This, that and the other

You know how it is sometimes when you come to hear about something for the very first time in your life and then its a pity 'cause they are closing it down for good, so even though it has no real bearing on your existence, you kinda feel sad because you didn't know about it when it was still there? This is the emotion that welled up in me after I read this piece of news. Going forward, the Chinese government has banned stripteases during funerals. I know, you're saying to yourself, boy I wish I was a Chinese corpse, but let me remind you because you seem to have missed the point of the article, namely, that the activity in question has now been banned. Yes yes I am sure don't you think I double-checked?

But the reasoning behind the striptease apparently is that the Chinese believe that a well-attended funeral gives you the same kind of God points as does flying planes into a building. So, the strippers are there to coax people into attending an otherwise solemn occasion with no intrinsic entertainment value. I liked this sentence in the report : "The disrobing served a higher purpose". I however fail to see any purpose in disrobing that is higher or holier than titillation.

Personally, I would more likely attend a funeral if they had an open bar. Or fireworks. Or some explosive combination of corpse and fireworks. That would really reel me in.

In other news, I woke up today with a searing pain in my left tongue. Not only do I appear to have been talking in my sleep, but talking while eating in my sleep. So children, there's a lesson in this for you, do not talk with your mouth full even when you are asleep 'cause you will bite your tongue and wake up in agony.

I saw something funny last night during the baseball game. It was a blurb that popped up and it said "Comeback player of the year award, sponsored by Viagra". I thought it was funny, but it might easily have been something that was not actually funny but only appeared to be so to somebody with my IQ level.

I have a colleague who thinks my last name is so weird in its unashamed Indianness that every time he needs to communicate with me, he deliberately mangles it in a fashion, he thinks, is guaranteed to make it sound funnier than it already is. Unfortunately for him, yesterday his mangling resulted in the creation of a new name which, far from being funny, is actually a different but legitimate Indian name. It was like how when Leonardo, while fiddling around with his mom's eye mascara, created the Mona Lisa by mistake. My colleague, on being informed about his accomplishment, was so pleased with his inadvertant creation that going forward, he wanted to be known by this name. It was then that the shoe went on the other foot and I began to mangle it for him. Past sins always come back to haunt you, brother.