Surprise Topic#2

Below be deep waters.

Have you ever felt irritated at not being able to see yourself looking around/derping/making zombie eyes while looking in a mirror?

And yes this is on-topic while being completely different only I know how that can be. (Woop for ambiguity and screw commas).

Top 10 Pictures that Define my Household

in no particular order.

LINEBREAK MUCH.

To Dr Mahathir

Late last week, Dr Mahathir, the old, much condemned prime-minister of Malaysia, gave a speech in India which stirred me to retort in an open letter to the doctor. The reply was digitalised and has since taken the developing world by storm :)

Dear Dr Mahathir,

A couple of days back I woke up to newspaper reports which quoted you as saying that India’s democracy is a hindrance to its development and, if we did away with the nuisance of democracy, we will become developed.

Well, sir, it is heartening to see your concern about India’s future, especially now that our own elected government has orphaned us. To read that someone from the outside cares about our development sounds so very nice.

But you see, sir, your (apparently) good intentions notwithstanding, your advice to Indians is, well how should I put it… ill-advised.

I’m not really sure if you know much about the history of our nation. Don’t get me wrong.

Going by facts like the general absence of news from Malaysian newspapers; the absence of anything but song and dance in your electronic media; the absence of bookstores that sell knowledgeable books (for example, ones from which you can learn about history and not how to get rich in six steps); the abundance of malls and the stark absence of libraries; the abundance of coaching centres that can make masseurs, air hostesses and a host of quick-fix technicians and the relative absence of centres of higher learning especially in the social sciences; and, above all, the fact that this insanely consumerist and hedonist Malaysia was made under your tutelage, makes me doubt your knowledge of the history of India or any nation for that matter.

So allow me to apprise you of the story of our independence.

We won independence from colonial rulers waging a long and tortuous battle. A battle that sought to replace a discriminatory, unjust and violent regime that had enslaved huge populations with one which was based on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

India was home then, as is now and as will always be, to an immense diversity of people who spoke different tongues, prayed to different Gods, wore different clothes and had different political beliefs. These diverse people said to each other that – we, despite our differences, will strive to live and flourish together and make a sovereign nation which will be democratic, socialist and secular.

We did not anywhere say that we want to be Malaysia or for that matter China or the US.

In India, no one is above the law

We want to become a nation with a system that treats all its citizens as equal unlike your country that officially accords special rights to Malay Muslims calling them first-class citizens while relegating thousands of people of Tamil, Chinese and other ethnic origins.

Despite the fact that they have known no other land than Malaysia as their own, you denigrate them with the tag of being second-class citizens.

We try to work towards having a system wherein a person will grow according to his merit and hard work earning what she or he has rightfully earned.

You may be surprised to know that here in India making cartels based on identity, even if under the name of a holy cow called “Bumiputra” or "son of the soil" is looked down upon by most of us.

Here, promoting the selective interests of one’s self or that of his kin is called corruption and nepotism and not, as you call it, development.

We are in fact fighting tooth and nail to arrest the scourge of corruption and (you’ll be shocked to know) get the guilty punished.

Here in India no one is above the law and many a times powerful public figures go to jail for being corrupt or subverting the law.

Now that we are at it, sir, I’m sure it would be interesting to know what the minorities of your country have to say – especially the jailed and beaten ones – about the development-democracy debate.

In fact, sir, your idea of development is largely at odds with many of us here.

Development is no substitute for values

What you did to the tropical forests and water bodies of Malaysia (that is, raze vast acres of them into oblivion to make way for big-buck oil palm plantations and piggeries and so on) would cause huge outrage among many of us who are looking for sustainable development.

We are yet to be unanimously convinced that making cemented roads – however broad, lining them with buildings, even if glass-covered and glossy, and putting cars on them, however fast – is a substitute for our valued bio-diversity.

Many of us are very convinced that displacing huge populations of native people for useless things like racing tracks is a blot on the word “development”.

There are many of us who find it a shameful and cruel hypocrisy that while your country has abundant and openly advertised sex tourism, it still whips women for being licentious!

Thanks to the culture of reading here, many of us know of your penchant for cruelty in your personal career.

A career during which you enacted despotic and violent acts at times in the name (your contorted version of) Islam and at times in the name of security and national interest.

We could recount how you rose to power annihilating huge numbers of your opponents and stayed there for over two decades, continuing your devious rule using tactics and schemes which are far beyond Machiavelli.

Many of us know about your vile Internal Security Act, which you used to crush political opposition – jailing them and putting in place a frail and near-sham democracy and placing the entire nation under a one-man rule of Umno for over two decades.

You will note that I have used words like “most of us”, “many of us” and have tried to stay away from absolute claims.

Misconstrued understanding of ‘development’

Besides the age-old Indian practice of accommodating different opinions, it is meant to recognise that there are people in this country, too, who think like you and will have applauded you for saying what you did.

They, too, think that roads are all that important and not the humans who walk on them or the ones who sleep beside them.

They have misconstrued the word development as development of personal wealth and that this “development” is a holy cow and everything including the rights and lives of fellow humans is of lesser priority.

Their money power helps them buy a lot of print space and electronic bandwidth so they may appear like the majority, but thankfully the truth is they aren’t.

The majority of us recognise and are willing to admit – and even discuss at length – that there are problems in our nation – including bad roads.

But they’ll quickly add that we intend to solve those not by lessening democracy but by increasing it."

The sender of said letter, Siddharthya Swapan Roy is a freelance writer and activist based in Maharashtra, India.

Thank you Dr Mahathir for fucking up a promising nation with high hopes for the future. Everyone who is not bumi, we thank you for sincerely buggering off (I'm lying, even though you're a batty old crow, you just can't stop meddling with our politics, can you?)

----------jai out----------

Something with Justin Bieber

I hate, loathe how much this made my day. But it's just pitiful. I like that.

And that's my two cents. More than some blog authors I know around here can put out in a week.

Surprise Topic#1

The very one you've been quaking in your boots/socks/other footwear in anticipation of.

The Surprise Topic.

I admit that I never really came to a decision as to what it should be, but meh.

So.

The task I now set myself is to write down my acceding train of thought, and to make sure that you (the hypothetical readers) will not be able to follow it.

From here on out, I will drop spelling, grammar and the associated proof-reading in favour of really, really fast writing. I am not usually fast at typing (that is, I cannot touch-type). Thus I will make it fast.

The third author?

Hello, and YES, there is a third author to the blog, and YES it is me. Well, now that's over, let me introduce myself, yeah, it's me yah favourite author of the the lot (and between you and me, the others don't know a think about blogging). My name? Oh! sorry I must have forgot to mention, well My name is Gopi. Firstly, there are some things you should know about me. They are as follows:
1)I only post on mondays and fridays
Yeah, I'm sorry, I know you'd like me to post all the time, but I don't want to hog the limelight (actually I wouldn't mind stealing the spotlight, but it'd make me seem selfish)
2)I'm the best
I don't know why I included this point, I mean, you already know that I'm the best, but just incase you forgot!
3)Of the three authors, I am the most unpunctual.
Yeah, I don't have much time to type so I tend to just have time to spellcheck.
4)I will try to include a comic in each of my posts
I'll be adding a comic to this post so, read and (Do I even have to say it) ENJOY
5)My name is Gopi
I can't recall the number of ways people have spelt my name wrong, come on it, isn't hard, GOPI not goppy or gopee. Simples!
6)Comment!
Yeah you betta comment or else!
Kay thats all folks!
Read the comic

Meet Gopi. He joined the blog, and I'll be impressed if after that spurt of activity he'll even check on the blog within the next few weeks and see this post (before it goes onto page 2).

If he makes some posts, rest assured that he knows what he's doing. He's maintained some blogs in the past. They collapsed. He at least has the decency to upkeep a YouTube channel.

He will hate me if/when he notices that this is about him.

EDIT: Oh snap.

Veto the second

because this is the second veto.

I have changed (officially and all that) the subject of my Thursday posts to lists. So.

The food groups (in order of awesomeness)


          9. Vitamins and minerals - vegetables. Yeuch.
          8. Water. Because it's not a food.
          7. Fibre, because all you get from it is potatoes and stuff. It's not even a real nutrient!
          6. Carbohydrates are slightly better than fibre, because at least they are nutrients.
          5. Sugar. It seems a low placing, but then again, sugar is bad for you in any sizeable quantity. That is a thing which does suck.
          4. Fats are in many tasty foods, and also, fatness is happiness. I got that from a book.
          3. Proteins make you manly.
          2. Plastic is the main ingredient in MacDonald's Happy Meals. Is that not a good thing?
          1. Cocaine.

Disclaimer: We at SOS do not endorse the consumption of drugs, but make no claims against their boons.

Edit: Jai derped the Wednesday post lololol.

        So he thinks he can make up for it by removing my administrative status and changing the blog description.

        God dammit.

I was running low on music (that is, I was/am/will continue to be sick of it all).

I tried Animal Crossing for quick browsing and picking out of good tunes.

Click the link.

Headdesk.

Media. Hm. When I wrote that about a week ago, I did it so that it would be an open task.

The only media that ich weiß and am not alone in doing so is sparse.

So, Avatar is this film which succeeded in-

OH GOD DAMN IT ALL TO HELL I'LL JUST DO HARRY POTTER.

He might not even mind.


Harry Potter was considered a revolutionary series of books, giving, from what I garner, younger children a taste of the thrill of TLoTR, to name but one.

It

was

a

rip-off.

It starts with far more intrigue than most authors can ever aspire to, so that's all well and good. It has deep and involving characters and plot. It uses adventurous vocabulary. It has previously unexplored plot twists and turns, believable at every hurdle.

How about I leave it to y'all to figure out how much of the above I actually believe.

N.B.: Neville is best wizard.