The Large Hardon Collider Ballad

Song #3: Not suitable for work or children. Enjoy!

Dog person

Yes, I'm a dog person.

And I love this video.

Dogs in Cars from keith on Vimeo. (Found this on Gizmodo)

Spooky prank

Now this is a prank!



(via FB)

Mr. W.

One of the best ads I've seen in recent times:


On that note, have a great weekend.

(Link from Mr. Linkastic)

Mr Tiwari - Mr lonely

#chetanblocks funniest tweets

Update:

The most awesome Krish Ashok tells us how Hitler reacts to the news.



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Today was a great day to be on Twitter. Chetan Bhagat made the fourth mistake of his life when he blocked a couple of popular Tweeters on Twitter. What he didn't count on was that the Tweeters who blocked were well networked enough to start a #chetanblocks hashtag which became a trending topic in no time. Rohit documents a part of the story here.

Some classics:

Anand R.

• Nationwide search launched for Chetan Bhagat's sense of humour. No signs yet. #chetanblocks
• Why can't anyone be in Chetan Bhagat's good books? Because there aren't any. #chetanblocks
• What's the difference between a Chetan Bhagat book and a leech? The leech eventually stops sucking. #chetanblocks  
• Why did Chetan Bhagat cross the road? Because nobody could be bothered to block him. #chetanblocks  

 Ramesh Srivats

• There's no need to get scared of @chetan_bhagat. They say his block is worse than his blight. #chetanblocks  
• The first 3D Blockbuster - My dear kutti Chetan #chetanblocks  
• What do they call Chetan Bhagat in Scotland? Blockness monster? #chetanblocks  
• Please vote for @Chetan_Bhagat in the Indiblockies. #chetansblock

chuck_gopal

@chuck_gopal The two states of Chetan Bhagat right now - a lot of gas, and solid bull

Brainstuck

My company is planning to install @chetan_bhagat as firewall. #ChetanBlocks

tantanoo

Somewhere, Shashi Tharoor is heaving a sigh of relief. #chetanblocks

jhunjhunwala

Chetan Bhagat is offline,Will someone else please block me now? #chetanblocks

Some from yours truly (if I do say so, myself)

• "Er, Mr B, do you have some slimmer frocks?" "No, but I have plenty of Twitter blocks." #chetansblock #whenchetanbhagatsoldgirlsdresses  
• C'mon guys. #chetanblocks is not even trending. IS THIS THE INDIA YOU WANT!?!?

The whole universe of posts
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23chetanblocks

And, of course, the classic that started it all -

notytony

I guess this is what they call writer's block RT @chetan_bhagat @flyyoufools buddy, one more smart one and u r blocked. ok?

What a day!

Video based on XKCD classics

Awesome! :)

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

From the chat status of one Mr Amit Mitkar.

Limerick a la Tharoor

(Updated)
If we all must continue using Tweeter,
Our language, folks, needs to be neater.
We cannot call people who fly cattle,
And expect not to get into battle,
When some cattle still travel by sleeper.

Or even better, to Tweeter let's call a ban.
For being social is the very nature of man.
And if we don't want to be left in the lurch,
Pay heed to what they say in research,
Tweet makes for a very lonely man.

Context for last line:

(Also, for those who didn't get the 'Tweeter' references, please check out the inimitable Arnab in Amit Varma's post here.)

God help us please - Mr Anderson

Yesterday I was at a great party where among other things, I had my first viewing of Sam Anderson. Although I don't understand Tamil, his acting, emoting and dancing blew me away. I am forever a fan. I post this small sample from his movie 'Yarukku Yaaru' as a tribute to his greatness. Sam plays an automobile engineer who dreams of building a low-cost car, but is so poor that he can only use crayons for his engineering drawings. In this scene, he meets his college girlfriend who has just returned from Canada with his visa, passport and money. She convinces him, fairly easily, that he should go back to Canada. It is also our protagonist's birthday. And yes, Sam Anderson speaks English.

Bajaj Pulsar 220 DTS-i - The Fastest Indian

I love this ad - Bajaj continues to outdo itself. The music, the actors, the situation, the word play and the tension till the penultimate frame are almost perfect in every aspect.

Hero Honda better dhak dhak reconsider its dhakin' compaign.

Best late night jokes of the week

These guys won't let me embed this. So here you go, check out this nice collection of best late night jokes of the week from HuffPo, I especially like Colbert (the last one) and his take on Twitter.

You Got It Going On

Hilarious video that poses an intriguing moral question - if you put a wig in a dude and pretend that he's a woman, are you really gay? Never heard of Flight of the Conchords before, but think I'll follow it from now. :)

Link courtesy: Giribala

Day 14 - IPL 2

Ah what a day - one of my favourite teams winning and one of my least favourite teams losing.

Kolkata's Knight Riding ways continue. Duminy and Tendulkar doing well up front for Mumbai and they move up to 4th in the table. Predicted, happy result. Go Mumbai!

A more unexpected and happy result was RCB beating KXIP! Yuvraj makes up for his cricketing skills by being unbelievably obnoxious and he did it again when he asked Robin Uthappa to leave - he's an India team mate for God's sake! His 50 and hat-trick wasn't enough to guide his team home. What a fantastic last two overs by RCB - Kumble and Praveen Kumar, I almost expected them to go back to their losing ways after Van Der Merwe's 18th over. But Sangakarra and Jayawardene were kept in check with them going well below run a ball and that's where KXIP lost the game. Just proves that you don't need an expensive Kevin Pietersen to win matches.

The draw looks fantastic now with DD and DC leaving the other teams in the dust. Even RCB has six points. 5th in the table! Who'd have thunk? The second half is going to be really exciting.

On another note - the Vodafone international roaming ad uses words which are basically Kerala dishes - 1. Parota (Similar to Chapatis made from Maida) 2. Puttu Kadala (Rice cakes with chana) 3. Kappa meen (Fish and tapioca)

Check it out!

The twitosphere

[Updated]
Funny video about Twitter.
Courtesy: Fly, you fools!

Ok I give up, you're right Saad, the fail whale so got me. Take a look at the purported video here. Maybe, I could have just tweeted this. There's a faint irony in this somewhere. Hmmm...

Back to basics

I'm back from vacation. Time to switch the out-of-office message off. Sample this:


Large presence in the center would be me. @ the reverse bungee at Clarke's Quay, Singapore.

Back to the routine now. No more octopus balls, shark fin soup, and fried raw oysters for snacks. No evening time Tiger beers by Clarke's Quay. Heck, no beers in public.

At home, it's business as usual: fog in Delhi, Income tax bribery case in Bangalore, burning buses in Kolkata and the union government 'pressurizing' neighbours. It's good to be home.

Blogging may be shaken out of it's holiday stupor. Let's hope.

Indian media - sullying fact

Barkha Dutt is the face of modern Indian news channels - brave but brash, mature but insensitive and worst of all, over anxious to get a newsbyte. I especially detested having to see her report after 26/11. In fact, the backlash against her and her industry was so large that she had to come out with this clarification. It isn't ridiculous, but borders on ordinary. Check out of one these lines for instance:

If we were indeed the obstacle, or the "disabling force" why did they have time for us in the middle of an operation?

Now, look at the video below. Does anyone really look like they are making time for Barkha Dutt?? Is anyone dying to give their interview? Is she in a hurry to move back?



More junk:

Wasn't it important to touch upon the human dimension and not just the military one?

For whom, the family members or the TV channels seeking high TRP's?

Yes, I agree, the media is not all bad, but they really need to get their act together and desist from these and other awfully desperate acts to gain more credibility. Creating viewer interest should not be synonymous with sensationalism, we have entertainment channels for that.

Sleeping like a baby

One of the only times I like McCain (not that it matters), was after the US elections. Upon being asked how his post-campaigning life was, McCain responded:

Well, I've been sleeping like a baby. Sleep two hours, wake up and cry

Video below:

Palin meets Palin

Embedded video from CNN Video

Sarah Palin meets Tina Fey. I guess this shows that the Republican Veep candidate has a good sense of humor. But is that enough? At a time when she's attacking the Democratic Presidential candidate on a personal level, she seems to be taking this almost caustic satire against herself rather lightly.

Good luck, Sarah. Hope it works for you.

Wake up!

Tata tea's ad had a URL for those who have not yet registered for voting.

Check out Jaagore.com in case you haven't registered yet and are interested. It's very simple and easy to understand. An ingenious bit of social marketing to differentiate a commodotized product. It works so well - marvelous!

Reliance BIG jerk TV

All right, so many of you were wondering what the teaser ad above was for. I'm sure many even thought that it was Reliance Big TV's teaser campagin. Wrong! It was actually Bharti trying to create a teaser for it's DTH service. Confused?

That's because Reliance Big TV's ad folks showed immense nimbleness and poor advertising ethics by using the same symbols that Bharti used in its teaser ads (the couch image, and the "See you at home" line). They then proceeded to add some stupid stuff around it like "with over 200 movie channels".

I can understand comparative advertising and even the odd slanderous line here and other, but trying to ride on someone else's ad budget and brand identity by hijacking a teaser campaign is analogous to stealing. I've never really seen the sense in teaser campaigns, and this is a good example of another risk that an overly extended teaser campaign lends itself to. If you choose to classify daylight robbery as a risk, that is.

Bharti would now, I imagine, need to revamp its tag line and identity so as to shake off the confusion that the loose-moralled folks at Big TV have created in the consumer's mind. A good place to get the money would be the compensation they receive after winning the law suit. Big TV - see you in court (with over 32 cinema halls).