Standing Here Beside Myself

Perhaps you've wondered about the title of this blog. The phrase comes from a light-weight science fiction comedy called Short Circuit, which is about a death-dealing military robot, Number 5, who comes 'alive' when accidentally zapped by high voltage. A lot of the humor in the movie comes from the dialog between the robot's inventor and his Indian computer scientist side-kick, Ben Jabituya, played by American actor Fisher Stevens. The Jabituya character speaks that wonderful kind of twisted English one often hears in highly trained technical people from India, and his speech is full of malaprops, malaphors and other forms of unexpected and difficult English. The other characters also have plenty of funny things to say. Anyway, my favorite of all these is when Jabituya, in a moment of confusion and uncertainty, says to no-one in particular

I am standing here beside myself.

Certainly I've felt that way a lot.