Eine kleine nacht musik

Tell me - if you can - what the following lines mean:

Hallow hallow chick test

Hallow chick test

Chick tessst

That's what I heard 150 decibels loud for five whole minutes outside my house this evening.

Each line was punctuated with a tararam on the african drums.

At the end of the chick tessst, an entire troupe of musicians perched atop a rickety, but carpeted, stage burst into thunderous .... music?

There was a singing duo that belted out local hits at the top of their voice, broadcast to the whole neighbourhood via loudspeaker lest u miss a note.
There were cheers, speeches, crackers, planes overhead, barking dogs, screaming kids, tooting horns.....OH MY GOD, STOP!!! I'LL GO DEAF!!!!

They stopped in three hours.

The chairs were piled up into vans, the carpets rolled and carried away, the mikes taken down.

Peace at last.

It's 11.30 pm - I think I'll turn in.

Oh.

The lights just went out.

Thinking astrologically

Alright, I admit it. I subscribe to free online horoscope thingies. I even read them everyday, sometimes at the end of the day to see what my day was like. Most times it's crap, but sometimes it's just plain CRAP. Like today's (which I read at 11.39 pm btw) which says "If you try to do things on your own when Pluto is around, it can backfire." Why am I besieged by visions of Mickey's dog suffering a terrible bout of flatulence?

Then there's another one that said I shouldn't flash cash extravagantly today. Well, they should have told me sooner - I just bought two pairs of shoes; but I used my card to pay for them. I don't think that counts.

I'm not sure why I continue to read this stuff. For amusement perhaps? Or am I hoping for a miracle? "Everything you touch today will turn to gold." Or perhaps it's plain escapism. Just for a minute. I've turned it into a fine art - so subtle, I hardly notice any more.

Look What's Talking

I was in Hyderabad last weekend and was lucky to have the opportunity to attend a reading of the Vagina Monolgues. I am very sophisticated and can use the V word in mixed company. I am so matter of fact when it comes to discussing the anatomy that I don't even blink when someone tells me my eyeballs change colour to match my clothes.

I wish I had been this urbane when my long-ago marwari boss asked the australian consultant whether there would be a lot of laying in the gym; or when the self-same fellow asked if I wanted to travel with my other part (he meant to say better half). I must confess I nearly had an aneurysm both times. I lost five years of my life.

But now things are different. Everytime Mahabanoo Mody Kotwal made us shout the word vagina, I added ten years to my age bank! I will live long and non sequitur.

Gutter Girls

When my sister and I were growing up, we had
ample opportunity to experience our dad's more multi-faceted nature. The bitter - and often violent - fights my sister and I would get into every 3 hours led the earnest parent down a whole gamut of emotions where he would go from negotiating to stern to cajoling and finally to complete and utter resignation (read fly off the handle!)

It was at one of these turbulent moments that my dad came up with the name that would haunt my sister and I for the rest of our lives. Gutter Girls. His exact words were "All the time you fight like gutter girls!" (Well, as exact as they can be in my memory more than twenty years after the fact.) I remember my sister and I both stopped mid-invective - we were so taken aback.

The name stuck - my sister and I made sure of that. We proudly told any one who'd listen and took great pleasure in using the term on each other whenever we found an opportunity.

Why I say it still haunts us is because this photo that you see here was saved on my sister's computer under the name, gutter girls.

Look at our angelic faces and answer me this. Do we look like gutter girls to you?