The way we live now: The Internet in 2010

With every new internet application that becomes popular (Twitter! Facebook! Chatroulette!), there are millions of pixels written about the said phenomena. Almost all the “good” reporters write articles or do teevee news reports about how “<insert name of new web application>” is either ruining the internet and/or is a new revolutionary way to communicate with each other. (Except at Slate magazine of course, where I’m pretty sure that they’ve either written or are currently writing an article about how email is still the world’s most important “killer-app”).

Now, traditional journalists are not that fond of the internet as they claim to be. For them, the internet is sort of a bête noire. They may pretend to embrace it, but in most cases they simply come across as people devoid of any understanding of it whatsoever. Whenever they talk about the “new media” you can almost spot the froth coming out of their mouths. They can’t even know where to begin to understand the internet (to be fair, no one can. Maybe that is the beauty of the internet? OMG, we made an observation! And since it’s not on an old media platform, it probably doesn’t count!), but they bravely continue to talk about it. With embarrassing results.

The Internet in 2010: It knows everything. Just like that obnoxious kid in school.

Now here is the internet’s most common phenomena:

(a) Person A writes something and puts in on the internet.

(b) A large amount of people agree & disagree with Person A’s opinion

(c) Some snarky blogger links to Person A’s article/post and metaphorically tears it into pieces

(d) Person A writes post about how everyone who didn’t agree with them misunderstood them and/or the internet is full of mean and rude people.

The Internet in 2010: Just like your abusive ex-boyfriend. Nothing you do is ever going to be good enough.

Journalists' pride themselves in being the “first chroniclers” of history. However, nowadays, apparently, anybody with a computer and ability to type thinks “their opinion matters more than that of a journalist!” Silly idiots! How dare they think that? Thanks to the damn internet, the first chronicle of history will be by some stupid un-important person who doesn’t even have a teevee or dead-tree magazine gig and didn’t even go to some fancy journalism school.

Now, for a moment, imagine if you could read Cleopatra’s first person blog (Fuck like an Egyptian), how would you be able to figure out what she was saying? Would you have guessed that when she posted about her epic orgies with a Roman general named “Mark A”, she was referring to Roman general Mark Anthony? How would you be able to put two and two together, without the help of a journalist? How would you know that she was the first woman to ever get vajazzled?

And would Shakespeare have even bothered to write “Julius Caesar” if he found out that Caesar's death was caused by an harmless frat prank? Would there even be a “Caesar salad” if people thought that the man’s last words were “Don’t Ice me, bro”?

The Internet in 2010: Ruining history for future generations

The internet is a lot of things to lot of people. It even helps people create their own reality. Whether you want to still believe that the earth is flat, or that Paul is dead, there is an app for that. There is no universal truth anymore. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. And as it turns out, to their own facts. You don’t have to believe anything you don’t want to. And only on the internet can you have a second life, even if you don’t have a first one.

The Internet in 2010: Your own personal echo chamber

On the internet, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.

You may think that you’re smart, funny and insightful, but there is someone on the internet who is smarter, funnier and plenty more insightful than you will ever be. For every person who likes what you say, there are ten who think that you are full of crap.

The choice here is between speaking your mind or not saying anything at all.

If you think that anyone owes you respect because of whatever, well, just remember that on the internet no one gives a shit who you are.

To paraphrase some dude, The internet owes you nothing. It was here first.

The Internet in 2010: We’re all like a bunch of monkeys trapped in a cage. You can duck all you want, but one of these days you’re going to end up with shit on your face. The best you can do is to wipe it off and hope that no one figures out that the stench is coming from you.

Armageddon is almost here: Pakistanis in America pretending to be Indians!

According to this Reuters report, Pakistanis in America are pretending to be . . .  wait for it . . . . . wait some more . . .  . INDIANS!

"A lot of Pakistanis can't get jobs after 9/11 and now it's even worse," said Asghar Choudhri, an accountant and chairman of Brooklyn's Pakistani American Merchant Association. "They are now pretending they are Indian so they can get a job."

This news has made everyone at TImes Now come in their pants. Jinnah is rolling in his grave, and has started hitting the bottle again. Gandhi is smiling, not because he heard this news, but because he made friends with Che Guevara in freedom fighter heaven and he’s high. Nehru just shrugged and is continuously eating Lady Mountbatten’s head by telling her that he knew this day would come. And Sardar Patel is still mad at Hari Singh because WHAT THE FUCK TOOK YOU SO LONG TO SIGN THE DAMN THING, HARI?

Anyways, this is big news in the subcontinent, because this is even bigger than Arsenal fans trying to pass for fans of Manchester United! (Or vice versa! Or do all the kids love Chelsea these days? Real Madrid? Delhi Daredevils? Facebook United? I DON’T REALLY KNOW THESE THINGS!) or Red Sox fans cheering for the Yankees!

This is so because India and Pakistan were roommates almost six decades ago and had a really bad separation. And everyone is still bitter about it, mostly because Pakistan took India’s Kenny Chesney CD collection. EVEN THOUGH INDIA BOUGHT ALL THE CDs. And now, India is in a polygamous relationship with America and a few European countries and Pakistan is in a monogamous relationship with China, which is unhealthy because China always insists on being on top.

Anyway, this nationality switcheroo seems a bit strange, because most racist Americans (i.e. Republicans/people from Arizona) don’t know an Indian from a Pakistani. For them there are only two types of brown people. One is all those people from Burritoville, who bring up their kids, mow their lawn and sleep with their wives. Everyone else is an Ay’rab [sic], who do their taxes, make funny smelling food and watch those musical movies.

However, on this blog we are nothing but fair (snigger!), so here are some helpful tips for all those people who want to pass as a person of Indian origin living overseas:

9. Find out who Rajan Zed is – If I wanted to tell you, I wouldn’t say “find out”, now would I? This is important not because you need to agree with him, but whenever someone asks you where you are from, you can always answer with “Did you hear what Rajan Zed said now? . . .  Can you believe that guy? Sheesh”. Also, this might even lead to guest blogging opportunities at Sepia Mutiny.

8. Watch and love every hindi movie ever made – Not only is it important to watch those movies, you HAVE to like them. Even the crappy ones. And it is your solemn national duty to defend them in front of people who don’t like them. Even if your argument doesn’t make any sense.

7. Join the Narendra Modi fan club – You need to spend at least two hours everyday trolling the interwebs for blogs/articles/tweets about “NaMo” or any of his other brethren and attack whoever dares to write about them, without even reading what the blog/article/tweet is all about. If you don’t know what to write, just throw in the following in your word salad: “The mainstream media sucks, Congress bias, something something Sonia Gandhi and/or Rahul Gandhi”. Check the comments on www.rediff.com for more inspiration.

6. Always act guilty around your parents – A sure sign of Indian upbringing is when you see a perfectly normal, confident person act like a bumbling idiot in front of his or her parents. No matter how successful you get, no matter how much money you have, your parents will always make you feel guilty. You can’t fight thousands of years of civilisation. (Which reminds me, Mom, Dad, if you are reading this, then please remember that I didn’t do anything. I WAS TRICKED INTO WRITING ALL OF THESE THINGS). 

5. Excel at science and/or medicine – Let’s face it. Most kids of NRI’s are ready to do their PhD’s before they celebrate their tenth birthday. As to why, refer to reason no. 6. Hey, don’t take my word for it.

4. Don’t marry your cousin – That is because then you’ll be mistaken for someone from Arkansas. And believe me, you’d rather be from the caves of Tora Bora than from Arkansas.

3. Whenever someone tells you that your English is really good, thank them and inform them that their English is heavily accented.

2. Don’t kill your wife -- No, seriously. Don’t.

And the #1 most important thing to keep in mind while trying to pass as Indian in America:

*cue drum roll*

1. Don’t blow shit up.

Bada Bing, Bada boom . . . G’night everyone!

Today in comical attempts at racism

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, racism can be funny! And instead of outrage, it invokes pity!

Here are a few examples:

First, everyone’s favourite American election issue, Outsourcing! (They hate it so much that they even made a terrible movie about it!)

 

There are so many things wrong with this video.

a) The background music is probably middle eastern. But really, India, Arabia, all brown people must listen to the same music, no?:

b) None of the background pictures are actually Bangalore. One of them is Connaught Place, New Delhi!

c) What’s with the accent?

To be fair, the “many, many” jobs guy is simply hilarious!  Hey, NRI’s, you should hire him at the next birthday/anniversary party to entertain the kids, so that the adults can talk about the desh, without getting disturbed.

Anyways, seriously, Arkansas?

Your state is famous for only two things, cousin-marriage and giving birth to Presidential candidates.

And out of the two Presidential candidates, Bill Clinton pretends he’s from New York because now that he doesn’t have to run for an election, he doesn’t want anyone to remember his hee-haw connections and as for Mike Huckabee, that’s just another hilariously stupid thing about Arkansas.

So if you rednecks want to compete with people from India, then, instead of blaming other people, get an education. Oh, sorry. Let me spell it out for you: ej-u-cay-shun. It means book-larnin’.

If you want your children to be competitive in the international market, maybe get them to read something other than the bible or Going Rogue? Or maybe you shouldn’t have sent your children to Jesus school, in lieu of college?

If you want jobs in Arkansas, then maybe it’s best not to teach your children that evolution is not true and global warming is fake? Because if you do, then they’re going to end up like you. Bitter, dumb and clinging on to their guns.

Who am I kidding? It’s obviously those damn foreigners, who take away jobs you are not qualified to do!

*****

Now, you may not know this, but seems like England is having elections! I know! I thought Susan Boyle became their Prime Minister for life last year? Or whatever. How do British elections even work?

Anyways, this post is not about that. It’s about idiotic racist emails!

Two Tory councilman have been suspended for sending out a racist joke via email, because the Tories are trying to convince everyone that they aren’t bigoted and racist anymore and welcome everyone to their party! As long as they are rich, white and straight!

So here is the joke:

A Somalian arrives in the UK as a new immigrant. 
He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, "Thank you Mr UK man for letting me into this country, giving me housing, money for food, free medical care, free education and no taxes!"

The passerby says, "You are mistaken, I am an Afghani [sic]!"

The man goes on and encounters another passer by. "Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in the UK!"
The person says, "I not from the UK, I am Iraqi!"

The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand  and says, 'Thank you for the wonderful UK!'
That person puts up his hand and says, "I am from Pakistan, I am not from the UK!"

He finally sees a nice lady and asks, "Are you British?"
She says, "No, I am from India!"  Puzzled, he asks her, "Where are all the British?"
The Indian lady checks her watch and says: "Probably all at work."

Haha, what jobs is she talking about? There are no jobs in England!

And those which exist, are all thanks to those damn foreigners!

Here are some suggestions on what the Indian lady at the end of the joke should say, to make it less racist and/or better:

a) All the British people are at the pub, drinking themselves silly!

b) All the British people are auditioning for Britain's Got Talent!

c) All the British people are working for my husband’s company!

d) All the British People? They’re all resting because they knawed on a terribly large piece of spotted dick and now all of them have food poisoning!

That’s not funny, it’s true.

If Nick Clegg is Obama 2.0, then Gordon Brown is definitely Joe Biden!

 
O Blimey! We are in serious shite now!

The British are still having elections!

Things got terribly exciting for the British journalists yesterday when Gordon Brown committed a ‘gaffe’.

He was talking to a sweet old lady (sweet by British standards. In Britain anybody who doesn’t get drunk and beat up their husbands or have bad teeth is referred to as ‘sweet’.) who asked him “All these eastern Europeans are coming in, where are they flocking from?”.

Instead of answering her by saying “East Europeans? They come from Africa, of course!” or telling her to shut her gob, the Prime Minister said some boilerplate about immigration and then asked her about her grandchildren.

Well, that was that.

Afterwards, while heading back to his car, the following happened:

But Mr Brown was still wearing a microphone provided by Sky News, which recorded him turning to his aide Justin Forsyth, and pronouncing: “That was a disaster.”

He added: “Whose idea was that?” He then blamed “Sue” – Sue Nye his longest serving aide and friend.

He was then asked by the aide what Mrs Duffy had said.

He replied: “Everything, she was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour.”

Basically he called his whole base (working middle class who are worried about “them immigrants stealing me job” ), bigots.

Although, when I first heard that Gordon Brown had called someone a bigoted lady, I thought he had run into David Cameroon. 

This is probably the first mildly interesting thing to happen to Gordon Brown.

Now, since anything that happens in this election has to be compared to the 2008 US Presidential elections, because that was the only election that happened on earth ever, the sweet racist lady is now Britain’s Joe the Plumber. Damn. I hate that guy!

Anyways, sweet racist lady, Mrs. Gillian Duffy, now has an agent. and stands to profit to the tune of £250,000.

That will buy her a lot of East European maids, won’t it?

Strangely, for the first time, all the brown people in Britain are going “Wait, someone said something racist and it wasn’t about one of us? That’s a bloody miracle!” In fact, the were missing racism so much they decided to go to the airport, just to be racially profiled, for old times sake.

While the rest of the world does something important, it's election season in England!

   From L to R: Peter Pan, Gandalf  the Grey and the Wizard of Oz

Everyone in England has got their knickers in a knot these days. No, not because some rogues in some far-off colony want their independence, like in the good old days, but because in three weeks they have to stop drinking for a bit and go to a bloody voting booth and caste their votes to elect one of those sorry arse politicians to the sodding parliament.

In three weeks, Britain might even have a shiny, new Prime Minister!

Now, they had a brilliant idea. To have a debate on teevee, with all the candidates, just like they do in America. Thankfully, they didn't take other ideas from American Democracy like having a two-year election for a four year term or choosing Vice-Presidential candidates through the reality show Project Running-mate.

The British debates were boring, compared to their American counterparts. Not one person winked or shouted "Drill, baby, drill" and apparently, they don't give a broken tooth about Joe the Plumber! And no one was offering a kilo of rice at 2 bucks a pop. 

Here are the top three contenders:

1. Gordon 'Big Ears' Brown

He is the current incumbent Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party. This is the first election the Labour is fighting under his leadership. The last three were fought with Tony Blair at the helm. Unfortunately for him, neither is he as charming nor can he lie as well as Blair. Analysts predict that he is going to lose badly, because the economy is shite and after thirteen years of Labour, the people want a change (Yeah, you're gonna be hearing this word a LOT. Better get used to it). He has a huge man-crush on President Barack Obama and wants to bone him very badly, as all British PM's are constitutionally mandated to have unrequited feelings for their American counterparts.  If he loses the election, he'll probably retire into some remote British village with his wife & kids and open up a bed & breakfast, since due to his insanely boring personality, he really can't make that much money on the lecture circuit. 

2. David 'David' Cameroon

He is the front-runner for this election, and current leader of the opposition. It is his election to lose. And since he has been acting like he already won the election since last year, he is probably going to come up short. He is a 'compassionate conservative', which means a conservative who does not say racist things in public. If he were writing this blog post, he would have thanked you for reading it. He would have also reminded you that he loves all minorities, even those poor, gross Lesbians who live down the street. He understands how difficult this economic recession has been for everyone, as he has had to fire his fourth butler too, which has made things very difficult at Cameroon manor. Thank the lord for his own personal fortune, otherwise he would have had to live like an immigrant. Which would have been an absolute travesty! Unthinkable, innit?

 3. Nick 'The Kidd' Clegg

As the leader of the Liberal-Democrats, he is the 'wild-card' in this whole shebang. Due to Gordon being such a fuck up, and David being, well, David, experts are predicting that Clegg might be instrumental in deciding who forms the next government, because the election results might yield a hung parliament. Nick is famous for always spewing facts at anyone who cares (or for that matter anyone who doesn't care). He is sort of a wanker. That is why no one in England wants to go drinking with him, as constantly hearing about how mass-marketed alcohol beverages are causing malnutrition in Somalia is a real bugger. I mean, for fucks sake, all a bloke wants to do after a hard day's work is sit in a pub, make some jokes about how the fat chick flirting with the bartender looks like Wayne Rooney and watch some bleeding Rugger on the telly, so shut your pie hole and pass the crisps.    

Anyways, after yesterday's debate, everyone and their grandmother thinks that Nick Glegg is going to be the Prime Minister, because not only is he supremely confident & speaks 'truth to power', all the grannies and single mums in England want to take him home and do things to him which you absolutely do not mention in polite society. Also, since he talked about hope & change, he is being billed as the next Obama because after Nov 4, 2008 every election has to have it's OWN Obama, otherwise no one will care. Thanks, Barry, for ruining all elections, forever. 

Gordon Brown got some good reviews too because he managed to get in a few zingers and was also endorsed by Dr. Who (aka The Doctor. Because I don't want to get hate mail from those people.)  and the only working person in the whole of England, Harry Potter's mom.

These three got another two debates before they finally go to the polls after which everyone in Britain can go back doing whatever they do, like spreading sex diseases through the bookface and then stabbing each other to death.

Ah, Blighty. What would we do without you?

(No don't answer that. It was supposed to be a rhetorical question.)

Lastly, if anyone manages to 'steal' this election, just remember, I AM NOT GOING TO CHANGE MY TWITTER DISPLAY PIC.

Right, ho!

 

[All pictures via Reuters]

Only Sarah Palin knows what it takes to win something

via Salon:

"We miss Ronald Reagan, who used to say, when he would look at our enemies, he would say: 'No. You lose. We win.' That's what we miss. And that is what we have to get back to."
                                                        
                                                                          -  Sarah Palin

Insane clown Barbie is right. To win anything, all you have to do is look at your opponent, tell them that you win, and viola, YOU HAVE WON!

Holy Magic beans, batman!

If only this woman had been manufactured when I was in school.

Or maybe I can do this retroactively?

Yes, I can!

So here goes:

Listen up, all you people I was in school with, I WON ALL THE COMEPETONS! EVEN THE SPELLLLING B!

Suck it, nerds!

Dear Indian media and south block diplomats, Barack Obama is not your boyfriend

So Manmohan Singh is back in Washington, because "The Barack Obama" invited him, to steal all of India's nukes and then distribute them equally between Pakistan and China, because he hates outsourcing?!

Anyways, it's that time of the year again, whenever there is some official level interaction between the Indian and American governments, everyone in the Indian media, print or teevee, has just has one question and one question only: WHAT IS THE CURRENT STATUS OF THE HYPHENATION? IS IT BACK? HAS IT GONE AWAY? IT'S BACK ISN'T IT? OR HAS IT GONE AWAY? WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME? WAIT, WHAT IS THIS NEW SHINY OBJECT YOU'RE HOLDING? TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE NEW, SHINY OBJECT. . . .

Everyone (the media and their "anonymous sources" in South Block) keeps talking about how the previous Bush administration was such a "good friend" to India. Don't you remember how we could call ol' Dubya anytime of the night, to complain about how after gym class whenever we were in the locker room changing back into our casuals, Pakistan used to pick a fight with us to distract us so that China could sneak behind our back and empty a whole tube of ben-gay into our fresh, clean underwear. And Dubya used to huff and puff and threaten to blow someone's house down!

And this Obama, he doesn't even poke us back on facebook! What a big 'ol meanie!

Despite the fact that by Dubya did more to upset the Indo-Pak defence "equilibrium", then any other American President before him, he's still missed by everyone, and is seen as a "good friend" to India. The reason that is set in stone is because of the Indo-US nuclear power deal. Even though that was signed not because our buddy had a soft-spot for India, but because it was good for American business interests. Which is why countries usually do business with other countries, because it benefits them in some way or the other!

Shocking! I know!

The truth is that, Bush gave all those little girls in the media and South block a lady boner because just like them he didn't worry about "global warming" or the "Geneva convention" or "International treaties" etc. He would bomb, whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted! He was their brave, white knight in faux cowboy boots, out there killing the bad guys! Even though most of the times the bad guys turn out to be innocent civilians!

And this new guy, Chocolate Gandhi, wants to talk about all those gay things like "nuclear disarmament" and "cutting carbon emissions" and wants to withdraw his army from Afghanistan and Iraq. Gee, what a homo! Whoever has ever even heard of "nuclear disarmament" in our country?

Of course, right now, India and the US have different goals, internationally.  Obama is not here to make friends. He's looking out for his own country's interest, and we should look out for ours. Which doesn't mean that both countries can't be "friendly" with each other and go out for a beer once in six months or  spoon each other every few years (NO HOMO). It's really hard for our media to comprehend the fact that two adults can be friends without actually agreeing on everything. What else do you expect? These are the same people who morphed Amitabh Bachchan's gig of becoming Gujarat's brand ambassador into WHY DID AMITABH BACHCHAN PERSONALLY KILL EVERYONE IN GUJARAT, IN 2002?

The fact of the matter is that even if Barack Obama forcefully lands in Pakistan, bitch slaps Zardari and then pees on Jinnah's grave, our news anchors will find some way to complain about how his actions prove his negativity towards India (I can already imagine Arnab Goswami asking G Parthasarthy "Does his peeing over Jinnah's grave mean that Obama is trying to melt the frozen dialogue with the Taliban?"). All these insinuations are usually for the viewers/readers benefit. Whenever someone from the Obama administration comes a-knockin, they gush over them like a creepy overage Justin Beiber fangirl!

Someone needs to remind them that this is international politics. It requires a little more nuance than what is required during the weekly meeting of the Lajpat Nagar Traders Association (Regd).

This is how we treat 'em

This is simply stomach-churning, mind boggling atrocious:

. . . at 2 am on April 7, hours before Chidambaram’s farewell to the dead and barely 18 hours after the CRPF combatants were gunned down, it is only the angry lowly officer, a sub-inspector, representing the State at this government hospital at Jagdalpur town, 150 km north of the site of the deadly Maoist attack. It must be said that he is here on his own and not detailed for the job.

No chief minister, no state home minister, no other minister, no member of Parliament, no MLA, no director-general of police (Vishwa Ranjan, a man popular with journalists in all seasons), no chief secretary, no home secretary, no inspector-general (TJ Longkumer, who Chidambaram later told journalists had planned the dead men’s fatal foray into the forests), no district magistrate (frenzied a few hours later as reporters surged at Chidambaram’s press conference because he didn’t want anyone to throw a shoe at the Union home minister), no superintendent of police, not one high-ranking officer of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), to which 75 of the dead belonged, were here; just the very angry CRPF sub-inspector. “They were like my children,” he says.

Typically, the survivors mattered less than the dead. Head Constable Raj Bahadur and Constables Pramod Kumar Singh and Baljeet Singh are lucky to survive the carnage, having taken bullets everywhere but in the guts. A hundred paces from the mortuary, they lie writhing in pain on dirty hospital linen stained from previous occupants’ dried blood. Only one has a mosquito net. There are no doctors or nurses. Two constables who’ve come on their own watch over their wounded mates. The ward is a hovel; the toilet is a stinking blocked drain. “Our officers are home sleeping,” an attendant says.

Five hours later, just minutes before Chidambaram and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh visit the heroes, bureaucrats and the hospital’s administrators fuss in panic over the non-functioning air-conditioning. “Can’t it run for just 15 minutes?” asks one. Bottles of intravenous fluids now hang from their stands, their needles pushed into the arms of the wounded. These weren’t here six hours earlier. The linen has changed. The hovel is now spic and span. A couple hours later, Chidambaram chokes at a press conference, grieving the dead and expressing his resolve to wipe out the Maoists.

I know this is not a new thing for our country, but this is just sick. This is supposedly under our "best home minister" ever. And while those brave CPRF soldiers sacrifice away their lives, Mr Palipapan Chidambram gets to be the hero because he supposedly "resigned" from his ministry. You know what, "PC", if you really feel that you can't continue doing your job anymore, stay at home and let someone else do it. Otherwise, stfu and do what you were appointed to do and stop acting like a prissy teenage drama queen.

I always wonder what makes all those poor people join our armed forces. The pay is crap, they are most likely to die in combat because of some stupid bureaucrat or politician and if they happen to survive, no one is there to take care of their injuries. Most of them probably do it out of pure-patriotism, for a state which gives nary a thought about them.

Even reality show contestants have better working conditions.

Also, the phrase "Can't it run for 15 minutes?" encapsulates the philosophy of "governance" that is prevalent in India.

Yes, we're Incredible!

Incredibly insensitive, incredibly ignorant and incredibly idiotic.