Ugh!

So it's another year. While we still struggle to get out of the habit of writing ' January '07 ', it's a good time to do a quick recap of the worst of 2007. This space is much more intensely contested than the best of 2007, and people often confuse the two. For instance, although I personally don't know any (and I would kill myself if I did), there must be people out there who think 'Lead India' is one of the best things that happened in 2007. Speaking of which,

1. Lead India : I love the 'my leadership moment' section. Today's entry says [sic]'at present i am guideing my student friends for different projects, which make more useful for india science development'. More fun comes at 'Do you resemble a leader' and today's entry has a look-very- much-unlike of A.R.Rahman. 'It's a springboard to public life for those good men and women who fail to be daunted by the system', claims the home page. Looks to me like a springboard to getting those sms voting revenues up. Speaking of which,

2. SMS voting : I would like to meet all those who have ever voted for any participant(s) on any reality show - those selfless souls who don't spare a thought for themselves or the Rs 800 that they lose every time they send out 200 quick votes to Prashant Tamang or Rakhi Sawant. This phenomenon, I'm sure, is something that even pop-economist bloggers cannot explain. Speaking of who,

3. Bloggers : World problems, when I last checked, could not be solved through a careful setting up of a personal philosophy. I can prove this through a thought experiment. Let's assume you are half anarchist-capitalist-secular-libertarian. (What this assumption means is simply that your orkut 'about me' reads half anarchist-etc). Change your world view to anarchist-pseudo modernist-secular-libertarian.(Yes, click 'update profile' when done). Now look around. This experiment miraculously, works for other combination of personal philosophies as well. What's more it is replicable on other sites, such as facebook. Speaking of which,

4. Facebook : So Microsoft allegedly paid 15 billion dollars for a website that hosts virtual vampires, werewolves etc. I wouldn't pay that much even for real vampires and werewolves. But in their defense, I guess at some point this social network would develop an intelligence of its own and develop applications itself. Imagine logging in and reading notifications that say ' Congrats! In your absence, your werewolf bit XYZ's pet panda and gained 34 points!' or 'Facebook Inc. decided that your profile matched that of Katie's in Detroit. Your profiles went on a date subsequently and things didn't quite work out. Here's a growing gift for all that trouble!'. But then I have been wrong in the past about technology. I thought the graphics that posed as Shah Rukh's six-pack would not be enough to sell Om Shanti Om.

5. Bad movies : This deserves a separate 10,000 word blog post. Laaga chunari me daag would have to be my worst three hours of 2007. But to be fair, the best time I ever had was the ten minutes after the movie got over when it dawned on me that my prayers had been heard and the movie was not of infinite length. It felt like I was re-born. I found myself stopping to look at birds chirping, at the sun-set, at those beautiful beautiful flowers on the way to work. Then I walked into Sawariya.

Note : This is the first part in a series of 50 posts, where I list the twenty five thousand things that irritated me the most in 2007.