Tagged in the back

Chailey1418 has tagged me. The idea is to write five things about yourself and pass the buck.

This is the bloggers equivalent of Multi-Level Marketing,the Tupperware and Amway of blogging. You pay in the form of having to write a full blog entry about this stuff, and revealing your deep dark inner secrets, actually believing that somebody will give a damn. Either that or its so funny they'll read it anyways.

So if you're expecting a fantastic revelation of how I conquered the Amazon basin and the lower congo in one day, this is not the place for you. Or if you wanted to hear about when I had a lump in my throat watching a young sheep die from overgrazing or whatever it is they die of, this is not the place for you.

1) I had shaved my eyebrows when I was a kid. I wanted to be Mr. Spock. So I was ass-whupped by the senior authorities at home and had to put kaajal where the hair hitherto resided.

2) My dad's surname was Murthy and his father was a Rao. Don't ask, I don't know.

3) I started Agni Software in 1998, with a few friends. I was 23, just a year or so out of college, clueless and penniless.

4) I was "most talented outgoing student" at KREC, Surathkal in '96.

5) My wife and I found each other online, on a freak post at 2 AM on a web portal. Thank goodness for the internet.

Well, I tag:
MadMan
Prabhu
Gautam
SuperManeesh
Amit

The Shilpa Shetty Chronicles

So Shilpa Shetty is facing the heat, locked in a house for days with some other people. If you're locked in a frikking house for days with cameras all around you, you're bound to lose a few brain cells here and there, which is why some of the people in question got really aggro with Shetty; if you notice the behaviour of caged animals you might find they throw regular taunts at their neighbours, though you may not be qualified to understand the language.

The lost brain cells, however, are not only a feature of the occupants of the Big Brother mansion or whatever it is they call it. (Zoo would be better, but that's my opinion). TV viewers all over the world went frikking nuts because Shilpa cried on TV saying "Why does everyone hate me", with tons of them screaming "racism", "white supremacist bastards" and all that crap. Germaine Greer seems to have reduced cranial activity too, calling Shilpa a "tamil" which any Shetty worth her name would totally say "ijji" to.

Back in India, there are dharnas, processions and such. India loves protests and activism, for no apparent reason, and to no obvious end. Heck, we have a "traffic alert" today, on some people protesting the hanging of Saddam Hussein too. Wow. These guys must have one heckuva calendar:

10 AM : Protest hanging of Saddam Hussein
11 AM : Throw stones at people catching stray dogs
12 noon : Lunch + Agitation against highly priced vada sambar, goddamit.
1 PM : Join Relay Hunger Strike against company occupying farmers land. Note carefully that next time, at least find out name of company and not wear its T-Shirt.
3 PM : It's too hot, mate. Pass the hunger strike baton to the next person ("relay" hunger strike) and get a quick dosa+chai down
5 PM : Road march campaign against racism, carrying Shilpa Shetty Posters. Negotiate with leader and obtain miniskirt poster for taking home. Rakhi Sawant is now getting stale.
5:30 PM: Ask for the death penalty for racists. Oh, wait. That is "rapists". Not till tomorrow morning, 8 AM.
6 PM : Threaten to self-immolate. Search for reason.

Such is life, I guess, in a very boring sort of way.

Someone also mentioned this Shilpa Shetty episode in the UK Parliament, and all the suited politicians decided that racism was a bad thing. Then the official stenographer said, "what, obviousness struck you on the forehead just now? And what about Iraq, you numbskulls?" and in response, got fired for being racist. Because forehead pointed to "Indians" because they put bindis on them.

Kill all the stray dogs

I'm incensed that stray dogs have killed a child in Bangalore. A pack of 15 dogs attacked and killed an 8 year old girl on Jan 5. An in Chandigarh, a 55 year old man was killed by strays.

Stray dogs are dogs without owners, who hang out on the streets like they frikking own them, and were always very violent towards other occupants of the road. They've attacked cyclists and motorbikes all the time. They are stupid enough to try to attack my car too (In response, I've unsuccessfuly attempted to run them over) But when they attack people and will KILL them, it's far beyond time to take action. It's time to wield arms and kill the bastards.

Oh there are animal lover organisations that don't like it one little bit. How can you kill dogs, they say. They're so lovable! Well, so are rats. Rats don't even bite you so much. I don't see no animal organisation asking people not to kill rats.

They also say that we don't own the frikking streets, we should share them with dogs. How about leopards? Just yesterday Mr. Spots appeared in the streets of Nasik and caught. I don't see animal organisations screaming about why we shouldn't be sharing our roads with leopards.

What do I hear you say? Leopards are WILD animals. Well so are stray dogs. In fact all dogs are wild - what makes them tame is only the fact that they have an owner who has the responsibility of keeping the dog from biting or killing someone. Stray dogs have no owner, so they're as wild as any other animal - in fact, any dog which joins a pack becomes ferocious.

The touted cure is to sterilize. Sterilization does not help. It's the fear that is the problem. Does a dog come with a big sign on it's frikking forehead saying "I have no testicles"? So how do you know a dog is sterile? And who's to say there isn't a chance a sterile animal won't be a grumpy bastard and attack a defenceless child anyways? Are you willing to let your children on the streets with this kind of fear?

Stray dogs cause far more damage to the environment than people think. A Indian express mentions:

Stray dogs are incredibly damaging to wildlife, killing untold numbers of monitor lizards, birds, snakes, and other wild creatures. No discerning environmentalist would want to trade our dwindling wildlife for a world of free-ranging feral domestic animals.

Read this article - it gives some amazing perspective.

Ald kill the goddamn stray dogs. All of them. Round them up and give them poisoned injections.

If anyone objects, put the dogs inside their house. Or, if you have the money, drive the dogs into the forest and throw them in there. If the activists can't take care of them, the dogs should just die. Why should our children suffer?

Okay, we may be able to do this in a slightly different way. By using squirrels.

What religion is your....

Time and time again, the question has really baffled everyone: Are your private parts religious? "Krish" seems to think they might be, that you can have a religious dick. I am sincerely perturbed by this major rant which sounds more like, as they say in a language I know, "the man has a fly jumping around in his butt".

Basically Krish says : An atheist = no religion. Not just no god, but no religion also. Okay? I can see you're with me till now which is pretty good.

But, he says, the "blog kiddies" who he does not name but knows really well, are masquerading as atheists and in their lair, practicing black magic and voodoo, which are essentially religion, and therefore they cannot be atheists. Actually he did not say that, but it seems to sound better. That's how gossip starts, and man if you don't like religion, you don't want me starting about gossip.

Back to the program.

Mr. Krish is irked, peeved or otherwise majorly irritated by bloggers who rise up in arms against Christianity and Islam, and in the process, target the posterior of members of the aforementioned religions. ("kick the butt of Muslims and Christians") Specifically, those that claim Hinduism is the atheist way of life; and therefore hate everyone else of other religions. Indulging in such religion based hatred, he seems to say, is counterproductive to the atheist tag, a statement I cannot find fault with. If you takes the Hindu high road and propogates the anti-Islam or anti-Christian dogma, you are not an atheist no matter how many times you imprint it on your forehead.

But to protest the irrationalities of particular religions is fair game. I can protest against the Hindu Caste System, the Muslim Burqua, the Christian fear-of-embryonic-stem-cells and still retain the atheistic bent of mind. But if you equate my stand against certain religious beliefs as coming from someone who was born to a Hindu family and thus is biased against all other religions, I would ask you what you are smoking, mate.

(and to please give me some of it because this religion business is giving me a headache)

But Krish ends with "The moment religion enters your thought process, you cease to have any rational thinking." This is as stupid-ass as it gets because 1) his post is about religion so if this statement is true, the whole post is irrational, and 2) atheists are not necessarily rational, they are just atheists, gawddammit.

This would have just been another random post in the random world of blogs. But I wanted to write because the image of a "religious dick" was just hilarious.

You know there is a real estate bubble when...

...you see something like this.



When chai wallas are trying to sell property, it's a bubble. "One by two tea please. And do you have any houses less than 40 lakhs?"