The King of Good Times sure got some balls, don't he? Your fucking airline, you went overboard, and now you want the government to bail you out! Wah! Shut the bludy thing down and have 240 girls in your damn calendar next year instead of 12! Moron!

***

2G scam. No bail, only jail for the bludy rascals. Good! Every time I start to feel sorry for Kanimozhi having to use the toilet in full view of her prison guards (unless the old walrus has had the latest European crapper and bath fitted in for her), the Anna Hazare in me springs up and says, -- No! It's because of scum like her that we have people shitting on the streets! No sympathy.

***

Metallica kicked ass! Though I have to say the Palace Grounds is no place to hold a rock concert. Because you do not make 50,000 people wade in and out through the muck from one entrance and exit like cattle. Not unless it's bludy Woodstock. In which case we'd have been more appropriately under-dressed.

I gotta say this for the Bangalore girls though - those beer drinking, chhota kapda wearing, babes with their cancer sticks: You rock! But the next time I go there I want an automatic pistol with plenty of spare cartridges to shoot some of those bastard rickshaw drivers in the head. That'll be more fun than watching a bunch of beer guzzling chicas going about their business.

And Koshy's. Yes, you know how they say no trip to Bangalore is complete without a meal at Koshy's ... well, I'm pretty sure that if I tried hard enough I'd be able to turn out a better plate of biryani than the cold shit they served us for lunch that afternoon. The locals might be docile and understanding and may take it all sitting down, but God help you if you fuck with a guy from out of town who's hungry! Like in the old Westerns, he'll whip out his guns and shoot you bludy dead. In fact I quite imagined doing that at Koshy's. First to go would be that condescending head waiter who claimed their biryani is not heated up again once it is made because it destroys the flavour! Yeah, and I'm a Kingfisher babe with nice bazongas!

This place on the other hand was awesome!

***

Ryan Adams and Whiskeytown - Dancing with the women at the bar.

It was the start
of a beautiful love affair --
he was in love
and she needed an affair.

For Cara

If freedom had wings ...
someone would shoot it
out of the sky.

Theirs was a love so strong
they kept it out in the sun
and in the rain and the snow
till it got brittle
and broke.

To me getting rid of corruption in this country is like a project to clean the river Ganges. There is only one way to do it -- drain the river completely, clean the thousands of years of shit collected at the bottom, and shoot all those bastards who will waste no time in dirtying it again. Does Anna have any clue how he's going to do it? Or does he merely stand by the banks of the great river proclaiming that something is rotten, all the while hoping that the river will drain on its own, get cleaned by itself, and that all those filthy bastards we can do without will be so obliging as to shoot themselves in the head?

I believe that as of now the only thing Anna Hazare has done is to become a symbol of hope for those who actually believe there is some hope. But for things to change it will take a cleaning up the kinds of which has never been seen before. How many of us are willing to get our hands dirty?

Having said that, I have to say I am terribly excited at the prospect of what lies ahead post this new inquilab. Perhaps we shouldn’t even be talking about a big change. Perhaps the little changes would work just as well. Let’s wait and see. Or rather, let’s not wait and see. Let’s go out there and do our bit.

How I wish guns were freely available in this country!

So the Pakis have very cleverly managed to sideline all issues relating to dialogue and bilateral mumbo-jumbo by shifting everyone’s attention to their new babe Foreign Minister! Because the truth is they don’t want dialogue – they want Kashmir, and whatever else they can get their hands on. As for their choice of young lady, we have to say, bravo! South Block must not have seen so much excitement in years!

The press as always is the first to be distracted. I can just imagine the scene at the joint press conference when it happens:

Madam, can you tell us in brief your foreign policy on India?

In brief, it is not to let the Indians into my territory.

But what if they manage to sneak in and infiltrate your sensitive installations??

I can assure you all sensitive installations are well protected. Penetration attempts of any kind will be met with swift action!

…. But the Americans penetrate at will!

Do not compare yourselves to the Americans. They are a lot bigger than you!!

***

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. When a guy decides to surprise a girl by proposing marriage, as we so often see in the movies, how does he know beforehand if the ring will fit? And in ZNMD the ring that he buys for his mother slides effortlessly on to his girlfriend’s finger! I wonder.

But the worst part of the whole movie – or should I say the most depressing - is when Katrina (who looks so gorgeous you want to reach out and grab her ... in a nice way of course!) rides off on a Bullet behind their car and then proceeds to kiss that reptile Roshan smack on the mouth. Ewww!

Apart from being a visual treat (I can see a whole bunch of rich Delhi/Chandigarh types and possibly even the more thrifty Mumbaikar already booking their tickets to Spain), ZNMD does nothing but to promote tourism in what is a near bankrupt country, and gives us delusions of how wonderful life would be if we risked it all and 'just did it'. But where's the sense in showing a bunch of rich folk doing this? They've got nothing to bludy lose! Show me instead a hard working, loan paying, average everyday Joe who says to hell with everything, and just goes out and does what he has always wanted to do, and I will applaud louder than all the crowds at the Tomatina put together.

From The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, this is Right Moves.

Frankly I have to say I’m a little disappointed that Aamir Khan, from whom we’ve come to expect more (given that the rest of our filmmakers barring one or two are all a bunch of idiots) would decide to dive into what I call the 'Tapori humour' genre. But judging by the hoards of (presumably intelligent) people queuing up outside cinemas to get a piece of the action, I’d say business-wise at least he has made a good decision.

Watching the trailer you know just what to expect – a ridiculously contrived plot, buffoonery, and crass, sometimes juvenile humour passing off for comedy. But when you have audiences that will laugh at practically anything, it works. In fact I reckon If I got up and cracked a joke while the movie was running, people would laugh at that too.

And have you noticed how in almost every so-called Hindi comedy there has to be a trigger event where something gets inter-changed with something else or passes into the wrong hands – be it money, jewels, a human being even, or in this case - shit! Without that mix-up nothing happens. I wonder why.

As the name of the movie itself suggests, its makers had no clue what to call it. Smelly Potty might have worked just as well!

***

I need to buy a new phone. The thought did cross my mind to buy one of those ugly black contraptions everyone seems to have these days but I will not let myself be 'Blackburied', no matter how handy those damn things are.

Even if they’re handy, are they value for money? Because really there is no greater satisfaction than getting value for money. And that’s the problem: most manufacturers will never give you value for money. Because then you will end up being satisfied for longer than they’d like. Which is not good for business.

***

My first post published using Windows Live Writer. Which is pretty cool, I think. Not everything Microsoft makes is bad!

Here’s a track that came pre-loaded with my new laptop - from a band that call themselves Assembly of Dust (wonder if they had naming issues similar to the makers of Delhi Belly). Featuring banjo maestro Béla Fleck this is Edges.

Write about the rains if you must, she says. Okay then, about the rains. Yeah, the rains are nice. If you are a millionaire sitting in your comfy chair by the window sipping some 30-year-old single malt and smoking a pipe filled with something you would normally get arrested for. For the rest of us it means slushing around in the puddles and the muck and trying not to fall sick from God-knows-what. And so the rains are something I love and hate in equal measure. I cannot think of anything else I can say that about.

***

So MF is dead. And frankly I don't see what all the fuss is about. If my art made me as much money as it did him, I wouldn't care where I lived or died. And I wouldn't think twice before painting a nice pair of lady bumps on the map of India or anything else if it paid for a new Ferrari. Desh prem be damned! And if he wanted a glass of Mumbai falooda (which I hate!) so damn bad, he should just have flown in a Mumbai faloodawalla and had glass after glass of that awful drink till London's sewer authority launched an investigation into the extraordinary number of tiny seed like things making their way into the city's underbelly.

***

Shaitan the movie is a complete waste of precious weekend time. One of those films where you come out feeling absolutely nothing (if you leave aside that feeling of having been cheated paying 100 bucks for bludy popcorn!). And why make a movie about a bunch of stupid rich kids doing what only stupid rich kids do? Sex, drugs and fast cars - we know the routine. Tell us something new or don't waste our time. As for the bloodbaths, leave that to Tarantino. Only he can butcher as many people as he wants and get away with it.

Nice week.

Why is everyone so flummoxed over what happened at Abbottabad? Why are there so many theories going around in the media? Or are Rajdeep Boredesai and his pal Borenob Goswami trying to stretch the story as much as possible because the elections in Bengal ain't doing anything to excite the ratings?

It's not that hard to imagine why many people might call this America's latest Operation BS -- 'bama in 'sama out. Simple as that. Everyone knows 'bama hasn't delivered on half the crap he promised in '08, and with '12 round the corner, something had to happen. Or, as the great Russell Peters would have put it, "somebody gonna get-a-hurt real bad!" Gadaffi would have been ideal at this point in time, but that would have meant stepping into a whole pile of political dogshit and possibly a few more graves at Arlington, so what the hell - why not take out ol' 'sama? They had him sitting tight as a guest of the Pakistanis anyway, with the bastards probably billing them for it, the ungrateful swine, so all in all a win-win! Oh but they had to make it look real; the American people ain't that stupid. So in go in a bunch of Navy Seals (might even have been the Navy Eels, who knows?) and out goes Osama ... into the depths of the ocean! With proper Islamic rites of course. Yes, we have no reason to doubt that the US Navy is not actually aware of the Islamic rites that go with the act of throwing a bullet-ridden corpse into the sea.

Can they really do this, some of you might be asking? To which I reckon the President would reply, "Yes We Can!"

***

Theories aside, it's hard to believe anything anybody says these days. Two days later we're being told by the press that 'details are still emerging'. Which is their way of saying, 'we don't know shit!' So now he could have been killed by his own guards, or maybe even his sons greedy for power, or maybe - just maybe - a US helicopter flying over the area developed a technical snag and crash-landed into a compound just as the infamous master of the household was getting ready to retire for the night. What an astonishing stroke of luck that would have been! "Wow Barrie, you sonofabitch!" I can almost hear George W. Bush Jr. go.

So the kid playing Jesus was making noises that sounded more like pleasure than pain. And the Roman soldier standing behind him with the whip wasn't helping. I tried very hard but every aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh that emanated from Jesus after the whip came lashing down on his body had me cracking up. Nobody else seemed to find it funny though. I really should go to church more often.

Good Friday. That day when booze is manna (i.e. they way it's pronounced in Hindi as opposed to in Hebrew, which is what it is at most other times). And we can eat only fish. Apparently a fish has less blood than a chicken or a goat so it's ok to eat on Good Friday. Yes, fish actually passes off for 'non-meat' on days such as these - ain't that wonderful?

Personally I wonder about the deeper meaning, or rather the message, behind Good Friday and Easter. I should have listened more attentively to what Mrs. Lemos was going on about during those catechism classes instead of marvelling at how Sonia's bazongas were so perfectly shaped. My bad.

The simple devout people I saw in church this morning though only seemed to know this much: Jesus went through hell for us so that we might be saved. He died on Good Friday and rose again Easter Sunday. On Good Friday we shall be morose and on Easter Sunday we shall rejoice!

For me it's about rising again after all the little deaths we die every day. Every day that is like one station of the cross: On some days a Veronica (or maybe even a Sonia!) will turn up and make it better; on others a good Simon will lend a helping hand, and on the rest you trudge on by yourself, stumbling and falling at times. And the destination always is that end which is inevitable. Hopefully we'll be spared a crucifixion.

The Black Eyed Pees - Just can't get enough. Yeah, I can't be morose on Good Friday. In fact I feel like dancing. Coz I have a holiday and can put my cross down for a bit. Such blasphemy, they must be saying!