I Am My Own Grandfather

This little anecdote was something that I had read in a magazine years back and bits of it came back to me so I did a google search and managed to find the whole thing. Apparently Mark Twain wrote this and it was rediscovered by a bunch of singers and made into a song. It's quite interesting and sticks in your mind making you wonder what was Mark trippin' on when he wrote this. Here is how it goes...

"I am my own grandfather"
I married a widow who had a grown-up daughter. My father, who visited us quite often, fell in love with my step-daughter and married her. Hence, my father became my son-in-law, and my step-daughter became my mother. Some months later, my wife gave birth to a son, who became the brother-in-law of my father as well as my uncle. The wife of my father, that is my step-daughter, also had a son.
Thereby, I got a brother and at the same time a grandson. My wife is my grandmother, since she is my mother's mother. Hence, I am my wife's husband and at the same time her step-grandson; in other words, I am my own grandfather.

How's that for something to think about for the rest of the day?

I Am Alive

I realize it's been 2 weeks since I last posted something here. I've been caught up and distracted by several things. Work has been the main culprit and the loss of internet connectivity for a few days had left me frazzled. Plus the night shifts I'm doing have been taking their toll. But I intend to put some stuff up in the next few days. Have a couple of drafts that I had started but didn't end up polishing off. No matter now. Hopefully they all come out the way my loyal readers (if there are any) would like them to be. Have some good material up in my head for the next couple of posts and the mother of them all that I've been wanting to write for a while. Too much suspense I know but I won't keep you guys waiting for long. Promise.

Friends For Sale

I have been using Facebook for a few months now and wasn't really a fan initially for the interface was much more complicated than Orkut which is simple and allows one to easily initiate conversations with friends through scraps and suchlike. But what got me addicted to Facebook were some of the applications. Not only are they innovative but highly addictive and provide hours of entertainment. One of my consistent favorites and one that I discovered just about a month ago is Friends For Sale.

The concept behind Friends For Sale is simplistic. You buy friends or strangers ( who have installed the application ) as pets and when they get sold you make a percentage of the sell price as profit over and above the original price paid back to you. You can choose to buy back or let go once the price seems unreasonable and choose to look for 'pets' that are reasonable and whose price you think would appreciate once they are 'discovered' by other traders. Also when you are bought as a pet your price appreciates by 10% of your previous value and you make a percentage of the profit in FFS dollars. Now this might seem like a passing fad and something one would get bored of in a day but that is not so. I haven't tired of it and I have a very short attention span. I gave it a bit of thought to see what could be the reason as to the addictiveness of this game.The reason I think is the extreme social nature of this application allowing users to freely interact with one another and forming groups, tackling the application and one's success in the game with strategy and team work. You go about checking out other people's pet 'collections' and maybe buy one or two if you like any and leave a comment on their profile thus initiating a conversation with a complete stranger from a different part of the world and an acquaintanceship being born when he or she replies back.

I have been fortunate to be part of a group of guys called FFSGG ( Friends For Sale - Guys Group ) who play this game and are as or maybe more passionate than me. They are great players, great people and great friends. Here's to all the guys at FFSGG. You Rock!

No More Social Networks

I have been spending an inordinate amount of time on social networks, upto 12-14 hours daily. The ridiculousness of it all struck me just yesterday and in a fit I almost deleted my orkut account. But then I calmed myself, spoke to a few people who advised me not to act so rashly as I'm bound to regret it a week later. Which was true of course. The dependence on social networks is scary but real. I need my daily kick as do a lot of other youngsters. Which is scary 'cause it's as addictive as drugs or cigarettes and has similar symptoms of withdrawal like anxiousness for example. I certainly feel it. These so-called social networks have made me more a social recluse than anything. I'd rather sit at home and chat and play games online than go out and actively socialize with people in the flesh.

Not that it doesn't have it's plus points. I've met some wonderful people through these websites and there's no denying that fact. But the ratio of the number of people I've eventually met to the number I've chatted up is abysmally low. The effort I've put in to try and build relationships with most people has been absolutely wasted. The time and effort would have been better spent strengthening the relationships I've already built. Not to mention how much loss I've suffered in the amount of social intelligence that I could have gained from real approaches and meeting new people in the flesh. That's going to change now and I've promised not to log onto my orkut profile for a couple of days at least. I'm going to make do with facebook for now. And limit the time I spend there as well. Also I'm going to make the effort to go out to meet my area friends at least once every day for an hour or so in the evenings. Need to get back into the game and make real friends as opposed to virtual ones.