… and we will use it like the biggest stage in the world and shout our hearts out.

Without any further ado, presenting…. Ashok!

This post is not about callipygian features. It’s about allegiances and disappointment, specifically my allegiance to the the Old Lady of Mount Road and the disappointment resulting from reading her newest stable-mate.

There was a point, even after I came to the US that The Hindu was the place I’d go first for my news, soon after I walked into the lab in Ohio. And you could argue that I lost my fan-boy like blind following when I found a report in The Hindu about a “100 days” celebratory event for Saamy.

Then, sometime last year I found out that The Hindu had a new stable-mate. This paper, Ergo, is circulated apparently in an “all-color format” and has been described (on its website) as a free sheet targeted at young, salaried professionals of Chennai initially “targeting the IT corridor”. I found that the web edition had a proper RSS feed and almost immediately I added it to my Google Reader feeds.

Then suddenly, the feeds stopped and started again after a gap of a couple of months.But from the feeds, I think that the content leaves much to be desired. With headlines such as “Nicole Kidman poses nude for magazine“, “Jordan set for fifth boob job“, “Christina Aguilera back in shape” and “Gemma Molloy off to party with Hefner“, it looks like Ergo is positioning itself as a supermarket tabloid or what could pass off as one in Namma Chennai.

First thing, who is Gemma Molloy? Apparently she is an Australian model. And Michael Jordan has man boobs? And Cuba, did you get an eyeful of his Airness’s man boobs when you did all those commercials for Hanes? Oh, they are talking about Katie Price? Whew!

Jokes apart, it looks like most of the entertainment news is recycled trash from TMZ or Perez Hilton. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but what’s the point of doing it in Chennai? What’s the core value that this “tabloid” is shooting for? Dumbed down news to the email forward creating, fast food chomping BPO types? Now that would sound like a sound business plan to my father. To me, going by what I see online, it seems like the editorial team’s priorities are muddled.

I am not sure if Page 3 Australian celebrities are worth newsprint acreage in India. I am not sure even Hollywood page 3 celebs are worth it. Wait, am I wrong? Do people in India really care if Kim Kardashian took a public shower in a bikini top and a sarong, which the people from thesuperficial.com very kindly brought to my attention last week (I have thesuperficial in my feed reader, solely for the illuminating commentary about Amy Winehouse’s skin ailments, honest!).

If recycled trash was the first thing that strikes me, the last straw is this gallery that showed up on the Ergo feed today. It made me do a double take and wonder if this was a feed from Ergo or one of those Kollywood type websites that post publicity photos from movies that never get made publicity photos that almost always show skin. You know, the one’s that make you think later that the pictures were probably from one of those movies that ended up as soft porn?

I went back and looked at the About page and found this line -

The team was handed total editorial freedom, with just two riders: to follow the “rule of the land”; and keep a check on issues pertaining to taste.

Well, there is no law that prevents “galleries” such as the one that I linked above, but I thought it was in poor taste for a publication that is a stable-mate of The Hindu.

The website itself looks like it is still in beta, though a footnote in the About page indicates to the contrary. For quite sometime (when the feeds weren’t being updated), on the main page, the link to their feeds took me to The Hindu’s main page. The section naming doesn’t make sense (Featured story 1 and Featured story 2?). This Podcast link leads to nowhere, though there are podcasts available (there is an error in the WordPress category id used in that link). Frankly looking at all of this, I think the beta testing was a sham and the design looks amateurish.

I would be willing to look past the website because I am willing to make the assumption that this was intended to be an offline till someone decided that they should have a web presence. It is stupid to give the online edition step-motherly treatment, but India being India, I guess that happens.

However considering that the website design is credited to a company owned by someone who is considered by many as a doyen among Chennai bloggers and that the “Editor, Publisher and Printer” for Ergo used to be a notable Chennai blogger at one point (if it’s the same person!), I am appalled.

Even then, if someone tells me that the offline version is better, I’d be inclined to believe. The restaurant reviews in the Saapad subsection are pretty informative, considering that I haven’t lived in Chennai for sometime. The Lifestyle section has had some interesting articles that make for nice light reading. And the Entrepreneurs sub section that aims to bring new business models into the open is a brilliant idea.

So if all of those articles (that I read and appreciated in the online version) found a place in the offline paper, then it is all good. However my visibility is limited to the online format alone and frankly if I were to go solely on the basis of this underwhelming online evidence, Ergo is doomed. While I want to root AGAINST that, I don’t think I will win that bet.

Reliable sources have alleged that the members of the simian world are thinking of complaining to the US Senate (which has recently been perceived as having an edge over Judge Judy and the United Nations, as the premier small claims arbitrator of the world) about the use of “that word” as a racial slur. You, Mike, can help us dismiss this simian charge and bring normalcy back to international simian-human relations.

Recent reports have also suggested that inter-racial couples and couples in aviyal relationships are refraining from using “that word” while referring to their partners affectionately. Your explanation might help to restore normalcy to that part of society too.

Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Anantha.

(P.S: I don’t expect either you or those arses Symonds, Ponting and Hayden to know this, but a friend suggested yesterday that a certain bawdy Hindi phrase could rhyme with “that word”. And while the aforementioned Hindi phrase is admittedly offensive, there is nothing racial about it. Brett Lee, who is starting to annoyingly become “more desi than thou”, can be called to give circumstantial evidence to this claim. As you know, Brett Lee is an Aussie. So his words would be more credible than mine, no?)

Rediff’s Rajaneesh Vilakudy says,

If top industry sources are to be believed, Shankar will work with Rajnikanth in Robot, which was planned to be shot with Shah Rukh Khan in the lead and as producer. But the project apparently did not work out owing to ‘creative differences’, with Shah Rukh himself confirming the separation.

In any case, going by what I know about the movie, its not Thalaivar material at all.

Though the film’s thread is not confirmed, the name ‘Robot’ and widely-speculated media reports suggest the story is about a maverick scientist who creates a robot and later runs into trouble with his pet creation.

Thankfully (even if you don’t agree with me that Thalaivar should not touch this even with a pole), Rajaneesh also reminds us to take this piece of news with a pinch of salt with his parting shot -

Interestingly, a search on ‘Robot-Shanker-film’ throws up many actors’ names as the heroes of this dream project — the latest being Ajith of Billa fame in the lead.

So, thanks for nothing!

(P.S: I am hyperventilating. No one come to me with smart ass comments. To trump all of you, I have made the most smart ass of posts. Thank you for understanding!)

So, I was very curious as to why I am getting so many invites (and reminders). The reason it got me so worried was, a few months ago a number of people seemed to have been conned into giving their Orkut profile info to another desi social networking site that spammed everyone of their friends. And those emails looked just like the ones from Shelfari? And now that I know exactly what happened, I don’t think I’d be wrong if I said that most of these people who “sent” me invites did not intend to do so.

This is what i did. Instead of clicking on any of the invites that I got, I went on Shelfari.com and chose an id, password and put in my usual spam id and voila. In the next screen, I saw this.

I think most people don’t read this properly and assume that they are asked to enter their login details again. I can’t think of any other reason. And once they do so, their Google address book is open for Shelfari to farm and send out invites. But again, to Shelfari’s defense, they have provided an way out. But for that, you actually have to read what is on the page.

So if you don’t intend to hear me cursing at you next time (if at all) we talk, here’s what you do – READ the damn page! And move your mouse over every single line of text. At the bottom of the email details frame, you see this (under either bottom corner of the said frame).

And voila, if you had followed my instructions and moved your mouse over each line, you’d find that one of these two pieces of text is actually a link! How sneaky is that! Click the link and you are in Shelfari and I don’t have any reason to curse you for your stupidity either.

So there. Become a member of any damn website that you want to be a member of. Just don’t give my email address to them. If there is something that is interesting on this Web 2.0 thingy, I am on the internet long enough every day that I’d have read about it extensively on Slashdot/Boing Boing/Gizmodo/Wired first before I got any invite from any of you n00bs!

I got this picture as an email forward yesterday. This is one of the VERY few cricket related email forwards that actually made me laugh. For those of you who are not in the know, the conversation is actually from this movie. Non-Tams, please excuse. The point of the joke’s lost upon explanation.

Enna kodumai sir, idhu?