Author Archives: manish

Teach racists a lesson for five bucks (updated)

Posted on by

In a Houston city council runoff election, a desi candidate’s campaign alleges he’s being called a ‘dot-headed terrorist.’ Again. Let’s stop this shit cold this time. Donate five bucks now.

We now know that ‘terrorist’ is the big new desi slur. You might think that the slur would be thrown around by hard-right Republicans angling for the redneck vote in the deep South.She… ‘joked’ to one of our supporters she was worried that if he lost, he might fly a plane into her building

Not so, says a friend working on Jay Aiyer’s campaign for Houston city council. In the Dec. 10 runoff election, his opponent Sue Lovell, a fellow Democrat and lesbian progressive, reportedly has a campaign official who’s called Jay a ‘dot-headed terrorist.’ As far as I can tell, Lovell says she’s reprimanded the official but has not disavowed the statements in public:

In May, I signed the Texas Code of Fair Campaign Practices, partially in response to disturbing racially bigoted comments coming from Ms. Lovell’s campaign… I called on the other candidates in the race to join me in signing the pledge. No one else signed. [statement from Jay Aiyer]

She’s even occasionally called off her supporters attacks on Jay for being a “terrorist” though that practice still continues to this day. [Link]

Our opponent, Sue Lovell, has a senior campaign adviser who has been publicly calling Jay a “dot-headed terrorist” and attempting to whip up racist sentiment against him within the Democratic party establishment…

… the “dot-headed terrorist” comment- a senior campaign adviser of Jay’s opponent made this comment to our campaign manager and one of our volunteers publicly at a Democratic Party event… But it’s not a one time deal- she also called him a terrorist at a statewide Democratic meeting and “joked” to one of our supporters she was worried that if he lost, he might fly a plane into her building. [email from Mini Timmaraju, a college friend who’s an Aiyer campaign consultant]

Continue reading →

Journie hall of shame

Posted on by

In a NYT review of a new Mughal art exhibit at the Met in Manhattan, Holland Cotter pens these lines:

Musharraf as Cupid?

India is the real subject here; you can hear it and taste it in this painting, as spicy as a vindaloo…

That’s what confident cooks and ambitious artists do to the recipes they inherit… A vegetable curry or a peach cobbler can take many inventive forms and still be intensely curryish or delectably peachy…

… there is a picture… of an episode from the fifth and last section of “Khamsa.” And it is pure, melting-on-the-tongue confection. [Link]

I dunno, does a vindaloo make you gag? What clichéd hell is this? Cotter writes with all the insight of Apache Indian. This reads like a kindergarten newsletter hot off the dot matrix printer, clip art carelessly pasted into a Print Shop template. Using a spice metaphor for Indian culture is like complimenting Rosario Dawson on her breasts. Y’know, work a little harder.

As for the art, Mughal miniatures are absolutely gorgeous, but the exhibit in Connecticut sounds far more innovative, an art version of the game of telephone:

One artist would create an image on a sheet of paper, then mail the sheet to someone else, who would add to it before sending it on to the next artist. Part improvisation, part calculation, each finished painting both is and is not the sum of its parts…

Continue reading →

Posted in Art

Dial Eminem for murder

Posted on by

A sick and senseless London murder finally comes to trial (thanks, Chiraag):

A fan of US rapper Eminem has admitted murdering the woman who idolised him and stuffing her in a suitcase. Christopher Duncan, 21, had the same tattoos as the rap star and had been performing his songs at a karaoke bar in London on the night of 13 May 2004.

Law student Jagdip Najran, 26, who had met him only two weeks before, left the bar with him, only to be battered over the head with an iron bat at his flat… Najran was in her final year at London Metropolitan University… [Link]

… Najran… told a friend her heart was “aflutter” at seeing him at a karaoke night. [Link]

… the couple slept together before Duncan, high on a cocktail of LSD, ecstasy and cocaine, set about her with a metal baseball bat, shattering her skull. He then stuffed her body into a suitcase because he “could not bear to look at her”… Duncan said he flipped after the “beautiful and clever” law student smiled at him…

Detectives who searched the killer’s flat in Bethnal Green discovered violent videos, knives, samurai swords and ninja weapons. A martial arts expert, Duncan also wrote his own songs…

Jagdip, 26, had seen Duncan performing at a pub a few weeks earlier and had gone back to the bar a second time on May 13 last year… Duncan… was born in Glasgow but moved to London at a young age… [Link]

Continue reading →

Play that stupid accent, brown boy

Posted on by

A second genner does that fake, bad Indian accent which gets ad directors all hot and bothered. Watch clip one, two. Here are two more without the desi guy: three, four.

This T-Mobile campaign aimed at Boost is called ‘Poser Mobile.’ Hyphen has the scoop:

The three caricatures of a smoked-out Latino, slit-eyed, grinning Asian, and fat, pimped-out white guy are a new, interesting spin on using racial stereotypes to sell product. Instead of selling mainstream whiteness a la Aryancrombie and Fitch, T-Mobile is itself clearly trying to sell black hip hop cred. The implication of the ads is that whites, Latinos and Asians are not really hip hop, not really street, not really trustworthy. [Link]

I actually think the campaign is pretty funny (fake Ali G = parody of a parody), but the desi accent is incredibly bad, and the Asian caricature treads close to racism. Fer chrissake, get yer ethnic mockery right.

Related post: Ga-ching-a-ching-a-ching

Continue reading →

Trash talk in Thimpu

Posted on by

From the trash talk in the comments of my last post about Bhutan, it’s clear some of its countrymen are indeed untouched by modernity. The Bhutanese dirty dozens are actually kinda sweet:

Once a european expert on “Yak” visited Bhutan. You know what the funniest part. He had never seen a yak in his life. You guys passing comment on Bhutan are exactly like that yak expert. [Link]

Yak insults. I say, yak insults. Boy, they really take the gloves off with yo mamma jokes in Bhutan.

Recently “Bhutan bashing” seems to have become livelihood for some peolpe. And some of these people are having a great life by just doing this… Bhutan bashing is a gold mine for them!!!. [Link]

I’m still waiting for my check, Nepal.

… when the Bhutanese are happy about everything, why are you all making a fuss of something which doesnot concern you. [Link]

The Bhutanese are not happy about everything. For one thing, some of them seem pretty pissed about my post. And this one is only going to drive down that Gross National Happiness, so better get crackin’!

Bhutan is a Third World Country… But we are also [a] highly educated lot. The fact that my english is better than yours proves the point. [Link]

Point proven.

Related posts: Bhutanese Gothic, Bhutan’s gross national happiness, Bhutan designs democracy, Bhutan: bidi ban, badmash!

Continue reading →

Lurid scapulæ

Posted on by

East Village denizen Anil Gupta is one of the best tattoo artists in the U.S. (thanks, Ennis). He’s known for his miniature reproductions of fine art. Here’s Seurat and a quarter. It’s sly, painting pointillism at the pinprick end of a tattoo pen:

Gupta draws a straight line from gaudy to Gaudí, from Bollyboards to nipple art:

“So how did you end up reducing the world’s greatest masterpieces into miniatures?” … He explained that as the son of a man who illustrated giant movie posters for Bollywood, he used to paint eyes that were two stories high. “Maybe,” he said with a deep-throated chuckle, “inventing the miniature was my form of rebellion…” [Link]

Continue reading →

Piss Krishna

Posted on by

Penises of Paradise: You could be forgiven for thinking a post with this subtitle refers to the prowess of the male Mutineers. Alas, our significant others demand truth in advertising. Actually, our old friend Beads of Paradise has thrown a new wrinkle into its exotica-dealing ways: it’s encircled Ganesh with a garland of penises. A dangle-sutra. A dick-lace.

I’m bemused by the dildos strewn around the feet of the idols, and the well-hung Buddhas dangling off Christmas trees. Is this Inuit-Hindu totemic mashup? Is it a newfangled fertility ritual? Are they invoking the subcontinental symbol of disgrace, the garland of shoes? Andrés Serrano would be proud.

Color me unimpressed by the gonads on display. Here’s what a real New York set looks like, from this year’s Halloween parade (NSFW after the jump).

Continue reading →

Panic room

Posted on by

Reader Dhaavak reports that he narrowly escaped a violent in-car mugging at the hands of a criminal pretending to be a construction worker. It’s the prototypical Good Samaritan horror story. Glad you’re safe!

I was approaching the stop light when a man with a construction worker’s safety gear stepped out of the side and waved at me to stop… The construction worker walked up to my side and said that he needs a jump for his truck… “Sure guy. Come in”, I said, asking the guy to get in.

… he caught hold of my neck with both hands and started choking me. “You are about to die”, he said as he squeezed.

It was a powerful grip and I started struggling. I had my left leg half way out and I kept trying to push the door open. He was quite strong and pulled me towards him with the neck. I used my left hand to try to pry open his hands and tried to honk the horn with my right knee. “Don’t kick open the door”, he warned, “Hand me your wallet, or I will kill you”. I got a couple of fingers open and then all of a sudden, he let go.

I leaped out of the door and turned around to face him. I noticed my lights were flashing and the horn was honking. I had inadvertently pressed the panic button… [Link]

Lesson learned:

Do not ever get into someone else’s car or allow some stranger into your own… If someone approaches you for help, lower the window just a little, offer to call on the cell-phone, but don’t let anyone enter your car. [Link]

There’s a silver lining. By nearly getting himself killed, Dhaavak pulls himself off Abhi’s list:

(13) dhaavak- This is the most boring blog EVER. [Link]

Read the whole thing.

Continue reading →

Papal pull

Posted on by

The new pope of the Catholic empire has put the rebel alliance of Assisi and its dialogue with Hindus and Buddhists in check:

Peace, love and tolerance: you disgust me

In a decree published Nov. 19, the pope placed the Franciscans in Assisi under the… control of a new local bishop… The edict overturned autonomy granted in 1969 by Pope Paul VI that in effect made the Franciscans ambassadors to peace movements and to outside cultural and religious groups… So far, [Pope Benedict’s] reign has been an exercise in the tightening of practice to match church doctrine as he sees it… [Link]

Rise, Lord Ratzinger. What bugs the new pope about those hippie-dippy Franciscan friars: respectful, tolerant interfaith exchange. Why, those reasonable bastards.

In the view of critics, few places within the church challenged Catholic certainties more flamboyantly than Assisi. In particular, interfaith meetings held in the hilltop town appeared to them to be a kind of food court of dangerous relativist thinking.

… Benedict was settling scores with the Franciscans over a “carnival-like” interfaith meeting they hosted in 1986. Voodoo priests, American Indian dancers and African animists took part… The Franciscans went beyond agreed-upon rules by allowing pagan worship practices to take place on church property, and Benedict “never forgave the Franciscan community for the excesses…” [Link]

Voodoo, Native Americans and animists are fine, but what really gets the good pope’s robes in a twist are Hindus and Buddhists:

St. Francis basilica at Assisi

“… during [the previous pope’s] voyage to India, he had given speeches of unprecedented openness toward that country’s religions, and at Bombay had even let a priestess of the god Shiva anoint his forehead with a sacred Hindu symbol…”

Some of the city’s churches were allotted for the prayers of Buddhists, Hindus, and African animists, as if these buildings were neutral containers, void of any indelible Christian value. The Buddhists set up a shrine of Buddha on the altar of the local Church of Saint Peter. The absence from Assisi of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger [the new pope]… was not improperly interpreted as… self-distancing… [Link]

Hinduism, he said, offers ‘false hope’; it guarantees ‘purification’ based on a ‘morally cruel’ concept of reincarnation resembling ‘a continuous circle of hell’…… [Link]

Continue reading →