Holy water


Water Dress - Mattoni Spring Water Commercial

Loving this commercial. Somewhere somebody 'd said sex sells. Used in refinement, and higher quotients of soft titillation, it still delivers. Some viewer has asked why is the word "bitch" briefly superimposed at 39 seconds. Beats me. Watch and comment.

Rambhai ekdum neat and fresh

They were doing a case study. That's what they had gone to B-schools for anyway. No surprises there. But why in the name of sweet Jesus did they have to get fresh with Rambhai? Sample this:

'The man after 25 years of service, today works relentlessly to make both ends meet. Students and staff of IIM-A passionately wait at the 'window' to get tea, cigarettes from Rambhai. People get bothered on not seeing Rambhai at the shop. They love to share a few passionate words(sic) with him.' link.

One feels seriously concerned for the wellness of the IIM-A students and Profs when they start getting all passionate with Rambhai. Now Rambhai is a world renowned figure who everybody worth his cup of tea on the net would have heard of. It's also good to see that the IIM-A academic body has roped in Mainstream media into Rambhai's life to give him his fifteen minutes of fame. It was just that the opening lines had me ROFL. I'd have let it pass thinking it was another TOI gem, but the article goes on :

These words are from a case material prepared by the Faculty Development Programme (FDP) participants at the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad.

Great. Just great. Now that the team have presented their case (the case study, to my mind, is another reinvention of the wheel, since the successful small entrepreneur model is age-old case material in B-schools anyway), and Rambhai has had his day under the spots, all decked up and freshened, one has a word of caution for him.

Careful with them boys, Rambhai. These MBA types, I tell you.

Bovine Divine (As in Jawaani Diwani)



This, on an otherwise unenthusiastic evening. Reminded me of the great cow-lover of our times. Venerable Mr. Verma, are you watching too?

Viru se takkar ?



28th July 2008, The telegraph, Kolkata. Sunil Gavaskar wrote (I'd been looking for a link for the better part of an evening, in vain, so I took a shot and put it up) :

(Last time India batted out the last two days of a Test match to avoid defeat).....In Adelaide perhaps,when Sehwag played an innings of such responsibility that when one sees the manner of his dismissals in recent games one wonders where and when the change to being casual has come.
of course, he does not want to get out but at the highest level unless there is a discipline in shot selection, the road back to the pavilion...blah blah.
....Viru can demolish and demoralize any attack in the world but only if he stays away from premeditated shots.
Then he will be unstoppable and India will get the start that they need to put pressure on the opposition.

There is nothing profound about Gavaskar's view on that column. Nothing we did not know already. Except the uncanny timing of the comment. On July 31st and August 1, 2008, Viru did just like the little doc ordered. Sambit Bal writes :

Sehwag has scored many gigantic hundreds but this must rank among his best. It came against massive odds, and it came when India needed a saviour after the two Sri Lankan spinners had humiliated their batsmen. Seen in isolation, he destroyed them.

India may yet lose this match. But I'm very very happy for Viru. I believe his is now the highest individual test score by a batsman from any visiting team on Sri Lankan soil. The way Sri Lanka has traditionally maimed big bullies in their own backyard, we needed somebody to show 'em.

The interview

Last night I dreamt I was facing a job interview. A tough, no punches pulled, "bizarre, new world" job interview. Now most people who have a faint idea of who I am and what I've done so far with my life, will be quaintly amused with the absurdity of the notion. The last proper job interview I attended was in the wee early nineties, when people were still sending telegrams, and the blogger and the fan reunion was more than just a motion away. In recent years, whenever I'd gone to discuss an opening with some prospective employers, they seemed to have a fair knowledge of the archetypal me. They never ask me about my strengths and weaknesses, or, why did I think my skills would be a good fit for the job. They know, to the exact decimal point, what I was capable of not doing, by dint of my sizable experience in not doing anything in the capacity of a technical manager in a behemoth organization. And whenever the subject of dope would be broached, lots of rolled up eyes and muted laughter on their part at the remunerations I'd require. As a rule, these discussions tend to culminate in perfectly amicable disagreement over the issue of moolah alone.

But this being the season of cross-voters and cross-dreamers, what should I dream of but this, a bizarre, tough, new world job interview. Say your howdys to Anita Bruzzese. Her idea of such a interview questionnaire is like

• If you could be any character in fiction, whom would you select?
• If Hollywood made a movie about your life, who would you like to see playing the lead role?
• If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?
• If you could compare yourself to any animal, which would it be and why?
• If you were a salad, what dressing would you be?

She has a theory it brings out grace under pressure. That there are no right answers, only the manner you respond which is analyzed. Surely they would have a manual for this. Y'know, the shallow drifter sort for thousand island, the power exec for blue cheese, and likewise? Set me thinking, and I pondered over it for long before dinner. Then I had this dream.

They were interviewing me for some job. Oddly, they were asking me personal questions. Oddly again, the interviewers were all pretty young women in their 20's. I know, men will be men, and one is allowed such liberties while dreaming.

If you were a cocktail, which one would you be?
If you are an MP who has cross voted, which party you'd rather be from, and why?
If you could marry a celebrity, whose husband would you be?
You suspect your boss is a closet gay. What color clothes would you wear to office on a Friday?
You're the leader of this terrorist outfit that is into serial blasts. Which city will you do after Bengaloor and Ahmedabad?

The second one was a sitter. I blurted BJP even before she finished. The fourth one I'd cross check with Mr. Shenoy. Apparently he's done some research in the area. The last one was not a happy question. I was in no mood to answer.

The Lotus eaters

We've had it up to here with China now. Not content with eating up our Steel, Textile and Consumer Goods industries on the fly and buzzing over our BPO gravy train with malice, they have now unleashed new age goblins on our national flower. G.S.Mudur reports :

...a fly from China has been eating lotus plants across vast stretches of shallow freshwater fields in Kerala’s Malappuram district, one of India’s largest hubs for commercial lotus cultivation.

The yellowish-brown larvae of the two-winged insect have been feeding on lotus leaves for over two years, causing an infestation not previously observed in the country, scientists at the Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) have said.

Chinese scientists had first identified the fly, Stenochironomus nelumbus, in 1986 a botanical garden in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing. Since then, it has spread fast within China, feeding on the rose-petalled lotus lily.

Link (warning: contains revolting photo of fly maggots)

Feature of the day

This excellent non-interview of Billy Joel by Dan Berry on NYT. Made my day.

Wondering why Vienna in the song Vienna, I was reminded Beethoven's grave is in Vienna. Could it be that as a young and very successful piano player who was ambitious and in a hurry, Billy addresses himself, and thus the allusion to Beethoven's grave in Vienna?

Completely out of context, there's a good joke (in somewhat unsound taste) on that grave. Goes like this...

Beethoven's Ninth

A tourist in Vienna is going through a graveyard and all of a sudden he hears some music. No one is around, so he starts searching for the source.

He finally locates the origin and finds it is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads: Ludwig Van Beethoven, 1770-1827. Then he realizes that the music is the Ninth Symphony and it is being played backward! Puzzled, he leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with him.

By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed. This time it is the Seventh Symphony, but like the previous piece, it is being played backward. Curious, the men agree to consult a music scholar.

When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing, again backward. The expert notices that the symphonies are being played in the reverse order in which they were composed, the 9th, then the 7th, then the 5th.

By the next day the word has spread and a throng has gathered around the grave. They are all listening to the Second Symphony being played backward. Just then the graveyard's caretaker ambles up to the group. Someone in the crowd asks him if he has an explanation for the music.

"Don't you get it?" the caretaker said, incredulously. "He's decomposing!"

Till kingdom come

The modernists said, " Style is king" ( These were people who also said green is the new fuschia, thereby proving they must never be taken seriously.)
The purists said, "Content is king." ( They were believers of the maxim " God gave you eyes. Plagiarise.")
Proponents of free market said, "Consumer is the king"(and then made a career of royally duping him)
Wiki acknowledges that Simon Pulsifier is the king.
Post US-Open, there's widespread belief that Tiger Woods is the new king (of pain)
Knowledgeable beer lovers would still call Gambrinus their king.



Well it appears that none of them was the real deal. Because come the 8th of August, only Singh is.

Our very own Pritam-da ,who is auditioning for the role of the fattest apostle in the upcoming Monty Python flick called Monty Python and the last supper (hence the tonsorial abstinence and and all that bread and wine he's been soaking up), is all hurt and dejection these days. He is saying, "What variety of a dog needs two g's? And who now are the new RDB? More than one of them, it seems? I mean, I worship Pancham-da and all, and although his tunes are are so oft-heard they're hard to lift, I'm working on it. In the meantime, these RDB chaps and their Dogg come along and steal a number from right under my..er..nose? What sort of a dog-eat-dog business is this?"
(The assorted animals have actually done some groundbreaking work, I think. They've put together, for the first time in the history of music, a lullaby laced with hip-hop sounds.)

So the fun begins to sizzle. And while we're on the subject, I'd love to put in a word sideways about Katrina Kaif the living doll. The way, with every passing day, she's starting to look more and more like a creature of flesh and blood, is making me develop a tender crush on her. Though I must also admit, that when it comes to leggy supermodels my heart is still in the right place. It is in safe hands, so to speak, with Giselle. Like Sir Paul would sing, Giselle, ma belle, those are words which go together well.....

Under duress to go watch Jane tu etc. on the July 4 opening. Wifey's still got a thing for those boy-girl stories. Let's see.

Update: I made a mistake, the video above actually shows the title composed by Pritam-da and not that bunch!

White=Beauty?



Yes. I can't help talking about this ad. But maybe that's the whole idea behind the campaign. To make people like you and me mad and hate it so much the marketers have already created awareness for their product. I mean, till recently, they used their fresh faces and new discoveries to sell to the fairness obsession. Think fair and lovely and their models. Now Lever has gone and upped the ante and hired two-and-a-quarter of the country's hottest stars ( Neha Dhupia, stand up and be counted) to "act" in a "film" doing the same fairness routine. Yuck! I mean, the blood boils, the mind boggles, and words fail me. If you want more sickening info, check out here.

One thing is certain. I can never forgive Saif for doing this stuff. I mean, I thought he was way too classy and all....well, forget it.

IMHO, the worse thing than celebrities endorsing whiskey is ...... celebrities endorsing fairness concoctions!

Of mice and men

Son-Of-A-Bitch Mouse Solves Maze Researchers Spent Months Building

This is teh make-my-day funny. Wondering, however, if there was a video somewhere? Someone knows of a link? That would be real ROFL stuff.

And on the same funny lines, here's another that I chanced upon :
If a programming language was a boat not that I've ever so much as heard of turing, or ruby and other such languages, it's still hilarious. Do check out!

Whose torch is it anyway?

Thanks to the greatest free thinker of our times and his everfresh views on the subject (the alma mater bred such great minds in those days!) , and this article below from Mukul Kesavan on The Telegraph Kolkata yesterday, I now have an opinion vis-a -vis Torch, Tibet and Amir Khan.Excerpts :

The moral of this story is that it’s a PR mistake to air mixed feelings in public. The trouble with the derision heaped on Aamir Khan, though, is that it seems to teach another lesson: namely, that it’s feeble-minded, unprincipled and immoral to not have a list of correct, categorical views on Everything, that if you’re tentative, less than encyclopaedically informed or ambivalent about a particular issue, you shouldn’t talk about it in public. This is a bad lesson to teach and a worse one to learn.

And then some,

So how is the Dalai Lama’s opposition to boycotting the Olympic Games (despite the fact that he virtually embodies the Tibetan struggle) different in principle from Aamir’s reluctance to boycott the Olympic torch run (despite his sympathy for the struggles of the Tibetan people)?

The short answer to that could be that the Dalai Lama has a rather longer record on Tibet than Aamir Khan does. So while his stance on the Games will be be seen as a strategic position in a long struggle, Aamir’s position is likely to be seen as expedient fence-sitting. Link..

In my opinion it is best not to have an opinion. I didn't have one before, but now I've made an informed choice not to. See how cleverly Mr. Kesavan covers his tracks in every paragraph, so it gets almost impossible to rant over his article. (Dear confused , you now have a challenge on your hands .)

Not having to have an opinion is relief enough. Especially as, post TZP, I feel inclined to forgive Amir much of his vaunted page3 activism and double standards.

A-POLITICAL



Looks like Hillary's race is all but over. There's a tone of pity in the latest offering from Obama girl. She sings to her mostly about being a good loser and all. Riveting video.

Parting Shot


Couldn't help it. Had to utube Barbara Mori. Hottie alright. From the clip she appears to have a propensity towards falling into water. Let's hope she gives us reason to ogle while flying a kite with Hrithik. Also trying to find La Mujer de mi hermano.

Self-explanatory. Though I know a few people who wouldn't be, let's not say famous, but " widely known" pretty much cuts it, if they were not writing such interesting blogs. And what can one say about this woman? I read about her before I took my first step into blogosphere.

No Spring Chicken
It's spring. I had to throw the blankets away last night. and this photo was taken this morn near my backyard off the garage. Is that a meadowsweat in the center? I was never good at these things. Googling doesn't help much either. Now that spring is officially here and India is playing a loserly match at Sydney today, I feel compelled to down a He-man 9000.
And I'm eating chicken for Sunday lunch, after eons. This part of the world is famous for h5n1. It's become an yearly phenomenon now, the wrath of the flu gods.Among the contradictory messages over media over the past month, nobody knew if one could die of eating chickens. Now the government has come clean on the issue. Funny thing, what they're telling us now were being said by The Poultry Lobby all along. They took out quarter page ads in national dailies. In the same issue of the same papers, State Government agencies would publish notices, in public interest, to stay away from poultry and eggs and not to go near where they are bred and sold. It created all sorts of confusion in educated people who read the news.
I went to the poultry market today to witness a sad scenario. Many of the chicken-sellers have gone home to till their lands or whatever. Respectable intelligentsia are still not seen buying poultry. Actually I've talked to many and found all that they need is moral support. Well, somebody had to be the pioneer. I guess I'd heard the call.
Just don't call on me if I get body ache and fever in a coupla days, will ya?

Easily this morning's most interesting news. Pity for the Khan. BTW, I think Salman is getting completely favorable media coverage these days. Everybody says he's fine. Including Madame Tussauds. Me, I always thought he was fine. I love the way he never emotes. He's developed a really cool method of thumbing his nose at high drama on screen. Most women always loved him anyways. It's lately that the menfolk have been converted. Guess it's got to do with his holding down a relationship with a bomb of a GF long enough. He should, however go a little easy on promoting his films on TV music shows. Doesn't seem to suit his style. That's so SRK.

I didn't know better. So I looked. And I found this place. Great for killing the better part of an afternoon. And some trivia.
Another place I went to maybe completely NSFW and all, but fun all the same.
And while passing, the page that Dhoomketu showed us returned two of my mugshots with slightly different tilt of the head and only a wee bit change in lighting with two completely different similarity reports. Exzibit(who?)-- 59% and the other, Beneccio Del Toro-- 63%. I'll try with other shots tonight and see which one Gets Antonio Banderas.