Visit a “sale” at your own risk

Maybe they should make it mandatory for all sales advertisements in the great US of A to come with a statutory warning – “Visiting the store during the sale can cause bodily harm”. It might well be in business interest in the lawsuit capital of the world. Sample this.

A rush to purchase $50 used laptops turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.

That is CNN’s version of events. Here’s another page that links to some video footage as well. Of course the only stampedes we have here in India are at the religious gatherings and people actually die which is tragic of course but I’m yet to hear of any stampedes at sales.

But this is nothing new to America. In holiday season 2003 a 41-year-old woman looking to lay her hands on a 29 USD DVD player was crushed and knocked unconscious at a Wal-Mart sale. Survival of the fittest? More like goodies for the fittest.

Retro!

Back in the days when I’d newly discovered the Internet and email, I used to “publish” a newsletter called “The best of Tidsy Bitsy stuff on the Internet” – swell name, isn’t it? Basically what I did was to compile whatever I found interesting on the Internet that week, do a copy-paste job and send it out to everyone I knew (who) had an email address. Ya, it wasn’t exactly “opt-in”, though as it grew popular (read as I got hold of more email addresses) I put in an “opt-out” option, if I remember correctly. Anyways, this post is something like that – a few stories that caught my eyes during the past few days.

This article over at CNET has upset Google so much that no one from Google will be talking to CNET for a year – literally! A case of truth hurts? The jury is still out on that one – remind me to do a write-up on that someday, I have a few things in my head, waiting to come out. Sticking with CNET you can get almost three billion dollars worth of lessons for free.

You’ll like this for sure, especially you Raman. A WiFi hotspot covering 600 square miles in Oregon, USA with speeds that would put most wired connections to shame.

Now one up for India. An English boy will fly to Delhi, India for a spine operation because the queue in hospitals in UK is longer than the ones outside ration shops in India. I guess he’ll save some money as well. Outsourcing goes medical anyone?

Sticking with the UK, the Guardian has an interesting article on Rising, the forthcoming Hindi film. Don’t care much about the guy or the movie, but the article is worth a read.

Talking about movies, saw Saher the night it was released and it’s what I would call an honest movie – really liked it. And yes Mayank, it’s based in the late 90s instead of 2004 because the plot required cell-phones to be introduced mid-way through the movie and not be ubiquotous throughout. Hope that satisifies your query. I agree the director could have paid more attention to detail and ensure that the “errors” you point out shouldn’t have crept in, but that would have been unnecessary effort in my opinion. He wasn’t making a periodical that he needed to go out of his way to ensure that kind of consistencies – a Bisleri bottle in the times of Akbar would have been a staggering mistake alright, but the new packaging, Honda City or CNG Buses being shown to exist just a few years back aren’t reasons enough to crucify the director. It’s a small oversight – I guess he wasn’t counting on too many Virgos with their attention to detail (to borrow your own words) on watching the movie 😉

And one last thing – how good was the test match at Edgbaston! Greatest test match I have ever seen for sure.

PS – Alcohol after a six weeks break is just like having it for the first time – for the first couple of swigs atleast.

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I realize now how much she’s just like the others, cold and distant, and many people are like that, women for sure, they’re like a union.

That’s life

“I had a good shot on 5,” he said, “and it was six inches short.” Well done, I said.

“No, no,” he said. “It was six inches short, and it rolled into the water.”

That’s the gist of life right there, ain’t it? Leave it a little short and boom, it’s all over.

I’ve always believed that golf is the game closest to real life and the above quote, taken way out of context from the original article, only reaffirms that belief. More on the similarities between golf and life some other day.