Add as ‘friend’

I am on Facebook and Orkut, with a friendslist that includes school-friends, college-friends, friends of friends and their friends and others.

The other people comprise of those I have never met, but we still have something in common. In their eyes, that something is reason enough for me to add them and give them access to all the pictures I might upload as well as the messages left on my Wall or Scrapbook.

Let’s take an instance of  my college folks on Orkut.

I have a number of people on my friend list on Orkut, and most of them are from college. However, I only speak to about 60% of them everyday or at least once a week. The interaction with the remaining is limited to getting updates everytime they change their status or upload some silly picture. (This brings me to the topic of pictures, why doesn’t anyone upload something sensible? No one wants to see pictures of  bare torsoed Actor Chaps, drooling babies, love-shove types or one of those pics with apparently witty captions.)

I hate clutter, and having a list of over 100 when I scrap only about 30 regularly irritates me. I also get highly defensive when a volley of badly-spelled questions come my way (whts up, howz lyf, u der?, saw u 2day in collagee). Images of hooded, stalking, masked axe-murderers- who are out for my liver and are making a schedule of my routine to do just that- haunt me.

What makes it worse is the display names these fellows have, with rubbish ASCII characters, and motivational lines instead of names. It’s a Herculean task to figure out what the name reads. All of a sudden I get a scrap from “Itz ma lyff” or “da kiingg” or something equally lame, with no indication as to who he really might be, and this leaves me wondering who the hell I am replying to.

What do you talk to these people about anyway? After all, there’s only so far a “whts up” can take you if you’re talking to a Cristiano Ronaldo fan before you feel like cutting and throwing him to wild beasts*. A truckload of people sitting on your friends list wouldn’t be so bad if they had the general intelligence to compensate for it.

While I was Googling for a suitable picture for this post, I came across this:

Extra Info

(taken from danspira)

Doesn’t it strike you as slightly desperate to mention when and where you worked (or studied or passed out drunk whatever) together? If some bugger would probably not remember that, I’d be more than happy to wish it remained that way.

You’ll probably say, don’t add them! See, no one wants to come across as an uppity bitch. It’s a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

*I mean the person you’re trying to establish a conversation with, though to do it to Pansy Boy Ronaldo wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

I got a silly SMS during the recent attacks

And given the speed at which SMSes travel these days, I’m sure you would have gotten it too. After all, it was the awe-inspiring type of message we all like to forward and receive in a crisis to assure ourselves that we just aren’t sitting comfy on our bottoms and are in fact Doing Something For the Nation. The message went something like this:

“An Indian Olympic shooter got 5cr from the government, but our jawans are getting only some lakhs. “

A line urging us to forward the message around until it reaches the Prime Minister and President was added as well. The message ended patriotically with ‘JAI HIND!’. Now, I got this message around 7-8 times, and it irritated the life out of me.

What exactly was wrong in rewarding Abhinav Bindra? Surely no one anticipated the attacks at that time (some say the secret service new about it for a long time, but that’s not our concern in this post). It was a GOLD medal at the OLYMPICS, and he was the first Indian to accomplish this feat. He deserved it.

If we’re going to count every rupee (or crore, you pick) then why not point all our fingers at movie stars who, apart from pocketing 20 crore upwards nowadays even for dud films, also get added perks like expensive gowns, endorsements, branded suits and watches, fancy cars and the such? I hardly think you can justify Salman Khan for demanding 40 or so crores for films that sank and stank at the box office. Rumour has it that when these celebs dine or stay at posh hotels, they insist on free food and a hefty discount on the room rates. Cricketers are no less either. The Champions League had a prize money of 2 million dollars (a little over 4 crores), excluding the token each player would get.

Indian Premier League Prize money details:

1. Winning team – Rs 4.8 crore.

2. Runners-up – Rs 1.2 crore.

3. Losing semi-finalists – Rs 1.2 crore.

4. Fifth placed team – Rs 80 lakh.

5. Sixth placed team – Rs 70 lakh.

6. Seventh placed team – Rs 50 lakh.

7. Last placed team – Rs 40 lakh.
(Taken from CricketPremierLeague)

Not to mention the usual endorsement deal that seems to be the norm… and all the hot ladies as arm candy.

Guess no one thought about the jawans at that time.

India: A Melting and Writhing Pot of Lesbianism

This post has been long due.

We all know that India with its secure, chastity belt has zero tolerance for public display of affection of any kind. In the eyes of the self-proclaimed prudes who feel it their duty to protect the little ‘uns from the harsh vulgarities of life, even walking with a friend of the opposite gender is an offense. Ms.Girl is branded as brazen, and Mr.Boy wasn’t brought up well by his parents.

Now, I stay near the Five Gardens area and couples coyly cuddling, cooing and sometimes copulating are a common sight. A policeman comes along and the usual procession ensues in a pattern like a choreographed dance sequence. He shouts. They scamper away. He waves his stick around. They return after 15 minutes. He is busy in another corner. Repeat.

All good. However, what surprises me is that the ‘authorities’ are blind to affection by people of the same gender. I remember seeing 2 guys neck each other and throw in a few kisses, yet it was the unfortunate straight couple sitting on the adjacent bench that got a good whack. I assumed the policeman would be clueless about that situation.

A few weeks after that, two girls were walking on the footpath casually. Bags on shoulders, mobiles on ear, and a pseudo-American lingo to boot. Only one thing was odd. These girls were happily walking with their hands on the other’s rear. As usual, they got away scot-free, though a few guys sitting on the railings and smoking did whistle and hoot.

If the holier-and-purer-than-thou, celibate netas squirm at the thought of us actually indulging in sex, it would be a scream to watch them realize that more and more people of the same uglies are walking down that road too.

Post in Queue.

Going by the comments I have received, both in this blog and the Blogger one, I don’t come across as an optimist- A person who looks at cream, not calories; who looks at guns as possible defense, not possibly getting shot in the face by an amateur, one who- in a nutshell, looks at a doughtnut, and not the chubby hole in the middle.

So I decided, the next post of mine shall be aimed to please almost the people out there, some more than the others. Except prudes as always, who can never be happy.

First, I’d like to tell you the factors that helped me decide what to write about. Many guys I know have specific tastes and preferences when it comes to reading material. Years of being a part of forums, news sites, and user-driven sites like Digg and so on have given me a basic idea of what gets a thumbs up, and what gets sidelined to the inherently irritating LOLCats.

Without further ado, post in queue is (tentative titles)

India- The Best Place to be Gay or Lesbian.
India and the Gay Community.
India and Dusky Lesbians.

A Greeting

Mob molests 2 women on New Year’s Day

 

Why aren’t any of the papers heralding Mumbai the way they did after the bomb attacks and floods?

 

Happy New Year.