Criminal Case Junkyard Garden Solved

All those playing the JunkYard Level in the Criminal Case game on Facebook will find the following image useful. The click positions of the clues have been specified. Cheers!

 

Criminal Case Mini-Market Bonus scene

All those interested in solving the Mini-market bonus level in Facebook's game Criminal case will find the image below useful. Happy scoring!!!!

Rule number 6

The following lighthearted way to stop taking yourself so seriously is from a book by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander (he's the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic) titled The Art of Possibility.It illustrates in a delightful way how we allow ego to create many of the problems we encounter that we label stress and anxiety.

    Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: "Peter," he says, "kindly remember Rule Number 6," whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws. The politicians return to their conversation, only to be interrupted yet again twenty minutes later by an hysterical woman gesticulating wildly, her hair flying. Again the intruder is greeted with the words: "Marie, please remember Rule Number 6." Complete calm descends once more, and she too withdraws with a bow and an apology. When the scene is repeated for a third time, the visiting prime minister addresses his colleagues: "My dear friend, I've seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of Rule Number 6?" "Very simple," replies the resident prime minister. "Rule Number 6 is 'Don't take yourself so goddamn seriously.'" "Ah," says his visitor, "that's a fine rule." After a moment of pondering, he inquires, "And what, may I ask, are the other rules?"

    "There aren't any".

    As you encounter stress, pressure, or anxiety in your life, remember "Rule Number 6" at the moment you realize you're thinking stressful thoughts.

Source: Dr Wayne W Dyer book "The Power Of Intention"

Empathy

In the story "The Last Judgment" by the Czech writer Karel Capek, the soul of a brutal murderer is brought to the judgment bar of heaven. Three bored judges try his case. They call a witness to testify, "an extraordinary gentleman, stately, bearded, and clothed in a blue robe strewn with golden stars". It turns out that this is the only witness needed because he is "the Ominscient God." The defendant is warned not to interrupt the witness because "He knows everythong, so there's no use denying anything." The witness verifies that the defendant committed atrocities, but tells more. As a child, he loved his mother dearly, but was unable to show it. At six, he lost his only toy, a precious colored marble-glass marble and he cried. At seven, he stole a rose he could give it to a little girl, who grew up and rejected him to marry a rich man. Homeless as a youngster, he had shared his food with other vagrants. "He was generous and often helpful. He was kind to women, gentle with animals, and kept his word."
Nevertheless, as expected, the hudges condemn the defendant to everlasting punishment. At one point the defendant asks God, "Why don't You Yourself do the judging?" God replies, "Because I know everything. If the judges knew everything, absolutely everything, they couldn't judge, either: they would understand everything, and their hearts would ache... I know everything about you. Everything. And that's why I cannot judge you."
To me, this story illustrates that the more I understand about you, the more tender I feel toward you and the less inclined I am to rule on your worth as a human being. The less I understand, the more likely I am to see you as a "thing" to be judged, manipulated, and dismissed.

Source: Stephen R Covey "The 3rd Alternative"

Silver Lining Playbook Review

 Plot: Two neurotic people who fall for each other and prove to be a silver lining for one another. Pat Jr, a bi-polar married person is released from a Baltimore mental institution into the custody of his parents after undergoing treatment for 8 months after he had beaten up the history teacher whom he had found in the shower with his wife. He has a restraining order that prohibits his appearing within five hundred feet of his wife, Nikki. He is now unemployed, without his own home and under the supervision of a psycho-analyst. He is supposedly still in love with his wife and wants to patch up with her. He is on medication, and loves wearing a black garbage plastic as a cut-off sleeve jacket over his t-shirt (top half). He is so hyper that he wakes up his parents twice in the middle of the night – once to relate Ernest Hemingway’s “Farewell to Arms” story and second time to find where his wedding video is.

I mean, the world’s hard enough as it is, guys. It’s fucking hard enough as it is. Can’t somebody say, “Hey, let’s be positive? Let’s have a good ending to the story?”

 He meets Tiffany, a sloppy and dirty, big slut widow at their friends place. Her husband, a cop, dies while helping changing a tyre of a car passing by  after he had purchased her Victoria Secret lingerie after a fight with her. She has been fired from her job for “having sex with everybody in the office”, as she confesses to Pat Jr. She has slept with 11 people from the office that includes women. She has been fired for such forward behavior.

Pat Jr is into reading good books and developing a positive attitude. Both, Tiffany and Pat Jr, fall for one another and after a dance scene where they receive a rating of 5 out of 10, they confess their love for one another and the rest is history!

 

Comments: There are a lot of  literary references strewn around in the movie. There is synopsis of William Golding novel “Lord of the Flies“ as told by Tiffany.

I can tell you all about the “Lord of the Flies.” It’s a bunch of boys on an island and they have a conch -- they have a shell -- and whoever has the conch has the power and they can talk. And if you don’t have the conch,then you don’t have the power. And then there’s a little chubby boy, and they call him Piggy and they’re really mean, and then there’s a murder. I mean, humanity is just nasty and there’s no silver lining.

There is reference to Ernest Hemingway with the tragic ending of “Farewell to Arms”.

I mean, the world’s hard enough as it is, guys. It’s fucking hard enough as it is. Can’t somebody say, “Hey, let’s be positive?

Origin of word Ok is provided as related by Pat Jr

Well, Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States of America, is from Kinderhook, New York... ...and he was part of a club, a men’s club, called Old Kinderhook. And if you were cool, you were in the club, they’d say, “That guy’s OK.” ‘Cause he was in the Old Kinderhooks.

There is “Excelsior”, the official motto of state of New York and the call to move ever upward. OCD Mental disorders is depicted through de Niro, Pat Jr’s father who is prone to aligning the remote controls to the home theater system perfectly. Pat Jr is suffering from bi-polar disorder and is on medication.

Casting: Also, I am curious to know what made the casting director select Anupam Kher from the whole wide world as a psycho-analyst? An Indian psycho-analyst by the name of Dr Chris Patel? A Gujarati and psychoanalysis? Sounds far-fetched. Maybe,the movie is catering to the global audience by having the Asian population represented by Kher, black population by the fellow-patient cum dance-mover Danny [Chris Tucker] and the South American community by the Brazilian svelte dancer. That should have appealed to  the Oscar academy jury-members, I guess!

Conclusion: Bradley Cooper(Patrizo Jr Solitano) gets to be the next James Bond. And, he will rock !!!

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Gayatri Mantra

Let us meditate on God. His glorious attributes, who is the basis of everything in universe as its creator, who is fit to be worshipped as omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, and self-existent conscious being, who removes all ignorance and impurities from the mind and purifies and sharpens one intellect. May God enlighten our intellects.

Aum -> Om

Bhur -> earth

Bhvah -> sky

Swah -> in the heavens above

Tat -> God

Savitur -> God as creator and power that sustains creation

Varenyam -> transcendent

Bhargo -> he is the light that dispels darkness and purifies impurities

Devasya -> light behind all lights and bestower of happiness

Dhimahi -> exhortation to mediate on him

Dhiyo -> intellect

Yo

Nah -> ours

Prachodayat -> prayer that God may direct our energies towards good deeds, thoughts and conduct.

Source: Khushwant Singh article

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Movie Review

Plot: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movie has a total of seven Britishers that includes five single people and a married couple who arrive in India on the same flight and headed to the same hotel based in Jaipur. Out of the 5 single people, first is a homosexual looking for forgiveness (Tom Wilkinson), second is a cantankerous racist old lady in need of a hip replacement (Maggie Smith), third is a widow who is out of funds and does not want to be dependent on her children (Judi Dench), fourth is a doddering old person looking to alleviate his loneliness (Ronald Pickup) and fifth is a single lady (Celia Imrie) looking for an easy way out in the way of a rich man, The married couple consists of a long-suffering husband (Bill Nighy) who out of respect and old family values is still married to the negative-approach and nagging wife (Penelope Wilton).

In the Indian context, we have Sonny (Dev Patel) playing the role of a young man trying to make the dreams of his dead father remain alive by running a decrepit old-run down hotel. He wants to market it to senior citizens who are lonely. He wants to prove to his family that he can make it a success despite stiff opposition from his mother who is against her son wasting his time and money on failed endeavours. There is also a love interest in the shape of a young lissome girl who is sister to the CEO of a call-center. Sonny’s mother is opposed to this also.

Locale: India – maddening, bustling, over-crowded, polluted with chaotic roads (bus-drivers zig-zagging on the roads), the harijans, bustling markets, land of Kamasutra etc. We have the various industries covered that cater to the foreign market  i.e. tourism industry (the hotel), call-centers (Dev Patel’s girl friend), medical hotels (Maggie Smith in need of hip replacement). Thankfully, you don’t get to see any snake-charmers!!

Review: The movie is a comedy of manners in the understated British style which uses the obvious metaphors of what strikes the foreigners who come to India. It is an over-the-top look (from the “mountains” as Ronald Pickup says in the movie) at Indian culture, mannerisms that any tourist traveling to India would encounter. The tale of the seven Britishers has been brought together in a quite complex plot. It, however, keeps on moving quite smoothly without faltering. It keeps the attention of the audience engaged without any yawning moments. There are moments of quiet chuckles and outright laughter at some of the quaint patois English language that Sonny (Dev Patel) is forced to speak,

Summary: All in all, quite an enjoyable movie to see if one suspends all right to criticism of the movie as an Indian. 

3.5 stars out of 5