Ghostwriter

If you could have any author – living or dead – write your biography, who would you choose?

ImageThe answer is pretty simply actually, for me it would be Walter Isaccson. He is a writer, journalist and more importantly in this case, a biographer, (and a very good one at it) which makes him the ideal candidate. Now while I might sound like a big ass for putting it that way, it can be said this is his area of expertise.

ImageI had read his famous biographies on Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein before, and with his most recent work on Steve Job’s biography, he did get much more fame (he was already acclaimed, just that more people know him now because of it). While my favourite authors include George RR Martin, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dan Brown, Stephen King, Khaled Hosseini, Amish Tripathi and in graphic novels/comic books Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison these lists go on, and he quite doesn’t come under the ‘favourite author’ list, he is great at what he does no doubt, and it would be an honor to have him write my own. Just that I need to do something worthwhile first for that matter.

And thank god the question was not an autobiography. That would have killed even myself to death.

Week by the Playlist

Tell us how your week went by putting together a playlist of  five songs that represent it.

Maybe Tomorrow Is a Better Day by Poets of the Fall

Somewhere I Belong by Linkin Park

 

Numb by Linkin Park

 

Bored by Deftones

 

Dreaming Wide Awake by Poets of the Fall

 

Well honestly that is more how my week was based on remembering songs from my favourite bands than actually pertaining the song to the context itself. Still accurate more or less. Here is a post with songs describing my life.

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

538287_10151310369867883_770463414_nCourtesy of IndiBlogger

As per your wish, here is not one but many happy smiles hearty laughter. And a bonus, I’m there too 😀

This was taken at a bloggers meet by IndiBlogger, India’s largest community of bloggers. Connected Music IndiMeet (we technically add ‘Indi’ before anything here, sort of) sponsored by HP. And as another bonus, here is what happened there in glorious detail (kind of) in a previous post of mine – The sound of blogging. Well okay, I already mentioned this in another previous challenge, but still that post is so awesome. (so kindly don’t jump on me please)

Coming to the title, this poem was what immediately came into my mind.

A Dream Within a Dream.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe

What makes one a VIP?

Who’s the most important person in your life — and how would your day-to-day existence be different without them?

ImageMy answer to this question is a counter question, what makes someone a VIP? (title) I’m myself wondering. Sure there are lot of important people in everyone’s lives, myself not being an exception. My parents are important, as I’m as of yet living dependent on them. Lot of people are important whom I’ve met throughout my life. But I don’t understand what basis to classify people as relatively important. I face this question a lot, not just limited to this context. Even among friends, we have good friends, close friends, best friends, this friends and that friends, depending on how much we trust and confide in. But the truth is, we never actually care about others more than we do ourselves. That is the the sole truth. And the most importance person? Still no answer. I can’t even name myself, otherwise I would sound narcissistic. So I’ll just leave it here.

Fantasies, when the truth isn’t good enough.

The Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny or Santa Claus: a fun and harmless fiction, or a pointless justification for lying to children?

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Sometimes… the truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.

– Batman (The Dark Knight)

Reading the above question, this is what which struck my mind immediately. Now personally I don’t care about these fantasies, since speaking for myself, I always knew they were nothing more than stories (besides I don’t much care for festivals for that matter). But when I say that I didn’t care about them, what I really meant is it didn’t matter to me whether they were true or not, as so-called-grown-ups we are aware, but what about a child who isn’t capable of thinking this?

ImageIf you ask me, I feel they are just plain stupid. Not the fantasies and fiction themselves, of course I too love them like most other people, I was the kid who grew up reading/watching Batman and playing Pokémon, both of which after decades I still do, but the main point is, since the start I always knew they were stories. Okay not just stories, in some cases legends, but will come to that later. The point is, why bring up this myth vs. reality right since childhood? Aren’t parents capable enough to up-bring their children in the ‘right’ way? (among many other things that is)

That’s all I have to say. And coming to legends as I said before, do have a look at this. These are the stories having an (positive more importantly) in our lives.

Seven days worth of money?

You wake up tomorrow morning to find all your plans have been cancelled for the next seven days and $10,000 on your dresser. Tell us about your week.

It can cover a short trip to Europe or something, despite the fact it will cost me more but this will help. Anyways I don’t have any great plans for the next several weeks or so, besides unless I have this sort of money…

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or like this…

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what difference is it really going to make?

Well not that I’m saying it’s really useless, one will be a fool if says so. I’d rather just buy some stuff and save the rest. But what I really want to do is this:

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Whee!

All Grown Up

When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

I’d like to begin with:

Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional.

Well, unless you wind up dead before your time that is. To much of my dismay, I seldom think I grew up, and I actually at times get the thought more that I’m old. It’s because I don’t think I personally done something worthwhile (so far) in life. Growing up is more to do with responsibilities towards yourself and others, while I’m most often trapped in the supposed to but ain’t phase.

Ironically to make things worse, (well not completely) last week was my birthday. I turned 21. As I said earlier, the cake is a lie. I feel bit crappier now. But in any case, I don’t like to think of being trapped in the illusion of time and particularly ‘growing’, old or up.

The Mother’s Perspective

“You don’t eat anything. You just waste food and money.”

“But… “

“You aren’t eating properly. You are ruining your health.”

“But… “

“And when you do, you just consume junk. Still not good for your health.”

“But… “

“Not to mention wasting money and food.” (again)

Write about the last disagreement you had with a friend or family member — from their perspective.

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This is my response. The above is from my mother as the title says, with the usual helpless me. This just happened some minutes ago as I typed this.

I always live usually tend to agree to disagree. More or less.

etaoin shrdlu cmfwyp vbgkjq xz

So when you read the title, sure you must have thought “what gibberish is this?” Actually that is the order of the most used letters in the English language from most to least used. You should read this article on wikipedia on letter frequency, an interesting read. Here is an excerpt from it.

The frequency of letters in text has often been studied for use in cryptography, and frequency analysis in particular. No exact letter frequency distribution underlies a given language, since all writers write slightly differently. Linotype machines assumed the letter order, from most to least common, to be etaoin shrdlu cmfwyp vbgkjq xz based on the experience and custom of manual compositors. Likewise, Modern International Morse code encodes the most frequent letters with the shortest symbols; arranging the Morse alphabet into groups of letters that require equal amounts of time to transmit, and then sorting these groups in increasing order, yields e it san hurdm wgvlfbk opjxcz yq. Similar ideas are used in modern data-compression techniques such as Huffman coding.

So what made me write this is today’s daily prompt, which asked: There are 26 letters in the English language, and we need every single one of them. Want proof? Choose a letter and write a blog post without using it. (Feeling really brave? Make it a vowel!)

I technically ‘failed’ that challenge, since I used every single one of them in the title itself. But not counting it, I still didn’t use quite some, so it’s not hard, actually not at all. Most of us can manage and must have done it times not countable, just matter of checking all those hundreds of posts (even the long ass ones) with patience.

Instead here is a funny song for you to have a laugh (hopefully):