Celebrating Celebrities

Here is a list of my favourite celebrities (fictitious and real) and the reasons why I am a die-hard fan of them.


Seven greatest celebrities!


1. Harry Potter: The protagonist of the most exciting series ever written is also a great conversation starter, ice breaker and a brilliant instrument for hitting on chicks without the risk of appearing gay (no offense to twilight fans!). Overuse of harry potter may however be disastrous.
Boy: I must be in Flitwick’s class! You’re charming!
Girl: Well then i have failed miserably because I was trying out vanishing spells on you.
Boy: Ouch! You must be confusing my heart with a phoenix. My heart is not the thing that regenerates after burning!
Girl: Rowling on the Floor Laughing!


2. Katrina Kaif: She is the most inspiring celebrity on the planet. She proves that you don’t need talent or wit or even the basic knowledge of your work to succeed! You can make it big without it all. She also proves that persistence pays! I would take this opportunity to congratulate Katrina for finally getting her first facial expression right in ‘Rajneeti’ after struggling in the industry for seven years. You’ve earned it girl, you’re an inspiration for us all!


3. Sourav Ganguly: Never mind that he has had a few disgraceful exits from the team. Dada, as his fans call him, is still God! I wasn’t a huge fan of dada until a Bengali friend and a diehard Dada fan made me realise why people worship him. “Dada never disappoints.” He said “Dada either plays as expected, or when he scores some runs, better than expected!”


4. Himesh Reshammiya: If you hate his nasal voice, his catchy but irritating songs and his relentless narcissism, you’re not alone! Hundreds of online communities with thousands of members hate Himesh Reshammiya too. People made Raavana statues with beards and caps, stopped naming their kids Himesh, and gave rise to WWE superstars like HHH (few people know that it stands for Hardcore Himesh Hater). I hated him too until one day I was invited to a couple’s third anniversary celebration. Throughout the party they never even looked at each other. I wondered what kept them together. It turned out that the only thing they had in common was hatred for Himesh. I suddenly started admiring and hating Himesh at the same time. Cheers to Himesh Bhai for uniting the world in mutual hatred!


5. Barack Obama: He is the original hope generator! He gave people hope and became the most powerful man in the world. He gave the nobel academy hope and won the nobel peace prize. I put his book beside my fish bowl and my goldfish jumped out of it hoping to be able to fly. There are now get-well-soon cards being printed with his photo on them with messages like: Hope all your teeth grow back! Here’s hoping success for his first music album: Hip Hoper!


6. The country club president: I don’t know his name but he tries so hard to be a celebrity by being present in every single one of Country Club’s advertisements. He’s a little fat, has a Rajnikant hairdo, wearing sunglasses and smiling at you with his thumbs up while saying “Welcome to country club”. Nobody actually acknowledges him as a celebrity or a model so I would like to honour him with celebrity status on my blog. He sure is entertaining!


7. Woody Allen: He is perceived as an intellectual but is not very well known. He is someone who is witty and cool. He is also the perfect celebrity to validate your original quotations. Pass off your own quotes as those of Woody Allen and see them appreciated much more than they deserve to.
“The toppers think the others know nothing. The others think the toppers know nothing. Unfortunately they are all right!”
- Woody Allen


Use discretion though. The following quotes may not exactly be convincing.
“Da difference between da localites and da hostellites is dat da hostellites ROKK. LOL!”
- Woody Allen
Or
“’Seven things’ is the freshest new blog on the net. It is like freshly brewed coffee from the plains of Costa Rica.”
- Woody Allen

Sleeper Hits

A fourteen hour train journey in a sleeper coach in India is probably more entertaining than the entire LOTR trilogy (and is only half as long) provided you meet some fascinating people. Here are some people who make the hassles of travelling non-AC, totally worth it.


Seven Fascinating People you meet on a train!


1. The Vuvuzelas: They are usually old. When you first see them, you pity them for having to travel alone at that age, however soon you realise that their family is in the adjoining compartment. They are alone because they are strategically planted in your compartment. They would have a constant frown on their face which would not change even for the small kid who regularly brings them something to eat from the next compartment. Every few minutes you see them move their thigh a bit, make a thunderous vuvuzela sound and straighten up without altering their frown by a micrometer. They even reply to your questions (Could I switch on the fan?) with the vuvuzela sound!


2. The Statistician Patriots: They will convince you with their 3 hour long monologue, that corruption is the single greatest challenge that this country faces. They would furnish the latest (generated 7 seconds ago) statistics about people and their behaviour and propose strategies to change this country by 90% (whatever that means). When the TTE (train ticket examiner) arrives, they take less than 7 seconds to slip him a 100 rupee note to speed up the seat allocation process by 200%. “It cost me 50% more last time!” They’ll tell you later with a huge grin.


3. Gold-Fingers: They would probably be sitting next to you. They have a mutant nail on their little finger (could be an inch long). The nail would keep probing every orifice on and around their face looking for gold. However after passionate searching, once they have found the gold, they just flick it away with the indifference of a monk towards treasure. Your journey suddenly becomes exciting, trying to keep yourself away from the projectile of the relinquished riches. You mind also stays busy trying to keep the gold-finger away from your body.


4. Chhota Kotler: He’s young, about 25, a little naive and has just started a new business of making stuffed toys. He is carrying pictures of his products and is trying to show them off to everyone in compartment, the neighbouring compartment and to the TTE. Everyone patronizes him. The statistician patriot gives him some advice to reduce the costs by 50%. The gold-finger runs his prized asset all over the pictures before handing them to you. Even the vuvuzela chips in by trying to give a squeaky sound effect to the picture of a stuffed squirrel that you are watching.


5. The Lady Boys: Even the strongest dudes shudder on hearing the sharp claps marking the arrival of the lady boys. They extort you and there is nothing you can do about it. Your biceps and your ‘contacts’ are rendered useless once they start calling you ‘mere SAROOKH’ and blow kisses at you. You simply pay up. Sometimes you may get flattered when they call you “Aamir Khan” and decide to give them 10 bucks extra, but you tend to change that decision a second later when you hear them call Mr. vuvuzela, “Hrithik!”. Nothing scares them except perhaps Chhota Kotler who tries to make them see his stuffed-toy-pictures!


6. The Snipers: They never sit by the window. Their mouths are so full that when they talk, all you hear is gurgling. After continuing in gurglish for a few minutes they finally decide to give their drowning tongue some space by leaning over your shoulder and letting out spittle jet with the accuracy of an archer fish, right out of the window. From about 2 feet away they manage to empty their mouth without spilling a droplet on the window bars or your shirt. It’s an act that deserves a standing ovation. Better entertainment than Ripley’s!


7. The Wandering Targets: They show up at 4 am with their stereophonic chants of ‘CHAI CHAI’ and collect more abuses than orders. Their true value however lies in the reactions that they invoke. The vuvuzela greets them in his signature fashion. The statistician patriot sleepily mumbles a strategy to reduce the Chaiwallah’s kin by 90%. The gold-finger, disturbed by the commotion, tries to find comfort by setting his wild animal free and Chhota Kotler wakes up with a start and rummages through his bag to find the pictures before the Chaiwallah disappears!

Managerial Motivation

It takes about a month of working, on an average, to realise the fact that ‘managerial motivation’ is an oxymoron. I would however give full marks to managers (and bosses in general) for persistence. They never stop motivating you to work harder. A manager, who stops motivating, is like a shark that stops swimming; both are bound to drown. It takes some time however to figure that a manager is the devil’s messenger and the sweet message he has for you is nothing but a curse, gift wrapped in jargon by demons. Here are some of the most inspirational quotes (at face value) from managers. Most of them are original and authentic.


Seven Most Inspirational Quotes by Managers

1. “As human-resources, we must focus less on our humanness and more on our resourcefulness.”


2.  “There is tremendous growth possible in the project. There are huge opportunities. It’s just that you won’t see them.”


3. “You are unhappy because you are unable to align your personal aspirations with your company’s objectives. Alignment is the key to happiness.” (If this makes sense to you, think about it for a while. You’ll get the cruel joke.)


4. Encouraging a programmer to document the beautiful piece of code he’s written: “I gave you good work and you did it well. Now I’m giving you horrible work and dare you do it horribly!” ( Drocumint virgeon 1.0 usar giude.....)


5. “Under me you’ll have a lot of freedom, provided we have a good understanding of each other. You can do whatever you want. Heck, if we share a good rapport, I’ll even let you resign!”


6.  “You have been doing so exceptionally well that I can’t evaluate your performance just on the basis of the work you’ve done, anymore.” (True story!)


7. The most inspirational managerial quote however, to this day, remains a gem from Scott Adams. Pointy Haired Boss shows his subordinates a picture of his breakfast, bacon and eggs, and tells them “While the chicken contributed, it was the pig that was truly committed.”

I'm blogging too!

Blogs usually bore me to death. Most blogs are a display of ‘grandiloquence’ starting right from their titles (Incoherent Confluence, Myriad Musings etc. ...all of which could easily be replaced by: Yawn!), and are usually too long or uninteresting to hold one’s attention. However, realising the social need for having one’s own blog, I have decided to give it a shot anyway. Now since most blogs have only one reader, the blogger himself, I have decided to lower the standards of this blog to suit that reader. I shall keep it short and say not more than seven things at a time.


Seven Reasons Why I Started This Blog

1. My marketing professor likened me to P.G. Wodehouse after I wrote a 43 words long sentence for his report which didn’t make any sense whatsoever.


2. I have found a collection of old MAD magazines from where I can lift jokes for this blog.


3. To demonstrate my creativity. (Please notice the seven exclamation marks after ‘Seven Things’)


4. To recycle my old jokes and ideas into a new format. (Be patient! The six-pack-abs jokes will come in a few days)


5. To replace ‘Blood Donation’ from my hobbies, on my resume, with ‘Writing’. (I just realised that blood donation is a little painful and a little stupid to write off as a hobby.)


6. To have something to do online other than ‘liking’ people’s Farmville stories on Facebook.


7. I actually wanted to make it 10 things, but can’t think of 3 more reasons.