more time to blog now than a few months back. Thanks to no course work at Stony Brook :)

Among some of the things I do in my lab are analyse the blogs in live journal. My prof got a call supposedly from some important person in live journal that we shouldn't provide link to the blogs of the users. My profs said that the stakes are very low and we should keep them happy. He doesn't want to invite any trouble to the university. He had a point. What I dont understand is, if people want to keep their blogs personal, why publish it on the net? and then expect many people to not read it or provide references to it?

Anyway, I watched this movie 300. Utter disappointment. I think the director wanted to make the audience gasp in awe, I must say he reached close to his goal (phonetically), only that it was a 'argh'. ;)

The whole movie according to me was full of glitches. The characters didnt show consistency of behavior. At one point a character was shown to be implusive and at another point he talked about self control and reserve. The costume didnt fit it in. One of my friends said that 'zerexes' looked like a gay. The protagonist were dressed like "He-Man" only that they wore leather underwears, (He-Man, its high time you get trendy!). I dont know how it helps to dress less when going to a war! Its not like they were going swimming. Even the dialogues were so much out of context. 'American' English was spoken in an 'age' where devils existed! What was the point of this whole movie ?

They should take some part of Mahabharata and shoot it. It has so much more depth and so much more meaning, glamor and bravery to it. Obviously with immense amount of wisdom.

Today, I watched a few episodes of southpark. Man! they were awesome. I particularly liked the episode 'Tssst'. The episode is about how one of the characters 'Eric - Cartman' is out of control and how they get this Mexican guy to teach him good behavior. In the end, Eric - Cartman's mother being a weak lady, spoils him just so that she is emotionally satisfied. Man that was revealing.

I even saw this episode on scientology ('Trapped in the closet') and I remembered my experiences with a free personality test that I took during summer 2006. The guy was persuading me to buy the book and I told him that I would look up the internet before I buy it. He suddenly started acting paranoid because in the internet I would find information that scientology is all crap and he thought that I wouldnt take it too well. It just brought that memory back. Anyway that was a funny episode.

Persuasion...hmm. I now remember this guy from citigroup who took me to this "amway" equivalent product meeting. He wanted me to join it. He gave me the ticket first and asked me for 100$. Man!! He manipulated, talked nicely did every god damn thing to persuade me to sign up for their marketing business... I must say I lost 10$. But I got away with everything else.

There was another incident recently, where a girl from nowhere came up to me and put some kind of a frgrant pillow around my neck and said that it would relieve me of my worries and would help me relax. She massaged my chest, my back at the same time she was asking me to inhale the liquid saying that it would be good for me. She wanted me to buy the product. Initially she said that she would sell the whole set for 59$, then she said that she would be willing to give me a discount of 39$, then she said that she would be willing to sell it for 35$. The more I was staying there the more she was persuading (physically..u know :( ) I didnt want her to persuade me so much by touching that I finally get into a position where I am oblidged to buy from her. In a few minutes I realised that there was no way I could convince her verbally, so I just left her there and ran away. Man!! Phew. I found out later that my two of my friends had placed a bet on whether I would buy that fragrant pillow or not!! Sandesh lost it and I am sure he now knows which side to place the stakes when it comes to betting on me ;)

I am sure Iwas a tough challenge to each of these people. Either that, or I am student who doesnt have much money to spare.