I mean, what tops Le Royale? Le Imperiale?
Wikipedia to the rescue. The Angus Third Pounder is not sold outside America and Canada (where it is called an Angus Deluxe in Ontario). No clarification, however, on whether this is because the rest of the world has the metric system, and wouldn’t know what the fuck a third pounder is.
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Arbit Fundaes, Books Movies and Music, Food | Tagged: Angus Third Pounder, check out the big brain on brett, le big mac, le royale, McDonalds, quarter pounder with cheese, they got the metric system there | 
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Posted by Aadisht
Last week, the Planetizen news feed on urban planning posted a link to how contrary to predictions, retiring baby boomers were moving not to cities but to the rural countryside in Oregon (Planetizen summary, actual news story).
The very next link on the feed was titled Not So Fast and linked to another story from San Jose which said that seniors were in fact very much moving from suburbs to cities (Planetizen summary, actual news report). What explains these two contradictory trends?
I think the answer lies in the small population (by Indian standards) of America and particularly Oregon. Oregon has slightly under 4 million people. It has as many people as Ahmedabad in an area the size of undivided Uttar Pradesh. With that kind of population density, the number of people who need to do something to make it a trend is very small indeed. (Warning! Reckless Exaggeration ahead!) If three people do something, it seems like a trend. If twenty people do something it begins to look like an independent subculture.
Now, let’s extend already reckless exaggeration even further. Along with the high productivity, resulting leisure time, and huge capital base, maybe the reason the West is ahead in the creation of new subcultures and alternative lifestyles is simply that their population is so small that far fewer people have to be doing the same thing for them to stand out. If twenty people start dressing in black clothes and heavy eyeliner in Austin, Texas (population: less than 700,000) they become a Goth movement, but in New Delhi, India (population: more than 10 million) you would need 20,000 people acting in the same way for a subculture to get attention; let alone traction.
The implications of this are actually very alarming. What if existentialism achieved its name and fame just because Jean-Paul Sartre was good at socialising in cafes and a group of twenty chelas in a city of less than 3 million looked like a major movement. If Skimpy had been grown up in similar circumstances, perhaps philosophy students would today be studying studs-and-fighter-ism.
So basically this is a reason to support Atanu Dey’s plan for 600 new mid-sized designer-cities in India. It will give us cities that strike a happy balance between being urban enough to generate subcultures, and small enough for subcultures to get noticed.
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Posted by Aadisht
I honestly don’t care about the Commonwealth Games (or any sporting event that doesn’t involve Dwayne Leverock for that matter). But if Commonwealth Games are what it takes to give Delhi better roads, a better airport, and Metro connectivity up to Green Park, I am all for them. I mean, it would be nice if the Kaangressi sarkar built infrastructure for the Delhi-ites who have to use it everyday, but as long as we get to use it eventually it’s okay if they build it for athletes and delegates.
As far as the Commonwealth goes, I wish it would do something more useful than giving Delhi better infrastructure as a second or third order effect. A good place to start would be to make travel between Commonwealth members visa-free. As a citizen of a former British colony, why the hell do I have to pay 10,000 rupees for a British visa?
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Posted by Aadisht
Ayyo! Alas! Alamak! My post on ideological violence in Delhi and other cities has provoked controversy in the comments, with various people accusing me of saying that everyday violence provides catharsis, or that I was trying to use twenty years of peace to play down the anti-Sikh riots, or that I was saying that Delhi was better than everywhere else or that Delhi was worse than everywhere else.
People, I was not trying to imply anything with that post. It was purely an observation, and I threw it out in a short blogpost. I did not give much thought to the why’s and wherefores of this. I am now paying the price for writing like Dilip D’ Souza and not stating what is a premise and what is a conclusion. So, to clarify things:
Now that I’ve given some thought to this issue – I think the reason there’s very little ideological violence in Delhi is that in the other states ideological violence is usually caused by different identity groups jockeying for power and access to government machinery – or if not directly to grab power, as a show of strength or threat on behalf of political parties.
In Delhi, everyone has access to someone in government somehow. A neighbour or relative or some connection will be anything from a political party member to a minor clerk to an IAS officer. There’s hardly anybody who’s totally excluded from the administrative or political process, and so nobody needs to join a mob to grab the spoils of government. Delhi’s corruption is very democratic. In other states, government servants’ class, caste or language biases could mean that they won’t do your work even if you’re ready to bribe them.
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Posted by Aadisht
I think that if you are unlucky in your genetic makeup or your early development, then your heart, liver, lungs or kidneys will probably fail by the time you’re in your sixties or seventies and you will die at that age. But if you are blessed with good health, then you will survive these dangerous decades and live into your nineties.
Basically the people who survive into their nineties do so because they are obscenely healthy and so stay obscenely healthy even at that age. And so they may have hearing aids or walking sticks or be on medication, but they aren’t bedridden or perpetually in and out of hospital.
This very unscientific theory is based on seeing all the 80 and 90 year old relatives at my 74 year old great-aunt’s chautha last week.
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Posted by Aadisht
Last year, metal and punk fans ran amok in Mexico beating up emo fans. It got so bad that the emo kids had to get police protection. It seems that the metalheads got so pissed off at the emos constantly talking about how life sucked and suicide was better that they decided to help them along:
Via the Austin American Statesmen, several postings on Mexican social-networking sites, primarily organising spot for these “emo hunts,” have been dug up and translated. One states: “I HATE EMOS!!! They are not even people, they are so stupid, they cry over meaningless things… My school is infested with them, I want to kill them all!”
Another says: “We’ve never seen all the urban tribes unite against one single tribe before… Emos, their way of thinking is for crap, if you are so depressed please do us all a favour and kill yourselves!”
The whole thing has two important implications.
The first is that Richard Dawkins is wrong. Do you remember how after 9/11 he had an essay which said that religion is a convenient label for identity formation and so drives violence? But alas, identity formation doesn’t depend on religious indoctrination by your parents. People find ways to choose their own identities (metalhead, punk, goth, emo), and then cheerfully slaughter each other over them. So it goes. (Kunal also helpfully points me to this pertinent Penny Arcade quote: “Policing the output of our cultural apparatus for wrongthink is a pleasant occupation for young men with surplus energy.”)
The second implication is that we in India have dodged a major bullet. Can you imagine if the Lata Mangeshkar/ Asha Bhosle rivalry had spiralled out of control? If it was fought not between O P Nayyar and Naushad but gangs of fanatical fans, ready to spill blood (their own or others) over the issue of who had recorded more songs or whose pitch was more controlled? The result would have been sheer carnage.
Even more horrifyingly, it would eventually have resulted in a Romeo and Juliet or West Side Story sort of situation. A guy from the Lata didi fan club would fall for a girl from the Asha tai fan club. After five acts, they would both die, but not before Bappi Lahiri too perished in the violence, shouting “A plague o’ both your houses!” with his dying breath. Then finally the two fan clubs meet and their differences are mediated by a Kishoreda fan. But unfortunately by that time the plague would have incarnated as Himesh Reshammiya.
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Posted by Aadisht
This morning I realised something. Delhi is probably the most violent metro in the country when it comes to stuff like general rudeness, road rage, sexual harassment and rape, and beatings and brawls. But it has the least ideological violence.
So although Bombay, Bangalore and Chennai are more easygoing in general, they all have these bouts of ideological or political party sponsored violence. In Bombay you have the MNS beating up anybody who isn’t a Marathi manoos, in Bangalore the Kannada Rakshana Vedike goes about rioting against Tams and outsiders, and in Chennai you have regular outbreaks of either caste violence or anti Sri Lanka riots. If you insist on calling Calcutta a metro, they have Bangla bandhs.
Apart from the stain of the anti-Sikh pogrom twenty four years ago, Delhi has mostly been free of organised rioting and violence.
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Posted by Aadisht
In a comment to my previous post, Manojar informs me about Ambikapathi and Amaravathy, Chozha Nadu’s very own doomed in louw couple. The story is elaborated in detail elsewhere on the Internets. It turns out that:
The King sentences Ambikapathi to death. But Amaravthi intervenes, claiming equal responsibility for whatever may have been the crime that Ambikapathi is said to have committed. In the ensuing argument, the King condemns Ambikapathi as sham poet who could write only verses that cater to man’s baser instincts. Ambikapathi is outraged at this slur on his poetic capabilities. The upshot is that if Ambikapathi could sing 100 devotional songs in succession, the King promises him Amaravathi’s hand in marriage. If he failed in this challenge, he would be executed forthwith. Amaravathi visits Ambikapathi in prison that night and urges caution. Ambikapathi laughs away her fears, assuring her that he is wholly confident of his own capabilities. A relieved Amaravathi says that she would be counting the songs, and would appear before him at the end of the ordeal.
The court assembles next day at the vasantha madapam, and in the august presence of the King, ministers and scholars, Ambikapathi commences his soiree with a short invocation to Saraswathi, the Goddess of learning. Amaravathi mistakenly counts this as one of the hundred songs, and so at the end of the 99th song, she appears happily in front of Ambikapathi to signal his victory. Overjoyed at sighting his beloved, and thinking that he has completed the hundred songs, Ambikapathi bursts into a verse in praise of Amaravathi’s appearance. Rising with grim satisfaction, Ottakoothar points out that only 99 devotional songs had been sung, and hence Ambikapathi has lost the challenge. Kamban’s anguish-filled plea for clemency falls on deaf ears, as the King orders the death sentence to be carried out. Ambikapathi is put to death, and the grief-stricken Amaravathi too falls dead… their souls unite in heaven.
This is remarkable. Normally it is only a problem when the guy comes early.
Update: On reflection, I realise that actually Ambikapathi did ejaculate (with joy) prematurely.
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Posted by Aadisht
The most excellent PeeGeeKay sent me the link to youtube videos of Garfunkel and Oates. Including this one about sex with ducks:
We already know that ducks are sinister fascists. They also break the law, and rape and pillage. And new evidence has emerged that they acted as Stalinist enforcers. Indeed, it was a shared loathing for these scum from the pond that brought me and the darling girlfriend together.
Garfunkel and Oates have also pointed out that pregnant women are smug:
In some cases the smugness lasts well beyond the pregnancy, and thus we have the Mad Momma.
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Posted by Aadisht
Moving back to Delhi has meant that I now watch TV that is not Balika Vadhu and Bigg Boss. My mother usually has FRIENDS turned on when I get home. These days, Star World is showing the final season again. And this made me realise…
So FRIENDS wrapped up in 2004, right? And in the last few episodes Chandler and Monica buy a house in the suburbs and move there with two newly adopted infants. Hmmm.
So basically they bought a house in the suburbs at what was almost the peak of the housing bubble. And now the housing bubble has collapsed. It’s possible that their mortgage is underwater and they owe more than the house is worth. Not only that, they have to pay for kids. But even worse than that, look at their jobs. Chandler is in advertising, which is the first thing that gets hit in a recession. And Monica is a chef and relies on people putting discretionary expenditure, which is also just not happening in these harsh times. Unemployment therefore looks very likely. And they live in New York, where health insurance is very much employer-dependent (my uncle is avoiding early retirement for this very reason). So, to summarise:
Their lives are truly miserable. Which means that there is actually hope for them – they now have a bright chance of getting on to a show on Colors.
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Posted by Aadisht