If you think those little books filled with magic beans and flying chairs, complete with happy endings, were merely tools to keep us from noticing the mundane routine of life, then think again, and stop being so cynical all the time.

I have a magic bag.

For a bag to be magical, it must satisfy several proper­ties. First, it must possess a will of its own, or at least co-operate with a Higher Being to perfect His Cosmic Plan. If that didn’t make sense to you, then congrat­u­la­tions, you can call yourself a normal and sane individual.

Second, it must do things that most other bags cannot. This one is better than all others. This one can hide stuff whenever it feels like it. All you have to do is put something in it, and voila! it is…still there, but don’t worry, it will disap­pear when you actually look for it. I almost turned my bag inside-out the other day, looking for a small hard-bound notepad of mine. I looked for it in my bag about six times, and didn’t find it. A few days later, I was looking for something else, and there it was. Today, I was hunting for my earphones, knowing that it had to be in there somewhere. I found it several hours later — exactly where I had been searching for it.

Third, it must accept respon­si­bility for its own actions. Thanks to this clause, you cannot blame me for any of the above incidents. My bag has owned respon­si­bility for its actons, and I am sure it is all a part of a Larger Plan.

Don’t worry, I’m rambling on like this only because it is two o’clock in the morning. At other times, I would have rambled on differently.

Many many years ago, there was a televi­sion series I kinda liked. They called it Knight Rider. I called it a guy in a cool car. I don’t remember much about those ancient days, but I still remember that I liked the series.

Over the last week, I watched the latest avatar of Knight Rider: the movie that aired on NBC. Now, it may have struck you as strange that I said ‘over the last week’, because people gener­ally don’t watch movies over a week. Give them two hours, and they’re done with it. But this one was different. This one was so bad you could have mistaken it for a soap opera. They might as well have sung me a lullaby.

Occasion­ally, the actors tried to act. Oh well, I’m sure they tried their best. See, this woman is chased by bad guys, who have probably killed her father. I suppose she believes in living “in the moment” though, because she only seems inter­ested in that car of hers. She’s also very inter­ested in knowing why her old boyfriend left her.

Like all movies, there’s this guy who claims to be the hero. He doesn’t do much, but I suppose they needed someone to fill the spot. He’s the son of the original Knight Rider, which is deemed an appro­priate excuse for pretty much every­thing he does. He’s also our heroine’s former boyfriend, who blew her off years ago for no reason at all.

There is no chemistry between them. She might just as well have eloped with the car.

And speaking of the car, this car has one of the most advanced artifi­cial intel­li­gence systems ever built. It can do a lot of things — access infor­ma­tion that couldn’t possibly be obtained, talk to people to make them feel better, and show pretty pictures related to every­thing it says. Unfor­tu­nately, its brilliant creator forgot to install a decent intru­sion detec­tion system, so the average bad-guy-geek can hack into its computer in what, twenty minutes?

Let’s skip ahead to the end. Actually, I still haven’t watched the ending, but let me guess how it would turn out. Obviously, our hero would claim some deep and dark reason for having abandoned his girl despite having loved her, and we would all be asked to feel sorry for him. Then the reunited couple would exchange the customary hugs and kisses, and would live happily ever after.

Maybe I’ll find out how it really ended, someday, but frankly, not knowing is turning out to be a far more exciting prospect.

I was walking home last night, minding my own business, humming a little tune in my head, thinking about what I would do when I got home; dinner had been prepared and ready to be eaten — potatoes, yum! I always buy potatoes when I go to the mall, but recently some of them had started rotting before they could be used up; I don’t know why they sell such stuff…but then again maybe some water got into it, in which case it wouldn’t have been their fault. It wasn’t too cold last night, so it was quite a pleasant walk; it was late of course — I mean, I would have have caught a bus even on a pleasant day, if the option existed. The buses are good, pretty good…but there are never enough buses. Maybe that’s just human nature or something acting up in me; or maybe not — I think sometimes we blame our problems on things that cannot deny it or put up a fight. Imagine what would happen if human nature got up one day and said, “I’m sick and tired of you folks blaming me for every­thing!” It would be scary of course, but what would human nature look like anyway? So it was all dark and silent, and all of a sudden, my right shoe-lace got stuck in my left-shoe. I guess that sounds a little silly now, the way I put it? I don’t know, but at that time it was nothing short of amazing…I mean, think about it, the odds of something like that happening are almost astro­nom­ical. Odds, what a strange word! I find it hard to remember if having large odds means it’s likely to happen or if it’s the other way around. Oh, and shoe-laces! Imagine waving two pieces of rope in next to each other, and forming a knot, with thanks to the laws of proba­bility. One in a million, I would say. Or a zillion. Pick a high enough number; when you’re not sure, you might as well pick a high number that gives you some satis­fac­tion. It took me a good five minutes to untie it too — I couldn’t walk home with shackled feet!

And then I was home.

If you have been following the US elections lately, you should have realized this by now: becoming ‘emotional’ is the most efficient way to become President.

In fact, this strategy can be success­fully employed even at other times, when an impor­tant bill needs to be passed by the Senate, or when more troops need to be sacri­ficed in foreign lands.

I am glad this secret weapon is finally being employed for such a worthy purpose.