Humor – Page 2

Clash of the Titans

Posted by Ankit On May 13th, 2010

...

A.A. moves his Knight to d5

Tress Vandeley: (Brilliant, brilliant. That's a shrewd one right there. In one fell swoop he has managed to save the fork that was going to be threatening his Queen and Rook 7 moves down the line and build up a momentum which gives him strategic play in the center of the board. I suppose he is thinking of moving his e and f pawns to threaten the integrity of my King's castle while his Bishop controls the black diagonal. And now with his Knight ensconced at such an advanced position I think the game is going down south for me in less than 23 moves. Mr. Alexandrovich's reputation precedes him. But I should never have underestimated a Russian to begin with. Counterattack is my only option. Maybe I can rattle his composure.)

T.V. moves his Rook to c2

Anatoly Alexandrovich: (Why the hell did he do that? I'll move this long towering one.)

A.A. moves his Queen to a4

Tress Vandeley: (My god, such genius. Such genius! 12. Qxd7, Kg8, 13. Kne7, h6... ... ... I estimate a checkmate in 17 moves. Unless I do something now, my demise is just around the corner. To think that someone could have come up with such a deep move at such a nervous juncture of the game. It doesn't take a genius to see that Mr. Alexandrovich has descended from the land of the Karpovs, Spasskys, Kramniks, and Kasparovs. My god, what shall I do here. The only hope I can see here is my aggressive flank on the Queen side and I should try to step up the pressure.)

T.V. moves his Bishop to e3

Anatoly Alexandrovich: (The short stumpy one then the long slender one then the short stumpy one then the long slender one. I get it now. Here gallops my horse.)

A.A. moves his Knight to f6

Tress Vandeley: (Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn. What insight! What absolutely brilliant insight! Is it time that I resign to a guy who is well and truly on the top of his and our game? He already has a significant strategic advantage. Although I am ahead on material but hindsight shows that Mr. Alexandrovich offered his gambits and I lapped them up without enough thought. But what could I have done in the face of such brilliance? That pawn sacrifice on the third move - who could have thought that it was offered to gain positional advantage 25 moves down the line? There is no other way. It's time I give up and accept defeat against a man who is pushing the envelop in our field.)

T.V. resigns by flicking his King.

Anatoly Alexandrovich: Dude, you tripped your slacker.

Damn, you English language

Posted by Ankit On March 2nd, 2010

The teacher claimed it was so plain,
I only had to use my brain.
She said the past of throw was threw,
The past of grow - of course - was grew,
So flew must be the past of fly,
And now, my boy, your turn to try.
But when I trew,
I had no clue,
If mow was mew
Like know and knew
(Or is it knowed
Like snow and snowed?)

The teacher frowned at me and said
The past of feed was - plainly - fed.
Fed up, I knew then what I ned;
I took a break, and out I snoke,
She shook and quook (or quaked? or quoke?)
With raging anger out she broke;
Your ignorance you want to hide?
Tell me the past form of collide!
But how on earth should I decide
If it's collid
(Like hide and hid),
Or else - from all that I surmose,
The past of rise was simply rose,
And that of ride was simply rode,
So of collide must be collode?

Oh damn these English verbs, I thought
The whole thing absolutely stought!
Of English I have had enough,
Those verbs of yours are far too tough.
Bolt upright in my chair I sat,
And said to her 'that's that' - I quat.

-Guy Deutscher

Dissertation woes

Posted by Ankit On November 3rd, 2009

Oh blast! This thesis writing business is really beginning to rile me up now. Because, you see, it's a whole lot of charade to begin with. Like any sort of bookkeeping, because that's what it really is, it's one daunting, limitless ocean of morbidity that is wetting my feet as I take my first steps with the intention of wading across. And to reach the land on the other end, I have but a skiff with a spatula for the oar. There is no humor involved and I am not allowed to make it interesting. I cannot write sentences like, 'While the academic world was nestling in the arms of its own complacency, it was hardly aware of what was brewing in one man's mind.' I have to be chronological and am not allowed to keep the best for the last - I cannot build it all up towards one nerve racking, palpitating sentence, 'Yes, my dear Mr. Hamilton - you've had it all wrong. Please have a seat for the shock of it all may be too hard for you to bear.' There is no room to exaggerate, to metaphorise, to embellish, to dream, to give voice to the passion that one does indeed feel sometimes in academic research.

In the golden lightning
of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning
thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race has just begun. (-P.B.S.)

No, I am not allowed to do any of it. Rather, I must worry about how to expand the amount of my work so that it at least appears as if my last 4 years have not been completely squandered. At 66 pages currently, and with hardly a hope of going beyond 150 (doublespaced mind you), my contribution hardly appears a gushing spring of knowledge. It's more like a gentle, dying trickle from a broken tap in the middle of a parched desert. And Masters students routinely clock 200. I think I'll have to fiddle with the spacing, and tinker with the font, adjust the margins, and tamper the text inÂ order to post such gallumphing figures.

Maybe I am exaggerating but that is one peeve that I have with the whole process of 'growing up'. There is something behind this that I feel strongly about and often feel saddened by. It's that we do not exaggerate often and well enough as we grow up. This ability of making things up from thin air, adorning it with beautiful false ideas, coloring it with dazzling deceitful colors, it not only leaves us to some extent as we grow older, it also suffers as we develop a condescending attitude towards it. AndÂ as this vitality shrinks within, we are left predictable, and immobile, all our ideas fossilized into useless sediments - just reminders of times gone by. And some of usÂ go on to produce Ph.D. dissertations so bland, it's more fun a watch a glacier melt.

Division by zero

Posted by Ankit On October 22nd, 2009

...and it would be a crazy happy world. Truth would only be a matter of one's imagination. Fallacies would be the only consistencies and no professor would be smug. People would be generally confused and disoriented and no one would bat an eyelid when sold 5 oranges after paying for 6. It would be a chaotic world with its unsure zombie like citizens walking around on crazy Mobius strip shaped roads. The principle of mutually assured destruction would cease to exist because no one would be sure if 10,000 is greater than 1. Hence countries would stage preemptive nuclear strikes and finish off this stumbling, hobbling world and the rest of the universe wouldn't give a damn.

But there would be advantages, definitely. If somebody asks you what would you do if you had a million dollars, you can simply say that you don't even need a million dollars. And yes, quantum electrodynamics would probably have a believable premise.

Category Archive: Humor

Clash of the Titans

Damn, you English language

Dissertation woes

Division by zero

Snail's Law

Self Reference

Oh my darling Clementine

Gravity of the situation