Category Archives: Humor

Chinese Idol

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Earlier we posted about how prayers have been outsourced to India. Now Indian priests have even found subcontractors (via India Uncut):

After toys and dolls, communist China — where there are strict curbs on religious practice — has flooded Indian markets with images of Hindu gods and goddesses. And the religious-minded are bowing before their superior quality.

“Containers are landing in Mumbai by the dozens every month. Not a single idol goes unsold; there’s a mad scramble for them. I’m struggling to cope with the demand,” said Balwant Singh, who runs a gift shop in Mohali. “The buyers come and ask for images of different gods and goddesses, but will accept only those made in China. Not many buy Indian-made idols now.”

What makes the Chinese idols so attractive? “Their finish is excellent. They are made of synthetic material and are very colourful,” said another gift shop owner in Chandigarh, Inder Kumar Sethi. “The customer would take one look at a Chinese idol and immediately settle for it… There is also more variety in these idols… They are unbreakable and can be washed. The Indian ones are heavier and not as well polished. Their shelf-life is very short but the price is cheap.” [Link]

As Clayton Krishnasen might say, only the high end is safe from this market disruption:

For the moment, though, Kumartuli with its heavy, custom-made idols seems safe enough. [Link]

You know which god the communists churn out? Lakshmi, goddess of wealth. Amit Varma wisecracks:

And you know what they’re made of? Irony. [Link]

I leave you with the hilarious lyrics to ‘Plastic Vishnu,’ a banjo song:

Plastic Vishnu, plastic Vishnu
Riding on the dashboard of my car:
Ride with me and you’ll be safer,
You needn’t bother with any wafer
Bow to Plastic Vishnu, in my car…

If I run over little old ladies
And the police think I might have rabies
They’ll never find my hashish, though they ask;
plastic Vishnu shelters me,
For His head comes off, you see —
He’s hollow, and I use Him for my stash…

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Better Living through (Massachusetts Institute of) Technology

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anmols creation.jpg

Boys, the era of “uh-huh” is over and you have one of your own to thank for it {Thanks, Srinath + Anon}.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing software for cell phones that would analyze speech patterns and voice tones to rate people — on a scale of 0 to 100 percent — on how engaged they are in a conversation.
Anmol Madan, who led the project while he pursued a master’s degree at MIT, sees the Jerk-O-Meter as a tool for improving relationships, not ending them. Or it might assist telephone sales and marketing efforts.

HA. You’re all busted. No more mindlessly muttering, “uh-huh…yup…wow.. .huh” while your significant other chatters on– the Jerk-O-Meter is listening! Thanks to the magic of mathematical algorithms, the program can measure stress levels, how often one speaks and how empathetic a person’s voice sounds…if it doesn’t hear dulcet tones, the Jerk-O-Meter admonishes users to be nicer via pop-up messages on their phones. This isn’t all bad news, though. The Jerk-O-Meter could be a boon to the back, since its use could prevent a night spent on the couch.

“Think of a situation where you could actually prevent an argument,” he said. “Just having this device can make people more attentive because they know they’re being monitored.”

A penguin was involved:

The prototype version of the program runs in Linux on a phone plugged into Voice over Internet service. Once the Jerk-O-Meter is completed, in six months or so, Madan envisions selling it as software that could be downloaded off the Internet — a potentially useful tool for focus groups, telemarketers and salesmen.

Pish posh. It’s such a useful tool, it’s going to become a best-seller with pissed off girlfriends, trust me. 馃槈 Continue reading →

‘I’m brown… and messin’ with your head’

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Some desi guy posted a hilarious rant to Craigslist on dealing with suspicious looks from fellow passengers while riding the DC metro (thanks, midnight toker):

… after the London subway bombings, i have been getting “the look” on public transportation and at airports. To put it mildly, my days of picking up girls on a plane are over…

I don’t have an accent, a dot or a large cobra wrapped around my head (except on Tuesdays). I’m your typical poser hipster Indian living in DC, trying to get my hands on as much smoke, beer and ass as i can. But step on the metro… and suddenly i transform into Allah-kazam bin Laden…

… open your book bag at least 3 times. As soon as you reach for the bag, look at their reactions. Kodak moments all over the place.

My dream is to go on a plane, act crazy suspicious… basically inviting some white folk to beat the shit out of me. Then when they open my bags, it will be full of Bibles and medicine for sick children. Then i’ll sue all the muthafuckers and go live on some island with all my money and broken bones. Now that’s the American dream.

… i gotta deal with this bullshit everyday on the metro… It’s not even a cool subway like NYC or in Paris. The lame ass DC metro.

The DC metro reminds me of BART. The New York subway is to DC’s what a fastback is to a station wagon: it isn’t wide and cushy, but it’s a hell of a lot faster.

Read the whole thing. See Anna’s related post here.

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Grind me down sugar salt

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Standup comic Aziz Ansari recently did a sketch about how the ‘gasam blew him off at her Knitting Factory show. He re-enacts several far-fetched scenarios about what he wishes had happened instead:

M.I.A.: ‘Actually, I have a lot of experience with hard disk recoveries on Macs…’ (Lowers eyes seductively) ‘Maybe tomorrow I could come by your place…’

It’s a cute schtick, but overly long as a video. On the other hand, it’s the first time I’ve heard Tamil spoken in a comedy sketch and the first time I’ve seen a tall, pasty white guy stand in for Aziz’ ‘Sri Lankan princess’

Does Ansari merely want to jump M.I.A.’s bones, or is it also a great publicity gimmick? I surrender. Watch the low-budget video. Here’s the site.

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An ode to my beloved

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The first thing I’ve always noticed is how she feels to my touch.  Even if left out all day, there is some warmth left at her core that rises up through my fingertips.  A person’s true beauty is on the inside and despite the fact that I always take time to admire the texture and taste of her outer shell, every crease and fold and hard bit, it is what’s inside that I think about with the greatest anticipation.  In there, a secret garden she hides.  And the way she smells…mmmm mmm mmmm.  It can make you hop right out of bed in the morning.  Is there any better way to break-fast?  Even in college I could always count on her at the end of the night when nothing else would fill me up, and the partying just wasn’t fun anymore.  I’m not the only one that lusts after her though.  True beauty is easily recognized and doggedly pursued.  The folks at The 92nd Street Y (thanks to the anonymous tipster) not only recognized her, but delved into her past to uncover the things even I didn’t know:

…we thought it might be time to pay tribute to the humble samosa.

The deep-fried, fist-sized triangular pastry is traditionally filled with either spicy potatoes or ground lamb and is India’s great contribution to the world of fast food. Traditional samosas come in all sorts of variations; in the Punjab they’re smaller and more akin to Western potato puffs, while in southern India wrappers are traditionally made from Lentil flour. There’s samosa chaat–where samosas are doused in chickpea curry or yogurts and chutneys to make for a quick, messy meal on the go–and regional variations like Bengali dessert samosas filled with rosewater or Myanmar’s samosas, which substitute wonton wrappers for the thicker shells used in India.

But the samosa is also the product of a thousand years of culinary heritage. Variants of this uniquely Indian food can be found everywhere from Cape Town to Singapore to Tashkent to Tel Aviv. A samosa/samoosa/samsa/sambusek/burek world tour (with recipes) after the jump.

Food historians have established, however, that the samosa originated not in India, but in Persia. The sanbusaj, originally a Persian term for any stuffed, savory pastry or dumpling, started showing up in Persian, Arab and Turkish literature starting in the 9th century, when poet Ishaq ibn Ibrahim-al-Mausili wrote verse praising sanbusaj.

Wow.  I am truly humbled to follow in the footsteps of the poet Ibrahim-al-Mausili.  I am a blue-collar samosa eater.  I don’t need the finest green and brown chutneys.  Just give me a little bit of ketchup and you’ll shut me right up.  That’s right, I like to go slumming.  I also refuse to see any movie at a theater longer than two hours unless there is an intermission with warm samosas in the lobby.  I LOVED Lord of the Rings, but it was so long that every time Gollum said “my precious,” I kept thinking about samosas.  My mom makes them the best.  Cashews and tofu sometimes.

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Ferengis invade the Gaon Federation

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I never thought I’d see the day…

Graduate students from top schools in the United States, most from [MBA] programs, are vying for internships at India’s biggest private companies… Bypassing internship opportunities on Wall Street… they went to India to spend the summer at an outsourcing company in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi…

Infosys Technologies, the country’s second-largest outsourcing firm after Tata Consultancy Services, discovered how popular India had become as an internship destination for Americans when the company began recruiting: for the 40 intern spots at its Bangalore headquarters, the company received 9,000 applications… [Link]

This brings a tear to my eye. It also makes me want to warn Gurgaon (‘the village of gurus’) and Bangalore (‘lots of banging’) of the mercenary MBA hordes of Genghis Cant. During the Net bubble, they descended en masse upon our quaint silvered shire in their X3s, treating the muscular engine of history like a poodle to be shorn, bobbed and bowed. Like life-sized Edna Modes, they declared technology first supernova-hot and then old and busted within months, fleeing back to Manhattan with hype in tow.

The final 40, who cut a wide academic swath from engineering schools like M.I.T. and Carnegie Mellon to business schools like Stanford, Wharton and Kellogg, have since arrived on campus for average stays of three months… They live in a 500-room hotel complex on Infosys’s expansive campus in the suburbs of Bangalore, exchanging coupons for meals at the food court and riding the company bus downtown to decompress at the many pubs and bars… Many are in India to study globalization firsthand, Mr. Karnik said; that is often not possible in China because, unlike India, English is not widely spoken there… [Link]

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The poll poll

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should we do a reader poll?
 
Yes: Thanggod! I want to know whether readers are veatish, own a pet monkey or listen to Cornershop
No: Na ji na, it’ll lead to dismissing commenters with snarky, inaccurate labels, which nobody ever does now

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Izzard vents his gizzard

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Cross-dressing British comic Eddie Izzard performs a very funny Monty Python-ish bit about how Britain conquered India (thanks, ms). In his formulation, a flag is like letterhead. Any self-respecting, Brazil-ian bureaucracy must have one.

That’s how you build an empire: we stole countries with the cunning use of flags. You just sail around the world and stick a flag in: ‘I claim India for Britain.’

And they go, ‘You can’t claim us, we live here. 500 million of us!’

‘Do you have a flag?’

Watch the clip.

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Cowboy up…if you dare

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scooter-cow.jpegQ: How do you deal with the estimated 40,000 cows who wander the streets of Delhi?

A: Put a price on their heads! Sort of.

An Indian court has issued an order telling authorities in Delhi to offer a reward for people catching stray cows roaming the capital’s streets.
The Delhi High Court ordered southern Delhi authorities to pay 2,000 rupees ($45) to anyone delivering a stray cow to them.

Though another court order addressed this situation two years ago, not much progress has been made; the animals are still a traffic hazard. The bounty-equipped bovines will be taken to a shelter before they are auctioned off to fund the scheme.

This is something I’ve always been curious about– where do the meandering animals come from in the first place? Are they drawn to the bright lights of the big city like so many of us villagers?

Most are let loose to wander by unscrupulous dairy owners.

And how’s this new strategery working for you, Delhi (to bite Dr. Phil)?

Catching a free roaming cow is not easy – on the first day of the cash scheme there was not one claimant.

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Freedom at midnight

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Long years ago I thought a ‘Tryst with Destiny‘ meant hooking up with a stripper.

Long years ago Vinod thought ‘desi‘ was followed by ‘Arnaz.’

Long years ago Anna thought Karsh Kale was a kind of cabbage.

Long years ago Abhi thought Kalpana Chawla was a variety of rice.

Long years ago Sajit thought the Dum Dum Project was an insane asylum.

Long years ago Ennis sprang full-grown from his mother’s forehead quoting Gayatri Spivak. Well, shit, he’s freakishly bright and messes up the curve like that.

In the last year, our scary-smart readers have corrected all those misconceptions and are poised to correct a million more. Once, S/He Who Must Not Be Named confided to me that s/he wanted more comments for his/her posts. ‘Comments?’ says I. ‘You want comments? Post something that’s flat-out wrong. You’ll have 47 comments correcting the error, 47 calling you a commie and 47 calling you a fascist by the time the post button springs back into position.’

So on this first anniversary of the Mutiny, I’d like to confess our little scam. You thought we were writing for your edification (and masturbatory coffee breaks — we know how you use the WiFi.) Suckas! In reality, y’all have been educating us.

Collectively, you guys are some smart mofos. Can I just say? You rock.

脗路 脗路 脗路 脗路 脗路

I’ve also taken the liberty of penning my hopes and dreams for Sepia Mutiny’s impact on second-gen culturistas. It’s a weighty political manifesto, so be sure and sit down while you read. Here it is:

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