What? She did not!

About a month back I heard Celine Dion covered AC-DC’s You shook me all night long. I wasn’t going to go looking for it. But I was eager to see how badly she had mutilated one of my favorite songs by one of my top 5 favorite bands. And stumbleupon helped, popping up a worst covers of all time list. And not surprisingly the hag topped it.

So here it is for your aural displeasure:

and here’s the original just for comparison. Although the audio’s crappy it sure rocks harder.

Youtube’s related links tell me that Shania Twain made the same mistake. Shame on you both. Washed-up tarts trying to blemish good bands with your crappy covers. Shoo!

Excuse me, but do you have reservation?

First here’s the skinny:

Buoyed by its success in pushing through a quota for OBC students in higher education, the government has now ordered IITs to introduce – with “immediate effect” – quotas in the teaching faculty for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and OBCs.

How can the government feel buoyant about something it has attracted so much flak for? It’s like saying “My boss just spit on me before he gave me my performance incentive. I feel so great. Maybe if I work lousier this year he’ll spit on me again.”

Anyway, I’m not here to discuss modalities of verbal communication. What I really want to ask the government is have they considered what this might do for the reserved categories?

Is the government aware of how badly people from the reserved category are treated once the others figure out that they belong to “that” category? It’s like being ostracized all over again. People look askance at your ability to handle even the easiest task. It’s disgusting. It’s equally bad, if not worse, as the dark early ages where dalits were denied entry into public places and temples. One is instantly categorized into a low IQ, unintelligent, oh-my-god-their-house-must-smell-horrible-because-I’ve-heard-they-have-weird-rituals section of the crowd.

And I think the government’s new groove is going to exacerbate the situation. It might please the voters, but only in the long run will they realize how raw a deal they have been offered.

It’s like a curse. Like being in purgatory for a sin you didn’t commit. In the words of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day “It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray and it’s gonna last for the rest of your lives!”

Da bomb of a dialogue

Peter Griffin is the funniest cartoon character I’ve come across. No, not even Homer Simpson comes close. He’s outrageous and the creator cares 2 *****s for political correctness. And that’s exactly what makes the show great.

Here’s something that almost made me crap my pants. This is what Peter (as an ancestor Jabba di Griffin) says in a flashback moment:

Rahsa Naba Doe-ah Gola Wookiee Nipple Pinchy!

This has to be the funniest piece of gibberish in the world. Or does it? Wait till you hear what Quagmire says as Bill Clinton:

My fellow Americans: I have not been entirely truthful with you. I did ga-googity that girl. I ga-shmoygadeed her ga-flavity with my googis, and I am sorry.

What? You think I’m a shallow, no good blogger who just posts rehashes of popular TV show dialogue? Well, go f*** yourself.

More demons of stupidity …

Just listen to the lyrics. Retribution at last. F*** yeah!

No smoke after Aag

Got to watch RGV’s “Sarkar Raj” on the Saturday that just went by. I must say I was a whole lot more skeptical about it as compared to putting unknown Mexican food in my mouth. But thankfully there were no unpleasant surprises in the movie. All actors were spot on in delivery. Dilip Prabhawalkar was effective & a perfect fit for the role. Abhishek Bachchan had powerful screen presence & impeccable dialogue delivery. Aishwarya … well she had a small role with few lines which she, thank heavens, didn’t botch up. The twists & turns in the movie are extremely entertaining & well timed. All other factors like direction, editing, cinematography, lights & sound are signature “Factory” products. But this time, they’re far better executed than with the previous “defective maal“.

But the one-man army of acting, emotions & screen presences, the Big B, Amitabh takes the cake. He’s the cynosure of the movie. The second half of the movie (and a portion of the first) is all about him. His face is a veritable cornucopia of expressions. His voice full of emotions. His eyes, replacing the words when & where it’s needed. RGV has really allowed AB to take the lead here and the outcome is great. If this is a peace offering from RGV to AB after the debacle called Aag, sir, there couldn’t have been a more fitting one.

The movie’s a must watch!

Icey shrew, anyone?

I don’t like Hillary Clinton. No no this isn’t a sexist comment but an outcome of rational and unimpassioned thinking if you are willing to look at it my way. She is a second generation politician. And whenever second generation politicians take the highest seat in America they end up listening too well and doing too little. They aren’t jingoistic and adventurous; two qualities America hasn’t seen in a President for a while. Their main aim is to be the hero by keeping everyone and their dog happy which leads to nothing but failure of most policies they promise during their campaigns.

Having said all that I’m glad Obama is on his way to become the Democratic representative. He’s new, he’s brash and gives two flying ****s about conventional politics. I think he’s just the tonic America needed. And the timing couldn’t be better. What with the flagging spirits of its citizens, the drooping economy and sense of overall insecurity boring holes in the country that was built on the very fundamentals of democracy by its pioneers.

Here’s something to drive the thorn deeper into Mrs. Clinton’s ribs. An excerpt from a BBC article about her West Virginia campaign:

The Clinton die-hards battling on through the last handful of primaries from West Virginia to South Dakota must be starting to feel like those Japanese soldiers who used to turn up on Pacific islands decades after the end of the Second World War, still refusing to believe it was really over.

Kids say the darndest things…

I’m sure a lot of people must have got this funny forward where a teacher asks the students to complete popular adages and the kids come up with hilarious new ones. I got it for the n-th time from a close friend. It was mildly amusing too. But what was better was the observation. I thought maybe someone thought of all this and made up a story about the classroom setup. So here’s the observation of the day:

A lot of things get attributed to children because we lack the courage to own up to our actions.

Gee, that’s the best thing I’ve said all day

Talk freezes when listening to music

Been a long time since anything geeky made its way onto the blog. So here’s something that has bugged me all week. I’m sure it has had at least a few of you pulling at your hair.

Some days back I upgraded to Winamp 5.5. But in a day of use, I saw that Google Talk doesn’t quite like the new interfaces in this version. When you switch the status to “Show current music track” the GTalk window freezes, never to return to stability. There’s no option other than closing and restarting GTalk. But the internet threw up an easy fix to this.

Step 1: Go to the Winamp directory, which is usually C:\Program Files\Winamp\

Step 2: In Windows Explorer, select Tools->Folder Options->View Tab and uncheck the “Hide extensions for known file types” and click Ok.

Step 3: Now create an empty file (Right click -> New -> Text document), so the default file name would be “New Text Document.txt”.

Step4: Rename the above file to “winamp.m3u” and save.

Step5: Close Winamp and Google Talk. Now open the apps again and voila, your music track should show up in GTalk without any problems.

Epiphany at the grocery

Last evening I finally went and bought groceries. It usually takes me between a half hour to 3 hours depending on my list and I am usually happy at the end of it. Yesterday’s venture left me a bit sad and more agitated.

One of the items I buy almost every week is murukku. Unfortunately that’s all the fried stuff I can consume these days. But I have it at home without fail. As I passed thru the aisles putting things into the cart I noticed the shelf with all the namkeen stuff. I picked up a packet and turned it around to see the date of manufacture. And there it was … the reason for my melancholy (I am not exaggerating) for more than 12 hours now.

Just above the packaging information was the postal address of the manufacturer. It ended “… Chennai, Tamil Nadu, South India … ” I shrugged and laughed to myself for a moment. Then the smile waned and I just kept staring at it weirdly.

I have fought the thought all night, but it just keeps haunting me. I came to Bangalore thinking ‘I am just relocating to another part of my country’. When I look at people on the road, at work, at pubs or in cinema halls I think of them as my countrymen not as madrasis or any other derogatory term. But yesterday’s jolt makes me wonder if they think of me as a fellow Indian or just some outsider from slightly up north trying to invade “South India”, whatever heck that term means. To me it’s as meaningless as North India. Did we suddenly become a continent?

I want to ask these people a question. Doesn’t your conscience hurt you when you make money selling your products in northern markets? If tomorrow you need blood, will you refuse someone’s offer just because he is from up north? If you are being mugged, would you refuse to seek help from the only other person on the street just because he doesn’t speak your language?

One thing’s for sure. I’m not buying that brand of murukku anymore.

How to sweep your stupidity under the rug…

Everyone’s acquainted with the adage that “The crime is not stealing but getting caught”. If success were equal to the number of times people get fooled by someone, Microsoft would have been “the” most successful software maker around. First Windows ME and now Vista. Not to mention Live Spaces, whose presence was more like that of a gnat on a military radar.

Now Microsoft tried their best to look cool with this video made for their Marketing team, but look what the outcome was! Here’s Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street band. This is probably the worst video I’ve seen … ever! Supremely haggau!