After grappling about this with myself for a while, and also since I have been insisted by friends more than once to make a post about something that happened to me, I finally submitted to myself that the following post could be considered serious gyaan! My sincere apologies to those who don't think so.

Whether you are all alone in a discotheque or there's a whole gang of friends gyrating and grooving all around you, the risk of being picked up is just the same. In the age of modern thought one might consider himself or herself quite the picker, and the art of picking very adventurous and ego-boosting... I must admit that it is this particular end of the game that must be quite exhilirating. The dread is not at being the picker, nay! It is the constant fear of being picked that has started to haunt me. To prevent one from thinking that I am (to put it informally) full of either myself or IT, I should clearly outline a classification of pickees and pickers that I came up with. Discussed with the male in mind, it is left as an excercise for the reader to examine whether an analogue for women exists:

1. The first and topmost class would be the that of 'da man'. The guy who's got the right looks, the right moves, and measures just about right on most social metrics. This guy is either a) never hit on because no girl thinks she can match up to him b) plays the picker before he is picked so he gets to choose instead of being chosen c) gets hit on by so many girls that its no fun for him anyway!
2. The second and most woeful class is the just-above-average guy. Decent sense of style, manages to either stay or look fairly clean, can atleast move his hips without looking stupid or excessively cheap. Has a maximum of 2 brands on him at a time. This is the guy we all would be satisfied being. Beware though, this is the least satisfying of the classes! As a picker, he either tries and fails at picking up girls hopelessly above his league or rarely manages to pick up girls he regrets picking up mintues later. As a pickee, his life is plagued. No girl in his or a higher league would ever approach him, and the one rare time he does get picked, it's by a girl he wouldn't like being caught being in the same province with!
3. The lowest and happiest class - the nerds, the weirdos, the geeks, the junkies, the goths. Either they don't care, have lost hopes, or are in a delusional warped world all of their own where they are hit on by grotesquely deformed but oddly terribly alluring green goblins... with toejam.

Assuming that most of my readership (indeed, all 3) belongs to class 2 (a person in any other class is seldom worried about matters like these), it is necessary for me to elaborate on WHY class 2 is the worst of the lot. I will then conclude with a few tips I have learnt the hard way to avoid being picked up in a disc.

We are all not born equal. Class 2 was something God came up with just to make Class 1 feel good about itself. A good explanation of why Class 3 is around is yet to be though of. One would argue world progress and breaking of scientific barriers and all that... but come on, it's not a good enough excuse. Class 3 is atleast happy. Class 2 is condemned to mediocrity. Class 2 will watch Class 1 take all the Class 1 and Class 2 girls, leave the mentally imbalanced Class 3 behind. The picker-pickee choice is toughest in Class 2. Do we become active pickers finding much rejection and little succes? Or do we choose the passive role, fearing rejection so much that we choose instead to wait for an elusive princess charming to approach us all by herself? Yes, Class 2 is the lowest of the low and I have to admit - I'm bang in the middle of it. And here's the truth - most of Class 2 decides to be a pickee - passing stares and smiles to cute girls all day with little luck...

So here are my tips on being a Class 2 pickee. Remember that your primary fear is being picked on by the ugly chick. It often overrides your primary function, i.e. being picked:

1. The basic idea here is to avoid all eye contact with all girls at all times. The reason is simple. Class 1 girls will either ignore you if they are nice or will show you a finger if they aren't. Class 2 girls are almost always booked - their boyfriends will show you a finger if they are nice. Class 3 girls generally are squint, and wouldn't be able to return your stare even if they wanted to!
2. When an ugly chick comes alone into your group during a dance, she is most certainly after YOU! Your friends are always spared. It is YOU she's after... just because she's ugly! Don't have doubts about this - it pays to take a conservative stance. Avoid all contact, fake a shoulder dislocation or simply kiss the guy next to you on the lips. It's a desperate situation.
3. Never ever leave the group for any reason whatsoever. Safety in numbers, that's the thing. The friends you lived in solidarity with will trickle away at the slightest chance - leering and sniggering from a safe distance... or in a bomb shelter.
4. When asked for a ball dance, DO NOT use the tempo of the music as an excuse - it will not work. The chick will ball dance to 'My Name is Lakkhan' for all she cares. Take this very seriously. I ain't just talkin'.
5. When her fingers start trembling when she's holding your hand, it's time to raise the alarm. The least chivalrous way would be to scream fire and run for your life. A better way would be to clunk her over the head with something sufficiently hard.
6. Finally, do not exchange email ids or phone numbers. Else, you're in a world of pain.

In conclusion, I'd like to admit this was all for a good laugh. I really admire the unseen protagonist of this post - for her courage, for her attitude, and simply because she was a nice person and considered me worthy enough to be picked. And yes, she gave me a very wonderful evening indeed!

Computers, once the privelege of an elite few, have become a sight in almost every house - all in a span of a few years. This rapid explosion has lead to the emergence of a subculture with its own beliefs, jargon and protocols. This is a small glimpse of it. And you thought we were all just nerds...

"Do you endeavor with a difficult dilemma, or ponder a posed problem you cannot perspicaciously pursue? Angling anxiously for advice? The Internet Oracle can help! Like all famous oracles, the Internet Oracle is omniscient, and will provide some answer to your question. In return, the Oracle may require that you perform a small service ..."

The Internet Oracle has been answering questions since the early 90's. A Usenet phenomenan, it has seen some very funny question-answer exhanges (also called Oracularities). The idea is simple. A user poses a question, which is sent to a random user to answer within 24 hours. If unanswered, it is forwarded to another user. The net result... something like this:

The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:
> Why is a cow?
And in response, thus spake the Oracle:
} Mu.

Another:

The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:
> Oh most superbly poetic Oracle Who could teach Erato a thing or two,
>> For the life of me I can't seem to come up with a limerick that uses
> the words "parthenogenesis", "Hoover" and "mudpuppy". Is there any
> chance that You could be of help?
And in response, thus spake the Oracle:
} That was quite a trick, but I've got one...
}} There once was a mudpuppy from Hoover,
} (in Alabama, not in Vancouver).
} He found an old Rhesus
} Who said "Parthenogenesis
} Requires no copulating maneuver."
}} You owe the Oracle a haiku with the word} "floccinaucinihilipilification."

The questions range from deeply philosophical to plain stupid, and they are all answered by people. Anonymity is of course maintained, with all credit and blame going to the Oracle. The Oracle is widely recognized as one of the first virtual personalities to emerge on the internet - and a collaborative one at that! What really drew me to this was the word 'spake'... but you might enjoy it for something else. Get more here.

Sometime in the early 90's, the Japanese game 'Zero Wing' made its way to the west after some success in Japan. A cutscene from this game had the line: 'All your base are belong to us' (get the entire transcript here). This error lead to an internet phenomenan, with websites filling up with pictures and videos edited to insert that very caption. Videos and flash animations, lyrics of songs, and loads of parodies can be found on the web. Linux users and hackers have adapted this slogan for loads of t-shirt designs and the sort. As always, look around on the web for more information. I'll refrain from telling you which phrase to search for.

Found this while browing the portage tree of Gentoo. A program called cowsay. True to it's name, it makes an ASCII cow say whatever you want it to.

For instance, you type (on the Linux command prompt):

$cowsay err... moo?

And you'll get this very apt output:

 ____________
< err.. moo? >
 ------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/                ||----w |
                ||     ||

For a brief moment I wondered what people in the good people at Gentoo drank while on the job to include this as one of its available packages, but Google told me otherwise. Apparently this program has been around for quite a while, informing people about their overfull disk quotas, their new mail and the sort... in the days of the text console. It's now found a place in hacker circles as joke. The author has been creative enough to include several features which can make the cow appear dead, tired, asleep, and even in a state of paranoia. The most interesting thing is that it's even in the Linux Kernel!

Hmm... perhaps we really ARE just nerds!