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A man, who boasts of a million twitter followers, recently confessed that he has no idea where he is leading them.
“It’s stressful”, the twitterer said, when promised absolute anonymity, “Every day I wake up, I wonder: do I know where I’m taking all these guys? I find it hard to sleep at night, thinking of this tweet or that, that I posted. In fact, I cannot remember the last time that I tweeted”, he confessed.
How does he have so many followers then?
“A lot of them are bots. But there are ways to increase your followers”
When asked, why did he want the followers in the first place, he looked baffled.
“But why else would one tweet?” he asked.
KBNN has been struggling to find new news as its sole reporter (until recently) has been on vacation.
While it’s recent recruit [here was his first investigative piece] learns the ropes, and all that, we’re fishing in our archives, for news we did not find fit to print at the time it happened. [Ed. Which basically meant, we were lazy enough never to print]
Interview with Bhada Badhao
Mr. Bhada Badhao, the leader of one of Pune’s fifty odd Auto Rickshaw Unions, was interviewed recently by KandaBatata reporter. Mr. Badhao, who is known for his outspoken and candid interviews, talks about the recently concluded strike, its aftermath, and the eventful lives of the Pune’s Rickshaw drivers.
KBI: Mr. Badhao, tell us a bit about yourself.
BB: I’m not important.
KBI: Okay, tell us about your union.
BB: It’s not my union. I’m union’s humble servant.
KBI: Um. Okay, tell us about the recent strike. There was a strong resentment in the public about the strike. Don’t you think, Sir, that it is justified?
BB: The resentment is manufactured by the media.
KBI: Hmmm. But with the Petrol prices down so much, shouldn’t the meter be rationalized?
BB: How is the price of petrol related to the Rickshaw meter?
KBI: Errr. What do you mean?
BB: Show me one guy in my union who uses Petrol. Have you checked prices of Kerosene, recently? It almost looks like we’ll have to start using Petrol, after all these years.
KBI: Hmmm. That gets me to my next question. Why the reluctance to move to CNG? Is it only the availability of filling stations that is the issue?
BB: This only shows the ignorance of media about the whole issue. Has any auto-rickshaw driver ever complained about the lack of availability of Kerosene filling pumps? The rickshaw drivers are very resourceful people.
KBI: So what is the problem?
BB: What problem?
KBI: So you’re saying you’re ready to use Kerosene, err, I mean CNG?
BB: Who am I?
KBI: I mean Sir, your union… the union you serve.
BB: You’ll have to ask the union, that.
KBI: So what, in your opinion, is the real reason for the strike?
BB: I thought you guys in media will know at least this much. The government is controlling Kerosene supply, so that they force us to use CNG, which, we all know, to be the inferior fuel. I mean, if aeroplanes can fly with Kerosene, why not autos? It’s all conspiracy between big business and political nexus. But we won’t give up.
KBI: But you did call off the strike.
BB: Yes. The kerosene supply in black market is back to normal.
KBI: And you’re happy about the new meter rates, I presume?
BB: Oh that. When is the last time you saw any rikshaw driver from Pune charge anyone by the meter? It’s just for headlines. You guys should know that well!
KBI: Thank you Sir. It was a privilege talking to you.
BB: Sure. Next time, get your facts right.
Post Script: The KBNN reporter has resigned from KBNN, and is planning to buy an auto-rikshaw. His exit interview with us mentions “better prospects” as the sole reason [Ed. We don't blame him]. We’re hiring.
A Man Wakes Up To Find That His Name Is Unique After All:
Krasser Dawg, who likes to call himself Kresy Dawg, woke up in the middle of the night, after a virtual nightmare in which he saw his vanity url being taken away by someone else. On the fateful Friday night of June 12, Dawg was waiting — ready with his laptop and browser — for the stroke of midnight, along with millions of other internet users, for Facebook to unveil its vanity url feature. To his horror of horror, he dozed off at 11:59 PM, EDT, just a few seconds to the awaited moment.
“I cannot $%$$ believe it”, Dawg said later, talking to KB reporter. “I mean, I sat there for hours, unable to do anything else, waiting for that moment. And just when it was seconds away, I dozed off. I was literally counting down seconds”, he added with a sheepish smile.
Could it because of all the stress?
“That’s not very common, but it’s not unheard of”, said Dr. Siddhartha Jain, a leading psychiatrist, who specializes in behaviorial effects of extreme mental stress. “Some human beings are known to have, what the psychologists call, the sleeping instinct. It’s a evolutionary freak of an instinct that helps certain organisms to deal with extreme mental stress. It’s triggered when brain detects unusually accelerating blood pressure, when it releases strong sedatives to avert an impending heart attack”.
Dawg woke up, at around 3 AM, drenched in sweat. He recalls a dream in which he typed what was do be his vanity url: http://facebook.com/Kresy.Dawg, and it took him to a Facebook profile of an African-American rap star. Fully awake then, he logged back into his laptop, and refreshed the pre-typed url, to check if his username was still available. It was.
“It was a mixed feeling”, he said. “I was a little relieved, and a little sad too. I mean sure, it’s great to get the vanity url, but what’s the #$$% fun, if there ain’t no competition?”
When told about the extreme stress theory, and that he could have had a heart attack, if it weren’t for the sleeping instinct, Dawg said that wasn’t so worried about that.
“No”, Dawg insisted, “I have already booked a legacy locker. I do not fear an offline death anymore”
Related News: Man sues a Hollywood star for stealing his vanity url.
Charles Roswell — a prominent atheist, astrophysicist, and author of the niche bestseller “The Specter of God: Justifying Disbelief” — ended his life late last night by self administered overdose of sleeping pills.
While Dr. Roswell was best known in freethinking circles because of his aforementioned book, he was much more popular for his fierce debating skills in televised debates. He wasn’t a stranger to controversies, and he caused quite a stir by his remarks while debating with a famous TV evangelist, who asked him if he’d still deny the existence of God if He were to present Himself, to him (Roswell) one fine day? Roswell, in his characteristic style had insisted: “If ever I see God, I’ll enlist myself into a mental asylum. And I believe, so should you”
According to his colleagues, Dr. Roswell was suffering from a severe depression recently. Colleagues hinted that it (the depression) had something to do with the news of a Cambridge undergrad publishing the proof of non-existence of God using mathematical induction.
The proof, which was published first by the prestigious scientific journal, The Mathematical Belief, is currently being checked for its veracity by a team of mathematicians. The proof is being verified using deep simulation technique (a proof technique which has its share of skeptics, but is generally well accepted practice in the scientific community), with the help of a computer grid spanning the globe. The deep simulation is expected to give a very-very-highly-probabilistic validation of the proof in an year’s time. The deep simulation will continue to run possibly infinitely.
According to his colleagues, Roswell, who allegedly could not take the suspense anymore, was distraught that a mere undergrad had managed to prove in an elegant (but possibly non-provable, if you discount deep simulation) few lines, what he had been trying all his life, with little success. It probably was the final straw that pushed him to take this extreme measure.
“He believed that the proof was right”, said his colleague and best friend Dr. Ailbe Kahn, who is a skeptic himself. Kahn is very cynical about proofs that need deep simulation for validation, and wondered if Roswell was right in ending his life over one such proof. “He just believed in it. And in the end, that belief killed him”, he said.
“With God’s existence disproved, finally, there is nothing left for me to do”, Roswell said in his brief suicide note.
In a move to destroy, what it claims to be the most potent symbol of American cultural imperialism, the Taliban is planning to bid for the swimsuit that Pamela Anderson used in Baywatch.
The Taliban Auction Team
“Inshallah, we’ll lay our hands on that filthy dress”, a Taliban leader told a private Pakistani news channel, yesterday. There was a minor controversy about the actual meaning of what was said, and some Pakistani intellectuals are still debating whether he said “lay our hands on” or “bring back home” or “cut with our swords”. But, they’re unanimous about the words “filthy dress”.
The filthy dress
“There is no phrase in Pashto that translates to ‘laying our hands on’”, a senior Pashto scholar said over a panel debate, claiming that it’s most likely swords or daggers, that are being alluded to.
The red swimsuit in question, was worn by Pamela Anderson, while playing lifeguard C.J. Parker in the hit TV series “Baywatch“. The swinsuit is expected to fetch $2,900 when it goes under the hammer this month, as a part of the auction of Hollywood memorabilia.
“Price is no issue. Inshallah, we’ve enough opium to buy the whole of Hollywood if needed”, the leader added. “But we would like to start with destroying that filthy dress”.
US President Barack Obama has underplayed the threat, saying that the group belongs to what he calls ‘the good Taliban’, who “just like any honest, tax-paying, worrying-about-health-insurance, Americans, are just interested in buying the most sought-after piece of clothing in the whole of America, if not the world”.
There are reports that some Democratic Party senators are strongly opposing this threat of “outsourcing”. Obama administration is considering a 100% tax rebate, for any American who buys and keeps the swimsuit on American soil.
Taliban, meanwhile, is planning a public flogging of an effigy dressed with the red swimsuit, once they “lay their hands on that filthy dress”.
KBNN.
The India Meteorological Department, or the Met Department, in a move to improve its terrible track record in daily weather forecasts, has decided to delay the forecasts by forty-eight hours.
“Normally, we forecast the day’s weather a day in advance”, the spokesman for the Met Department, while addressing a press conference, in Pune “However, we realized that we were being too aggressive. After much deliberation, we decided that we should prioritize on getting the predictions right, even if that means a couple of days of delay. We’re hoping to cut down the delay to just one day, but we’re not going to worry to much about that, at this point”
While answering the KandaBatata reporter’s question: “Have you considered upgrading the equipment, in the near term, to improve the prediticions?”, the spokesman answered in the negative.
“No. That’s out of question. In fact, with these new revisions in our methodology, we would hardly need any instruments. We’re expecting significant cost savings in maintenance, too”
Another reporter asked if there are any plans to auction out existing instruments, when the spokesman said that it’s under consideration.
“We’re definitely looking into it. However, there are a lot of security considerations to be taken into account. Besides, no one is sure how much the instruments are worth, if anything”
Public opinion is divided on the Met decision.
“On the one hand, everyone will welcome an accurate prediction. But unless we have time travel, a prediction that comes a day later will hardly be useful, except for historical purposes”, said blogger, on the promise of anonymity.
“It’s a welcome move. It’s high time we had some accurate predictions”, a consumer activist from Pune said. “No, I’m not worried about the timing. As it is, the predictions are worthless today”
[KBNN Report]
Wal-Mart Corporation — the mega store that’s famous for its supply chain management — has asked US government for a “pink underwear bailout”, say close industry sources. According to a Wal-Mart spokesman, Wal-Mart’s suppliers from China, and many Asian countries have been producing disproportionate number of pink undergarments, due to a sudden increase in the sale of pink underwear from its outlets in the first week of February. This unprecedented increase in demand for pink underwear triggered Wal-Mart’s supply chain to send automatic orders to its suppliers to increase the production of the pink underwear.
No one noticed anything wrong, till the sales suddenly went down post February 14th – the Valentine day. For a while, the Wal-Mart guys just assumed that the pink underwear sales were a Valentine Day related rush, just as every year, however the spike was so big, that the supply management chain software was not prepared for it, and sent unprecendented big orders to the suppliers.
Chaddi Colonialization
Investigations revealed that this spike was the result of a “Pink Chaddi Campaign” (chaddi is an Indian language word for underwear/underpants, that’s slated to enter OED’s next edition), started by Indian bloggers in the wake of an attack on women by a political party workers.
“It was unprecedented. Each year we see a spike in the sale of anything pink, in late Jan to mid Feb, and typically it tapers out in next two weeks as we put those items on discount sales — which are mostly flooded by Indian-Americans. So we thought it’s just a Valentine Day phenomenon — but this time the spike was ten times the average. And the demands were back to pre-spike level right after Feb 14th”
In its appeal to the US Senate for a bailout package, Wal-Mart has cited a ‘bug’ in its supply chain management software, which was largely developed by a company (name withheld) outsourcing to India.
“Wal-Mart has been the vicitm of unprecedented turn of events, and outsourcing quality issues”, said another spokesman. “We want the US senate to buy the excess pink underwear at reasonable prices, to bail Wal-Mart out of this extraordinary situation. All we’re asking for is one time bailout, to save the livelihood of thousands of Wal-Mart workers”
Meanwhile, back in India, some right-wing groups have alleged MNC hand behind the Pink Chaddi Campaign. A right-wing intellectual talked to KandaBatata (under the promise of anonymity, as he was afraid of getting truckloads of Pink chaddis landing on his doorsteps) about what he calls “Chaddi Colonialization”
“It’s an old game, for these US corporations. They create a demand where there is none. After all, do you see anyone wearing pink chaddis in India? Pink is not an Indic color. But the west has been trying to re-colonize India, through this chaddi campaign. It’s rich NRI’s who are spoilt by the freedom of internet, who are funding this campaign through reactionary blogs, but a little bit of research will show you who’s behind this”, alluding to an MNC angle.
Obama administration has refused to comment on the “pink bailout”. However souces close to the President have insisted that the President was livid when he heard about the bailout request.
Walmart Sale
“This is what happens when you outsource”, he reportedly said to close aids. “America is the finest country in the world, and America’s workmanship has been the finest in the world, all these years. Just to save a few dollars, these greedy multinationals outsource their work to other countries, and end up in such a mess. It’s the responsibility of every American to act responsibly, in these times of deep distress”
Wal-Mart has already started a “buy one, get three free” discount sale for the pink underwear, but no one from Pink Chaddi campaign seems to be buying any. Indian Bloggers are busy debating if Slumdog Millionaire deserved to get all those Academy awards.
In a move that has sent shivers down the cricketing world, BCCI’s Chief Administrative Officer, Prof. Ratnakar Shetty, announced that BCCI has called off all its future tours, unless ICC rectifies injustice done to Indian batting maestro, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.
Sachin walks off after dismissal
ICC released its latest “all time great” rankings in which the Indian batting maestro figures 26th and 12th on the Test and ODI rankings, respectively. Reacting to the news, Navjyot Singh Sidhu, the former cricketer turned entertainer, alleged that this is just another proof of the racist attitude of ICC.
“It’s an open and shut case of racism against players from the sub-continent. Quite simple”, he insisted, talking to KandaBatata reporter. When questioned on Sangakkara making it to top 10 he said:
“One egg doesn’t an omelet maketh. It just means that the hen needs attention. Any monkey can come up with lists, but a monkey is best utilized by a madari, and not the other way round. Pull the purse strings, and the monkey will dance”
Andrew Symonds, the controversial Australian cricketer, and a fishing enthusiast, reportedly has taken offense at Sidhu’s comments.
“It’s clear to everyone who Sidhu is calling a monkey”, he told Australian TV channel, after another. “I’m consulting my lawyers about the possibility of legal action”
Meanwhile other cricketing greats, like Gavaskar, seemed little reluctant to talk on the issue. When asked what he thinks about the alleged injustice done to the Indian cricketing maestro he replied:
“You’ve to understand that lists are always going to be arbitrary. Let’s make no mistake about it. I mean I’ve featured in tens of lists, from anywhere between 1 and 10. It was a little shocking to see myself at 20, but, that the nature of lists”, he explained. When the reporter said, a little apologetically, he was asking about Sachin, Gavaskar added irritatedly that “I believe I have already answered the question”
ICC said that they have not received any formal intimation from BCCI about the cancellation of any tour, and that they cannot comment on alleged public statements to media, unless they have a “direct” communication or complaint from the said board. But, they insisted, that no country will be allowed to hold the game to ransom, and that they, just as in the past, will not bend to unreasonable demands.
Sources close to BCCI officials reveal that BCCI just wants to get an extra round of IPL organized in the latter half of the year, and is trying to corner ICC into a position where they can get a better bargain. However, KandaBatata never publishes unconfirmed or speculative news. Stay tuned for the updates.
Cities in India saw scenes of protests by women of all hues, often turning violent, after the news of a possible close down of the TV serial “Kyun Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi” (better known as Kyun Ki) hit the media. The Star Group recently announced that they’re going to terminate sourcing and telecasting the popular television series from November 10.
In Mumbai, women took to the streets, and there were some incidents of belan throwing at various Star TV offices. Some Tata Sky and DishTV offices were also attacked, when various rumors did the rounds pointing at one of the two popular DTH service providers being behind Star Group’s unprecedented move. Speaking to the Kanda Batata News, Tata Sky spokesman blamed Reliance, who’ve recently launched there DTH service, for the rumors.
Across India hundreds of women have reportedly tried to kill themselves, using sleeping pills. However, many of them needed sleep so badly, owing to the prolonged soap watching every night, that many just fell asleep. But when they got up the next day, they were again feeling depressed, empty, and wanted to kill themselves.
Anita Naik, a resident of Borivali, a suburb of Mumbai, had this to say: “I don’t know what I’m going to do for an hour every day now. I think I’ll just try and catch up on other soaps that I have been watching during the commercial breaks in Kyun Ki. But, this is like losing my family”.
In Delhi, the protests turned violent, as a group of women tried to break security cordon, as they waited for Chief Minister Sheila Dixit. Police tried to use tear gas to disperse the protesters, but it proved totally ineffective. The CM, who’s got herself into a big mess over her alleged anti-women statements lately, declined to comment. However, she added that it’s a matter that concerns the Center and not the State, as it is a National soap. The police had to resort to lathi charge, to disperse the protesters, who just refused to move – an art they had practiced on a daily basis.
Ekta Kapoor, the brain behind the serial, has expressed shock over Star Group’s decision. She claimed that it’s a patriarchal move by the male dominated Star Group, and that they’re doing it only because she’s the only successful women producer in India.
On the Indian blogosphere, Ekta’s sentiments have resonated with a lot of urban educated women bloggers. Lot of these bloggers, who vehemently hate Kyun Ki, have strongly criticized Star Group for their anti-women stance. A group of Dehli based bloggers, have even announced a “Best of Kyunki” showing, at their upcoming blogger meet.
Meanwhile, the Star spokesman was not available for comment. In a email comment, later, he said that he was busy talking with the producers of Balika Vadhu, to replace Kyun Ki, and dismissed the controversy as unfortunate.
Unrelated News: Kumble, afraid of a ‘forced’ injury, asks for police protection.
American President, George W. Bush, has asked the U.S.Treasury to replace all the existing American currency notes with newly designed notes [Image below], to fight the impending depression and continual gloom. The new design was unraveled by the President himself, in a special press conference held by the President to restore confidence of the American people.
Aiming to be reassuring and to show that he is working on the problem, he said the markets are adjusting to the “extraordinary measures” that have been taken in recent days by the federal government.
“The American people can be sure we will continue to act to strengthen and stabilize our financial markets and improve investor confidence,” he said, as the huge LCD screen projected the image of the new Dollar bill.
New Currency
“What the American people need right now, is faith. The American problem is the problem of diminishing faith – in God, the Bible, and the Government! We, the American people, have forgotten our official motto”, he said, fumbling, then looking at the screen and reading with a little difficulty, as he completed the sentence, “in God We Trust”.
But after that brief fumble, he resumed in his emphatic style.
“I’ve not doubt that God will save America, and its people, and I want to tell every doubting Thomas Jefferson that we take our belief in God quite seriously. That is why we’ve added an inscription “No Kidding”, on the currency notes, after our motto”
“These are the times for the young. And that is why we need an experienced President to take this country out of this financial crisis. The young people must feel that the country cares for them, their dreams, their lingo. And what better way to tell them that we care than to include one such youthful expression on our currency!”
On asked whether he thought these majors are enough to turn the things around, the President asked the journalist curtly:
“I believe in God. Don’t you?”
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