Democracy at its worst, and quite wrong too

I keep hearing people here using the word "Democracy" synonymously with "freedom". As in, "Hey, it's a democratic country, I can do whatever I want." Umm, to quote Mr. Montoya, I don't think it means what you think it means.

Check out the way the "bad guy" uses it in this ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfM9g7XSFug

That brings me to this SMS soliciting. You cannot turn on the TV these days without seeing some sort of "send an sms with your response". There are talent shows where you can vote for your favorite candidate. Then there are quizzes during movies where they ask trivia questions related to the movie, where if you are correct, you could win a big prize. The problem is, the questions are insanely obvious, like "Who is Chiranjeevi's brother? a. Pawan Kalyan or b. George Bush" So all these suckers (if they haven't learned yet) think they are the only ones who know the answer and punch in the answer.

Turns out, these special SMS's cost about three times what a regular SMS does. So all these TV channels cash in big time from all these idiots. Make a deal with the providers and even if you get only 25% of the take, you're making a killing. It's insane.

Hi Cookie, what are you wearing?

I just love the girl in this ad. Can't get enough of her:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8khAlg7Iw

This ad for Virgin mobile drives me nuts. On one hand, I just love the concept and in particular the line "Kya Dhakkan hai!" But in the end, I somehow don't think the bit where she sends "What am I wearing? Nothing!" is quite appropriate. That's pretty much saying that you will probably use these phones for phone sex. Esp young people. I somehow don't believe parents will be too excited about buying this service after watching this ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcbIT8RH3qc

Another reason to hate the French

Alright you Cheese-Eating surrender monkeys! Did you think the world didn't hate you enough? You think your d-baggery wasn't at a peak already? You had to go ahead and do this -

http://www.hindu.com/2009/02/24/stories/2009022456471800.htm

I'm sorry but please don't lump an honest, hard-working democracy with a nation of terrorists. They couldn't be more unlike each other. Unless all that smug accumulated from US-bashing has totally warped your sense of reality.

On that note, a hearty congratulations to Pakistan on that "truce" with the Taliban. Let me know how that works out for you. No terrorists operating on your land? You mean no terrorists that you are unaware of, or don't have a peace treaty with, or allowed to run your country etc?

It certainly isn't a shampoo bottle anymore

Congrats Kate. What a great actress. I'm actually rooting for her to break Meryl Streep's record. Good job.

Also, not to sound too gossipy but (who am I kidding, the Oscars are the best subject to the gossipy about!) I can't believe Sean Penn mentioned Mickey Rourke but forgot his wife! The camera even cut to her in the middle of his speech and that only made me feel sorrier for her. I love Robin Wright Penn.

Wasn't the directing oscar presented way earlier than it was supposed to be? And I'm sorry, who was the host again? I couldn't tell.

All that was to say that I did get to watch the Oscars against all odds. What odds? For one I was on a bus an hour before they started. I came to Pune just in time to catch the Oscars. Heck I even watched the Red Carpet arrivals.

Earlier on Sony Pix I caught a show called "Chicks on Flicks", basically a couple of girls reviewing movies. This one in particular was an Oscar special and they were presenting all the best picture nominees. I just want to say for the record that I will never be caught dead watching girls analyzing movies or sports. Atleast till someone truly blows me away with their insight into either of those fields. And "Chicks on Flicks" didn't do it for me.

Is the end of that sentence "plagiarize"?

And that's not the only such poster. The latest entry into AP politics, Megastar Chiranjeevi is using Obama as a theme for his election. There was another poster which had a picture of Obama and a caption which read "Yesterday US, tomorrow Andhra Pradesh. Good for you Chiru, way to hitch your wagon to a winning horse.

Cooking Pasta

You know how they say you can "get everthing in India these days"? It is rather true. But it's interesting how that plays out.

At home I saw a bunch of Pasta shells in a box. Somehow my parents saw these in a store and felt they should buy them without knowing exactly what it was. So I thought I'd make pasta for them. Went out in search of the sauce and some veggies. In grocery stores here, there is a small foreign foods section, although it's not named as such. I couldn't find the sauce at first. But my intuition/common sense kept telling me that I would find the sauce there. So I kept looking and there it was hidden between two bottles of schezwan sauce. Actually I was quite impressed by the selection of international condiments and food items they had there.

The pasta itself didn't turn out that good. There were a few reasons but it didn't matter. My parents were too nice to criticize the food and just ate it. We even got some olive oil and bread to complete the Italian experience but it wasn't as good as we expected. The bread was too sweet (milk bread!) That's the last of Italian food we'll be having I guess.

Gah!! I missed the Super Bowl

I know, the Super Bowl was so long ago that you can't even remember the funniest ads anymore. And even though it's been that long since I DID NOT watch it, there's a reason I'm complaining now.

And I was so close too. You see, I was supposed to visit Hyderabad during the SB weekend and come back to Pune Monday morning. Which meant that right at kickoff, I'd be in a bus, and so I was quite upset with that. But (for reasons I'll explain later) I ended up being in Hyderabad for Sunday night. I perked up and thought to myself, "Not bad, atleast I'll watch the SB." So I spent a few hours on Sunday searching the internet to see what channel in India would be carrying the SB. It didn't matter. My dad told me that our cable TV provider in Hyderabad actually relayed only one sports channel (#58 on our TV), and he selected what channel would actually be carried. So even though we technically had access to Neo Sports, ESPN, TEN sports etc, at any given time, #58 would be carrying only one of those. In fairness to the provider he did a good job of selecting which sports channel to show and he has been showing all the relevant cricket matches and the occasional soccer (Football here) and tennis matches. But "relevant" probably didn't include the Super Bowl since when I woke up on Monday morning (Sunday night, CST) I couldn't find the SB.

I suppose I could live with that and chalk it up as one of the problems with living in India. But since that day I've seen the UConn-Duke game, the NBA All-Star game along with a bunch of races and even beach volleyball. Somehow this operator was smart enough to show me most of what I was hoping he'd show me but missed out on showing the Super Bowl! Well atleast I got to download all the Super Bowl ads and watch them here. I really enjoyed watching the ETrade baby.