The Third Slip: Issue 44 - Ape Jokes Aren’t Funny
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip - the newsletter where nothing is made up and the points do matter. We may indulge in (alleged) satire on occasion, but it is our line anyway to say things that matter. If we were a fielding position in cricket, we would be Silly Point - not afraid to stand in the eye line of the batsman wielding all the power and try to get under his skin by calling him out, ready to catch him out at a moment’s notice, but more often than not getting hit in the nether regions of our body and trying to find the funny side of it. This is issue 44 of The Third Slip and we’re still here. Or as you Bollywood fans might say, 4-4 baj gaye lekin party abhi baaki hai.
What’s better than depressing news? Hilariously depressing news...
Primate Detective: This week, a union minister claimed that Darwin’s theory of evolution is scientifically wrong because “no one saw an ape turning into a man”. He went on further to say such wrong theories should be changed from school and college curricula. Reporters gathered around Satyapal Singh (whose name ironicaly either means a pal of the truth or a keeper of the truth, our Hindi isn’t up to scratch) were about to point out that they were witnessing a man turning into an ape, before TTS stepped in and commented that ‘Union Minister Satyapal Singh’ anagrams to ‘Roughly insistin’ apes ain’t man’ to which the minister replied “That’s right, and ‘Charles Darwin’ anagrams to ‘A arch swindler’” getting some anagrammatical traction at the expense of a grammatical transgression.
A glitch in nine saves time: Madam Goodluck shined brightly on the Indian team putting them in undeserving winning positions at various points, but India’s nine series winning streak was halted rudely by a rampant South Africa who gave India the Ungli through their debutant Lungi Ngidi. India have only themselves to blame for some schoolboy level fielding and bizarre dismissals and tough questions are being asked of the team and its management. Mukul Kesavan tells us why Rohit Sharma’s selection over Ajinkya Rahane is important in a hilariously masterful takedown.
A modicum of vulnerability?: Poor Modi. Indian intellectuals are telling him they’re not happy with the way he’s saffronising everything. And now, the RSS is not happy with his inaction on Ram Mandir. Poor guy just can’t catch a break. Meanwhile, in an attempt to show how he’s willing to be asked hard questions by journalists, PM Modi is being interviewed by wait for it, Zee News and Times Now. That’s like showing you’re not afraid of pace bowling by facing Chirs Harris bowling with his left arm with 10kg weights attached to each foot after drinking 10 pints of Guinness. Anyway, the PM said his performance should not be evaluated on the basis of Demonetisation and GST roll out alone. Wait, we thought these were success stories?
Justice for Jabberwocky: Quick, take a pick: Watch the Republic TV for an hour or recite the phrase “How many cheeseballs could a chipmunk chomp if a chipmunk could chomp cheeseballs?” 15 times. Of course, you chose the second one. There is a bigger intersection between TTS subscribers and Chipmunks than between TTS subscribers and fans of the undisputed and long-reigning universal champion of “What if Jabberwocky were a real person” contest - Arnab Goswami. But the trouble with being a sane person is that you have to, unfortunately, extend courtesy and freedom of speech to the embodiment of trolling, Republic TV as well. And so, when Jignesh Mewani asked for Republic’s reporter to be removed from a press conference, all other journalists walked out. And rightly so.
“Aadhaar is insecure.” “Your Face!”: In a measure to step up security on Aadhaar data, facial recognition is being rolled out. The real problems with Aadhaar though, continue to persist.
New Year Resolutions on Steroids: As a friend remarked, we’ve all heard of how human endeavour is slowly turning into the metaphorical hamster running endlessly on the wheel, but this tweet below is the real one.
Data on airplanes: No, we’re not talking about statistics on aircraft delays or security, but about TRAI’s decision to allow mobile calls and data while flying.
Removing Haj subsidy is a good move of course, but forgive us for being a little sceptical when the same principle does not apply to all pilgrimages.
Stating the obvious: The Supreme Court set aside notifications passed by some states against the release of a movie and said artistic freedom must be protected
World
Turn it off and turn it on again: It’s been a year since Trump took charge (how has it been only 12 months?! We have another 36 to go. Groan) and his anniversary celebrations were marked in classic Trump style with a government shutdown. His attempts to blame Democrats for the shutdown seems to have backfired as well. In all honesty, a shutdown and restart might help, as any IT fan will tell you.
In other Trump news, there was a lot of führer furor over ‘shithole’ and Trump predictably called himself the ‘least racist person on Earth’, which seemed a little like Gujarat pitching itself as the most ‘microbrewery-friendly place in India’.
In other-other Trump news, Bannon has been called to testify by Mueller! This should be saucy.
Tweetledumb: Let’s face it, we’ve all made a few tweets that we’re not proud of which we’ve later had to delete in our saner moments. Usually, just awful puns which seemed funny when you made them (this is why The Third Slip is in an email format because if it were a blog we’d have deleted it by now). But $hit just got real, in Britain, Toby Young, a politician had to step down from his post after it came to light that he had deleted 46,000 offensive tweets (mostly about breasts) which of course was well documented before said deletion. It seems the answer to Hamlet’s question is - “not Toby”.
‘Tis the season of false alarms: Fake ‘missile incoming!’ messages were received by Hawai’i and Japan - which would otherwise be shrugged off in this era of drunken texting - except the warnings were around a trigger-happy North Korea.
The disconcerting Korean bromance: The good thing after a year like 2017 is that anything even remotely optimistic… Becomes amazing. The South + North are considering a joint hockey team in the upcoming Olympics! Imagine a joint Hogwarts newsletter authored by Gryffindor and Slytherin to get a sense of the magnitude (or, for those inclined to Britpop, an Oasis reunion). What’s more, the North is planning to send a 140-member orchestra to perform at the Games. What’s next, a shared Facebook page?
Meanwhile, other countries are meeting in Vancouver to figure out what to do with NK. Notably absent: China & Russia. No biggie.
You think you have a tough job? Imagine being in charge of America’s tourism. You report into someone who says ‘anyone who is not American can bugger off’ while trying to maintain everyone is welcome.
Tech
Well, whaddya know. Google Maps started working in China again.
While people are debating the right response to that Aziz Ansari story, the tech world provides the absolute wrong version: a blockchain based app to secure consent. I love the smell of Facepalm in the morning.
TL;DR
In case you read nothing of The Third Slip so far 1) WTF are you doing here?! 2) Here’s the summary of the week:
LinkedOut
Some new year resolutions are still intact, but are you maximising your life? This piece looks at how we’re improving ourselves to death.
A damning explanation as to why America and white supremacy kept Haiti, well, ‘s**thole’.
An amazing 3 minute read about how some industries are dying, will be replaced and will evolve. Featuring a ruthless quote by Jeff Bezos.
The complete story of the fall of Travis Kalnick of Uber. Darker and weirder than you thought.
That’s it for The Third Slip issue 44. If you’re still reading this, I love you, mom and dad. Please send some baby pictures of me from when I was cute, I am running out of Instagram content. Wait, you’re not mom or dad. Why are you still reading? You really, really like The Third Slip don’t you, you masochist? Do you want to indulge in some Sadism as well to round that up to some S&M? Why don’t you share The Third Slip with your friends and twisted lovers? Get them to subscribe and brighten up their our lives. Have something to tell us? You can reach us on Twitter (Tony | Chuck) or better yet, send us an email. No, really. We’d love to hear from you. Until next week, how many cheeseballs could a chipmunk chomp if a chipmunk could chomp cheeseballs?