Where all the dirty stuff comes from

Sometimes, you just have to let go of everything to be happy. But usually, you should NEVER let go of everything, because you will then wet your pants. There will be so much of embarrassments and explaining to do that you will hardly get any time to be happy.

Perhaps the reason why children are so happy and carefree is because they let go of absolutely everything, including the control of their own bladder. Children cannot hold on things for too long, and if they are taken beyond the limit, they will let go of absolutely everything. It’s not pretty at all.

That is true not only for bodily wastes but for pretty much everything with children. For example, all children can store only so many secrets for only so much time. If they are asked to keep secrets beyond their capacity, they will try to keep it to themselves for as they can, they will sweat and pray and do all kinds of awkward walk so that it does not come out, but they finally give up. When they do that, they spill out every last bit of secret they have in themselves to whomever is present. That is why thieves love children so much. Not only do they get to know the place where the jewels and cash are hidden, but they can also extract the naughty pictures of parents with the help of the children so than they can blackmail later.

The same was true for KGB and Gestapo. These two organizations, of dictatorial regimes, made children spy on their own parents and relatives. If the parents had a hidden stash of dirty pictures or videos anywhere around the house, the children would dutifully report to the government. The agents would then make copies of such documents, and keep it for ‘archiving purposes’. Later, they digitize and charge money for those ‘documents’. And that is why there are so many adult content websites on the internet.

I Fell

As I always remind myself, I am idiot. I fell very badly yesterday, and I don't think I'll recover fully for some time. I hope I have not hurt myself as badly as the first time, when I was sick for almost three months. I really hope I never...Sudha di asked me very kindly what was wrong and I think I told her, but I am not sure. Thank god my book is not complete or else I'd be the sissy boy character.

Serious Job Ahead

Almost completed my CV yesterday, but then saw another CV format, which has now confused me. I think it'll take one more day to complete my CV.

Sasanka bhai yesterday showed me the blog of Dikshya Karki, whoever she is. I didn't read all of it but it looks nice, and it would be much better if she blogged regularly. However, I am still a loyal reader of Prawin's dai's blog which, it seems, dai updates in sporadic bursts of writing.

What With the Site

Nimesh, Avishek, and I went to that new website's office. I was not expecting too much, but I think I need a table to work if I am to work anywhere. The design is cool, and I thought the concept was wonderful, as Nimesh had told me, but that it seems was grossly edited to make it sound better. I have realized that I need a serious job now, so I think I'll complete my CV soon and submit it any place that is willing to give me money to spend.

Also, to tingle my writer's senses, I went to Naya Baneshwor on foot in the evening, and my mother did not believe was was going there just to have a walk. I am planning to go for morning walks soon but only if I find someone to go along with me.

Bruno's download is almost over and if I stay awake till 1 am I might as well watch the movie and sleep. I was thinking about downloading Half-Blood Prince, but I'll go to the hall and watch it. For the experience.

Beckham Bloke Gets Into Trouble, My FB Profile Very Active

Take a look at the link http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=117972284576&h=-UuNu&u=iWO86&ref=mf.

I thought it was rather unfair to David, and his professionalism, but my friends in FaceBook disagreed. And then some disagreed with them. So there was quite a conversation in my not-ususally-active profile, with eight long comments over the link. The ironic part is that its related to sports, something I have rarely(okey, never) posted links of.

Of course, I'm a bit of an idiot because I did not read the last few paragraphs of the article and missed out quite a bit of the discussions. I had not a clue about people being mentioned, even though I did chance upon the last few minutes of the match in question...

I guess there's going to be more discussion because once you have been critiqued, it is against the unwritten rule of FB etiquette to stay quiet. So I might see quite some activity in my profile. Hope it does not get as rowdy as the Football Fans.

That Again

This is the ninth time I might have gotten into serious trouble with Sudha di, but thatnks to her greatness, and her maturity, she has not lost her temper yet. Of course, I think I do have a point, and it would be rather nice if she sang the song for me but I thing that 92-comments-long picture was enough of an embarrassment for all of us.

The cartoon shows have changed

Hari, 13, does not want to school. It’s not the bullying; he is taller and heavier than an average guy of his age. And yet, every morning, he wishes his school would blow up, or an earthquake would close all schools for an entire year, or his head master would get a heart attack and drop dead.

Since nothing of the sort happens (which is surprising, because someone looking at the headmaster’s meals would assume that he has an ambulance on the stand-by), Hari goes to school every day.

Thousands of children like Hari do not want to go to schools. It’s all thanks to the stupid cartoon shows that Nickelodeon shows these days. Not only do they take children’s attention away from their studies, they also take away the potential gain the children could have had watching better and classier cartoons.

Nickelodeon has only three daytime shoes that it repeats every week: Ninja Hatori, Perman, and a show about some cockroach. The shows suck.

Once upon a time, Nick was actually a classy channel, and had programs like SpongeBob, Hey Arnold!, Jimmy Neutron, and others, where the characters spoke in English, behaved like real cartoon characters and not puppets for infants, and almost always had a kind of moral at the end of every day.

One fateful day, some genius at Nick India probably realized that they could get away by putting real cheap shows on air, and yet show the same ads, thus significantly increasing their profits, so they looked for the cheapest shows available. They probably found those three, that unsurprisingly also have the worst non-Indian animations, and started airing right away.

My heart bleeds for those poor kids who have to watch the crappy hindi-dubbed cartoon shows in Nickelodeon. They will never know who Jimmy Neutron, or Dexter were. Scooby snacks(cartoon network, but still) will hold little meaning for them.

Whistleblower 2—Revenge of the Secret

Some secrets can get you into trouble. Other secrets can get you into deep trouble that’s probably a lot deeper than the deepest pile of cow manure you have seen, and get you expelled. The second type of secret should stay a secret, for god’s sake. And yet, it doesn’t.

Bottles: that’s where our story starts from. Human civilization has always used things inside the bottles for good purpose, but never bothered with taking care of the bottles. They are discarded carelessly, and create problems for the environment, the country, and the people who drank the wine from those bottles.

You will not find wine bottles around any man’s house, because men are far too experienced to pay ten times as more for the kick you can get from a cheap bottle of vodka, or weed, or drugs you inject in your body. Women, on the other hand, are naïve—they demand quality, they demand class, and they want expensive wines which their teachers cannot be suspected of having because they are far too sensible.

A bottle of cheap rum or vodka can be attributed to anyone—a teacher, a student, ‘the drunken guy from the maintenance’, the kitchen guys, or even the army guys who come to play football every week. Bottles of expensive wine, one the other hand,  belong only to teachers who have either gotten a promotion so big their salaries are trebling, gotten the US VISA, just looted a bank, or girl students who have very little experience with choosing the right material to get drunk on.

So it was a shock when so many bottles of wine were found in the trash of girls’ houses. The duty teachers could not do much—most of them were men, so they could not just barge into cubicles like they do in boys houses—and tracking the bottles to the owners was an impossible task. Some warnings were given, the authorities alerted, the HOHs reprimanded, and some students subject to dislike by teachers warned that such acts would result immediate expulsion. That was all.

The establishment avoided creating a noise because nothing would be worse than the news reaching the parents’ ears. The HOHs were slightly more strict, and the duty teacher a little more vigilant, but that was all.

The recent History of the world, according to Sandwiches

The human species are the most violent species to have ever lived on planet Earth. We outdo even the most fierce dinosaurs and Sabre-tooth tigers in our thirst for blood and purely physical victory.

We have weapons that can destroy all life on the planet hundreds of times. We spend most of our resources on killing each other, and defending from others, instead of improving the lives of our fellow beings, most of who are underfed, do not have proper housing, and are very susceptible to diseases already won over.

And yet we survive. Despite our prowess, we have used our ultimate weapon only once(or twice). Despite all the weapons we have, diseases and natural causes kill several magnitudes of more people than to man-made causes. We are on the verge of flooding our planet, and yet we might find solutions to the problem we create and ultimately save ourselves and others. So what makes us control our urges?

The answer is simple: the love of certain food items now named ‘Sandwiches’ in English language. Throughout history, it has been the love of sandwiches that has saved humans and the planet.

After the Americans bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they realized that now no one could go to the sandwich joints in those cities. They were ready to attack Tokyo or Kyoto, when they realized that not only would thousands of years of human culture be destroyed in moments of rage, but hundreds of great sandwich-making techniques and great Japanese restaurants serving the food would be annihilated too. They could not even think about that, so continues the war using conventional means.

During the cold war, the most secret of all documents had secret recipes for secret sauces for the tastiest sandwiches ever. When JFK deployed troops in Bay of Pigs, and Khrushchev pulled back the Russian forces, it was not the nuclear confrontation that deterred both parties from warfare but the fear that the hippest Cuban clubs, serving the best sandwiches ever made, could be destroyed in the fighting.

The former Soviet Union disintegrated mainly because the government there did not provide enough sandwiches to its people. Whereas the Americans and Europeans were giving their people as many sandwiches as they could afford, the Russians had the quota system for sandwiches. They believed that the world had a limited supply of tasty sandwiches, and that were it to end, there would be catastrophe. However, the people in the Republics did not buy those, and quickly realized that it was the ploy of the rulers to keep the best sandwiches for themselves. So they went to the streets, and got themselves countries, along with unlimited supply of sandwich.

The Al-Qaida and other major terrorist organizations exist because of sandwich-related reasons, and they create fear and terror, because they do not want everyone to enjoy them. They believe that only the chosen ones, with the divine rights may enjoy the really good sandwiches. The rest of the world disagrees with them, so they try to create their own world by eliminating anyone who does not support them.

Media in Nepal: The right, the wrong, and the messed-up--I

This is  the first part of a series of writings I plan to continue for a year.

The Poor Papers

I absolutely hate the English print media in Nepal. It is as if someone decided that Nepal should have English papers too because, well there are some people who cannot read Nepali, and so created English newspapers out of nowhere.

And so the business began. Right now there are three daily papers that deserve mention--no actually, those three are the only ones-- Republica, The Himalayan Times, and The Kathmandu Post. OH, and then there's The Rising Nepal, but I am forgetting it. Oops!

Those who are in Kathmandu probably know that The Kathmandu Post is the oldest. Some journalists in The Rising Nepal decided in 1996 that they had had too of licking the governments shoes, and so they started TKP. In the beginning it was almost an English translation of Kantipur, its sister publication, and it got its independent editorial team only a few years ago.

Being the oldest, it was also the oldest to be really bad and annoying( I ignore The Rising Nepal because giving it a place in this discussion would be giving respect it does not deserve). Poor grammar, unintended puns (what does 'Driver's body gets new head' say about those in editing) plagued it a lot until its first real competitor The Himalayan Times came out. Since then, it improved considerably, but it still is something to be ashamed about.

It increased its page count from 8 to 12, and got back to 8, and right now its again at 12 pages,, with possibility of increase to 16 pages in the near future.

I will talk about the other papers, and other media in upcoming posts.

The Whistleblower

My high school is finally over (it’s been two months already)! And the 10 years of boarding life. Now there’s no need to have any secrets and stories not to be told, so I will become the whistleblower for a lot of upcoming posts. In fact, I might start yet another series of posts where I will whistle-blow things that are supposed to be secrets. I start the series with the story of the whistleblowers that were already there in the school. Hope I am killed for this series.

***

Some secrets are supposed to stay what they are—secrets. That obvious definition was definitely not understood by several of our classmates, to whom secrets were opportunities to make new friends, and get close and comfortable with them after sharing the topmost of secrets.

There was perhaps no secret in the boys’ houses that did not reach the girls’ houses.

First, there were those embarrassing moments which no one would want anyone else to know. A certain someone had certain problems with the digestive problems, and had let go way earlier than he should have. Those who knew of it were very sensible about it and helped him. We in the boys’ houses knew there was a secret somewhere but did not know what it was, and we did not care.

I found what it was less than a week after the incident. There was some club work, and a girl friend asked me if a certain something was true. I was not sure where we were were going, and she thought I was protecting the secret, so she let me know that she was ‘in the secret’ and she knew everything. I moved in cautiously, extracted the information from her, pretended I was very embarrassed to talk about it and told her it was very true. Her roommate’s best friend had been the source of information, and she had gotten it from a guy who had wanted to get close. He failed at that, but the cat had been let out of the cage.

That’s a curious phenomenon. It’s like the so-called ‘dates’ were only places for sharing deepest-darkest secrets about friends. How else would the ‘dates’ take several hours daily for a few days, and end abruptly? The irony is, they were not even ‘real’ relationships. They were usually ‘oh, let’s get together and talk for hours for some weeks, and tell everyone we broke up, and stop talking, and once there’s enough new secrets about people, we could get together again and exchange them’.