Ohai! Is it wrong that on my sporadic FB visits, when I see teh wimminz with slightly suggestive (and by suggestive I mean “naughty”) status updates, I immediately think that they are talking about breast cancer? What does it mean that breast cancer has become a “naughty” thing on teh internetz? Are people getting very excited about the ‘breast’ part and sorta missing out on the ‘cancer’ part of it entirely? Will I live to see the day when dudes start to rock out with their cock out to spread awareness about testicular cancer? That totally needs to happen.
We have been through some most hard times, homibabas. Hard, hard times. Here are some of the things that grieved me in recent months, days and hours. I share them with you so that you can also be sad.
Things That Might Make You Sad
1. Ubuweb wuz hacked! And some people were happy it wuz hacked! And while the debate about Ubuweb and ownership issues and permission issues ensues, I think this is a great time for writers and all other people to say to themselves, ‘Hmm. Do I own the copyright for the stuff I’ve published?’ Because it would really suck if you thought you owned the copyright for your work and then you find out you don’t. Even if you’re willing to give everything you write away for free, at least know what you are giving away and what ‘giving away’ is going to mean for you. Please know that I say this as someone who blissfully and ignorantly and completely signed away copyrights for an embarrassing number of things with my own one number hand, without really understanding what I was signing away. Which means I should probably just cut my hand off but I need it so maybe I will cut it off later.
2. A book called Such A Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry was removed from the second year course syllabus at Mumbai University because a person belonging to a certain political party said it was offensive and they burned copies of it and I think they wanted to burn the author also but they didn’t actually read the entire book or something. The book-burning-wanting-to-burn-author part is not new so it is not interesting (tho an esteemed commentator on this blog called shruti ravi provided this link which maybe you can read in light of these events). What is profoundly and awesomely interesting is that these actions actually resulted in the University removing the book from the syllabus. Which makes me wish I had done the same thing when I was in college because the syllabus had a lot of books which I had no intention of reading and they really offended me. And I think we can all agree that the people who are in the best position to decide what books should be part of a syllabus are students who haven’t actually read the books but are offended by them. I feel maybe it’s still not too late to share my feelings about some of the books that offended me. I’ve provided helpful explanations why I found these texts offensive and also how they are offensive to Indian culture, which automatically makes me awesome because anything done in the name of saving Indian Culture is good. Which also means that if you don’t agree with me, you are against Indian culture and it’s totes ok if I set you on fire.
Adam Bede- Title clearly has the word ‘Adam’ in it which is a reference to Christianity which is not Hinduism so it must be against Hinduism and hence against Indian culture. Also someone said that ‘bede’ was pronounced ‘beedi’ which has tobacco which causes lung cancer which makes people die. Dying is against Indian culture.
MiddleMarch- It was allegedly written by someone called George but apparently George was really a girl but she was pretending to be a boy and girls pretending to be boys is against Indian culture. Also, it has too many pages which is also against Indian culture too also.
An Anthology of American Literature – A very reliable source told me there is a semicolon somewhere in this book and one another reliable source told me that semicolons are against Indian culture, because they have the word ‘colon’ in them. Also it’s American, which means it is CIA plot which means it is against Indian culture.
Moll Flanders- Flanders is the neighbor on The Simpsons which is an American show but more offensively, it is the name of the field where the poppies blow. Poppies are where heroin comes from. Heroin is a drug. Drugs are bad. All of this, including The Simpsons, is against Indian culture. Nobody in India uses drugs. We don’t even know what drugs are.
Also, all of these books are in English which is like SO totes against Indian culture that I can’t even say how offensive that is. Of course I am also offending myself by writing about all this in English also. Maybe I should set myself on fire. Maybe I can do that after I cut off my hand.
3. Moving on tho! Good Charlotte has a new song, which I mistakenly thought was a very long ad for some new kind of cell phone. In the same vein, I thought Hey Soul Sister by Train was an ad jingle for home loans and I thought that maybe the teevee ad would have a young couple smiling in new house because they’re both really happy that they have just manacled themselves to this loan that will only take 4977 years to pay off. I have to say that in my old age, many songs are starting to sound either like ad jingles or the opening theme tune for a really bad American sitcom.
4. What could possibly be moar bizarre than that Ambani house? The reaction from many…um, well let’s call them Phust World Pholks, who believe that Mukesh Ambani shouldn’t have built that kind of a house because India is filled with poor peepal. Seriously. Peepal are actually typing those words out and they are appearing on teh internetz. Anyhoo, I’ve noticed that many Phust World Pholks reallyreally like to tell us how we should all be communists in our Third World countries but this advice is never applicable for Phust World countries because that would be communist and that’s bad. I have to admit, I don’t really understand how that works but I know that if the Phust World says this, it must be true.
5. M.I.A. decided to show up to Scream 2010 wearing something which was allegedly a niqab allegedly which is so allegedly shawking. Let’s not talk about the “politics” of this because it’s just too shawking. Instead, let’s talk about how she put this very colorful arrangement on and was at some point surrounded by her peeps, her entourage and they all looked at her and said ‘Go on with your bad self girlfriend, you are looking FIERCE!’
6. I just finished listening to a podcast of the novel Lorna Doone. Why? Who can say? In my opinion, Lorna Doone can be described in purely critical and literary terms as a big Tamil movie with a Scottish accent. So I feel that you can just watch a nice, masala Tamil village-type movie and get the Lorna Doone story without the tedium and with comedy track and songs thrown in.
1. The fine and upstanding engsters at Madness Mandali are making so much progress with theirs one number visual poetry book. However. They are not having title. Titles are so important for a book because when people try to remember a book they have read, they often remember parts of the story and the color of the cover but they rarely remember the title. So if you believe that you can provide a good title that is in keeping with Indian culture, then you can go here and tell the good peepal the name you had in mind and if they like yuvars namechoice so much, you will win a free copy of said book plus a copy of the poster which, and I quote ‘has been proven by research to increase the aesthetic appeal of even a pista-green wall so even people in Racism jail can ekdum enjai this.’
2. Dekstop Life is a powerful story that relates a powerful chronicle of a collection of powerful things that live on a desktop. Also, there is an elephant, which is totes in keeping with Indian culture.
3. I Kill People by Jon Lajoie can be described as Canadian gangsta rap which means it has an equal chance of being epic in a very mind-blowingly epic kind of way or so embarrassing that you feel overwhelming amounts of cringe and sorry for all Canadians as a people. Jon Lajoie falls into the first category while Nickelback falls into the second category. Jon Lajoie also sang this other Canadian gangsta rap hit, which is all about supereffective dudes who have a supereffective way with the leddies. I am not going to mention the title of this song because it has the word ‘genitals’ in it and genitals are against Indian culture. I just mentioned the word ‘genitals’ twice although I didn’t mean to. I just did it again. Oh whale.
okbai