kuzhali manickavel

bai yougaiz

2012-01-15T21:54:00.002+05:30

It is with much sadness that I announcethat this blog is going on indefinite hiatus. I hope to write and blog againat some point but just in case that is a long time coming, I want to say thankyou to the kind and gracious people who have read and commented here, it hasbeen a privilege to get to know some of you and I would like to dedicate thismesmerizing gif of marlon brando to your sparkling faces.

from here, please right clicky if he is not being mesmerizing

bai yougaiz and thank you.

<3

tawa is a hot iron girdle used by women in Indian culture

2011-12-18T18:03:00.000+05:30

This blog post title is a good example ofhow I learn something new and amazing about Indian culture every day. I thoughta tawa was used for the cooking purposes. Littledid I know that this contraption is actually for holding all that Indianculture together. Did you know this? I did not know this. I think so this iswhat makes Indian women so great so hats off to you gals and congrats on yourhot iron girdles, thank you for your efforts in supporting Indian culture.

I now want to talk about one of my favoritepastimes. This is something I used to do a lot. I don’t do it as much anymore,not because I ‘learned my lesson’ but because I don’t go out as much. If I did,I’m sure I’d still be doing this. So anyway, sometimes when trying to be allbadass and ‘one with the people’, one goes to rough and tumble places like teakadais or hotels, where we eat on banana leaves! This is often done so you cantell people later about how you are so badass you sometimes eat off banana leaves. If one is very lucky, one will spota small child, cleaning or washing up in the local eating vicinity. After beingsatiated and satisfied by a ‘common man’s meal’ which one can write about laterthat might (fingers crossed!) be picked up by a foreign publication, one callsone of these small children over. Small child is busy working but will come ifyou call them because that’s what they do. You ask them their name, ask themwhy they aren’t in school, and then (my favorite part!!111) you launchinto a very big lecture about how education is important and small personshould go to school, study hard to get first rank, learn computers and Englishand achieve great things. I would often say things like ‘when I come here nexttime, I don’t want to see you here. You better be in school!’ I was totally notcoming back but small person doesn’t need to know that. It’s important to givechildren something to hope for and telling poor kids that I’m coming back givesthem hope.

If some adult was locally available, I liked to pull them up too,pointing out the many schemes and special measures available to help children‘like that’. There’s reservation for poor folk! Free textbooks! Free laptops!It’s so EASY to get educated and be more better! But you have to work hard! Youhave to work hard to get this easy education! You have to work hard at working hard and work hard because you have to work hard. I am not poor (thangod!) but I can speak English so I feel totally qualified to tell you what you should be doing with yourself. Clearly you don’t know all thisso imma sit back and tell you all about it while I wait for some transportationto take me back to civilization.

This was my favorite pastime for manyreasons- it made me feel smart and good about myself. It made me feel like I‘made a difference’, that there will be one less uneducated child in the worldbecause of me- I didn’t even have to do anything, I just had to talk like Iknew what I was talking about! I liked to believe that my advice also helped tofight poverty in some way because if poor people were more smart, they’d know thatpoverty is a bad thing, right? And they wouldn’t do it, right? Later on, when I needed to argue with peopleabout Indian topics, these kinds of incidents made me feel like I am qualifiedto talk about things.

The idea of poor folk winning at life andteaching these poor folk how to win at life is a wonderful topic for cinema-some of my favorite Tamil movies are about this. I can’t tell you howheartwarming and empowering it is to see movies where poor child woke up early,cooked food for sick mother, studied by candlelight while rocking baby sisterin arms, then went out to work three jobs, ate one meal a day, and did allsorts of mad studying in between that equipped him with the skills necessary tofight corruption and smack the brown off English-speaking chicks in jeans. DidI mention that by earning two paisa a day, he was able to become a millionairewhen he was big because he didn’t waste his money on bad poorpeople things likealcohol and beedis? And he beat poverty! In two hours! I mean if he can do itin two hours, what’s with all the poor people in real life? Why are they goingto movies and buying cell phones when they should… be doing whatever it is poorpeople are supposed to do to make them not poor?

This pastime of mine was a good thing to dofor fun, especially when the small child in question was photogenic. And itcertainly makes great fiction, esp. when you write about third world countrieswhere people are third world and stuff but then they work hard and become first world winners. I’m just not sure if one should write how-not-to-be-poor internet articles about it though. Gene Marks has received a lot of slack for this article and I feel like none ofthis fallout would have happened if this had simbly been timepass kept outside the internet or if it was a fiction piece or best of all, a Tamil movie. ATamil movie is always a good option because you can include song and dancenumbers, fight sequence and we always appreciate it when people use technical computerwords like Google.

Now let us talk about RuPaul. I wasinformed that I shouldn’t blog about RuPaul’s Drag Race anymore because menaren’t supposed to dress like women because they are supposed to dress like menbecause they are men. Also my blog posts which are incomprehensible on a goodday somehow disintegrate entirely when I talk about RuPaul. And anyway, Logostill isn’t letting nonAmericans watch the show online but they let us see theMeet the Queens clip for the new season? So that we can all feel bad in ournonAmerican countries? So I will just say #TEAMSHARONNEEDLES!!!11 Season 4 is going to be CANCELLED!!1

Now I want to talk about Kalasala song from Osthi. I like this song because LR Easwari soundsnice autotuned and the chorus is great slow-motion walking music. Although there alsoseems to be a dog panting in the middle and it is little unnerving to hear T Rajendar screaming Ikada Ra Ra into your ear. According to this clip, LR Easwari isthe Asha Bhonsle of the South. Is LR Easwari some indecipherable thing that canonly be understood in terms of Asha Bhonsle? Or does this mean that Asha Bhonsle is the LR Easwari ofthe North? I cannot able to understand this. Similarly, I cannot able tounderstand when people say that Bengaluru is the Silicon Valley/ Boston/Manchester/Greater Matcham Scratchings in Lower Market Snodpicket of India. Or that Chennaiis ‘the Texas of South India’. What does that even mean? It means ‘ohai! Imentioned Texas so that I can tell all you coll people that I have been toTexas, which is the Chennai of the United States.’

Anyway, the Kalasala clip also says thatT. Rajendar is the RD Burman of the South. The accepted practice is thatwhenever someone mentions T. Rajendar on the internet, you have to immediately linkto a ‘t rajendar speaking english’ video and go lol at t rajendar speakingEnglish lol. Instead of doing that, I would like to share this interview clip which actually features Simbu and some other dudes but it also has T Rajendarso it’s basically just all about T Rajendar talkingdancingsingingmakingastrologicalpredictionmakingpoetryplayingdrumbeatboxingtakingoffwatch and everyone else gets reduced topieces of furniture that sometimes talk. I’m not sure of this proves that he isthe RD Burman of the South but anyway. I remember once I heard T Rajendar speakingduring election tyme and he said ‘Vaiko, nee oru psycho’ and I went lol butalso felt bad for Vaiko but not very much so. #kalasala #thankyoupiratedvisumoviesforevaforsendingthisclip

I would now like to say bai with thisGolden Tweet from Shahid Kapoor.

‘Too bloody random ... So seize everymoment n juice it ... Cause it'll never come back ... Work hard always did ..Party harder ! Loca style’

bindaaz4lyffe muthafuckaz

i am very much not aware and least bothered also

2011-12-04T13:57:00.001+05:30

Haifraans. I unfortunately have come backin the return. With myself, I bring this wholly incoherent and incomprehensibleblog post consisting of things I have seen/heard/read/thought about in the lastcouple of months. The post is too long also and I am so sorry. Okso these are some interesting lines that I thought wereinteresting.

I am very muchnot aware and least bothered also

I feel this isa great thing to say in general. It is also very helpful in so many situationsin our daily life. For instance, acquaintance gives you her demonchild to holdeven though you have made it quite clear that you will drop demonchild if shegives it to you. She gives it to you anyway because you are an unmarried womanand you need to learn how to carry other people’s babies. As was foretold byyou, you drop said demonchild and acquaintance is all #rage and ‘you dropped mychild!’ and you’re like ‘I am very much not aware and least bothered also’ okthat’s a bad example and you totally shouldn't drop other people's demonchildren because it's so mean.

Paper carrotcannot be used in the preparation of broth.

this is from a half-page color adtypethingthat appeared on the front page of The New Indian Express. I think it was forthe promotion of Indianness which is a very promotable thing

From the year2000 onwards Americans have continuously received Nobel Prizes for Economics,but American Economy is doing both rock ‘n’ roll and kathakali dances.

fromselfsame aforementioned adtypething

Ha!oh…

from AnthaAsingamana Padam aka The Dirty Picture song Ooh la la, thank you for bringingback this oldskool itemgirl sound and thank you also for proving that an itemgirl can still be lucrative even when she is dead. That is the best kind ofitem girl evar.

ThenI wrote a story and it got published yougaiz!!11 This hasn’t happened very muchlately so I am excited. The story is called Discuss How India Will Become A Prosperous And Secure Nation InThe Next Five Years, which is very much in keeping with the Indian culture. So thank youto Indian culture and to Ani Smith for helping this story to exist and givingit a place to sit.

ThenI went to Karnataka! I trekked barefoot among the mofussil areas, ate withtribal people in forestmountains, imbibed strong alcoholic and narcoticproducts usually consumed by “poor people” thus proving im badass in a nativesort of way, got typhoidmalariacholera and cured myself through sheerwillpower, wrote a novel longhand on deadleaves and watched sunrises fromisolated jungle areatypethings and now I’m going to tell you ALL about it.Actually I just went to Bengaluru and ate a lot of fast food and wore socks. Iremember seeing three things of interest there.

A license platethat said ‘Hai Lord Venki!’ .idk, it seemed interesting then. not so much now

An ad that wassuperexcited about a female deejay who was female and had female deejayingpowers which are female which means they have boobies like in the picture ofthe female deejay with boobies. This ad made me feel so bad for the mandeejays whodon’t get this kind of publicity because so many of them are flat-chested and theylack the ability to spin dubstep with their uteruses.#papercarrotcannotbeusedinthepreparationofbroth#sexismismeanyougaiz

Then I saw this billboardof Rob Schneider’s face in the blore latenight sky and thought to myself ‘o maicheezuz adam sandler’s massive face is hanginglike an American sun in the night of the india sky! Surely this is a sign that wewill rise and become great world power through the power of Walmart!'# americaneconomyisdoingbothrock‘n’ rollandkathakalidances

And now, just asit was every Indian’s duty to join AnnaHazareMovement, I must now talk aboutthe Kolaveri song. I like this song for the following reasons.

It is nice tosee a Tamil video clip go viral without it involving Baby Simbu and someone onBuzzfeed calling it ‘crazy I don’t even know what the fuck is going on hereBollywood song’, which would inevitably lead to a comment that Indiansshouldn’t be making movies because we so po’# papercarrotcannotbeusedinthepreparationofbroth,#Ha!oh…

I am veryappreciative of songs that don’t have boyfellows in jeanspant talking about howgirlfellows in jeanspant are ruining Tamil culture because they are wearingjeanspant, said the boyfellow in the jeanspant. This often leads to speculationthat girlfellow needs onetightslap because that’s the most effective way tosave Tamil culture. #betteryoucanavoidit, #soupboyswhodontwanttoslapyourfaceareawesome

It made Kamaal RKhan say this on Twitter.

Take one box oftin and put some coins in and shake it so you will hear malayalam language andfor me kolaweri song is same. #Ha!oh... #maintainplease #notestakinginthehandsnackstaking #pahpahpahpah

Songs in strangephoren languages are often translated but this song gave an opportunity for theerudite and the in-the-know to “decode” it. Why it needs decoding? Because itis not written in phoren language. It is written in magical unicorn alien languagecalled “Mangled Tamil/ Broken English.” This is a very unique language spokenby magical Tamil people and broken English people, Superstar, and the engsteryouth who are doing bothkathakali and rock n roll dances. Did I mention that the language is weird?Because wow it’s just lykke so weird yougaiz. How weird? So weird that peeps kepttalking about how their Injun peeps in America and the UK thought it was soweird. This is golden rule- when something weird happens in India, don’t talkto the Indians living in India about it. Talk to people who don’t live here or who used to know people who lived here in 1974, as they will be most knowledgeable and havethe grassroots and current information regarding this and all items and itemnumbers generally. Alsomangled or broken is always a good way to describe something that’s different.#onlyenglish #pahpahpahpah #holycowdyingnow

I like how thewhite skin- black heart line implied that Tamil people were racist against whitewomen. Or was it women in general. Or was it women having heartdefects. Idk, anyway, this led me to fondly recollect some of my favoritestereotypes about South Indian Woman as a whole because apparently South Indianmainly means Tamil, little bit Malayalam, kindabutnotreally Telugu and a lolzurnotreallySouthIndianbutwhatevs amountof Kannadiga. Some of these stereotypes are culled from the internet, othersfrom real life, all of them are true because people say so. Also, one should never blog about stereotypes because they are racist. #wadachangeovermama #nowtunechange

South IndianWomen Are all Fucking DogHippos with no Dress Sense

This one islittle confusing because I’m not sure if it means every single one of us is similarto the mythical doghippopotamus with regard to facial features, body mass andstructure or if every single South Indian woman is allegedly in constant statesof fornication with doghippopotami. Considering that many folks on the internetlike to see ‘south indian bending aunty fucking’ and ‘south indian auntyfucking and feeling pain’, perhaps the fucking doghippo is just another facetof this surprisingly rich oeuvre. Also there seems to be some implication that ourSouth Indianness robs us of the sense to dress, which is why we all lack the skills necessary to coverour boobies and crotchimus areas when we go out in the publics. You were wondering about that, no? Well this is whybecause. Overall verymuch against the Indian culture, especially the fucking hippos part. #ha!oh…

South IndianWomen are all Beautiful, Smart, Witty, Funny, Clever, Intelligent, Sexy, Cool,Great, Wonderful, Talented, Beautiful, Smart, Witty, Funny, Clever

Ok so someonesays that South Indian women are fucking doghippos and not having any dresssense and someone else valiantly defends us all by saying ALL SOUTH INDIAN AREBEAUTIFUL SMART TALENTED SEXY etc etc. Aw. Here you are, thinking you’re smartbecause you read a lot and stuff like that but it’s really because you’re SouthIndian! This exercise is called killing the face of people who say bad thingsabout South Indians by nice things about South Indians, which is very #winning because it involves defending the South Indian women who were not in a position to defend themselves,possibly because they were too busy fucking doghippos. It has been myexperience that these righteous flowers of praise are often followed by lineslike ‘I love South Indian food’, which always makes me nervous because I wonderif this means that I have to cook for them as a way of saying thank you fordefending my South Indian Womanhood. Once someone said ‘oneof my friends used to be South Indian’. And that also scared me because I waslike, what do you mean ‘used to be’, what happened to them , did you eat them? Noshade though, I totes do the same thing- I mean whenever I see a white person, which isn’t that often, Ilike to tell them how much I like English music and that I read English booksand can even speak English sometimes and will you adopt me as your thirdworldIndian child please? Also I feel like this stereotype is scary like that one angle who will talk about how he loves all South Indian women. ALL ofthem. Without exception. And you immediately make mentalnote to stay very faraway from him all the time forever. #omaikarpu

All South IndianWomen Are Dark Which Is Perfectly Ok Because I like Dark Women! Actually I Prefer Them!

Thangod!1111 Wewould have been in big trouble if you didn’t like and prefer our deskyseksual South Indian darkness! We as apeople were going to commit collective suicide and now you have given us areason to live. Now, what happens when you come across a South Indian woman andshe is not ‘dark’? Does it mean she isn’t South Indian? Yes that’s exactly whatit means. ALL South Indian women are dark. Every last one of them. But someonehas said that’s perfectly ok for us to be like that so we should try and be okwith that too.

Please don’tleave me comments saying all this means I hate Naan South Indians or that you’dlike to add your own stereotypes to this list because frankly this blog canonly take so much truth in one posting.

Ashwini Ye Na

I Got it fromAgnes

Winner

kbai u coll peepal bindaaz4lyffe

i am taking leave yougaiz

2011-09-28T00:34:00.002+05:30

back in december, please convey my pranams to all at home, just enjoy life and be rocking

From cow-worship to satellite communications ranges the progress made by Indians.

2011-09-12T22:53:00.000+05:30

Hay yougaiz! Remember once upon a time like about a week ago everyone kept talking about something called AnnaHazareIssue? Remember that? Since we’re not talking about that anymore, does it mean we won? Please answer me yes or no. Anywaiz, this blog post title is stolen from The Illustrated Weekly of India Annual 1973- The New Landscape of India. It is from the essay on Gujarat and these illustrious words can be found nestled beneath a black and white picture of a very large satellite dish and in front of said satellite dish there are cows tooling about and doing cowish things that cows are wont to do. So in that way, the line makes sense.

I recently read The Illustrated Weekly of India Annual 1973- The New Landscape of India although maybe ‘read’ is too strong a word. I glanced through it but not really also. Sometimes I smelled it and wondered why some old magazines have that somewhat kind of smell because basically I have poor reading skills. Anyway, I think the aim of this issue was to feature essays on how all the Indian states and union territories were awesome in 1973. Independence had been won, the Green Revolution was bringing on hybrid seeds and insecticides, life expectancy was up, literacy was up, the snail was on the thorn, morning was at seven and we were just the dopest flyest OG pimp hustler gangster player hardcore motherfucking third world country in the world yougaiz. Here are some things I thought were neat about The Illustrated Weekly of India Annual 1973- The New Landscape of India.

1. The civics section of one of my school text books taught me that one of the reasons for population explosion in India is ‘the fatalistic outlook of the common man.’ Basically Common Man is going around saying hay yougaiz India is depressing and we’re all going to die, let’s go make baybeez. Similarly, this magazine taught me the following

-          “Naga women have the reputation of being excellent housewives. They are hard-working, smart and faithful to their men”. Luckily that first sentence is there because if you read the second sentence on its own, you’d think you were reading about some exciting breed of domestic animal they have in the Nagaland. Also, isn’t it neat how back then, peeps probably had no idea where Nagaland was because that was 1973 but now in 2011, peeps are like, Nagaland is like ManipurMizoramTripura types place, right? Somewhere over there, no? #progress

-          “Mizo girls who only a few decades ago sent their young men on head-hunting sprees are now modernized and sing soulful love songs to the tune of the modern guitar.” So many amazing things happening in this sentence that I feel it needs to be on a really big t-shirt with flashing lights so that people can read it in the dark and from very far away also.

-          “Kashmir is renowned for the beauty of its women and the skill of its artisans”. Later we are informed that’ the greatest ornament of a Kashmiri woman is her modesty’. So basically you just need to mix the Nagaland womans with the Kashmir womans to create ultimate Indian wife, no? #nationalintegration

For some reason, none of the writers felt the need to make such fabulously sweeping statements about the various dudes in the various states. Why such blatant sexism in 1973? Is modesty not the greatest ornament of a Kashmiri man too? Or do Kashmiri men not wear ornaments because that would be gay? Are the Mizo men not modernized and singing soulful love songs? After all, they don’t need to go out headhunting anymore, no? What they are doing in this spare time now? Why has no one said ‘Naga men have the reputation of being all-round excellent dudes.’? Is all this the early ruinous effect of naansensefeminism in modern India? I think so yes it is.

2. Another thing that my school text books told me was that we are all Indian caste. We are casteless but we are Indian. Indian is my caste. Or something. Anywaiz, this magazine also propagated against the caste and region-based ebils by perpetuating caste and region-based stereotyping in the following manner

“The Kammas, compared with the Reddis, are known to be urbane, astute and sophisticated.”

If I was a Reddi I think I might be thinking about whether I should be thinking about whether I should get offended by that or not but I'm not a Reddi so it doesn't matter. Anyway, this following one is my personal favorite

“Self-pity comes as naturally to the Andhra as self-praise does to the Tamilian.”

My Tamilian self would now like to say that I am awesome. Zomg, I just self-praised myself. Self-praising Tamils is like SO TRUE YOUGAIZ!!!11 See? Stereotypes really ARE real!!11

3. Let us now desist with the unfair practice of cherry-picking lines from the magazine, mainly because there are too many of them. Now let’s look at the pictures. We have already spoken about the large satellite dish juxtaposed with tooling cows. Other interesting pics included the strikingly dramatic black and white pics of the authors and the alarming number of pics of topless young women accompanied by descriptors that said things like ‘beautiful and bold naked tribal girl being beautiful and bold and naked’. In stark contrast, there were no pics of topless young tribal men, possibly because they are not as beautiful, bold and naked as the tribal girls. I feel like the fact that all the essays seemed to be written by men was neatly balanced by this profusion of pics of young women and their boobies. In this way, the magazine accommodated men and women in the different capacities that they are most proficient in. Because men and women are different yougaiz and they are good at different things, as is wonderfully expressed in this following ad that was also found in this magazine.

This ad has a foreigner (or an Indian who looks very foreign), foreign language spoken by white people, kamasutra pic and a really funny joke. No really, it's funny. Really. This makes it a relevant banking ad because there is a difference between a bank and a bank yougaiz. We can see this is successful ad because I have gone to the trouble of taking a pic of it and posting it on my blog. But that is not my favorite ad. This one is.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that ‘figure developer’, really means ‘this will make your boobies big yougaiz.’ When I first saw this, I thought it was for ladies personality development course because you can see that in the ‘before’ pics, the ladies are sad and wearing sleeveless. In the ‘after’ pics they are smiling even though they have somehow lost their sleeveless and are only wearing bra. So maybe that is personality development in a way yougaiz. Again, doesn’t seem to cater to the men but that’s probs because manboobs are gross yougaiz.

Wow, so much man/woman whining in this blog post, no? I must be on my period or something! Anyway I want to end this by saying that it is very unfair to snark about a 1973 magazine in 2011, especially when I didn’t really read it in the first place. But I feel like in order to understand where we are and where we are going, we need to understand where we were and the best way to do that is to read magazines from 1973 and make fun of them. Also it is important to remember that we are now in 2011 and we are awesome because we have internet and there are many Indians living in America. This means we no longer stereotype or make sweeping statements about people with uteruses and people from different regions, different castes and different stratas of society. We don’t even do it in ads anymore, as is clearly illustrated in this ad from TataDocomo about the thieving maidservant . Because maids really do steal everything yougaiz! I even wrote an echapbook all about it! I also wrote a book which has pics of insects but no topless tribal women because that’s against Indian culture.

bai.

ps- Didn't You Kill My Brother by Alexei Sayle. This is one of the best things I have ever seen in my life yougaiz.

i hate people who are against india and support corruption ‘like’ if you agree!!11111

2011-08-29T16:05:00.000+05:30

You know how there’s these groups on Facebook that say JOIN ONLY IF YOU REALLY LOVE INDIA AND ARE TRUE SON OF BHARAT MATA and the allcaps scare you and stuff so you hesitate to join and then all these peeps are like ‘wtf, why didn’t you join the group you fucking terrorist.’ So then you poke around the group a little and you find comments like ‘kashmir belongs to india all muslims should remember this is HINDUstan’ and ‘clearly this aruna roy female is lesbian for opposing jan lokpal’. And so you’re like ‘um, no don’t want’ and peeps are like ‘JOIN THIS GROUP OR I WILL SET YOU ON FIRE’ and you start sobbing and saying ‘Gawd I don’t want to die’ and they’re like ‘JOIN THIS GROUP OR I’M UNFRIENDING/UNFOLLOWING YOU ON ALL SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS AND I WILL TELL EVERYONE WHAT A BAD INDIAN YOU ARE JAI HIND’ and you become fearful for your life and stuff?

Yeah.

So anywaiz, I’d like to share some of the highlights that made AnnaHazareIssue really neato for me. Because that’s EXACTLY what this country needs right now, another AnnaHazareIssue blog post. So here it is, My List of Salient Features which made AnnaHazareIssue Salient For Myself

1. It made Bipasha Basu say this in Twitter- ‘Ppl's outcry under Anna's guidance should not go deaf.The govt has to reach a dialogue and show that they are sentimental towards the ppl.’

2. Illustrious acquaintance received illustrious sms requesting us to show support for AnnaHazareIssue by turning off all lights. IN THE DAYTIME YOUGAIZ!!111 How can anyone see you are showing support if you turn off the lights in the daytime when there’s like fullsun happening in the sky and stuff? What about all those people who are just turning off lights because it’s daytime and they are actually not in support of AnnaHazareIssue and simply they are acting in misleading manner? Wtf yougaiz. Anyway, the real question is, did I do this? Was I a good Indian? And the answer is…um…..HELLZ YEAH!!111 And you know what?

from here

Please clicky the chicken to experience the epicness of the gif. Also, if nothing else, the lights knew I supported AnnaHazareIssue and maybe that's what is really important here.

3. There were times when one looked at the supporters of this anti-corruption movement and one said ‘YAY JAI HIND YAY NO CORRUPTION YAY PRETTEH CELEBRITIES YAY LOOK IT’S…wait, what? WTF are they doing there? I thought this was ANTI corruption movement. WTF YOUGAIZ!!111’. This is where I would have liked to say something about a certain illustrious individual with a ponytail but I’m scared of being sued yougaiz.

4. When people call you Anti Indian for not supporting AnnaHazareIssue, it sometimes sounds like they are calling you Aunty Indian. That is like so weird and confusing, especially when you see gentsfellow being called Aunty Indian.

5. Despite the fact that a number of people wrote articles “against Anna”, it was Arundhati Roy who once again wins the You Make Me So Mad I Want To Eat My Face award for making an alarming number of our populace like so mad yougaiz. Granted, she has a bit of an advantage since hating on Ms. Roy is one of our favourite national pastimes. I think so it is only rivalled by playing carroms and enjoying the casual consumption of roasted groundnuts and other various pulses. Also I think many people were getting Aruna Roy and Arundhati Roy mixed up here but since peeps be hatin' on both it weren't really no thang ya'll.

6. Sometimes you know what would happen? A stupid person would say ‘I don’t know about this yougaiz…’ to a group of rabid AnnaHazareIssue supporters. And said stupid person was immediately requested to provide a “better plan”. And because stupid person did not have A Better Plan To Get Rid Of Corruption In India in their pockets, they were requested to shut up their mouths jai hind. Sometimes they were also told to ‘go back to Pakistan’ which is very dated but lolzworthy nonetheless.

7. Voicing criticism of the AnnaHazareIssue apparently meant you loved corruption because it’s like SO. HAUT. Conversely, supporting AnnaHazareIssue meant you loved India and were incorruptible and hated corruption even though you have indulged in corruption activities but you couldn’t help that because India is like that only. I think it’s like those love songs where the lyrics are like ‘I hate myself for loving you but I can’t help loving you because I love you but I hate myself for loving you.’ Or something.

8. The Gandhi cap made a comeback yougaiz!

9. Fasting made a comeback! Even though Irom Sharmila has been fasting for about ten years now, it took this kerfuffle to make fasting haut enough for certain illustrious and informative sites to write about how fasting is good for health and will make you sexy apart from being an effective tool of democracy.

10. I thought I knew all about corruption because I’ve had to pay bribes yougaiz and it was like so unfair and totes hurt my feelings. Then while actually reading about corruption and all this other stuff, I decided the whole thing was too complicated and I was like wtf WAY easier to just turn those lights off in the daytime, no? Yes.

And now, I would like to end this by saying why yes! This IS yet another uninformed, negative and useless nonsense blog post written by yet another elitist, English female blogger who knows nothing about the Real India, nothing about the issues at hand and only knows how to sit in front of computer and criticize one of India’s greatest movements against corruption. Still, I feel like this shouldn't stop you from buying my book or buying my echapbook. Ideally, you could buy both. Also, I just remembered that I actually wanted to write about porn and instead I wrote blog post about Aunty Indian filled with lustysexual feelings about the corruption. Maybe that’s like porn in a way.

baiyougaiz

Is ‘yougaiz’ against Indian culture? It probably is yougaiz.

2011-08-14T22:13:00.000+05:30

Dear whoever landed on this blog in the hopes of finding ‘west mambalam free raped girls phone number’, not to sound all judgy and stuff but WTF??!!1111 Also you are gross. Also

To continue in the wtf vein, a certain Maureen Chao who is allegedly Vice Consul of illustrious US Consulate allegedly spoke about her Foreigner in Indian Train experience which is not that interesting but allegedly the experience made her so dirty and dark that she had to tell us that ‘I became dirty and dark, like a Tamilian’ . Thankfully the US consulate website made everything ok by posting this ‘Ms. Chao deeply regrets if her unfortunate remarks offended anyone, as that was certainly not her intent.' I’m really glad they did this yougaiz because I was SO about to get offended because that is what whiny third world colored folk are wont to do, no? Yes. Anywaiz, my favorite aspects of this little kerfuffle are as follows.

1. She said these awesome and empowering words about the Tamil people WHILE STANDING INSIDE THE TAMIL NADU YOUGAIZ!!11. Seriously. If you are not on drugs at the time, what kind of space does your brain need to be in for that to happen? At what point, while you are speechifying, does it seem like a good idea to say this? These are extremely relevant questions when you consider that the illustrious Maureen Chao is not your adorable but embarrassingly bigoted grandmother who says things like this in public because she is your grandmother. Maureen Chao is a foreign diplomat type person type thing. And I’m pretty sure that somewhere in foreign diplomat type person type thing school, they have a course where they teach you not to refer to the natives as dark and dirty while making public speeches. Or maybe they only have that course for First World countries because Third World natives really ARE dark and dirty. LOL!11 That is a clever joke. If you did not laugh at it, you are not only racist, you are a racist that can’t take a joke and that’s the worst kind of racist ever yougaiz.

2. I am also very much louing the illustrious people who are taking the high road on this one, kindly educating the rest of us on how us Indians should consider that an apology has been issued so that makes everything ok, it was ‘just a joke’ and most importantly, we should remember that all of us want to study in America and then live there forever and ever and that is FAR more important than some diplomat saying something about Tamilians being dark and dirty. You’ll never get that green card honey if you upbraid US consulate peeps. Come on now, eyes on the prize.

Now onto less disturbing things. The illustrious Adam Roberts said nice things about my echapbook and my collection. This illustrious blog also had nicethings to say about my collection.

And now, I must take this opportunity to wish advance JaiHind greetings to all my Indian brothers and sisters on our forthcoming IndependenceDay celebrations. In honor of this hallowed dry day, I would like to call for Nationwide ban on certain kinds of wines, specifically whines, specifically whines about how this, that, up, down and your father in law are all against Indian Culture or causing Indian Culture to die. Indian culture is not going to die yougaiz. I think some little kid in Pondicherry was spotted hawking bags while shouting ‘Indian culture!’ or something so not only is Indian Culture not dead, it is very lucrative also for the common peoples. Heretoforehenceoforththerewith, I would personally like to say that I think this kind of whining is against Indian culture and so I call for ban against the following whines because they are also seditious encouraging our youth to go along the morally wrong path and is counterproductive to development of this great nation jai hind. Kindly request all to do the needful yours sincerely.

JAIHIND!!!11111 Whine aka I Am Indian Hear Me Rawr

This whine is RAWR LIKE INDIAN TIGER. But nay. India is home of the nonviolence so let us not be the violence. Instead, let us make up for the lack of violence by being loud, obnoxious and crazytown while maintaining very small attention span. For instance, let us look at the gay pride parades and slut walks but let us look at them from a distance because gay pride parades and slut walks are sogross and scawy ALL THIS NOT PART OF INDIAN CULTURE JAIHIND!!1111 Safely ensconced in our little boxes that are having no air and armed with our fabulous ignorance about gay pride parades and the slut walks because who wants to know about such things anyway, let us declare them both against Indian culture because they are both…walking? No, maybe let’s declare walking to be against Indian culture later on. Let us say they are against Indian culture because OH LOOK A SHINEEE PENNEH!!111 SHINEE PENNEH IS AGAINST INDIAN CULTURE BECAUSE IT IS NOT PAISA JAIHIND 111!!!!

Country Whine aka I Am Awesome Because When I Wave To The Lepers They Wave Back At Me And I Know The Names Of Two Auto Drivers

This whine states that Indian Culture can only exist in rural areas and among the poor people because that is the Real India. The rest of India is Fake India. Popular accents of this whine include talking about roughing it among the natives and how regional languages are the only real Indian languages and people who can’t/won’t talk in these languages should be ‘thrown out’. Naturally these whines are more effective when they are delivered in English, which thankfully happens alot. How else will the Fake Indians understand yougaiz??!!! While these whines like to be “gritty” in order to appear realistic, there is always a touch of romanticism of the louly green rice fields and the scent of poor and rural Indian things wafting on the poor and rural Indian breeze and flute playing and big white ambassador car rolling along the road carrying sunglassed hero who has come back from America after completing studies- chee, sorry that is opening for eighties Tamil movie. But it works here also. Also please to note. Sometimes Country Whine comes from people who are no longer in the country but feel they are in the best position to whine about Indian Culture because they came here for vacation once in 1984. This is known as Foreign Country Whine.

Homemade Whine aka We Run This Motha

This whine defines the entire spectrum of Indian history, culture and its people solely on the basis of the whiner's family, nextdoor neighbors and their six assorted friends. So if they don’t do it, then it must not be Indian and must be against Indian culture. Apart from the bizarre things they say, what makes this whine interesting is that they speak with a great amount of conviction. And why wouldn’t you, when you believe that you and your six friends constitute the entire Indian experience. Popular aspects of this whine include saying things like ‘we do not do such things in India’ 'that is not Indian' and my personal favorite, ‘you please leave this to the West, as it is not part of this culture’ .

I Haz A Sad Whine aka The Bluebird of Happiness in My Life Has Been Replaced By The Indian Boiler Chicken of Depression

Watery with tears of nostalgia, this whine laments the fact that Indian culture is dead/dying and that everything Indian suddenly isn’t Indian anymore because it is different from the India of 1979. It is marked by sadness, bewilderment and utter dismay that India had the audacity to change over time. Did it wantingly change or was it CIA propaganda? Why didn’t things stay the same? Who stole my 1979India? Where are the pistagreen walls and ambassador cars of my youth?

this just seemed very appropriate for this whine and was stolen from here

jaihind vazhgabaratham yougaiz.

is englishbullying in modern india like hipster racism without the hipsters and the racism yougaiz please answer me yes or no?

2011-08-01T23:30:00.000+05:30

This blog post title is something I would like to talk about a little later. First, did I mention I have an echapbook out called ‘Eating Sugar, Telling Lies’ which you can buy and enjai like anything? Did I also mention that my collection with the tediously long title is now available as an ebook so you don’t have to wander all over the countryside trying to find it? Didn’t mention? Ok so I have mentioned it now.

Now can we talk about the slew of shirtless dudes that have apparently bombarded the Bollywood and just ruined everything? I feel like peeps were complaining about this when I was in college also and that was a REALLY long time ago yougaiz. Maybe this is one of those things that people like to periodically bemoan, like the death of the short story, which apparently has been going on dying for many years now. Anywaiz, I believe some people are very upset about said slew of shirtless dudes because I think so in Bollywood only the women are supposed to appear in various stages of undress. In this way, Bollywood is very similar to Hollywood, thus proving that there is unity in the diversity. Or maybe peeps are upset because shirtless fellows are against Indian culture. Maybe like the feminism and the gayness, shirtless dudes are one another Western crapnonsense nuisance. This of course would explain why in our great Indian epics we have great Indian man hero type people fitted out in shirts which covered their modesty and their bellybuttons. This is in marked contrast to certain women of low character who always displayed their bellybutton as a way of seducing great Indian man hero type people.

from somewhere on jezebel.com

Can you see his bellybutton? You can totally see his bellybutton yougaiz!!11 OMG DON'T LOOK AT HIS BELLYBUTTON YOUGAIZ OR YOU MIGHT GET PREGNANT !!111

Anyway then what happened means I watched a television commercial the other day. From what I remember of it, a man could not find his socks and his wifelet was pissed off because she had to come and find his socks for him. Then the teevee showed us a shot of some Bran Flakes (I think), which tells us that one of these illustrious individuals was constipated. Someone told me that Indians don’t get constipated because apparently that’s something that only happens to white people. And here we are in 2011 watching an Indian commercial for Bran Flakes. This is called progress of the globalization. Anyhoo, because I am just a silly old woman with a silly old uterus, I thought the constipated individual was the man, who was possibly so backed up that he could not even find his own socks anymore. But nay- twas the woman who was irregular. Her irregularity caused the irregular behavior of wondering why a grown man can’t find his own socks. Thankfully by the end of the commercial, the woman had her Bran Flakes and the snail was on the thorn, morning was at seven and the man had a woman to cheerfully find his socks for him. I’m really glad that commercial ended well because I was really worried about the socks!!11 Who would find them?!!11 Would they be lost forever?!11 So much drama yougaiz.

Now, I would like to talk about this blog post’s title. This is something that occurred to me a while back, when I noticed that an Indian name was trending on Twitter. The Indian name belonged to an Indian dude who had an Indian blog that was filled with Indian English and it was just the funniest thing evarevar yougaiz. The trending seemed to be largely made up of that unique form of EnglishBullying that we are so fond of doing in our onenumber country to anyone who has the audacity to use Indian English like it is a language that people actually speak in India or something. This bullying is not really bullying yougaiz because apparently it helps the other person to ‘see his mistake and correct his ‘bad’ English’. So it’s kinda like the mean twin of the Benevolent English Despotism I once blogged about before. And while they may appear to be different, I feel they are both are coming from the same family only.

The bullying in itself was not very interesting but it was done in that slightly nervous, loud and defensive way that makes EnglishBullying so adorbs- like hipster racism joketype things, it is extremely important to go along and laugh at everything because if you don't, you either don’t have a sense of humor or you are pretending to be American or you are a terrorist or you have your period or something. I myself did not laugh because I did not really see what we were supposed to be laughing at. On the one hand, we had this individual who had offended Mother India by having a blog filled with Indian English which apparently is “the horrible English”. And then we had peeps tweeting things like ‘‘god please save d India from such fellows who use d English in such a manner jai hind!’ I found all this very similar to a forward I received some time back, which snarked about the similar horrible English one finds on certain shaadi.com profiles. This consisted of taking a profile that was written in “bad” English with “bad” grammar and then following it with a comment that read something like ‘next time you plz ask the help in framing sentence to save us from you’re painful grammar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’.

I’m guessing that the English used by one party is “better” than that used by the other, although I am unable to see just where the betterment is. I am also unable to understand why it is so important to jump up and down and frantically scream about "the horrible Englishes" or if people are aware of what it looks like when you frantically scream about "the horrible Englishes'" while using phrases like "the horrible Englishes". Admittedly, I probably shouldn’t be talking about this at all. Not only is this blog is riddled with bad English and grammar, I have no qualms in admitting that not only was I student of Government Girls Higher Secondary School in the Tamil Nadu, I also failed English in the same. I also failed English in Canada although there it was called “Language Arts”. Point being that I have failed English in First and Third World countries so that’s probably why I cannot discern the subtle but incredibly important differences which makes one of these Englishes moar better than the other.

Instead, I will end all this with this poem by Nissim Ezekiel. I like this poem very much but perhaps this man is somewhat to blame for the goingon population explosion of that awful thing called Indian English because blatantly he has written poem using the same. Hopefully the EnglishBullyingBrigade will be able to put this man and his horrible English in his place soon and save the India from such fellows.

The Professor

Remember me? I am Professor Sheth.

Once I taught you geography. Now

I am retired, though my health is good.

My wife died some years back.

By God's grace, all my children

Are well settled in life.

One is Sales Manager,

One is Bank Manager,

Both have cars.

Other also doing well, though not so well.

Every family must have black sheep.

Sarala and Tarala are married,

Their husbands are very nice boys.

You won't believe but I have eleven grandchildren.

How many issues you have? Three?

That is good. These are days of family planning.

I am not against. We have to change with times.

Whole world is changing. In India also

We are keeping up. Our progress is progressing.

Old values are going, new values are coming.

Everything is happening with leaps and bounds.

I am going out rarely, now and then

Only, this is price of old age

But my health is O.K. Usual aches and pains.

No diabetes, no blood pressure, no heart attack.

This is because of sound habits in youth.

How is your health keeping?

Nicely? I am happy for that.

This year I am sixty-nine

and hope to score a century.

You were so thin, like stick,

Now you are man of weight and consequence.

That is good joke.

If you are coming again this side by chance,

Visit please my humble residence also.

I am living just on opposite house's backside.

- By Nissim Ezekial, stolen from here

Valerie- Amy Winehouse

baiyougaiz

We Like Gaiz Yougaiz!!1111

2011-07-18T17:33:00.000+05:30

This blog post title is awkwardly appropriated from this pic


stolen from here

This gaizappreciation pic is superneat but unfortunately, not very Indian at all. We can know it is not Indian from a number of salient nonIndian features.

The women are white and Indian women can’t be white because they are brown. Indian women are just like you and me expect they are brown yougaiz. The only time Indian women are not brown is when they turn white in order to become awesome wifelets or to get job that involves carrying a laptop and swishing one's hair in dramatic manner.
While all Indian women are overwhelmingly heterosexual, it is not part of Indian culture to blatantly advertise one's female heterosexuality by putting gentshead pictures on the wall, as this is a sign of loosecharacterbehaviors which ultimately leads to the decline of humanity and is also been known to be a strong contributing factor to the hole in the ozone layer.
Indian women do not wear skirts because they only wear Indian clothing which apart from being very Indian, forms a magical forcefield that deflects and prevents sexual molestation, which is something the jeanspant cannot do.
The men on the wall are mostly white and Indian women only like Indian men. I feel like this is the right time to clarify that this dude is actually Indian.


stolen from somewhere on jezebel.com

Here we can see him proving his Indianness and manliness by doing traditional Indian dance of Indianness and Manliness.

stolen from here

Now this blog will attempt to promote patriotism and nationalist thinking by sharing two very Indian things.

1. I have an echapbook out from Blaft called Eating Sugar, Telling Lies. You can buy it here. Or you can buy it here if you live in the US or UK. Or you can buy it here if you have a Kindle. This is an Indian thing because the title is taken from ancient Indian nursery rhyme which actively promotes criminal activities among the youth as well as juvenile diabetes.

2. My collection' Insects are Just like You and Me Except Some of them have Wings' is now available as an ebook and you can buy it here, here and here. This is an Indian thing because some people from other countries have said it is.

Since this blog post started with a very nonIndian thing, it seems appropriate to end on a nonIndian note, specifically what Ghulam Nabi Azad said recently about homosexuality. The illustrious Wikipedia tells me that he allegedly said that homosexuality was a disease, which is not that interesting because a lot of people like to say that. But he also allegedly said that homosexuality was ‘an import from Western Nations’, which you have to admit is so Indian like pistagreen walls. Shockingly, our illustrious health minister was allegedly misquoted out of context yougaiz, which seems to happen a lot when people talk about homosexuality.

I read about this on some illustrious Indian news sites and because I am stupid, I read the comments that followed the article. And I have to say that the idea that homosexuality is a Western thing is certainly a very popular notion, with an alarming number of people being very keen on drawing parallels between homosexuality and that other horrific Western import, feminism. Apparently the two have a lot in common, the biggest commonality being that they are not Indian. One illustrious individual once informed me that they were both CIA plots which I think is the same as being not Indian.

Then I thought about how there are certain Western imports which we take very active steps to appropriate. Like M Night Shyamalan. Remember when he got Oscared and we as a nation sort of fell all over ourselves saying that it was his Indianness that made him win? Isn't that like so embarrassing now yougaiz, especially since people don't seem to like him as much anymore? Appropriating people who win a Nobel Prize or awesome First World accolades in general is not easy. In some cases, the people haven't lived in India for eleventytwelvty years or they are like 'um, I'm not Indian' and we're like 'Oh yes you ARE!! AND WE'RE GOING TO PROVE IT !!111'

If homosexuality or feminism won an Oscar or something, maybe all the haters would stop hating, at least in a kneejerk sort of way. On the other hand, during the ensuing appropriation process we may have to prove that India invented homosexuality and women. That might be really hard yougaiz.

Trolling Saruman

Munni Badnaam Remix ft Black Eyed Peas (Dirty Bit) by MK

okbaiyougaiz.

stolen from here

I hate scorpions and liars. I love ice cream and my mother.

2011-07-04T18:42:00.002+05:30

Namaskaram Viewers! This blog post is little late but whatever. This blog post title is another one of those wonderful things sometimes found in old school/college autograph/slam books. This snazzy little thing is something I saw on a notebook cover.

A Hindoo pen is apparently some kind of antique pen and not a pen made out of Hindoos, which is disappointing because I think a pen made out of Hindoos would be superneat to have and show off to people also. Speaking of Hindoos, Out of Print magazine's mythology-inspired issue is out and includes a reprint of my story The Dolphin King. Speaking of dolphins, I would like to talk about some things I thought were interesting from my little corner of the world. They actually have nothing to do with dolphins and I’m sorry I misled you like that yougaiz.

We have a flyover and a Marry Brown which is why my templetown is now, and I quote “just like America”. The Marry Brown outlet here has pictures of massive white children on the wall. These massive white children are like the looming threat of American consumerism overpowering Indian culture and the everlingering presence of colonialism in Modern India. They are also like having oversized Children of the Corn staring down at you while you are trying to eat buffalo wings.
There is a marked absence of Shakeela and other sex padam posters which were always present in large and startling numbers in this smalltempletown when I was engster. And when I say ‘marked absence’ I mean I only saw one and someone was drying cow dung on it. Now there is marked profusion of posters for Improve Spoken English courses which I guess is kind of like sex padam because so many sex padams seemed to be called My English Teacher or My Tuition Teacher and for something totally different, My English Tuition Teacher.

And now I am going to talk about SlutWalks because this just wouldn’t be a chickblog if I didn’t talk about SlutWalks yougaiz. The SlutWalk in Delhi had interesting and completely predictable effects on certain sections of our illustrious society. Some people who had hitherto been trying to wrap their heads around the novel idea that one should not call women sluts suddenly became superconfused and excited because the word ‘slut’ is very exciting. Other sections of society made the exceedingly clever observation that if women themselves are parading themselves as sluts, then why won’t they be treated as sluts? The aforementioned superconfused contingency took a great deal of comfort from this observation and now these two sections of society are like bee eff effs yougaiz. The ‘SlutWalk joke’ was born and quickly distinguished itself as a very unique breed of humor where peeps got extremely emo and upset if you did not laugh at these jokes, even if they were mind-blowingly unfunny. People also defended general assholic behavior by either saying they had a uterus or they knew someone who had a uterus which is not that interesting when you consider that this is pretty much a template defense for…everything.

I have to say that this adorably bizarro behavior reminded me of the reactions that often happen when you make the mistake of telling certain people that you have been sexually harassed or as we prefer to call it here, “eve-teased”. Ideally, one should never speak of these things because one, it is very Western-y and feminist-y when women talk about “eve-teasing”, especially when they insist on calling it sexual molestation or sexual harassment, thus making the whole thing very sexual and sexy. Secondly, saying that you were groped or grabbed means that you were basically asking for it in some way- for instance, maybe you were walking down the road or riding the bus or breathing. I think we can agree that many women, especially in India, are guilty of breathing. Thirdly, and this seems to be a more modern brand of thought, issues only become all gross and issue-y when you refuse to ‘see the humor’ and decide to make them an issue. This is why we should all start laughing at rape jokes because laughing at rape means it no longer becomes an issue and the last thing we need is for rape to be an issue yougaiz.

Anywaiz, all of this what-the-fuckery reminded me that people say some really bizarre shit to explain sexual harassment. Here are some of the tiptop wtf reasons I have heard for why women get “eve-teased”

1.      You Speak English
In my corner of the world, ‘English padam’ means sex padam, so I think that means that on some level, English means sex. So if you are a woman and you say something in English, you are basically saying sex sex sex sex sex sex sex which is possibly what incites men to grab your breasts on public transportation. This of course does not apply to dudes because dudes who speak English are awesome yougaiz and everyone wants to be their friend and no one wants to grab their tits, which must be superconvenient when you want to ride the bus and stuff like that.

2.      You Are Unmarried
Marriage is the best way to fend off sexual harassment because you know what happens when you get married to a dude? This magic force field grows all around you and if a guy tries to grope you, the force field makes the gropingdude's penis fall off. Seriously. This is why married women never get sexually harassed. Ever.

3.      Men Are Like That Only
Rape is just one of those things that all men are naturally inclined to do. Or something. I don't really understand that but thankfully Scott Adams does and he wrote the Dilbert comics and Dilbert is funny yougaiz. According to certain Tamil movies, this is another reason why women should marry men. Because it cures the inherently rapey tendencies all men have which the woman was trying to avoid in the first place which is why she gets married to a dude who by default has rapey tendencies because he is a dude. Or something. Sometimes Tamil movies are confusing yougaiz and you get the feeling that Scott Adams made them.

4.      You Are Arrogant
Female arrogance in general is apparently at the root of most bad things in the world today. For instance, that whole Maoist problem that is happening somewhere over there is really all about Arundhati Roy and how she’s like so arrogant yougaiz. I’m pretty sure that bird flu was created and perpetuated by arrogant chickens.

5.      You Have No Respect For Indian Culture
This is actually a deadly combination of female arrogance and speaking English, two of the most notoriously disrespectful disrespectations of Indian culture evar, with wearing pants coming in a close third. This is why women who wear traditional Indian dress are never sexually harassed evarevar. Also it is worth noting that if you speak English, wear pants and are a dude, you are #winning and also bravely upholding the tenets of Indian culture with your English and your pants.

And now, at the risk of showing further disrespect for Indian culture, I would like to wish a happy belated Canada Day to Canada, thank you for keeping it real and being so Canadian yougaiz. In your belated honor, I would like to dedicate musical numbers-

The Logdriver’s Waltz

The Best Song

No moleste yougaiz. okbai.

stolen from here

‘if I were a man, I’d be in the boy’s club, I would be so masculine, I’d conquer all the ladies with force or gallantry, I’d hold you in my arms just so that you could hold me, if I were a man, if I were a man I’d like to meet somebody like me’

2011-06-19T16:49:00.000+05:30

This blog post title is brought to you by the song If I Were a Man by Andrea Menard. I like this song because I sometimes think that if I were a man, I would like to meet someone like me also. If I were a man, I would also read about how India is among the top five worst places for women and be like hahaha bitches and I'd also be superglad that I’m a man. Anyway, this song is on the Queer as Folk series soundtrack. I like a lot of songs from that show. I also like Gale Harold from that show.

This is Gale Harold shaking his head.

GIFSoup

This is the Fuck Yeah Gale Harold tumblr

This is Surya in Singam which has nothing to do with Gale Harold whatsoever.

GIFSoup

And now, because this is a blog that likes to get whiny about inauthenticity, privilege and white people, this is where we stop talking about Gale Harold and Surya and start talking about how the Gay Girl in Damascus is not even gay, not even a girl and not even in Damascus. Even though this well-intentioned little oopsie has made things worse for the real LGBTQ bloggers in Syria, Mr. MacMasters is real sorry yougaiz. And I think it's way clear from his awesome nonapology that he just HAD to pretend to be a gay girl in Damascus because no one listens to straight, white dudes who are possibly the most disenfranchised, oppressed and voiceless people in the world. They can’t even get on those awesomebook lists people keep putting out because those lists are like OVERFLOWING with colored women of exotic sexual orientations. It’s like a big queer uterus festival. POOR STRAIGHT WHITE DUDES!!111 Who will listen to their words? Who will read their books? Because there was supposed to be a book, like a memoir typething which you can read all about at Minal Hajratwala’s blog. And here is an excerpt from said fictionmemoirtypething.

-Now, Hajj Musa tried to take Nashqua to his bed for she enraptured him. She refused him, saying that, though she was a servant now, she had been born free in her own land and was of an ancient noble lineage; if he would have her, he would need first to ask for her hand and do all things properly. She was no slave and would be no man’s doxy.-

Ok. Let us now move on to other nondoxy things because that little excerpt made me feel somewhat also. SoAnywaiz, the peepal at Blaft updated their blog. This is something they don’t usually do and when they do, it’s sometimes about invertebrates or slogans people write on children’s clothing like hai! American Express CutieSweetie. This time, Blaft posted about this.

*sniff* Sorrygaiz. I read this and I just think of Mrs. Mortimer and the tears flow like Mother Ganga down my third world Indian face. Anywaiz, this rhyme is like the most Indian thing evar yougaiz. Seriously. You go to some Indian house in India filled with Indian children and their Indian parents say ‘RHYMES SOLLU!!’ and these Indian children open their Indian mouths and talk about having blue eyes and being VERYfair. Then you turn to the Indian parents and say what the fuck yougaiz? And the Indian parents smile fullpridetypes and shrug and click their teeth and say ‘oh it’s just a rhyme!’ and they generally beam at you like they just diarrheaed thousand rupee notes all over the floor.

Is it weird that Indian children in 2011 are still reciting nursery rhymes that were all the rage in England in the 18^th century? Of course not! Watte crapnonsense you are talking! We are Indians! We ADORE 18^th century English things, especially if they are racist. If at any moment you feel uneasy about this fuckwitted piece of poesy, kindly restore your Indianess and sense of balance by remembering the following-

One should never get emotional about simple nurseryrhyme when in India so many poor people are dying and women are wearing pants and doing slutwalks, thus eroding our Indian culture and causing foreign media to write negatively about us, saying we are the fourth worst country in the world for women when we are A-1 country jaihind!111
It’s not like nursery rhymes are made of words. And even if they were, it’s not like these words have any meaning. And even if they do, it’s not like a little kid is going to understand anything anyway because little kids are stupid. (I have found that this is often followed by 'Don’t you dare say the word ‘stupid’ around my kids or I will kill your face.')
It is very important for our teaching methods and literature to remain rooted in the 18^th century because that was just a really great time to be alive and it is the only way for our country to grow and prosper in 2011. Also, as I said earlier, kids are stupid.
So many people in this country have learned this rhyme as a child and all of them now have best friends 'who are dark'. This is because at the tender age of three, these awesome people were like ‘I might be wagging my head and going ‘curly hair, VERY fair’ but I KNOW bitches be trippin’ ya’ll. Who ya finna try, who ya finna try, who ya finna? I bet it ain't me, I bet it ain't me bitch.’

You know what’s neat tho? One of the excerpts from the aforementioned NonGay NonGirl’s TotallyNotLivingInDamascus’ memoirbooktypething is

‘The whole time, I was noticing how mature and pretty she was; long, wavy golden hair tied up in a bun, bright blue eyes, an almost pinkish face and a woman’s body, just the way that I wished that I looked.’

It’s the teacher’s pet yougaiz! She grew up into hot blondehairedblueeyed woman and- actually, you know what? I’m sorry. Because these two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other and I just went and connected them in such an irresponsible way and I’m just so sorry yougaiz. As a white dude from Finland, I shouldn’t even be writing about this stuff. So let us leave you with

Mr. Timn The Milkman

Mr. Timn in Candy- Land

French and Saunders Reading a Madonna Interview (there are too many awesome lines here. TOO MANY)

okbaiyougaiz

from here

'between the parted pages we were pressed in love's hot fevered iron like a striped pair of pants'

2011-06-05T17:37:00.005+05:30

ohai yougaiz!11 Unfortunately I have come back in the return. The good news is that I will only be blogging every other week from now on. So instead of not really having anything to say on a weekly basis, I will not really have anything to say every other week. Anyway, this blog post title is brought to you by the song MacArthur Park. I think it is neat because it reminds me of the strange places that metaphors have the potential to go and even though we listen to it and lol at it and use it as a blog post title, a part of us, deep down inside is nodding very sagely and going ‘I know EXACTLY what this is saying’. And now I shall now use this opportunity to catch up on correspondence. Because that’s always fun to do.

Dear Malayalam Version of the Ringa Ringa Song,

I listened to this only because I thought it would shed some light on what the Telugu version was saying. But something tells me that the Telugu version isn’t really about ‘aunties dancing with their hands’. Or something. That’s probably not what this version is saying either because my Malayalam skills are worse than my Tamil skills and I fully admit that I just recognized the words ‘hands’ and ‘auntiemaarey’ and made the connection myself and I probably shouldn't have done that and I'm sorry yougaiz. Anywaiz, is this in any way connected to the song ‘These Are The Daves I Know I Know’, specifically the line about how they all have the same hands but they come from different moms? Please answer me yes or no, although I have a feeling the answer is no.

Dear Kanimozhi,

I am not writing to you to talk about how you’re in jail because maybe you already know you are in jail and so I don't need to tell you that. I am mainly writing to tell you that when I was in school, there was a girl who was also called Kanimozhi and we all called her FruitLanguage because that was a thing for us back in the day, to translate Tamil names into English. Also back in the day, we sang all our memoriter poems to the tune of certain cinemasongs for easy memoriterization. Like Fear No More The Heat of the Sun was sung to the tune of Maasi Maasam Aalana Ponnu. And for the line ‘aasai noorachu ponga’, we sang ‘fear no more the lightning flash!’ and we sang it with so much feeling, like you could actually hear that exclamation mark and the lightning flash yougaiz. Fear no more the lightning flash! Anyway. Maybe this is not a good enough reason to write to you, especially when you are in jail and stuff like that.

Dear Racism,

Where would this blog be without you? I mean seriously, if we couldn’t make fun of white people and jump up and down and up and down about racism, what purpose would this blog have? It would have no purpose AT ALL. So anyway, I saw this video, right? And it had this old woman speaking about how brown people aka Indian people smell like shit because of the curry and they don’t bathe. Which is not that interesting really. Said old woman has been put on YouTube display by honorable grandson Peter Chau aka pyrobooby and then himself and people who said they were “brown” and people who said they were “not brown” all went to great lengths to assure everyone that this wasn’t racist it was just funny and we should all learn to see the funny and Russell Peters got dragged into the conversation somehow. Which is also not that interesting. I was just wondering why everyone tends to say the same stuff about everyone else. I mean, it doesn’t really matter who is talking about who, it always seems to follow the same pattern, you just fill in the blanks accordingly.

1. I am not racist. But I know ________ people because I have met/worked with/sat behind/seen them. So I know what I’m talking about because it is actually the truth and my opinion which means it is not racist.

2. __________ people smell bad. Specifically, they smell like shit. This is the truth because I have smelled them because I have met/worked with/sat behind/seen them. Also I like smelling people. Ok maybe peeps don't say that last part.

3. ___________ people smell bad because they eat __________ which is some crazyshit that __________ people eat because they are ______________. I know this because I have met/worked with/sat behind/seen them.

4. _____________ people also smell bad because they do not bathe. This is also because they are __________ people and it’s not part of their culture to bathe like we do. I know this because I have met/worked with/sat behind/seen them.

I would like to know what is this connection between racism, a lack of personal hygiene and a tendency to reek of fecal matter which is also connected to the partaking of native foodstuffs? Why don’t people say, oh THEM? THEY run with scissors. Or THEY eat baby unicorns. Why is it that THEY are just not bathing enough and they eat WEIRD things and all of this makes them smell like poopoo? Why is it that these conversations ultimately reduce grown ups to 4 years olds? Please answer me yes or no to all this question.

Dear ActorAbbas,

I just want to say that I recently saw you in that Harpic ad and you were like very enthutypes and yay cleantoiletrevolution and all and I have to admit that for maybe half a half a second, I thought of how much better this world would be if we all had clean toilets. But I still could not help thinking how back in the then you were the haut guy in Kadhal Desam and now you’re the guy in the Harpic ad. Eppadi Iruntha Nee. Ippadi Ayitte.

Dear VS Naipaul,

Have you noticed how dissing you has become like making Rebecca Black parodies but not really also? You are like the Rebecca Black and the Charlie Sheen and the Donald Trump and the Baba Ramdev of…something. Anywaizalso, we had to read yours onenumber ‘Middle Passage’ when I was in college and I liked it. So I just wanted to tell you that I think what you say makes total sense. Because we keep being bombarded by all these lists of the most awesome books ever. And these lists will sometimes have one female author on there but this is often because they have an ambiguous first name and that possibly confuses people. Usually the lists are all about dudes. And then peeps see this and are like ‘oh mai cheezuz, that is shawking! Good writing has no gender! But this list has no leddies on it! oh mai cheezuz, that is shawking! Good writing has no gender! But this list has no leddies on it! oh mai cheezuz, that is shawking!’ Which is kind of like Dory in Finding Nemo but not as funny and without the fish and stuff. You however, are not doing any of that. Because you’ve said, and I quote "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by awoman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me." On the one hand, you are very much like the old woman in aforementioned letter. But on a completely different hand, you’re just telling it like it is, bro- when it comes to the bestfictionevarevar,

stolen from somwhere on jezebel.com

You just bein’ real, girlfriend! And I for one have resPECK for that. resPECK. And I say this is a fellow brodude who is also white and from Finland. Which I’m sure you can tell just by reading this. I mean the bro part. I don’t think you can tell my color by reading this because that would make you racist.

Dear This Article,

I am a white dude from Finland currently failing at being an IWiE and trying not to be fail because one of the prerequisites of being an IWiE is to always be a winner. One of the things I am doing in an effort not to be fail is to totally not talk about certain allegations against a certain someone whose name kinda rhymes with Flava Flavidar but not really. I just wanted to say that I lold so much at the fact that you called him Hot Lips Flavidar in aforementioned article. Please don’t tell anyone I said that though because I think I might already be in trouble for calling Naipaul ‘girlfriend’ in some previous correspondence.

Dear D. Maran,

Can I have one of your phone lines? I mean you have over 300 of them, no? In your house. I want to assure you that this phone line would be used for a good cause only, namely my Fund For The Empowerment of Third World People With Less Than 300 Phone Lines in Their OneNumber House. I feel this is a very important fund because so many people in this country, rich and poor, do not have over 300 phone lines in their homes. It is a problem that affects us all. My fund will aim to proactively engage with this issue head on, working at a grassroots level to organically solutionize, ideate, accentuate and propitiate the necessary paradigms and paroxysms to create a solid foundation today for a better tomorrow than we had yesterday in the future. It is my dream that one day, every house in this country will have over 300 motherfucking phone lines. If you don’t feel like donating a phoneline for that fund, perhaps you would consider donating one to another fund I have called the Please Answer Me Yes or No Fund For Better Understandingment Among The Common Peoples. Because one of the key features of better understandingment among the common peoples is to have over 300 phone lines in da house, bro!

Actually, can I have two phones? Or 12? Or 30 maybe?

And before I leave you all, I want to congratulate my writingfraand Davin Malasarn who has a collection of short fiction out which is buyable here. I am awfully fond of Davin because he is neat and also he writes neat stories like this one.

And now, musics-

If there is anyone out there who has been desperatelyseeking the song ‘Onnam Padi Yeduthu’ by Vijayalakshmi Navaneethakrishnan, it’s here yougaiz!111

And I suddenly remembered this song from Pandi Nattu Thangam, which is nice to hear in a bus for some reason.

okbaiyougaiz.

from here

echa pa' lante, no mires pa' atras, pa' coger impulso, and you know what fuck you haha

2011-05-08T20:00:00.000+05:30

hay yougaiz!!11 This blog post title is allegedly Yara Sofia’s farewell message when she sashayed away from RuPaul’s DragRace3. I'm not really sure what it means but it looked so foreign and exotic and Latin and stuff that I just HAD to have it yougaiz. So anyway, Raja won DragRace3. Yay for your face Raja! In your honor, we post a Raja gif.

stolen from here

And here is a gif of RuPaul waving at me.

stolen from here

HAY MAIFRAAANDS!!111 HAAAAAAY!!!!111

Anyway, is it sidey to post after onemonthbreak to say ohai! I’m taking oneanothermonthbreak also? The answer is yes. Yes it is very sidey to do this. But whatever. Then you know what sprepper is? DragRace3 tells me that sprepper happens when you mix Sprite and Dr. Pepper which is Sweet! But Not Delicious! When you think about it, so many things in life are Sweet! But Not Delicious! I also learned another new word. This another new word is 'scrotching'. I think the person who kept saying this wanted to say ‘scorching’. Like they wanted to say ‘it is scorching day in the outside’. But instead, they are saying ‘it is scrotching day in the outside’. This could prettymuch mean anything yougaiz. But I feel like this could be used when you generally want to say something negative but also want to include crotches and setting things on fire also.

Then what happened means I was interviewed by the highlyillustrious V.V. Ganeshananthan at the Sepia Mutiny. Not only was this fun interview to do, it includes some helpful tips from my booklet How to Write Your Awesome Indian Slum Novel and kind people said nicecomments also which I now keep in the pockets of my heart. And the DheegaDheega song is there also. That in itself makes everything #winning, no? Yes. Yes it does.

Then also, because I think it's important to perpetuate rumors whenever possible, rumor has it that I will have some kind of echapbook happening in the near future. If it happens, you heard it here phust yougaiz. Although I think Blaft posted about it on their blog already but whatever.

Then what happened means I VOTED!!11 Very exciting! I like to vote yougaiz. This was a lot more interesting when it happened and when I thought about it afterwards. It is not so interesting now when I write about it here.

Now, I will take this opportunity to answer some questions. Some of these questions are real, some are fake, some are completely made up and some are Sweet! But Not Delicious!

1. Epicest RuPaul Pic Evar?

There are so many. But this one is just...there are no words yougaiz.

stolen from here

The only thing missing here is a sparkly unicorn holding up a sign saying ‘I cannot stand the absolute epic that is happening in this picture right now yougaiz’.

2. How Are you Celebrating Short Story Month?

As an alleged short story writer, it behooves me to celebrate this month with pomp and circumstance and aplomb and perspicacity and fortitude and all those kinds of things like that. Primarily, I've decided not to write any short stories during this time. This is like how on Saraswati Puja day you don't touch any books or anything. It's like that yougaiz. Then I thought I should try and read which was phail but was totally #winning in terms of falling asleep with mouth open. Then I thought ok let me listen to free podcasts. This is something I do very well. So here is what I heard yougaiz.

1. My Man Jeeves and Right Ho Jeeves by PG Wodehouse

I don't know why these are free. But they are. Which is awesome. These particular podcasts were also read very well which is just #totalwinning yougaiz. Also, it behooves me to share this passage from My Man Jeeves.

"No doubt you read my book, India and the Indians? My publishers are anxious for me to write a companion volume on the United States. I shall not be able to spend more than a month in the country, as I have to get back for the season, but a month should be ample. I was less than a month in India, and my dear friend Sir Roger Cremorne wrote his America from Within after a stay of only two weeks."

Isn't it neat how that was how people did things back then but that totally doesn't happen today? That's so neat yougaiz.

2. The Chink and the Child by Thomas Burke
I'm not linking to this. I don't know why I listened to this either. I remember while listening I kept wanting to ask the narrator, 'How can you keep reading this? Can you hear the words that are coming out of your mouth? Why are you doing this?' That was probably unfair on my part but it was what I felt yougaiz. Anyway, the story is what it is and I guess that's all we can say. Also it is neat to know that with regard to Burke, and I quote from the awesome and illustrious wikipedia, "the majority of his autobiogaphies attest to his supposedly intimate knowledge of lower-class life. These fabricated autobiographies enabled Burke to establish his authority as an expert on the Chinese in London, allowing him to create a persona that he used to market his fictional works on Limehouse. As Witchard notes, Burke, through his writing, positioned himself as a “seer” in an “occult process” of representing London’s sub-cultural ‘Others'." Oh my. Oh my, Oh my, Oh. My.

3. Why don't you post some tits on your blog?

Of course. Here are some bouncing ones.

4. Mutton Song yes or not?

yes.

5. Saali Bitch song yes or not?

Oh honey not. So much not. Although on the cover, Thiru IshqBector Avargal seems to have written the word Ishq in big letters on a wall using his own pee which leads me to believe that perhaps he has a massive bladder. Which probs comes in superhandy on long bus rides and things like that. Really feel like one needs to find the positives where one can and celebrate them. Although the pee looks like black spray paint also. I don't think your pee is supposed to look like that. I really don't know what to say now yougaiz.

6. I haven’t read your writing because your kind of writing doesn’t interest me but I do think you should answer my 27 part question regarding your Indian identity crisis.

I’m actually a white dude from Finland. But from far away I look like I have an Indian identity crisis. Also,

stolen from somewhere on jezebel.com

Did you know this dude dances really well to Show Me Your Jalwa? Really he does. He's supertalented yougaiz.

And now, some musics.

Missy Elliott VS. Rudenko - Everybody Lick Shots Remix by DjCK

Britney Spears- If You Seek Amy (Metal Remix by bliix)

Britney Spears- 3 (Metal Remix by bliix)

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Perform This Way

And of course, since today is Mother's Day, a salute to all mothers with this mothering MGR song from Adimai Penn which featured the biggest Amma of all. This is seriously a great song yougaiz. Makes you feel like running and jumping among big rocks in the sun. But not in a scrotching way.

seri bai, ah?

don't let them take it all 'cause you know they're going to take it all they seem so far from you but really they're close to you

2011-03-27T18:58:00.000+05:30

This blog post title is taken from a song called Children by EMF and it just seemed like the right thing to do so there it is. So many things have happened you gaiz. Elizabeth Taylor died. Blaft sold out (allegedly). Then I have a new story up at the Michigan Quarterly Review called The Underground Bird Sanctuary. It is about zombie birds in Vedanthangal. It's not, actually. Then certain internet slangs were added to the Oxford English dictionary. And some people got really emo about that. Like, REALLY emo. Like batches be trippin' about how Shakespeare and a variety of other dead white dudes are now turning in their graves, screaming in their graves and doing the splits in their graves because LOL is now in the dictionary. I feel like because I write in English (allegedly) I need to say WE’RE SO SORRY WE LET YOU DOWN DEAD WHITE DUDES!111 The threat of the bad Englishes is upon us, batches! Don't let them take it all! 'Cause you know they're going to take it all! They seem so far from you! But really they're close to you!

Also I watched a movie you gaiz! Not about dudes getting fucked by horses. This one was called The Louly Bones. From what I could understand, and I did not understand much, this movie was Lord of the Rings but except there was a young girl in it whose main purpose was to strike Neo-esque poses to remind us of another great movie, called The Matrix. Then also there was a Heavens which apparently is mainly filled with murdered white women. I always knew that’s what heaven would be like you gaiz!11 But perhaps most interesting of all is the fact that this story had an Indian boy in it. YAY INDIA SUCH A GREAT HOLLYWOOD FINALLY UNDERSTANDING GREATNESS OF ALL THE INDIANS JAI HIND!!!!1111111!11 This Indian boy kissed a white girl on the lips you gaiz. That is very unIndian. I’m so conflicted about this you gaiz. Then I watched movie called Orphan. Arfan is the natural progression of Russian commie villain to Russian demon child girl person orphan type thing that plays the piano because she is Russian and who is not child girl person either really. Or something. I think the moral of this movie was not to adopt Russians. And I feel like maybe certain members of our philim community who are currently decanting young Russians in the hopes of casting them as the white girl in their next movie should take note. DON’T DO IT YOU GAIZ BE INDIAN BUY INDIAN!!11

So while I can no longer watch RuPaul, I have been following this tumblr with avid avidness because it is FIERCE! See?

from here

YARA DON’T LET THE BATCHES DISRESPECT YOUR LANGUAGES YOUR ENGLISH IS VERY WELL LOOKING DARLING IT REALLY IS!!111

Now I want to talk about how last time, I gave a very special shoutout to some of my real life peeps who are now lounging on the prickly bed of unemployment. And I feel like maybe the advices I gave in the last post were not very complete and they may have been not very useful also. So I am now going to provide some useful employment advices for your face, real life peeps. Even though you don’t really read this blog. And you are currently unemployed also so how employment advices will help you I can’t say. If you ever get employed again, you can remember all these precious things and win at life because life is about #winning, you gaiz.

Scenario #1- You call in sick because for realz, you feel like now would be a really good time to die and even though the floor is very dirty and running with numerous lines of red ants, it’s looking like the most comfortable place on earth right now and you'd really just like to curl up in the fetal position on said floor and die. And then the asshole on the other end of the phone says ‘Kindly take the appropriate medication and come to office.’

Do Not Say- What in the name of all that is good and holy on this green earth made you think you could tell me to ‘take the appropriate medication and come to office.’ Do I look like one of those people who ‘take the appropriate medication and come to office’? Has anything I have ever done in my illustrious career made you think oh, well she’ll just take the appropriate medication and come to office! If so, are you on drugs? What exactly is the ‘appropriate medication’ anyway? What could I possibly take to make coming to work a little easier on me, even on a good day? Crack? Are we allowed to do crack and come to work now? Please send me a memo regarding this with information regarding the same. In conclusion, I will conclude by saying that if you ever. EVER. Tell me to ‘Kindly take the appropriate medication and come to office.’, I will hunt you down and set you on fire.

Scenario #2- You are caught by that sleazefuck who cannot hold a conversation with you without touching you because even though you’ve made it quite clear you do not want to be touched, they have made it equally clear they really want to keep touching you. Then when you try to sidle away they say things like ‘Hey relax! Why are you so tense? You’re not tense, are you? Come on, don’t be like that. You know I like you. Just relax, ok?’, thus sounding like a pedophile and making everything much much worse for your face.

Do Not Say- How much porn are you watching for you to think that this is going to have some kind of #winning result for you? Because something made you think that you could talk to me like I’m 12 years and you’re trying to get into my pants like that’s a #winning thing, right? What did you think I would do, clap and go ‘GOOD JOB!!1’? Is the bowchikkabowwow music supposed to start playing somewhere above our heads about now? At what point in these proceedings do I start stapling your reproductive organs to your forehead? Because I really feel like that needs to happen. I feel like that’s something I can make happen for you.

Scenario # 3- For the 876th year in a row, the office has decided to give you an armpit handbag for your happybirthday.

Do Not Say- It’s not often that I wish I had a penis. But right now, I kinda wish I had one because people in this office who have penises get CDs, books, gift certificates and neat stuff like that for their birthdays. And it’s great to see that all that money I can’t afford to give goes for neat birthday presents for cool peeps with penises, many of whom I don’t like and who don’t like me also. I know all of you pitched in a lot and made a lot of sacrifices to get me this plastic armpit handbag that looks like it cost…oh, maybe 4 rupees. And I totally understand how it is with us ladies, our ladyparts are always screaming out ARMPIT HANDBAG and that can be very deafening so naturally you are just getting us what we want. Anyway, I also want to say how much I appreciate this moldering piece of hardened vomit here which someone informs me is a pizza. And this lump of gawdhelpus which I thought was a collection of dead kittens but apparently is a cake. Also cheers for this flat and tepid orange drink which tastes like naphthalene, possibly because it’s been in that cupboard since 1997.

Anyway you gaiz, I won’t be blogging next month. I should be back in May. If I’m not back in May, I should be back in June. If not June, then July. And so on and so on. Hopefully it will be May but then again, man proposes but the god disposes. And so homibabas, I leave you with two things. One is this song called Hostage-O by Warren Zevon which is kinda emo but whatever. Two, I leave you with these words of wordings which you can remember when people try to dim your sparkles.


from here

carry on, batches

‘I like your nose don’t forget me’

2011-03-20T18:10:00.001+05:30

This blog post title has been appropriated from an illustrious person’s illustrious school autograph book. I feel like this is a good autograph to give, even if you don’t really like the other person’s nose. Other autograph book illuminatiquotes include

Your friendship fills my body like sweet poison

(k- very emo, no? I’m not sure this is something one should tell their friends also. If a friend told me this I'd be like, I'm not sure you should tell me that.)

Drink hot coffee drink hot tea burn your lips and think of me

(k- again, very emo. I feel like people were very emo in smalltempletown school autographbooks)

Man proposes but the god disposes

(k- why would you write this in someone’s autographbook? but also it's very true also)

Also someone thoughtfully wrote the phone number of their aunt in Chennai in this illustrious school autograph book because…I don’t know. Although back in the day, Chennai was Madras and some girls would go to Madras and have ice cream there and come back and tell us all about it for weeks and weeks.

Anywai, here are some things people said to me, some things that happened and some things that didn’t happen also. I feel like this is kind of how my life is like. But also not really.

mallu boys are asking shopuncle for ‘chilled cock’ #bowchikkabowwow

shopuncle says there is no ‘chilled cock’ only pepsi #cockblock

listening to illustrious person telling me the story of My Name Is Khan because that’s the one thing that’s been missing from my life for all my life

found a pen! going to try and write with it! #writingplan

the pen doesn't work you gaiz. oh whale. #writingplanfail

hopefully I’ll find a pencil next time #writingplanfornextyear

the pencil might be broken tho im so worried you gaiz writing is hard! #writinganxiety

according to mai fraand, My Name Is Khan is about that bombing that happened in america called 24/7 and that’s why srk was “a retarded muslim” in the movie #oscarwinning

bank is filled with small cottage industries ladies #agrovillagers

i am filling in bank forms for agrovillagers because i am scared of them. VILLAGERS ARE SCARY YOU GAIZ!!111 #educationwinning #everythingelsenotwinning

gaiz, remember actorkarthik and his moustache in ponnumani? what happened you gaiz? what happened to everything?

none of the agrovillagers have ponnumanimoustaches. sure sign of loss of tamil culture aping the west internet satellite television ruining engsters

agrovillagers have pushed me to the back of the line. i will be in the bank forever and ever #notwinning

i am going to die in this bank. they will find my desiccated carcass under a pile of outdated deposit challans #tellrupaulnottocryforme

i feel like RuPaul would really like me if she met me

i feel like RuPaul would be really disappointed if she met me

i feel like the chances of me ever meeting RuPaul are very slim so whatever #heartbreak

i am never going to the bank again. ever.

wearing headbandheadscarftypething. looking FIERCE HONEY FIERCE!!!111 #fabulous

from here

ok maybe not this fabulous. sorta fabulous. like, from far away. and stuff.

someone just said my headbandheadscarftypething makes me look like tea estate worker with the terminal illnesses wtf you gaiz!

ok maybe it does #succumbingtopeerpressure

we dans la maison! that’s canadian for we in da house! we’re actually not in our place of residence actually. we’ve entered someone else’s place of residence. anyway. #misleadingtweets

am i the only person here without a phone? i should have asked shopuncle if i could bring his payphone #swag #tardyfortheparty

these people wont let me carry around their landline around, wtf you gaiz! why wont they let me carry around a fone too you gaiz? #thispartysucks

'i knew this poet once. he had sex with everything.' 'with everything?' 'with EVERYTHING.' 'that must have hurt.' 'i know, right?' #ayehiphoppermujhepyartukar

‘i find indian women boring. i don't know, maybe it's an indian thing’ #thanksforsharing #itsweirdwhenindianssaythingslikethis

from here

hay listen to manila luzon you gaiz! if you don’t like the women, try the men!

the wine is apparently NOT ruby wine. whatever

that awkward silence that follows the question 'in the song aye hip hopper, why does he call her a part-time knocker?'

the bhangra version is pretty awesome tho. it isn’t actually. anyway. #makingthingsworse

i will pretty much listen to a bhangra remix of anything. o mai cheezuz i cant believe i actually said that out loud #makingthingsevenworser

i feel like there should be a bhangra remix of that song 'shake' thats not by kim kardashian. whats interesting is i felt like i couldnt possibly make things any worse and then i go and mention kim kardashian.

'it’s a tattoo of Krishna.’ ‘why does it look like throw-up?’ #importantquestions

from here

TELL ME AND DELTA WERK ALSO WE REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHY YOUR ALLEGED KRISHNA TATTOO LOOKS LIKE THROW-UP !!!1111!

someone’s gone to ask if they have the bhangra remix of aye hip hopper #kindredspirits

‘you think peeps are judging us for dancing like this to this song?’ ‘probably.’ #haterzgonnahate #dancingwithkindredspirits #dontbejealousofmyboogie

none of us seem to be able to say hip hopper. we keep saying hip hop her wtf is wrong with us you gaiz?!!

now we are saying heep hop har. this is either because we are indian or because we’ve been drinking.

rum and bovonto just isn’t the same without the bovonto #ilovebovontoreallyimnotkidding

i miss all my friends where are you gaiz? how come you don’t talk to me anymore? was it because i never could make my mind up about front seat back seat? IM SO SORRY YOU GAIZ!

yesterday was thursday today it is friday we we we so excited we so excited we gonna have a ball today tomorrow is saturday and sunday comes afterwards #rebeccablackftw #daysoftheweek

abcdefghi - jklm - nopqrstuvwx - yz. i love you. #humsaathsaathhainftw #thealphabet

going around saying ‘whatswongwitzyoomin’ because i’m a winner #winning #baptistegiabiconiwantstoknowwhatswongwitzyoomin

someone just asked me if i’m “from mizoram or something” because i’m going around saying ‘whatswongwitzyoomin’ #soracist #baptistegiabiconiisnotfrommizoramyougaiz

everyone seems really happy we’re leaving. possibly because now they can stop playing aye heep hop har on loop. #rosemilkparty

we’re watching a movie! it’s called Zoo! we are excited you gaiz. because we like zoos and hopefully there will be vampires also.

why does the cover have a horse on it? we are concerned you gaiz

we are flabbergasted to learn that this movie is about a guy who died after being fucked by a horse. we feel like we should stop watching but we really want to watch also. we’re so gross you gaiz. #shameshamepuppyshame

this movie is like being on drugs. it’s like being in a car and being stoned and watching the scenery and someone is talking to you and you keep waiting to see a horse have sex with a dude but it never happens. well it kinda does. i feel sorry for the horse even though the dude died. ok i feel bad he died also. i feel bad for everything you gaiz.

actorkarthik you gaiz! why doesn’t anyone remember his moustache in ponnumani? i don’t understand. it’s like i hardly know you gaiz anymore you gaiz.

Special shout out to my peeps who are now newly unemployed, O MAI GOD DONT SELL YOUR KIDNEYS YOU GAIZ, OK?!!!?? Because some of you may only have the one. And if you sell that also, you might die or something. JUST DON'T DO IT, KAY? Here are some other helpful tips for your face, mainly because I know none of you read this blog.

1. Do not go out with your disappointing gay best friend because that will be disappointing for your face and unemployment is disappointing enough as it is. If you absolutely must go out, try to go with a homosexual that is willing to really werq that fag bangle thang so you can feel fabulous.

2. Listen to this spanish version of the song 'Mickey' because it's catchy but slightly sloppy. Like unemployment! Not like unemployment. I don't know why I said that. Also don't listen to the spanish version of this song sung by small kids because you can get in trouble for doing that kind of thing on the internet.

3. Say 'Oh, Mickey dónde estás? Cada vez me gustas mas' to someone whose name isn't Mickey. This isn't necessarily a fun thing to do. Anyway.

4. Don't say 'aye hip hopper mujhe pyar tu kar' to anyone because just because you're unemployed doesn't mean you have to do that kind of thing, kay?

You're always a winner to me you gaiz!

konichiwa batches

and party and bullshit and party and bullshit and

2011-03-12T17:52:00.000+05:30

This blog post title is taken from When The Revolution Comes by The Last Poets. It’s always awkward when people from third world countries quote lines like this because no one really knows what you mean by the word ‘party’. Once upon a time, when I was a youths, I went to a party. We all sat in a line of chairs and we got paper plates. And then we got mixture and one sweet and rose milk and I said I don’t want any rose milk and they all said ‘IT’S ROSE MILK!’ and stared at me and I was affrighted so I drank it and then I felt like dying because I hate rose milk so much like I can't even say. Then all the engsters went out to play shuttle and they were asked to take me with them even though they tried very hard not to take me with them. But they were phail in this because the elders felt awkward having me sit there because they could never understand what I was saying and it was just awkward. It was the best shuttle game ever because engsters totes did not want me there either so that got boring after a while so I went back into the house and made the elders feel uncomfortable until it was time to go home. They didn’t invite me for any more parties. But I’m like whatever, your parties suck. And you can’t come to my parties either. I mean like, if I had parties.

It was Wyminz Dai, Batches! I feel like ‘batches’ is a very realistic but also not very realistic way of portraying that kinda-but-not-really Canadia way of saying ‘bitches’. I also like the word Canadia. So as a woman, it behooves me to speak of wyminz day because if I don't, it means I hate men which is SO not true because I think men are neat, especially this one.

once upon a time, i stole this gif from jezebel.com. the end.

So I just want to take this opportunity to do two things. One, I would like to offer this article for reading, which is called The Careless Language of Sexual Violence. Oh noes! Not another chick talking about rape again! I know, right? Then I would also like to give a special belated wyminz dai shoutout to four particular entities that I think get overlooked on that very special day.

The Misogynistic Woman- Special salute to the lady assholes out there that remind us that misogyny is not a dude thing, it's an asshole thing and just because you have a uterus does not mean you can't be an asshole.

The Feminist Gay Dude- Also saluting the feminist dude who for some reason gets labeled gay for being a feminist. Maybe they should be called Feminist Lesbian Dudes instead. Because that will be matchingmatching with the lady feminists because all lady feminists are also lesbians because they can’t get a man or aren't good Indians or something.

The Chocolate Guy- Big shoutout to that one guy who doesn't really talk to you and then on women's day, he will very seriously and somberly come up to you, give you a bar of chocolate and seriously and somberly shake your hand while saying 'happy woman's day', somehow managing to give you the impression that he is both happy and sad that you are a woman. He will do this every year. If he forgets, he will give you a bar of chocolate the next day and apologize and seriously and somberly shake your hand while saying 'belated happy woman's day'. Chocolate Guy is righteous.

StupidFuckHead- I would also like to extend both my middle fingers in proud salute to that one person, male or female, who wants to know when Men's Day is and then when Tranny Day is because that’s just so funny and then proceeds to tell rape jokes ‘in an ironic way’ because it’s wyminz dai and it's just so funny you gaiz.

‘what is the need?’ is a question I get asked a lot. What is the need to write this like this, what is the need to do that like that- sounds like a Celine Dion song, no? I also have my own ‘what is the need?’ questions and I thought it might be prudent to record them here from time to time because I have nothing better to do. Some of them aren't mine, I just think they're neat.

What Is The Need To Work For The Tehelka Robes?

I think the original question that was posed to me was ‘what is the need to work for the Tehelka rogues’ but I thought the person was saying ‘robes’ and I was like ‘Tehelka clothing line! That’s…weird! Are these robes like nighties?’ And I didn’t even know I was working for Tehelka, you gaiz! You learn a lot of neat stuff when you listen to other people.

What Is The Need To Know The Meaning of the Ringa Ringa Song?

There are people who claim to my face that they know Telugu. But when it comes to telling me what the lyrics of this song mean, these people who claim they know Telugu either say ‘I don’t know this kind of Telugu’ or they don’t want to translate it because it is vulgar/obscene/somewhat/chee or they want to know where I heard the song so they can judge me. In spite of all this adversities, I have come to understand that the first line means ‘I am a posh posh foreigner who has come from the foreignland’. Or something like that. Anywai, I was thinking it would be so neat to sell NRIs t-shirts with this line on it. I also like how the Telugu word for ‘posh’ is ‘poshu’.

What Is The Need To Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood?

There is absolutely no need for this. Don’t be a menace to south central while drinking your juice in the hood, you gaiz! I mean come on, they even made a movie about that.

What Is The Need To Be A Complete Asshole And Then Tell Everyone ‘I Know I’m An Asshole’ After You’re Finished Being an Asshole?

Dear AssholePerson. I feel like you’re doing this because you want us to give you a cookie. But we all know you’re an asshole too and no one’s giving us any cookies. Why only you should get cookie for something all are knowing from then itself I am not understanding.

What Is The Need To Look At Pictures Of Shirtless Boo Boo Stewart?

There is no need to look at pictures of shirtless Boo Boo Stewart because Boo Boo Stewart was born in 1994 which makes him like 12 or something which makes you a pervy pedophile.

Why am I still writing about RuPaul when I can't even watch the show anymore and my heart is broken and stuff like that? This is so much pathetic I say. It is like the lovefailure. I thought I should write a letter to RuPaul saying ‘Dear RuPaul, I really like your show. Why do you hate my face and not let me watch your show on teh internetz? I wish you were my mom. Will you be my mom?’ Anywai, LOOK WHAT I FOUND YOU GAIZ!! I found this tumblr called fuck yeah rupaul’s drag race. FUCK YEAH! And also this tumbler and this one dedicated to Raja! I will look at these tumblrs over and over and over and over again and pretend that I am watching the show! There are gifs! YAY!!!

from here

THE HOBBITS ARE CALLING BATCHES!1!!!

from here

I’m a strong, wicked bitch too! Kinda. A little bit. Sometimes. Like, not always. Not usually. Mostly I just like to post gifs of queens saying ‘I’m a strong wicked bitch’.

from here

Hay batches! YOU SO MAD!!1!

from here

Hay Tati! YOU SO MAD!!1! Seriously, Tati was mad here. In case you can’t tell.


from here

Hahaha, this was so funny because like Mystique said something that was like what? I mean like WHAT? because she was saying some crazy shit like really and then Raven was like what? and Juju was like gur, don’t even. Yeah, I was totally there. This is so sad. I have officially gone to The Sad Place. It can't possibly get any sadder than this. Wait a minute. Yes it can.

Don't Be Jealous of my Boogie by RuPaul

LadyBoy by RuPaul

Cover Girl (Macutchi's Taterz Deep Edit) by RuPaul

Clip from Drag Race Season 2 - ‘Those drag clothes look like a donkey fucked a piñata and threw up’.

Avalukkenna from Server Sundaram- For some reason people think I’m kidding when I say I like this song. Also, once I saw LR Eswari on the train and by the time I worked up the courage to ask for her autograph, it was time for her to get off the train. She got off at Mambalam. RuPaul does not feature in this song at any point.

konichiwa, batches.

All of this is everyone’s fault.

2011-03-05T18:32:00.000+05:30

This blog post title is taken from this blog post. But before I get to it, I want to say that I think this will be my last installment of RuPaul’s Drag Race fav lines because it looks like Logo has decided that nonAmericans can’t watch the show on teh internetz anymore. Whatever, this episode featured a clutch of drag queens that decided to call themselves Heathers. Seriously. Because they are all in high school and this is 1989. OH MY GOD YOU GAIZ, ARE YOU SERIOUS?? Also, I saw Raja's underwear when she was walking the runway and I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to. And when I say ‘saw Raja’s underwear’ please know that they were flaming white bloomers under a short, chocolate brown outfit. Whatever.

I've been single for a reason and now America is going to find out why

(k- this is not a great line. but alexis says this when she explains why she's nervous about doing the nude photo shoot and I was like what? are you on drugs? You’re a fabulous drag queen! If fabulous drag queens say things like this, all hope is lost for the rest of us. I think this means we now get to blame alexis mateo for our self esteem and body image issues.)

There is nothing I love more than chocolate. I could drip it all over my naked, lithe body over and over again and just lick it off myself

(k- what kind of space do you have to be in to actually open your mouth and have these words come out? This may also be the first time I have heard someone describe themselves as ‘lithe’. People don’t do that very often.)

Who the fuck is Heather?

(k- I think the nonHeathers should make a clique called Feathers. Then they could call each other Feather. Ok maybe they shouldn’t do that. DON’T LISTEN TO ME YOU GAIZ!!11!!)

Then what happened means I read this article, which was neat for two reasons. One, it appeared to respond to allegations of stereotyping by totally not saying stereotypical things. You can see one example here, completely out of context, which is like so mean you gaiz.

“The book is not necessary in these cases, for the argument is about who can write about India, not what has been written.

For critics of this persuasion, India surely seems a lonely land. A country with a millennial history of Hindus, Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists living peaceably together; a country of hundreds of dialects in which so many Indians are linguistic foreigners to each other, and happily, tolerantly so; a country that, unlike so many in its neighborhood, has bravely stuck to its traditions of letting discordant voices sing; a country that welcomes foreign seekers (of yoga poses, of spiritual wisdom, of ancestral roots) with open arms; a country where, outside the elite world of South Delhi and South Bombay, I have not heard an Indian ask whether outsiders have a right to write, think or exist on their soil.”

Sometimes reading this is like #fortheloveofsweetfluffyunicornsWAI?WAI? and sometimes it’s #LAWL. Stereotypes are like that, the incompleteness gives you ample room to laugh and cry also. Anyway, this is also the first time I have seen someone use their column in the New York Times to get emo about an unfavorable book review in The Indian Express. THE INDIAN EXPRESS YOU GAIZ!!!! Who knew TIE had this kind of powerful powers? Although I once heard that The New Indian Express, which is The Indian Express but not really, was promoting gay homosexual mafia lifestyles and people were turning into big flaming gaymos just by touching the paper. I think it’s a real shame that these people were not able to tell us all about their feelings in a New York Times column too also.

I just want to say some one or two number things about some things in general. These are not about anyone involved in the abovementioned emodrama. So please don’t leave comments saying I’m like so racist to IndianAmericans or whatever because I am old and I am tired and I can’t watch RuPaul anymore.

“Who gets to write about India?"

So let me see if I understand this. We’re not going to talk about how the clear and obvious answer to this question is EVERYBODY gets to write about India!!!111! We’re not going to talk about how EVERYBODY has been writing about India for a very long time because it’s a very lucrative and exciting thing to do and it makes people think you’re sexy but not like in a whorish, penicillin kind of way. We’re not going to talk about how privileged peeps often decide they want to write about something subaltern and haut like India and they just do it because the question 'who gets to write about India' is such a non issue to them like I can't even say, although it often comes in handy AFTER the thing has been written. Instead, we’re going to talk about how the question ‘who gets to write about India?’ is now going to be about how these people’s entitlement to write about India is somehow being threatened and this oppression is like totally oppressing them and they haz a sad? Didn’t all this drama already happen on Racefail? Does anyone else read the word Racefail and hear the words 'rice fail' in their head? Whatever, imma just put this under ‘things I don’t understand, like really’, right beside ‘I don’t understand India’s violent love for Michael Jackson that makes Indian ads use MJ clones even though he is dead and was like child molesty and stuff’

Let Us Blame You And Me For Everything

There is the big fight of ‘oh my god you totally stereotyped everything’ versus ‘i SO did not, you only stereotyping stereotyper’. And because that fight is so big, maybe we’re not really paying attention to this idea that maybe we’re far more prone to stereotype than we’d like to believe. We like to enter this conversation with a very firm belief that we just CAN’T do that because we are awesome, which is maybe why we get upset when people say that’s what we’re doing. But stereotyping is unfortunately not a white, first world thing though it really feels like it should be, no? It is a people thing and because writers are people, this means that they can also stereotype. Seriously. I mean, like really. I’m not kidding. I don’t understand why this is so hard to grasp, it’s like people getting all #LIESANDPROPAGANDA about those fucking pie charts about gender disparity in publishing. Anyway, I also want to say that while I’m not a fan of Indian Exotica, I understand it has its own place in the India experience and has its meaning. Like the money it generates has meaning. There are many Indian experiences and identities and authenticities and all of them are right and there will always be people saying all of them are wrong also. Why because means this is India, it is a big motherfucking country with lots of stuff in it. Maybe we would have a lot less trouble if all of us made an effort to not think of India as something that needs to explained or can be readily explained, like it is a onenumber foot. India is not a foot.

Anyway, I also want to say that all of this is everyone’s fault. It’s not my fault though because I’m not from here so it has nothing to do with me.

NRI FOB Jokes

This doesn't really have anything to do with anything but once upon a time, I had no idea that NRI FOB jokes existed. NRI FOB jokes as in making fun of NRIs who are fresh off the boat with their water bottles and white socks and that unique mixture of arrogance and bewilderment which is like having a target painted on your forehead. Of course NRIs make fun of FOBs the other way round because that’s a big part of the NRI experience. Back in the day, we called them Fresh Of The Boaters. I don’t know what Boaters are or why we said that. The only possible explanation I can offer is that we were Canadian and it was the eighties. Anyway so I heard funny and also mean stereotypes/jokes/cultural critique by Indians about NRI FOBs. And I have to say, it was weird because half of me was laughing because it was really funny and the other half of me was sad and offended. I was laughing at myself and being offended with myself at the same time. That was hard to do, mainly because I’m used to doing only one of those things at a time. Anyway.

Hay Gaiz! Mai Country Welcomes Foreign Seekers Of Yoga Poses!

Ok, this I actually took from the article. The last six words of the above sentence, to be precise. I just think this should be a on a t-shirt. I really do.

konichiwa bitches

'We are broadcasting to you from the crystal gondola in the palatial main studios of 930 CJCA in beautiful downtown Edmonton for the education, elucidation, emancipation, enlightenment and mental emolument of the hoi-polloi.'

2011-02-26T15:12:00.000+05:30

This line was the introduction to a little radio show I used to listen to in my little youths called The Bill and Bill Show. It is only now that I am appreciating just how rad this intro is.

It's been a dramatic week. Uncle Pai passed away and as someone who really loved and continues to love old skool Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle, I haz a sad :( . Then Premananda, also known as Swami Premananda, also known as Rape Swami (although this is confusing because so many swamis are rape swami), also known as Prems, also died. Whatever, right? And then Bipasha Basu apparently hired two little girls to tie her shoelaces? And then took a picture of this? And posted it on Twitter? Or something? This is one of those things you should not read about if you haven't had any coffee because the more you read, the less sense it makes and that will end up setting the tone for the rest of your day. She probs wouldn't have got in trouble if the two little girls in question were white. Moral of the story, if you're going to take pics of kids tying your shoelaces, make sure they are white so you won't be accused of child labor.

Anyway, when I was engster, I wished that Julie Andrews was my mom. Now that I am elderly spinster, I wish RuPaul was my mom. This week's eppy was better than last week's so I'm just really happy that I don't have to kill myself over an American reality teevee show. My favorite lines from this 'sode were

I don't mean this to be offensive but do you have nail polish?

(k- halleloo, someone said something worth writing down)

She done already done had herses

(k- this is 'ghetto shit that rupaul says' although it also sounds like Gollum and it is rare for a line to reach both these levels of raditude. I can't believe I just used the word raditude. I hope I never use it again.)

I'm going to make up something, fill in the gaps bitch, with elephant shoe honey, cantaloupe and shalabalaba tuna.

k- :)

There are three pizza types in my smalltempletown. One is Pizza Katherine, which is fifty rupees. I have no idea what the topping might be. Possibly Katherine. Which is gross. Second pizza type is Pizza Diana's Choice. I believe the Diana in question is Lady Diana, because she's one of those elderly white women we like to talk about over here, along with Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson. The third pizza is Pizza Saddam's Craving. I believe the Saddam in question is Saddam Hussein, because he's one of those foreign dudes we like to talk about over here, along with Kennedy and…Kennedy. Why are these pizzas named like this? What kind of toppings will they have? Why are the Diana and Saddam pizzas sixty rupees and Pizza Katherine is only fifty? Why this Pizza Katherine racism?

Now that I have tried to be witty about the smalltempletown menu and its ohsoprecious English, it behooves me to say that this menu is a good reminder to myself of how English words have different meanings in different places. It also reminds myself of how we sometimes fail to apply this important piece of wisdom in areas like the smalltempletown. Whybecausemeans one automatically tends to assume the ohsoprecious English is a mistake and that the natives have used it because ‘they don’t know any better’ and they are just sitting here, waiting and hoping for someone to come and show them how to be moar better with their English.

It saddens me to say that I speak from experience when I say that sometimes I would see these "mistakes" and turn into the Benevolent EnglishSpeaking Despot. Benevolent EnglishSpeaking Despot royally points out the mistake even though nobody asked. This is often done with a very Jesus on the cross air, like 'forgive them father, they know not that their English is all rong but don't afraid babay, I fix everything because I am awesome'. The Benevolent EnglishSpeaking Despot then writes out in nice, big letters the right way (AFTER taking picture of the ohsoprecious English to post on blog or generally show everyone because it’s so lololo and also proof that we hast been among the great unwashed and its unwashed English). Benevolent EnglishSpeaking Despot beams, hands over the “correct” English version and walks away feeling like they've educated the unwashed masses and they will be forever in our debt for correcting their English. In your head, you picture everyone crying and watching you leave with folded hands as they mutter in their native tongues, ‘May you live long and prosper’. I personally used to take this a little farther and imagine that they named their children after me also.

Clearly are only two things to be said about this whole scenario.

stolen from somewhere on jezebel.com

While it’s true that some folks may be interested in “correcting” things, that number, in my limited experience, is rather small. I have found that practically speaking, many such illustrious establishments don’t give a flying fuck if you think their English is funny or wrong or whatever. As was once pointed out to me, 'you really think I'm going to call in some painters right now because you've told me one word is spelt wrong?' I have to say, I kinda thought they would and was flabbergasted that they didn't.

I think this whole idea of benevolently swooping down and ‘correcting’ the ‘bad’ English of the third world country signages may be another one of those romantic, othering notions we have about the nonEnglishSpeaking native, that they are desperate for us to teach them and make them moar better. Because that’s a nicer thing to believe instead of the rather unnerving idea that maybe they use English differently (*GASP!!!!*) and they don’t really care if you get it or not and your English doesn’t really have any place there. I guess this sort of applies to nonNatives making mistakes with Native words insofar as they don’t really care if they are doing it rong either. But also, it’s very different. Of course you may not consider it different if you believe in awesome concepts like reverse sexism and reverse racism.

Why would a little vegetarian meals hotel that has been doing brisk business for the last thirty years in a cosy little pocket of the world promptly redo all their signs AND menus just because you happened to drop by and be the friendly neighborhood English spellcheck? What made you think a spellcheck was even necessary? People already knew what the brother was saying. And if they know what a brother is saying, then it has some meaning, no? And rather than automatically assume the meaning is 'wrong', why not consider that maybe you just don't get the local meaning?

'pizza', 'saddam', 'diana' and 'katherine' all have some meanings in this smalltempletown that I haven’t really understood yet. They are different from my meanings. This is sometimes hard to understand and accept. But I've discovered that when I decide to assign my own meanings to these words instead of accepting that I just don’t understand them, I learn important life lessons. I learned one such important life lesson when I was looking at another menu in another small place and I saw the words 'Vegetarian Steak'. And I went HAHAHAHA! And a wise native companion rolled their eyes because that whole laffing at the menu thing gets old after looking at many menus. And I said Imma have vegetarian steak, bitches. And the wise native said 'don't be ordering that weird shit, have meals only'. And I was like pfft, nowai gais, imma have vegetarian steak! You can take your local meals and put it on your mouth! And the wise native said, 'I really think you should just have meals' and I was like Nowai! Vegetarian steak, bitches! I think even the waiter suggested I have meals but I was like vegetarian steak!! For the Shire!

Said vegetarian steak arrived and all I can say is that ‘vegetarian steak’ clearly meant something different to me and something different to the illustrious owners of said eating establishment. And the wise native said unto me 'I TOLD you to order meals! Why don't you listen to me! You never listen to me!' This golden moment has actually been preserved in time because everyone else had a really fab time because the meals were apparently very good. A napkin was procured from said establishment and everyone wrote on it and said they had the best meals evar and they would never ever forget this day because everything was just the best evar, especially the meals. I wrote the words 'big vegetable cutlet' on this napkin because that's all I could say. And for the rest of that trip, the wise native encouraged me to order vegetarian steaks from every little pottikadai that we stopped at. Important life lesson learned- if you don’t understand what vegetarian steak means in certain localities, just have the meals.

And now, I end with a song that when I first heard it, I thought oh my God, this song is all about my life! But I think maybe manymany people felt the same way also. This is These Days by Nico with the Velvet Underground. This song also appeared in The Royal Tenenbaums which had a little old Indian servant dude called Pagoda which isn’t that strange when you consider that I have a little old American servant dude called Skyscraper. He ties my shoelaces for me.

okbai.

‘Subscribe to our noble society for providing the infant negroes in the West Indies with flannel waistcoats and moral pocket-handkerchiefs’

2011-02-20T00:32:00.000+05:30

This blog post title is a portion of dialogue taken from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens and it is rad like I cannot even say. I am going to start a similar society to provide infant browntots in the East Indies with flannel waistcoats and moral pocket-handkerchiefs. I feel like I've started many funds and societies like this already but whatever.

This week, I received a handsome book called Kavi Kala created by Madness Mandali, which I have spoken of before on this illustrious blog. Since that before time, the book has worked its way into existence and was mentioned in newspapers and went to Kala Ghoda and illustrious people like Sarnath Banerjee bought a copy. So myself and the onenumber angle given below are giving kaithattals for this kaithattal-worthy endeavor and saying well done all illustrious engsters, we are appreciating like anything.

stolen from here

You want to buy means you can go here and type in 'Kavi Kala' and buy.

You want to enter flash fiction contest and possibly be published in Chapati Mystery and possibly win a copy of Zero Degree by Charu Nivedita? Of course you do! That's why you are clicking this link right now! Yay flash fiction contest! I am judging this contest so if you'd like to send me money or shirtless dancing dudes in order to secure your win, please feel free to do so although whether that will actually improve your chances of winning, I cannot say. It probably won't. It might. I don't know.

This week, I also watched a flabbergastingly boring episode of RuPaul's Drag Race. Of course this is only the fifth eppy of this season so there's a good chance it might get even more boring in future, in which case I may have to kill myself because I don't know what it means if an American reality show about drag queens starts to get boring. Anyway, fave lines from this 'sode. I can't even say these are fave lines. These are lines which were less boring than the other lines.

When you weren't pronouncing your ls and your rs I thought it was a terrible decision. But you know what? That never hurt Barbara Walters.

I can't do that, I'm way too rock and roll.

(k- At the beginning, I liked Raja a lot but now she's coming off like such a douche and this is probs one of the douchiest things she's ever said. At the same time, I think it would be neat to appropriate this to various areas of everyday life. Like someone goes 'Didn't you say you had to go to the bathroom?' and you’re like 'I can't do that, I'm way too rock and roll.')

It’s like that Beyonce feel. Where everywhere you go, you've got wind.

(k- Shangela meant like breeze blowing your hair and fabulous gown when you're being fierce on the runway but this line is way neater if you think she's talking about flatulence)

You know what VIDA is? It is apparently not that girl group that Channel V made once upon a time because that was VIVA and that apparently is different. VIDA released a study that showed men are published more than women in certain major publications. SHAWKING! Studies like this are neat to me for three reasons. One, it has pie charts and pie charts are rad because you get to see just how bad things are in terms of pie and this is just easier on people like me who can only understand things in terms of pie. Two, it seems to be predominantly American which means this study does not apply to me and that is rad also. Three, these studies lead to awesome comments which are delivered both by males and females, thus proving that at least in the realm of awesome commentary, the gender disparity is not as prevalent and we can take some comfort in that and be happy. Here are some of my personal favorites.

1. Gender doesn't exist in true writing

I have to admit, I don't know what 'true' writing is. I think it might be the opposite of liesandpropaganda writing but I'm not really sure. Anyway, this comment is the cousinbrother of another toteshaut thing people sometimes say that goes 'race doesn't exist'. Really. People actually type that out and it appears on the internet for other people to laugh at. Sometimes people also say, 'when I see a person, I don't see their color' and I'm like really? What do you see? Just an outline? Don't they all look the same if they are all just outlines? Is it racist for me to say that? Probably. Anyway, just so you know, "Art", like REAL ART, transcends things like sexuality and gender and race and all that inconsequential stuff and sort of just floats above everything like some large, androgynous art amoeba. If it strikes you that this large, androgynous art amoeba consists of a lot of man's writing (as opposed to women's writing), you are not pure enough to appreciate the large, androgynous art amoeba and you should go kill yourself in the face.

2. ‘I think it’s pretty obvious that you just need to be young and a woman to get published nowadays. If you’re a young, nonwhite woman, it’s even easier.’

Also seen as

'We need to buy more books written by women so people will stop making women feel bad by making pie charts like this because we need to be nice to women and not make pie charts that make them feel bad’

Whenever I hear someone say 'nowadays', I feel like they are about to burst into song. I also think it's one of the raddest things ever to be told that your writing only gets published not because of the writing but because you have a uterus and because you are colored and exotic and stuff like that. It's also way rad to know there are people out there who support writing by women because it's women and women are just so women because they are women. Interestingly enough, many of these illustrious individuals don't actually like to read 'women's writing', they just like supporting it. I think it's kinda like how you say 'oh my god, look at the poor little chickens in cages in Bismi Biriyani Center' and then enter the Bismi Biriyani Center to eat the Bismi Chicken Biriyani Special. It's actually not like that but whatever.

3. 'Someone should do a study on how trannies aren't published enough'

This is supposed to be funny. So first, HAHAHAHAHA! You know why this is funny? Because it has 'trannies' in it and trannies is funny! Why? I'm not really sure! I think it's like when you're four and 'peepee' is funny! Now, once we're finished laughing at that whole 'trannies' thing, which is just so awfully clever, we will seriously contemplate how the entire world is counting on the onenumber Awesome Magazine to accommodate all minorities, thus putting said Awesome Magazine in danger of becoming a large affirmative action NGO dedicated to publishing the voices of the oppressed, downtrodden and overall very sad people. Heavens to Betsy! What shall we do?

I think it's interesting when certain magazines talk of publishing minorities like they are benevolent despots taking in refugees from some massive global disaster. I think it's also interesting that if a publication seems to be low on writing from any currently fashionable haut minority, this is somehow the currently fashionable haut minority's fault. And if the currently fashionable haut minority aren't appearing in certain publications, we're supposed to assume this means they're voiceless and sort of floating around like orphans in this vast, dark sea waiting to be rescued. Really.

I think it would be far more prudent and wise to make a sizable donation to my noble society to provide infant browntots in the East Indies with flannel waistcoats and moral pocket-handkerchiefs. Because later on, you can take pictures of the infant browntots in their flannel waistcoats and moral pocket-handkerchiefs and publish those in the Awesome Magazine so it's like publishing and minorities and there are pictures and everyone likes pictures.

4. Why Am I Suddenly A Racist For Only Reading/Publishing Stuff Written By Men?

I personally don’t think it’s racist or sexist or whatever to read/publish stuff only written by men. I actually think it's neat to have that kind of clarity about what you like. What’s confusing is when your heart clearly belongs to men's writing (as opposed to women's writing) but you claim to ‘welcome and encourage diverse forms of writing from all over the world, regardless of anything. We even take translations’ and then you continue to publish the same kind of men's writing over and over again. It's like that epic fuckwittery that makes publications say 'we encourage international submissions!' and then you only accept postal subs and you charge reading fees in dollars and you want to be paid via fluffy pink unicorns and it's all very

from here, please to click to get fullfeeling effect

It would really help a lot if you just said ‘we dig men's writing’ or ‘we welcome and encourage diverse forms of writing as long as it’s men's writing’. It's just easier. You know?

Anyway, ever wondered what the song Dance pe Chance would sound like in Serbian? I did and then I found this song and then I was like, well I don't have to wonder about that anymore.

okbai.

'Opulence. You own everything. Everything is yours.'

2011-02-12T15:30:00.000+05:30

This blog post is a line taken from the documentary Paris is Burning and you can see the line in all its opulence here. I like to remember this line when I write because I feel like it’s a great thing to write like I just own everything. And when I've written something phenomenally fail, which happens a lot, I still give myself one of those diva pats on the cheek because it's like whatever bitches, at least when I wrote it, I owned everything.

Natural segue into RuPaul

stolen from here

I feel like this season is just not delivering as many amazing lines as the other seasons. I could barely keep track of the amazing lines during Season 2 and Season 1 gave us that one epic line 'I don't see you walking children in nature' which sort of wins everything. Anyway. Fav lines from this ‘sode.

Girl! My tuck!

We're giving fierce, jazzercise realness

Kate Gosselin, she learned this and then she loaned me this hair.

1, 2, 3, 4, I don't want that whore no more

What the hell is she thinking? You can't be lifting up drag queens!

(k- Fur realz, wtf? this is not WWF! This is not The Rape of the Sabine Women! You are not carrying drunk girls home! Wtf?)

Two neat things. One, Mubarak finally said ‘Well, FINE! I’m GOING!’ and went. Isn't that nice? Two, Daisy Rockwell at Bookslut did a nice write-up of some Blaft books including onenumber book that I wrote also. Which is rad.

Two fuckwitted things. Now the thing is, I can’t decide which one is the Great Big Awesome Winner of Fuckwit. So I thought I’d do a little contest type thing for myself and by myself and then decide accordingly. Let's do this Clue-style, shall we?

1. Amar Singh At The Press Conference With His Pants Off, Showing His “Wounds”

The salient features of this incident are as follows.

Amar Singh went to visit rape survivors.

(k- ok.)

A press conference was held.

(k- ok.)

At said press conference he took his pants off to show the “wounds” he got from not traveling by luxury buses.

(k- ok. Wait, what?)

I don’t really know what to say. It’s like some weird dream someone tells you about, you know? ‘And I dreamt Amar Singh was visiting rape survivors and there was this press conference and then he started taking off his pants-’. And that’s where you say ‘ok you can’t tell me about your weird dream anymore’.

Anyway, clearly the one thing that rape survivors need is a politician coming to visit them and then taking his pants off at a press conference and showing everyone his “wounds”. The only thing that hasn’t happened here is said politician declaring said “wounds” to be stigmata.

2. Jacques Testard at the Jaipur Literary Festival with the Slumdogs

Some of the salient features of this have been culled directly from the article and are featured here, completely out of context, which is like so mean you guys but whatever, this is my blog. But you are encouraged to view them in the beauty of their natural surroundings as well. Also this is just about the phust installment. I was instructed to stay tuned for the second installment, which I understand is up now but it behooved me to politely decline said offer because I am young and I want to live. So if second installment is awesome, that's awesome. This is about phust installment, which is brimming with Hindoos and lepers and cows and toilet issues! Now there’s something no one’s ever written about before! Here we go!

“Our driver is a Hindu; Ganesh stickers adorn his windscreen.”

(k –Doesn’t everyone just do this all the time? Like when you’re in Chicago or Vancouver, don’t you just go to the cab driver, hey muchacho, I see you have no stickers on your windscreen at all. You must be an atheist! Anyway, this comes near the beginning and it’s God’s way of telling you this is not going to go well and you should stop reading right now)

“…crouching lepers and stray cows”

(k- I mention this only because it will be the follow up to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. FYI. You saw it here phust)

“The mild January weather tempers the overwhelming olfactory experience that is India.”

(k- Can someone tell me what it means if India smells normal to me and I live in India and I totally don’t get this ‘overwhelming olfactory experience that is India’? Does this mean I’m actually living somewhere else? Does anyone know where I am? Can someone come and find me?)

“I’m looking for David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The girl at the till has not heard of it."

(k- it’s always very precious when the natives don’t know what you’re talking about, no? It’s one of the many things that makes me precious because I don’t know who David Foster Wallace is either. Who dat? I thought he was a piano playing dude but apparently that’s David Foster, which is a different man entirely. I made the same mistake with Victor Borga and Borges. I don’t know why I keep thinking certain writers are piano players)

“He worships Rama and Hanuman, the Monkey God who can change his size at will. In the Ramayana, Hanuman grows into a giant monkey and hops from south India to Lanka in search of Rama’s wife, Sita, who was kidnapped by the evil king Ravana. Most of these deities are blue. Christianity pales by comparison.”

(k- I’m not kidding. He actually wrote that. And then The Paris Review published it. Is it just me or does it sound eerily like Mrs. Mortimer? Maybe we should all be happy that writing in 2011 is similar to children’s books written by bigots in the 1800s)

“I’m determined to get through this book tonight. Testard, my surname, is French Provençal dialect for stubborn. I am not a practicing Jain.”

(k- I’m determined to get through this article without vomiting. Manickavel, my surname, is Tamil for Manickavel. I am not a banana. What the fuck? Am I on drugs? What is this? Why am I reading this? Why do I keep doing this to myself?)

-The hijras are eunuchs who live in marginalized communities and make a living from dancing and casting spells on credulous Indians. They also show up whenever there is a wedding, a birth, a death—any major family event—and demand money. If you refuse, they get naked and cast a spell on you. -

(k- The ExoticaSplaining Dude lives in other countries and makes a living from casting spells on credulous people by writing exotically about exotic stuff in exotic third world exotic countries. They also show up whenever there is a slum thang happening, a natural disaster, a literary festival- preferably any major third world event that involves poor peepal tho- and demand that you listen to them because they are the ExoticaSplaining Dude. If you refuse, they get naked and cast a spell on you. Actually they don’t but wouldn’t it be funny if they did? They should totes do that. Also, knicker please. As if the hijras didn't have enough issues to deal with. I mean why not just say they are casting these spells because they are magical vampires who beat up old people and steal the livers of newborn children also?)

Mrs. Mortimer wrote about all sorts of Far Away lands without actually going anywhere. And while I don't doubt that the illustrious Mr.Testard actually made it to our awesome shores, I couldn't help but think that it would be really easy to pull a Mrs. Mortimer with this one. After all, there is a lot of info on the JLF online. Add a few cows, lepers, a purple sari, Hindoo Gawds, hijras, reference to Indian friend who is related to people who live in India, throw in some pics from teh internetz (i noticed one pic was lifted from wiki, not a crime but whatever) and there you go- it’s like someone’s vacation blog from 2004. And now, after all that whining, can you offer us an alternative, you whiny third world colored person? Why yes! Yes I can! I personally liked this excellent write up very much but perhaps it sorta fails because it doesn't have enough cows and lepers in it. Oh whale.

And now, I have come to my decision.

Jacques Testard at the Jaipur Literary Festival with the Slumdogs- Despite having many salient features and providing the odd guffaw, I'm afraid we couldn’t find anything unique or memorable that we haven’t seen a kajillion times before and won’t see a kajillion more times in the future. If you had held a press conference and taken off your pants, we may have thought differently. Unfortunately, you didn't.

Amar Singh At The Press Conference With His Pants Off, Showing His “Wounds”- For sheer wtfness that worked on numerous levels and was memorable in the way that we cannot ever unknow and we really don’t want to hear or see ever again, you win. Congratulations, you are the Great Big Awesome Winner of Fuckwit.

Gentlemen, we thank you both. Without these awesome displays of fuckwittery, I would have had nothing to blog about.

And now, here is a Leiomy Maldonado Vs Kassandra Ebony vogue battle where Leiomy does this INSANE matrix dip and it’s like…there are no words. INSANE!

okbai.

all these bitches is my sons is the industry leader of viral data hygiene

2011-02-05T15:27:00.000+05:30

This blog post title is taken from an iteration of the constantly-changing prospectus for my forthcoming novel All These Bitches is My Sons. If you are, for some reason, able to read the prospectus in its entirety without your brain exploding, you will see that All These Bitches is My Sons is more than just a novel and the industry leader of viral data hygiene. Sometimes it is also the industry leader of B2C one-to-one re-sizing and sometimes it also practically invented the term "CAD". The fact that you get a completely new prospectus every time you refresh the page just goes to show how dynamic and fluid this novel is going to be. It’s just how we do.

So much shawking shawking news! Bryan Adams concert in India! ZOMG!!! That has never EVER happened before! Do you think he’ll sing Summer of ’69? Even though it’s 2011? Does anyone know why he keeps coming here? Also, Raja was arrested! It’s almost like he did something bad or something! Shawking!

Now I will put these exclamation marks to better use and say RuPaul! Season 3! Episode 3! Drag Queens in Outer Space! Why hasn’t someone made this movie yet? Seriously, we had lesbian vampire killers but no drag queens in space, it makes no kinda sense!! Ok, my fav lines from this ‘sode were

Well. Glad you’re still here Curly.

(k- Ok, the line isn’t that amazing but when Manila said this it kinda sounded like she was saying Kuzhali and I was like !!!!! Only she was saying Curly and she was saying it to Shangela and Shangela was like bish, please. It kind of sounded like Kuzhali. Kinda.)

Delta knows how many cab drivers I’ve slept with, Delta knows all kinds of shit.

Tweaker? The She Monkey? That’s haut.

Do not make fake sound effect gun noises.

(k- general rule I think. Just anywhere, fake gun noises. No.)

The idea of having Michelle Visage sitting there terrifies me a little bit because that woman scares me.

Lily motherfucking Tomlin.

(k- I KNOW!!!)

And while not technically a line, this little bit of conversation that happened while they were doing rehearsals was very swish because they were about to do the scene so someone said 'Action!' and then this happened.

‘Say what?’

‘Action?’

‘Oh’.

What else means PETA did an ad which apparently features a range of women fellating vegetables. I feel like this is the right time to confess that the only reason I am not a vegetarian is because PETA has not done an ad featuring haut dudes fucking melons. Make it happen PETA!!!

Then, my contributor’s copy of Pank 5 arrived to my little corner of existence and that is always a triumph when things like that happen. If you’re sitting there with thirteen American dollars and wondering hmm, what I can do with this thirteen American dollars maybe you can buy one number copy. Not only is it filled with writers who are phamous in other countries, it has some kind of illustrated dead bear on the cover and a bus and fire. If I had thirteen American dollars, I’d buy it for the cover alone.

Also, Lapata interviewed me at Chapati Mystery and painted a picture of me also and also included my louly ‘you mad!’ dancing dude as well, which is very yes. Did you know he dances like an awesome to ‘show me your jalwa’? I feel like the haters need to know this and if you know this and keep hating anyway then I don’t know what to say. You must be carrying a great sadness around with you if you keep hating after seeing the ‘you mad!’ dude dance to ‘show me your jalwa’.

Then after somehow managing to listen through the novel Moby Dick, I made the unfortunate decision to listen to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. And while I can appreciate the book for what it is, I can’t help but feel like it would have been vastly improved if the garden had eaten all the children in the end. Or the children had eaten the garden. I guess maybe the latter, considering they were eating so much of everything else during a large portion of the book. Anyhoo, I am pleased to say that I was able to make up for things with two veryexcellent short story collections which I feel are totally worth reading/listening to again and again.

Dubliners by James Joyce- One reader actually sings at one point and another makes sounds like a cork popping. Which is rad.

A Man of Means by P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill – The reader does not sing or make cork popping noises but we don’t judge him because that's not how we do.

And then, while trawling the internet to find stuff to read about Egypt, I came across this post called A Guide: How Not To Say Stupid Stuff About Egypt. I found this very helpful because while I am not an authority on Egypt or the situation there, I kept reading stuff that made me feel like something was not quite right in the way some things were being said. Coming across these kinds of guides when dealing with Othering in fiction is inevitable. Someone writes something idiotic (which happens a lot and frankly, there’s not enough guides happening), someone else gets riled up about it and they write a guide because really, that’s about all you can do about Othering. It’s a very lucrative gig and also if you call people out on it, that means you’re racist and sitting on the neck of their artistic freedom. Or something. I don’t really understand that part.

These guides also often happen in response to certain kinds of travelogues which are also basically fiction and which are also popular because of the Othering factor. My Trip To Canada? Meh. My Trip To Africa! YES PLEASE! Tell us all about how the tribal people danced with lions and elephants and how they made you king of their village after you showed them your cell phone!!! I feel like Canada really misses out because it has no tribal people dancing with lions and elephants. They do have Nanaimo bars though. Anyway.

And now we have a guide for the situation in Egypt, which I think means that at some level, Othering is rearing its awesome head here as well. If when listening to what the Egyptian people are saying, some folk are only coming away with the revelation that 'Egyptian people are so articulate', it seems to imply that what they're actually saying is being lost in the astonishment that the Egyptians can speak at all. And to say 'duh of course they can speak, what's wrong with you?' is for some reason racist and like, so mean and stuff like that. I don't really understand that either. So many things I don't understand.

I think the need for the guide arose because possibly for the first time evar, Egypt is being discussed in terms that don’t involve The Mummy and My Awesome Egyptian Vacay! And while I cannot speak of Egypt, I feel like I can speak about the other things that Egypt has taught me.

A large number of people do not want to actually understand what is happening in Egypt. They just want to get all emo on Twitter. (in case you DO want to educate yourself, maybe you can start with this helpful post at the disquiet blog. but it's way easier not to read anything at all and just get emo on Twitter. seriously.)

The incidents in Egypt have helped an enormous number of people realize things like the women are brave and the people are nice and these are totally relevant things to say right now because they are not generalizing and sweeping statements at all. Perhaps most shawking of all, Egyptians actually do not go around 'walking like an Egyptian'.

People who are ‘progressive’ and awesome because they got dysentery one time when they went to Mexico cannot technically say fuckwitted things about Egypt because this one time, they got dysentery when they went to Mexico and Mexico is like Egypt. If you feel what they say is fuckwitted, it's because you never got dysentery in Mexico.

People who are totally not in Egypt are like really upset. We can know this because they keep saying things like ‘I’m so upset about what’s happening in Egypt. I just can’t deal with it. Why can’t they just stop! It's all too much for me, I can't bear it! Make them stop! They're upsetting me!!!!!’ I’m sure the Egyptians are real sorry and wouldn’t have gone all revolutiony if they had known you’d get so upset.

'Walk Like an Egyptian', a song with lines like 'foreign types with the hookah pipes' is somehow the unofficial anthem for the 'Egyptian Revolution' because…well you know, they are both about Egypt and Egyptians walk but as was pointed out earlier, not like how we thought they walked. And it's always important to appoint other people's anthems for other people's revolutions. I feel like Egypt Rani from the movie Narasimha (phust song) is a better choice because at one point, the woman is called a 'ganja poonthottam' which I believe sloppily translates as 'marijuana flower garden'.

And now, mashups.

Hood Stunna

I Run This

G6's N' Whatever

okbai.

'Down the stairs? Well, don't stop when you get to the basement. Keep straight on. Give my regards to the earth's core. And if you give us any more trouble, I shall visit you in the small hours and put a bat up your nightdress.'

2011-01-29T17:41:00.000+05:30

This blog post title is taken from the Mrs. Richards episode of Fawlty Towers. I think it speaks for itself. Anyway, Republic Day came and went and as has come to be the custom with Independence Day and Republic Day in this onenumber country, one tends to look at all the increased security and have thoughts that are not necessarily ‘I love India’ but more ‘I wonder who’ll get bombed today’ and ‘I wonder who has threatened to blow up who or what today’ and ‘I hope no one blows me up today’. Clearly, this is what the spirit of India and independence and republicness is all about.

Anyway, RuPaul’s Drag Race!!!!111!!!! Season 3 !!11!!!! You betta WERK!!! How I love this show. And because I love this show, imma list my fav quotes from this episode so I can look back on them later on and enjai like anything.

-Everybody knows who Yara Sofia is in Puerto Rico. And if you don’t, then sorry darling, this is not your world.

(k- I’m going to start saying this to people. Sorry darling, this is not your world.)

-Girl. Prison, honey.

-She wasn’t giving us sexy, she was giving us crazy.

-I think your breasts are throwing your balance off.

-Alexis, a little Ann Margaret she was giving me today.

-Girl don’t blow your nose on the fabric, bitch.

-You never want to be upstaged by a papier-mâché snowman, you know what I’m saying?

-The lipsyncing is starting to get a little violent. Shangela’s lampshade has become a weapon.

I was informed that there are not enough pictures on this blog. So here's one picture.

This sewing machine is one of those things that was bought because it seemed like a good idea at the time. We must reflect on what exactly the situation must have been like for the purchase of an 18^th century sewing machine to seem like a good idea. Anyhoo, this machine hasn’t been used very often and when it has been used, it has been full of phail- I used it once and I felt the same sensation I get when someone makes the mistake of putting me behind the wheel of their car (which, I guess, also seems like a good idea at the time). It all looks very interesting and there are neat gadgets which I am appreciative of, but I really have no idea what I am doing and yet, I feel like that shouldn't stop me also. Anyway, the common diagnosis is that this sewing machine hasn’t been used properly and so, it’s sort of gone bad. It is a monument to the corroding power of potential that is never used but continues to just sit there. This is the Biff Loman of sewing machines but also, not really. I hope to set it on fire one day. If I do, I will take picture and post it on my blog.

Here's another picture.

See this nice angle and andy? I have no idea who they are. I have a photograph of them but I have no idea who they are. How did this happen? Once upon a time, an illustrious person (who would later send out 2007 New Year greetings in 2011) was once staying in Manipal hostel premises. And every year, various hostelites would leave behind English novels/random books after leaving the hostel, possibly because they are excess and unnecessary luggage. And this illustrious person, being someone who would later send out 2007 New Year greetings in 2011 (?!!??????), would collect all these orphaned and abandoned books and take them home. This photograph was in one of those books, but which book I cannot say.

For some reason, said illustrious person did not have the heart to throw this photo away so she left it in there. And everyone who borrowed the book said ‘hey you left this in here’ and she would say ‘it isn’t mine, you can throw it out if you want’ but no one ever did because there's something very sweet about the picture, no? So it just kept changing hands because nobody had the heart to throw it away and nobody knew what to do with it either. Eventually the book and photo parted ways and the photo was stashed along with someone’s photo collection because sometimes things like that happen. And then, it was remembered that I have blog so there was this brilliant idea to put it on the blog and see if maybe someone knows who this andyangle is. This brilliant idea is both absurd and notabsurd because the English reading populace in this area is kind of incestuous, although not nearly as incestuous as the English writing populace in this area, which is so much into the interfucking and inbreeding that it’s pretty much fucking itself. But that happens with so many other writing communities also. Inbreeding and Interfucking- it’s what community is all about.

So if you can somehow prove that this louly andy and angle belong to you (I’m not sure how you would do that tho), I will return this photo to you. Or I might just ask you to right click and save it and then I will take it down. This will be a big bulb if it turns out to be the picture of someone I know. Actually, the more I think of it, the more this seems possible.

I was also informed that there aren't enough positive/happy things on this blog. So here are things I find funneh or just like to look at. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are positive.

The Fuck Yeah! Ryan Gosling Tumblr

Pablo Francisco' s Strippers clip- 'This is a job man, don’t be makin’ those noises and shit!'

Margaret Cho’s Mom on the Answering Machine- ‘If you don’t pick up the phone, then you gay.’

The Fecking Greeks clip from Father Ted

Victoria Wood singing 'Pam'

Bus Driver clips from Lil Miss Jocelyn- '5, 6, 7, 8, Cor, Blimey, Geezer, Mate'

No Limits clip from Ab Fab

Vadivelu clip from 'Winner'- 'Venda. Valikithu. Azhathiduven.'

Super Karate Monkey Death Car clip from News Radio - 'But Jimmy has fancy plans! And pants to match.'

Count This Penny! clip from Sesame Street

The Front Fell Off

Horse Outside by Rubberbandits- 'Fuck your Honda Civic, I’ve a horse outside'

I was alsoalso informed that there is just not enough of a lot of other things on this blog. And I was like, oh fuck off.

okbai.

ps- i almost forgot! another positive/happy thing

stolen from somewhere on jezebel.com

‘well again, you have had a wonderful career. I have missed so much of it because I've been busy and also some of the titles didn't strike me.’

2011-01-22T15:10:00.000+05:30

This blog post title is taken from an interview that Jiminy Glick did with Steve Martin at The American Comedy Awards sometime in 2002. I think it is wonderful because oftentimes, this is what people actually mean when they are saying all sorts of other things to you. I’m hoping to incorporate this more into my conversation as well as the phrase ‘you’re really emo.’

Anyway, I recently read this post over at the Kaleidoglide which linked to a number of other fine posts on issues of books and piracy and privilege. I think it’s neat how piracy is generally something associated with the unwashed, underprivileged and the morally reprehensible. And yet in this onenumber country, we have a lot of privileged pirates (they may be unwashed and morally reprehensible tho).

I was an extremely active patron of pirated books (I only stopped because I discovered free audiobooks, not because I decided not to be morally reprehensible anymore). I also realize that I am probs morally reprehensible writer for admitting to being a former pirate. On that matter, I'd just like to say


stolen from here

Apart from pirated books, my bookshelf (such that it is) contains Xeroxed books (also illegal apparently), secondhand books and craptastic original books which were bought “because they were big” (shoutout to my peeps who do this too, I know there’s at least one of you out there) because big books somehow meant that I was getting more words for my money. This is what makes you put down the Atwood novel and pick up The Superbig Big Book Of Vampires and Werewolves and Vampires And Stuff Like That because that’s somehow more reading value. I don’t really want to go into how many of those superbig books I have. I have 7. I don’t want to talk about it.

This bookshelf is partly the result of idiocy and partly the result of going to great and sometimes illegal lengths for books that were otherwise inaccessible for various reasons. If a book costs kajillions of rupees or can only be found in a library that involves a Lord of the Rings-like journey to enter, that is called inaccessible. I don’t find the fact that these books are inaccessible to be shocking. There are probably complex economic reasons for that which I can’t understand. I do find it a little strange when peeps get all #outrage over piracy and say things like ‘why can’t they just buy it like everyone else’ or ‘why can’t they just go to the library’ (I love that one. That one’s my favorite). On the other hand, why are we relentlessly pursuing these inaccessible books which clearly we are not supposed to have? One reason could be because we are not having very much respect for IWiE books, even though they are usually (not always) cheaper. I think there is a very real feeling that IWiE is suckass when compared to English books written by other peeps. BUT!!!! A lot of the IWiE IS suckass. Wottodo.

I did not buy pirated books because I felt sorry for the vendors (which, I understand, is why some people buy them and I’m like wow, really?). I bought these books because there was no other way I could get them. I did not actively patronize book pirates as some form of activism. If these books were cheaper, I would totes have bought them in a store because I like bookstores! Really! They are way nicer than having to stand in dirty, crowded, potentially dangerous streets getting pawed and prodded, making sure you don’t get run over or step in the dogvomithumanshit or that your wallet doesn’t get nicked while trying to ignore the creepy stares from drunk dudes while you try to bring down the price from a dude who is alternately not looking at you at all and then furiously staring at your boobs. All this for a fucking book that will probs have smudged ink, wonky formatting, missing pages or as in many cases, all three. That’s fucking crazy. If someone’s willing to do all that for your book, chances are that they will be amenable to going to a bookstore and buy the original as long as it doesn’t cost them their kidneys to do so.

But Hay Gaiz! Guess What! You don’t need to be a bad book pirate! You can go to the library! Libraries are universally good things! Like good writing! If you can’t get your hands on the latest, all you need to do is skip over to the library, curl up in one of those lovely chairs provided by the management and enjoy the book! YAY! Golly gee whiz I sure do love libraries! Actually I’d rather eat my own spinal column while stabbing myself repeatedly in the eye with a dead bird than patronize a library. I know that as a writer I’m not supposed to say this either but again,

stolen from here

My libraryhate is purely a personal thing. I went to them repeatedly because I used to love them so much I can’t even say. I gave them my time and my money and they took everything and they broke my heart. They lied. They let me down. They broke my heart. I aint naming any names because I don’t want the English library mafia coming after me. Also these are my experiences, based on certain libraries during certain periods of time. It is my sincerest hope that other people have more positive experiences than I have had.

School/College Libraries- Ragged collections of locked bookcases filled with books that looked like they must have been all the rage in 1745. The End. I believe that the bookcase keys often played hide and seek with the library ledger which is maybe why people forgot that these bookcases could actually be opened and the books could be taken out.

Government Libraries are Government- These are great places to go if you want to look at books that have no pages in them. Where the pages went? People ripped them out and put them in their pocket and went home where they can do their research/studying in more comforts. There are of course books that still have pages in them but these books are no longer in the library. They have been lackadaisically spirited away and are in better places because apparently, the easiest thing in the world to do is flick English books from certain government libraries. Contrary to other libraries, these places actually kinda encourage you to read as long as you take the books (or at least the pages) with you and don’t come back and bother them again.

The Foreign Embassy Library- What could possibly be weirder than getting racist treatment in a phoren embassy library by your own brothersister brown peepal? Going back again and again to said establishment for getting same treatment like it is some candychocolate. But it’s going to take more than silly racism to keep me away! Because these people clearly did not want me in their libraries, grubbing up the books and the carpet and that imported phoren air with my dusty thirdworldness. Why else would they charge are-you-fucking-kidding-me rates for library cards? Other things they did to make these libraries superaccessible was to make it as hard as possible to physically get into the building and also to employ peeps with fullon Govt. Office Attitude, which I can get for free at places like the post office. Also worthy to note that these libraries were often shelf upon shelf of books that made one wonder if these embassies are dumping their garbage, outdated meds, toxic packaged food AND fuckall books here. Fuck you, foreign embassy library. Just, fuck you.

Private Lending Libraries that Offer More Than M&Bs, Sidney Sheldon, Ruth Rendell, Agatha Christie and PD James (Beedi James. LOLOLOLO)- These are the unicorns of libraries. I heard they exist but they apparently exist in very secret, magical places and only very special people are allowed in. To sign up, you have to take a blood oath which I understand is basically ‘keep it secret, keep it safe’ only it involves sacrificing a portion of your tongue at some point. If you offer up your first born and your liver, you get to take the book home. If you return the book early and in perfect condition but not early enough, they will slaughter your entire family. Twice.

Also, I doubt whether this somehow automatically reflects the sad state of libraries all over the India. Why because means in one little area I know of which somehow could never get its shit together in terms of setting up proper garbage disposal and sewer systems somehow had it together enough to set up a library (Tamil books and newspapers), which is used often and used well. Which kinda goes to show that we can if we want to, no? Or maybe we can’t when it comes to English books. I don’t know.

Ok, now I am going to be all contradictory and say I don’t think book piracy is a good thing. I say this as a writer with a book and also a reader who actively bought many pirated books- it sucks for an author to lose money (especially if they are not making much in the first place) and pirated books, in most cases, are not worth it. You just buy it because you reallyreally want to read the book.

I think shouting people down by saying ‘stop book piracy!’ is about as effective as ‘just say no to drugs’. It completely underestimates how deep the piracy issue is, why it’s happening and how badly some people want their books. If this is all about hip and swinging capitalism (ain’t no shame), doesn’t piracy mean there’s something wrong with the system? And if it is morally reprehensible to buy a pirated book, why is it not morally reprehensible to charge 900 rupees for that same book in its original form? If we can’t afford 900 bucks a pop for a book, does that mean we’re just not privileged enough to read and we should shut up and go away? When will people stop telling us to go to the library? Stop telling us to go to the fucking library!!!

So to conclude, I want to apologize. This blog post is just really whiney and offers no solutions though it offers problems and some questions and that’s really annoying. Also, in an effort to redeem myself as a serious writer, I just want to say

YOU BAD THIEVING PIRATING NATIVES!1!! SHAME ON YOU!!11

okbai

what is your native

2011-01-15T14:18:00.000+05:30

Phust, I want to send a big pongalo pongal! shoutout to my nativepeeps, wish you all good things and I wish people would stop saying ‘Pongal’ is ‘porridge’ because it’s not and this is not a festival celebrating porridge.

This blog post title is what people in my corner of the world ask when they want to know where you come from. It would also be a great name for a game show. Anyway, I finished Moby Dick and so I would like to dedicate the song Hannah by Freelance Whales to myself and also to all the freelance whales out there, thank you for keeping it real homies.

In the last week or so, I seem to have read a lot of stuff about Indian writers in English. Manymany things have been said but I think the bottom line is that IWiE are basically fail. If this whole thing was a reality TV show, people would be saying that IWiE are like so fake because we aren’t for real. The question of realness with IWiE has been dealt with nicely here so I won’t go into that. But I would like to offer helpful pointers on how to be IWiE win. I am the first to admit that I have absolutely no cred, experience or right to speak about IWiE win. However. I do have massive experience and cred in being IWiE phail. I know this because Indians in the India have told me this, Indians not in the India have told me this and notIndians in the notIndia have told me this. So it must be true. So here it is. Wish you all success in your future endeavors.

1. Write like an Indian

Sometimes people will choose an Indian book of fiction because they want to learn about new cultures like that Slumdog movie. This fiction needs to primarily operate as a guidebook to Indian Exotica and not so much as fiction because if these peeps wanted fiction, they would have probs chosen something else to read. Anyway, ‘Indian Exotica’ is very different from ‘Indian’. Indian Exotica is what people THINK constitutes all things Indian. It is mainly there to satisfy that Indian Exotica Itch. In other words, it’s porn so it needs to be written like porn and that’s very different from writing literary fiction and other stuffs also. So your scifi story might simply be phail because it’s not Indian Exotica porn. So it’s not really your fault. Well it kinda is because you’re Indian and you’re not supposed to be writing scifi anyway.

Also, while you need to write like an Indian, it’s important not to be too Indian. Do not use too many non-English words that will make white people faint away in fright or get like distracted with the distracting (ie threatening, confusing nonEnglish) vibe you got going. Also remember that as an Indian, your story, no matter what it’s about, automatically runs the risk of slipping into magic realism territory if readers cannot latch onto some “realist” aspects like beer or Jesus.

2. Do not write like an Indian

The biggest criticism that IWiE face from readers back in da hood is that it sounds Indian and it fails to be compelling because it doesn’t sound NotIndian. We’d all be extremely wealthy people if we got 50paisa for every time someone wailed about how there are no Indian Bukowskis or Franzens (btw, who dat? btw, never say 'who dat?' about any authors you feel may be famous in America (also kinda in the UK but mainly America) because people will kill your face if you do. You are, however, encouraged to be ignorant about other IWiE). So anyway, children’s stories are not Harry Potter. Fantasy stories are not Tolkein. It’s a fun game to play once you get started, no? For some reason no one plays this fun game the other way round because that’s just weird! I mean, all those people OWN English and we are just borrowing it or “aping” English like we “ape Western culture” (I for one would be in epic bling if I got 10paisa for every time someone said that to me). However, I heard that most IWiE are not too worried about this one because it’s mostly just Indians saying this and nobody really cares what Indians say anyway, especially other Indians.

3. Be Duly Penitent and Ashamed for Not Knowing Your ‘Mother Tongue’

English is the language of superduperprivilege in these here parts and that is a trickytricky thing. It manifests in different ways. In RaceFail and in many arguments about Othering, the privileged whine about how all the nonprivilaged folk are just so mean to privileged folk who are like so misunderstood even though they are so nice and stuff. Sometimes however, the privileged don’t say anything. Notice how this blog likes to go on and on about all sorts of nonprivilege issues but keeps a studied silence about its own privilege. For the IWiE, this Privileged Silence must always be coupled with the act of showing everyone the scar and shame of the absence of your Mother Tongue. This should be automatic. It should be so automatic that you should say ‘I feel terrible for not being able to speak/read/write in *insert any vernacular language here*’ for no reason whatsoever. This is like saying PROUD TO BE INDIAN for no reason whatsoever.

It doesn’t matter if you really do feel terrible about this (because you SHOULD feel terrible about this, you terrible person) because no one is going to believe you anyway. You are writing in the language of the raping invaders which means everyone has the right to tell you how your writing is ‘inauthentic because it’s in English’ and ‘you are handicapped because you cannot write in your Mother Tongue’ and you’re basically just this big whoring writer slut-ho. You may feel the need to politely point out that maybe English IS your mother tongue, it’s the language you think in, it’s the language you are comfortable with, you revert to it when you are angry or in great pain. Do not do this because no one will believe you and also, you probably do not believe this yourself. It’s usually best to just stand there and nod and say ‘yes I am a motherfucker’ over and over again instead.

4. Be A Walking Encyclopedia Regarding All Things Indian

So as an IWiE you’re already inauthentic and people don’t believe what you say or they do when you say what they want you to say. Apart from all that, you also need to be a living resource on all things Indian because NotIndians need you for guidebook purposes and Indians need you to balance all that inauthenticity with rabid GK knowledge. When people say ‘what’s a caste system’, you better have a well-researched, 50 word answer, preferably with Euro-centric/American parallels ready at your fingertips. The same goes for issues like Indian royalty, communal violence, the British Raj, the anatomy of Bollywood, the decline of the Indian village, the use of spices (especially turmeric) in Indian cuisine, Satyajit Ray, the joint family system, role of women in Indian society, cows, child labour, the literary history of at least three regional languages, AIDS and Indian lorry drivers, the transgender community and Anglo Indians. You are not allowed to say ‘I don’t know’ to anything because that renders you both useless and more inauthentic than you already are and you may disappear completely off the face of this good Earth.

5. Do not have an unnecessarily complicated name like Kuzhali Manickavel

The English alphabet was not made for Indian names. So when people stumble over your name, in yours one number country and abroad, it’s all your fault and you should be so much ashamed. If your name has zs, xs, consonants all smashed together, inappropriate vowel combinations, hyphens or if it’s just really long, you are Ebil Name Terrorist. The best way to not be a terrorist is to have simple one or two syllable names. Arundhati Roy wins for her last name but screws it up entirely with her first name. Vikram Seth wins slightly more but would have won completely if his name was Seth Vikram, or better yet, Seth Victor. Names to avoid are anything that shows up as a mistake on spellcheck or anything that will make people nervous and angry and ask if there is some ‘easier’ alternative that they can call you. Also, it’s a good idea to avoid names like Swastika (especially if you’re hoping to hit it big overseas) and anything that runs any kind of risk of immediately conjuring up images of fecal matter, urine, reproductive organs, various stages and acts associated with coitus and also mammary glands. For example, avoid names like Peeya, Poorani, Dikshit (holla back at me white dude from New Zealand!), Mehboob, Fakhia and Christians leddies are encouraged not to shorten their name to Titty if their name is Elizabeth.

stolen from somewhere in the deepdark wilds of jezebel.com

I just put this gif here because it seemed like the right thing to do. I don’t think it has any magical IWiE powers.

7. Have No Sense of Humor

Isn’t Indian Writing in English just the funniest thing evar? No it is not. Why it is not? Because, as someone once told me, ‘what is the need?’ And since I could not think of an answer to this, they must be right. Humor is one of those things that is like really awkward and upsetting when it comes from anyone in the third world. I think there is some rule that one should not look for humor here because we’re supposed to be really sad all the time and it’s bad manners to remind us how we are so third world we obvs can't afford to have a sense of humor. I mean, all those times you see peeps smiling or laffing here? We're actually crying. We so sad. We are not with smiling face.

Also, writing is a very serious bidness, especially if you’re Indian and especially if you’re writing in English because then it becomes runningrace and has almost nothing to do with writing at all. And like all runningraces, you have to be in it to win or really, what is the point in you being alive? It’s like getting phustrank. If you can’t get phustrank, why are you living? Anyway, this is why we are having so many people who believe they can win at writing in English because they have a passable knowledge of English and that’s really all you need in this particular runningrace. I myself like to believe I have a passable knowledge of Tamil, which means I win at writing in Tamil. Also apparently, Indians do not have a sense of humor anyway because, apart from many other reasons, stand up comedy is not part of our culture. Someone told me this so I’m just passing that along, so you can know it too. Anyway, what is the need?

8. Do Not Write Blog Posts Like This

Why because means, what is the need? This is what people here will tell you and people over there will tell you and people who don’t know what you’re talking about will tell you because ‘what is the need’ is one of those things that is all-purpose-multi-purpose. Also the English writing world is sad enough without your woe and your woe is not universal. You know what’s universal? Good writing. Good writing is universal like Universal Studios. Anyway, if you find that you are fail at being an Indian Writer in English, quietly you can label yourself something else. Say you’re a NotIndian Writer in English. Or UnIndian. Don’t say you’re Anti Indian tho because you might get thrown in jail.

okbai.

that’s neat that’s neat that’s neat that’s neat i really love your tigerfeet

2011-01-08T21:11:00.000+05:30

this blog post title is taken from Mud’s Tiger Feet, covered here by Gus and Fin. This is their cover of Are Friends Electric? And this is their cover of Don’t Fear the Reaper. I think Don’t Fear the Reaper is one of the stupidest songs I have ever heard in my life. But I feel like Gus and Fin make it not stupid.

So one week in the new year has passed and what I can say is that it was remarkably like any number of weeks that occurred in the last year and in many years prior to that. Well maybe not so much because in weeks gone by, the media was not saying that birds and fish and crabs and corporate bankers were dying in legion numbers. Ok, maybe not the corporate bankers. Anyhoo, what we have forsures are the dying animals and the illustrious people at The Hairpin were not only able to comprehensively collate the data but also discern telling distribution patterns which you can see here. It is worth noting that none of that crazyass shit is happening in India because we’re Indians and we don’t do crazyass shit like that, not even our birds and fish and crabs. I mean the REAL Indian birds and fish and crabs don't do crazyass shit like that. We did have the plague once though. Remember when we had the plague? In 1994? Which was an excellent year for Tamil cinema in terms of musics I feel. And we didn’t get the plague down here either. So maybe a good year all round but not if you had the plague and had no access to Tamil movies at the time or did not appreciate them also.

Anyway, in an effort to retain some ragged credibility as an alleged writer, I thought I should write about some of the books I have read recently. Which I haven’t really read in the traditional sense because I fall asleep when I try to read actual books because I am old. However, I have listened to a few audiobooks which I understand don’t really count as real reading because real reading involves pages and the smell of the pages and the turning of the pages and curling up against and around significant others with cups of coffee and sweaters and things like that. I am sorry for not doing all those things but these audiobooks are free and for me, that is more important than turning smelly pages.

Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger, Jr- Sometimes we read/listen to something and think, why am I doing this to myself? I often thought this while reading/listening to Ragged Dick, which for some reason is not gay porn but, according to the everknowing wikipedia, ‘a juvenile novel by Horatio Alger, Jr. about a poor bootblack and his rise to middle-class respectability through good moral behavior, clean living, and determination.’ So it is what it is and all I really have to say is that it would make a great Tamil movie and it is also lolololo in the same way that elderly bigoted people are lolololo because they are old and they are going to die soon anyway so whatever.

The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith- I could go on and on and on and on about why I liked this but I am really trying to do the shorter blog posts thing so I will just say I liked this for many reasons and I don’t understand why it isn’t more famous or maybe it is and I didn't know. This particular audiobook is also the happy marriage of a good piece coupled with a good reader.

The Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton- Sometimes I go to this place where I am reading English words or hearing them and I understand what they are supposed to be as single words but they make absolutely no sense to me as a whole. I think this might be a family thing because once I was watching CSI with an illustrious family member and said illustrious family member turned to me and said ‘I can’t understand anything they’re saying’ and I said ‘Neither can I’ and she said ‘Oh good, I thought it was Telugu dub or something. It’s English, no?’ and I said ‘Yes.’ And she said ‘But we can’t understand it for some reason’ and I said ‘Yes’ and she said ‘Ok’. I don’t know why this happens but it does- I can recognize the words and I can hear them but they are just not understanding for me. This is what happened to me with this audiobook. I understand this is a collection of 'mystery short stories' and that is totally what they were for me. They were very mysterious and I would love to know what it was about and what those words were saying.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald- I haz a sad because the audiobook I heard was actually quite good but it also had a sermon sneakily sneaked in there which we are encouraged to distribute among people because Jesus said so or something so I’m not linking to it because Jesus told me not to. I have heard people orgasming about how epic this book is and all I have to say is homibabas, I totally totally get what you’re saying. Totally.

I am currently trying to read Moby Dick, which I am reallyreally happy I didn’t have to read for school or in order to save my life because I honestly do not know how I would have gotten through this. When I am older and wiser, I hope I will be able to appreciate this one better because like many things I have read/listened to, I can understand there are amazing things happening but I can't quite grasp them. It’s like being on the wrong side of the door and knowing great things are happening on the other side. Also, I feel like I know a lot about whales now.

And now, some things I appreciated from Def Poetry

Sarah Jones- Your Revolution

Beau Sia- Asian Invasian

Erykah Badu- Friends, Fans, Artists Must Meet

Lauryn Hill- Motives and Thoughts

And now, musics also.

Bad Medicine by Die Mannequin

Fucking Die 2 (€€ Cooper Mix) by Skrillex

Thousand Violins by The Tiger Lillies

okbai.

i have changed my name so often i have lost my wife and children but i have many friends

2011-01-01T15:08:00.000+05:30

i would wish you heppy new year but i am unsure if it is unIndian to do so since we didn’t create it or something. No doubt, we will have to rely on those mostillustrious and often violent keepers of teh Injun CulturesAndTraditionsAndEthnicDress to let us know because they are so smart and stuff like that. Anyhoo, this blog post title is taken from a song whose cover version I so much appreciate. I sometimes like to think this particular line applies to me very well except I never had a wife or children and I don’t have many friends. I have met people who think this line applies to them too very well for the same reasons also.

Anyway, I thought I would use this post to catch up on some correspondence that I never got to send before 2010 keeled over and died.

Dear Warren Anderson,

Hay sup homi!!1! What’s going on with your bad geriatric self? You know, I was just thinking about how you’re totally not in jail but Dr. Binayak Sen just got life imprisonment on sedition charges. I couldn’t help but admire how neat that is for you and for all those people like you who are inside the Indias who should also be in jail but instead they are like in parliament and stuff like that. Indian Justice, we haz it! Anyhoo, I guess it’s only a matter of time before I call India a big poopoo head and get sent down for life on sedition charges myself. I guess you won't be in jail then either.

Dear Sheila Ki Jawani,

(stolen from here)

Dear ColorWar Brigade,

Did skin lightening in the third world become the new haut thing to write about now? Why are so many of these writings/conversations little more than excuses for peepal to talk about that time they went to that dark, exotic foreign land and that’s about it. I’m not hating, it’s totes cool to reduce otherwise large and complex conversations into excuses to talk about our minority friends and trips abroad. I myself used Christmas as an excuse to tell everyone I had that one Christian friend that one time. Besides, people kinda do it in fiction and that’s totes ok because whatever! But maybe if we want the conversations to move beyond that, maybe we can keep the following points in mind the next time we decide to fight over non-white folks in non-white countries and how they should be studied, pitied and then shot for lightening their skin. Also ‘non-white countries’ is the term I will use for want of a better term and because this is my blog and also all four of ya’ll know what I’m talking about anyway.

1. Skin-lightening in non-white countries has to do with white people, doesn’t have to do with white people and has to do with a bunch of other stuff, some of which predates Jesus and it’s all exceedingly difficult to summarize in 30 words or less. Wottodo, life is hard.

2. Skin lightening in non-white countries is not the same as skin lightening in America. If you apply the skin lightening reasons of America to skin lightening in non-white countries, you will reach that scawy part of the Twilight Zone called Flabbergasting Conclusions which is like a corn field but without the corn and without the field also.

3. Just because you ‘traveled extensively in *insert any non-white country here*', or ‘have friends from *insert any non-white country here*’ does not make you any kind of authority on issues of skin color in said non-white country. There is of course nothing wrong with sharing what you know based on these experiences but it would be really nice if people could move beyond ‘well when I was a tourist there I saw this happen from my tourist bus window so it must be true’.

4. Don’t feel shy to read resources on the issue that are written from a non-Eurocentric perspective!! I am convinced that shyness is the only reason why more people aren’t doing this so I say to you, SHY IS COMING MEANS DON’T AFRAID BAYBAY. YOU BE FREE!!! NO ONE CAN JUDGE YOU!!!

5. Did I mention I had that one Christian friend that one time? I totally did. True story.

Dear Indian Journalism,

In a year that was otherwise devoid of LOLZ, you guys were totes hilarious. Like seriously you guys were like,

GIFSoup

I don’t know how you will top stuff like plagiarism, doing messenger work between political parties and taking dictation from corporate lobbyists. But I have fullfaith that you will somehow manage to entertain us even more in the new year. Stay classy ya’ll!

And now, the obligatory list of Resolutions for 2011. I hereby resolute to resolve to make the following resolutions.

1. I will walk with my people once I find them.
2. I will start a revolution.
3. I will be arrogant enough to think I can start a revolution.
4. I will stop talking about the ‘Other’ in fiction because it is pointless.
5. I will eat less vegetables.
6. I will never stop talking about the ‘Other’ in fiction because as an alleged writer with a blog, I revel in pointless things.
7. I will frequently say ‘PROUD TO BE INDIAN!!!!’ for no reason, thus cleverly avoiding any risk of being charged with sedition. PROUD TO BE INDIAN!!!!
8. I will find my home so I can finally give up and go home.
9. I will be more forgiving of people who refer to me as 'exotic', even if they keep doing it because to them it's a compliment and I guess it doesn't matter that it makes me feel like a pineapple.
10. I will ignore it when people call me 'exotic' and pretend like they just farted or something.
11. I will do the same as above when people say stupid things in general.
12. I will set up an I’m an Exotic Third World Writer So You Should Give Me Money Fund for the people who call me 'exotic' so these people can send me money and I can get this money that they send me. This fund will basically be about giving me money.
13. I will start a political party that solemnly swears never to talk to Nira Radia.
14. I will not buy bread that smells like agarbathis.
15. I will finish my epicest novel All These Bitches Is My Sons.
16. I will start the sequel and call it All These Bastards Is My Daughters.
17. I will write a novella called Only Some of These Bitches is My Sons.
18. I will only write in the goode Englishes like all goode people. Bad people apparently write in French because French is the opposite of English. FYI.
19. PROUD TO BE INDIAN!!!!
20. I will use the word ‘twunt’ more.
21. I will stop using the word ‘fuck’.
22. I will start using the word ‘fuckityfuck’
23. I will sob loudly when people pity me for not being able to speak my Mother tongue properly.
24. I will set up an I Can’t Speak My Mother Tongue Properly Fund so people can send me money and I can get this money that they send me. This fund, like the above mentioned fund, will basically be about giving me money.
25. I will no longer post the GIF of the dancing dude because it objectifies men, a section of society that has been oppressed and objectified for far too long. Objectifying men is reverse sexism and like reverse racism, it’s like so mean, you guys.
26. I will submit this list of resolutions somewhere as a list poem

27.

(stolen from jezebel.com but where exactly, who can say?)

28. YOU MAD!!!!11!!!!!!! That's not a resolution but whatever. YOU SO MAAAAAD!!11!!!!
29. I will eat more candy.
30. I will write shorter blog posts.

And now, in an effort to broaden my understandings of exotic cultures, some exotic musics.

Song of India by Korla Pandit- I am incredibly shocked to learn that Korla Pandit was apparently an African- American dude and not “a baby born in New Delhi, India to a Brahmin priest and a French opera singer, who traveled from India via England, finally arriving in the United States.” I am not really shocked with the costume of the dancing dude featured here because it explains to me why so many nonIndian people think that Gandhi was “wearing a diaper”.

Cara Mia by Jay and the Americans - Not to be confused with that other famous group Jai and the Indians

Cuanto La Gusta by Carmen Miranda and the Andrews Sisters

We No Speak Americano by Yolanda Be Cool & DCUP

And last but not certainly not least, here is my wish for you in the 2011.What did you say? Hey! What did you say? Nothing? Oh, it's alright!

May these words be like words in the new year and things like that.

okbai.

will you take that phoney dream and burn it before something happens?

2010-12-25T14:59:00.002+05:30

Heppy ChristhuMuhsu! Can I just say that there is something very thrilling in being part of the majority who extends patronizing good wishes to the minority on their holiday. What makes this even better is that I have some Christian friends so that makes me awesome and way better than peeps who don’t have Christian friends. I mean, Christian friend. I used to have one. I think. Anyway, truly, it’s that time of year again where a large number of peeps in my corner of the world wonder why the postman didn’t come and decide it must be some Muslim holiday like Bakrid. Christmas anthems like Do They Know It’s Christmas? were totes made for folks like us. It’s just how we do.

The title of this blog post is taken from the play Death of a Salesman. Is it not very fine? I think it is very fine. Other things which were scrawled in the margins of this sametext include

Walrus is ugly sea animal

Willy failure

No vandi, bus

America consumerist society

M. Kalaivani

And now, I’m going to talk about how white people are just the worst thing ever. Kidding! I’m actually going to do a best of 2010 round up because no other blog or site is doing this at all. KIDDING! However, I thought it worth mentioning that this blog had a birthday sometime last month which I completely forgot and neglected also because I’m an awful person and I neglect and forget everything. This is how you make someone else’s birthday all about yourself. FYI.

Ok seriously peepal, like really. I was listening to some author interview with some author dude and as has come to be an inevitable part of inevitable author interviews, said author dude lamented about how the English language was being corrupted and vandalized by things like LOL and HAY SUP!!1!! and it's just like the worst thing evar because these are very corrupting and vandalizing things. Below, kindly see the proofs of the corruption of the vandalisms.

from www.icanhascheezburger.com

Anyhoo, said writer dude and manymanymany other writerpeepal hast seen these dirty nonstandard, nonconventional English languages and doth proclaim that we are all going to die right now and it’s really going to hurt unless we all repent and reform ourselves unto that one most holy form of Ye Aulde Standardized and Conventional Goode English. It is the only thing that can save us from…whatever we need to be saved from. Because there are so many kinds of Englishes out there, each having its own use and meaning in places that aren’t England or America (gasp! How can that even be possible?!?), it makes complete and utter sense that Ye Aulde Standardized and Conventional Goode English, created by Ye Aulde, Standard, Conventional and Goode English people, rule over all of them. Like the Lord of the Rings but not really.

One Standardized and Conventional English to rule them all

One Standardized and Conventional English to find them,

One Standardized and Conventional English to bring them all

and in the darkness bind them

That’s scawy! But what is Standardized and Conventional and Goode English anyway? I thought about this question for a very long time. Actually I didn’t but anyway, I decided that the answer is how the hell should I know? I’m an alleged Injun allegedly! I’m not even supposed to know English! If there was any good left in this world, this entire blog would be in Hindi, the language of all good Injuns living in the Indias!

So instead, I thought I would fondly recall some of the nonconventional nonstandardized, ebil and horrible Englishs and assorted words I used in my own onenumber Injun youths. I think the meanings of these words and phrases will probably vary from the original or how other people remember using them because my memory is bad and I like to embellish things also, which is also known as lying. I know I have forgotten a lot of them and for this, I am exquisitely sad. Here are the ones I remember.

ZailSingh

Origin- Once upon a time, when we had only one DD channel with such sad and sporadic transmission that one often watched UGC transmissions because not watching them seemed a waste of the television, Zail Singh passed away. Who is Zail Singh? Good question! Anyway, back in them days, when peeps like Zail Singh died, DD went into mourning for about 780 years. The upside was that we got almost constant television. The downside was that it was all mourning music that made you feel really sad, in a I Wish I Was Dead Too kind of way. Zail Singh’s death unfortunately coincided with school quarterly leave, the one thing we had all looked forward to for heppyheppyjoyjoy television viewing purposes. Those were the headyheady days of the Metro channel and Superhit Muqabla apart from the already very exciting Chitrahaar and Oliyum Oliyum and Sunday night movie. AR Rahman was making awesome music, PrabhuDeva was dancing, Salman Khan had hair, the snail was on the thorn, morning was at seven, everything was very exciting with the world. And then Zail Singh died.

What made all this even worse and what ultimately elevated ZailSingh into our slangs was the fact that nobody in my corner of existence knew who he was. The catchphrase of that holiday was (sloppily translated from Tamil) ‘Hey, who ya is this Zail Singh?’ This means we are all the ignorants. But the fact remains that during that entire holiday, all we got to watch was people wailsinging in all the regional languages as the screen dutifully held up a picture of Zail Singh holding a rose, which somehow just made everything worse.

Definitions

1. A ZailSingh is something that causes deep and long-lasting disappointment and sadness.

Ex- I thought there would be one week leave but then Tyooshunsaar put class in the morning and test in the evening and it all is somuch ZailSingh for me.

2. For a time, this word replaced the Tamil word ‘sothapals’ so it also came to mean that which is completely messed-up. ‘Sothapals’ is actually not a Tamil word. Maybe it kinda is, I don’t know. I’m sorry if it’s not and I said it is.

Ex- Namma plan full ZailSingh-ah goinggoing.

This example has more English in it than Tamil but it’s considered Tamil. Actually, maybe it isn’t considered Tamil either. Oh whale.

Demise- This phrase disappeared when we forgot about ZailSingh which was rather quickly and I guess it isn’t a big deal anyway since we didn’t know who he was in the first place.

Soozerland

Origin- Corruption of the word ‘Switzerland’. Once upon a time, in the hills of Kotagiri, a certain someone who we will refer to as WaterBottle, sat outside in that sharp sunlight and marveled at the blue sky and the green trees and thought so THIS is why the British hung out here all the time and so on and so forth. Everyone who passed WaterBottle said ‘You keep sitting in the sun like that and your face will burn off’ and WaterBottle said, ‘But the sky is so blue! The trees are so green! It’s like a Soozerland!’ WaterBottle sat in that Soozerland sunlight for so long that WaterBottle’s face did indeed burn off and can I just say that the only thing more ridiculous than a sunburn on a white person is a sunburn on a brown person.

Definitions

1. That which is clearly not Switzerland is Soozerland.

Ex- See this Cooum river so much it is like a Soozerland, no?

2. The result of looking at something very beautiful that also causes great physical pain later on is Soozerland.

Ex- Your burnt face is so beauty looking like a Soozerland.

3. That which is wtf is Soozerland.

Ex. This blog post is like a Soozerland.

Demise- This phrase experiences periodic revivals because sometimes all you can say is 'oh it is like a Soozerland, no?'

Bouse

Origin- Once upon a time there was a girl who just sat there. Seriously. She just sat there and her face never bore any kind of expression at any time. And her claim to fame was that she very good-naturedly let people make fun of her Zen state of being. On a very hot and sour and tiring afternoon when nothing was happening, she was christened ‘Bouse’ and it was the best thing evar and it saved that entire day from being utterly useless. There was also this movie that had Revathi and Aravind Swamy which was flop only but it had this one song which was also flop but it went, ‘Azhagana veedu, something something something.’. Someone changed the words to ‘Azhagana veedu, athukulla Bouse’ and it was really funny. Maybe you had to be there.

Definitions- Because the word proved to be so popular, people attached many different meanings to it so they could use it as often as possible. Some examples (all sloppily translated from Tamil)

Why Bouse you are like a Bouse?

Bouse you are really doing so much Bouse antics, yes I am saying. (can I just say that Bouse antics is the improper translation of the word we used in Tamil, which was Bousethanam, which is awesome. Also, that’s probably not Tamil either.)

Bouse, how did you become such a Bouse like this?

Demise- I like to think this word never died.

You Ain’t Got No Pancake Mix Cries of the Martyred Proletariat

There were a lot of these and it breaks my heart that I can only recall two. These are in fact English phrases, where the meaning is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever and it’s really all about where you use them. Like, what I can say is, maybe you are using them like

Two people are having an argument and you randomly walk up to them and shout it at both of them with somuch feelings
While having a serious conversation with someone about something, you suddenly say it for no good reason, thus derailing the conversation completely
When there is some kind of large gathering and there is a lot of anger or indignation going around mainly because people want to be angry and indignant, you stand up and say ‘MyFraands, what I can say is-‘ and then say one of these phrases and possibly get beaten or cheered as a charismatic leader of the masses.

All Are Paying Equal Fees

Once upon a time, in a hostel, two girls were fighting over a bathroom stall. I understand this is a very porno premise but in real life, it’s tedious, everyone wishes they were somewhere else and feels bad they live in a hostel in like a larger sense, like 'this is what my life has become. i live in a hostel with people i don't know and don't like and this will never change'. Anyhoo, during the course of this particular argument, one girl decided to take a very strong stand indeed and began yelling in English, because while yelling in Tamil is bad enough, yelling in English is for some reason much worse, even if whatever you yelled is weird. So anyway, said girl said ‘all are paying equal fees!’ and we all were like yeah we ARE paying equal fees! It’s a true! And for a split second, we thought how life was supposed to be like that or something. But that lasted only for split second and also, this probably did not help her win the bathroom war either.

Give The Respect And Take The Respect

Once upon a time, a girl (who we will call Haterade) took it upon herself to come up to a certain person (who we will call WaterBottle) at regular intervals for no apparent reason in a very sudden manner also. This of course is distressing enough. But Haterade would also hold up her gold Hero pen in a very menacing way and say (in English, because it’s just way worse that way) ‘give the respect and take the respect’. Why? Nobody knows. Also, haterz gonna hate, you know? Anyhoo, this phrase doesn’t sound so bad in an “English” milieu but in that milieu, it was like epic disrespect and shame like how ‘rascal’ and ‘I say you get out’ are like epic disrespect and shame. So I’m guessing WaterBottle did something really bad like maybe killing off Haterade's entire family or something. Maybe it happened in the Soozerland. Anyway, every time this happened, a conversation like the following would occur (again, sloppily translated from Tamil)

A- Hey, what ya?

WaterBottle- I don’t know, ya.

A- What, I don’t know? You must have done something. Why else would she say that to you?

WaterBottle- Because she’s a crack.

A- You called her a crack?

WaterBottle- Chee, why all that for me?

A- Then?

WaterBottle- Then nothing! I didn’t say anything to her!

A- Then why she said like that to you?

WaterBottle – I don’t know! I didn’t do anything! She just does that and I don’t know why!

A- You must have done something.

WaterBottle- I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!!

A- You must have done something. Else why should she say that to you?

These kinds of conversations, like DD mourning periods, often went on for about 780 years.

Yenuff, no? Yes.

okbai.