Goodwill Monkeys.

DO NOT DRINK COLD WATER AFTER A MEAL - YOU COULD DIE OF CANCER!

This was the message of an e mail I got earlier today, for the second time in six months or so.  Apparently "A Cardiologist" concurs with this pearl of wisdom, too.  Indeed, he wouldn't be courageous enough to reveal his name, for he would be soundly thrashed in the realms of reality and truth.

I am inclined to believe the internet has now reached millions of people with too much time on their hands, and many of them simply want to reach out.  If they wrote to us that they were bored and just wanted to say hello, it might be hard to get this kind of mileage, so they come up with some utter crap, cloaked as a gem of knowledge, that can "save lives"!  Notice how many of these messages do not have the author owning up to it!?

There are some genuine gems out there, for sure, but those are few and far between.  I wonder why a lot of people fall for this kind of pop culture "good will" that needs to for some reason be shared now, but wasn't worth our time before we got our broadband connections.  It's because the internet doesn't spew back.  It doesn't ask us the questions normal humans would ask, usually starting with "And who the *^@k are you?".  If you are a fat slob sending out an e mail on how to stay healthy by drinking tea with a spot of yak urine, nobody really gets super annoyed, but if you showed up in real life, that would be a hoot, wouldn't it?  You freaking wouldn't dare.

A couple of months ago I got this stupid message extolling the virtues of letting one's hair down, eating that tasty piece of chocolate, ignoring an extra round of flab, not exercising, and sleeping longer.  How much guilt should you carry before you need to justify any of this to yourself?  What a pathetic pop culture parasite must have come up with this nonsense!  And what mindless broadcasting of this shit is carried out by millions of "good" people who want to spread the goodwill and score brownie points with their friends.  Sorry fools, it irks some of us.

I don't want to hear how nice it is to finally be lazy, sloppy and uncaring.  It doesn't apply to me so I don't want to read this.  But it arrived in my inbox from a trusted friend, so now I am forced to.  Seconly, I don't know you, the bloody original author of this shit, so I don't give a shit what makes you feel nice either.  That's not to say I wish you bad.  Clearly you are fully capable of doing that to yourself with your love of slob.  But I just don't give a shit about ANY lazy slob.  You eat your freaking ice cream, don't shower, sleep, fart, booze, that's all your freaking business, not mine.  That's all there is to it.

Now, what about the fools who spread this shit?  What makes them do it?  If something brought a smile to your face, you want to share it - THIS I get.  But would every single person on your mailing list get the same smile reading the same shit?  Some of us get frowns, duh!

I have lived long enough and travelled far enough to know there is no magic pill that can keep us healthy and happy.  We need to invest in being healthy and happy, and then we can reap the benefits of that investment.  Eating properly, getting exercise, learning stuff, being productive - these are things we should do and do every day.  None of this is a luxury, and some of us have to work harder than others, since we're not created equal, no matter what you hear to the contrary.  If you think everybody is equal, why the fuck are you not able to run as fast as Usain Bolt?  Even if the whole world had EQUAL opportunity, EQUAL motivation, EQUAL everything, there would still be only ONE fastest runner.  That's just the way it is.

The internet, unfortunately provides a mirage of equality.  I can spew as much as anybody else.  Fools can show up as much as intelligent people, liars as much as truth seekers, quacks as much as doctors, and saints cannot be any holier than pedophiles in this whacky space.  We're all freaking "equal" somehow.  While some of us have had normal lives and know our places, the internet is to some of our monkeys, the ONLY space where they can be fully expressive, scratch their asses in full public view, and get really creative!

To a monkey, anything that can kill boredom is creative.  Sending out these freaking "goodwill" messages makes the lazy feel like they are doing something good, the empty ones probably feel like their lives are actually worth something, and the dumb ones even have a chance of feeling intelligent by getting appreciation for messages they had nothing to do with in the first place.

So, all you goodwill monkeys out there, do the rest of us a big favour.  The next time you get one of these freaking "good" saving the world messages, ask yourselves if you would print out the message, put that in an envelope and stick a stamp and mail it to a dear friend.  If you wouldn't do that, the message is either not important, or you wouldn't take the pains for your friend.  THAT is the measure of your character and your judgment.  Please don't hit "forward".  If you would indeed do all this for a friend, great!  Connect that printer and get to work.  It would be nice to get some real mail too.  Heck, it might even get read!

BSK.

The joy of winning, without losing any of it!

For a while I have been watching the IPL, edition 3, enjoying quite a bit of it, annoyed with some parts, disgusted with some parts, amused by some, and plain irritated with shit like the fucking MRF Blimp.

Watching my team CSK win the final yesterday was great.  CSK aren't my team because I live in Chennai, and since I don't, why would I pick them over the other teams?  They just seem like a relaxed, happy bunch that doesn't play for anything other than the fun of the game itself.  The Rajasthan Royals I like for a similar reason - they play well when they really don't have a chance, and especially when they don't have a chance.

I don't understand why some teams get so much more attention than the others, like the bloody Kolkata Knight Riders.  I believe they were the "most watched" team.  As if that counts for something, other than TV ratings.  How can a bunch of losers be the most watched bunch?  Are their supporters so big in number?  Statistically impossible.  Shah Rukh Khan is a draw but simply seeing him in the stands and occasionally humping a Shoaib Akhtar in a presentation cannot be reason enough to watch a disgruntled bunch of losers turn it off game after game.  There is artificial juicing up of KKR games, and it comes from television - like an invisible hand pushing them to be prominent, spoken about, written about, and even win if possible.

Could it be Lalit Modi's proxy stakes in KKR doing their stink job?  So what?  That's to be expected, but the way the asshole took the microphone and started addressing "the world" during the post match presentation took something away from the joy of Chennai Super Kings winning the trophy.  Somehow, if Mumbai had won it, the people who had cheered for Mumbai all along would not have left those lovely stands empty, and Modi's emotional address would have seemed absurd at such a happy time.  But, the badly delivered address from Modi, clearly written by his ghost writer, served to reinforce how nobody really seemed to care that much about CSK's win.  Shit, they're not KKR!

CSK seem to mind their own business.  Nobody even saw their owner in public until they had won the trophy, and his wife didn't run out and get her ass grabbed by the players either.  And yet, they not only won the trophy, they also won the "Fairplay Award" with a perfect score - which means, good natured guys with no negative attitude to show can also win, and win handsomely.  Not once during the whole season did CSK put on grim faces, show disrespect, or play the blame game when they lost.  And lose they did, quite a few.  They had won only 2 out of their first 7 games!  But Dhoni and his boys did exactly what was needed WHEN it was needed.  And they didn't make a fuss out of it either.  They gave their supporters a lot of joy.  Not one negative vibe.  Dhoni did catch Tendulkar and Tendulkar didn't walk when the umpire missed that one.  Dhoni didn't lose his cool, or the cup.  Sachin didn't lose his temper that much, but under pressure, he captained Mumbai like a moron - scared to death and making amateurish mistakes.

It just looked like one side was playing to win, and the other was playing to not lose.  Nightmares do come true, and never mind the dreams.  This is what happens to those that are groomed for greatness and those that know how to steal it and seal it when the opportunity comes.  Sachin was magnanimous in his praise for CSK and I'm sure Dhoni would have been no less had his side been humbled.  But the entire Mumbai Indians show was prepared for one thing - a Mumbai Indians victory, not a great cricket match!  That's why it became a Bollywood type of flop show for most people who came to watch Mumbai Indians win.  The CSK victory was not even an option in their fairytale run to the cup.  Alas, Dhoni doesn't court fairies.  He lets them run after  his mighty heart.

It would be one thing to simply be happy that CSK won, but I rather prefer to give the middle finger to the miserable losers who left the field without waiting for the presentation to be done with.  It had the Under 23 success of the tournament to be declared, it had the Purple Cap, the Orange Cap, and so many wonderful awards to be dispensed.  But none of that was good enough for the Mumbai crowd.  They just wanted to see Mumbai Indians win the IPL.  Many started leaving when there were four balls and 27 to get.  Sachin's team may have a few winners in it, but his staunch Mumbai supporters are all bloody sore losers.  They're not cricket fans, they're just bloodthirsty for one result.  But, it takes more than blowing horns and wearing blue to make your team win.  Your team needs to have the brains to get close and the balls to grab it when the opportunity comes.  Too bad your team had neither, fools!  Sachin's a great player no doubt, but he is no match for Dhoni tactically.  Mukesh Ambani might buy all the big names with big money, but Meiyappan's boys know how to make the merry charge to the top of the hill.  So fuck you unhappy bastards.

And what was all that Bollywood shit all about during the closing ceremony?  It was so foolishly uncreative and uninspiring, we could have been watching the Teleshopping network trying to sell us used cinema set furniture.  That big incredibly tall batsman was a great entrant, but he didn't do shit!  He just stood, while all the Bollywood fools did their shit and pushed the match into a late start.  How tardy.  It is clear A R Rahman doesn't have anything to offer, for if he did, and if any of the other pricks behind this pathetic non show had any ideas, we wouldn't have meaningless numbers, stupid actors cavorting and Rahman's horrible rendition of Vande Mataram for the n+10th time in his uniquely boring and sincerely empty way.  Fuck you Bollywood - stay out of our faces for a while, please.

A few words for Royal Challengers Bangalore, the other grim faced bums in red that made a pretense of a lot of shit before they got blown away.  You assholes look like you swallowed a can of decaying worms no matter how things are going on the field.  This IPL is supposed to be entertainment, and that means, happiness.  If Mallya and Kingfisher stand for "good times", you bastards stand for something like a plague outbreak.  I mean, what the fuck is up with your non smiling fuckfaces?  Kumble, you son of a constipated bitch, keep your team this unhappy and I wish you taxation and torture on your way to hell.  How dare you even mention you lost a game because Kallis batted slow?  Kallis was the one pillar you built your limited success on.  If he batted slow, it was your business to send him a message to get on with it!  How many fucking dot balls do you have to see before you can tell he is batting slow?  Thirty seven?  And what's up with showing so much anger towards your younger players.  We know how miserable you were as a fielder while playing for India, so what's up with this attitude?

And what's up with all that "go green" shit you thought we'd swallow?  Your owner flies in his own jet, and we're supposed to believe you are all going green, because of that piece of green pantyhose on your shoulders and pouring water on some plants in the stadium.  What do you take us for?  Your only job is to bloody entertain, fools, and you're miserable at it.  Now, fuck off.  Learn how to be happy.  Show some appreciation for the life that lets you play a game and make a good living out of it.  Show some appreciation for all the hard work people put in to pay for the tickets to come watch you play.  Winning is fun, but it must be fun to watch you play as well.  You don't have to be grim all the time and you certainly don't have to act professional when you're not good enough to win with your method.

This is just a game, and it's called cricket.  No matter how much science comes to it, and no matter how much management comes to help you focus on winning, it is still fundamentally a contest that should bring its own joy.  What's the worst you're going to face if you lose?  Certainly not a shooting squad!  So, what's your problem, assholes?  The least you can do is carry yourselves with some dignity and some lightness of being.  Ravi Shankar too lives in your town.  Consult him on how to relieve your constant constipation.  Heck, he might even tell you how to go green without being so flimsy about it.  Wouldn't hurt to get a chant a little better than R C B, a drummer who can actually beat a few rhythms and not look like he just cut loose after getting half a hair cut three years ago.  Get your police force to find those who planted bombs in your stadium, especially if they say it was the "betting mafia".  Looks like they know each other rather intimately.  Oh, yeah, we know you were trying hard to avoid playing Mumbai in the semi finals!  A fat lot that helped.

Now, you fucking Mumbai Indians, just in case you thought I'd let you go - why are you blaming your strategic errors so much for losing to CSK?  Why can't you just accept that you just couldn't beat Dhoni and his team?  If Pollard had come in earlier, for instance, Dhoni might have had him in knots with his spin trio and made him lose his timing.  In any case, saw how he shut him down with his clever field placing?  No fine leg, no third man, one deep mid off, one long off, and what does Pollard do?  Drill straight to Hayden at deep mid off!  It wasn't just Dhoni celebrating.  This was brains celebrating and stupidity disintegrating.  So, please accept that on this given night, CSK got it right, and your guys didn't.  It is as simple as that.

I'd be called a sore loser if CSK had not won even though I'd stand by everything I said so far.  But it's nice to be a winner and see how sore some losers can actually be.  Pretty sore by the look of it.  Deccan Chargers, you guys aren't sore at all, and I totally understand you just weren't mentally in it in the 3rd place playoff.  Thanks for the entertainment - what a magnificent charge you guys made!  I heard Ray Jennings say true winners are those who come back after being defeated.  No thanks, fool.  I think true winners are those who take the cup and run with joy, all the way.

Also, if you heard Matthew Hayden's interview, about how strong a tradition they are proud to represent, of Tamilnadu, both in cricket and culturally, and how it was a privilege and an honour to win this for their fans - it wasn't about tactics, strategy or competition.  It was bigger than the cricket, all right, and truly acknowledging some very real, well grounded facts about some very real people.  If this game had been played in Chennai, and CSK lost, the stadium would not have emptied out before the entire cerermony was over.  Saurabh Tiwary would have been cheered as much as any under 23 success of the league should have been, and Sachin would have been celebrated along with Dhoni, and the entire show would have been packed off with plenty of positive energy for the World T20.

You lousy Mumbaikars showed your disgust at your own team - a team that had entertained you for so long and topped the table, no less - you left them at the moment of reckoning - something Chennai would never do.  If winning is all important to you, how come you motherfuckers lost?  It's because you have small hearts, you bastards.  It's because you couldn't embrace your team and love them all the way, no matter what.  You wanted them to "deliver" something to you, because you "paid" for it.  Fuck you bloodsuckers and that damned attitude.  Life isn't a fucking formula, fools.  Now, stop analyzing all things MI did wrong that led to the defeat.  Mukesh Ambani can pump in a lot of money, but he can't guarantee victory against a side like the CSK that is just too happy to show up exactly when it matters.  Learn to respect that sort of positive energy.

CSK, you made the whole thing worth it, and if I may add - as always!  I have many wonderful memories - Vijay's sparkling century, Bollinger's fantastic bowling, and then holding his scalp so Raina wouldn't pull his hair a second time when he got a wicket, Dhoni clubbing Pathan, and Raina's screaming, free flowing strokes.  Oh yes, our catching was brilliant, including the one Jakati had to hop after taking clean as a whistle.

Thank you for so many lovely moments, your brand of cricket, your spirit of being, and for smiling so much, for playing so fair, and making us cricket fans all truly happy!  Now Mahi, time to get Team India to play like this in the Caribbean, and make even more of us very, very happy.

BSK.

Fuck Earth Hour.

Earth Hour.  One hour out of 24, one day out of 365.  Lights out!  Fans on, stoves on, air conditioners on, trains running, buses running, factories running, planes flying, ships chugging on crude oil, power plants still burning dirty coal, but lights out.  The man who started this movement called it just "symbolic".  Problem is, it's the wrong symbol.

Not only does it send the message out that putting out lights somehow helps the earth, it also eases some guilt out of our collective ecological consciousness.  It somehow sends out the message that by just putting ourselves in darkness, we are somehow, symbolically, at the very least, reflecting upon how life would be if we didn't have to burn any energy at all.  All this, while a lot of people lit candles to show their ubiquitous support of anything these days, ostensibly however, leaving a bigger carbon deposit into the atmosphere from burning wax!

The message going out has more to do with becoming unproductive than becoming efficient.  Cutting off power to devices doesn't stop thermal power plants, which are the majority in the world today, from burning fuel.  Lights are a very small percentage of our power consumption anyway, and indeed a very, very small percentage of our energy consumption.  What we actually achieved is a whole bunch of people in the world were less productive for an hour than they would normally be. 

Why do we love the symbols more than making actual lifestyle changes?  For example - one acre of land can support twenty vegetarians but only one and a half meat eating humans.  Bottomline, being vegetarian is enormously beneficial to the planet - by a factor of 5 at the very least, over being non-vegetarian.  Why aren't we giving up meat eating for the right reasons?  Because there is no convenience factor there!  There is no lazy gesture that we can sign on to, like the new fancy hogwash of buying carbon credits.  How it makes a difference to the atmosphere if money exchanges hands is mind boggling!

If we want a symbolic ritual, we could give up meat for a week.  Call it Earth Week.  No meat.  God, that ought to send some businesses scrambling for cover!  Imagine the animals that won't have to be killed, the meat that won't have to be refrigerated, or transported.  Oh, wait a minute!  What about the animals having to be fed until the feast the week after?  See?  If it isn't long term, it isn't going to work at all.

Let's look at this from a very Indian perspective.  Where I live, we've had a regular two hour power outage for over two years, so we're already way, way ahead of all the clowns out there celebrating this stupid Earth Day.  If I took the symbol seriously, I'd say I wouldn't have to participate in this Earth Day for another two generations and I'd still have less guilt!  So, let's leave the symbolism aside and consider what the real messages going out are.

This Earth Day was first thought about and started in Australia - today the single largest exporter of coal to the single largest consumer, China.  In other words, the one country that is going to feed the energy hungry beast called China, with the most polluting of all fuels, is the one that came up with this retarded idea of an Earth Day!  And why the heck are we celebrating this, when we are already much more environmentally friendly with hours of power outage all over the country?  Shouldn't we emulate perhaps Nepal, which has 16 hours of power outage a day?  What kind of environmentally conservative mindset wants to emulate countries that have reliable (read overproduced) power supplies?

The USA and China have the two biggest carbon footprints in the world.  India is languishing way behind in that department, and for once, we can be thankful.  But there are fashionable idiots all over the world who are busy sending out wrong messages.  And our idiots are grabbing them and really thinking it makes a bloody difference!  We apparently saved 916 megawatts of power during the Earth Hour according to some estimate.  With just lights, if we managed so much of a saving, how come this will never reflect in any power production budget?  It won't because we didn't produce any less, we just consumed less!  If we actually produced less, the environmental ministry simply has to cut a deal with the energy ministry!  India would shut everything down and be the most environmentally friendly.... yuk, India would be the "most green" country in the world!

If this doesn't make sense, think about this - our power plants, mostly coal fired thermal units cannot run below capacity just because we anticipate all our fashionable clowns switching off their lights for an hour.  Hydroelectric plants never run below capacity, for there is nothing to save except stored water, in some cases.  Lights are less than 15% of our power consumption, remember?  So, we continue to pump out as much electricity through the generators at the thermal power plants, and we'll be damned if some idiot downstream switches off his lights or not!  Now, let's look at the numbers this symbol actually stands for - 1 hour out of 24 is 4.16% of a day's consumption.  Assuming we had ALL lights off during this period across the country, that is, that would be 15% of 4.16% of a day's consumption - or 0.625% in a day.  Divided over the number of hours in a year, that was a royal saving of 0.0000171% of our annual production.  When was the last time you were happy saving 0.0000171% of anything?  No wonder no power plant around the world takes this Earth Day with even a symbolic reduction in production.

Saving the environment must be the same as saving money - not until we figure out how to do this, do we actually have any chance of building a lasting interest in saving anything.  Coal and oil are doing very well, because they are still very cheap, considering how much it costs for us to mine as a percentage of how much money we can make from the mining.  Until solar power and wind power and all the other sources of energy come down in cost, we don't have any chance of realistically bringing about a change in usage habits.

For some reason, it was fashionable for the White Man to destroy entire continents in his search for a comfortable life.  It was okay for him to dig out all the world's resources and burn as he wished.  Now, all of a sudden, he wants to sell us new technologies since he realizes he ultimately doesn't control too much of the world's oil.  Up came this great suggestion from none other than the foxes in the USA - let's bring all the world's forests under a global management system.  Well sorry White Massa!  In fact, fuck you.  That didn't work out very well, so now we have this widespread media onslaught that the environment is really important and that we cannot poke holes in the ozone layer, but only since the White Man is the one who is first going to get skin cancer by the dozen!

Sadly for Whitey, the rest of the world is pretty savvy when it comes to alternative technologies - there is no breakthrough infinite energy source for whitey or anybody to control.  And a very brown Arab community still has plenty of oil, and the Venezuelans aren't likely to hand over their big oil resources to the Yanks or the Brits either.  Nor are the Kazakhs or the Iranians. And many OPEC countries are considering switching from the US Dollar to the Euro to peg their oil and gas on!  Not the British Pound!  With so many countries in the EU, we don't have to worry about any controlling interest in the currency itself.  In other words, Whitey's control of oil has eroded bloody fast.  So he's looking for something new to control, but we must first be made to fear that shit that looms in the unknown future.  Disaster is easy to subscribe to.  Well guess what?  If we had no power and no oil, we in India will simply ride our bullock carts and ride out the disaster.  Whitey cannot.

But Whitey can scare the shit out of us.  Because we have idiots who believe everything Whitey tells us.  Their freaking press looks so classy, they can't possibly lie, can they?  Yes, they can.  And we're falling like ninepins for the bullshit they spin out.  Their lies are all geared towards feeding some industry or the other.  They've even invented diseases and told the whole world to get vaccinations for diseases that don't even exist!  Look at our poultry industry!  Crushed by thousands of vested interests.  Luckily we have realized that broiler chicken is no good and are back to raising free range chicken.  Same with genetically modified foods and brand new diseases like ADD!  How come the new generation suddenly has a disease, a disorder, that none of our ancestors had, well up into this century, this generation of parents!?  Whitey lies.

So fuck Whitey when he tells us to use resources carefully.  All of a sudden, those are global resources, huh?  Every culture uses whatever it can afford to use.  We don't have to sacrifice anything for anybody.  We are already very judicious with our decisions and look at how well our regulated banking system did not flinch with this global crisis Whitey had to endure with crashing, burning and pain!  We may be terrible in many ways, but we know how to take care of our shit when we really have to.  We don't need to add to the pain we already have without enough electric power.  We have done enough.  To hell with Whitey.  Fuck Earth Hour.

BSK.