Hi all (four of you). It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a proper post (the BS Youtube video posts don’t count) but sickness and a recce that keeps getting postponed over and over again have kept me from writing.

BTW if you’re wondering what my affliction was, I had/have a runny nose, a fever and the nerdiest of them all, an asthma relapse. That’s right ladies! They call me Sexx-Y! (Just like that catchy/crap song by ‘The Ting-Tings‘ that I can’t get outta my head, MP3 Here.)

So, the screenshot on the right with my retarded digital scrawl on it. Let me explain. I’ve posted about Google Analytics before. If you let Google put a bit of code on your web pages they will give you all kinds of interesting information about people who visit your site. For example, a listing of all the search terms people have keyed into Google that led them to this website.

So, the other day I was looking at the Google Analytics app on my iPod Touch (BTW, that app is so well made that I’ve stopped looking at the site on a computer) and amongst the many search strings that included the name of NDTV’s most famous anchor was the one you see here. Needless to say, my nose instantly wrinkled, my face contorted into a potty expression and a loud, involuntary EEEWWWWWWW! escaped my lips before I remembered that:

a> It isn’t nice to comment about how people look.

b> Specially for someone with a mug like mine.

c> Beauty is in the eye…  etc. etc. It takes all sorts to make up this planet and after all, people actually read this site, so there’s obviously no accounting for taste.

Anyway, I’ve walked around with that image in my mind for four days and now it is my gift to you. Enjoy!

Hell! At least it leads some credence to the frankly quite unbelievable stories that friends from NDTV have told me over the years.

So, in closing I shall say “Good for you Ms. Dutt!”

P.S. To the dude who keyed in the search term in question: I know who you are!

P.P.S. To Ms. Dutt: Mail me and I shall give you the dude’s contact info, you never know when you might need it….  and I won’t judge.

Also, on an unrelated note. I caught a glimpse of CNBC TV18 last night and some sardar journo had pitched a shoe at our honourable home minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram. I had/have two observations:

1> The surd in question throws like a girl. (But I shouldn’t talk)

2> Rajdeep Sardesai needs to switch to decaf. Seriously. For the entire three odd minutes that I could bear to watch, Mr. Sardesai looked and sounded like he had been given a chilli enema sometime between when he finished make-up and  when the bulletin started. I’m just sayin’

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Recently a blogger, Chyetanya Kunte posted this retraction on his blog, an apology for an earlier post where he totally trashed NDTV and Barkha Dutt in particular for their coverage of the Mumbai blasts. NDTV obviously threatened to sue the poor bastard which shows the new depths this once venerable network has sunk to.

My own thoughts about the massacre in Mumbai and Ms. Dutt’s coverage can be seen here and here. Basically, a very large part of the infuriating, stomach-turning experience of watching the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last year was the ‘journalist’ seen here with some BS award.

To put it very mildly Ms. Dutt and NDTV, sucked! Big-time. But then, the channel that I once had a lot of respect for has made it’s full-time job sucking for the past few years. But this is a new low.

Is NDTV so thick that it tries to sue a blogger? Do these stupid twats understand anything about freedom of speech? Personal opinion? How the internet works? Honestly. You can’t never, ever make someone take down a posting on the internet because once it is online it is in the wild, it will be around forever, even if the original poster takes it down. 

As for the apology from Mr. Kunte let me just say this to the folks at NDTV. Your channel and news coverage sucked. Barkha Dutt sucked even harder. You idiots want to sue everyone who thinks so? There are thousands of people on Facebook in a group called ‘Make Barkha Shut the Fuck Up!” (Or some such shit to that effect) One of the more popular search terms people use to find this blog is (and I kid you not) ‘BARKHA DUTT BITCH’.

Get your head out of your asses NDTV. If it looks like shit, smells like shit and tastes like shit it probably is shit. You guys had a respectable channel. But somewhere along the way egos, ratings, political agendas and advertising money made you join in the race with every other news channel in a downward spiral into the lowest common denominator sort of news and guess what? You’ve won the race. There is no respect for you within the industry. Even normal household viewers who are essentially opinion-less sheep that you have dumbed down with BS news about kids stuck in gutters and the US election now realise that the ‘news’ you air is essentially content-free filler between the ad breaks.

Read the full story for Mr. Kunte’s apology and the original post he wrote after the mumbai massacre.

Read more…

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A couple of weeks have gone by since the terror attacks in Mumbai and I thought I’d just write about the reactions of various groups of people to what happened.

This is a follow-up to my previous post. Bombay. How I loved you.

Lets start with the ‘media industry’. A lot of people raised a huge stink about Barkha Dutt’s grating coverage of the events and the huge cock-up about whether the hostage situation at Nariman House was over or not. There is even a group on Facebook called ‘Get Barkha off air’ or some such crap.

Please. Get Barkha off air? She may look like a dog, sound like nails on a chalkboard and ask the most inane questions but people who say that she used to be great but has sold out, ought to get a clue. Also, part of essential reading for all students of journalism and mass communication, especially all the wannabe Barkha Dutts doing piece-to-cameras for news channels ought to be this book.

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media – Noam Chomsky

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