Bush vs Clinton

The biggest laugh I've had in a while.

Warnings: Adult content, not work-safe, DO NOT LISTEN WHILE INGESTING LIQUIDS UNLESS RICH ENOUGH TO REPLACE POTENTIALLY RUINED ELECTRONIC ITEMS.

Tags:

• humour

Donate Some Marrow, Yo

No do-gooder am I. Total charitable contributions: less than $50. Community service: only under compulsion. Almost-Objectivist. Last on Abou Ben Adhem's list, that's me.

But I'm doing this, and so should you. It's verrry simple, actually:

1. Call 1-800-593-6667. (USA only, sorry.)


2. Say, "Yo, put me on the bone marrow donor list, yo."


3. Give them your name and address.


4. Open your mailbox a couple of days later to find the home test kit.


5. Stick a piece of cotton in your mouth to get inner-cheek cells on it.


6. Put said piece of cotton in the baggie provided and mail it back in the stamped envelope, also provided.


7. Feel good about yourself.

That's all. No cost involved. More importantly, no needles involved. Come on.

Remembering Pluto

There was once a heavenly body known obscurely as "Planet X" for which there was to be no happily ever after. It was small and brown and quite eccentric; and all the astronomers always picked on it. "It's so small!" they cried. "Even its moon is practically bigger!" It didn't help things that this Planet X was so far away - barely a jot on the landscape of the solar system, really. They called it Pluto, the God of the Underworld, mired in ignominy and very often out of sight, out of mind.

Ninety-six years later, they even stopped calling it a planet. The end.

The children of Scorpio are orphaned! The children of Clyde Tombaugh are stripped of their glory! And the children in schools are just confused, because now the mnemonic is "My Very Earnest Mother Just Served Us Nine", and that doesn't make any sense. Goodbye, dear Pluto, goodbye!

Maggi

I love Maggi's fat-laden, sticky, characterless 2-minute noodles swimming in cholesterol soup. I grew up eating it as Sunday Breakfast, which was an elaborate ritual involving trekking a mile and a half to my cousins' place, plonking down in front of the TV to watch He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and yelling until my aunt and my mom brought in steaming bowls of noodles. To me, that's comfort food, OK? And even if it wasn't for you, chances are, you went through college pretending this was brain food.

This is a test of your loyalty.

Try finding a website - even an official Nestle website - featuring Maggi 2-minute noodles. Go on, I challenge you. Now I don't want some measly excuse of a website that just bloody lists, like, 4 flavours and then has a broken link at "How to cook it?", no no. I want the real deal, like cookies or potato chips. Even Rasna has a better website, goddammit.

It saddens me that we live in the sort of world that shows so little respect for the queen of snack foods. Awake! Arise! Or at least take two minutes and eat some Maggi.

Hyuk Hyuk Hyuk

I just want to remember this feeling forever.

Today my dear husband bet $5 on something that was so stupid to begin with that I was going to forgive him the loss. I'm online, the Overstock.com page open right in front of me, and he doesn't believe me when I tell him they're offering $1 shipping on furniture. Now, this ought to inspire some thought about the level of trust in our relationship, but I was simply amused.

Then ten minutes later I get an exceedingly gleeful email AND an explosively happy phone call from him going "nyah nyah nyah, you didn't read the fine print, you owe me five bucks!!"

Aw shucks. He got me there. Moral of the story - repeat after me, class - always read the fine print.

Also, try not to skip words while reading the fine print. Especially important words like "not". It turns out the fine print says something like: "$1 shipping is not (THERE'S THE WORD!) applicable to orders consisting solely of books and music." Poor hubby no see the 'not'. Poor hubby think he got me.

So this is me doing the happy dance - nyah nyah nyah, bam chicka bam bam.

Now I'm definitely collecting the $5.

Jesus Complex

For the third time in two weeks I dreamt I was walking on water. It was nothing miraculous, though, very matter-of-fact, plus everybody was doing it. This time the water was slightly choppy, and in the dream I thought that made walking a little easier coz it wasn't as slippery as last time.

Unlike flying dreams, walking on water isn't inherently fun. We did saunter up to the edge of the Niagara Falls, however, and that view was quite a thrill.

Tags:

• weirdness

Comic Truths

Watching most Sunday morning political programming here in USA is spectacularly frustrating. For example: this is widely recognised as one of the best Meet the Press segments. At least in this one, Tim Russert asks some hard questions, but you can still see how much bullshit Josh Bolten manages to spew with a straight face without getting called on it. And this in MTP's BEST segment.

So since journalists suddenly aren't doing their job, something weird is happening. Take this Jon Stewart segment, for example. Hilarious. But wait: do you realise this isn't -

(a) Some caricature of a politician,
(b) A sitcom like Yes, Minister, or even
(c) A guy doing funny George W. impressions.

These would fall under the category of comedy. But in this segment, there's nothing but the TRUTH, baldly stated. Comedians are telling it. We're laughing.

This is messed up.

One last thought: how hard would it be for Tim Russert to play one of these "truth montages" for his guests, and tell them, for once, in so many words: NOW GIMME A STRAIGHT ANSWER.

Tags:

• politics

Yet Another Personality Test

... But it's a good one.

Attentive Inventor

Take the PersonalDNA test

Tags:

• misc

I Have A Nephew!

Presenting the first baby born to a relative of my generation (I know I've been an aunt, technically, from the age of ONE, but this is totally different) ...

People, meet Ved.


I KNOWWWWW! :D

And here are Ved's first set of footprints -



Congratulations to the new mom, my cousin Ashwini, and dad Aashish!

Tags:

• misc

Net Neutrality

The CEO of EBay wrote me an email today, and she seemed really pissed off about something. I checked the issue out. Didn't understand a damned word of it.

Let me get this straight.

• If the Congress rules against net neutrality, then content and service providers on the internet will have to pay phone companies some toll to get their info online on the fast lane.


• Which means only the big players will be left on the internet - no message boards or blogs or personal webpages, right?


• Which turns the internet into... TV, essentially?


• But if that's the case, why are EBay and other large internet presences fighting for NN?


• What do they care if small fry can't have their own blogs? (I understand why Google would be pissed, but EBay has enough teeth and cash to survive, what.)


• Do *I* have to pay a bigger fee than I already am for a broadband connection? Doesn't look like it, from what they're saying.


• Also, control of what websites we look at is in the hands of phone companies? (Unless we're willing to take the slow lane, I guess.) Dude, what are they thinking??


• And what's up with Verizon reserving 80% of their bandwidth for their own services? The numbers say that what'll be left over is 20 megs per household. That seems like a very very small number to me. But expert blogs are telling me that's more than enough?


• Is this all a ploy by cable companies to stop people downloading movies off the internet? After all, Time-Warner charges $3.99 for an on demand movie while it's only $2.99 on the internet... Is this what it's all about?

Anybody with gyan, share it!

Tags:

• politics