Congress President: Originally from the Italian town of Lusiana.
More ridicule of inane government ads: Budding Poets
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Messiah Sworn in as President of the United States
The One True Prophet of the One True God was anointed as the Messiah of the United States of America on Tuesday.
Huge crowds gathered to watch the Messiah being baptised by John the Chief Justice. A Holy Book used by Abraham, who the Messiah is said to greatly revere, was used for the ceremonies.
People from around the world reacted with elation and joy to see the new messiah bring hope to a beaten land. The Messiah is expected to end all war and injustice in this world as well as teach Delhiwalas that honking at traffic lights is a sin in the eyes of God.
The Messiah, in his coronation speech, promised America that he “was the way”. He addressed the greatest crisis that the US now faces, the Recession, and criticised Wall Street for “leading us into temptation”. He promised to address the burgeoning trade deficit with China and urged the Chinese to “forgive us our debts” and also assured Pakistan that America would “forgive its debtors” if they reined in terror. In spite of the great anger against the earlier ruler of the Land, the ever merciful Messiah did utter nary a diatribe against him and, in fact, asked the American public to “forgive him for he knew not what he did”.
Verily, the miracle of the Messiah was confirmed in the Promised Land too, as people saw stars, made of White Phosphorous, in fact, rain down on them from the East.
Huge crowds gathered to watch the Messiah being baptised by John the Chief Justice. A Holy Book used by Abraham, who the Messiah is said to greatly revere, was used for the ceremonies.
People from around the world reacted with elation and joy to see the new messiah bring hope to a beaten land. The Messiah is expected to end all war and injustice in this world as well as teach Delhiwalas that honking at traffic lights is a sin in the eyes of God.
The Messiah, in his coronation speech, promised America that he “was the way”. He addressed the greatest crisis that the US now faces, the Recession, and criticised Wall Street for “leading us into temptation”. He promised to address the burgeoning trade deficit with China and urged the Chinese to “forgive us our debts” and also assured Pakistan that America would “forgive its debtors” if they reined in terror. In spite of the great anger against the earlier ruler of the Land, the ever merciful Messiah did utter nary a diatribe against him and, in fact, asked the American public to “forgive him for he knew not what he did”.
Verily, the miracle of the Messiah was confirmed in the Promised Land too, as people saw stars, made of White Phosphorous, in fact, rain down on them from the East.
Friday, January 16, 2009
We Need More Reservations
There’s been a lot of brouhaha over reservations ever since the British got fed up of us and left. First it was the Dalits. Quite logical, since after being oppressed for centuries they do need affirmative action. Then, of course, some 50 years later Arjun Singh informed us that even the OBCs needed help with their ABCs. So seats were reserved for them in our education system.
So far so good.
But I ask of you, aren’t we missing out a vital part of our population that needs help from the State? Yes, dear reader, I’m talking about our children (by ‘our’, I mean children generally. I myself have no children...seriously). They need all the help they can get from the State, simply because they are, in one word, dumb.
Think about it. Do you know anyone dumber that, say, a five-year old? Other than a four-year old, that is. And I’ve seen it myself. My two-year old cousin can hardly recite four-line nursery rhymes and her parents have such low expectations from her that they go into raptures every time she crosses ‘P’ when reciting the alphabet.
And this isn’t just a problem with children related to me, mind you. It’s all pervading. At a neighbour’s kid’s birthday party, one child had a hard time grasping the concept of the game, 'Passing the Pillow'. The idiot would refuse to pass the pillow, while playing ‘Passing the Pillow’. Needless to say, Musical Chairs was completely beyond him.
People who oppose reservations for children do, of course, try and make up a million excuses in order to explain this remarkable lack of intelligence visible among non-adults
Some people blame the parents. However, more often than not the parents are helpless in the face of such massive obtuseness. One couple bought their one-year old bundle of joy to the theatre to watch ‘Body of Lies’. I’m sure they expected their kid to learn much from Ridley Scott’s indictment of American foreign policy in the Middle-East. But alas, it was not to be. The kid just cried throughout the whole movie, in spite of his parent’s grim determination to not take him out of the theatre.
Of course, people also say, “let things like growing-up work and the children will get smarter. Give it time, baba”.
Bullshit.
To disprove this naïve assumption, all I have to do is to take Raj Thackeray as an example. He’s grown up, hasn’t he? But has he become any clever? Nope. In fact, I bet, Raj, as a kid, refused to pass the pillow at birthday parties. Or maybe he only passed it to the Marathi kids.
Now tell me, don’t these kids, disadvantaged as they are by nature, need our help? Shouldn’t we, as responsible citizens of this country fight for what’s right? Can we afford to deny our little ignoramuses reservations in our educational institutes and in our workplaces?
So do the right thing and support reservations for children in our institutions. Do it for a stronger India, if nothing else.
So far so good.
But I ask of you, aren’t we missing out a vital part of our population that needs help from the State? Yes, dear reader, I’m talking about our children (by ‘our’, I mean children generally. I myself have no children...seriously). They need all the help they can get from the State, simply because they are, in one word, dumb.
Think about it. Do you know anyone dumber that, say, a five-year old? Other than a four-year old, that is. And I’ve seen it myself. My two-year old cousin can hardly recite four-line nursery rhymes and her parents have such low expectations from her that they go into raptures every time she crosses ‘P’ when reciting the alphabet.
And this isn’t just a problem with children related to me, mind you. It’s all pervading. At a neighbour’s kid’s birthday party, one child had a hard time grasping the concept of the game, 'Passing the Pillow'. The idiot would refuse to pass the pillow, while playing ‘Passing the Pillow’. Needless to say, Musical Chairs was completely beyond him.
People who oppose reservations for children do, of course, try and make up a million excuses in order to explain this remarkable lack of intelligence visible among non-adults
Some people blame the parents. However, more often than not the parents are helpless in the face of such massive obtuseness. One couple bought their one-year old bundle of joy to the theatre to watch ‘Body of Lies’. I’m sure they expected their kid to learn much from Ridley Scott’s indictment of American foreign policy in the Middle-East. But alas, it was not to be. The kid just cried throughout the whole movie, in spite of his parent’s grim determination to not take him out of the theatre.
Of course, people also say, “let things like growing-up work and the children will get smarter. Give it time, baba”.
Bullshit.
To disprove this naïve assumption, all I have to do is to take Raj Thackeray as an example. He’s grown up, hasn’t he? But has he become any clever? Nope. In fact, I bet, Raj, as a kid, refused to pass the pillow at birthday parties. Or maybe he only passed it to the Marathi kids.
Now tell me, don’t these kids, disadvantaged as they are by nature, need our help? Shouldn’t we, as responsible citizens of this country fight for what’s right? Can we afford to deny our little ignoramuses reservations in our educational institutes and in our workplaces?
So do the right thing and support reservations for children in our institutions. Do it for a stronger India, if nothing else.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Humans Might be the Cleverest Animal on the Planet, Say Researchers
Ground breaking research at the University of Auckland, New Zealand seems to suggest that humans might be cleverer than any other animal on the planet.
John Smith and his team (who have nothing better to do, apparently) presented humans with a series of tests. For means of a comparison, these same tasks were also carried out by langoors, till now thought to be the cleverest animal on the planet.
The first test consisted of the two species being asked to condole a nation in the aftermath of a great tragedy. The humans performed superbly at the task getting extra points for making references to another cleverer species, the dog. Researchers also noticed one human was seen to be extremely concerned with his appearance, taking great care to appear well-dressed to another human who kept on waving, as if to a crowd. What that means is still not very clear. Langoors, it seems, on the other hand did not even understand the scale of the tragedy because they said nothing and just hung their heads, as if in shame.
The other task, apparently a rather tricky one, involved the researchers presenting the subjects with a gun. The humans excelled here too, running off with the gun into a hotel and killing scores of people. The langoors, seemed disinterested with the guns. One of the primates even tried his best to make it into a sickle, inviting the scorn of the humans.
In a variant of the above test, humans performed remarkably when presented with a bomb, seeming to know exactly what to do with it and when to use it.
Further test were far more difficult testing advanced problem solving abilities of the two species. One test, involved trying to show that a company had cash reserves of crores of rupees when it had none. The humans again showed far greater ingenuity achieving the goal with consummate ease and even boasting about it using advanced technology like email. In fact, the same human also showed rare skill in word games using palindromes, reversing simple words like ‘truth’ in a matter of seconds. Predictably, the langoors failed miserably again, failing to even show a profit for the company.
“The concept of immorality is very highly developed in the human species allowing them to carry out tasks of far greater complexity than the langoors could manage,” said one of the scientists. Further research is expected to be carried to by the University along these lines.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Not so Punny
The Satyam fiasco has pained millions of Indians…by forcing them to read horrible, horrible puns. Here are some of them:
Business Line:
Times of India:
Reuters:
Mint:
Indian Express:
The Economic Times:
Note: Satyam is a Sanskrit/Hindi word which means truth.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
MNS Saves India from Impending Doom
In a fitting reply to Pakistan’s banning of the Jamat-ud-Dawah, Raj Thakeray has ordered a ban on all Pakistani books in Mumbai. Raj is the head of the bestest and most patriotic party in the whole world, the MNS.
The move is, in fact, seen as being a logical follow up to his earlier move to ban Indians from the Indian financial capital, Mumbai. Raj is learnt to have called for a ban as soon as he learnt that Pakistan has no Marathi people. Raj is also apparently miffed that Pakistani terrorists attacked Mumbai.“Only I can do that,” he is reported to have said
“This ban will prevent the spread of undemocratic ideas from the totalitarian state of Pakistan,” said an MNS spokesperson, explaining the reason for the ban. “Also, stopping the sale of the 30-odd Pakistani books per day in Mumbai is sure to cripple the sources of funds used by these evil terrorist.”
Meanwhile, publishers of those books are contemplating a surreptitious name change for the books concerned to try and sneak past the ban. Mohammed Hanif’s (not to be confused with Hanif Mohammad) brilliant book, “A Case of Exploding Mangoes ” is to be now renamed “A Case of Exploding Oranges”.
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