Sreesanth must be a commie, ponders captain Ponting

Indians are caught behind the wicket on a racist googly from none other than the masters of the game, the Australians. The majority of Indians believe the whites are superior in everything they do and fancies to imitate them to near perfection. Including, their racist behaviour. But before coming to that aspect of India Shining, let me clarify my thoughts on the alleged racist abuse against the Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds. I doubt how many people knows about his West Indian lineage; and it would be a safe assumption that the crowd were booing at his braided hair and painted lips than his tanned yet fairer skin. And it was not Symonds, but the Australian media who brought in the racist interpretation. Here Symonds is the scapegoat, and it is evident from his later comments that he realises that. He grew up in Australia, and knows a thing or two about racism.

Then I read about what the Australian captain is reported to have said. “They’re fairly passive sort of people, Indians, and he’s probably one from [the] left field.” Ponting said, referring to Indian pacer S. Sreesanth and his aggression in the field, according to the report. May be he should barter his name, Santhakumaran Sreesanth meaning ‘calm young boy of serene grace’, with Rudra Pratap Singh. Pointing has of course seen the red flags fluttering alongside the Indian national flags among the crowd in Kochi, Sreesanth’s home ground. Now, it’s not about Ponting’s commie-phobia, but about his trouble in accepting Indians not being a passive sort of people, as they are supposed to be. I’m not very sure Ponting had to say the same when he was India for the first time for a tour, in 2000 or ’01, about the girl he tried to molest in a pub. I always thought he looked a lot like that guy called George W. Bush. I know, Ponting doesn’t deserve such a huge insult.

The media, and general sentiment about the issue among the public, both in India and Australia is almost consentaneous. Indians played badly and behaved badly in the field, losing a series at home for 2-4. There was a time, not long ago, being in the Indian team required much more than talent, and a time when the players were ‘safe’ in the team in whichever manner they played. Winning was only for personal gratification of not losing, with almost no responsibility on the team. Making such an accusation is not without considering those few exceptions, but it is a just summary. Things have changed, because old ways are inadequate to sustain the fast growing business. Talent has of a little more importance in the selection criteria now.

I stopped watching test matches, ball by ball, quite a long time back. Still some of that old love is left in me. Cricket is not as charged up game as football, the first love. Well, when you put a ball between two strong legs, you ought get a good supply of testosterone, and cricket can’t match that excitement. The beauty of cricket is in its subtleties. The late cuts, or the leg break that whisks the bail off the off stump. Its beauty is in the lack of a second chance. It takes only 10 balls to finish a game, and it’s all about evading those ten deadly balls. Its beauty is in the abundance of chances. It takes only a few overs to turn the game around. A backhand half volley of Jim Courier from the baseline would inspire one to yawn, but an almost same movement before the wickets will give you a beauty of a cover drive.

Sledging is an acceptable practice in cricket. It’s no great surprise that two teams that uses it to the hilt are the now mellowed down South Africa, and Australia. “They pretend the aggression and that sort of backfired,” commented Australian coach after the India tour. To me it’s a clear admission, or claim, that Australians don’t pretend it, but mean it. “The Australians match the personal aggression with the bat and ball,” wrote enlightened Indian media. The trouble I have here is not whether Indians can use sledging successfully, or can win the game without it. My trouble is taking the argument that it is right for Australians and not for Indians, in a good sports man’s spirit. My trouble is in accepting that Australians are naturally aggressive and Indians are passive, and to buy the opinion that it should be so. It’s nothing but well accepted double standards – one so fair and one not so fair.

The Australian team is the finest among all current teams. You have records to prove that. Captain Ricky Pointing is arguably the best among the captains. They have reasonably good bowlers and about alright batsmen. They field well, and win games. The experts call it winning by playing as a team. Sledging is not personal insult, but a pressure mounting tactic, they explain. All true, from the surface. Indian bowlers are never counted as above average, that’s after beating every side they played against. When they say Indians can’t field well, they should give the extra credit to the bowlers for taking wickets without adequate field support. When they say Indians can’t field well, they shouldn’t be giving much credit to the batsmen scoring against them. When they say Australian fielding is impeccable, they should also admit each run scored by Indians against their finest bowlers is of the highest order, and worthier many times over that scored by their batsmen. But to see it like that one should evaluate the game beyond the scorecards. Winning is all that matters, they tell me. And when Indians win, they tell me Australians didn’t play their usual game.

It’s not the story of this series, it’s the same story that I’m hearing ever since I started reading sports columns. It was a very rare occasion of losing a series at home. Two of the four matches could have been won, if it were not for a few mistakes; and it would have been a 4-2 series win. That’s a lame argument in justifying the loss, but if Indians had won I would have got to read that they won by chance and sledging. I have nothing against losing, and don’t believe winning is the only thing. Indians usually win all the series matches at home, and rarely win any abroad. Indians rarely win abroad only means someone else wins at home; still, I never have read about that point of view. The people, who tell me Indians make pitches that support spin bowlers, don’t tell me all others make pitches to support their fast bowlers. This imposed feeling of guilt, and lack of self-esteem is not a very surprising thing for a nation that was colonised for over 200 years.

“Whatever logic you may say, but it’s a fact that we are way behind the Whites – in physical and psychological capabilities.” One of my good friends, who has seen a bit of the world informs me. “May be, it’s purely for socio-environmental reasons,” he adds in an attempt to cover-up the factual error in the argument. He is not alone in this view, he has got majority of Indians with him. Including most of the cricketers. And that shows on the field. With such an attitude, the best thing one can aim for is measuring up to them, once in a while, and then calling it luck. That’s why very often we end up reading Indians won because the opposition didn’t play their best game.

The induced aggression seen recently among Indian bowlers has something to credit to their coach Venkitesh Prasad. He is one who had to take it lying down during his playing career. And this attitude change should go deeper than the expressions. It can only be called a change on the day people start to accept it as not just mere pretension. And the up coming Australian tour can be a real test for it. If some of the eleven can prove it, then the rest of the billion can try to follow it.

While Australia is a topic of discussion, I would like to bring back another subject, that’s not so cricket, related to Australia. I had posted this piece sometime back, explaining the racist, genocidal policy of the Australian government, and called for to sign an online petition put up by Ridwan Laher. That post was the most visited on this blog to this day, getting more than 2000 hits for that page in a week. And hardly anyone among those visitors decided to sign the petition. I got some responses saying they are afraid that would affect their job, because the companies they work for has Australian clients. Another person wrote in and said she’s planning to travel to Australia for higher studies, and do not want to risk her visa. All you people, if wish, can sign the petition as anonymous. Still, I suggest you not to do it. A short but credible list is always more powerful than an inflated one. Those who like to spread the word through their blogs can get the banner from Tom.

The White eclipse of the land of the red sun

OR, The territorial pissing over a 100-thousand year old civilisation

“Aussies have been on the piss, getting pissed, drinking piss, drinking more piss and, most definitely, taking the piss for the past two hundred years.”

– From the website of an Australian beer brewer

Pissed, as a slang meaning drunk, is quintessentially Australian. My search for the reasons of the origin of the term didn’t return any satisfying answers. A possible logical explanation is not a very difficult one. Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning, a substance that prevents the secretion of ADH that instruct kidneys to reabsorb excess water. Naturally, this effect causes kidneys to produce diluted amounts of urine. Alcohol relaxes muscles, and one of the first muscles to affect by it, is the sphincter muscles of the urethra – second only to the muscles of your eyelids. Now put one and one together and you will end up in the loo when you are drunk. This physiological trivia is not as trivial as most of us might think. It has an astounding effect on human civilisation and its explanations of evolvement.

It was in The Songlines, by Bruce Chatwin, I first read about the native Australians, and amazed by their superior, almost parapsychological, mental faculties. About their abilities to read land like a book. About their abilities to code and decode geographical information in the form of musical notes. Songlines are songs that describe the journeys of a Totemic Spirit. Sometimes spread across hundreds of miles, with each community singing only the part that crosses their region. Astonishingly, an experienced singer of one community is able to identify the geography when someone else sings another part of his Songline, without understanding a word of it. I have never been to Australia, or have met any of these native Australians in person. Most of the things I know about them is from this book, The Songlines, which I read eight or nine years back. After that I sure have read more about their life and culture, including the much celebrated, almost amateurishly written, novel Walkabout. The Songlines is widely criticised for being colonialist and thus unreliable as a source of information. Nevertheless, it sure has told me many untold stories about the world’s oldest living culture, and I have found his narrative neutral and detached in most parts of the book. In the book, Chatwin describes the following conversation with a policeman he met in a bar:

“[…] ‘So why do you bother with them?’ The policeman jerked his thumb at the Aboriginals.

‘Because I like them.’

‘And I like them,’ he said. ‘I like them! I like to do what’s right by them. But they’re different.’

‘In what way different?’

The policeman moistened his lips again, and sucked the air between his teeth.

‘Made differently,’ he said at last. ‘They’ve got different urinary tracts to the white man. Different waterworks! That’s why they can’t hold their booze!’

‘How do you know?’

‘It’s been proved,’ said the policeman. ‘Scientifically.’

[…]

From having different waterworks was an easy step to having different grey-matter. An Aboriginal brain, he said, was different to that of Caucasians. The frontal lobes were flatter.

‘I like them,’ the policeman repeated. ‘I never said I didn’t like them. But they’re like children. They’ve got a childish mentality.’ […]”

That’s what you can derive, when you think with your piss-mechanism. The native people were living in the land for about hundred thousand years when the Europeans landed on their coast in the late 18^th century. In the next 100 years, by the time the nation christened as Australia was established, the native population was reduced to about ninety thousand from over a million. Of the 750 native groups, currently there are about 200 that survived the hospitality of the guests, constituting 2.3% of the current population with about 90% Europeans. Majority of these native Australians today live in the urban areas – bearing the mark of misfit, uncivilised, inferior race.

The Northern Territory Land Rights Act, 1976, is one of the most important legislations made in Australia after the founding of the nation. The Act was made to give back some rights, mainly ownership of their sacred land, back to the natives. Northern Territory has about 1% of Australia’s population, and is the least densely populated area in the country. Nearly half the geographical area belongs to the four Land Councils under the 1976 Act, though the native population is hardly 29% of the total in the Territory. The native population in NT is hardly 12% them in the country. It’s not that only NT is aboriginal land, or the rest 88% belongs to nowhere. It’s just that the Whites had already taken over all of the other regions except the desserts by then. And then, they found enticing deposits of minerals in the Northern Territory. And then, they found the most suitable land for nuclear waste dumping. And then, last year, the John Howard Government amended the 1976 Act. The effects were not as fast paced as the White man’s calculations, though they had managed to sign a deal for a 200-year lease of land for nuclear waste dumping.

In this time of trouble, Howard gets an inquiry report – tastefully titled, Little Children are Sacred – on child abuse among aboriginal children in the Northern Territory. The 320-page report reveals some shocking facts. Like, the miners widely engage in prostitution with children as young as 12 years. The report clearly states that it’s not just aboriginal men who commit the crimes; and the widely believed view that aboriginal culture and laws protect the abusers is a plain myth. The report strongly says, “The Inquiry believes there needs to be a radical change in the way government and non-government organizations consult, engage with and support Aboriginal people. A different approach is urgently needed.” It very clearly says that the government service provision is pathetically inadequate, and there should be an urgent need to take the aboriginal ‘world view’ seriously, instead of imposing the European ‘world view’ on them. Howard flips all these pages too quickly and stops at where it says, “The Inquiry was not told many stories concerning intra-familial child sexual abuse. However, given the experiences of the community mentioned above, and noting the findings in other Australian jurisdictions, it is safe to assume that it is more prevalent than was identified in consultations.” Howard found what he was looking for, and his government decided to ban alcohol in the region and take over the communities slashing the aboriginal rights.

If you have failed to grasp the connection between the report and action, that’s only because, there’s no apparent connection at all. “"Let me say there is not a single action that the commonwealth has taken so far that corresponds with a single recommendation,'' Ms Pat Anderson, one of the authors of the report that suggested 97 recommendations for the problem, tells us. “The Government is treating aborigines like children,” a fuming Ms. Anderson, who headed the inquiry team, told the reporters. Seems like Prime Minister Howard’s attitude towards the aborigines is not any different than that of the drunken policeman Chatwin describes in his book. But there’s much more to the conspiracy.

The 2006 amendment of the Land Rights Act, 1976, allows individuals to own land, and enables them to get loans on a subsidised interest rate on that land. It’s a pretty old trick. Someone who’s not happy with the community elders decides to own his own land and approaches the bank. The bank, happily gives the loan, taking the documents. And the owner will most probably lose the land to the bank in a few years. The region, with 29% of people with ‘inferior waterworks’ has the highest per capita alcohol consumption in the world. Alcoholism has been a major concern for the communities for years, and the elders are obviously against the drinking behaviour of their people. Howard thought, an alcohol ban would be welcomed by the elders and ‘piss off’ the drunkards. That would naturally increase the chances of the drunkards wanting to be ‘independent’ and go to the banks. Exactly the kind of people they wanted to come to the banks with land. The exaggerated publicity on the grounds of alcoholism and child abuse will prevent leading socio-political agencies from opposing Howard’s move strongly. Anyone opposing the new legislation can be portrayed as ‘supporters’ of alcoholism and child abuse. Something, any organisation that needs public support will be wary of risking.

The new legislation is ready to be put before the parliament. It will scrap off almost all the rights aborigines were granted. The permit system will be removed, and any non-indigenous person can go to the aboriginal areas without any prior permission. The customary laws or cultural practices will be stripped off from their validity in courts, while all other ethnic groups in the country will continue enjoying the privilege. The Government will take over the aboriginal lands for next five years. It proposes to completely stop the funding of Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP), through which over 30% of the aboriginal adult population earns their and their families’ living. The sole income for majority of the families will be stopped that way. This means, they will be more vulnerable and completely dependent on the federal government forces, which will be taking over their lands for the next five years. That’s the wisdom of the highly evolved Caucasian brain.

Let me quote a passage from the very popular novel Walkabout by James Vance Marshall. It’s a small novel the describes the story of two American school children stranded on the desert plains of Australia by a plain wreck, who then meets an aborigine boy on his walkabout – the six month solitary journey on foot across his ancestral land as his test of manhood. The passage that describes their first meeting reads like this: “The three children stood looking at one another in the middle of the Australian dessert. Motionless as the outcrops of granite they stared, and stared, and stared. Between them the distance was less than the spread of an outstretched arm, but more than 100,000 years.” The rest of the book tells a few things humankind learnt to forget in the100,000 years.

One of the very basic beliefs of the native Australians is people don’t own land, but the land owns everything that it allows to grow on it. One of many things the ‘highly evolved’ Europeans can never understand. The European idea of evolution and advancement of civilisation is pretty much skewed. And with their industrious colonisation efforts across the globe, they have successfully established their notion and standard about being civilised and advanced, in all modern communities. This allusion of evolutional advancement is the very foundation of their assumed superiority. Educated people all over the world are blinded with the belief that equality means rising to the levels of European standards of human development. I am too uneducated to understand how a society that can go helpless and paralysed, if all the electrical fuses burn simultaneously, can be called evolved and superior. Call it a highly optimistic society, if you want. A society that survives only on the hope of having every fuse intact. Or, one that is too dumb to think of such a high possibility of a few fuses burning together.

Ridwan Laher has initiated a campaign that calls for a global tourist boycott as a message of protest against Australian government’s move to take over the aboriginal lands. The campaign plan is to collect signatures of all the people around the world who think Howard Government’s move is insanely racist, and against basic human rights. More than an attack on human rights, it’s an effort to destroy a superior civilisation by a pathetically crippled one. Go and add your name to the list of people who supports the campaign. You can do it either by going to Ridwan’s blog, or by clicking on the banner you see on the right hand side of this page. Don’t support the campaign thinking you are helping the aborigines; they don’t need yours or anyone else’s help. Their way of life has survived a hundred thousand years, and will survive even after yours and mine bite the dust. Add your name, only if you think, you, the Australian government, or anyone else has no right to endanger their life and their 100-thousand years’ wisdom of land and life. The petition is open only till October 17^th, 2007. If you have a blog, and if you support the campaign, you can get the banner to display in your blog from Tom.

You can download and read the inquiry report, Little Children are Sacred.
You can also read more about:
The report authors' reaction to Howard's move
Withdrawing the plans of existing government funding
Plans to nullify the validity of customary aboriginal laws

I’m a racist, and other terrible truths you don’t want to know about me

No one, absolutely no one, has ever fucked up as many of twentieth century human minds as Nietzsche did. People love to talk about themselves; and at the same time, people are timid about doing so. And to them, to all of us, that line from Nietzsche, comes as a very comforting, see-through blanket. He wrote, and I quote, “Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.” The tricky part is that ‘can be’.

After the great invention of the idea called forwarded mails, the next big thing that goes around the netted world is tags. A privilege for a few among the 200 odd millions of human beings who call themselves bloggers. A rarity dubbed as privilege, just like Napoleon’s aluminium cutlery. And, with great pleasure and pride, let me announce the news that me too is tagged.

Amooma, the youngest granny alive in the blogosphere, pulled out her Pen Knife and asked me in a grunting voice that is reminiscent of the legendary Ma Baker – “Confess your secrets to the world now, or…” Someone who doesn’t know how to swim and caught between the devil and deep blue sea would most probably try to strike a deal with the devil. And I’ve decided not to invite the wrath of the granny.

There are three rules that I must follow, which can be summerised into two. 1. Write about eight random facts/habits about oneself, and 2. Ask eight other people to do the same. Though the prime motive of the game is to popularise one’s blog by the network it can build, it can also serve to the purpose of providing the pleasures one can get by peeping into someone else’s silly life.

While tagging me, Amooma had described me as a person full of paradoxes – not because she knows me that well, but because of her love for wordplay. But she is absolutely right about me. The reason is, everyone, and everything can be seen as a paradox. Or, like what they say, every coin has two sides to it. Cheques don’t have, but they will make you sign on the back to make it up. All facts I’m going to disclose are paradoxes. It would give me two very brilliant advantages. Firstly, I can bring down the number to four, because they come in pairs – but preferring to play fair, I have decided to keep it eight instead. Secondly, whatever I’m going to say would be also true when you negate them. The idea fits perfect for me.

While telling the facts about oneself it’s very import to number them carefully. Otherwise, people will miss them, because people take facts that lie between the lines for granted. I must have told twenty or thirty facts about me so far in this passage, which many of my readers have missed to notice. That’s how the world is. Consider the first line of the novel Moby Dick, which would be, arguably, the most brilliant opening line for a novel ever been written. It reads: Call me Ishmael. That simple, 3-word imperative sentence actually tells many facts about that person. Let’s count them.

1. His name is not Ishmael
2. He doesn’t want to tell his real name, or he has no permanent name.
3. He doesn’t believe his name is very important, but knows people always need names.
4. He likes, or at least doesn’t dislike, the name Ishmael.
5. He has no other documental evidence for his name.
6. He’s a vagabond, because only a vagabond can afford to live without a name.
7. He is not related to anyone in the story, by blood or bond.
8. He’s not a fanatic believer of Judaism, or Christianity.

Here you go! You have eight facts, implied, if not explicit, among those three simple words. And there are many more that you can find. But then, I can’t say: Call me Herman.

There’s one small trouble with facts about people. They do change with time. One might end up loving madly something he or she used to hate from the bottom of the heart. Train journeys, as in my case. Or will become comfortable with something, which was not very enjoyable, like talking on the phone. Or even hate something, which once used to be one beautiful dream, like shaving the face. This means, there's the inevitable condition – I’m free to change any of the following facts without prior notice or permission at any time in the future.

Well, I’m a very secretive person, almost cynical. And I go around throwing statements that I’m this and I’m that! I grew up reading c-grade literary weeklies in Malayalam. They were called Ma weeklies, because all their names started with a Ma. Mangalam, Manorama, Manorajyam. The name, Ma weeklies, was coined by the very intellectual readers of another weekly, which publishes b-grade novels. Ironically, that too was a Ma weekly – Mathrubhumi. Mathrubhumi has played a great role in Malayalam literature, flourishing it in the 60s and 70s, and nipping every budding writer during 80s. We had textbooks big enough to keep these weeklies inside without getting caught. The first lesson in keeping things secret. And the stories told me how important it is to keep secrets. You can be blackmailed, tormented, or even killed if your secrets are out! And if the secret is your secret moles, you might have to commit suicide. It still gives me a shuddering chill through my spine, when I hear, “hey, you have a mole here!” I’m a regular guy; I can’t wear my underwear over my pants.

Two. I wish at least one of my fingers were a screwdriver. I opened a computer for the first time on the very next day I got one – it was a rented one. I was very disappointed with it, there’s nothing much one can dismantle inside a computer. Have opened almost every single tape recorder that had stayed near me for more than a week. And to my good luck, the power promptly went off, whenever a porn videotape was inserted into the player. Opened the carburetor, when the tank nozzle was clogged - because I was waiting for a good reason to open the carburetor for a long time. The temptation is almost equal to that of stripping a girl, when you get a free hand. All you would want is to screw it back properly. Machines have a mind of their own. And deep down in their hearts, they love being pampered. Normally, every machine will start working if you just open it up and close – whether it’s a simple cigarette lighter, or a clock, or a motorbike engine.

Three. Nothing disgusts me. Well, almost. Those things that are generally described as disgusting or horrifying seldom make an impact on me. A rotting corpse under the debris, or a bleeding person at an accident site. A cockroach’s leg in my food or a piece of recently discarded faecal matter on the pavement. But, seeing people making a dramatic display of disgust at such trivial things disgusts me!

Four. I’m a racist. More precisely, I’m religiously anti-white. Most of the few people I truly respect and look up to are whites – the writers, the musicians, the moviemakers, the sportspersons, the sailors, the mountaineers, the philosophers. Many of the most interesting people I’ve met in my life so far are whites. Many of the few regular readers of this blog are whites. The dislike is not personal, but more general and prejudicial. For the unavenged injustice done by the white communities all across the world. There’s no single white nation that didn’t grow rich without insane exploitation of other countries, or communities. Razing communities and cultures and peoples. When it’s a historical fact that India’s share of world’s wealth fell from the pre-colonial 22.6% to a low of post-colonial 3.6%, I have great difficulty to accept that the best way for human development is of what the West practise. And they haven’t stopped doing it, whether it’s the indirect exploitation with trade laws favourable only to them, or direct brutality of the kind they do to the aborigines in Australia. When a whitey shoots an African, or an African shoots a whitey, it’s another whitey who gets richer. And when they talk about liberty, equality and fraternity, it disgusts me!

Five. I do get angry. I’m pretty much an indifferent person, I rarely get irritated, or even bored. I’m too lazy to acknowledge insults most of the time. If a stranger spits on my face, it’s most probable that I’d wipe it and ask ‘why did you do that?’ But I do lose my cool for the silliest of reasons. If I am very, very angry, I’ll go mad. If I’m very angry, I’ll go silent. If I’m angry, I’ll ask for an explanation.

Six. I’m scared of the traffic. I’m scared to cross the roads without traffic lights. It’s almost impossible for me to cross roads with traffic in both directions and have no dividers. And I’m equally scared to ride a bike in the traffic. I once rode a scooter from Chennai to Bangalore, and the last 10 kilometres inside the city almost gave me a heart attack. So much so that, after riding with my brother for over 50,000 kilometres, he wanted to make a tee shirt for himself, with the line on its back – IF YOU CAN READ THIS, MY BRO GOT MARRIED, OR LEARNT TO RIDE. You will never read it.

Seven. I’m a dispelled member of Workaholics Anonymous. Not because I couldn’t quit working, but because they couldn’t. As we all know, the idea is inspired from AA. And one of the hardest facts about an alcoholic is: one drink is too much, and a thousand is not enough. My firm belief is that it should be the same for a workaholic. They didn’t agree. They are okay with working moderately! Like an alcoholic having just six drinks a day? Not happening. I quit. And I’m seriously planning to establish the true Workaholics Anonymous. Or shall I name it after me? I’m procrastinating it only because it’s work.

Eight. I’m a virgin. It’s a very embarrassing statement to make in a metrosexual world for a heterosexual man, where even queers are cool. “Can’t you even take a girl out and get her drunk, and be done with it?” Ask the metrosexual guys. “Can’t you just tell them that they are very different and listen to their crap for an hour or two, and be done with it?” Ask the metrosexual girls (Yes, the adjective is not just for men anymore. Gender neutrality, you know). NO. Says me. I’m a man of ideologies. I’m usually an honest one too. That statement about honesty can surely put me into trouble! And, when I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. I ask in immaculate innocence. “Come again?” And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. Hail Mary! Blessed art thou! So am I.

That’s eight for eight. Now I need to tell eight people to do the somersaults. I would rather ask the same person to do it eight times instead. Someone, who’s really good in changing facts too often. I tag George W. Bush (Jr.). It’s still debatable whether this Harvard Business School graduate can read, but I’m pretty sure that he got a blog with a pink template with cute little flowers, where he writes sweet little poems. Don’t believe me. Believe it only when CIA releases its secret documents after 20 years. Then you will read about how they were popularising his blog among Eye-rackey children and African children, to use it as the most potent brain-damaging tool. And if, even he won’t take up my tag, who else will? So George, you have 560 days more to do it.