The Toothpaste Conspiracy Theory

You going to the neighbour's kitchen?

Yes, I smell Mangalore style fish curry.

Can you get me some toothpaste?

What?

I asked if you could get some toothpaste on your way back.

Why should I get it?

I'm out of toothpaste. I thought I'll borrow some just for the day.

You go get it yourself. I don't like stealing things.

You steal food all the time!

That is different.

How is it different?

It's different because you're a human. And I'm a cat.

That is why I asked you to sneak in through their kitchen window, walk up to the attached bathroom and get the toothpaste. You can put it back in the same place once I am done.

Sorry I can't steal toothpaste. It's against my principles.

Stealing is not against your principles.

Stealing is not but toothpaste is. I don't believe in toothpaste.

What is there to “believe” in a toothpaste?

Why do you need toothpaste?

To brush my teeth.

Exactly. I don't believe in that.

You don't believe in brushing?

No. I am not against brushing. You should brush your teeth. Humans have always brushed their teeth. Not with the modern plastic bristled brushes you use today but with Neem twigs, rough cloth, pieces of leather, something or the other. Brushing is useful. Brushing is important. I am just not convinced about toothpaste.

Why?

Look at the statistics:

Correlation doesn't imply causality. Bad dental health in modern societies is because of the exceptionally high starch and sugar (and cola) content in our diet which our hunter-gatherer genes have not evolved to handle.

Alright, let me make an economics argument then:

What is this, a new conspiracy theory?

I'm not saying it is a conspiracy but think about it. In the last 20 years alone toothpaste companies have made your toothpaste green, blue, red, pink, orange, mint, peppermint, spearmint, vanilla mint, fennel, cinnamon, clove. They made it a transparent gel, half-gel half-paste, multi-flavored, multi-layered, multi-textured, added crystals, added fluoride, added sugar, added salt, added activated charcoal, bleaching agents, glycerin and a lot of other chemicals along with the the extra goodness of natural herbal extracts and then started removing them one by one saying sugar-free, low fluoride, no artificial colors, no artificial flavors, no non-veg, no crystals, no glycerin, no bleaching agents... what exactly is going on there?

Do you really need those advertisements having futuristic dentist labs with transparent touchscreen control rooms, college boys with low self-esteem, hot chicks with creepy sparkling teeth, ocean surfing stunts, concerned mothers, lazy fathers, four out of five dentists, 3D graphics, sciencey jargon and that forever-alone germ?

What forever-alone germ?

hehe

Here's a fun fact. The toothpaste actually plays a very marginal role in your oral hygiene.

Marginal role?

Yeah, it is the physical action of the brush against your teeth that does all the cleaning. Scientific studies have shown that any abrasive agent like rock salt or activated charcoal will work just as fine as any toothpaste in the world.

So The toothpaste doesn't matter?

The toothpaste doesn't matter.

All that foam?

Totally non-functional.

The blue crystals?

Just a placebo.

The 24 hour freshness guarantee?

It's a bamboozle.

The sugarcane-ripping, green-apple biting strong teeth?

Total humbug.

Mouthwash?

An outright hoax.

Damn it!

I know.

That explains all the advertising. If the toothpaste companies do not advertise as aggressively as they do, we will all go back to a no toothpaste world and it would make no difference whatsoever.

Some things exist only because they sound good in an advertisement.

That is true.

I was going through your kitchen stuff the other day. There was a jar of Boost and it had some weird tasteless yellow and blue crystals in it. The label says that they are “Envita nutrients that give you 3X stamina”. Now I’m not an expert on nutrition but that sounds like bullshit. I mean how is something blue in color even edible?

You licked my Boost?

I do it all the time. Here's the interesting thing. I ripped apart a packet of Surf Excel. And even that had little blue crystals in it. In fact, the same shade of blue. And the same weird taste as well. The label says that they are “power surfactants that remove the toughest of stains” and I was thinking, “Wow… these are some versatile crystals!”

They're everywhere, G2. Facewash, toothpaste, soap, chewing gum, ice-cream, shampoo, shaving gel, energy drink powder... these blue crystals are everywhere.

I know. Procter & Gamble is using these blue crystals like Mallus use coconut.

Why are humans working on improving soap and toothpaste like it holds the key to the cure for cancer? Haven't you, as the most intelligent species ever to walk the earth, noticed that a "New & Improved Formula" makes NO DIFFERENCE whatsoever?

We know but advertising is not exactly a democratic medium. People don't get to choose the ads they want to watch.

I mean why can’t all humans arrive at a consensus saying, “Look. I think we have improved toothpaste enough. We don't really need green tea flavored toothpaste. Let’s put our limited energy and natural resources towards solving more important problems.”?

Oh, that's not gonna happen. It goes against the very logic of advertising. They're in the business of making us buy things we don't need with money we don't have. It is their duty to throw that shit.

You know what, you should protest against this system. Show them the finger. Boycott toothpaste. It'll be fun.

No, I'm not boycotting toothpaste.

You should.

Get out of here!

What is the big deal? Even Gautama Buddha never used toothpaste. Is he not worthy of emulating?

Sure... I'll meditate but I'm not giving up toothpaste.

He meditated under the Bodhi tree for 49 days. Do you think he took breaks in between to brush his teeth twice a day? No. He would have never achieved enlightenment if he listened to his dentist!

I am not eliminating toothpaste from my life.

You know who else never used toothpaste?

Prophet Mohammad?

Yeah... yeah... the prophet too (peace be upon him) but let's not go there.

Disclaimer: No toothpaste tubes were stolen in the making of this post.

Clockwork C2

Why is there so much time around?

Time? Who has time?

I mean information about time. Why are there so many devices that tell you the time all the time?

There is an alarm clock by your bed, another clock on the wall behind the alarm clock. In fact there is a clock in every room of your house and also in your phone, tablet, Kindle, camera and computer screen; on every photo, email, status, tweet, pin, scrap, fork, and cart; on your wrist watches, car dashboards, FM radios, mp3 players, TV channels, DVD players; in every shop, restaurant, public place, traffic signal and heck even on refrigerators, microwave ovens, and induction stoves!

It is almost impossible to look anywhere and not see a clock. You are a species of obsessive time-keepers!

That is because we have so little of it.

If there is one thing that everyone… humans, cats, dogs, trees… has equal amounts of, it is time. All have 24 hours in a day.

Yeah but between a coconut tree, a pet cat, and a human being, the human has much more things to do. We can't afford to waste much time.

But you waste so much time! And other people's time too. And you're always ten minutes late for everything.

Hey, I am always exactly ten minutes late, okay? That is punctual but just off the mark. That consistency deserves some credit, don't you think?

That “just off the mark” is what your boss calls “always late”. Why can't you make a small adjustment to your daily routine?

It's not that easy. I tried. I set my watch to run ten minutes faster. Setting the watch was easy but believing in it was difficult because my phone is synced with the network time. So I set my phone 10 minutes fast. And then I realized I had to set my computer too. And then my office computer and my tablet and my Kindle and...

Wow, you did that?

Yeah. I set all my clocks 10 minutes fast and tried to follow my new personal clock but these social networking apps just won’t let me. When someone just replied to a tweet, the twitter app would show it as “10 minutes ago”. Every time I try to really believe in something, the internet ruins it instantly. Soon I was mentally subtracting ten minutes every time I looked at my watch. The whole purpose is defeated.

You never fail to fail.

In my defense, my failure was inevitable. Those days are over. My grandfather had only two clocks – his wrist watch and another “grandfather” clock. If my grandfather wanted to get more punctual, all he had to do was to set both his clocks ten minutes fast and believe in it. That's it. It was that simple for him. But it's much more complicated now.

It's weird... this human obsession for precise time-keeping.

What do you mean weird?

It's not natural. I mean cats don't believe in it. I rely on the sights and sounds of nature to keep track of time. The sparrow's morning invitation that says “bite me”, the warmth of the sunlight in the afternoon when I nap near the kitchen window, the secretive squeaks of mice as they pore through your trash at midnight... these are the things that tell me the time. We rely on our instincts.

Yes, wearing a watch is unnatural for cats. If I saw a cat wearing a watch, I'd shit in my pants and call the Army. But what is unnatural for cats is not necessarily unnatural for humans.

What about your great-grandfather? He didn't have much use for a clock. He probably just followed the rhythms of nature just like cats.

Humans for thousands of years before him kept track of time only through the natural cycles of day and night, the movement of the sun, moon and constellations in the sky. They didn't care about the exact time. It didn't matter whether it was 6:40 AM or 7:20 AM. It was just “morning” but seasons mattered a lot. They anxiously watched out for the signs of changing seasons, growth of plants and migration of birds. What they did on a typical summer day was vastly different from what they did on a spring day which was completely different from how they chilled during Kaartheeka Maasam. That is what I call natural.

That is a very vague definition of natural.

Forget about the definitions. I'll tell you what is not natural: Your life where you are stalked, hounded, judged, chided, rigidly monitored, intimidated and enslaved by your own clocks. That is not natural.

Oh come on, it's not as bad as you make it seem.

I'm telling you... clocks are the real masters of mankind.

That is bullshit.

Oh yeah? Who woke you up in the morning?

I woke up by myself...

Abba cha!

...with some generous help from four different alarms.

See! You begin your day by begging the clock for 20 more minutes of snooze time. When you eventually wake up, the clock reminds you that you have overslept by 14 minutes and makes you feel guilty about it.

For the record, I never feel guilty about too much sleep.

Do you wake up moments before your alarm clock actually goes off?

Sometimes...

Do you know why?

I don't know... I never thought about it.

It's fear.

Fear?

Yes, fear. All your life, you've been conditioned to wake up afraid of being late to work or school or some other appointment. Your day begins exactly at 9:10 AM. Then you have a 5 minute shower, make “2 minute” noodles and catch the 9:40 bus for a “25 minute” commute to reach office exactly 10 minutes late for the meeting that starts precisely at 10:30 AM every morning. Everything you do... what you do, when you do, how to do it is all dictated by The Clock.

At least I don't sleep when it is time to sleep.

I'll give you credit for that but don't you see bigger picture?

You eat lunch not when you are hungry but because it is time for lunch. Students open their books not out of interest or curiosity but because there isn't much time before the exams. Parents want their daughters to get married early because they think she is running out of time.

People go to the gym and run for exactly 30 minutes till a beeper announces that their workout is over. Friends try to wish each other on their birthdays at the stroke of midnight. You make resolutions to exercise, read, and spend more time with loved ones not because you feel from within that you should become a better person but because it is that time of the year when everyone makes resolutions. No wonder they all crash in the first two weeks. The list is endless.

Thank you. Happy new year to you too!

So how did you end up like this?

We invented clocks for obvious reasons

Yeah but in those days, each city had its own time based on local sunrise and sunset cycles.

It changed with the industrial revolution. It made transportation faster and with it, synchronization of clocks became very important especially for the railways. It was so important that the British govt. passed a law in 1880 that required all timetables in Britain to follow the single time of Greenwich. It was the first time in human history that the population of an entire country was obliged to live by an artificial clock.

It is the norm now.

Trust me, it feels completely “natural”. The assembly lines along which modern industries are organized also require thousands of employees and machines to work in tandem following precise timetables. From those modest beginnings, the whole world eventually got tuned to GMT.

Unfortunately the assembly line mentality was not limited to industrial production only. It percolated into almost every sphere of human activity. Strict timetables are imposed on schools, hospitals, restaurants, prisons and everything else. Scientists are even debating if we should really follow the movement of the earth around the sun for our time.

That is the story of humanity. You just keep withdrawing from nature at every step. You biologically evolved to be hunter-gatherers in open grasslands and moderately dense forests. Then you domesticated animals, figured out agriculture, invented the wheel, learned to extract metal, started trading and ended up living in towns and cities so that you don't have to depend on the wilderness for food.

The Industrial Revolution and faster communication channels implied that your reach is not limited by geography. Air conditioning and other things ensured that you don't have to care about the weather or the seasons either.

You reached a stage where you eat genetically modified organisms, drink corn-sugar solutions in plastic bottles and live in houses with smooth monochromatic surfaces and right angles. The end result is a life devoid of organic experiences. A life that involves an endless loop of waiting for weekends and then wondering where the hell it went!

Finally when the body and mind complain about the dreadful monotony of rigid timetables under the tyranny of clocks, you realize you need to take some time off to “unwind”... much like rusty old CLOCKS!

I don't like the way you say clocks anymore.

The idea of a modern vacation is itself quite funny. It is not a coincidence that the most popular holiday spots – mountains, beaches, lakes and the countryside – are places with the least number of clocks.

What is your ideal holiday? Let me guess. You wake up when you feel like waking up. You eat when you are hungry. You stare at the clouds, hear the birds, smell the flowers and feel the fleeting wind all at once. Your senses are working at their peak capacity.

You lose track of time. You do things that excite you, maybe even things that exhilarate you. You introspect and try to make meaningful connections with your identity, religion, people, and nature. Just in a short while, you begin to feel really alive, momentarily free from the clock. You wonder why you don't do this more often.

But not for long because time flies, especially when you are on a low budget 3 days-2 nights package holiday. And then your holiday comes to an abrupt end with the hotel charging half a day's extra rent for overshooting the check out time by 35 minutes.

Welcome to The Clock!

Whose Mother-in-Law is it anyway?

I always get fascinated how the real owners of society have managed to raise armies to fight their causes for free.

The war in Syria?

No. No, looking at the "SAVE Attharintiki Daaredhi" campaign. I am really impressed at the majestic display of power that our leaders have in controlling the minds, thoughts and actions of the people. It's truly remarkable.

Save what campaign?

Attharintiki Daaredhi (translates to “Which way to my mother-in-law’s house?”) It’s a Telugu movie starring actor Pawan Kalyan. Scores and scores of young Pawan Kalyan fans around the world took to the streets and social media to “save” the movie.

Save the movie from what?

From internet piracy

How do you do that?

By raising awareness about the evils of internet piracy. On how by the act of selfishly watching a pirated version of the movie in the comfort of our bedrooms, we are no different from pickpockets, robbers and dacoits raiding and stealing from the movie producer’s coffers.

They are posing the most important moral question of our age: What kind of assholes deliberately do things that affect the lives of so many hard working actors, directors, producers and crew and their families?

That sounds like bullshit a Hollywood lawyer would throw at Pirate Bay. How did it all start?

Some guy with a wicked sense of humour, allegedly an editing assistant who worked on the movie, leaked high quality footage of the first 90 minutes of the movie onto the internet even before its release.

The fans (mostly males in their early teens to late twenties) were horrified at this news. They shook their head in sacrilege disbelief and wanted to fight this injustice. They took to streets, got on twitter, and formed an army. They fist-pumped, chest-bumped and high-fived each other, made resolutions to fight this war and defeat those cyber pirates.

They were not going to rest till the last pirated copy of the movie was removed off the net. They are going to make everyone go to the theatres and watch the movie there. They are going to ensure the profits for the producers. They will to use this opportunity to showcase their collective strength and establish their superiority over fans of other heroes. They will make their hero be proud of them.

Thus the campaign "Kill Piracy – Save Attarintiki Daredi – Save Telugu Films" was born.

You guys are nuts!

That is only the beginning. Telugu movie fans all around the world spontaneously burst into action. Some fans have taken resolutions to watch the movie two or three times in the theatre just to pay for the sins of their fellow dishonest Gult citizens and green card holders. They organized themselves on the social media to report links to the anti-piracy cell so that those links can be taken down and legal notices sent if required. Pawan Kalyan’s fans have formed an alliance with Mahesh Babu’s fans to raid CD shops selling pirated mp3s and shut them down.

They have shared, put up and walked around with Save Attharintiki Daredi, Save Telugu Film Industry posters and banners. Some NRIs even released videos of them wearing PAWANISM T-shirts and trying to articulate the power and greatness of their hero on their way to watch the movie. And finally when news reports emerged that the movie broke box-office collection records, they celebrated by bursting crackers on a weekday afternoon.

What is this PAWANISM?

PAWANISM is a way of life that involves watching celebrating every Pawan Kalyan movie that releases, following and worshipping the stunts, dialogues, dance and charisma of their leader Pawan Kalyan who is rumoured to be an intellectual because he was once seen wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt inside a shopping mall. The intellectual part thankfully is just a rumour.

Is he that good?

No, nothing like that. They just idolize the fictionalized persona of a mediocre actor who happens to be the younger brother of actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi. It’s not just Pawan Kalyan. Every movie star has a religious following like that.

I don’t know why but part of being a fan includes praising the actor’s masculinity. All the characters in these movies make unsubtle references to the hero’s manliness, ferocity, tiger-like agility, his lion-like courage, the mass appeal of his family, his forefathers’ virility and the awesomeness of his fans and followers in general.



The fans are really into what metaphors are used to praise the power, stamina, influence and the greatness of their hero. It is one of the aspects of the movie they look forward to and compete with fans of other rival heroes on this idea of masculinity. This even forms the basis of college politics in a lot of colleges in Andhra. These manhood issues are a very recent phenomenon.

You people are nuts! I understand hero worship. Europeans break each other’s jaws over football rivalry all the time. I am all for people punching strangers in the face but fighting internet piracy like this is a little hypocritical, don't you think? I mean when was the last time you Googled "XYZ movie songs free download" and felt guilty about it?

Exactly! The hypocrisy is Himalayan. I want to take yoga classes to expand my consciousness so that I can fully appreciate the supreme irony of all this.

I know you humans and I know you are not a very honourable species to begin with. You guys aren't acing any moral-science exams just as yet. You routinely lie about what you are and what you do to your parents, bosses, girl-friends, the income tax department, traffic police and pretty much everyone. You cheat like it is your birth right if you can get away with it but two days before the release of the movie, you people are out on the streets lecturing everyone about rights and wrongs… screaming about protecting intellectual property of Telugu film makers?

That's the thing. What is so "intellectual" about these movies that warrant "protection"? The Telugu Film Industry is not oozing with original ideas and creativity by any standard. Scripts, story lines, jokes, action sequences, and music scores are routinely ripped off with impunity from Hollywood, Hong Kong, Korean and other world cinema and suddenly, this special group of anointed fans get a sudden attack of conscience, grant themselves moral worthiness, act like cyber vigilantes, shutting down shops, reporting links…

So they are trying to protect the intellectual property rights of people who have no problem stealing from others?

Pretty much. Let me make one point absolutely clear. I have nothing against this movie. I have not seen the movie. I haven’t even seen the trailer. Bits of it are probably funny. I heard that the second heroine is hot. In fact, I respect the talents of writer-director Trivikram Srinivas. The quality of the movie is NOT my concern here at all.

What is amusing to me is the total lack of perspective in these self-organized armies of fans that have formed to defend the financial interests of the movie's investors. If you look at their hard disks, I bet you’ll find a lot of Allari Naresh movies, contraband Hollywood movies and illegal porn. They didn’t buy those original DVDs. They downloaded them from the internet, just like everyone else. Let them first pay for all the HD movies, the HBO series and for all the times they jerked-off for free, maybe then I'll listen to their lectures on “The honourable way of watching a movie”

Every movie industry in the world has been reeling with the problem of piracy for a couple of decades now and Tollywood has solved it. Their efforts of building the mythology of macho star power seemed to have paid off. The most interesting thing is that these people spend their own money in droves and then take pride in the profits it generated for someone else. Even Apple cannot dream of such obedient consumers!

Here's what I find really pitiful about the fans. If anyone of the ethical self-righteous movie-going fans, after all that they have done to save the profits of the movie, walk up to the producer for a chat or something, he would most probably treat them with the same contempt as a shepherd treats a goat in his herd. The industry doesn't care about the fans. They don't give a damn. All they care is how to take their money as easily as possible. And they are already doing it quite efficiently.

Think about it. If the actors and the directors really had even the tiniest bit of respect for their loyal fans, they would at least have the decency to put an honest effort into making movies instead of selling the same recycled misogynist machismo drivel shot in a foreign location.

Instead we have fans trying really hard to say nice things about the movie with a sense of duty. And mind you, all this action is happening when the state itself is going through the worst political crisis in decades.

I totally forgot about it. Wasn't your state supposed to be split into two or three?

Yeah, ever since the central government declared in August that it is proactively considering bifurcation of the state of Andhra Pradesh, a huge political turmoil ensued in all parts of the state.

Schools and colleges were shut down, protests and strikes were enforced, banks refused to open for business, industries became inoperable, government employees are on strike, public transport is paralysed, and politicians are making trips to Delhi contemplating in their business class seats if they should threaten to resign and yes, the release of Attharintiki Daaredi itself got postponed for the same reason.

This Samaikhya Andhra paralysis is happening at a time when the economy is already at its worst with the collapse of the manufacturing sector due to the power shortage, the on-going agrarian crisis, and massive unemployment. The postal department made an announcement for two hundred odd clerk posts and more than ten thousand people – many of them unemployed engineers with education loans on their head – applied for those clerk posts! That is the future.

A lot of these fans themselves are staring into the same uncertain future but reality doesn't seem to bother them at all. The box office fortunes of their hero's films continue to be their biggest concern in life.

Am I supposed to empathize with them?

Do you want to?

I am not answering that question.

Most of this is written by Flawsophy

Outrage on Outrage

Wasn’t it depressing?

What?

The whole Nirbhaya thing.

Is that her real name?

No

Then why is everyone calling her Nirbhaya?

The media gave her this name to protect her privacy. Some people are calling her Damini too.

It is interesting that the media can give anyone any fictionalized name they want. How come she is “fearless”? Who gets to assign these names? Is there like one person whose job is to assign random names to various victims and then write (name changed to protect identity) next to it?

I’d love to have a job like that.

Maybe they don’t leave such delicate matters to the whims and fancies of one person. I am guessing there is a Victim Renaming Committee in each media organization that assigns names to victims whose “privacy” they want to “protect”.

I can already imagine the meeting that came up with the name ‘Nirbhaya’. Some corporate looking manager fellow must have said, “Alright guys, Hindi news channels are already calling her Damini. Let us brainstorm a list of appropriate names and then we’ll pick the best out of it. Just throw your ideas around, be creative, and remember: No idea is a bad idea!’’

I am even willing to give you away to another cat just to get a hold of that list.

Woah! You are MY cat. I am NOT your human. Haven’t I made it very clear?

Let’s not get into that. How did Facebook people take the news?

“1 Like = 100 slaps for all rapists” said one and got a hundred likes. “Death for the rapists” cried another to greater applause. Chemical castration, public lynching, cutting off the wiener with a pair of scissors and feeding it to rodents… everyone had their own idea of justice and most of them included invoking vivid imagery ranging from 13th century Sharia style stoning to Garuda Puranam style torture in the afterlife.

*cough* Wahhabi regime *cough*

The Political Correctness police have decreed that she’s a rape SURVIVOR now, not a rape VICTIM because, you know, being a rape victim is a stigma in our society.

I don’t think the word ‘victim’ is the problem here. There is no shame in being referred to as a riot victim or an accident victim. Technically, it is the word ‘rape’ that is taboo. Why not replace that? Let’s go Carlin all the way and refer to her as an unwilling sperm recipient!

Political Correctness only makes the violence seem subtle

It is interesting to see the different forms outrage takes

Yeah, some people take it personally like how the rapist is a sick, perverted psychopath who ought to be punished in colorful ways based on their favorite era of barbarism to show future potential rapists that we mean business!

Just a short tempered reaction…

Yes, and the anger goes away real quickly too. This guy is shouting KILL THEM, HANG THEM, RAPE THEM BACK and all sorts of things and two minutes later he is commenting on his friend’s engagement pictures with a lot of smileys. That’s weird.

Facebook Turing Machines, all of them ;)

The second category is the Outrage Machine. The mainstream media strokes it wonderfully well. They have truly capitalized on this high intensity drama.

They make sure they never pick a side. That is how you maximize profit… by pleasing all the parties involved: the victim’s family, the “market base” they are trying to entertain, and the government which protects and bails them out during tough times.

First, they spin the story into a sob fest giving her names like Nirbhaya, Damini, Amanat and then they come up with the usual neutral, non-threatening, non-inquisitive, ass-kissing narratives like, “HOW UNFORTUNATE… OH! HOW BRUTAL… SHE WANTS TO LIVE… PRAY FOR HER… THE BRAVE ONE… INDIA’S FAVORITE DAUGHTER… LET US SALUTE THIS MARTYR… LIGHT A CANDLE… OBSERVE TWO MINUTES OF SILENCE… and hey, while you are at it… CHRISTMAS SALE!

No wonder they were chasing ambulances carrying rape victims. I am sure it improved their Q3 profits

And as the protests intensified, there was consensus among all the news channels that the people’s anger is not against one rape incident but it is outrage against all rapes, the way women are treated in our society, the apathy of the police, lack of respect for due process, the snail paced courts, the paralysis of our parliament, the state of the world, the chaotic nature of the Universe and humanity’s collective failure to unify the General Theory of Relativity with Electromagnetism into a Unified Field Theory!

It's in their interest to prolong the issue and maintain the confusion as long as possible.

The other thing they passionately did to fuel the Outrage Machine was to fish for misogyny. They have searched the length and breadth of the country to find MLAs, MPs, ministers, policemen, senior bureaucrats, scientists, religious people, film stars and all kinds of people who made insensitive, asshole statements like “DENTED AND PAINTED… SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT… WHAT WAS THE GIRL DOING OUTSIDE HER HOUSE AFTER SUNSET? … SHE SHOULD HAVE RESISTED… SHE SHOULD HAVE SURRENDERED… WESTERN CULTURE… BAD PUNJABI RAP and published them with anguish about the times we live in.

The irony…

Okay, the guy’s “music” is disgusting but what is point of directing all the anger towards one person? He just happens to be on the fringes of an industry that makes its money by objectifying women. You can’t celebrate “Munni badnaam hui” and “Shiela ki Jawani” by giving them Filmfare Awards and then call Honey Singh an asshole!

One standard is enough for everybody, we don’t need a double.

The Outrage Machine consumed all the news and outraged at a scale we haven’t seen in recent times. “If this SON OF A PRESIDENT talks like this… what else do you expect?”; “Did you hear that? She is a SCIENTIST and she is a WOMAN… this is disgusting!” MLAs, MPs, POLICE, TEACHERS, GOD MEN … yes it is not very hard to find assholes in this country. We already know that.

Aren’t people tired of this shit?

People are, but the Outrage Machine never gets tired. The third kind of outraged people get emotional and take themselves too seriously.
The Internet Revolutionaries who are draped in their pajamas, lying on the bed tweeting as if they are part of this new-age secret society on the boundary-less internet and all smug about how they wish they were getting Lathi charged and tear gassed while they are going to light candles and shout slogans at Freedom Park or Jantar Mantar and be part of a “revolution”, you know like Rang De Basanti.

They are like the ones who “woke up this morning in Addis Abeba wishing I was at India Gate, wanting to be tear-gassed, wanting to be lathi-charged, wanting my holiday to end and to be standing with people like me…“

haha... కడుపు నిండిన బేరాలు as they say in Telugu ;)

Clearly, she has never been on the other side of a policeman’s lathi. Else, she would never wish it upon herself.

Louis CK captures this Internet Revolutionary Liberal mood beautifully

The next category has people who belong to The Battalion of The Completely Useless. These are the people who keep saying, “Men get horny all the time… The real problem is human nature… Unless men change their attitude towards women, things will remain like this… We should educate children to treat women well… Mothers should raise their sons to be sensitive towards women… We should look inwards and ask ourselves … is this the world we want our daughters to grow up in?… we should be better role models for our kids starting tomorrow… and for tonight, let us all hug a little extra tight as we sleep… and be thankful for what we have… to keep the spirit alive… hopefully one day, we’ll learn to love each other” or whatever the fuck all that means!

Haha… they add no value to the debate. They are not giving us any new facts, neither are they are not giving us any new insights. Except comedy or entertainment value, this point of view has no practical value at all. It is fun to have such colourful characters though.

To be fair, people were genuinely outraged. I mean we are the 123rd safest country to be a woman and that is bad. Even by our standards. And our government also handled it in the worst possible way.

Their first reaction to the protests was suppressing – Shutting down public transport, cordoning off areas, deploying additional security for the politicians, Lathi charges, water cannons, tear gas (optional) and Section 144.

The usual Police State Style

Then they flew her out of the country as a preemptive political move to prevent the on-going street protests from intensifying. And now that she died, they are giving her a state funeral, special aircraft, special postage stamp, flags at half-mast and other memorial shit as if she is some kind of a war hero.

How is she a martyr? That doesn’t even make sense. A martyr is someone who voluntarily chooses to suffer death rather than renounce their principles. War heroes are heroes because they volunteer to take the risk for a higher cause you are cool with. There is no higher cause here. She did not volunteer for anything. There is nothing ‘fearless’ about getting into a bus at 9 o’clock in the evening. She was just a normal girl who was going home after watching the movie. Let her be that “human” person.

Our political class is clearly afraid of its own citizens. That is why they send out poorly trained police force to crush any small sign of dissidence.

As far as the police are concerned, it is just another day at work. That is how they deal with every protest. Farmers, price rise, labor rights, women’s rights, nuclear plant, corruption, land grabbing, child malnutrition, water…. It doesn’t matter what you are protesting for, this is what you are going to get.

Have you noticed that the media rarely talks about the unnecessary use of force by the police when poor people protest?

They don’t cover most of the people’s movements to begin with. Those protests happen in “Bharat” you see, the third world country where people hold signs and placards in vernacular tongues saying they don’t want mines, nuclear plants, dams and factories built on top of their houses. They don’t want “development”.

But we live in this country called “India”, an emerging market and rising superpower where these protests are a “nuisance” because they create a “bad investment climate”.

The recent Delhi protests happened in “India” with urban middle and upper middleclass people holding sign boards in English and that is why the “Bharat” Sarkar’s methods of dealing with dissent are being questioned now.

It is good that they are being questioned at least now.

None of this outrage is gravitating towards finding an effective fix to the rape and sexual harassment problem. The criminals win more often than not because they know exactly what they want. A rapist knows what he wants. It is the same case with a company that exploits their workers; a politician who scams the public; corporations that rape mother earth; or a Bhopal gas tragedy.

Look at how well the criminals are organized. The big criminals I mean –- politicians, corporations, media and the bureaucracy. They are organized at the global level. They cover each others asses when they are facing the heat. The police provide security to the politicians. The politicians protect the police from scrutiny, the corporations write labor laws and mining companies are in charge of environment regulation.

yeah

The reaction to the crime on the other hand is always spread out all over the place. Some want all the rapists to be hanged. Some want us to look inwards and meditate. Some people are happy that Congress is going to pay for it in 2014. And right wing people pretend that rapes don’t exist at all!

You don’t even know what you’re protesting for. You don’t even good mechanisms to collect statistics that might help nail the criminals. All public debate only happens in the emotional space. We rarely see any arguments backed up by real data.

Yeah, emotional responses in short bursts cannot bring any meaningful change

You humans suck at democracy

We have failed to develop that scientific culture. Elections here are primarily won by vote bank politics, not through debate and reason.

But democracy is not about voting your favorite feudal lord and hoping that he’ll be benevolent. Democracy is about dialogue. Democracy is about humans organizing themselves and demanding what they want and getting it.

Historically, all the rights and freedoms you have today like your fundamental rights, freedom of speech, labor rights, judicial rights… all of them have been the result of hard won and often bloody struggles. They weren’t “given” to you by your rulers because “it was the right thing to do”. Bullshit, the rulers of the time did everything in their power to deny you those rights! And given a chance, they’ll take them back again and that is what they are doing.

Democracy is a continuous process of imposing the will of the people and making life difficult for those in power unless they do the right things. Elections are just one aspect of it. Democracy has been around for 2000 years and still you don’t get the essence of if!

Now, that is a lot of democracy coming from a cat!

Cats are Anarchist. We know better.

But there is only so much the government can do. The problem is just not a question of law enforcement. It is about the society that we live in, our patriarchal mindset itself. I mean, we are a culture of Goddess worshippers who burned millions of women along with their dead husbands. If you are a woman and made of stone, you're revered. If you're made of flesh and blood, you're on your own!

Bullshit doesn't get any finer. There is something fundamentally wrong with a society that gropes women who are protesting against sexual harassment!

Yeah, there are no easy solutions. There is no giant off button that says “Press to stop all rapes” that we can go and click. The brutality of this particular rape is almost unimaginable. Why are such psychopaths roaming free? How alienated from the system must one feel to even think of doing something like that to another human being? What are the conditions that create such maniacs?

Is it the rising income inequality? The conditions of horrible poverty, objectification of women, economic policies that accelerate these conditions, apathy of the majority, dowry, female infanticide…

The only way to go about is to take scientific approach of collecting data, crunching and empirically arrive at feasible solutions that make the roads safer for our women and make those specific demands. Any solution that doesn’t include these two processes will end up belonging to the four categories of outrage.

Which one do you belong to?

My allegiance is solely to The Battalion of the Completely Useless!

Co-written by Flawsophy

The Posh Restaurant pre-meal Ritual

Why are you eating curd rice? I thought you went out for dinner.

I did, but I am still hungry

Did you go to one of those ‘you don’t pay for the food, you pay for the experience’ places?

yeah

And how was the experience?

As usual, the waiter walked in with a bottle of packaged mountain spring water in his hand and…

packaged mountain what?

Packaged mountain spring water from the Himalayas. The same water that our ancient rishis drank water 2000 years back!

Why would anyone buy that?

Sadly, there are enough people in the world who think that drinking normal water makes them sick. Did you know that Italian mountain water is exported to the US?

Wow, water?

It’s not just “water”… It is Italian mountain water. I have tasted it once. The naturally occurring spring water there is slightly alkaline, so the water actually tastes a little soapy and doesn’t quench your thirst at all. And they also charge like $8 for a 500ml bottle!

And still you humans claim to be the most intelligent life form on the planet?

Well, we have a thing for glossy, sexy looking, non-biodegradable plastic bottles. The main market for this is young men going out on dates. The waiters target guys on first dates and subtly ask questions like, “Sir would you like to try our new Italian mountain water?” The last thing the guy wants on a first date is to look cheap. So there is a huge probability that he would say yes.

That is pure evil.

I know. It’s a popular strategy to push bottled water. If you say no, then the waiter will follow it up with something judgmental like, “Tap water is fine for you sir? And you madam?” It is bound to create an awkward situation which is the last thing you want on a first date. So they have a very good conversion rate.

Okat, so they collect all that water from the Alps; transport it a Mediterranean port in tanker trucks, and put that water into a shipping container which is then transported across the Atlantic in a cargo ship to be unloaded, treated, bottled, branded, packaged, marketed and sold across the United States all because some guys don’t want to look cheap in front of a chick?

Yes, I call it High Carbon Footprint Dating

It sure is. What did you order?

I am not really sure. The menu was in Italian or Spanish. They had some English subtitles but I couldn't pronounce a single word and was too embarrassed to even attempt it in a crowd. So I pointed my finger on an item and said, “I want this”

Like a four year old? :P

Yeah, like a four year old. And as soon as I showed the waiter what I wanted, he just went on a roll with his questions, “Would you like with some bread sir? What kind of bread? Brown, white, parmesan? Would you like some maple syrup on the side? Would you like some chocolate sauce? Or would you prefer it varnished with Schkarsi sauce? Do you want coke? Do you want a cookie? Are you sure you don’t want a bottle of Himalaya Mountain Spring Water?”

These waiters sometimes sound like they are Brand Ambassadors of Diabetes

I know. I don't understand these people. How the hell am I supposed to know if pasta primavera tastes better with Asparagus or sundried tomatoes? Why am I even given that choice? I don’t even know how much sugar to put in a cup of coffee!

The restaurant management expects waiters to go through a checklist during the ordering process. They charge a lot for extra maple syrup, slices of bread, bottled water, chocolate chips etc. So it is in their interest to make you lick some honey.

The list was endless. Where I come from, if you order a Masala Dosa and filter coffee, you will get Masala Dosa and filter coffee. That’s it. No questions asked. End of transaction!

But this guy was going on and on with his questions. It brought back repressed memories of walking into lab viva exams without any preparation.

Did you say anything to the waiter?

No. I just nodded... giving the waiter full freedom to interpret the nods as he deemed fit and he was tapping the order into his iPhone.

The waiter had an iPhone?

Yeah, he places the order in his iPhone and the chef wirelessly receives it

That sounds efficient

Yes, it is. We got our order in 43 minutes instead of the usual 45. I bet some MBA fellow has taken credit for this "innovation" by writing "Analysed and identified bottlenecks in the ordering process and suggested strategies that improved efficiency by 8%" in his resume!

Haha... yes, I am sure. What did you guys do for forty minutes?

Oh the usual, people were discussing other people’s status updates.

Isn’t that weird? Humans used to talk about their real lives on social networks. Now they’re talking about social network updates in real life. When did that switch happen?

I don’t know. It was quite subtle. And when the food finally arrived, the buzz of the conversation died down and the posh restaurant pre-meal ritual began.

What is that?

Just after the food is served, everyone sits in quiet attention and inspects the food warmly from different angles. Once they have seen everyone's plate and the contents, they bring their arms together in position to…

...to pray before every meal?

No… they bring their arms together in position to take pictures of the food with their smartphones and uploaded them with the caption, “Yum!”

Wait. How did they know that the food was yummy even before tasting it?

No, you don’t understand. It doesn't have to be good. It just has to be photogenic. You don’t have to have fun. You just have to look like you’re having fun. At a fundamental level, that is all that matters.

Come on, you’re being harsh.

Oh yeah? How else do you explain Youtube videos of amazing live concerts with everyone in the audience holding up a dumb camera above their heads? I mean there are fireworks in the sky, awesome laser patterns in the air in sync with the wonderful music but these people are looking into their four inch Handycam screens instead!

What is this obsession to archive every moment of your lives as it happens? Why do you want all your memories to reside on a 2 TB hard disk full of shitty footage with bad sound recording?

Yeah, why can’t they just use their brains and have memories?

Last year, I saw a family recording their Diwali celebrations. Now most cameras are not particularly good at capturing fireworks at night, so all the family members were taking turns trying to figure out the right setting which they were not able to.

The kids who were bursting crackers till then were more now interested in capturing pictures of firecrackers instead. An hour into the celebrations, they were all frustrated with their mediocre photography skills. They complained that the camera was not a DSLR, gave up on the celebrations and went back inside to watch TV. That’s their Diwali! Can you believe that?

If you’re ruining the environment, at least have some real fun in the process you idiots!

It's one of most depressing sights – people desperately trying to have fun. You can see that in malls all the time. At some level, they see the they the plastic soullessness character of the environment. But on the other hand they are spending so much money, so they're all "Whee!" and "Yaay!" with half-baked enthusiasm.

Truly happy people don’t go around telling other people how happy they are. They just are! Why is it so hard for you humans to grasp such simple things? Learn a little something from cats. We remember all our awesome purring sessions but we don’t go around telling every remote acquaintance what was an awesome purr it was. We just lick the back our paws and purr a little more in satisfaction.

You're a pet cat. You have nothing else to do.

Anyway, this decadence of your civilization is not at all surprising. It is the price you pay for rejecting your true religion.

What true religion?

http://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/cat.html

Oh, shut up

I find your lack of faith disturbing *purr*

So I was wishing @flawsophy for his birthday...

Flawsophy: By the way, I have 100 published posts in flawsophy. Of course, Evil Twin has crossed 100 a long time back.

Gtoosphere: Cool. Even my blog crossed 100 sometime back. I think it should count as sort of an achievement… for holding on to a hobby that long.

Flawsophy: yeah it is.

Gtoosphere: It's a bigger achievement than birthdays :)

Flawsophy: Anything other than dying is a bigger achievement than birthdays...

Gtoosphere: That is a good standard to have. So what is the rule to wish NRIs for their birthdays? It is midnight here but it is still yesterday for you and hence not your birthday yet.

Flawsophy: :)

Gtoosphere: No... I am asking because some people are very particular about being the first to wish or wishing someone exactly at midnight. I am just wondering, what their policy for NRI birthdays would be. Do they wish them at midnight IST or midnight for the other person, whatever the time zone is?

Flawsophy: A girl would make sure there are at least three occasions... one India, one US... and one formal dinner in the evening. I was once about to wish someone dot on midnight (India time) but a Korean friend of mine came and asked for something. So I was like, six minutes late and in the meantime, another friend called and she was so mad at me for not being the first!

Gtoosphere: hehe :p

Flawsophy: ok, there may be a difference between 00:00 hours and 00:06 but for me it is 14:30 and 14:36!

Gtoosphere: yeah. What is six minutes after a heavy lunch? Pf…  

Flawsophy: adhe gaa… even different hours have different meanings… don’t they?

Gtoosphere: If you insist on being specific to the hour, then you should be wished in IST because you were born in IST.

Flawsophy: Exactly... this takes us back to reviving a dying horoscope system. That’s the only time horoscopes make sense to me

Gtoosphere: You mean a dying horoscope system adjusted for daylight saving? ;)

Flawsophy: chee chee

Gtoosphere: I am not kidding… these horoscope apps account for daylight saving as well!

Flawsophy: Horoscope has the assumption of a consistent time-zone which implies "travel across time-zone at your own risk"

Gtoosphere: ISRO launched the moon mission only after making sure it is launched at the right “muhurtham”. I mean, seriously? We're sending a vessel to the effing moon and you’re consulting a horoscope that considers the moon to be a planet?

Flawsophy: hehe... sometimes, we forget birthdays altogether. The anger over missing a birthday is something people take very seriously.

Watch this space for more adventures of Awkward Man
and his forever alone side kick, Captain Friend-zone.

Gtoosphere: I probably hold the record for forgetting the maximum number of birthdays in a year. If you forget someone’s birthday, you can’t call them anytime soon. You have to give some cool off time, maybe 3 or 4 weeks, so that the forgotten birthday doesn’t come into the next conversation.

Flawsophy: Yes, the Birthday Cool Off time.

Gtoosphere: I think an appropriate Birthday Cool Off time is 2 to 3 weeks.

Flawsophy: Two to three weeks is too much. Who remembers their birthday after a week? One week is enough.

Gtoosphere: I don’t know, I wouldn’t risk only one week of Birthday Cool Off time. I once forgot to wish someone for her birthday and she got very angry

Flawsophy: The anger over missing a birthday is something people take very personally

Gtoosphere: yeah, and when I called her a week later to apologize.. I ended up giving a very Seinfeld-esque speech on "What is the big deal with birthdays? All you did was “not die” and you want to celebrate that? Doesn't all the medical science and technological progress mean anything anymore? That we human beings as a species are collectively celebrating the miracle of ‘not dying’?" Of course, I had to apologize for the apology (which was also quite Seinfeld-esque). 

Flawsophy: hehe...

Gtoosphere: Another time, a friend invited me for lunch, so I went to her place. Her mom made awesome lunch, fried rice, payasam, etc. I had a pleasant with her chat for a couple of hours after lunch left in the evening. Two days later, I realized that it was her birthday that day, I went to her house, ate a lot of food and didn't wish her. 

Flawsophy: chee chee.. that is horrible! 

Gtoosphere: I know, but in my defense, I didn't know it was her birthday. It was the proto-Facebook era.

Flawsophy: No, there are times you can get away with that excuse. But not this time. 

Gtoosphere: So you think it is a non-bailable Birthday Offence. 

Flawsophy: yes, that is what it is -- a non-bailable Birthday Offence! You are sentenced to an invitation ban for 6 months and a fine of an expensive gift plus an apology. 

Gtoosphere: Abbo... "non-bailable birthday offence"... People these days are celebrating half-birthdays… like birthdays aren't bad enough!

 

Flawsophy: the whole concept sounds voodoo

Gtoosphere: Oh… you're turning 24 and a half today! Who gives a shit???

 

Flawsophy: hehe… I once wrote a post on birthdays and some girl commented saying that her boyfriend declared the month as a birthday month which implies a C in the high school English I exam for coming up with a ridiculous self-contradictory term.

Gtoosphere: Even worse are the couples who celebrate month-anniversaries

Flawsophy: What the hell is a month-anniversary? These people have no respect for time!

Gtoosphere: The word anniversary itself is closely related to “annual” which means once a year! The word exists because ancient Greek have arrived at a consensus that a relationship should last at least for a year before the couple can start annoying other people and here we are in the 21^st century celebrating month-anniversaries. People have no standards anymore.

Flawsophy: Yeah, people are inventing new holidays whenever they feel like smooching!

Gtoosphere: If you want an excuse to celebrate, look to traditional lifestyle. Our ancestors have invented enough reasons.

Flawsophy: yeah celebrate Maasa Siva Raatri. It is always around the corner :p

Boorelu and Pulihyaara

Gtoosphere: Bamma celebrates ‘Maargasira Lakshmivaram’ or something. How cool is that? Just like that, for four days a month, she makes Boorelu and Pulihyaara and no one complains. They didn’t even bother to give it a legitimate name. They just call it “The Thursday of so-and-so month”… Holidays can’t get more arbitrary than that!

Flawsophy: We have a whole system of made-up excuses and arbitrary holiday system thanks to India’s beautiful appetite and a fundamental hatred for work. And they don’t have oxymoronic names like half-birthdays and month-anniversaries.

Gtoosphere: hehe… that is the advantage of belonging to a 5000 year old civilization. The holidays tend to accumulate ;)

Flawsophy: Yeah, we are losing a lot of good things in a way because they are slightly inconvenient.

Gtoosphere: The beauty about our festivals is that they have more to do with our love for food and almost nothing to do with our beliefs. Did you ever pray on Sankranti? No, we just wear clothes and eat. Did you ever go to a temple on Diwali? No, we were busy drying our crackers on the terrace and test firing them. The kitchens are busier than the temples. Our festivals are broad enough to allow even atheists to enjoy them :)

Flawsophy: Yeah, shallow urban people have started wearing branded clothes for short term gains and are completely ruining a beautiful, devious, evil, and well-oiled system for excuse making and binge eating.

Gtoosphere: hehe… also, gone are the days when “Neighbours are doing Satyanarayana Vratam” is a legitimate excuse.

Flawsophy: Was that ever a legitimate excuse.

Gtoosphere: I bet someone would have used it at some time in history. It is 12:40 AM now, should I wish you now or later in the afternoon.

Flawsophy: Just wish and be done with it. Indaakati ninchi dobbuthunnav nee yankamma :p

Two Waggin' Tongues: On Movies, Women, Media and Supermarkets

This post was published in Flawsophy earlier this week. We're experimenting on a new format. Posting here just for the record. Click on the image to read the post.