Givvup Only Are There

Mayank Austen Soofi performs a service to humanity, and informs us about Prince Kamakhya Singh, who in addition to having a psychic connection with Nicole Kidman, owns the sky and everything in it:

“I’m the single owner of the sun rays, the moon rays, the stars that shine in the night, and the entire sky,” the Prince noted as I was helping myself with buttered toast. “They all are individually owned by me and I’ve legal papers by the Rajasthan High Court as proof.”

(The Delhi Walla)

The implications of this are staggering.

Will solar plant operators have to pay him royalties for the use of the sunrays? If tidal activity causes damage at ports, is Kamakhya Singh liable as owner of the moonrays? Is it limited or unlimited liability?

And what about astrology? If he owns all the stars that shine in the night, can people who are going through Shani dasha appeal to him to help them out?

And all the lyricists who write songs about getting the beloved the stars or the moon – are they aware that they have been describing criminal activities?

But seriously, why did the man go to the courts to establish his claim? Is there an existing property dispute over the sunrays and moonrays? The idea that there are multiple people trying to claim ownership over the sunrays makes the mind boggle. And if there is no dispute, why the hell does he need the court to give its stamp of authority? It reminds me of the furore over getting the Central government to declare Kanadda a classical language – I mean, if it’s a classical language why does it need a Central government certificate?

written by Aadisht

I was reading the April 2008 issue of the Asian Institute of Transport Development’s Journal of Transport and Infrastructure yesterday. Yes, I am that far behind on my reading, and yes I do read journals on transport for fun. It was a special issue on Public-Private Partnerships, and had a paper on Hyderabad’s suburban rail system and its planned Metro.

Describing the efforts taken to design the MMTS network and the MMTS stations to make them as convenient and appealing as possible for commuters – bus bays for the feeder buses, seats on the station platforms, station beautification – it concluded with this line: Net effects of these stations and trains is validated by the fact that most of the Telugu movies have at least one scene shot in an MMTS station or train or both.

It was the first time in five years that inflight reading made me laugh out loud.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: genelia, gult, hyderabad, megastar, mmts, public transport rocks, telugu

Apparently twitterers in Singapore and Malaysia discovered an old project called CIBAI yesterday and started sniggering because cibai is a Hokkien slang term for vagina.

Someone from Microsoft then helpfully clarified that CIBAI was an acronym for Class Invariants By Abstract Interpretation, was something one a Microsoft researcher had worked on independently, and that the concidence was unintentional and they will look into removing the acronym from the website shortly.

Soon, Eve Ensler will demand to know why Microsoft is embarassed by this and why Cibai should not be an appropriate name for a technology.

written by Aadisht

Although India’s mainstream political parties are WTF enough – banning computerisation, resisting improved diplomatic relations with the US, asking if loyalty to the Gandhi family counts for nothing, and thinking that a Ram temple is India’s greatest preoccupation come to mind – for true, diamond-hard, industrial strength WTF-ness you have to look at the fringe parties and candidates.

Starting with the Pyramid Party of India.

The name itself is weird enough and brings to mind Amway distributors or Ponzi schemes. But their Wikipedia entry (which seems to be self-written) helpfully informs us that their political agenda surpasses all expectations raised by the name:

The “ Pyramid Party of India ” is formed to transform all the People of India into meditators, enlightened persons, vegetarians and peace loving people during our current life-time itself through the methodology of the Electoral Process !

The Pyramid Party of India, formed in the year 1999, participated in the General Elections for the first time in the State of Andhra Pradesh in more than 50 constituencies and polled several hundreds of votes per constituency. Again, in the year 2004 it was General Elections time and again it was time to participate in the elections and to spread the twin concepts of vegetarianism and meditation. This time it was nearly a hundred constituencies ! And, thousands of votes were polled for the Pyramid Party per constituency !

…

The ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, firmly believed that the best form of government was one ruled by an individual possessing the greatest ability, knowledge, and virtue. And, the highest knowledge is possessed by that individual who truly knows himself. This knowledge constitutes ultimate wisdom. It enables man to act in a virtuous manner at all times, because he knows what will bring him true happiness. And the highest good for any human being is happiness.

This essential Socratic Teaching is the Founding Theme for the “Pyramid Party of India” conceptualized for the first time in the year 1998 by Brahmarshi Patriji and actualized in the year 1999 by the PSSM.

Wow. But let’s not forget about the Humanist Party of India. They plan to put the mass media at the service of the cultural debate, ban authoritarianism, compulsion and separation of sexes, leave the discriminatory WTO, nationalise foreign banking and commerce, and eliminate hospital fees. On the other hand, they also plan to give land and agricultural rights to tribals and farmers, which is a start.

My favourite, though, is the independent candidate from South Delhi BP Pandey. According to the short Hindustan Times writeup on Mr Pandey (can’t find it online anywhere), he believes that all that is wrong with India today is happening because the gods have abandoned it. Therefore, if elected he will win back the favour of the gods and free Indian from demonic influence by building 108 temples.

This is magnificent. I wonder if BP Pandey is a relative of Acharya Somuchidononanda Pandey. I appeal to Mayank Austen Soofi to provide a great service to humanity and interview BP Pandey as soon as possible. Inquiring minds want to know more about this great man.

written by Aadisht

This Dealbreaker story is awesome. Citi has very few profitable divisions right now, and the people who run them are demanding massive bonuses to stay on and ensure that they stay profitable. But after all the outrage over the AIG bonuses, Vikram Pandit is pre-emptively going to Obama to ask for permission.

The political palatability of giving out the bonuses is, alas, very low because one of the people doing the demanding owns a castle. Seriously. An actual 1000 year old castle outside Hanover.

You might be asking yourself what an investment banker does with a castle. In these times it’s excellent risk management. After all battlements are more reliable than presidents when a mob shows up with pitchforks.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: bonus, castle, executive compensation, investment banker, mob, phibro, pitchfork, psychotropic weather, schloss, trader

It is very gratifying to have your irrational prejudices validated. Happily, this has been happening a lot recently.

The first of my prejudices to be validated was the one I bore against ghazals. This isn’t anything to do with their Moslem origin. After all, Islam has also brought us excellent things like qawaalis, kebabs, and Islamic banking (which generates jobs for TamBrahms).

I started out with mere indifference towards ghazals. Then Seashell on Residency Road had the bright idea of keeping a very bad ghazal party to sing and take requests from diners. I hate live music during food. The music distracts from the food and the food distracts from the music. And bad ghazals distracting from really great Mangalore fish curry is particularly annoying. Since then, I have borne an animus against the genre as a whole.

So Jagjit Singh’s recent WTF antics and puking on first Adnan Sami and then A R Rahman and Gulzar are pleasing. I shall use them forevermore to point out that ghazals are beastly and no good can come out of anything or anybody associated with them.

Next, we have vegetarians. I had already blogged about P G Wodehouse’s quote on vegetarianism souring the disposition, and how this could explain the tendency of Gujews to go out and slaughter each other. Now we have further evidence in the form of Varun Gandhi. Maneka Gandhi not only brought him up vegetarian, she cut off his milk supply. Is it surprising then that he gets his jollies from cutting off peoples’ hands?

Now, I am eagerly awaiting the results of the Lok Sabha elections. If the Samajwadi Party wins any significant amount of seats after releasing their Talibanesque anti-computer and anti-English manifesto, I will use it as ammunition for my dismissal of UP types as uneducated wankers determined to pull themselves and everyone else down into mediocrity. Such joy.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: ghazal, hindi types, jagjit singh, karimullah, maneka gandhy, milk, rahman, residency road, samajwadi party, seashell, varun gandhi, vegetarianism

So this morning, a little bird decided to fly through the open window into our living room. Once inside, it perched on our cordless phone’s base station.

It eventually decided it didn’t like the phone, so it went on to the network hard disk. Over here, I got off a shot which shows off its blue feathers.

By this time, I was squeezing off lots of shots and the bird got nervous. So it crapped on the hard disk and flew away.

Nice bit of weirdness to start the day.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: Add new tag, avia, bird, cordless phone, douw, dove, fauna, home, It's not love it's dove, network hard disk, pigeon, when doves cry

This story hasn’t appeared in the Indian press as far as I know, which is a shame. It’s one of the most awesome practical jokes/ pranks/ hoaxes ever devised. So I’m summarising it for your reading pleasure.

OK, the European Union has a rotating presidency which passes between the member-countries. France just handed the presidency over to the Czech Republic. The Czech government decided to commemerate the occasion with a piece of sculpture about Europe. A Czech artist called David Cerny said that he would get artists from all the 27 member countries to contribute to the piece. This was nicely symbolic and he got the job.

So here’s where things get interesting. What Cerny finally produced was a giant map in which each country was depicted in a joyously stereotypical manner. France was just a metal outline with a Strike! banner across it. Italy was a football field where the players were all assaulting each other. Germany was a dull grey map with autobahns at right angles stretching across it. You get the picture. You actually get the picture over here (Spiegel Online slideshow). Cerny got the contract and used it to yank the European Union’s chain in a delightful manner. Even better, he charged 373,000 Euros to do this.

OK, but things don’t end there. First Cerny revealed that he had done the whole thing as a joke, causing shock and horror in the EU bureaucracy that people could actually make fun of them. Then, to make things worse, he revealed that the twenty-seven artists from each EU country did not actually exist. He had cooked them up. To add even more masala to the mix, he had also submitted tongue-in-cheek descriptions of the sculpture by these fake artists (PDF download). 5.7 MB, but do download and read, it’s well worth it.

This of course would be awesome enough in itself. But there’s something even better to come. Since the whole thing is about national stereotypes, Bulgaria was shown as a bunch of squatter-potties. This is apparently because they used to be ruled by the Ottoman Empire, who introduced Turkish toilets there, and they’re still over there. The Bulgarians have taken grave offence to being depicted as a nation of commodes, and have now summoned the Czech ambassador to demand an explanation.

I think a practical joke which results in diplomatic action being taken is pretty much the gold standard. David Cerny is my new hero.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: bulgaria, czech republic, david cerny, demarche, eu, european union, euroskepticism, hoax, ottoman empire, practical joke, prank, squatter, turkish toilet

Seriously, the man is fabulous. For the past eight years, Bush-hating activities have existed at a level that can best be summed up as “lame-ass”. There have been protest marches with bad slogans. There have been riots in Lucknow where Hindus and Muslims beat each other up (or vice versa), but Bush himself escaped unscathed. He wasn’t even anywhere near Lucknow. There’s been a persistent falase rumour about him serving plastic turkey to the troops. At a time when people were sick of him and the Iraq war, he couldn’t be defeated in an election, for crying out loud. You have to ask what the hell people have been doing.

And now, this man does with forty days of a Bush presidency to go what people couldn’t do in eight years before him: take direct action against the man himself, and hurls a pair of shoes at him. While violence is deplorable, it has to be admitted that his directness is admirable. No shilly-shallying for this man of action.

The incident also shows the declining standards in Presidential manliness. When Theodore Roosevelt was shot on the campaign trail, he just kept on giving his speech. When Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan, he took it in the lung like a man and told Nancy Reagan that he’d forgotten to duck. Bush ducked, when faced with nothing more dangerous than shoes. Deplorable. One can only hope Obama turns out less feeble.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: badass, bush, bushitler, hinckley, honey i forgot to duck, jodie foster, manliness, muntazer al-zaidi, plastic turkey, president, shoes, taxi driver, theodore roosevelt

You know who the president of North Korea is right? It’s not Kim Jong-Il. It’s his long-deceased father Kim Il-Sung. The North Korean constitution was amended to make him ‘Eternal President of the Republic‘. Kim Jong-Il is the mad dictator of North Korea, but the official position he holds is only ‘General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea’.

This is similar to Turkmenistan, where the Presidency has passed on, but only Saparmurat Niyazov is Turkmenbashi, though he too is long gone.

This sort of thing exists in India too. All T-Series movies – Karzzzz included – are advertised as ‘Gulshan Kumar Presents…’ even though Gulshan Kumar told jai back in 1997. Which means that he’s been presenting movies in a deceased state for eleven years now. How’s that for succession planning?

written by Aadisht \\ tags: from beyond the grave, gulshan kumar, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-Il, mad dictator, North Korea, Saparmurat Niyazov, t-series, turkmenbashi, turkmenistan