I want corruption fixed as much as the next person but why should my vote not count? Why are people who don’t represent me trying to get in the way of how I am being governed?

Perfect man, perfect son,
Ram’s loved by everyone.
Always right, never wrong,
We praise Ram in this song.

Sing his love, sing his praise.
Ram set his wife ablaze.
Got her home, kicked her out
To allay his people’s doubt.

Ram’s wise, Ram’s just,
Ram does what Ram must.
Duty first, Sita last,
Ram’s reign is unsurpassed!

[Warning: This video may offend you. Viewer discretion is advised. ]

Things get interesting and quirky pretty fast when you start looking at Ramayana as Sitayana… the same story, but from Sita’s perspective. That is what animator Nina Paley ended up doing after a devastating relationship. Five years, many hand drawn paintings, 500 flash scene files and copyright struggles later she brought out the brilliant and engaging – the greatest break up story ever told – Sita Sings the Blues. It is beautiful, epic, thought provoking and witty and that’s a tough combo to pull off in a single animation. And the best part, she’s put it under a CC-sa license, so download it and watch it… like right now! This is a mix of old jazz music, three funny chatty Indian narrators who know less about Ramayana then even me and the story of Nina’s own life and if you are anything like me, you will totally love it.

I give this a 4.8/5.

Update 0: A convenient 700 MB download.
Update 1: There’s gotta be a better way of importing facebook/twitter comments. None of the plugins I tried worked well. I hope this thread merge is ok.

Till about a few years ago I used to believe that banning hate speech in a multi-cultural society like India was a good idea. But I guess I was simply drinking too much of the NCERT Civics text book kool-aid. These can-hate laws, as I like to call them, simply don’t work. If canning all the hate was the idea, why are the Modis and the Advanis of the world still roaming the streets? The ones that have these laws to blame for their jail time are artists and innocent couples. That kind of a track record can’t argue well for a bunch of laws.

What hurts me more is what we are missing because of all this. Look at this guy -George Carlin. He is a stand-up comedian – spiteful, offensive and even brutal. But he is good. He says it like it is. He is smart, charming and damned well knows how to get a point through. He once said something along the lines of the duty of a [stand-up] comedian is to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. And he really does a good job when it comes to that. By these standards Indian stand-up comedy is in it’s infancy. In fact, it is more like a retarded infant.

My point is that when you allow hate speech, you can have a comedy show on HBO whose opening line is this -

[Warning: All videos on this page might be offensive to some and even NSFW. Viewer discretion is advised. ]

And then go on for an hour speaking your heart out against the primary religion of the country and it’s ruling party, it’s a whole new refreshing kind of freedom. I think that kind of a freedom is important for a country to grow and that you can only grow so far with these kind of restrictions on free speech.

Here is George Carlin on the Ten Commandments which was a part of his Complains and Grievances routine -

Life is worth losing is the latest routine of George Carlin. It’s good. And the whole of it courtesy Google Video.

There’s a lot more of Carlin around. May your favourite search engine be with you!

While you are at it, you might also want to try the Punjabi dubbing of Spiderman. The mind blowing Desi Spiderman series.

Once upon a time there lived a boy called Obel
Who dreamed of getting a Nobel
So, he started on his journey
On his way he met Roni
And his path was no longer stony.
But this boy was a bit loony
So, he kept saying he doesn’t love Roni
This, to Roni, sounded very phony.
Then came the twist in the tale
There was this “intelligent” male
The male was Sanskrit and drank a lot of rum
He loved Roni more than his mum
He proposed to this little miss
But the blunder was he asked for a kiss.
Obel, who was in a lot of pain
Now, was back in form again.
The male avoided Roni and Obel
And in the process got the Nobel.
As for the little boy called Obel
Who had always dreamt of getting a Nobel
He sadly met a certain Bhaskar
And instead of a Nobel, he got an Oscar.