Government flip-flops; wants to make shoe throwing a national sport

After pretending to be offended at the various shoes that have been thrown at various politicians, the Indian government today said that if it comes to power again after the elections, it would introduce legislation making shoe-throwing a national sport.

In a hastily called press conference, Sports & Youth Affairs minister, M.S. Gill said that "Why fight it? It's an inexpensive sport. You don't need anything much for it anyway. All you require is an old shoe and a despicable politician. And need I remind you that our country is filled with thousands and thousands of specimens of the latter?" .

When asked by a reporter  whether all the people who threw the shoe were actually frustrated with the current crop of politicians and wanted to see something other than empty promises, Mr Gill laughed off the question. "This is India. We elect politicians who don't do anything for us. And then we elect them again. And again. You see, our elections are like washing your hair with shampoo. Lather, rinse and repeat. Simple. Although, washing your hair does actually make it cleaner. No chance of that happening in the elections".

He added that even if people are missing their target and are actually not that good with their aim, need not worry. "Not being talented has not stopped anyone from being successful in sports before. Look at the Indian cricket  team for example. And in the circumstance the shoe hits it's target, well, as the fellow once said, if the shoe hits, bear it". He then laughed at his own joke for ten minutes.

Mr Gill seemed to be very excited about his new venture. "In fact," he told the reporters present that "I have even selected a theme song for the sport. I am even exploring the possibilities of including it in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi".

When questioned by a reporter from Mint about where he would get the money from, he said that even though he is working on a shoe-string budget, he would try to find some money for his project. And that he believed that the UPA was a shoo-in to form the next government, and that he hoped that it would be one of the government's priorities.

The left parties were wary of the government. "This bears the footprint of the neo-imperialists. You know which country I am talking about. The same country which would put Sanjaya on worldwide television", said a fuming Sitaram Yechury still angry over the season six American Idol contestant.

SP general secretary Amar Singh criticised the move. "When we come to power, we will just ban people from wearing shoes. That's the best solution to everything. For example, to reduce the population, we need to ban sex".

MNS leader Raj Thackrey said that anyone in Maharashtra who plans to pursue this sport should only throw shoes which have been manufactured in Maharashtra. "Maharashtra is for Maharashtrian shoes only. All other shoes should be sent back to where they came from. Anyone seen throwing shoes which are not of Maharashtran origin will be made to smell Bappi Lahri's shoes for a week. Remember, he's been wearing the same pair since 1965".

You're too poor for facebook

Hey, all of you living in the third world? Did you really buy all that crap about the world being a global village? Hah. Fooled you.

It turns out that we only love you if you sound like a good investment or when you someone makes movies about you which make us go "awwwwww".

As today's New York Times points out, the internet is just as democratic as Rwanda.

Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results.

Have you heard of the video sharing site called Veoh? Of course you haven't. How can you? In fact, they don't even want you to.

Last year, Veoh, a video-sharing site operated from San Diego, decided to block its service from users in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, citing the dim prospects of making money and the high cost of delivering video there.

“I believe in free, open communications,” Dmitry Shapiro, the company’s chief executive, said. “But these people are so hungry for this content. They sit and they watch and watch and watch. The problem is they are eating up bandwidth, and it’s very difficult to derive revenue from it.”

You bad, hungry people with your thirst for videos of cute dogs and frumpy looking reality TV stars. That's why Veoh gave you a big F.U.

Also, that's the same reason that you can't use Hulu.

And all those sex predators on the Indian edition of MySpace (by the way, that's like our version of Orkut. It's full of perverts and creeps and everyone wants to be your fraaaaand) are going to get a little downgraded.

MySpace — the News Corporation’s social network with 130 million members, about 45 percent of them overseas — is testing a feature for countries with slower Internet connections called Profile Lite. It is a stripped-down version of the site that is less expensive to display because it requires less bandwidth. MySpace says it may make Profile Lite the primary version for its members in India, where it has 760,000 users, although people there could click on a link to switch to the richer version of the site.

Uh-Oh.

Those of you who want to see You Tube videos of old segments of TV shows and funny lip synching Chinese kids, are still okay. As long as you don't mind waiting a few hours for a two minute video.

Tom Pickett, director of online sales and operations at YouTube, says the company still hews to its vision of bringing online video to the entire globe. In the last two years, it has pushed to create local versions of its site in countries like India, Brazil and Poland.

But Mr. Pickett also says that YouTube has slowed the creation of new international hubs and shifted its focus to making money. He says that does not rule out restricting bandwidth in certain countries as a way to control costs — essentially making YouTube a slower, lower-quality viewing experience in the developing world.

Facebook hates you too.

“We can decide, either on a country by country or user by user basis, to engineer the quality of the service for that cohort of users,” said Jonathan Heiliger, the executive who oversees Facebook’s computing infrastructure.

Facebook is in a particularly difficult predicament. Seventy percent of its 200 million members live outside the United States, many in regions that do not contribute much to Facebook’s bottom line. At the same time, the company faces the expensive prospect of storing 850 million photos and eight million videos uploaded to the site each month.

Heh.

Nothing personal, it's just business.

You know we love you and we'll be back as soon as we discover how to make money from you.

Is that okay?

Word.

p.s. Is this why you guys use Bittorrent? Figures.

Dangerous Republicans

Republicans just don't get it. Remember there was once a stimulus package that was to be passed by the US Congress and the Senate? And the Obama administration couldn't get enough Republicans vote in the Senate, because according to the Republicans, there was too much spending in a bill which was created with the purpose of spending too much. So as to be able to, you know, stimulate the economy. Anyways, in the end they got three "moderate" Republicans to vote for them by cutting things that the three musketeers didn't like.

It turns out that one of the things that they cut from the bill was funding for preparing for a pandemic flu outbreak. Such as, wait for it, the flu currently toping the Pandemic flu charts, the Swine flu.

 

Nice work, GOP. Thanks to your incompetence to comprehend the basic reality, a lot of people will die.

This is the same party whose members refuse to recognize Global Warming calling it a "liberal idea" and who quote the bible when told about the consequences of not taking steps to decrease it.

Again, isn't this just another form of terrorism?

Update: Now, according to the republicans, the flu out-break is supposed to be a cover-up.

Even the tribes in the Amazon are like "Dude, are you cruking futs??"

I do share sometimes

The United States declares public health emergency because of outbreak of Swine Flu

Apparently, wall street bankers are safe. Because even the swine flu is less damaging.

Do you think there are people in the middle east right now who are saying to each other "You're going to America? Oh, no. You shouldn't go there. It's too dangerous!"

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Makes you wonder who your real facebook friends are

A Swiss woman has lost her job after her employers spotted she was using the Facebook website when she had claimed to be too ill to use a computer.

What's even sadder, they used twitter to fire her.

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Speaking of social networking, do you love twitter? Do you also love excel? Then we have just the thing for you. A tool which proves the fact that people who use it, are big tools themselves.

Ladies and gentleman, say halo to SpreadTweet. For those lonely nights in the office when you want to pretend to be working while you are secretly tweeting. Who knows, you might end up saving your job. Even if your girlfriend will eventually leave you and your pet dog will die. Still. You get to tweet! Wicked, no?

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I think I'll take either of these as a gift for my birthday.

 

 

That's what I'm talking about!!

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OMG, they are closing Geocities. Add another one to the "Stuff that really, really outlived their time and usefullness" list. Now where will all those ironic, hipster, webpages named using Linkin Park lyrics go?

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Okay. Last one involving twitter. But this kinda scares me. A little.

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There is a possibility that the United States government might prosecute those who authorised the alleged torture of prisoners. Quick Question, though. Can they also persecute my last boss? He was an idiot and he did torture the English language beyond recognition. And while they are at it, can they also torture the guy who came up with the idea of a reality "talent" show? Much appreciated. Thanks.

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Sigh. I think I've finally lost it.

The Indian right is completely wrong about our national security

Everyone knows that I'm not a big fan of the UPA government. Hell, I'm not a fan of any of the probable governments. And it's safe to say that the only thing I know about the election is that I am going to loathe whoever forms the next government.

However, there are two things that in my view the UPA government got right. One, was the Indo-US civilian Nuclear deal and the other was the mature reaction the government displayed after 26/11. That is, after Shivraj Patil resigned to spend more time with his designer clothes.

It was not an easy decision to take. With everyone from the candle light vigilantes, the facebook activists, old leading ladies from Raj Kapoor movies clad in white and every news channel urging the government to conduct "surgical strikes". Yes, because when you want to win a war, you follow the policies of the Bush administration.

Neither do we need a stronger law. When terrorists attack, they don't choose the place with the weakest constitution. It's not like they go "Can't attack India now. They bought back POTA. That makes me want to pee in my snuggie". They come with a motive to kill everyone in their path. And these people aren't afraid to kill themselves either because they have been promised 72 virgins after they die. (Although, from the blog fakesucidebomber we get to know that it's just 7 virgins and they all look like Ritesh Deshmukh in drag).

There are two things that we need to realize about Pakistan. First, the Pakistani state left the building a long time ago. What exists now is a nation and a government just in theory. Secondly, Pakistan was formed on the basis of "We fucking hate India and all the Indians". So for more than sixty years, their whole domestic and foreign policy is based on the concept of being the anti-India. That is why they oppose anything we did or try to do  in the international arena. That is why some Pakistani-Americans raised money to defeat Bobby Jindal in Louisiana when he first ran for the US Congress. (Not that Mr Jindal doesn't try to hide his origin at every opportunity. If he could, he would actually go ahead and paint himself white. According to him, he's just like everyone else in Louisiana, except when he needs to pimp his parent's country of birth  to further his political career). That is why, India-Pakistan matches held in England are like a warzone. Not that the feeling isn't returned. Even we have our fair share of crazy.

The international community believes that Pakistan is best handled by a military dispensation. That's where they are completely wrong. Pakistan is in the position because of it's military. It's in it's current state because the Pakistani army is still fighting the 1971 war, decades after it has ended. The Pakistani armed forces are so obsessed with Kashmir that they don't even see the writing on the wall visible from their own window. (Actually, it's not just a metaphor. According to media reports, there are actual warnings on the wall written by the Taliban which asks the establishment to either lose their jobs or their head). The last thing Pakistan needs is another trigger happy military dictator.

A major part of the polity of Pakistan is based on making India the boogeyman. This attitude is so deeply entrenched in their system that whenever something which they perceive as negative happens to India, there are simultaneous ejaculations in the Pakistani establishment.

What Pakistan now needs to do is what most of us do while growing up. It needs to "find" itself and base it's identity on something other than anti-India-ism.

On our part, when we talk about national security, we cannot abdicate our responsibility. Whether we realize it or not, terrorism is a reality we all need to live with. As long as their is abject poverty in the world, terrorism will exist in one form or the other. We need to learn to deal with that. Yes, Pakistan is to be blamed for a lot of the attacks, but we also need to take a long, hard look at our security apparatus.

What we actually need is a robust national security policy. We need to strengthen our intelligence gathering operations and essentially need to provide our army and police with training and equipment for specific anti-terrorism operations. What we need is political will in New Delhi to invest time and money into our national security apparatus.

What we don't need is rhetoric. Which, thanks to leaders of our political parties we have enough of.  The media does not fare any better. The various anchors across all the channels feign hurt and trepidation to manipulate popular sentiment for increased TRPs. That hurts our country in the long run.

Not that it's surprising. Like always, our media and politicians insist on barking up the wrong tree.

Pakistani President to share home with Taliban

By our correspondent for affairs of crazy-ass countries

ISLAMABAD, April 26: Today, the Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari declared that he would hand over the keys to one half of his Presidential palace to the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Mullah Sakbk Omar.

He said that just by giving him two out of three floors of his living quarters does not mean that he is surrendering. "On the contrary, they now seemed settled and are quite enjoying themselves. Why, just yesterday I saw them shooting at, what used to be, my plasma TV. I had to convince them not to feed my laptop to their goats by showing them my large collection of Sarah Palin photos. Although, that angered them and they have asked me not to come down to their quarters anymore otherwise they will kill me. Small compromise. That's what relationships are about, aren't they? So now I get myself airlifted everytime I need to leave the palace. After all, the army and the air force is not doing much these days. So I might as well put them to some use".

The United States government and members of the European Union warned that the Pakistani government is abdicating it's responsibility to it's people by ceding more and more territory to the Taliban.

Senior Pakistani government officials dismissed the warnings of the international community as paranoia. Bilawal Zardari, son of slain former Prime Minister Bhutto and Presidnt Zardari, said that the Pakistani government is standing by it's people. "They might stand by and watch them getting flogged, looted and raped, but at least they are there for them. As I learned at Oxford, it's the thought that counts".

He was then seen providing PM Geelani with details on the types of food his pet Chihuahua is allergic too. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Quereshi was dispatched with a brown bag to take Bilawal's "little angel" for a walk around Islamabad. 

Open letters

To,

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

When you actually have to say something multiple times, it implies that it isn't true. By repeating to every person you meet that "you're not weak", it ends up having the completely opposite effect. It further adds to their belief that you are weak. To keep on repeating something which is not a fact isn't going to make it come true. (Ref. Bush administration Iraq-WMD evidence)

If you want to prove to the world that you aren't the most weak person ever in a list which includes VP Singh and IK Gujral, then I would suggest that you either fire one or your ministers or release "secret" footage of you crushing a Heineken beer can with your bare hands.

To,

Prakash Karat,

If you are hell bent on renegotiating every treaty we ever signed, can you first please renegotiate your head out of your ass? Thanks.

To,

LK Advani,

You're not Barack Obama. Just because you put online adds, and thanks to google's user-surly targeted adds system, they appear on every goddamn site we visit,  we're not going to think that you're Barack Obama. You're more than eighty years old. Everything from the talkies to colour television was invented AFTER you were born. So, just because you start a blog doesn't mean we're going to be able to connect with you.

Although, please consider a request. For the love of everything good in the world, please, never open a twitter account. Thanks.

To,

Conspiracy theorists,

If you want to prove that Rahul Gandhi is "Raoul" and Priyanka is "Bianca" then please produce some actual evidence. Not everything that is printed on the internet is true. You do know that you can use google to search for things other than porn & detailed instructions on building a nuclear weapon in your secret science lab in the basement, don't you?

To,

MK Karunanidhi,

A bandh never makes sense. It makes even less sense when YOU are in the frikin government. Only in India do politicians hold demonstrations against themselves. Oh, and by the by, what happened? Did you suddenly run out of telegrams? You could have sent one to yourself instead of pretending to close a whole city.

To,

J Jayalalitha,

When you say that you have the country's best interest in your mind, how do you keep a straight face and not be all "LMAO, y'all".

Also, do you think we really believe you when you say that?

You do?

LMAO.

To,

Susan Boyle,

Oh Susan! What have you done to yourself? We want you to look frumpy. We want your bad eyebrows back. We want you to look like something a drunk Scottish cat dragged in. That is because then we can feel wonderful about the fact that, for once, we appreciated someone for their "inner beauty". Whatever that is.

p.s. Your semi-makeover makes you look like Hyacinth Bucket.

Time to shoot the messenger

When the Tamil Nadu chief minister says that he is in touch with the central government, he means that he is communicating with them in morse code.

Or worse.

The matter came up during the Congress briefing in view of reports that the Chief Minister had sent telegrams to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee asking them to issue an ultimatum to Colombo.

And this is not the first time.

"Save the total Tamil race in Sri Lanka from being completely wiped out - ensure ceasefire and initiate peace talks immediately," he said in a telegram, a copy of which was released to the media here tonight.

The telegram was also addressed to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Union Home Minister P Chidambaram.

Has Mr I-am-so-cool-I-wear-black-glasses-even-at-night ever heard of something called a telephone?

Or a computer?

And this is the leader of the party which gave us the Union Minister of Communications and IT.

Jesus F'ing Christ.

You can't make this shit up.

Sigh. Why is our political system like a Rob Schneider movie?

Mr K'nidhi, even texting is less complicated and more cheaper than using the telegraph.

Thankfully, according to some other old guy who loves things that are obsolete, the telegram is dying!

After more than 150 years of service, and often immortalized in film and fiction, the Indian telegraph system is losing out to newer means of communication. While investments and technology innovations are still forthcoming, demand for the service has dropped dramatically. And even long-time employees of the telegraph system believe the history of the telegraph in India, which began in 1833, is slowly drawing to a close.

Finally.

It's been more than one hundred and fifty years.

Die already.