Ah, how misleading pictures can be. I’d assumed from the picture here a few days ago that Kangana Ranaut was wearing a skin-color thingie under her dress at the IIFA Awards in Yorkshire—I think it was the way the shadow fell on her neck that gave me that impression. Well, other pictures—like this one—make it clear that I was wrong, and from a close-up I saw in one of the papers but can’t find online, it seemed that the straplike thingie holding her dress together was a piece of cellotape, perhaps hastily improvised to prevent a wardrobe malfunction. Bummer.
I am cent-percent sure that she has officially set a new record in terms of depth (low cut) and exposure of side-boobs ever to be displayed by a Bollywood actor at an event.
I’m a huge fan of side-boobs, and records are meant to be broken. Go for it, someone.
(No, not you Salman. Put your shirt back on and go hunt a chinkara or something.)
PS: I think Kangana is incredibly gorgeous even with all her clothes on. More power to gorgeousity.
So do you find anything objectionable about this commercial? Fox and CBS did, and refused to carry it on their networks. In a statement, Fox said:
Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.
Heh. Fox’s slogan really should be “Back to the 19th Century.” I’m sure what they regret most about the 20th century, even more than the Holocaust, is the emancipation of women—birth control had a lot to do with setting women free, and is a natural enemy. I hardly need to spell out who the pigs really are in this story.
There’s a pithy quote in that story by Carol Carrozza, a marketing executive, that just about sums it up:
We always find it funny that you can use sex to sell jewelry and cars, but you can’t use sex to sell condoms.
Paul Potts, Paul Potts, Paul Potts—what to say now? I’d raved about Paul Potts here, and am delighted that he’s won Britain’s Got Talent. There are some murmurs about how, unlike the other contestants, he “has received professional voice training”, and thus “held an unfair advantage over the other five finalists.” I don’t see why that’s a problem. If he’s spent years working hard on his talent without any reward, then that’s all the more reason to root for him.
Anyway, here’s his performance in the final—as in the audition, he performs Nessun Dorma:
And I could swear that halfway through that, when they cut to Simon Cowell, the man was moved. Tra la, emotion!
"Competition is a better option than controls in ensuring quality,” writes Premchand Palety in an excellent piece in Mint, “Scrap this regulator for business schools”, in which he explains the damage that government regulation has done to the business schools of this country.
It’s a familiar story across sectors, frankly, with MBA education in India being just one illustration of it. Competition in the marketplace always results in better products and services than well-intentioned government regulation. Imagine, for example, what would happen if the government looked at blogs, found that most of them are terrible, and decided to regulate the blogosphere to ensure quality. That’s a scenario Ravikiran Rao examined in his magnificent post, ”Most Blogs Are Terrible,” a couple of years ago. Do read, I think it is hard to disagree with his conclusions.
Ethnic Cleansing? What Ethnic Cleansing by our corr. I. O . Gothabhayasena (SCN Ministry of Defence Eka, 8-6-2007)
Today rumours published in the anti-Government news agencies like AFP, AP, CNN, BBC and ABC gave a false impression that the Glorioush Garment of Sri Lanka was ethnically cleaning the Tamils who were loitering around Colombo. What happened was some of these poor people were smelling of Vaddai and Gingelly oil and had not washed for days.
So what we did was give them a good wash with the best soap and sent them on a picnic to LandMineLand™ in Killinochi, which is a popular Sri Lankan amusement park.
The reactionary press of the rest of the world and our own Supreme Court got it wrong! Next time we are going to pile them all into gas chambers....er....I mean industrial sized washing machines and give them a good wash. The Supreme Court judges need a good washing as well and if you media people ask me any more stupid questions I will wash you as well! So there!
Sinhala satisfaction sighs seductively. Such simpering…
(Link via email from Murali Reddy.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 17 June, 2007 in
Miscellaneous
This character’s creator described him as “insufferable”, and called him a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. On August 6 1975, the New York Times carried his obituary, the only time it has thus honoured a fictional character. Who?
Posted by Amit Varma on 19 June, 2007 in
Arts and entertainment
