September 20, 2010

Interview with Aam Aadmi part 2

Most of my regular readers know that I write at The NRI. A couple of weeks back, I wrote this article called Interview with aam aadmi and it got a lot of attention... here is the second part of it --> http://www.the-nri.com/index.php/2010/09/celebrity-interview-aam-aadmi-part-ii/
 


You might be wondering what the dog from UP is doing here... well the thing is, I know that you have an attention span approximately equal to 'Dug' the dog and this image is just to make you click on the link to the post...
P.S: I can think of a lot of images that will attract even more attention but I wanted to keep this PG13 :p

September 12, 2010

Atheist Ad Sense

The Dude vs The Pope

Last week when I was doing research for the Jesus vs. Gul Panag article, I followed a trail of links that led me to a few atheist websites. The interesting thing about these websites is that they always have “Convert to so-and-so religion” ads popping up where “so-and-so” is either Christianity or Islam, mostly Christianity. Yes atheist websites have conversion ads and Jesus Christ is marketed as aggressively as GI-Joe!

Converting is now as easy as 1-2-3... just enter your email address and click "Yes"
...and while you are at it, chat with Asif :) 
Let’s suppose our dude (of Meter Jam fame) is an atheist who thinks religion is a state of mental disorder. (The dude is a fan of Bill Maher) The dude goes to an atheist website to catch up and socialize with fellow atheist dudes. The atheist organizations are not very well funded. Apparently saying "whatever you believe in is bullshit" to people is not a great business model! To raise a little money, these websites put up Google Ads in their pages. The chances that our staunchly atheist dude embraces a religion because of a Google ad is very low! If you think of it, it’s even a little stupid to place that ad there in the first place.

follow the money trail... 
The dude can either ignore the ads or click on them. If he ignores the ads, nothing really happens. We all know that if the dude clicks on the ad, then the atheist website gets some money from Google which is interesting. Let us follow the money trail...

With Google as the middle man, the Church is indirectly funding the Atheist websites so that the atheists can abuse the Church! This abusing will only make it more popular in Google searches etc. which will drive more traffic to the website which translates to more money from Google! Who's paying more money to Google again? The Church!!!

Conclusion: The Dude is smarter than The Pope

The Pope Ain't that dumb!

The Pope as we know, throughout history has always tried to have more people in his club. The Pope always wants more people. But where are all the people? The American market is saturated and Europe is in a slump. The middle-east has a lot of brand loyalty! So, like most international business houses, the Pope is now concentrating on the emerging markets namely, India and China! And they have a pretty good business model too.

A lot of good Christians in Texas, Norway etc. donate a lot of money towards helping the poor and the downtrodden in Asia through Christian missionaries. With that money, a small branch office (Church) is set up in a remote village. Times are not good for the poor village folk. One such fisherman in the village loses his boat in the storm. The fisherman’s family is hungry. The fisherman is helpless. The fisherman has lost all hope.

On a bright Sunday morning perfect for fishing, the fisherman walks by the Church, depressed, dejected and vulnerable. He sees the miracle box outside the Church. Yes these Churches have miracle boxes and miracle prayer sessions on Sundays! All you have to do is write a wishlist and it'll happen! The fisherman has nothing to lose. So he writes how badly he needs a boat on a piece of paper and drops it into the miracle box.

A few weeks pass by. Things do not improve and one cold gloomy morning, the fisherman finds a new boat outside his house and lo! It’s a Christmas miracle! The fisherman is now convinced that Jesus saved him! The fisherman converts, so does his family… and slowly the whole village and then the whole district! It’s a pretty successful business model. It worked great in Kerala and the Northeast. It is working pretty well in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh too! The dude may be smarter than The Pope but mind you, The Pope is not dumb… getting 2 billion people into your club ain’t easy!

@Indibloggers... promote this post on Indivine here --> http://bit.ly/bH4TAl

September 3, 2010

Jesus Christ and Gul Panag are stalking me!

Jesus Christ and Gul Panag, I wonder what they have in common! I don’t personally know them but they don’t look like the kind of people that would hang out together on a Friday night, do they? (No offense Jesus!). Over the last weekend, I asked this question to myself over and over again! What do Gul Panag and Jesus Christ have in common?

Trust me on this one. When you are stalked by a celebrity and an alleged extra terrestrial in the same week, it is a little disturbing! Folks, I am not making this up. It is completely true and I shall prove it.

Whats the Deal with Gul Panag?

When I suggested to my friend that Gul Panag could be stalking me, he asked me why in the world would she do that? Well, here is my theory:
"Gul is smart and sexy. g2 has a great sense of humor and is in IIT. It’s entirely possible (and seems completely natural) that a lady like herself could fall madly and hopelessly in love with a dude like g2 after reading his blog! g2 may have ignored Gul when she came to IIT and out of desperation, she started stalking him!"
The theory may sound ridiculous but it’s not impossible. As a victim of stalking, I had to follow all leads I had. She “accidentally” ran into me yet again one fine Sunday afternoon and this time I thought I should put an end to it...

The accused has "tweeted" guilty your honor! I rest my case.

Where does Jesus come into the picture then?

Now Jesus… Jesus is a tough nut to crack. And to present my case, I have to digress a little. A lot of people ask me how I get ideas for my blog. Let me tell you this, it is not easy!

Typically, I “research” for about 4 or 5 hours a day! By research, I mean stumble upon something and then follow all link trails until I land into something “interesting”. By interesting, I mean something that is either inherently funny or something that can be made fun of! Once I get an idea, it takes about one or two weeks for it to mature and get shape and this usually happens with the help of very long discussions with my brother! Its a very long and intellectually arduous process but its totally worth it!

Now back to Jesus. A couple of days back, while doing my usual research, I had three tabs open in my browser. One was 123orkut.com (I had no idea why I opened it!), the second was a comic from Abstruse Goose (someone shared it on Buzz) and the third was a movie website named Cine Blend!

Now what can “www.123orkut.com”, “Hollywood” and “Abstruse Goose” possibly have in common? Nothing (or that’s what I thought)! I was quickly ‘ctrl+tab’ing (shuffling) through the three tabs and there he was gazing at me with steely eyes with thick dark hair, flowing beard from the same ad placed in three totally unrelated webpages. Here are the screen shots.

Cinema blend!

the comic is not even related to religion or god!

Double whammy!
Jesus, for some esoteric reasons desperately wants to save me from something. I was like “Thanks man, I appreciate it but NO” but he was like “No, I insist that you click here to get saved” and I was like, “get the hell out of my browser dude!” and he just wouldn't leave... can you believe that?

I know it’s kind of uncanny but it can’t be a coincidence. That leaves only two explanations. It is divine intervention or Google ad sense really sucks! Whatever it was, it was really weird!
History shall thus remember the day when Jesus freaked the “bejesus” out of g2!

Next Steps 

Stalking is a serious offense and I thought I should report the matter to higher authorities. I tried to tweet his Dad – The Almighty God about this but he did not look like he really cared!

I thought Il Papa, The Pope might be of help here, he is after all human. So I logged into facebook to write on his wall (Yes, The Pope has a facebook page and his relationship status says “It’s Complicated”!).

His facebook page turned out to be so much fun that I totally forgot and forgave Jesus and I am now completely over it!
I recommend you to visit this page. It's a goldmine for comedians!
St. Paul says Hi and some weirdo talks about circumcision... This is only the beginning!
Why is everyone blessing the Pope? Isn't it supposed to work the other way round?
Next week on gtoosphere: How the Church is now sponsoring Atheist websites!

@Indibloggers... this post on indivine is here --> http://bit.ly/aR3C4j