Domain Maximus

I agree with some of what Paul Lay is saying here. But banning cellphones in museums might be taking it too far. Still there is no denying that the picture accompanying Lay’s post is A-W-E-S-O-M-E!

Sometimes your head just explodes when you read a story. Several times. Curious developments in Rituparno Ghosh’s life. Hattip: Greatbong.

Busy week with many thousands of things to do. But what to do… the need to keep reader amused overwhelms the self…

So let me share the fascinating works of Vilayanur S Ramachandran. (Yes Pastrami, the brain guy. From Chennai. Correct. The very same.)

I am halfway through his first book, the tremendous Phantoms In The Brain, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. But to save you some of the 540 bucks it costs at the Imax Crossword here is, ah my love for you all, VSR’s talk at TED in March 2007. The intro from the TED site:

In a wide-ranging talk, Vilayanur Ramachandran explores how brain damage can reveal the connection between the internal structures of the brain and the corresponding functions of the mind. He talks about phantom limb pain, synesthesia (when people hear color or smell sounds), and the Capgras delusion, when brain-damaged people believe their closest friends and family have been replaced with imposters.

Wait wait. Don’t run away. Listen to the man. Listen and drool.

Do you have friends who are totally, totally on a different wavelength?

Sure you guys get along just fine. But sometimes conversations tend to get bizarre very soon. I don’t mean different wavelengths in the sense that you work in consumer banking and they work in investment banking. No I am talking about the situation where you work in consumer banking and they work in mixed media impressionist sculpture or something.

Let me explain.

There is this dear friend who is the highly creative advertising-media-design type who does a LOT of work for JAM Magazine. She is quite the brimful of ideas. And I mean ALL the time. Now these advertising types have brains that work at a completely different level, (electron orbit?), compared to the regular moderately imaginative brain that I have.

When you ask them for advice or inputs on things you do so expecting an avalanche of creativity to be let loose. It’s as if they just wake up in the morning, spend an hour thinking up a few hundred creative trains of thought, and then spend the rest of the day just launching them at the least suspecting MBA types who still can’t get over the genius of VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP.

Question in office: “How do we give the magazine a new look?”
Regular Sidin answer: “Let’s get a new font, increase the visuals and jazz up the cover a bit!”
Arty Lady’s answer: “Let’s chop the magazine to a square, punch a hole down the centre, print text down the diagonal and string it up at newsstands.”

At the time you try to hold a straight face while wondering what substance makes the brain works that way. But most of the time you envy the insane coolness of their ideas.

So yesterday evening I am sitting hunched over the laptop wondering what to get the wife on the soon-to-be-here first wedding anniversary.

While I may be tall, dark, handsome, have immaculate chest hair and nearly odourless sweat, gifting has never been a strength of mine. I suck at it. And when it comes to gifting women I take that sucking to plunging depths. So, in a moment of weakness, I asked Arty Lady for a anniversary surprise idea.

The mystery is this. She doesn’t even pause to think. It’s as if her brains has ideas for any possible scenario just cached in somewhere. Without as much as a pause to suck in air she launches into the description of a plan unlike any I have heard before:

“Sidin what you do is this. First I will give you the number of a friend. He is a broker for elephants and other trained animals. You book a nice big elephant for your anniversary day. You then rent a good Indian prince type Sherwani. You dress up, take the elephant, go to her office and wait with the animal till she comes outside after work. Then you pick her up and begin a slow yet extremely regal elephant ride to South Mumbai. On the way you can stop at a cafe or something and share a coffee of some kind. Leave the elephant prominently outside. You must have booked a table at the TAJ for dinner obviously. Then you take the animal right upto the entrance of the TAJ. The valet’s face! The idea is to give the woman an experience she will never ever forget for the rest of her life. Awesome no?”

I paused for a second in order to retract chin and a lion’s share of tongue from the floor.

“Yes. Yes. Awesome. Awesome. Elephant. Awesome. Very good. Give me that bottle of water please…”

“What were you planning Sid?”

“Handbag…”

p.s. Still open to outstandingly creative ideas that do not involve large creatures that can tenderize you for timepass.

Afficianados Aficionados (just like fans but with better teeth and gold credit cards) of this blog will be well aware of the many changes that have taken place to Domain Maximus over the last five years or so. It all began as an email newsletter which ran for a year or so before finding a very happy home at sidin.blogspot.com. The blogspot site saw the blog mature, find itself in a Zen sort of way, and settle down to the sporadic rhythm it has now.

And then in May of last year I moved everything to this whatay dedicated domain. With rising traffic and a more vigorous freelance writing career I figured I needed a better, more personalized showcase of my writings. The wordpress platform gives it flexibility and customization that was simply unimaginable on Blogger. But apparently more than that has changed on this blog. Sob.

Middle of last week I came across this link.

The Blog Readability Test ‘apparently’ goes through the content on your blog and determines the education level required to understand what’s going on. This is a fun thing to do for the avid blogger unless, of course, THIS is what the site had to say about the very blog you are on right now…

Hmm. Elementary school. Damn! And here I was, thinking Whatay was all about erudition and insightful humour and intellectually enriched conversation.

Apparently we are all little kids with leaky noses and tiffin boxes.

But the slap in the face was yet to come. (And I WILL tell teacher about it too!) Guess what happened when I typed in the trusty but forgotten blogspot url:

DAMMIT!

What has happened to Domain Maximus? Are any of you sensing a general lowering in intelligence levels? Am I using one word where I should use a paragraph with footnotes? Shorter sentences? Perhaps time for a post on Shakespearean Insights into Metaphysical Particle Dynamics?

I am at a loss of words here. I feel dumb. Waah! Waah!

Can I go to the bathroom now?