Day in the Life

My copy of Urdu for Beginners came in yesterday. After I squealed, I turned sheepish and told my husband, "Well, it's not like I'm actually going to be learning Urdu, or anything."

"But it's nice to know that you can, on a moment's notice!" he replied.

He came home from work, Urdu in hand, while I had Chalte Chalte on pause. I watched a bit of it a little later, so he caught the scene where Shah Rukh is ranting and smashing glasses all over the place, and then the one where he gets drunk and starts screaming outside Rani's window, and the cops come -- hey, it's just like the Law Enforcement Log in the small Minnesota town where I grew up! Ah, jerkoffness is universal. Anyway, my husband informed me that I don't need to worry: if any of my ex-boyfriends were to give me two and a half million bucks, he wouldn't be troubled by it. Not that it's likely to come up, but good to know, just in case.

Speaking of Chalte Chalte: at one point, I actually had to think: is Shah Rukh's character really nameed Raj, or am I just thinking of him as Raj by default? Nope, it's Raj. So that made two Raj films in one day (after Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman), not a bad score for a day in which I was determined to do nothing productive. I failed somewhat in the goal of utter laziness by blogging and screenshotting (oh so arduous!), and by walking to the next town to get their library card.

That sounds like a story I can tell my great-grandnieces and -nephews some day, but the next town is only like ten blocks away. I wanted to get the libary card to put the Ethan Hawke Assault on Precinct 13 on hold. I need to watch it (or at least make a halfway decent attempt) as part of my ongoing quest to condemn all the unnecessary John Carpenter remakes. But I didn't want it taking up space in my Netflix queue that I could be using for Mithun movies.

In their entire multi-city library system, the only book brought up by the keyword "Hindi" was the new Dreaming in Hindi (which I also put on hold).

Even worse, they signed me up for a library card without ASKING FOR ID! I hope it was my Planet Terror t-shirt that inspired their confidence. I actually thought, do I even want to be in such an insecure system? But at least with me already being in, and actually being me, hopefully if someone pretended to be me, they'd be caught as a duplicate. Hopefully. Besides, there's more interestng people to pretend to be.

And in the place where libraries and Hindi film blogging collide: I checked my Statcounter yesterday too, and what on earth is going on with all you literacy slogan people? The phrase "literacy slogan" has overtaken "pain of disco" as the top keyword search that brings people to my blog. There isn't enough "Whaa?" in the world!

I wrote one little post, a million years ago, about the concept of reading at appropriate age levels, and how my reading always disturbed people when I was a kid. I can't imagine what people think when they scour through numerous real sites on literacy and then hit my "Read: It Pisses People Off!" Come to think of it, a friend of mine came up with a new one the other night: "Reading: Better for You Than a Bottle of Gin."