Self-help books are self-help for their authors. They sell you, your dream of making it big, in a better package than you could've wrapped yourself and charge you for it. But there is one self-help / advice column that I am completely in awe of. Mary Schmich's 1997 Chicago Tribune column(click to read the original article) which became an urban legend and transformed Ms Schmich in to Kurt Vonnegut overnight in cyber circles : Yes, I am talking about the much forwarded "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)"

You can watch her simple but incredibly powerful words accidentally discovered by Baz Luhrmann and set to music, in the video below.


If you are hearing about this for the first time(fat chance) you should definitely watch the video. If not, pardon me for thrusting it on your face once again after a decade long gap. You had thought it was safely tucked away into VH1's: I love the 90s attic. Oh, be a sport and listen to it one more time. To read more about Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen, refer to its wiki link.

Number of pages in the latest edition of the TIME Magazine - 115
Number of pages in the latest edition of the TIME Magazine containing ads about medicines - 23

That is - 20% of the pages of the TIME Magazine talks about medicines. The pharmaceutical companies must be spending a lot of money to get these ads out.

I have not had any medicine for the past 25 months. I had antibiotics in Sept 2007 because I had the Chikungunya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chikungunya). I do not take flu shots (Even the swine flu shots). I do not take medicines unless it is absolutely necessary.

"........ Then after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as well. There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can’t live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses."

- Marion (Julie Delpy's character in "2 days in Paris")

Perceptive, what?

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And something off the top of my crazy head :-p :

Tum paas aaye
yun muskuraye
jiya bole jaldi
koi doctor bulaaye