Boris...the spider

As the New York times says in its take on Yeltsin and his era,

No one recognized more than he how far short he fell of his goal. In his resignation speech, he told the Russian people: “I ask forgiveness for not justifying some hopes of those people who believed that at one stroke, in one spurt, we could leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into the light, rich, civilized future.”

At the end, he was a man worn down. “I feel like a runner who has just completed a supermarathon of 40,000 kilometers,” he wrote in his memoir. “I gave it my all. I put my whole heart and soul into running my presidential marathon. I honestly went the distance. If I have to justify anything, here is what I will say: If you think you can do it better, just try. Run those 40,000 kilometers. Try to do it faster, better, more elegantly, or more easily. Because I did it.”

In an era of manufactured political leaders, Yeltsin was the last of the old school politico's. Someone who could orate, who could mingle, who could get drunk, who could shake a leg, who would use the local transport, who would remember what it meant to be poor and disenfranchised and who would get angry at the state of things around him. Power corrupts and Yeltsin too left the stage to polite applause and muttered whispers, but for a brief moment in time, he was the man who dared raise his voice and take a hammer to the machine-state.

Perhaps it would have been better if he had been a spider, able to weave his web and hang by a thread, play the parlour games and tread lightly on the ground...
Still we must judge a man by his actions in his youth and middle age, not in his dotage. For those who remember, Boris was not a spider, but a bear of a man, poking his nose where it wasnt appreciated, shoving his way into places where he wasnt welcome and forever ready to stand up and climb on tanks and talk to the people directly.

Look, he's crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he's up above my head
Hanging by a little thread

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Now he's dropped on to the floor
Heading for the bedroom door
Maybe he's as scared as me
Where's he gone now, I can't see

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

There he is wrapped in a ball
Doesn't seem to move at all
Perhaps he's dead, I'll just make sure
Pick this book up off the floor

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

He's come to a sticky end
Don't think he will ever mend
Never more will he crawl 'round
He's embedded in the ground

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

and i aint no animal....

excerpts from an article about a man from gorakhpur......full article here

"He apes buffalo's bellowing to such an extent that whenever he visits the cattle-shed, a simple call by him (Munna) makes all the buffaloes turn their attention towards him. Likewise, crows too hover around his head no sooner than he gives out a call of caw-caw," said Raju, one of Munna's friends. "

and another -

"It may be of interest to know that the famed hunter-turned naturalist, Jim Corbett had mastered the art imitating the roar of mating call given by a tigress. It is said that often, he relied on it to lure his game."

thank god for a free press.... we would be so deprived of astonishing information if not for them....

btw.. Shantaram, the book about a guy in mumbai, too had characters from Gorakhpur, the bear handlers who loved their bhaloo, went back with him to their home in Gkp.

message in a bullet

Excerpts from the video message that Cho sent to NBC

"You had 100 billion choices and ways to avoid today but you decided to spill my blood instead," Cho said in one of the more coherent passages aired by NBC. "You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off. ... I didn't have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run.

"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," said Cho, the son of Korean immigrants who reportedly work in a dry cleaning business, in a passage apparently addressed to his victims. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. ... They weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything. "

shot through the heart...and you're to blame

Quoted from the Guardian - She said the gunman "was just a normal-looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout-type outfit. He wore a tan button-up vest, and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something

In virginia tech.... 32 people killed by someone wandering around in a boy scout outfit and spraying bullets..... hmmmmmm

totally wierd.... whatever happens... theres something rotten in denmark....why are schools and colleges the best targets? ..... why not target offices ( where people may actually thank you for giving them a break ) etc...why does it happen in schools and colleges mostly.....

One theory doing the rounds is that the guy was angry coz his girlfriend had been cheating on him.

wierder...

and everyday the paperboy brings more

News of the day.... After 60 years of independence, we finally got around to doing a survey of our children being abused...and the results -

"More than half of India’s child population has been scarred by sexual abuse. The nauseating statistic, indicating that 53 per cent of the country’s children are sexually assaulted, was revealed by the Government of India’s first survey on child abuse."

read more here -

party on!!

The Times of India reports - Among those arrested were call centre and IT firm employees, children of affluent businessmen, air hostesses and college students. The police seized seven bottles of phenylfine hydrochloride, two-and-half-kg of marijuana (ganja), 100 gm of hashish (charas) beer cans, cigarettes, music systems, 45 cars, 29 two-wheelers and an unspecified number of mobile phones were seized from the spot.

The revellers had come for the party from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Belgaum, Chennai, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. They were charged an entry fee of Rs 500 per person to enter the party zone.

Nangre-Patil told TOI that 50 per cent of the names and addresses given by the suspects turned out to be fake. Some addresses were correct because they were taken from credit cards and driving licences. Interestingly, at the (badminton hall) court, friends and family members provided cigarettes to the suspects from windows. As soon as the judge left the court room, a few youths started singing, clapping and dancing!

want an english speaking ministerial horse?

The Hindu reports - Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's prized possession-- a horse which responds only to English commands-- finally found a new master today.

'Pawan', who was on display for the last three days at one of Asia's biggest cattle fairs in Bihar's Sonepur, was sold for Rs 1.1 lakh to a farmer, Baleshwar Rai, who lives in Raghopur Assembly constituency of Prasad's wife Rabri Devi.

The horse had a price tag of Rs 1.51 lakh. "Since Rai belongs to Rabri Devi's constituency, it is expected that he will look after the horse carefully and that is the reason the horse was sold at a lower price to him," Prasad's Private Secretary Bhola Yadav told PTI.

Supporters of the JD (U) MLA from Mokama, Anant Singh, offered a higher price for Pawan, but Rai refused to part with the horse, he said.

Pawan, his trainer claims, "can race against a Bolero on a smooth road" but it can only follow commands in English, which put off most bidders at the auction.

Also there were no takers for Prasad's pet as it arrived at a time when most horse trades had struck deals and left the place.

news from home

Now I know what I am missing here in America... the Indian Express reports on a small incident that happened in Gurgaon while i was away - read the full story here.

Dr. Amit Diwan, a radiologist at a Gurgaon hospital, was parking his car at his Sector 10-A house when a speeding Tata Safari, bearing a Faridabad number, scraped it, police and eyewitnesses said. As Diwan objected, the driver of the Tata Safari reversed it and hit him. “The car then tried to speed away, but my son caught hold of the fender and was dragged for over 150 metres. The vehicle also hit a rickshaw and injured two other persons,” said Amit's father BR Diwan. When one its tyres burst, the occupants abandoned the vehicle.

the sandbox

doonesbury just started something called a sandbox. Its a collection of blogs etc from the US military effort in iraq. Kind of interesting. Lots of stories protected under the First Amendment. The latest post starts like this -

..."I love the Army, I truly do. It has offered me incredible opportunities, and helped me come a long way from the crank-smoking high school drop-out that I was 15 years ago. And I love our country, even when I don't always agree with the people that run it. I'm desperately sorry to the people that have lost loved ones here.

My husband's job site was ambushed last week, and although no one was hurt, it has prompted a lot of these reflections. It was a terrible question to ask: If, God forbid, he had been hurt, what would it have been for? I read an article in Rolling Stone recently, about a reporter riding with some soldiers here in Iraq. He put it into words perfectly.

Those of us serving here simply can't afford to ask that question."....

Panda bites man, man bites panda

why?

Zhang Xinyan, from the central province of Henan, drank four jugs of beer at a restaurant near the zoo before visiting Gu Gu the panda on Tuesday, the Beijing Morning Post said...that explains it....read more here.