I try to say a lot while saying very little. Get used to it.
staying.shitty
of savita and sacrilege
Mar 15th
Posted by SEV in staying.general
‘Tis a little hard to come up with a good way of intro-ing topical posts, while including my own snarkiness in the mix.
Nevertheless, here goes nothing.
It sort of splits up.. oh, you’ll see.
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What will it cost me?
For all our loyal fans, we have worked out a very special offer today. If you signup this month, you can become a Kirtu.com exclusive member for only 9.95$ a month. This offer will only be available for the first 100 members, so hurry. Once this offer is over, new members will have to pay 15$ per month.
[Link]
Yes, its paid. Paid. The desperation of the average Indian male may convince him to loosen his purse strings, while he loosens his pants.
They even have “sneak peek” comics on the front page for those of us who want to make sure that Savita’s “class” has not been lowered (or raised, depending on your POV) as a result of asking us to pay for it.
This paywall happened over 2 months ago. Well before all the hoopla regarding partial feeds recently. That they’ve not taken down the paywall probably means that at least a few people have shelled out. And thats all it takes to keep the site running, really.
After all, how many ads can you target to the average desperate f*ck?
That’s rhetoric, stop answering. And no, I’ve not subscribed. I wouldn’t have even if the Mrs didn’t exist. I prefer my pr0n to be free.
At the other extreme of India, f
rom a couple of months back, the front page of TOI that is alongside stares at me in the face.
[Link to TOI, TOI.com article]
Lets see. There was once this guy who decided to petition that photo ID cards need not have proper photos of the person being ID-ed.
He told people around him, and they agreed that it was a good idea. He then petitioned.
Nobody tried to reason with him that the EC and High Court judgments already made on the matter multiple times actually made sense. Due to the beauty of democracy, he was allowed to file petition and waste the Supreme Court’s time with the matter.
His argument?
Counsel for petitioner M Ajam Khan had contended that asking ‘purdah-nashin’ women to lift their veil for being photographed would amount to sacrilege as their photographs would be seen by many men working as polling agents and electoral officers.
Well truly. Women’s passport IDs being seen by men. Sacrilege indeed.
The SC told him to stop acting like an idiot, and think about what he’s asking them to agree to. Which resulted in:
When the petitioners again insisted on protection of the religious sentiments, the bench said: “If someone comes to vote in a burqa and the photograph was also taken with a veil covering the face, how would anyone identify the voter?’’ Explaining that right to vote was only a statutory right and not a fundamental right, it said: “Right to contest an election is an extension of the right to vote. Can anyone contest an election saying a photograph of her face be not taken?”
[Emphasis mine]
To me that last underline is a goldmine. Imagine, if you will, the world where burqa-clad women can vote with burqa-clad IDs for burqa-clad women who are standing for office.
We’ll never know who won and due to whose vote. Ever.
Actually, that may be an improvement to what we have now. Just sayin’
************************************
And thus:
Savita Bhabhi walks into the voter office, wearing a burqa (Why? The first four times she left the house unclad – without a burqa, perverts – she ended up with (in order): the milkman, the sweeper, the man at the corner waiting for a bus, and the bus conductor. Realizing that the only way out is to ensure that the average Indian is not titillated more than necessary, she adopts her “disguise”). The voting officer won’t let her vote without removing the burqa. Savita resists. He insists. She resists more. He insists more. She gives in, misunderstands, and takes off the entire ensemble, burqa and all. The officer yields to baser instincts and the polling booth cover, for a change, houses two people for a while. Unknown to her, the polling booth camera films the whole sequence. Which is then sold on the internet via Kirtu.com for $10 a month. Meanwhile the SC has to contend with the plethora of cases petitioning to allow no heterosexual acts in voting booths as it would amount to sacrilege, even if the woman in question is Savita.
Savita is just sad that voting happens once every 5 years. Piracy is easiest to combat when new content can be released on a regular basis. There are only so many milkmen, neighbors, and cousins that one can take advantage of.
Meanwhile, a frighteningly large number of voting officers are hit on by homosexuals. For god knows what reason. Maybe just because they can.
Actually, making Savita the poster girl for encouraging voting (Savita saying “I voted”, while licking her thumb) might be one of the more brilliant ideas I may have had.
why you should never buy an HP laptop of any kind ever
Jul 10th
Posted by SEV in staying.shitty
Once upon a time I bought a laptop.
[I know that start is not as great as 'Many many years ago, on a galaxy far far away..' but you can pretend those words appear on the line above if they mean that much to you.]
Anyway. A laptop. An HP dv2500t. Yes, the very same laptop that died on me a few days after my warranty expired.
We are getting ahead of ourselves. Let us return to the beginning of time when the laptop landed in my hands a second time. Yes, I know it is counter-intuitive to think of a ‘beginning of time’ and a ’second time’ simultaneously, but still. In short, HP screwed up the order the first time it shipped to me. So begins the tale of them screwing up. With a screw up.
Flashback to last year. A year of heating problems and over-heating…and my graphics card is shot. I am in the middle of a conference. I need it fixed ASAP. HP charges me $300 (which I now realize I could have invested in a nice efficient little netbook), and ships it back to me pretty quickly. Everything seems fine. A month later, the edge of the panel facing me comes loose from its fastening. Repeat call to HP. They blame it on me. I think it may be possible. I don’t want to spend on it. I live with it. Over-heating still exists. Oh well. Jinxed laptop and all that.
On this trip to India, I find another good laptop engineer. Who is cheap. Amazing how everything in the US costs 10 times as much compared to India. Said engineer tries his best to open the laptop, because I think a cleaning of my laptop is overdue due to the overheating problem yada yada yada. Eventually he decides to try it in his lab. Back at the lab, and an hour later, I get a call.
[E] “Boss, they’ve applied super-glue.”
[Me] “What? HP Support? No..no..not possible. International organization, quality standards, etc etc.”
[E] “Boss, these panels are welded shut to the base. Super-glue. I’ve put in a solvent. Its coming unstuck. I’m telling you. Super-glue.”
[Me] “Ok.. great.. whatever. Open it up, clean and get it back to me. I’ll take care of it.”
So, let me get this straight. HP did not respond to my complaints (apparently, “high-end graphics cards can get pretty hot, sir”) when I said my laptop was over-heating until… my warranty expired and my video card blew. Then they replaced the entire fucking motherboard (‘coz of their god-awesome architecture), couldn’t fix the panels back on correctly, and so used SUPERGLUE to fix it? (My engineer managed to do it just fine without superglue, btw). When it went back to overheating and the panel came loose.. somehow I am to blame. Now, why did the panel really come loose? Well, sometimes superglue doesn’t hold everything in place. Why does it still overheat? Lets see:
- One tiny laptop fan.
- One Core 2 Due CPU.
- One NVidia 8400M GS graphics card.
- One tiny fuckin’ air vent on one corner.
Putting (2) & (3) results in a crapload of heat. Adding (1) to the mix means very little is being cooled down. Adding (4) to the mix means the heat goes nowhere. Bravo for neglecting every single rule about computer architecture and heat dissipation, HP. Now for the rhetoric. Why does HP suck so? Don’t get me started.
Never buy an HP laptop ever again. That’s what I tell everyone. Even the random guy in the store who I see taking a slight interest in HP products. Every salesman I meet at an electronics store in any country. Please don’t buy HP. For the love of manufacturers that make products that actually work.
Please.
Sample crappy HP laptops: Link 1.Link 2
Update (11 Dec 2009): The damn thing has pretty much died. Information gleaned from various sources tells me (1) this nVidia chipset sucks ass, (2) HP does not know shit about heat design for high-end laptops. Having ripped mine apart, I can tell you that the GPU has some kind of rubber between it and the heatsink – instead of thermal paste. I’m just shocked it didn’t die on me earlier. Since this post is hit up a lot:
- Service manual: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01035657.pdf
- Disassembly: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=228268. Please note additional inputs from here as well. I will try to post an even more ‘for dummies’ version based on the notebookreview link (hey, I’m a dummy, I mucked up so many times on this thing too).
- Complaints, solutions, complaints: Link 1 (to be contd.)
I will attempt to find out more about the copper-mod, and see what I can do. Keep updating as and when I know more.
dhinak dhinak din-dainik tamasha!
May 12th
Posted by SEV in staying.general
Hello everyone, and welcome to ‘Dainik Tamasha’. Please welcome Jaan Satwinder!
[Woman of indeterminate age, dressed in a sari, walks in. Namaste to audience while keeping every part of her body and head covered - just in case.]
Hello everyone! Before we begin the show I would like to inform anyone who still watches this show after it has been off-air for 10 weeks that the Dainik Tamasha has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘The Daily Show‘. For one, the name of the show and the host are different, as is the color of the background, and we will definitely not talk about any news broadcasts in a disparaging manner. Well, not any more anyway. After our first episode, we were sued by all the newschannels for using their own footage to appreciate the news. I have to say ‘appreciate’ because I got sued personally when I said ‘made fun of’ the last time. I should not have brought up Barkha Dutt during the Mumbai attacks, Rakhi Sawant’s slap or even pigeons as examples of the fine reporting in India.
A humble request is being made to Comedy Central: please don’t sue us. Or take out ads disclaiming intellectual property on the matter. You should know by now that intellect has little to do with Indian television. Another extended break while the courts put a stay order on the show, have a stay order put on the first one, then have a preliminary hearing in which a stay order is put on putting stay orders… will mean we cannot attract advertisers to sell key catch phrases like the IPL. If you do have to sue (not like Aparna sewing machines, where things once sown must be worn) us anyway, our lawyer is availabe via SMS at any time. Text ‘WLSU 1′ for damages of 1 million, ‘WLSU 2′ for 2 million, and so on to 38434687.
Anyway onto our first segment, ‘Rajneeti Mein Rajya Kam’. Votes have been made by the most important people: all the Khans, their children as well as the Big Bs. We eagerly await results of voting by Feroz Khan and Raj Kapoor.
[muffled yelling on anchor's headphone]
My apologies, those people are dead or presumed missing. However they probably still exist on voter lists around the country, and probably proxy-voted for by 10 year old Rampyaari. Given such awesome voting mechanisms, it is little wonder that..
[scuffling sounds from outside the studio, yelling on headset]
Hold on, someone appears to have stormed our show…
[yelling as big crowd breaks stuff and rampages in]
[Leader of pack] “Aye, yeh sab band karo! Kya chal raha hai idhar? Mujhe bahar sab sunayi de raha tha, tum desh ki sanskriti ko badnaam kar rahe the. Pata hai desh mein aadmi-aadmi shaadi karne lage hain, lekin aurat toh ghar mein rehni chahiye. Kitna achcha tha apna desh, jab yahan computers bhi nahi the.. ”
[Screen goes blank. Tata Sky poster ad comes on, with voice-over by anchor]
Sorry for the interruption. Please note that with Tata Sky there can be no interruptions. Given the chance of legal/destructive action, I am retracting what I just said, and re-affirming faith in the Indian voting system that needs proof that you are not dead to let you vote, and more importantly needs you to exist in myriad Government ledgers – which is somehow easily done by millions of fake voters. Remember the Indian government needs to ensure that you are not a parallel dimensional being or an alien attempting to take over an Indian’s body.
We will attempt to continue in a few weeks time. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Not as good as I was hoping. To be continued..
shera-wat the f*ck
Apr 28th
Posted by SEV in staying.aside
Coming on the heels of Dr. Shilpa Shetty , we now have this.
Like why?
Now not only does my current objective have no meaning, but the place I live in has the absolute lack of sense to honour Ms. Sherawat.
p.s. I like my wordplay in the title. A lot. Go figure.
p.p.s. Yes, I only put the picture there coz her dress starts at her navel. Go Figure.
the laptop gods hate me
Aug 28th
Posted by SEV in staying.general
a year and 60 days after my warranty expires, the nvidia 8400GM graphics card on my hp laptop has fried. no matter that i have pointed out to HP more than once that the laptop does get pretty warm, and i have been using a cooling pad/table since. no matter that graphics cards should only get fried if i really abuse them. no matter that hp’s solution to all problems is to have me send it to them, so that they can do nothing at all. maybe i should have done it earlier. maybe i should have lived without a computer for 15 days while finally tell me i need to use a cooling pad. the support team was pretty nice though, and very helpful. i am just pissed at the quality of the laptop build. $1250 for this ?
what does matter is that this laptop has been pretty jinxed from the word ‘go’. i wonder if this is a hint to move to a super-powered desktop. maybe this one. or, even better, this one.
i sad
i wonder what the blah is going on..
Jul 22nd
Posted by SEV in staying.aside
why does did google currently have a gay.com ad in the sidebar down there ?

it is just disturbing for me. its supposed to be content-based, so that is even more disturbing..
however, that should not stop any of you from clicking it. Please do. I’m begging you.




