Harbaughs are the first Brothers to play against each other in Super Bowl? Naaaahhh… That would be Lovie Smith (Bears) playing Tony Dungy (Bucs) in 2007 🙂

The Super Har-Bro-Thers, it is then…

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” – Thomas Jefferson to William Hamilton, April 22, 1800
(thanks Al Blake for digging this quote up)

During my run today, I was listening to Richard Shure’s “Says you”. There was a quiz question – Whose tombstone says “The best is yet to come”? A panelist’s first guess – which was hilarious – was Charles Darwin. Haha 🙂 It seems the answer is Frank Sinatra!
That got me thinking… Do any of you have an idea of what you want your epitaph to look like? Can you capture in a few words what you would like the world to recognize you have striven for? (to make this religion-agnostic, how do you want the world to remember you as?).
And, to far little import and importance, it would be enlightening for me to know how you would remember me as if I were to die today. To make it worthwhile, you have to make it within a few words. (unless your name is Sharmila in which case, this could be your final chance to register your long list of complaints against me 🙂 )

In Pennsylvania this evening, a man shot and killed a lady in a church, a man in his residence, a second man whose car got into an accident with the assailant’s truck and then himself bumped into a cop car and started shooting. (He was shot dead by cops). 
The NRA swiftly responded to this mindless mayhem by strongly suggesting that there be armed guards around all churches, residences and cop cars.

Some of you know me for some of the weirdest answers to the simple question “How are you?”. The one that gets most laughter is “Staying alive… Me and John Travolta”. The one that just throws people off undoubtedly is “Compared to what?” Another one that usually lightens up the conversation – “Much better, now that I have seen you / heard your voice” 🙂 Now you know, when asked to describe me in one word, my wife told my friends – “quirky”.

But I am getting tired of the same responses. What are some of the other funny / smart / thought provoking responses you have heard? I need to steal some ideas…

“I hold your doctrine of Memento Mori 
And were an epitaph to be my story, 
I’d have a short one ready for my own. 
I would have written of me on my stone: 
I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” 
– Robert Frost

Coming from the biggest democracy to the oldest democracy, I am always intrigued by how politics works here. I have tried to make it a point to shut up and listen to opinions and how they are articulated. After listening to my office colleagues, social friends, newspaper articles and TV/radio, I have found some interesting common grounds that both sides strongly believe in. For example, everybodyseems to be convinced that…

1. Ours are balanced and substantive arguments. Yours is “rhetoric”.
2. Your vision? Clearly “unAmerican”.
3. Our candidate has had minor transgressions. Yours is morally bankrupt.
4. Facebook is the ideal forum to declare to my friends that the other side are a bunch of idiots.

What is up with this recent spate of all my FB friends posting pictures with cute messages printed on them? Man, I long for those days where they use to post pictures actually taken by them or some witticisms (original or otherwise) that were sent as texts. I think I missed the whole new wave but I wonder if I am the only one getting a barrage of those cute messages in pictures.

Ponderings of life: Before smartphones were invented, what did people do when they stepped into an elevator with strangers? 🙂