stop the world i want to get off

life stagnant
nothing
speed burn
slipstream that tears the flesh off bone
die like that
quests
pushing to the limit
beyond
far beyond
something more than just what you are
what you can hope to be
impossible
do it anyway
tearing away the stereotypes
all you see before you is a wall
this is not my life
this was never meant to be my life
walk away
run
stop the world i want to get off
helplessness
frustration anger blind rage
escape
rabidly biting
darkness
light
there are no absolutes
why
why not
can't but must
jealousy
greener grass
guilt
self loathing
i can't live this anymore
i have to
what is me, myself
what is
what
just don't know
can't think anymore

Deja Vu2

now I have the nasty feeling that some lesser god is playing games with me.
went back home and installed halo
after you've killed off all the convenant bugs that boarded your ship, guess where you crashland on.
an artificial ring-shaped habitat. classic arc of the ringworld rising overhead.
if it wasn't so blatantly obvious, it'd be creepy. disturbing.
right now it just feels like fate is beating me on the head with a rubber mallet.

or am i just missing something altogether?

Deja Vu

picked up strata and within the first twenty pages i was flooded with having seen this before.
you've read ringworld? same thing. artificial habitat on a cosmic scale, collapse of civilization, marooning of the motley crew - one/two rational humans, a bloodthirsty kung/kzin, search for the builders, a paranoid pierson's puppeteer and a long-suffering shand.
the two books are identical, and that's not what inspired the deja vu.

kzinti have two arms. kung have four.

i can distinctly remember, even as i read ringworld, that Speaker was supposed to have four arms. everything else fitted. i visualized him like that. so when Marco turns up now with four...

I hadn't read strata. yet somehow this one insconspicuous detail is haunting me. how can two books be so similar, and how could i see the other while reading the one, six years ago?

Attack of the Columba livia domestica

Day 1

5 AM

scrith-scratch. scritch-scritch-scratch.

roo. grroo.

Day 2

8 AM

CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP

I leapt up, eyes gummed shut with sleep, heart going like a triphammer on Ritalin, adrenaline washing through my blood. Not pleasant. Damn near killing on a sunday morning. I actually had to struggle to draw that first breath.

CLAPCLAP

clunk

roo.

grroo-roo.

CLAPCLAPCLAPclapclap

scratch

roo

clap clap clap...

Look around. Nothing. Roommate fast asleep. Clock ticking. Birds chirping. Distant muted traffic. Lying back and dozing off.

Day 3

6 AM

CRASH!

CLAPCLAPCLAP

Argh! Huh-what-mmf-splutter. Wide-eyed jerky vision flickering around. Getting up.

Pad quietly into corridor. Door closed. Bolted. Nobody. Clothesline slightly swaying.

Peek into kitchen. Vision blurry, eyes watering with sleep and fright. Sense of whiteness.

Small, quiet but very deliberate movement.

groo

scritch-scratch

Quietly move back. Slowly reach into the dark behind me, fingers skittering across the door edge, the wall, the wire, onto the switches. Fingertips sliding over plug, switch, outside light, kitchen light.

Press.

Click

brightness

Sudden violent explosion of sound and motion into my face!

CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP

scratch-clunk

clapclapclap clap clap

gasp. gasp. gasp... gasp... breathe... breathe.

Look.

Smashed jar on ground. Salt everywhere. Nobody.

Day 4

8:30 AM

Alarm missed. Late. Struggle up.

Mouth dry and tasting like dessicated ashtray. Cold water. In the fridge.

Head for kitchen.

pad-pad-pad-squelch.

Stop. Lift foot. Warm gooey wet sensation mixed with small soft lumps.

pad-hop pad-hop pad-hop wassssshhhhhhh

roo? groo-roo. roo.

Look up.

Pair of black beady and completely insane eyes looking into mine less than a foot away. Grey feathery body. Cracked and veined pinkish-gray skin. Yellowed claws.

groo! roo-groo-roo!

Pigeons are in my home.

Day 4

11 PM

Close all windows

1 AM

scratch-scratch. scratch-scratch.

roo.

scratch-scratch.

Mumble unintelligibly and turn over.

scratch-scratch.

roo.

scratch.

scratch-scratch.

scratch.

Leaping up staggering into bathroom light explosive flutter of wings from window silence

Sleep.

Day 6

2 AM

Wake. Bladder painfully full.

Complete darkness. Silence. Dogs barking in the distance.

Pad into bathroom. Light. Peeing.

roo.

Look up.

It's there. Six inches from my face. Sitting on pipe. Watching me. Not moving. Watching. Looking in my eyes.

Heart jumping straight into throat. Flow clamping painfully closed. Spontaneous backward lateral jump putting back of head straight into edge of door.

Flashing lights, stars.

Pain.

groo.

CLAPCLAPCLAP struggle clapclap clap clap silence

Don't sleep for two hours.

Day 7

Stuff T-shirt into hole in bathroom window. Close all windows.

9 PM

Back home.

Open door.

Darkness

Hot stuffy, dry, and, yes, feathery smell.

And... something else.

Something's in here.

groo.

I left it in the house

Lights

Crap.

Pigeon crap. Everywhere. On my books. My electric drill. The DVD player. The floor. TV. Stove. Kitchen counter.

roo.

Gaze drawn inoxerably upwards, slowly like my dawning understanding.

Shoerack. Shelves. Wall.

And... loft.

groo.

Clamber up. Look inside.

Five beady black homicidal avian glares.

It's a nest.

What do I do now?

wannabe wannabe

I remember when I used to look up to these people, wanting to look like them, be like them, be them. An yesterday I caught myself dismissing them as wannabes, remembering how I used to idolize them.

All I want to know is -

If I went from aspiring to, to aspiring away from; if I went from one end to the other;

Why can't I remember ever actually being them?

a blog on a blog

I was looking at my two blogs recently, and they're so - starkly different.

Look at the travel blog, for instance. There's a distinct sequence on events, a process. Each post has a series of things behind it.

An event. A journey, a trek. An effort made in doing that.

Photos taken, transferred, cleaned, and uploaded on flickr.

People. Different people, from different places, with different stories.

Research. Where did we go, what is it, where it came from, what is there and what was there. A history.

Remembrance. The incidents, the stories, the words.

And last and least - the post.

There's a discipline.

And then, look at this one. It rambles. Posts for the sake of posting. Anytime. On anything. Random.

The question is - can you even decide which is better? Or if that adjective is even relevant.

Free flowing or disciplined?

Random or restricted?

Blank verse or haiku?

Maybe I should start applying some rules to this. Restrict each post to an event, an evocative image, an emotional connect.

Horrifying Parents part - 1

Have been thinking more and more about getting a tattoo done for a while now.
Obviously, permanent. So now the question is - what? Everything that looks damn cool today will be horribly embarassing tomorrow. Besides, I'm not really the kind of person who'll be able to wear a naked-woman-entwined knife-through-left-eye fire-breathing-snake-through-right-eye kind of thing without having a "Yeah, I know how it looks, :(" added on under it.

What else? Abstract celtic patterns is good, with the tremendous advantage that if I put on 20 kgs over the next couple of years, the tattooed Charlize Theron won't become the tattooed Aileen Wuornos.

Japanese Kanji characters is pretty good too. Looks nice, and you can always customize what it means to anyone who asks according to what they want to hear. A 'No Smoking' sign in Kanji could become the basis for a lifetime bonding with a Gladrags Model Of The Decade if you tell her it means Save All Cute Furry Creatures Of The World. Or some such crap. Some marketing needed.

Even your own name can be a pretty good idea. check this out -

Nice, huh?

Anyway - feedback invited. What do you think would look really good? I'll probably go for a full-back-and-shoulderblades-thingy; everywhere else is too much hair and I'm not disposing of the best mosquito protection I have during treks just for a little beauty. Best suggestion gets five-star dinner and a chance to give me back massage on brand new tattoo.

another meeting

9th floor

light playing across the ceiling
windshield reflections from street below
sound muted
dim light, cold air

skin drying, fingertips going numb, goosepimples
hair standing up, brief muscletrembler shudders
killing chill

blazing sun dusty heat strident traffic an eighth of an inch away outside
a sheet of glass, a different world
dust motes dancing in the projector's lightstream
a rushing icestorm in a cold blue searchlight
silent violence
cold

geekgasm

The high point of my day has been getting a meebo widget installed on my blog. (see further below, in the Contact Me section of the sidebar. It's a neato little bit of code that lets anyone reading my blog chat with me live on the net and tell me how much he admires me and my writing.) Not much use, and quite probably a major irritant in future... but somehow the whole deal of getting a bunch of raw material, and sitting down and fiddling around with it, tying, soldering, cutting, twisting, glueing, taping, stretching, sealing, and painting it until you have a... something else in front of you is extremely... entertaining. It could be junk from your grandparents' storeroom, or a hedge sculpture, or a Red Alert 2 mod, or a broken amplifier, or code, or plumbing, or an anthill, or a messy desk, or the electrical system of your house, or a model plane, or somebody's self-esteem, or anything, really.

Maybe it's a kind of displaced maternal instinct. Guys can't give birth, so we try to find other ways of creating something. Or we're genetically subconsciously jealous, and are desperately trying to make ourselves useful and justify our existence...

Either way, at the end of it... it's still fun.

life's aches and pains and sunday mornings

This morning, my breathing stopped. We were doing a contact drill in the jeet kune do class, and I took an unexpectedly hard knuckle in the solar plexus when I wasn't expecting it; and a whole bunch of involuntary functions - like heartbeat, breathing - went haywire for a second. Easy to see how you can kill someone with your hands like this.

Now I'm in a delicious fugue state that usually happens after any high-intensity physical activity followed by a bath, a pizza and a holiday. We're lying around like a pack of dogs - me, N, P, and Bd, on the mattresses amidst newspapers, music systems, wires, chargers, phones, and water bottles, alternating between F1, The Great Indian Comedy Challenge, the lifecycle of urban coyotes, napping, and SMSs.

It's like I can't move beyond the essentials - no need to. Thirsty, stretch a hand, pick bottle, drink. Send a message. Eat a Smokin' Joe's Special slice. Watch TV. Chew on a carrot. Zzzz. Smoke. Zzzz again. Stretch. Carrot.

Like a Tom & Jerry cartoon where everything you want - irons, anvils, baseball bats, pies - can be had by just reaching beyond the edge of the screen. Everything I want is within reach, and I don't even need to get up.

Sun. Day. Dozing.

God, my arms ache. Will need to start getting into some serious shape soon; Won't be able to keep up in the JKD at this rate, and I can kiss the mountain trip goodbye as well.

What do you describe that state when you know what you're going to do, and you know you're going to do it, and you want to do it, but... you're not doing it. Yet. Maybe the next second, the next hour, the next day... I guess the closest parallel is travelling, looking out of the window. Or the thinking-nothing phase during meditation, when you see grey-maroon shapes and hear faint wind-noises of your thoughts disappearing behind you as soon as they form, except for the one that says, any time now, any second, you're going to open your eyes - and conscious thought will begin again. Or sleeping in a cab. Or that pause before you sign, the pen a quarter-inch above the paper.

Today, that feeling is complete, all-pervasive, everywhere, everything. The Pause Before The Life.

You scored as Hobbes.

You are Hobbes! Resourceful, laid back, optimistic, understanding, and able to put up with Calvin on a day-to-day basis. You are the best type of friend, someone who you can get in fights with and look at comic books with, someone who will send prank letters to you through the mail and someone who leaps over cliffs with you. What more could anyone ask for? Hobbes 86% Calvin 79% Susie 61% Mrs. Wormwood 54% Mom and Dad 29% What Calvin & Hobbes character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

No wonder I loved this exchange -
Calvin: What's it all for? What is our ultimate purpose? Why are we here?
Hobbes: Tiger food.

Interestingly enough, this is a confirmation. People had already identified me as Hobbes earlier.
Mmm. Time for a nap, and maybe some tuna...

and the wettest dry day ever

Calling any day a dry day is the meteorological equivalent of hanging a 'kick me' sign on your back and walking through 1955 high school for clouds.

Dry day my squelching wet foot. Six hours on the bike. Fat rain, sprayey rain, vertical rain, sideways rain, rain like sheets of water and rain like an aerosol spray. Cold rain, warm rain, tepid rain. Rain that rained like it was the last rain on earth and stopped only 4 times -
1. When I was inside Inorbit
2. When I was inside my sis' place at Bandra
3. When I was having a chai in the shelter of a plastic tarp
4. When I was home.

In between, I took the bike through sheets of water. I did 90 on wet roads. Cars would go past like Tata Safari Dicor ad auditions. I would in turn spray elderly gentlemen standing on pavements and sitting in autos, who would shout and shake their fists at me. Finally after six hours I am home, and I find waist deep water.
Nothing is more frustrating than driving for six hours, going through half of Bombay, sloshing, splashing, Dicor'ing, crawling, and finally find the last fifty feet are the ones that're waist deep.
Sigh. Park on the main road and wade.

Hot water. Followed up with an RC + ice.
Happy Birthday, MKG.

followed up by a traumatic birthday

5 PM. I'm floating in a warm fuzzy cloud of microsleep.

Brief flashes - leaving office - the digits on the station clock changing with a distinct click - the strands of gray in the head of the guy stuck in front of me in the train - the icy chill of the ATM - the dabba that feels nearly too heavy to pick up - and finally, the dark of my room, NatGeo running on mute as a nightlight.

11:59 PM. Someone shaking me awake. Blinding fluorescence. Sound. Fuzz that resolves into Bd, Bp, R, D, Bn, and A, standing around with ear-to-ear grins. Crackling yellow thrust into my hands that becomes a cellophane-wrapped bunch of yellow flowers. A pair of pretty nice shirts. A group-autographed red underwear is hung on my head. Chocolate smell. A black forest cake appears, opens. I cut. A piece comes up and hits me in the nose, and then rubs all over my face like a lascivious cat. Chocolate and spongecake coat my bed. I eat kheer. I stand, and as the room sways and spins, with a deep buzzing sound, I say goodbye. I wash sheet. I sleep.

1 PM. Office. Chocolate smell. another cake appears, pure chocolate this time. A knife is in my hand and forty-five people sing happy birthday. I cut. A piece comes up and hits me in the nose, and then rubs all over my face like a horny turbocharged giant snail. Deja vu. I look even more like Singapore's Chocolate Spa's posterboy of the year.

If you're reading this and you're an attractive woman with a weakness for chocolate, do send me any and all ideas that came into your head when you saw this and let's catch up sometime.

Heheheh.

9 PM. Pratap's Dhaba. Also known as Chawla's Chicken, Pritam, the punju joint and the Oshiwara dhaba. Table for ten, have invited seventeen, and three have turned up. I need a drink.

Over the next 3 hours, everyone arrives - trekkers, ex-colleagues, hostelites, competitors, bosses, girlfriends... but all, remarkably enough, in series, so there are no embarassing encounters and no chairs short. I give my growing event management skills ten thousand brownie points.

And hukka, daru, chicken, and gossip. Wah.

1:30 AM. The dhaba is dark. All lights have been switched off, chairs have been stacked up, and the only occupied table is ours. Most of guests have gone. There's 5 of us now, happily calling for more jalebis and daru. I was later told that I had a wide, fixed smile, a thousand-yard stare, and was conducting 4 simultaneous conversations on unrecognized work, site traffic back-calculations, the merits of eating predigested chicken, and the future of travel in India and recruitment in GTL. And apparently playing footsie with an empty shoe.

And consuming frightening quantities of reshmi kabas and lemon-flavoured smoke.

2 AM. Senior person disappears into auto with speed of striking snake to drop off people home, leaving strict instructions for us to meet him at X later.

2:05 AM. Panicked SMS saying the group has been halted by the cops and is in imminent danger of arrest for unruly behaviour.

3 AM. First successful dropoff

3:15 AM. Final dropoff

3:16 AM. Battery dies. Like Christian Slater, I say, "So be it" and go home.

And so Death and I take one more tiny little step closer to each other.

27, and life to go.

and an even more bizarre week

'Desperately seeking drama', she said.

So what if I have an overactive imagination? It keeps me entertained. But the last ten days have been weirder than anything I've thought up so far.

It's a monday morning, in office, and I feel - cocooned. Wrapped in a soft fuzzy envelope. I can see, hear everything, but it's with a distinct feeling of disconnection. Like it doesn't really apply. Sound is muted. Hushed. It's not like the other times when I can feel myself looking out from behind my eyes - I might be insulated, but I'm very much there in the environment. This is like - not being here. Real-time, real-life memory. Waking dreams.

Backlash of emotional intensities. Guilt, tension, indecision... all overlaid with a sense of I-can't-believe-this-is-actually-happening feeling. Physical exhaustion. Sleep deprived, alcohol-fueled states of mind. Endorphins at their lowest point this month.

repaired the comp broke up got together got slapped didn't get drunk hot happy signed up ate ate ate smoked up a lungsqueezing level of fags watched movies and movies and movies walked talked rode around bombay at 3 am worked

It's like... everything piles up together. Like a freeway smash. Does this mean the last few years my life's been accelerating, the curves getting faster, more dangerous, the skids a little longer each time... and when you're in a car, with the windows up, the AC on, and the music playing, you don't realize when you cross the line into dangerous speeds.
When did I get into a car? It was always supposed to have been the bike.

I need to find out if this silence means I've gone off the edge, or just rolled to a stop on the side.

interesting weekend

Friday. Caught in traffic. Time ticking by, movie getting closer and closer, traffic still, tempers fraying, friend waiting and progressively freaking.

Arrive half hour late. Stony silence from friend kept waiting. Watch movie completely unnerved, and the fact that it reminds me of Terrible Ex-Boss doesn't help.

Drink. Eat fish and shrimps. Gross out people with what the cheesy dip reminds me of, so get to eat all of the dip. Go back home. Watch Snatch.

Saturday. Wake up at 1 PM. Lunch. Watch the single worst movie in Bollywood history forever. Again caught in rain, this time with massive thunderstorms knocking out the power grid so all trains beyond Andheri stop. Sit at a CCD for over 3 hours over a single coffee, watching the storm. The Fun Republic CCD is an amazing place to watch storms; the biggest balcony of the world.

Sunday. Realize I'm late for movie again, so hit 95 on WE highway and miss the turn, and backtrack for close to another ten mins. Get fired. Watch House Of Flying Daggers which is a must-watch on bigscreen. Eat a bad pasta and go for haircut. Fall asleep while getting haircut, because of which I now look like Langda Tyagi.

Reclaiming Life

I hate that ad.
Not because I particularly dislike my current existence, but because it equates that existence - something that I've taken my life to build - with buying a 6.4 lakh SUV. And a garish one at that. I mean, come on! Air conditioning? Music system? Is that the life you want to reclaim?
What the fuck happened to having enough discipline to put work where it belongs?

And at one level, it's frightening. Is that much of the world so myopic that they actually make advertising-budget sense in pushing Escape as a USP? What is this, Auschwitz?

Or are we so bereft of imagination now that we need someone to feed us things-to-do. Buy The Car. Invest For The Future. Become VP. Watch This Movie. Show Off That Palm. Be Seen At This Club. Wear That Label.
A very long time ago, I said, "I'm bored."
I was told, "That means you aren't intelligent enough to find something to do."
The whole world is bored now, and everyone wants to tell them what to do. Nobody's thinking. Nobody's finding something to do.

There is - and always will be - something to do. Something you enjoy doing. You know what it is. You know you can have it.

All you lazy frickin bastards need to do is just get off your fat bloody butt and take it, man!! What the hell is wrong with you?!
Why has the whole world just given up independent thought to the extent that when I assert it, I'm the crazy one? I mean, has it - can it - even occur to someone that there's more to life than this? That sometimes a person can spend the whole day in bed, ordering in, reading, dozing and daydreaming? That sometimes he might like walking for 25 km in the pouring rain in the middle of nowhere just for the silence? That it might be more important to be liked and respected than feared?

My life is sliding more and more off the beaten path of acceptable existence. My soul was never on it, my mind is leaving it... and soon my life will follow.
Soon.

timepass

What happens when you're phenomenally bored during meetings? Don't know about you, but my mind tends to wander off in some very weird directions indeed. At the end of the last five-hour meet, I came to and looked down at the notebook. I'd picked up this habit of assiduously and industriously taking notes while fast asleep (actually, I have a nasty feeling there's a whole different alter ego that does stuff when I'm asleep. I definitely know I drove some 5 km in Goa with zero recollection...)

And in the book, this is what I saw...

13/8/06

Tardiis

A product that exists only in code, only recognizable by the way current flows are directed in semiconductor microchips, that still fulfils a function.

That function is media analysis.

a science

dedicated to analyzing the impact of planning an art (advertising)

of selling an idea (I must become thin)

of a concept (because thin is good)

of a brand (X will make me thin)

that's a perception (X the non-real personality with aspirational values)

of a product (non-aspartane-based sugar substitute)

that fulfils a need (looking good by being thin)

created of another perception of social expectation (looks are important)

created of a set of mores (looks means 34-22-36)

based on social psychology (34-22-36 means healthy, fertile, breeder)

that grew out of evolution (healthy fertile breeders are your best bet for preserving your genes)

from genetics (survival of the fittest)

from biology (fit means most efficient organisms, adapted to environment)

from chemistry (efficiency comes from best enzymes, molecules, oxygen conversion)

from physics (molecules form operating on electron orbital linkages between atoms)

from quantum physics (atoms are made of quarks)

from string theory (top, bottom, left, right, charming, and strange quarks are made of unidimensional vibrations in different directions)

which is a... faith?

I need help, right?

Telecaller 2.0 - The Next Generation

she: sir this is ___ calling on behalf of orange.
me: yes?
she: sir you are using prepaid or postpaid?
me: madam, are you prepaid or postpaid?
she: sir i can be whatever you like sir. if you want prepaid i will be prepaid, if you want postpaid will be postpaid.
me: ??!
she: sir you are interested?
me: umm... how much do you charge?
she: sir it depends on the plan sir. i have starting from Rs. 250 per month sir.
me: and what do i - er - get in this plan?
she: blah blah blah blah blah
me: sigh...

But the day is not far, I feel...

an ode to nice guys

Found this on a a rainy sunday afternoon.

And this is so true. (Sniff.)
I don't get it. We might be socially dumb but at least on the overall, have a fairly above-average level of intelligence. Why can't we see that being 'nice' just isn't working?
We listen, we escort, we drop and pick up, we buy thoughtful gifts and do the life-saving, career-boosting work / idea / solutions... and still go home in the end. Hasn't it occurred to us by now that there really isn't any point in doing this? Sure, I'll get appreciated, remembered, kiss my ass. There's no RoI. Even the odds of anything happening by chance are way way too low.
Why do we persist in this self-destructive behaviour? Does niceness come with a side order of masochism? Or just a special kind of dumb?

Sigh.

view from the loo, part two

A loo is not just a place to pee in. It's an entire world in itself, with it's own rules, culture, and most of all, it's biodiversity.

Undresser: He'll walk in, take off the belt, open 3 shirt buttons, and drop his pants halfway down before getting within 2 feet of the urinal. Hello! You coming to take a leak or father a dynasty?
Spitter: Will lean morosely over and spit... spit... spit... ok, so you really needed to let it out, but try and do it from just one end, hmm?
Talker: Cellphone precariously slung between shoulder and jaw, will close deals, comfort parents, flirt with GFs, and argue with wife. Spends an average of 10K a month on new phones and an average of 10 minutes on each leak.
Conversationalist: Unlike the talker, who tends to remain lost in his own private world, the conversationalist will discuss work, life, cricket, the stock market, the latest release, music, philosophy, motorcycle maintenance, yes, zen too, and anything else you can think of with you while you're both together. Usually tends to be your superior in rank or size since the juniors die horrible deaths in mysterious and disgusting circumstances.
Choked: Can't go if there's anyone near him, or in the room, or in his imagination. Will stand with desperately blank look for up to 15 mins at a time. Usually dies by explosion. If you see a blankly pained look on a fat guy, RUN!!
Gameboy: Will aim for the scented napthalene cakes / ice lumps and chase them around, displaying a skill and resourcefullness rarely seen outside most top-level hockey leagues. Usually runs out of ammo before objective is achieved, forces himself, and bursts a blood vessel.
Bather: The urinal's not where all the action is; check out the washbasin. This guy apparently walked in from 10 years in the Sahara, 'coz he's been splashing his face, hair, neck, head, shoulders, arms, and everyone around him for the last 5 mins. Some one throw this dude in the pool please!
Psycho caller: Not strictly a denizen but intimately associated with the natives, the psycho caller is telepathically linked to your urethra and will phone you exactly as you get going. You then struggle with L'il Bro, your pants, your embarassment and your phone while Himesh sings out polyphonically from your crotch.


On the other side, the Stalls!

Singin' in the rain: Or humming, whistling, whatever. Fairly content and happy camper. Usually revered as holy man, sage on the mountain, or local tech guru in the outside world.
Tycoon: Will read entire paper and do his NAV checks and P/E ratio analyses before he arises. Is usually banned from most libraries due to Pavlovian response.
Big Boomer: Will fart LOUDLY and follow up with rich-media sound effects. Grunts and sighs for additional benefit.

And how can we forget the underpreviliged left-out-in-the-cold species, Desperate Andy, the Guy Next In Line. Usually found in pubs where bladder pressure soars in inverse proportion to loo capacity. Will bang on door, swear, dance the macarena, and finally semicollapse against the door in agony. Great fun to watch after 4 pegs when you wait for him to realize the door opens the other way and he's been roasting in bladder hell for an empty loo.

Coming next... the girl's loo counterpart, as soon as I get this damn spycam hooked up properly...