Why people have clocks/watches on their blogs?

1) Because you want to know what time it is before you answer nature's call in the middle of the night. So holding your bladder, you boot your PC, wait for the damn dial-up to connect meanwhile debating between using Firefox or IE, use Firefox anyway because Bill is such a sissy, visit your blog, look at the time, and then scurry into the bathroom where you go, "Sigh...!" in accompaniment to the sound of running water.

2) You fritter away your youth looking at your site stats all day, counting each hit as it trickles in, and you need to know if it's time to eat or shower or ca-ca (not necessarily in that order) or whatever it is that you do in between. Of course, you're too preoccupied to notice the task bar.

3) Digression. Ever noticed how bloggers have two clocks on their blogs? Chances are one shows the time of an American city/town with a university, and the other, of some place in (Replace with third world country). Have you wondered why? It's because the aforesaid blogger (again too preoccupied to look at the task bar) can then time his call to his girlfriend (third world country = India) when she's in the middle of a meal to have the following conversation:

"What you upto yaa?" - blogger.
"Eating." - bored girlfriend.
"What you eating?" - blogger.
"Onion Oothaappam" - bored girlfriend, feeling slightly disgusted.
"Onion Oothaapam?? Sigh! I so miss home food yaa" - blogger.
"Hmmm" - bored girlfriend wary of oncoming mush attack.
"And I miss you too yaa" - blogger.
"Hmmm" - bored girlfriend with appropriate measure of love.
"Do you miss me?" - blogger, slightly desperate.
"Hmmm" - bored girlfriend who can't say anything in front of handsome male colleague accompanying her.

4) Transcript of a chat between Blogger and his Bluggle* friend.

Blogger - Dude! Got myself a new watch yesterday...
Bluggle - Kewl.
Blogger - It's got this ultra cool electric blue dial, with sexy white hands man.
Bluggle - Kewl.
Blogger - You can even see the time in three countries at the same time!! Awesome naa?
Bluggle - Kewl.
Bluggle - Is it water proof?
Blogger - $%#@&*

*Bluggle - A person who doesn't blog and knows nothing about blogs. In other words, someone with a life.

Feel free to add more rational explanations of this ubiquitous phenomenon.

UPDATE (June 18): "Bluggle" is something I coined perchance. Remember, you read it first here :)

Slow poison

That is what the world is these days. A slow poison circulating in my veins, its venom diffusing through the hallways of my mind, desensitizing my soul to pathos and purity, ridiculing my ideals, clouding my vision about what's wrong and what's not.

The world is gray. Make no mistake about it. An understandable shade of gray, and this is precisely the frustration that I face daily. Nothing/nobody is so bad, or evil, that it/they can't be redeemed by a little (misplaced?) compassion and understanding. Everything is circumstantial, and nothing is absolute. Objectivity and opinion seem to switch places with alarming ease. There is no evil. There is only evil. Depends on what side you're on. Depends on how much you're willing, or unwilling, to allow. To even attempt to have a vision of life seems at once foolhardy and preposterous. For what is today, is not tomorrow. To try and transform from what you are to what you ought to be is futile, like trying to fuse together an object and its mirror image. One derives its sustenance solely through the existence of the other, and to merge the two would be to kill both. Because Life, the mirror, doesn't permit you to. The two are destined to be conflicting apparitions. Illusions because you're in a constantly suspended state, moving from one to the other. And at times you wonder whether you're moving in the wrong direction too. It's like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle where with every piece you place correctly, the puzzle modifies itself, forcing you to shift perspective and start all over again. All because the world is that way.

The world is a slow poison. And I'm dying a little each day.

Good news...

...is always great to hear.

***

Calvin: I wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks. If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you're doing good. If you can find even one person you really like, you're lucky. And if that person can also stand you, you're really lucky.

Hobbes: What if you find someone you can talk to while you eat apples on a bright fall morning?

Calvin: Well, yeah... I suppose there's no point in getting greedy, is there?