Unfortunate names (in science and elsewhere)

Just the other day, my friend was talking about how Chinese names were a big pain when it came to scientific publications. If you want to look up a publication by someone with a common name, youre likely to get hit by a huge number of results (Zhang W retrieves 8180 results). Some enterprising and less-than-honest people have apparently also tried bulking up their CVs by citing others' publications as theirs (Hey, that Zhang W is really me). Worse, sometimes you can get repeats, like this, which really screws you up (once you look past the Li Y, Li H, Li L and Li X):

Detection of HPV types and neutralizing antibodies in Gansu province, China.
Wu X, Zhang C, Feng S, Liu C, Li Y, Yang Y, Gao J, Li H, Meng S, Li L, Zhang Y, Hu X, Wu X, Lin L, Li X, Wang Y.
J Med Virol. 2009 Feb 23;81(4):693-702

We'll see if solutions like UAIN actually get implemented some day.

But anyways, I happened to mention this to pushupdad, and he responded saying it wasn't as bad as being stuck with a name like Thanjavoor Sivaramakrishnan. Or Govindarajan Ananthanarayanan. Turns out though that South Indians aren't the only ones stuck with lousy names. There is a little passage in Freakonomics where they talk about kids being named Shithead (pron. Shuh-teed) and Orangeade by incredibly short-sighted, I would go so far as to say vengeful, parents. Now, pushupdad being who he is, went on to search for, and forward to me his list of top unfortunate names from the UK:

Stan Still,
Helen Back,
Terry Bull,
Tim Burr, ,
Barry Cade,
Mary Christmas,
Chris Cross,
Ray Gunn,
Jo King (and his brother Lee King),
Justin Case,

And my favorite duo: Will Power (and the other half of the superhero team, Max Power)

Speaking of all this stuff, I came across another delightful little tidbit (h/t pushupdad):

Q: What do you call a Jamaican Proctologist?
A:Pokey-mon

Update: As reader Ampa points out, Brad Pitt's sister Cess. Very funny. But not as funny as this guy (WHO I KNOW) who's name is Hung Rong...

Viagra OD death & unfortunate ad placement

So I saw this yesterday at that bastion of journalistic excellence, The Sun, and I thought several thoughts immediately:

1. It finally happened. I had a bet (from pre-blogging days) with a friend of mine, and that 6-pack is all mine now...

2. That must've been an awesome 911 call: "hey, we're calling because this guy dropped dead during this sex-orgy marathon that we were having..."

3. That is one hell of an unfortunate ad placement (Look Bottom Right). I mean, that's like placing an ad for Jack Daniels on an Alcoholics Anonymous site. Well, I guess the whole event *does* sort of illustrate the potency of the drug, but still... These randomized ad placement programs need to improve - I wrote a blog post about socks once, and all that Google Adsense can put on my blog is ads about smelly feet cures, sweat resistant socks and yogic footwear.

And of course:

4. The emergency medics must've had a rough time putting that body inside that body bag...

Obama's pronunciation of Afghanistan vs. Pakistan

Speaking of speeches, why does Obama pronounce Pakistan the way it should be pronounced (Pahkistahn), but Afghanistan like, well, Afghanistan? Its weird.



In completely unrelated news, I am dog tired. Phew. Any more than 3 hours of productivity a day wears me down...

Bobby Jindal, you are a complete idiot

AAAAAAGGHHHHH!!!! Why did Bobby Jindal (or as we call him in my work place, Babu Gental) have to be Indian!?!?!? Its bad enough that I have to constantly remind people I am not his brother (all Indians look alike, you see). Now, on top of being an anti-science jerk, he has also proved to be completely inept at intelligent conversation. I mean, if ALL FOUR panelists at Fox news, FOX NEWS, have nothing good to say about your speech, dude, you suck.

mostly useless Weekend Update

Hm, so what do you do when you are stuck at work on a weekend? You write short weekend updates during incubations.

1. Movie review

Movie: Benjamin Button.

Verdict: Skip.

Explanation: GREAT cinematography (could/should win the Oscar tonight). But THREE HOURS??? I mean, that's longer than Indian movies man. I was fidgeting by hour two, and honestly, all I could think of when he hit adolescence is when the hell he was going to die. I was sort of hoping some sort of motorbike accident in Tibet (or whichever impoverished country he was doing dishes in).

2a. Book review

Book: Bonk

Verdict: Read.

Explanation: Its about science and sex. Enough said. (can't resist one small addendum: its funnier and raunchier than you'd expect)

2b. Book: Naked

Verdict: Read.

Explanation: Its by David Sedaris about David Sedaris. Really funny. But a couple of people have said that some of my writing reminds them of Sedaris, so this really could be self-fellation and nothing more.

More HOW CAN SHE SLAP ME?!?!?? - what it teaches us about Indian men

All I've been doing is watch this video OVER and OVER and OVER. And OVER. YOU HAVE TO SEE THE VIDEO TO GET THIS ESSAY (you can scroll down for the embed). This is one of the gems on the Internet that keeps giving. But one thing that struck me today, and I'm going to share this with you because I think it's important, is how the video reveals the four different character types of Indian men:

1. The wannabe-alpha-but-really-wimpy-ass male: The protagonist. He's alpha enough to say something snide to the woman, and get mad when he gets slapped, but that's about it. All his machismo ends with the return slap. The rest is downhill. Watching him get his ass whupped is especially enjoyable given how his masculinity, on full display when he hit the woman, simply evaporates into thin air. What we're left with is a bruised and battered (both body and ego) whimpering fifth grader who has to get led out of the studio so he can change out of his soiled pants. This is he kind of guy who will take you out to an expensive restaurant, wine and dine you, promise you the earth and skies, and then will go completely limp in bed. Most likely to go to sleep in a fetal position, with you comforting him and shushing him quietly to sleep as you sip warm chocolate and bemoan your lousy choice for a date.

2. The angry young man: Epitomized by Amitabh Bachchan in the '70s, this would be the co-host of the show, who, miffed that his hair-trigger lady co-host got bitch-slapped by an even more hair-triggered wannabe-alpha-but-really-wimpy-ass male, gets into the act. Under the guise of defending the honor of the above-mentioned lady, all that pent-up anger resulting from his miserable love life, unhappy and impoverished childhood, and retard agent who put him on this dumb-ass show in the first place, gets poured onto the weaker and soon-to-be-sorry ass #1 character-type dude. The quick transition from broken TV English to the choicest of Indian cuss words reveals how quickly the thin veneer of bollywood polish can be stripped away under appropriate circumstances to expose raw testosterone. This is also the guy who will take your clothes off, whether you want it or not, two minutes after you've gone back to your home with him after the date, and then will rough you up while telling you that you wanted it this way. You will most likely have to head into work for the next week with a couple extra layers of make-up to hide the bruises.

3. The beta-and-a-half: You may have missed this, but look at the video again. Now spot the guy with the pink shirt and brown shorts. See what he does? Runs right in and kicks type 1 in the nuts when he's on the floor. And in the face. And in the ribs. Then he runs away, just in case, you know, the guy who's getting mauled by #2 types might get up, run after him, and whup his ass. And then he comes back (because you know, his transferred anger at the co-hosts robbed honor comes in waves), and when #2 is totally down, punches him again and then again beats a hasty retreat. Happy that he's gotten to actually beat someone up, he can now run back to his boys and spin tall tales about how he destroyed a goon with his bare hands to protect the honor of a fair maiden who was being harassed by above said goon. This is the guy that will constantly snipe at you and watch other men watch you throughout the night, occasionally beating them up when he's had enough to drink. And then blame you for it. This is also the kind of guy who will have a vasectomy and wait until you get pregnant before he tells you about it.

4. The thoroughly beta male: The second contestant who didn't get bitch-slapped. You see what happened to him? Yep, watch the epitome of virility and manliness slink out of the frame at about 0:20. A true survivor. You know, when Matthew talks about the meek inheriting the Earth? This is the guy first in line. His bravery and presence of mind give me goose-bumps. Oh, there are way more men than you think who fit this bill. Except you'll never know because you never see them, unless you have the misfortune of getting arranged to one of them. In which case good luck, because he's going to jizz in his pants when you touch his hand. But even if you aren't married to them, and even if you can't see them, know this: they're watching you. And imagining you naked.

********************************************************************************

BONUS: (yes, today was a light work day)

1. Check out the short but well-done Millie Remix.

2. The surprisingly entertaining Techno Remix.

3. The Indian TV Remix that delves deeper into the incident and involves other players.

And the ultimate overkill mix, the How can she slap me Insane Edition.

Update: OK, response to the comments:

1. You asked about the foul-mouthed woman. I am in no way defending her actions. I think she was totally out of line. It was bad enough that she yelled at the dude for no reason (really, the F-word on TV? In response to someone saying he didn't want to talk to you? I don't know yo... I have women tell me they don't want to talk to me, all the time. I don't go around telling them to f-off...), but then to actually bitch-slap the dude? m-m-mm. Bad form. Totally tasteless. But then again, you get slapped by a woman, you walk off, or you restrain her or something. (When I get slapped, I turn around an take a bow for the audience. And then make a hasty exit stage left) But to slap her like that? (notice his shoulder, hip, everything went into that pimp-slap). That is not kosher at all...

2. What category do I fit into... Ah, that would be the rarest of rare, one-in-a-million, diamond-in-the-rough, hidden category #5. Example, the producer of the show. In the midst of all this ruckus, this is the dude in the Hawaiian shirt behind the camera with his rum and coke and Cuban cigar, watching this whole thing unfold with a giant smirk on his face. He is also the guy making a bunch of money off of this sordid show. And is also probably banging bitchslap woman for all she's worth.

I'm that guy. Of course, minus the money, shirt, alcohol, nicotine. And bitchslap woman.

Scientists boycott Louisiana

Wow, nice to see scientists showing some spine. Now as you may know, the governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, is a thoroughly misguided, anti-evolution republican (what else?) politician. (Both his voting against the stimulus and the legislation that he signed into law that will allow for "supplemental materials" that "provoke debate" in science classes are topics that deserve their own detailed post, but that comes later).

But now, The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology has decided to back out of their annual conference, which was slated to be held in New Orleans, as a result of this legislation. That's a lot of money that the city and the state can ill-afford to lose. Though the city is taking the punishment for some pretty backward political thinking (you should read the comments section in the nola article to see how people in the area think. It's illuminating), the protest is great, in my opinion. Not that science should be political - it shouldn't - but when we are up against a systematic program to undermine a very basic tenet of Biology for no real reason other that religious bigotry, the least we can do is let our voices be heard.

"HOW CAN SHE SLAP?!?!?!" must watch, must go viral video

{{Bonus: After detailed analysis, I have come up with a list of 4 Indian male character types that are revealed in this video. For the complete character analysis, click here. But only AFTER you see the video}}

I hope this video of a TV host bitch-slapping a contestant and getting pimp-slapped in return goes viral. I really do. I don't quite understand the premise though - its some retard game show where the host, dressed like some dominatrix (even though there the whip and all the accoutrements are obviously for show only), gives these guys a rough time. I don't know who's brainchild it is, but it must help with all the suppressed sexuality that young Indian men have to live with.

Anyway, watch what happens when the dominatrix goes, oh well, somewhere, and everybody ends up regretting the move.



Its a sorry, sorry episode. Says a lot about Indian TV and Indian men. Not very good things. (before you pounce on me; I didn't choose the title of the youtube video). Although the beating and thoroughly Indian cursing is thoroughly enjoyable.

Update: And of course, some genius came up with this. Gottalove it.



Update 2: Remarkably, the TV show actually went on!!! Wow...

More evidence of humans overcrowding this planet

First, there was this. And then there was this.

And so I really got thinking about how much we are going to be SO TOTALLY SCREWED. I mean, what I see in the future is no just just some minor inconvenience here and there, it's going to be one giant clusterfuck.

1. As far as the nuclear submarine incidents go (this was the second "this" just above if you were too lazy to click on it), it really isn't getting as much coverage as it should. Two NUCLEAR POWERED SUBMARINES with NUCLEAR WARHEADS HAD A FENDER BENDER in the Atlantic. I mean, first of all, how ridiculous is it that two giant behemoths can't see each other? I mean, we are spending billions of dollars trying to build missile shield systems that can shoot stuff out of the sky, and you can't see a 500 FOOT LONG 15,000 TONNE behemoth in front of your face??? Dude.

1a. What the hell were the subs doing that close anyway? Don't they have specific routes for their training exercises?
1b. Why the hell couldn't they see each other?
1c. Were they carrying payload? In which case, WHAT THE FUCK!!???!?!?? I mean, even without the payload, these are NUCLEAR POWERED craft. Sorry I'm shouting so much, but if there was a breach, we are talking of a massive, massive, unforgivable disaster.

On the other hand, and I KNOW this is my testosterone talking, but man, that HMS Vanguard is one sexy beast of a machine... Phew, it's giving me goosebumps.



2. The other sign that perhaps we're getting too numerous (technologically advanced for our own good) is the satellite collision that happened this past week - the first "this" above.. All that debris around the planet is going to kick our collective asses in the near future. I can promise you that.

Here's a cartoon of the simulation of the existing debris in space around the Earth (from the NS article)



Yep, all that junk is damn dangerous, irrespective of whether it starts coming down ("Ms. Smith, we regret to inform you that as your son was decapitated by an ancient soviet-era spy satellite during his soccer game today. He did however score a goal in the first half."), or whether it stays up ("Dear investors, we regret to inform you that the 3 billion dollar communications satellite that we successfully launched last year crashed into a 2 billion dollar communications satellite that was launched the year before, and is completely destroyed. However, not all the news is bad - the other satellite belonged to our competitors. Get the champagne, Charles.").

He who invents the first space poop-scoop will inherit the world.

Will.i.am ft. Al Gore - some great songs/videos

I liked these; do go to dipdive and embed/link. Sure, it might seem a little flaky if you are a hardened enviro-nut, but I think this is a GREAT way to spread the message. Music does work, pretty much all the time.

Happy Raphael's day

Did you know this ? Apparently the saint for chance encounters (presumably the kind that has a happy ending) is St Raphael, and NOT St Valentine. Yep, the same Raphael who is the saint of healing.

So if you haven't been having any luck recently, here's your man.

I didn't know he was also the saint of nurses, physicians, blind people, and travelers. Physicians and nurses? Hmmm... I could do with the company of a super hot doc. Or a pretty nurse who can take care of my dry knuckles.

Maybe as I drink and watch TV alone tonight I'll pray a little on the side...

Really long nails + car crash = really broken nails

You remember this woman? This is Lee Redmond, with the world's longest nails. Well, the poor thing was involved in an accident. Apparently her long nails do not prevent her from driving, and she was a passenger. But still, that must have absolutely sucked. It's bad enough being badly hurt. But to lose your carefully nurtured treasure of 30 years? That stinks. Btw, this is a record that an Indian dude used to hold (though his nails looked really REALLY ugly). Still,I bet Shridhar Chillal is laughing all the way back to the Guinness World Records Office right now...



Well, on the bright side,Lee Redmond can now finally wipe her ass much easier than before.

Update: A reader who has been assiduously following Shridhar Chillal's story tells me that he clipped his nails in 2000. That disappoints me on two fronts:
1. That's one less Indian in the record books, and
2. I somehow missed this important news event. Makes me feel less clued in than the above reader...

More Stupidity from the "Vaccines cause Autism" folks

You may have already heard about the landmark ruling by a special court, where judges given the quaint title "Special Master", ruled that vaccines indeed, do NOT cause autism. This is something that we knew for a while in the scientific community, but we have had respectable scientists have their lives turned into a living nightmare by a small but vociferous group that somehow tapped into public sentiment and insisted that vaccination indeed caused autism. For those of you who don't know, THIS ENTIRE CONTROVERSY WAS KICK-STARTED ALMOST SINGLE HANDEDLY BY A NOW THOROUGHLY DISCREDITED SCIENTIFIC PAPER BY ONE MAN - ANDREW WAKEFIELD. (Seriously, follow the link for a thorough debunking of the paper).

Now, I understand why parents of autistic kids would want to know what causes their child's symptoms - I understand that they may want to search for something to pin blame on. But this was more than just calling into question the efficacy of vaccines. This campaign by the anti-vaccine group has immunologists and epidemiologists genuinely concerned. Why? Because it makes a whole generation now susceptible to diseases that we should have eradicated long back. The crucial concept to understand here is "herd immunity"; basically, when a significant fraction of a population (herd) is vaccinated, it is more difficult for a bug to be transmitted from one individual to the next, and it eventually runs out of people it can infect, leading to its eradication. And when the crazies convince people not to vaccinate their kids, shit like this happens (yep. Measles - endemic again). Or this.

And then there was a gem from the spokeswoman of this group (and I can't find the link now for the life of me), AFTER the ruling - I'm paraphrasing: "... until we know what causes autism we cannot definitively say what cannot cause autism."

So while we don't know what caused the plane crash at Buffalo, we can't say that my peanut butter jelly sandwich lunch yesterday didn't cause it?

Mumbai terror masterminds arrested in Pakistan

Hmm.... I'm not "quite" sure what to make of this. Holbrooke makes his first trip to Pakistan, and lo and behold, the Pakistani government, which till now seemed to have been dragging its feet, all of a sudden has gone and arrested the alleged plotters behind the Mumbai attacks a few months earlier, which claimed some 173 lives.

On the one hand, great. Now I hope they call a couple of hard pipe-hitting ni****s to go to work on these homes here with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch and figure out exactly what happened, and then hopefully actually root out the LeT. The fact is that most mainstream Pakistanis are equally fed up with the crazies as everyone else, and I think we'll all be happier if they're stomped out.

On the other hand, I have to wonder, what arm wringing has been going on in the background, and what has been promised in exchange for this? This is no small deal. A government is actually owning up to the fact that a terrorist organization has fluorished within its borders and has plotted and carried out a terror attack on a neighboring country. This is big. So for Pakistan to own up to this, I wonder what has been promised in return.

My guess is "anti-terror" arms and technology form the US. Now ostensibly, this will be used on the Afghen border to root out those crazies. But this whole thing of arming a weak government in order to quell an uprising has been tried so many times before (to many to link to), and most often, has failed spectacularly. Plus who knows how the equation will change with regards to Kashmir, even though/especially since India has lobbied strongly (and successfully) to ensure that Kashmir will not be on Holbrooke's mandate...

Phew, I don't know what's really happening... and I'd wager a bunch of money that no one does... what do you think is happening?

Joaquin Phoenix at Letterman last night

Did you see this? I mean, WHAT IS THIS GUY SMOKING??? Dude, I've heard your hip hop music/rap or whatever bullshit shtick you're trying to pull, and it SUCKS BALLS, ok? I thought it was one big long documentary that you were making, and you'll eventually tell everyone it was a big joke and you were poking fun at the hypocrisy of hollywood (honestly, a small part of me still hopes it is, because you're a good actor and surely, you know better than to throw it all away).

But now you're either persisting in playing everyone (in which case, please stop, it's gotten tiresome), or you are genuinely completely screwed up, decided that you aren't going to do something that you're good at, and do something that you're fucking god-awful at (in which case, back to the top, WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING???).

I usually don't give a crap about self-absorbed, directionless, completely vain and vapid Hollywood types; but then again, they usually don't come on Letterman completely stoned and end up looking this pathetic.

Watch it - it's painful, but watch it.

Bonus video (h/t anon. reader): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/10/jon-stewart-rips-bill-ore_n_165506.html
Jon Stewart hands BillO his ass on a platter. Sweet.

The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women - my heroes

You may or may not have heard of this, but there is this ultraconservative Hindu group called the "Shri Ram Sena" (the army of Ram - an Indian god, who is probably turning over in his celestial grave at the sight of his name being used by a group like this). They call them the Hindu Taleban, with some good reason.

These guys have decided to wage war on Valentine's day, because you know, it's SUCH a western concept, and destroys the chastity of demure young Indian women. Apparently the sight of young people actually falling in love and holding hands (gasp!) without their parents giving them off in marriage to someone they haven't met before is sending the old farts into conniptions. This attitude alone deserves a separate rant on this blog, and will probably get it soon.

But for today, here's saluting the The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women, a Facebook group that's urging women to stand up to these thugs, and go ahead and have that drink at a pub. They're also planning to send a bunch of these pink knickers to the Sena, which I think is a great way to neutralize these blue-balled sex-starved neandrathals (btw, chaddi - rhymes with cruddy with a real hard d - in Hindi means underwear. That's also a dig at another right wing group called the RSS, but we'll get into that later). I can just imagine their heads exploding (lousy but appropriate pun I think) at the sight/small/touch of these lovely undergarments...

Up yours, sexist pigs.

Numbering and lettering your socks is NOT O.C.D.

A friend of mine noticed recently that my socks had little numbers and letters on them (under the toes). He asked me what it was, and I told him, quite simply, that I number AND letter my socks. He looked at me with a certain amount of amusement and/or disgust and/or pity and told me that it was OCD.

Now I know what Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is - its when you can't stop washing your hands, or you keep fretting about whether you turned the oven off before you left home, or looking at all your baseball cards before you go to bed every night. Let me tell you why numbering and lettering my socks is not OCD, aided as always with a little schematic. The numbers enumerate the socks obviously, and the lettering is L (left) or R (right).

Case 1 (top) is optimal: I am wearing the "L" of the "nth" sock on my left foot, and the "R" of the "nth" sock on my right foot. All is good, and the flowers smell great.

Case 2 is a common mistake made by slobs who don't care about how each sock looks. No, I am not just talking about pairing a brown sock with a black sock (in which case you are probably single, live in your mother's basement and masturbate excessively. Or you have an IQ of 150 and are working on quantum physics. Either way, no excuse. You are beyond saving, and I am not wasting breath on you). I am talking about multiple pairs of socks that, when brand new, looked identical. Here is a pairing of an "nth" L sock with an "mth" R. There is no cause for physical discomfort, except that you may have worn the "nth" pair with your new brown shoes on a sweaty day, causing a mild brown coloration on this pair, while the "mth" pair may have no such discoloration. This causes pseudo-asymmetry, which is a no-no; further, if the socks have gone through variable wash cycles, you will now be wearing socks that are variably stretched and/or worn out, and if you can't feel variably stretched and/or worn out socks on your feet, you have the hide of an elephant.

Note: I do not have baby pink socks. For that matter I don't have powder blue socks. These are for the purpose of illustration only.

Case 3: By far the most important reason I do this. Note that I have switched the letters, so now I am wearing an "R" sock on my left foot and vice versa. Obviously this does not matter the very first time you buy the socks because they are symmetrical. But with time, what happens is that your big toe stretches out the sock on side only - the right side of the left sock, and vice versa, as you look down at your feet. And so out of the blue, if you wear your "R" sock on your left foot (as illustrated here), what happens is that: a. Your big toe is now constricted in the little bit of fabric that was originally meant to hold the little toe, and b. Your little toe now has a ginormous cavity it has no hope of filling (yeah, I know there's an R rated joke here), and so what
happens is that the extra fabric folds over, jams in between toes, or tries to hide in the crease under your little toe (bleaurgh. It hurts to even write this). Again, if you have a buffalo's sensitivity in the foot region, good for you. I however have sensitive feet, and this extra floppy fabric is extraordinarily vomitous. It makes me go limp waist down and makes me want to feed my feet to a mad hungry pitbull. It has all the pleasantness of a long sloppy wet foot sex session for someone who doesn't have a foot fetish.

Incidentally, the same goes for socks that have been interchangeably worn so that they are now symmetrical (having been assaulted by both feet) because now they are symmetrically loose, with symmetrically floppy fabric that wants to hide in the creases under your toes. The very thought makes my toes curl, although to be fair, I only have vague memories of this feeling of discomfort, sometime before puberty. I think I had a tough time getting my mum to agree that a little marker ink that had bled from my socks to the other clothes in the load was only a minor inconvenience...

Anyway, so that's the reason I do this. As you can see, perfectly reasonable. You should try it too, if you don't do it already (in which case we should have a beer and yell at all the cubes around us).

Sharon Stone slaps the OTHER Indian dude

I'd so like to be in Dev Patel's shoes right now...

He's 18, superstar in a mega movie, women are crazy about him, and he somehow winds up looking cute when he says stuff like "These guys have been winning awards even before I'd started tasting ,my first grits" when standing next to Sharon Stone (and some dowdy British interviewer).

Pity he's stuck with a name like Dev Patel, which is really the Indian equivalent of John Smith. Sure I'm sniping because I'm a jealous old non-megastar Indian dude, whaddya think? Harrumph.

Meanwhile, BBC, you really need to start allowing people to embed videos...

Hillary brushes off Bill to kiss Barack

HAHAHAAAAA!!!! Turns out the Presidency does indeed gives you a magnetic personality. Aw, poor Bill... he's got his eyes closed, and his lips all puckered, and he totally shoots an airball. I mean, I'm sure things weren't super warm between the two of them anyway, but to turn away and kiss another guy while your hubby leans in to kiss you? Ouch. Very Ouch.

PushupYogi v2.0

Well, what do you think?

Tell me.

My expensive haircut story

I usually don't pay much for haircuts; I had an awesome Azerbaijani hairdresser who used to firmly wedge my head in her ample bosom as she gave me a quick cut every month. 20 minutes and 20 bucks later (and with warm ears), I was done. As my own mother once said, no point fretting too much about a haircut - I'm stuck with the face I have and there's only so much you can do about it.

But recently, since I moved, I've had my hair cut by a Vietnamese lady - very sweet, but I just can't get her to cut it the way I want. Somehow, the broken English and the gesticulating doesn't quite get across the message that I want the hair on the sides of my head cut just like so.

Well, so when I was walking past this barbershop (ok, "salon") I decided to just walk in because I needed a haircut, I was tired of the same old "just-not-quite-right" cut, and someone had talked up this place big time. It looked like a decent place from outside, nothing outside the ordinary. I guess the fact that the group of hairdressers looked like an alt-rock band with their tattoos and spunky hairdos, and the iMac-like decor should've been a giant red flag. But I went in, and told the dude that I needed a simple haircut. Sure, he said.

They first fed me some food and gave me something to drink, and then the nice Russian chick in the corner made me sit in a recliner chair. And then proceeded to massage my head, bumps and all, while humming softly to herself. Yeah, sure, it was nice. She also rinsed my hair and put three different things in it and rinsed and massaged some more. And all this was even BEFORE I got to sit in the actual barber's chair.

I think I was supposed to be relaxed by then, but honestly, all I could think of was about how I was SO screwed. I mean, can't back out now, right? Got to go with it. So I sort of resigned myself to some more new-age relaxation bullshit before I actually got the freaking hair-cut. I hoped that by asking for the simplest possible cut I might reduce monetary damage. Nothing doing. The dude took 45 minutes to snip every hair individually (stepping back every now and then to look at it critically), and then, after a good deal of snipping and critiquing and buffing and combing and hand-running, this is what my hair gets to look like:



Exactly. "Meh" would be an understatement. Well, it might not have been a $16,260 haircut, but it was $50. 50 bucks = 10 Guinness, a nice amount of good brew. And 50 bucks and 65 minutes is how much I spent to get my hair to look like this. Again, not that it broke the bank or anything like that. But for that much time, money and hype, I better come out of the place looking like Brad freaking Pitt.

crazy week = no time to blog

Seriously, it has been THAT bad.

Plus I went to a bar yesterday to relax a bit, and I ended up standing for SEVEN HOURS STRAIGHT. So now my whole lower back and legs are killing me, making this a pretty rough day in what has been a pretty rough week.

Although I did have a great time yesterday talking to this woman who was about a foot taller than me, and solidly built. I was getting great vibes from her, but my buddies took me aside and advised me to back off. I believe their exact words were: "Dude, don't even think about it. She will snap your body in two." Except they didn't say body.

So I backed off. But I can't stop laughing about it today.

The worst movie I have seen. WOW

Have you heard of the movie "8 seconds"? You haven't?

Lucky you.

So I come home today after a 12 hour day, and I notice my roommate and his girlfriend are watching this cowboy movie. I can tell from the hair and the jeans (too tight around the crotch for men, worn at nipple height for the women) that the movie's been made in the 90s.

I don't know why I decided to watch the movie, but I did. I think I was just too tired to pull myself off of the couch. And so for the next hour-and-a-half, I subjected myself to the worst moviemaking I have experienced in my life. The exquisite lack of depth of characters, incredibly artless editing, painfully stone-faced acting, extraordinarily vapid screenplay and generally godawful directing make this movie a must watch for masochists. Actually, towards the end, I continued watching only to see how bad the show could get. It didn't disappoint. I would rather have my teeth pulled out without anesthetic and have my eyeballs gouged out with soup ladles simultaneously than see any part of this movie ever again. I honestly think I'll have an epileptic fit if I happen to see this movie for the second or so that a channel stays on when you're surfing.

The movie is about a cowboy who wins a lot of rodeo championships and then gets gored to death by a bull. His friend then rides some other bull for more than 8 seconds in his buddy's memory.

End of story. Did that take eight seconds? Hm, maybe the movie makers should've limited the show's length to 8 seconds too. That way the poor dude who did die (Lane Frost) would be spared a bunch of posthumous angst. Back in the day, these guys had no protective vest, no helmets, nothing. Just balls. And Lane Frost was one of those guys. Got to give respect where it's due. But by making Luke Perry (blech...), Carrie Snodgress (whuh...?) and STEPHEN BALDWIN (What were they THINKING?!?!?!?) the main characters and shooting a really, really, badly made movie, you've done the guy a real disservice.

There are too many awesome nuggets of moviemaking to list, but if I HAD to choose, fast forward to the last 10 minutes, and watch the central scene in the movie, the actual goring incident. Seriously. (A close second comes 3 minutes later, when Baldwin rides his bull)

Bruce Springsteen crotch shot - the most enjoyable moment in Superbowl 43

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Steelers won.

We hates the Steelers. Hates. Hates. So even though I was in good company the game, while reasonably exciting, was a bit of a let down. The superbowl ads were even more of a let down (there were maybe a couple that didn't suck. Must be the economy...), and the half time show was the BIGGEST letdown of them all.

First of all, yes, I was also traumatized by Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, but does that mean that you only get senile people that had their last hit three decades ago? I mean, I respect The Boss and all that, but seriously, he sounded like his vocal chords had gummed up. The problem with erring on the side of politeness is that you get acts that are so bland that people have already forgotten what they just saw five minutes into the show. (Remember, this IS superbowl weekend, so we're all watching through a alcohol-addled haze) Fortunately, in the midst of all that incredible stretch of mediocrity, here was a gem that stood out for me:



I feel sorry for the guy - really, I do. He should have stopped after the Obama gig.

Fresh-off-the-boat Indian folk: Mistake #1

I feel like I have to include the following disclaimer: this post is intended to be snark and snark only. So please spare me the "don't hate on us Indians" attitude. On the other hand, feel free to add other mistakes that you may have made or that you may have heard other people make. I'll try to make a little list.

As far as I know, the cheeseburger has GOT to be the all-time most common mistake made by FOB desis (pron. "they-sees" this is what Indians call Indians). I guess the word "cheese" in close apposition to the word "burger" must conjure up images of a bun with slices of cheese in it; I cannot tell you how many times I have witnessed (with sadistic glee) the facial expressions on my vegetarian friends as they take their bite out of a cheese burger. This happened to me recently, and so I thought I should present to you what I thought the dude's thought process went like:

Yum, can't wait to sink my teeth into all that cheese and burger buns

**bite**
Yum, cheese...

**chew**
Wait...

**swallow**
What was that? That didn't taste like cheese...

**squint at suspiciously brown layer under yellow layer between buns**
Hmm, it doesn't look like cheese...

**squint at pushupyogi**
Why is pushupyogi pointing at me and laughing?

**realization slowly seeping in**
It can't be, can it?

**feeling of dread**
It is?

**Incredulousness**
It really is?

**token skepticism**
Naw, come on...

**squint at pushupyogi - he's saying the word...**
BEEF?????

**.......**
Mother cow?????

**flash of framed picture of vishnu and Kamadhenu / Nandi (the celestial cow) from childhood**
Oh Shit.

**flash of next incarnation as a gimpy calf in a lion's cage**
I'm going to die.

**ok, maybe not**
My parents will be SO disappointed.

**Well, it didn't taste THAT bad...**

And then finally, you'll hear these exact words:

"Well, I've already swallowed it; I can't do anything about it NOW, can I? And besides, I didn't know that it was meat when I ate it, so it's all good. Um, I'll go get some french fries I think..."