THE DIGITAL BREAKUP

Your phone rings with a text message : WE NEED TO TALK. And splat. The one sentence that every god fearing individual does not want to hear because no matter how much we want to man up to it, the sub text of that text is ….you are gonna get your ass dumped bro! Now bear in mind that this could be the simplest case of you-did-not-pick-up your underwear, but nonetheless there are plenty of sparkly words of anger that’s gonna follow. You have the unpleasant TALK and then its over. Josh Groban comes on, and the rest of the months is spent in eating disgusting amounts of chocolate alternating with copious amounts of alcohol. But this is the big bada bing breakup. But if you are the kind of couple who break up every single fucking day like Ross and Rachel ( ANNOYING!), then how do you gauge when is the talk.....the TALK? Aaah Padewan, technology shall tell you the right time to start packing your bags and move to breakup city.

Stage 1: The Gchat Block
This is easy to do but also the trickiest one to gauge. You say”Baby how you feeling today” and ….digital silence. So either she is not on her desk or the reality…she be ignoring you and then proceeds to block you. Since you have no actual way of knowing you are blocked unless she tells you, you proceed to email. No reply still. Then you know you are 99% blocked or worse….she is actually looking at all the messages and is playing stabbing scenes on repeat in her head. Women are mean like that. But this can still be fixed with a heartfelt email, but has to be sent within the next 24 hours or stage 2 is in action.

Stage 2: The Facebook block
Limited profile is on. No access to walls, photos, nothing. Chances are that this is still pretty much easy to save by another desperate message on Facebook, but this time you might have to quote a love letter from Voltaire or something. But , still reversible…so you still have a shot at making this work. Stage 3 has not set in yet, but is soon to follow.

Stage 3: The BBM Block
NOW SHE’S PISSED AND MEANS BUSINESS. BBM is the one thing that couples obsessively use to the point of actually puking your living guts on it, so much that if by any chance you as a friend come across it, you might consider barfing too. All the big guns come out, fancy dinner, roses to the office and cake. Lots of cake. ( dunno why I said that….cake makes me happy! He he he …..) So if you are BBM blocked, you might as
well have the talk and see it go south…if it does that is.

Stage 4: The Facebook Relationship Status change
Now its public. The comments are going to start pouring in and all the guys who have been waiting in line are going to start “liking” it. This also depends: If its changed to “complicated”, then you still have a chance. “Single” and you are moving to Breakupville. Population: You.

Stage 4: The Facebook Defriend
Its over bro. No point saving it. Vengeance is upon you. The Defriend is the official announcement of “I never want to see your dumbass again”. The untagging of pictures begins followed by defriending mutual friends and plenty of stalking. The best thing you can do right now is either stalk her profile or troll facebook for your rebound. Meh!

Too complicated you think? Hell to the yeah! Where are the days of landing up on her doorstep with a song or doing a simple burning ritual with your girlfriends? Technology has made us lazy bastards. Meh….maybe its for the best! As Artie says: Hair of the dog that done bit your ass bro! Laters, my dumped homeboys!

Alcohol and Technology – Not a Good Cocktail

Drunken stupors. The ancient tradition of getting so hammered that you have no idea what is happening to yourself or to the people around you or most importantly to the person to are about to or already have inflicted some serious emotional atyachaar on. We have all done this at some point of times in our lives, got so sloshed and done the one thing that is worse than a tequlla and old monk shot- DRUNK DIALED OR TEXTED THE CURRENT OR EX GIRLFRIEND/BOYFRIEND. Now mostly, its sweet nothings or even a bootycall which if played correctly makes the morning after not so difficult to deal with. But if it’s the other side of the spectrum i.e the ex/current has been sent the bitching text of a lifetime which does not have even the slightest sprinkle of happy thoughts, the morning after can be described in two words- HUNGOVER AND EMBARRASED.
Before the invention of the device that we all take for granted now- the mobile phone, am pretty sure drunken stupidity was easier to handle. Forget that, even before texting was made cheap or alcohol dialing was legal, all you could do was lie in your bed in misery or you know, cry yourself to sleep or something or if you were really really rich- get Nestor the butler to do the sobbing for you. Now since its so freaking easy to send severely self damaging words in less than 50 paise, thinking of an excuse of why you did that the next morning can be turned into a seriously profitable money making business. Not kidding, seriously.
So now getting to the cause of this post- my drunk text. It was not a happy one and I am not even going to get into the details of it, but I so wish my battery was so godamn dead so that I could have saved myself from the evil eye of embarrassment. This is where technology has to change and here’s what I propose.
1.Service providers should have drunk SMS packs in which certain numbers are blocked. And even if they cant be blocked, should zap you everytime you enter the number that you are supposed to STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM.
2.As soon as you enter a place, a signal jammer should immediately put phones in offline mode. That does mean that you cant invite any more people to the party, but then again- lesser the better. Not many people should be watching (coz they are definitely not listening to it!) your rendition of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance anyway.
3.An app that keeps reminding you that you are a moron for your previous drunk dial everytime you look at your phone.
4.An app that instantly gives you pictures of maggots, dead chickens or something really gross so that you puke out all your daaru, get sober and go home.
5.Major brain shaking wake up from the dead “keeeeeeeeeeeeee” shrill sound the minute you touch your phone. It’ll scare you, maybe even make you pee in your pants a little bit, but lets think of the bigger picture here.
Till the time all of the above are put into action, you will just have to live with either switching your phone off or give it to the next best sober person in the group. So in the end, technology and alcohol is not a good cocktail at all. And if at all you still manage to go through the tunnel of the drunk texting and dialing, you better have a great excuse or a peace offering on the other side! And if still nothing works, denial is the key.

Hack & Slash or Patience?

Over the weekend, while I still spellbound by my new PS3 and the awesomeness of God Of War 3 in pure HD, a close friend of mine uttered 5 words that I will never ever forget. “Can we play something else?” While I was obviously taken aback, I decided to actually give in this time and try out something else for the night. Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, Metal Gear Solid was popped into the PS3. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful game, but then again you gotta have a lot of patience to play it. There is about 10 mins of gameplay and then an hour of cut scenes, at some point I admit, I was BORED. Which got me thinking..dating…is it all just a game of hack & slash or just a matter of following the cut scenes with patience in an attempt to achieve the greater good?

Lets face it, in today’s world a lot of people out there would like to cut through all the bullshit and just purely enjoy some hack and slash. It gives you instant pleasure, there is lot less that goes into it in terms of skill and leaves you feeling all happy, even if it is momentary. Met the guy/girl a couple of times ( or even once in some cases ), some texting and wham! Plain and simple. Considering we all lead very heavy lives in which we are bombarded with work and cranky cabbies who do not want to go ANYWHERE, a hack and slash in some ways is a way to better functioning. A smile plastered on your face the next day, work seems better, your crappy boss is suddenly a sweetheart and you seem to like the fact that you have the freedom to get out of this so called whatever relationship that it is whenever you want to. Translate: Hack & Slash= Fuck Buddies. Our generation ( I actually hate using that word coz it makes me sound like such a grandmom!) is full of this. No matter where you go, chances are 6 out of 10 men/women will want a hack and slash. Kill one boss and then move on to the next one.

And then there is Metal Gear Solid. It’s a pretty amazing game no doubt but requires a goddamn load of patience. Patience to actually go through the cut scenes, wait for them to finish and then make sense of it. Very very story oriented. Every man/woman has his/her own story. The question is : do you want to be patient and follow through the cut scenes? There are crazy chicks with issues, there are hot chicks, there are nerds and then there are of course straight up men. Everyone has baggage and we wish the small robot that Sunny and Snake’s brother made in MGS to follow Snake around was there in our little lives too. Why? Because it gave Snake his set of cool weapons and a freaking cool Solid Eye! The people who have the patience of following through the cut scenes generally end up in long term relationships- good or bad. Its got its own charm and a whole lot more than just a couple of booty calls or text messages go into it. Would most of us choose this path? We would want to, but not necessarily that we choose to. Am still trying to figure out the want and the choosing ….more on that later.

In the end to this post, in conclusion…what if you get stuck in the middle? Do you play a game like Unchartered: Drake’s Fortune which somehow gives you the idea that it is the best of both or would you rather listen to Deadmau5’s “Sometimes things get complicated?”

Think about it.

Tough Luck.

As a woman who is very proud to call herself a geek for the last 6 years, let me start of by saying – Dating in today’s world is TOUGH. Tougher than beating Zeus in God of War 3 or trying to hack your own iPhone all the while praying that it doesn’t turn into a brick. Not hard because there is not enough of the good stuff floating around, but the minute you are on a date and you whip out your trusty phone to do a little googling on the current topic in conversation, you are immediately termed as a chick who has way too much attitude. And surprisingly in some cases, even called a PRUDE. I mean WTF? Man, are you just pissed off that the www is bigger than your damn ego or are you pissed off that you just lied your ass off in an attempt to get into my pants, and Google saved me? In the end, everyone says that nothing really matters. I say fuck that, unless that cute guy on the other side of the bar does not give you his BBM pin, he is NOT going to call you again. Simply because of 2 reasons .

1. Most men think it is the most earth shatteringly difficult thing to ACTUALLY store the number of the cute chick they talked to last night. Most men also know that keying in those 10 digits into their phone would probably be the only action that they would get that night, so they prefer to just shrug and play Brickbreaker instead. More moves.
2. Then they Facebook stalk you. I used to think that only women do this, but surprisingly men have major FB stalking genes. Check mutual friends( hopefully ex is not a mutual friend), look through photos and even when everything seems fine, NOT send you a FB request. Instead wait for you to send one, so that he can take your number in a private message. The level of layered insanity in this is astounding.

Now its also unfair to say that women don’t do this, but then again, WE ADMIT TO FB STALKING.

As I said before- Dating in today’s world is hard. Technology helps. Atleast you can block that ugly guy that you met last night who called himself “hopesh” on your Gchat right?