rantlust

Posted by anupcs on July 16th 2008 in Comics, Humor, Politics
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Maureen Dowd writes in an Op-Ed in the New York Times that Obama and his messianic followers need to lighten up and have a sense of humor about things. The recent furor, as I am sure you have heard, is about the cover cartoon of the latest issue of New Yorker magazine that depicts our man as an Osama look alike and Michelle Obama as an AK-47 wielding terrorist. Even John McCain was forced to decry the cartoon in the name of political civility.

I really hope that we don’t end up having an unfunny president as Dowd fears. We need to keep feeding the genius of the likes of Letterman, Leno, and Stewart and who better to feed them than our leaders? We can only take so much of the Brits and the Lindseys. The nation is depressed as it is. We need more humor to survive through these tough times in the economy and not complain over mere cartoons. What are we, turning into The Netherlands or something? (No offense, reneejo.)

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Posted by wolfgang amadeus on May 27th 2008 in Comics, Politics
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Wolfman learns how important it is to respect women. From Bill Clinton.

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Posted by wolfgang amadeus on March 13th 2008 in Comics, Politics
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Wolfman ponders the mind-bending power of mad cow disease.

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Posted by wolfgang amadeus on March 09th 2008 in Comics, Politics
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Wolfman wonders about the qualifications for commander-in-chief (on day one.)

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Posted by wolfgang amadeus on January 26th 2008 in Comics, Humor, Politics
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Wolfman discovers the joys of the primary season (by proxy.)

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Posted by anupcs on July 27th 2007 in Business, Comics, Humor, India
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Mike Peters, author of the daily cartoon “Mother Goose and Grimm” had this as his daily cartoon yesterday:

Even Gandhi is not spared these days.

[via SAJAforum]

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Posted by wolfgang amadeus on June 26th 2007 in Celebrity, Comics, Humor
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Wolfman believes Paris Hilton was born to be wild. And free.

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Posted by anupcs on April 29th 2007 in Comics, Europe, Language, Travel
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Like most other cultures (with the glaring exception of the French), the Czech are very appreciative if you at least try to speak their language. After a week here in Prague, I have picked up a few useful “phrasebook” words. Czech or čeština belongs to the Western Slavic language family along with Slovak and Polish. The phonetics is not hard to learn and there are hardly any exceptions to the rule (same as German). There is one sound that I find almost impossible to pronounce correctly and that is the one marked by ř (that is r with a diacritical mark above it called haček). The closest sound to this according to the language guides is a rolled “r” followed by the “zh” sound (like the s in pleasure). Even the Czech spend years of their childhood (complete with special training) to get this particular sound right. Why make it so tough?

Apart from that, I have been able to pronounce Czech without much difficulty. Last night, this even got me a free appetizer at a fancy bar (where the wait staff spoke fluent English). For them, it was a pleasant surprise to hear me greet them with a dobrý den (”good day”) when I entered the place and say děkuji (”thank you”) whenever they poured me a Scotch. Their normal customer base of crusty old British blokes don’t bother with such niceties, I was told. While the pronunciation is one thing, learning the grammar is supposed to be quite difficult as words are modified at will with the gender and case. I am not even going to try learning the grammar.

The above two photographs are of the crude Czech language cartoons found in a popular local pub called Pivnice U Pivrnce (in the Jewish Quarter).

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