Arbit Wednesday night rants and linx

I don't know what to say, I'm still laughing. This is a DVD rip of Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith, bought from a friendly neighbourhood pirate in China, which has been translated in Chinese and then back to English. So you end up watching, Star War : Backstroke of the West.
Hila-fucking-rious.
I know Wertti now loves J-Rock, so I thought there might be other people who like arbit J-Rock. Or as in this case, and I quote, "2 young Japanese girls rock duo from Osaka JAPAN!
Naked rock!!!!! Naked soul!!! Red red strong red dress!! Freeeeeeeeedam" (bottom of the page)
I got some strange phone calls today. The first was a series of phone calls from Haier telling me that I should have called their P7 'pen phone' crap, which it is, and that 'respectable' publications like the WSJ had given it good reviews. Which they then threatened to fax me. Before I got fired from my job because a 'hurt' consumer durables company used up reams of fax paper, I told them tht their phone was 'crap', and that said WSJ reviewer must no nothing. OK, so after a google of results, um, I now know that yank phone reviewers no jackshit. Thats primarily because they've been brought up on a steady diet of crappy cellphones by Motorola. Sure, it looks good, but the Nokia 6880 I'm using is a lot cooler. And it works. And it has a 1.3 megapixel camera on which I have several nice shots of Cal which I'll upload once I get around to paying Bharti for the broadband connection at home. I also recieved some calls from the India correspondent of Der Speigel, no not for a job, but because Bossman in some glorious moment of temporary insanity (sorry ed. in advance, don't fire me for this) thought that I was an 'expert' on the automotive industry. Other than the fact that I now know that the Tata Indica is as crappy to drive as it is to your street credibility, I'm not much of an expert. Though I will un-hesitatingly tell you to buy a Maruti Swift, because it is the most fun car on Indian roads today that costs less than Rs 25 lakhs. Anyway, there is some panga with the Volkswagen deal, but if you use shady Indian auto-importers as your pointmen, what do you expect? I'll tell you something about half the 'Lexus' cars and SUV's you see in India. They are all rebadged Toyota's. Shady car importers import say a Toyota Crown or Toyota Landcruiser and then they rebadge everything about the car. The giveaway, the Sat-Nav system in the car. No-where in a Lexus does it say Toyota, not even in the Sat-Nav. But rich Punjabi cloth-merchant or Gujju Lala don't know this fact, right? So they import a car for say Rs 10 lakh, rebadge the 'T's with 'L's and sell it for Rs 25 lakh. Brilliant, ain't it. The sad thing for them now is that the new series of Lexus cars and SUV's look wildly different from the current Toyota's. Thank god.
Childrens books of the early Soviet era! Reminds me of the NBT Childrens books of the fifties in India.
Talking of childrens books, whatever happened to Uncle Pai and Tinkle? I used to love Tinkle comics, the old paperback ones, not the new plasticated stuff. Maybe I've just grown old. I don't even miss Target anymore. If I ever meet Ajit Ninan I must tell him to start a Detective Moochwala strip again in ToI. That, if nothing else, will compel me to buy ToI. In fact the lack of Indian strips has always puzzled me. We have some of the largest newspapers in the world, but other than a silly left-wing propoganda strip run by Jug and Neelabh, there is almost nothing! Sad! By the way, if you want to buy Amar Chitra Katha, you know the mildly Hindu right-wing historical epics brought out by the same guys who brought of Tinkle and have a few hundred dollars of spare, check this out!
Oh yeah, and Londinium won the right to host the Olympic Games in 2012. Wonder if the good old Queen will still be around, or will Monkey Ears inaugurate it?
God save the Queen. (y'know the one who stands at the corner of Zakir Hussain Marg every evening)