A single page

As part of a  C E N S O R E D  process, I was quickly scribbling down a brief history of where I've worked - names, places, designation, duration, salary, etc. I have most of it scanned and ready, so didn't take too long... but somewhere, that page started getting heavy. 

It carried over a decade of my life - why wouldn't it feel heavy? Every figure, every word on that page came with days, weeks, months worth of history. The salary negotiations. The resignation dates. The pitifully short breaks between jobs. The names of reporting managers - good ones, bad ones. Months that gave up years' worth of excitement, fun, learning, hard work, heartbreak, drama, action. Years that simply faded away into the ennui of repetition and and boredom and left me with a few months worth of stuff happening. 

Every shift was literally the high point of the year - the reasons that would lead me to quit, the bitter, voluble daru sessions that preceded it, frustrations coming to a head, the interviews, the final offers, the quitting, the new places and people, the learning curve... 

It's just in the last few years that Life has had more to add and contribute than Work. More stuff has happened outside the Office than inside - and I remember the times when the Ofiice was literally all there was, and home was a place to crash and drink, and weekends were for catching up on sleep, getting smashed, recovering from hangovers, or putting in overtime. And maybe the occasional movie. There was no TV, no gaming, no interior deco, no family stuff, no quality time. 

There was, however, the ubiquitous, all-powerful cig break, the glue and the cornerstone of Office life and growth. There were the industry parties and the outbounds. All your friends worked where you did, and traveled together, so there was no 'commute', just extended timepass. Bosses could be angels or demons, but you always had less to worry about than them, more spare time than them, no matter what they did. Little things would be HUGE - road trips for a special tea or dhaba or snack. A weekend trek. A visit home. They'd sustain you for weeks. 

And the learning curve. Everything was new. The admin staff, the networks, reports, presentations, fieldwork, data entry, cold calls, warehouses... it was all a mysterious new world filled with drama, excitement, and above all, something new to learn every day. 

Then you shifted, and suddenly your world fractured into new and old. Then into Work and Personal. Then Work, Personal, Family, Friends, and the To-Do List. You feel sliced thin now, spread out over too many shifting textures floating on an unstable sea, pulling together the drifting loose barrels under your raft. It's more stable, bigger, but... there's something missing. Like a stage-one rocket, the first few career years drove you howling into space, and now, drifting in the silence, you miss that drive. It consumed you, that pillar of fire, changed you, took you into a place you never thought you would reach... but sometimes you wonder if the journey cost you the destination. 

It's strange how all that can fit on one page. 

Of meter jams and other suchlike stuff

It's going to be interesting to see how Meter Jam plays out tomorrow and beyond. It's definitely an interesting social experiment - but I want to step back from it a little, look at the larger perspective. 

The passengers: After years of frustration at being refused fares, the entire movement is a emotional outburst that's been building up for a while. When you're struggling to reach somewhere, and the auto refuses your fare, it does feel like a slap in the face. I think this is the real reason, more than just inconvenience - it's the insult, the feeling of having to beg for service and being turned away. 

The autowallas: On the other hand, sometimes they do have their reasons. They're not necessarily valid, logical ones, but more around an instinctive reaction - short-distance fares will give more pain in terms of traffic negotiation, finding a return fare, etc. And if you have a rigged meter, you do make more profit on a longer distance. 

Unfortunately, it's short-sighted. By progressively riling up and angering customers, the autowallas have painted themselves into a corner from where it's going to be a tough task to get out - a situation where they've demonized themselves. Yes, I do agree it won't affect business - yet. For every 50,000 people who refuse to use an auto on one day, another 250,000 people will use one. That's just plain economics, demand and supply. But those 250,000 won't necessarily like it, either. They're swallowing their pride and shelling out their money. The feeling will remain, rankle. 

And in the long term, they'll think of other solutions. 

Carpooling is not an answer. We've all tried it and we know the painful logistics it involves, especially when travelling under deadlines. 

Lifts is not the answer. All it takes is one rape or molestation to end the concept, and you and I both know there's people out there for whom this is a heaven-sent opportunity; just stick a poster on the car and roam around, searching for prey. 

Posters is not the answer. A few cars smashed by union thugs, and the posters will vanish overnight. 

So what is the answer? 

It's beyond the obvious ones above. It's better finance schemes for buying motorbikes and cars. It's having a gym with a shower in the office so you can walk or cycle to work. It's gigantic parking becoming mandatory in malls and offices. It's the Sea Link. It's the Tata Nano. It's the realization that sometimes, whatever money you make is not worth the effort you put in and the sacrifices you have to make to get it - sacrifices of family, of leisure, of peace of mind. It's the reducing attractiveness of an office in the heart of the city where residential rent is unaffordable - so you choose the next best job offer, closer to home. It's decentralization, easing traffic pressure. It's decentralization beyond the city, reducing migrants. 

It's about... balance. The city was successful, so it attracted a population. That population is making the city unsuccessful. When the city fails, the population will depart. It's not pleasant, but it's life. 

That's why Meter Jam by itself won't work, even if it is ten times it's current size and lasts for a month at a stretch. It's unsustainable. It's fighting a system bigger than autowallas, bigger than unions, bigger than politics. It's fighting a natural outcome of a city's life-cycle. Everything you do - every solution - will only treat the symptoms, not cure the disease. The disease gets cured in a longer timeframe than most of our lives. So it doesn't make sense for us. So we treat the symptoms, with initiatives stretched out over years, while the disease cures itself over decades and centuries. 

But it is definitely a important event - it's the blinking red light on the health chart of the patient Mumbai. It may not do much, but it's telling us very, very clearly that things are wrong. Now we need to figure out how to fix them. 

Discovering Anarchy

Until a few days ago, I was like any one of you. I existed in a cocoon of placid self-belief and faith in my world. I had dreams and hopes, some expectations in life. I had plans.

Increasingly, it's becoming obvious that what I think doesn't matter, doesn't even exist.
All of us are living in a state of collective self-hypnosis. We have convinced ourselves that we have rights, freedoms, privileges. We have the right to dream and the freedom to pursue that dream, and now, in the last decade, we have the resources.
Here's some of the basic myths we all live under. Tell me you disagree.

1. The government will take care of me if I pay my taxes, vote responsibly and follow my duties as a citizen. They will maintain and develop infrastructure, healthcare, education, law & order, national security.

2. As an Indian citizen, I can live anywhere in India without prejudice or discrimination if I do not deliberately offend my neighbors.

3. My children will be safe in school, in a park, at malls and multiplexes, in public transport.

4. If someone hurts me illegally, or cheats me, or robs me, the police and the courts will give me
justice and punish the wrongdoer.

5. My vote counts and my taxes are used properly.

Do you really believe that? Really?
It's all a delusion. I'm beginning to understand now. We live in a concealed anarchy, a state where a semblance of order is carefully laid on top of chaos, and served up to us in media, in opinions, in implicit and explicit education, in socialization.
There are no guarantees in life, and we all know that all of the above may or may not apply to us at random.
Someone with power and connections can do exactly what he wants and get away with it. Whether it is evading crores of taxes or casually raping, killing and throwing away the body of a child on the road.
I can die anytime - by terrorist hand, by drunk driving, knifed by the addict on the footpath, of dengue or malaria, in a collapsing building built with substandard material, in an armed robbery, of fake medicines in a hospital, anything.
I can just as easily die in a genuine road accident, have a heart attack, be struck by lightning, slip and fall downstairs.
And I'm using death as an example - but it applies equally to success and failure at work, in studies, in business, at relationships.
Chaos is everywhere, around every corner. All we do in life is try to limit that chaos, by creating rules and order. By creating certain support for life. That's why we believe in dial-100, in ambulances, the operation theater, in anything.

But the truth is - what we thought was order, structure, rules, isn't really there. We just thought it was. What is there is anarchy, chaos, lawlessness, where the strongest person always wins, and the weaker one is eaten up or dies.
I can choose to be weak - or be strong. Choose which way I want to live. I know what I deserve out of life; I know I can make that happen.
But in understanding that, I'm also acknowledging the death of a dream. It could have been better, it could have been wonderful.
It's still going to be good, but just for a few of us.
And all the rest are going to hell.

A Moving Story - moved, shaken and stirred. And setup.

It's over. I Am ensconced in new flat snugly, and wandering around, uttering child-like cries of wonder at every new discovery.

• Strange, disturbingly vivid, cartoons in rubber all over the walls.
• More glass and china than produced by entire generations of the Ming dynasty. Considering that there will be a Taurean living here shortly - and 2009 is the year of the Ox - this is not a good idea.
• A stack of tiles and a twenty-kilo rock in the window seat.
• Small, six-inch high cane chairs in the loft.
• A giant roll (six feet across and god knows how long) of bubblewrap.
• Crystal decanters.
• A sewing machine treadle.
• A genuine VCR. Remember, the ones that used to play those rolls of magnetic tape... before mp4, before xvid, before blu-ray, even before dvd and vcd...
• A giant furry tiger-print blanket.
• Giant plastic sheeting, lovingly colonized by pigeons.
• Something that I still can't figure out, but it looks like the pelt of a capybara, or a four-foot orange rat. Shedded so much hair and dust I sneezed for an hour.
• Stone vases and extraordinarily realistic plastic plants - two of us watered them for a week before realizing something's off.
• Mysteriously sealed cupboards
• Commemorative mugs of the Royal Wedding.
• 3 small ivory balls
• 25 combs of varying fineness, a hair dye brush, and a pack of morning-after pills. How such small things tell the story of an entire life...
• A pack of cigarette filters
• Thirty feet of coaxial cable
• Wind chimes
• Forty feet of guano-encrusted network cable
• 3-disc CD player with speakers
• An address book populated with Macs, restaurants, and beauty parlours
• A complete bar kit - corkscrew, opener, tongs, etc - made by Sanyo (??)
• A set of six full-length thick curtains that don't fit any window or door in the house
• And finally - The Last Supper, made of plaster, embedded in one wall.

And, as you would no doubt have realized, on top of all this I shall be adding my unique sense of taste and decoration to an already unique foundation. This should be fun.

A Moving Story, neverending...

My arms ache. Individually moving a quarter of a ton of clothes, books, DVD's, electronics, and assorted household goods has left it's mark - but has fortunately not fucked my spine like last time.
And I have a partially functional new apartment. No cable, but 650 movies; no internet but 250 GB of pics, videos, comics, and games.
And finally, at long last, parking.
I have spent the last 2 days packing, moving, shopping, moving the shopping, unpacking, rearranging, and screaming like an enraged orangutan at the shocking lack of storage space. Not that the new flat lacks it; there are cupboards, shelves, minibars, lofts, cabinets, and box beds galore. Unfortunately, they all appear to be used. I have never seen a larger collection of glass and china in one place together. It's crammed. Plates, cups, saucers, humorous coffee mugs, mementoes, beer glasses, steins, creamers, bowls, wine glasses, shot glasses, chalices, dishes, mugs, lids, baking thingies you make veg au gratin in, platters... I am exhausted. I need to banish all these somewhere and I have no clue.
Photos coming soon.

product life cycle like never before

Today, dear pagecount contributor, let me tell you about my washing machine.

My washing machine suffers from habitual and copious incontinence.

My washing machine groans like a ghoul at odd intervals.

My washing machine cannot take water on it's own, and needs to be put on a separate hose like an IV drip for every wash.

Because of this, it needs constant watching and supervision to make sure the pipe doesn't fall out and sprays water all over my comp. My washing machine, perversely, will start it's wash cycle exactly when I step out of the room in nicotine-starved frustration, with a flatulent rumble followed by a merry splish-splash, causing me to twitch violently at a crucial juncture while leaning sideways over the gas (since the matches are soaked) and singeing my eyebrows.

My washing machine needs a special support stand in order to be moved around, to be able to reach the bathroom drain.

My washing machine displays all the vibrancy of an epileptic seizure in the spin cycle. A vibrancy that knocks it off its castors and upon my unsuspecting feet, whilst partly-spin-dried clothing flies about in wild abandon.

My washing machine is an old, old man, on it's deathbed.

Had it owned large property, or even a hall-kitchen south of Boriviali, I would have been standing over it with will and pen and large, comforting smile.

"If you hate your washing machine so much," asked HR, who was just recently introduced to the joys of new-ownerhood of a brand-new IFB, "why don't you just buy a new one?"

A new machine, it is true, would be young, vibrant, and eager to please with a hint of smug superiority, like an MBA with 1 year's work ex. It will, like Sharman Joshi in Metro, take away all my troubles and resolve them. It may not get me laid as well in the bargain, but with the kind of tech Siemens is putting in it's machines these days, you never know.

But the truth is - I like this one. It's more paisa-vasool entertainment than a Mithun-da film festival. Washing day is lookied forward to with dread, trepidation, and a fluttering int he stomach weeks in advance. Jeans are re-re-re-used until they're insufferably obscenely filthy, and therefore last decades. Office shirts are guarded like Kohinoor diamonds to avoid the slightest speck of dirt. Underclothing contributes to many new species for alien scientists to discover and theorize about the evolution and origin thereof, billions of years from now, by creating independent, individual biospheres. Curtains become bulletproof with mold, mildew and dust, and that too at no extra cost. Enough electricity is saved to power rural Maharashtra for at least a week, which is why I was able to watch DishTV at the end of the Lohagadh trek while savoring a nice hot chai and ciggie out of the pouring rain.

So, such is my life and that of my washing machine.

Even talking about it makes me feel clean.

Is it not the most amazing machine you've seen?

It's lean, mean, and even ecologically green.

Other machines, they look obscene,

When compared. Wah. What a scene!

A moving story... moved!

For all my loyal fans and faithful supporters who have been avidly following my trials and tribulations at the hands of the financial capital's treatment of it's denizens vis-a-vis translocation of residences, let me serve up to you, gently warmed, a multi-course repast of the aftermath of the move - where we are now.

Starters:

The PC Room

One room has been converted into a combination of gaming centre, server room, laundromat and travel office.

A cupboard threatens to explode from the accumalated pressure of souvenirs, trekking equipment, and half a dozen knapsacks and sleeping bags so tightly rolled up they threaten to achieve critical mass. Especially R's alpine sleeping bag, the best way to picture which is to imagine a regular Kurl-on mattress somehow squeezed into a gas cylinder. I can hear it groaning and vibrating under stress, sometimes.

The rest of the cupboard looks like Lamington road, where my entire paraphenelia of electronic spares and discards, now completely indistinguishable from each other, languish in wait of the Great TurboListing Day, when they shall go up for auction on ebay.

Next to which is a desk which is not actually alive, though you may be fooled by the way it hums, moves, chuckles and chirrups to itself, is warm to the the touch and exhales gustily on your knees when you sit down; that's what comes of having a CPU, two heatsinks, and a subwoofer in one confined space. There's a small hole in the desk which the original owner had intended for a genteel 2-3 cables for monitor, speakers, etc. It looks like a Lovecraftian revenant now, with over 20 cables of assorted thicknesses, colors and tensions coiling out of it. 2 monitor, 3 ext. HDD, 1 USB hub, 1 joystick, 6 speaker, 1 mouse, 1 gamepad receptor, 1 webcam, 2 router, 1 cam cable, 1 cardreader coming out; 1 network and 1 power going in; and don't even think of the interior, where there's also 2 extension boards. It gives local network engineers heart attacks. I counted yesterday - 17 LEDs operate at any point of time. It's a bloody spaceshuttle flight deck.

And while you sit down, behind you the washing machine, if on, provides a pleasant growling, thumping, drumming background score, with the occasional merry splish-splash of overflow when the pipe falls off or the exhaust hose leaks.

At nights, it's like being in a high-tech womb.

gaming

Why do I game?

It eats away time, money, sleep, healthy eating, good posture, fills the head with nightmares and daydreams, opens your computer to infection risks, overwhelms my HD, and blows my bank balance in associated costs - AGPs, peripherals, networking...

yet I game. Compulsively, obsessively, incessantly. And I enjoy it. I love it. I live it.

I guess one bit of it is... escapism. The same reason you read, or listen to music, or watch movies... or plays, or art... there is a story in here, and it's long, complex, rich, and often fascinating. It's not just shoot-and-watch-the-gore-spatter; the background stories can be expansive and imaginative as any SF. When you read, you don't just look at the words; after a point, there's a direct flow of thought from your imagination to your conscious mind, with the words on the page just the occasional trigger. This can be as immersive.

Entertainment. Adrenaline. Reflexes. Will you rather play cricket on the road, on rock-hard tarmac? You also play with traffic. Or travel for an hour each way to get to the ground, after having booked it in advance, of course? Sad fact of life, but real-world play in an urban environment is becoming more and more inaccessible. And in a city, finding a safe nice place to play in is way easier than finding a nice, safe person(s) to play with.

On the other hand, you can curl up on a bean bag in an AC room, and immerse yourself for a couple of hours.

Ever done puzzles? I'm not talking about the crap that passes itself off as 'puzzle games'. Even stuff like Tomb Raider, like a lot of movies and books, require significant suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. Stand back and look, and you know that Ms Croft can get past the cunning trap in one way and only one way, and that one way has been conceived and created by Eidos Interactive long long before you came on the scene. You're being forced to walk down a corridor, wearing a chicken suit, with a pause every five seconds to sing the chorus lines from Eminem's Stan. If you don't do any of this, you die.

On the other hand, look at cheatcodes, easter eggs, and cracking. You're getting inside. Edit the default values in the config files, and suddenly all your tanks mooove like rocketbikes and fire unlimited nukes, our soldiers wear tank armour, and your buildings are invulnerable, and you yourself can fly, walk through walls, never run out of ammo, and use level 9 weaponry on level 1 minions, the poor creatures. The getting in, figuring it out, trying a hypothesis, seeing it work, applying it for a better experience - dopamine overproduction! It's a high of just using your head to make something happen!

More than that, sometime around 2 AM, when suddenly, everything clicks, and you're past the block, in the zone, on fire... it's a quasi-religious experience. Superego and id in perfect harmony for once, in perfect coordination, needing each other, working together. Higher brain functions shut down, worries evaporate, stress vanishes. It's just you and the game, in a world where none of the constraints apply. And it's amazing what a relaxing feeling it can be for the soul when all your troubles get boiled down to 2 simple counters - your health level and your ammunition level - and your hindbrain, too, believes that with all it has.

Stopping play is like... waking up, or falling asleep, depends on how you see it; between

.

.

Do you really want to quit? Y / N

.

.

and shutting down, getting up, water, roll into bed, drifting off... is a dreamlike, fugue state anyway. As soon as I slide into unconsciousness, REM kicks in almost instantly, picking up where the other side of that Y/N left off. Talk about an immersive experience - like most immersive experiences, this one sticks to you after you've climbed out. The next waking in the morning is even more disjointed.

It's an experience that extends way back in it's foreplay before the actual gameplay. The entire wandering through Fort, leafing through the pavement titles, one eye open for cops, making the selection, the bargaining, the wrapping up of the purchase in the inevitable black plastic bag, quick turn-down of the offer for porn ("saab english / hindi / double / triple / latest") and walk home; and the entire installation adventure, decoding the crack instructions written by a technically gifted but linguistically retarded cracker, and that rush when the game executes perfectly for the first time... this is entertainment that you work for, that you take risks for. Is that why it's that much more enjoyable?

That's it for now - I stocked up on Gears of War, Q4, Bioshock, and Max Payne 2 and HL2:Ep1 is still left with a little to go... have a good Winter-een-mas!

---

Play. Evolve.

Images thanks to Ctrl-Alt-Del and Explosm.net

A Moving Story, Part III

Last time we moved, we ended up having 43 individual pieces of baggage (including a bucket full of brooms and mops). It's too much to manage. This time round, I think it'll make more sense to do couple of quick trips to the new place and start dumping bags - and emptying them and bringing it back as well.

Advantage -

• It'll do away with the need for superpacking where every available cubic centimeter is utilized, which results in superdense cartons where you have no clue exactly what has been packed where.
• It'll allow re-usage of available bags
• It'll let us set up the new place in phases, so the exhausted period post-move isn't occupied by an even more exhausting re-setup; last time, we were so pooped that stuff stayed packed in cartons for months at a time. In fact, some cartons are going today as is from the last shift.

Disadvantage -

• Multiple trips, so I need to be able to leave early enough to pack, and reach late enough (from and to office) to do a baggage dump in the morning and an unpacking exercise in the evening.
• Finding cabs willling to go short distance, with a luggage rack.
• Anyone in the Andheri West area willing to help and with a big car, and lots of free time?

A Moving Story, part II

yep, that's my room.

cartons, bags, dust, electricals, Jon Bon Jovi, and the bright clean table in the middle is where a chicken patiala rested not very long ago. It's an explosion in a psychotic warehouse, and I'm lovin' it.

All the interesting stuff i never knew I had has started turning up... and will be going on eBay soon. Advance booking open for cordless headphones and an ancient Yashica.

Another fun bit of this phase is imagining where some of all this stuff - so useless so far - will go in the new place. This tiny bulb on a bedswitch? Can it be used to make an illuminated drinks cabinet? Or how about this...2.0 speaker set? Can I wire up the entire house so I get my music in every room? I already have the 5.1 set, the old 2.1 set... and an amplifier... and lookit this, thirty feet of shielded cable... heheh.

in the watches of these dark nights...

...the most innocuous takes on... overtones.

like the laundry. close to twenty shirts hanging in the dark corridor. like a battalion of emaciated, headless corpses.

gently swaying in the wind, like they're giving a chance to let those at the back peer forward.

twitching. crowding around the door.

if I go to the loo, brushing past them all, what will I find outside waiting for me when I come back?

dead quiet... but moving. coordinated, twitchy, random movement. like a silent mob.

it's creepin me out...

moving... again

After 2 years at Veera Desai, it's time to go. I like moving. It's cathartic. A chance to leave behind all your mistakes, your messes, and start over, now that you've learned from the past. A sloughing-off of the dead skin, the ultimate housecleaning.
And while brokers, societies, landlords, and other such blots generally conspire to make it horrendous, this time around, the entire process of closure took less than a day, thanks to Harish.
And now we're the proud owners of... well, just a single key right now, but the next 6 days are going to be action-packed. Packing, unpacking, repacking, scotch tape, cartons, dust allergies, finding things you thought had been forever lost, arranging, buying stuff that had been waiting for a better setting... it's an awesomely fun experience.
Signed off with the landlord, an elderly lady who for some reason has assumed that my roommate is so junior he could be my son; a fringe benefit of the beard, I guess. Roommate naturally is frothing at the mouth.
And the celebration parties never stop.
As I look around at the awesome wasteland of debris that my room is, I can't help wondering how the fuck is it all going to be shifted.

what not to do when alone on saturday night

The below activities are perfectly fine when taken separately but together make for a... memorable experience, and not in a good way.
1. Stock up on beer.
It's 8:45 and I decide to pick up some suds to generally relax and pass a pleasant sat evening
2. Don't check roomie's whereabouts.
Fucker has been missing and no clue when back... house deathly quiet... might as well start on my own
3. Download a massive collection of movies
I have 237 movies at the last count, some seen, some unseen but heard of, and it's playing on my conscience.
4. Get drunk
It's 11 PM and I'm fairly high. and bored. Maybe I should start watching some of my movies?
5. Of all the movies to pick, do not, repeat, do NOT select The Shining.
It's midnight, and the house - and the neighbourhood - is deathly quiet. My head slightly blurry. Jack Nicholson slowly going insane in a deserted hotel in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, while his son has this deplorable habit of roaming the hotel alone. Very quick cutscenes of chopped-up bodies. An extraordinarily creepy pair of ghost twin girls. What is it about twins? From The Shining to Ghost Ship, they've successfully creeped me out each time. Even in porn they creep me out.
1 AM, and I'm distinctly twitchy. Keep seeing half-glimpsed flashes of movement out of the corner of my eye but when I look, there's nothing there.
6. Get a 5.1 speaker system.
The music is awesomely creepy, right enough, but at this time of the night and in this state of sobriety, I do NOT need to hear faint ghostly whispers coming from precisely behind my head from the rear speakers.
Now officially too freaked out to continue. Everything's slightly out of whack. The shoes look too long. Beer cans too yellow. Open cupboard too hungry. Speakers too w-watchful. Boxes too full of something I don't remember putting in. Curtains moving in a... wind?
Wasn't that chair in the corner five minutes ago?
It's too quiet. Maybe I should put on some music and

OHSWEETMOTHEROFGOD

It's ok. It's ok. It was just the water coming in the open tap... but the last thing I need to hear at this stage is the sound of something uncannily like a throat being cleared noisily and violently at the end of a dark passage INSIDE the house.

Ok, need to watch something funny. Fast. What do I have? Open the movies folder.

28 days later
Alien
Communion
Constantine
Dawn of the Dead
Day of the Dead
Dracula
Exorcist
Ghostbusters
Land of the Dead
Manhunter
Monster House
Monsters Inc
Nightmare on Elm Street
Predator
Primal Fear
Resident Evil
Saw III
Se7en
The Blair Witch Project
The Descent
The Fly
The Frighteners
The Machinist
The Sixth Sense
Underworld

I have a truly inspiring collection for times like this, don't I?

Have no clue what to do now. Help.