The Third Slip: Issue 46 - What does your bud get? Nothing.
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip, the intrepid weekly newsletter that soldiers on in the face of adversity, tedium, and a general lack of growth in subscriber count. But, we continue to exist for our lovely niche audience - the same niche audience that each successive government is voted into power by, only to have a taxing experience, be ignored in important decisions, and based on your sense of humour is decidedly of middling class. We love you wholeheartedly. This is issue 46 of The Third Slip - incidentally, this is the first issue that was first written with pen on paper harking back to a simpler time when email IDs were like tonysebastianmccool@yahoo.com and chuck2cute4u@hotmail.com (yes, we were always cool). Before we proceed...
Nogito ergo erratum: In TTS issue 45 we said that David Cameron once gave a 45-minute speech instead of a “4 to 5 minute speech”. The smarter co-author of this newsletter has since pointed out that it was Gordon Brown and not David Cameron who did that. Who’s an idiot? That would be me. With the Milind Soman marathon goof up in issue 44 and David Cameron in issue 45, that’s two strikes. One more strike and I’ll be invited to head a political party in Kerala. On with the news…
Home
Maximum Support for Party: The BJP is completely on the side of the middle class and worried about the rise in Petrol prices and wanted to abolish income tax etc? LOL LOL LOL what? Who? When? Where? Priorities change when elections approach of course, and yes, you are expendable. This week the budget was an exercise in making sure the largest vote banks saw headlines that would make them vote favourably again. In a poll-bound budget, the focus was on farmers with a promise of a Minimum Support Price of 1.5 times the cost of production. But when you only want to manage headlines and not solutions, you indulge in some numerical anagramming, so the definition of cost has been changed and farmers will be sold short.
Modicare: Remember right-wing economics being about universal health care, and sops for farmers? Yeah, we don’t either, and we’re not complaining. In a bid to make sure that its populist agenda is driven home, Jaitley announced “Modicare” an ambitious healthcare scheme that is a fantastic idea on paper. And what do you do when the math doesn’t add up? You conjure up some numbers and leave the rest to imagination. Nobody knows where the money will come from. In all fairness, the phrasing said “We will launch…” in the same manner that a man in a household says he will fix the non-functioning geyser in the guest bathroom, every day for 3 years - future continuously obscure tense. Vague is in vogue.
Fine-nuance: No one knows if scientists have experimented by getting a rat and rabbit together, but one suspects that they would be really good partners. In one certainty in the budget this year, the government has made an amendment to give political parties a free pass for illegally accepting funding from foreign companies and it’s backdated by 40 years. Surprisingly, neither the BJP nor the Congress have any complaints about this one. Rat and Rabbit sitting in a tree...
Padmaavat Redux
There once was an outfit called Karni Sena
They violently protested a film, can’t beinsaner
When they finally saw the movie
And discovered it was groovy
They decided to promote it, irony funny hai na?
Update: Lokendra Singh Kalvi, the chief of one Karni Sena said that it was not his Karni Sena that said it would now promote the film but a different one. Aaaarghhhh! Brain Mash. Hopefully, this is the last time that one has to type out the words Karni Sena.
Zara Zara Behekta Hai: Is there anything more tempting than a man in a lungi? Yes, a man in an overpriced lungi by Zara. Zara called their version of the lungi a “Check Your Privilege Mini Skirt”. And, like a phone that’s been plugged in overnight, it was overcharged several times over at around Rs 6,000 per ungli lungi. Meanwhile, in other expensive Lungi news, South African pace bowler Lungi Ngidi was picked up by Chennai Super Kings for Rs 50 lakh at the IPL auction. The punchline for this section is left as an exercise for the reader.
Burn of the week: Math Question - If the Tabasco sauce you request for with every meal at a restaurant scores between 2500-5000 units on the Scoville Scale, and Bhut Jolokia scores around 1 million units, how many Scoville Heat Units is there in this remark from Shashi Tharoor?
Shaw em who’s boss: The Indian U19 team captained by Prithvi Shaw won the cricket world cup in New Zealand with one of the most comprehensive performances ever seen in a tournament. India now leads the U19 winners’ list with 4 titles. This victory was doubly sweet because the outfit was coached by Rahul Dravid who has not won a world cup as a player. In the good old days of Twitter, someone remarked that “Rahul Dravid is India’s most sung about unsung hero”, and sure enough Dravid fans went slightly apeshit on social media singing paeans for the legend. Annoyingly enough, Dravid said with characteristic humility that the credit should go to the team and not to him reminding us yet again to stop talking too much and just do it. This man keeps raising the bar wall so high that even Sergei Bubka has no chance.
‘Lunar Eclipse’ anagrams to ‘Peculiar Lens’: The beautiful Supermoon, a once in a lifetime phenomenon, shone brightly this week and reminded us of how infinitely random the universe is and how life is meant for enjoyment from the simplest of things. However, when it’s India we must complicate everything with our peculiar lens of superstitions and scientifically invalid nonsense - from throwing away food to not wearing jewelry, there was a veritable buffet of bullshit on offer from yogis, mystics, and the mainstream media alike. One assumes that this is why the etymology of lunatic is still valid.
International
Donald’s Trumping: What’s the advantage of starting at rock bottom? You have nowhere to go but up. While his predecessor worked on The Audacity of Hope, Trump seems to be thriving on The Oddity of Hopelessness. The presidential tracking poll reported that Trump’s approval ratings have been the highest it’s been in a year at 49%, after having started at a record low of between 35% and 45% in year one of the presidency. Trump promptly took to Twitter to trumpet the achievement.
FBI, not FIB: In an outright war with the FBI, the Trump administration published the Nunes memo against the advice of security experts and suggested that the FBI investigation against Russian interference and collusion with Trump was a witch hunt that was funded by the Democrats. Trump claimed that this memo totally vindicated him. Not really.
A change in climate?: This week, climate change skeptic Kathleen Hartnett White’s nomination to serve as Donald Trump’s top environmental adviser was withdrawn. Hallelujah. What’s next? Trump actually sitting down to understand Climate Change?
Tech
Best Oxymoron of 2018: The Boring Company Flamethrower by Elon Musk. Yes, you read that right, he’s making a freaking flamethrower available to the public and it already has exhausted the preorder limit of 20,000. Oh, and he has ideas to solve shipping challenges too...
Bursting the bubble: Andy Zaltzman of The Bugle best-described cryptocurrencies as homeopathic finance. Mark Zuckerberg seems to be in agreement. In an attempt to stop scammers, Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and ICOs.
Brisk and return: Did you know that the 10,000 steps a day figure was the result of a Japanese marketing campaign from the 1960’s? Apparently, it’s much healthier if you take three brisk ten-minute walks per day. More.
LinkedOut
The ease with which Roger Federer won the Australian Open suggests that his ATM pin is probably 6-0 6-0. This really is supernutsobananas.
Uma Thurman is angry. She speaks about Weinstein and Tarantino.
What is it like to live in a surveillance state where your every move is watched an accounted for? The life of a Muslim minority in China.
An explainer on Blockchain and its potential applications. Read for FOMO.
That’s all for this week. If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can reach us on Twitter (Tony | Chuck), or you can send us virtual hugs and thoughts via email. Enjoy The Third Slip? Why not share it with a friend for good karma. Have the best week of your lives ahead. In the words of Neil Gaiman “Hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful”. Bye!