Well, a little late but a post on the Ganeshotsav. Also, finally something that aint Dubya related.

Anant Chaturdashi holds a special place in my heart, especially since I live very close to the river. The poetic pink wash given to the roads, the most obscure pieces of music you've ever heard and people dancing like they've got a mouse up their pants. Aah, nostalgia !

Saw one very interesting event his year. Since the very large junction just in front of my house has been declared dance stop central, I get to see a lot of what is best described as drunken buffonry. But this one incident really stood out this time. These two Ganpati mandals, who henceforth taking a cue from reservoir Dogs will be referred to as Mandals Orange and White had a slight altercation. Orange is called Orange mainly because it was lead forward by a group of way-too-old-for-half-pants senior citizen RSS members with the orange Shiv Sena flag overkill. White showed no any particular inclination and hence a neutral colour..

Mandal White reached the junction first blaring this Tamil/Malyalam song that seemed to be the rage all day saturday.. Mandal Orange was just behind them. For the dance number Mandal White put on a surprising remix of 'Allah Ke Bande'. Quite a welcome surprise after a whole day of Dhoom and Kajara Re. While the song started normal enough, 10 seconds down the line it changed to something that went as follows 'Toota , Toota.. dhikchak,dhikchak... , Toota , Toota.. dhikchak,dhikchak...' While this 2 word and 2 drum beat rendition continued for around 2 minutes or so, Mandal Orange had reached upto the junction. Seeing the road blocked ahead by White, the RSS grandpas saw the quick chance to rest their weary legs on any surface they found. And suddenly all hell broke loose.

For you see even though 'Toota , Toota.. dhikchak,dhikchak... ' might seem attractive to some people, the remix master for this particular song, bless his heart realised that the song actually had more words than 'Toota , Toota'. So, the words 'Allah ke bande' blared on the speakers. As you can imagine it bought new life into those almost ready to drop RSS walking skeletons. Aided o'course by their Shiv Sena brethren who were all happily riding behind in a truck. An immediate halt to the song was brought forth. 'An insult to Ganapati' they declared, 'Sacrilage' they cried. After many stern lectures and a few slaps by the Shiv Sena cronies, Mandal White put on what can be described as the worst recording of 'Omkara Swarupa' I have ever heard. And o'course they were made to lose their spot in the line and force Orange to go ahead. O'course this was a cause of celebration for the Shiv Sena folks and loud music was their only answer. And what song did they choose first ? A certain number by one miss 'Tata Young'. No points for getting the song.

Posted by anish at 11:27 AM. |

Now for the million dolar question. So, imagine u'r the President of America. You are struck in a UN meeting with 150 other heads of state and you really need to go to the bathroom. What do you do ? What do you do ?

The answer ? You ask your Secretary of State for advice. After all, even Dubyaman needs to pee right ? And since you are a half witted Texan POTUS, you cant even go to the bathroom without consulting your yes men. Just make sure you dont get caught on camera, something Dubyaman didn't bother with. Clicked by a Reuters cameraman the photo shows Bush writing a note to Condi saying 'I thiNK I MAY NEED A BATHROOM break ? Is this possible ?' Why Dubya needed to ask Condi if he needed a bathroom break is quite beyond me at the moment.

Posted by anish at 12:02 AM. |

Well, its 4 years to September 11th today. 4 years since the Americans got stupider, more gullible and paranoid (Please note the fact that I say stupider and more gullible). Then they went and re-elected their President. A guy who ran ever single company he ever had control of into the ground and who had a pet cat named India. O'course ! Who else would be better suited to run a country where they cant differenciate between Sikhs and Muslims. And what are his great achievements you say ? He managed to get more Americans killed in Afghanistan than the World Trade Centre. And then his muse changed, Iraq it was to be.. To depose Saddam Hussein, the leader who was in power in 2003 only because of US help in the Iran-Iraq war.

I wouldn't say all things Bush did were bad. Didn't we all want to be looked upon as a possible terrorist when we landed in America ? What could be cooler ?And we needed absurdly long baggage checks. And o'course how could we justify the increase in pocket money without the Rs. 15 increase in petrol prices Bush caused ? Plus the environmentalists are happy too.. Hey did you hear; somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot...

Posted by anish at 7:51 AM. |

I have had my share of bad and sad quizzes, but once in a while along comes a real whopper.. I am talking about o'course, SCOE's very own Pinnacle '05 quiz.

It started off an hour late, which is the hallmark of every good quiz, but that's where things started going downwards.. For some reason the organisers insisted on having stupid pointless rules like validating all the payment receipts and giving out answers to the elims 3 days later. The official explanation given for this was that since the elims questions did not appear again in the main quiz, we had no need to know what the answers or even what the cut off was. While we failed to understand what the great national secret was, a look at eh answers reveals that it was better that they were not revealed. Officially the answers to the elims have still not been given out, I just managed to source them through some contacts.

To point out some of the finest examples I could find in there :

1. Internet Explorer has a Unix version. Wow, Microsoft has really changed since the last time I saw it. FYI, the quiz masters have asked people to see 'About Internet Explorer'. Apparently NCSA'a Mosaic and IE are the same software. Didn't know that, did ya ?

2. How many of you are aware that William Gibson did not coin the term Cyberspace in his book Neuromancer, he infact coined the term Neuromancer in his book Necromancer ?

3. The most popular game in the world in the 80's was not Tetris or Pacman, it was Asteroids.

4. NIN's 'The Fragile' is the only release to hit #1 on the BillBoard charts . No other release has ever #1. A quick Wikipedia search reveals that NIN infact has had two albums hit #1 on BillBoard.

5. Did you know Pietermaritzburg, capital of Kwazulu Natal, South Africa is now home to a church museum, one of the country’s national museums, with Colenso's tomb in front of the altar. Infact how many of you ever heard of Pietermaritzburg or Colenso?

Some thing other things the quiz makers dug which us stupid quizzers did not know. Shame on us :

1. The album Oye Bubbly though critically though critically ridiculed has really caught the attention of the people and has gone on to become quite a rage in India. It has 9 film and Indipop tracks.

What is wrong with us people ? Led Zeppelin albums aren't important, Oye Bubbly is important. Also, remember to note down the number of tracks in every single album you listen to henceforth.

2. Mark Burnett lives in the US because hismother told him too. He was an advisor to the British SAS in a "security operation".

How do continue to live without reading the autobiography of the man who gave us such classics as 'Survivor' & 'The Apperentice' ?

3. Kimberly Yeo of Singapore won the SingTel SMS Shootout organized by SingTel in 2004.

All of you fools who saw the Sania Mirza-Maria Sharapova match, now you know you should have been watching the SMS Shootout instead.

4. Susan Hockfield is currently the president of MIT, Boston.

Also read up on the current Deans and Presidents of Yale,Stanford,Harvard etc..
And yes o'course, remember that STES's President always has and always will be Mr. Navale.

5. Cate Blanchett who played Katherine Hepburn in 'The Aviator' was nominated for an 'Best Actress in a Supporting Role' Oscar while Katherine Hepburn herself won an Oscar.

Wow, talk about your freaky coincidences ! Can you imagine how interesting this question can get if someone ever plays Cate Blanchett in a moive ? For those of you how were ill-informed read Hepburn's autobiography 'Me: Stories of my Life'.

6.

Girl you make it feel, like the first time
Like there's never been another
Girl you make it real like the first time
Every time you lay down by my side

Are the lyrics of a song 'First Time' written by by Ronan Keating for his wife Yvonne Keating. Google actually came close to failing me when trying to find this one.

But their point is correct, Ronan Keating does come just after Jim Morrison when it comes to writing lyrics.

There was an acrostic question thrown in for just for the heck of it which was supposed to help us answer the elims, which no one got. Also the organisers were blissfully unaware of the actual answer.

The quiz started 4 hours late, with a lovely you've-come-here-for-the-money-bastards-so-wait-for-it attitude shown by the organisers. It had one of the most brlliant scoring systems I had ever seen, with teams getting as much as 100 points for a correct answer. Overall difficulty level of the questions seemed to fluctuate more than the weather nowadays, with the obscurity levels completely off the charts. Also, there was an awesome pictorial round whose details I dont want to go into.

More rants found on Siddharth's blog

On a passing note, I apologise for the tardiness in this particular post. It was lying as a draft for a long time, I just could not finish it. It has been hastily shoved out of the door as of now.

Secondly, we are currently trying for another SCOE quiz that shall be made by the regular quizzers and shall be of much better quality, I promise. Also, based on the feedback to my quiz; the Simpsons and H2G2 shal make no apprearances in it at all.

Thirdly, Aditya Udas, welcome to the Blogsphere and be so very glad that you didn't come to the Pinnacle quiz. Also, Sopan has written his first proper post, an event that few people though would ever happen.

Posted by anish at 8:57 AM. |