Prose before hos

I'm not particularly uppity about my birthday and while I can speculate from a list of reasons why, it's important I focus. 

Unlike every year, this year I've prepared a list of things I don't absolutely want. This has come up after weeks of deliberation, stock checking of the existing items, and general well-being. 

SHIT I DO NOT WANT 

Cake

Chocolates

Edibles

Food (pretty sure people don't read)

Stuff Toys

Bed Linen, cushions and so on

Glasses

Mugs

Cups

Cutlery

Saucers

Pop culture paraphernalia

F1 related gifts

Custom T-shirts

Body Creams and Moisturizers

Band/TV/Film related gifts

Posters/Wall Art/Frames

There's a helpful shortlist of things I am accepting from and either way I'm not fully averse to. This was drawn after much deliberation so it's still rough around the corners insofar as the specifics are concerned but I'm happy to delve into detail provided I don't absolutely hate you and then some more. 

SHIT I DON'T QUITE MIND

Diet Coke Pack of 24

Mubi/Caravan/Other subscription

Fall Guys/ Other games on Steam

Body Shower Gel/ Bath Cream from Marks and Spencer

Gym Wear (please discuss for size)

Cast Iron Cookware (please discuss)

Playlists/Handwritten cards

Stickers (luggage/laptop)

Sepoy & Co Ginger Ale

Sepoy & Co Mint Tonic Water

Bedside Table Lamp (please discuss in detail)

Sneakers (please discuss for size)

Body Mist (Victoria's Secret ideally but please don't order it off Amazon or else other brands could do too including Bath and Body Works, Fab India, Forest Essentials, Bodyshop)

I think it would be great if you could take part in the birthday gift budget you have allocated and donate it to one of the few independent news outlets in the country or content creators who are doing a service to us all by doing the things they are doing. A part is good, yeah. 

 God has a new address. It's the internet. 

God lives in your cellular network on your mobile device, in cloud backup, greeting you on Facebook walls, Instagram stories, Twitter fleets, and in your digital history. God is ever pervasive, it's looking at you while you stare at your mobile phones and God's definitely observing you while you meander between tabs looking to switch to VPN to stream erotic couplings. God is watching over you from its new home, the internet. 

Sorry, Nietzsche. It was a tough one, mate. 

If someone had told me at age 8 that my desktop screen is where I'd find God, I'd have asked them to fuck right off. Why yes, I used the word "fuck" for the first time at age 8 during a game as a screen name, "fuck off". It wasn't my fault. I was a curious kid, who was big into reading and that was the first time I had encountered the word on a pre-loaded game. The same people responsible for letting me play aggressive, violent game at age 8, became utterly bewildered when they saw me play the game on screen with the said name. 

"Do you know what it means?"

Thereby, adding another layer to destroying the past time that sexual intercourse could be, in addition to my school. 

Anyway, the internet to me has always been representative of the vices and the excesses. Between these two concentric circles, we exist and consume. We engage with strangers, with lovers, with friends and then with algorithm. We navigate to make this space our own, we curate our choices with clicks and taps and feed data, almost as taxation to make this our own. To buy mileage online, to have our real-estate fixed at likes and dislikes and comments. The internet is our home. 

To say caste, colour, creed, sex lines blur here wouldn't be a stretch of the truth. It wouldn't, until God arrived. 

God arrived on the backfoot, like a sneaky little puppy who ran away from the pack. Almost too weak to survive by itself. Until it was discovered by a neighbourhood full of good samartians. The way people proliferate puppy pictures, God received the same treatment. On chain emails, through astrology and the divinity related discourse and then through viral forwards. It was unintentional but it happened. It happened because the internet real-estate was cheap and easy to buy. If you had a modem and a desktop and you possessed the wit of an Edenic Serpent, you could rule the internet. God, switched sides, and chose to enter through 0s and 1s. On screens. 

We could now view this on the internet. On a screen. Outside of real bodied lives, from edified inside marbled statues to now in your bedroom. From live sculptures and calendar shots to now in your screen. God was truly great and now everywhere. 

It wouldn't be incorrect to say, God made the internet great. Much like Trump's doing to the US. 

It's been twenty long years since God's first appearance on a desktop on a web page infront of me and this morning as I opened my Instant Messaging app to check on what I'd missed in the last twelve hours, I found a particular image enchanting. It was a photograph of a home-God. An image shot from a home temple on an extended family member's instant story. 

Ordinarily, I wouldn't have thought even more than a second about it. But, God. The sneaky creature. Showed up the first thing on my feed and in my thought and I truly thought of his real-estate value, its humble abode. God doesn't exist in live temples that people are fighting to build and killing others for. God is only around on the internet. God is in war cry chants that a religious sect uses to decimate the others; God is in thought when we want to show supremacy, an act of hegemony, when the warriors yell, "we are superior beings" because our God is the greatest God of all times. 

God may have occupied the internet and grabbed land out of turn, but can it persist for long? 

I was watching a competitive show recently where a losing team candidate made this observation, on how good times and bad times don't often last forever. They may last long but not forever, 

I'd like to imagine, like Nietzsche (my near-namesake) that God's time is up. Maybe not today, and maybe not in my lifetime. However, there's only so much left to be taken over and so many of us to kill before those who believe in God or God itself can call it a victory. 

I had a spectacular weekend. It feels like Kimmy Schmidt with the world except it's SnobO learns about the existence of F1 content outside of the sport and begins wondering the future of content creation. Also, fucking great community and why did she never take to that considering this level of game and pace is something she digs and how. 

Also, how has the world hidden Toto Wolff for so long from her eyes? 

Anyhow, to recall-

I recovered from cold, possible fever (not COVID, yay?) and got done with my period. 

I spent every spare minute, which is to say, in sickness and in health some 16-18 hours daily watching and reading F1 content, more specifically the highlights of old races and radio box commentary. 

I have also decided the final speech of what I'm gonna tell the 18-year-old me if I ever have a chance to revisit that idiot,

"Bro,

---x-----x------

Anyway, I don't know how much of life coach bit did I mention here, but I did manage to get my sleep cycle in check courtesy an old friend, who also in '13 helped me get over the said guy I'm leaving my 21-22 year old that fucking note for. The said friend (who shall remain unnamed or alternatively you can dig 2013-2014 posts to know more about him) has helped me recover from the trauma that was not getting the US tourist visa, not getting a thesis topic of my choice ("Dude film sounds interesting."— "NO, YOU MAKE THE FUCKING FILM IF IT SOUNDS INTERESTING!")

As a part of his advice slash what started this was the act of disconnecting and switching off. 

No, box-box. Only beer and champagne on the yacht.

However, since my industrial-grade anti-anxiety (the kind celebs OD on) does not permit drinking, I brewed a batch of Man Friday special Green Tea. Man Friday specifically requested his identity to be withheld, thus previous posts/tags are never going to be hyperlinked, not since his colleagues got hold of this page and it became a bit of a cover issue for him. 

I digress, but the day involved Vettel's radio commentary over glasses of Iced Green Tea, some vegetable cutlets I prepped earlier today just in time for race dinner and topped it with ice cream from the jar while watching Saif being exceptionally charming in Agent Vinod (2012; dir Sriram Raghavan).

Another note for my 20 yo ass, 

"Please don't diss that number. You'd be making notes about how happy it makes you for your next therapy session, only to check with your therapist with you indeed self-sabotage. Also, bitch, you like Saif. Why are you hating on the men you like?"

The answer to self-sabotage is no. I don't need an external agency telling me that. For if it weren't, I'd be chugging whiskey shots with ice cream right now and singing out of context lyrics to my crush over audio messages (about that) from Munni Badnaam Hui (cinema hall hui, darling tere liye— highly inaccurate cause the man hates films among other things—hella sexy). What can I say, I have a personal Kimi Raikkonen to fuss over. Or so I hope. 

I finally got around to doing what homework my therapist gave me, or well started so that's some progress. Also, learned that you can't hate people who like ice cream. You just can't. 

Tomorrow is a new day and we gotta take one step at a time. Baby steps, baby. Until then, some reading, little more disconnection (and all that crush missing cause no texting). 

My two moods on and off anti-anxiety, an illustrated representation. 

Not illustrated: current life status. If anyone's wondering, it's Vettel in 2020 with Ferrari. Literally, the last time something good happened to me was September 2019.