Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?


Tulsi Giri: "The king must have thus wanted."

Girija Koirala: "That was BP's vision."

Madhav Nepal: "The masses must have thus desired."

Prachanda: "It must have seen the People's Army coming."

Baburam Bhattarai: "As to why, every child here and abroad knows why."

Kirti Nidhi Bishta: "Must have lost deposit."

Bamdev Gautam: "Must not have wished to get buried in the same ditch."

Narahari Acharya: "Must have seen the republic train."

Hridayesh Tripathy: "For the cause of social justice."

Bharat Bimal Yadav: "Mai ka dooth piya hoga to dauda."

Sushil Koirala: "San dai ko ichha hola."

Shailaja Acharya: "Must have been the mainstream."

Gagan Thapa: "Must have happened while I was on my US trip."

Narahari Acharya: "Must have lost the leadership election despite being right."

Ram Sharan Mahat: "What do you want me to do about it?"

KP Oli: "Ta daudyo ta daudyo."

Pradeep Nepal: "Kukhura ko pani ke aukat hunchha?"

Amik Sherchan: "Kasto kura na bujheko tapain le?"

Lilamani Pokharel: "Yaska dui char karan huna sakchhan."

Narayan Man Bijukchhe: "Malai sodhera daudya hoina ta."

CP Mainali: "Yo bado naulo kura sunaunu bhayo tapain le."

Rajendra Mahto: "Uska bhi shoshan ho raha hoga."

Sujata Koirala: "Desh bidesh bata movement ka lagi moral support batulne hatar ho ki?"

King Gyanendra: "To participate in the municipal polls, for the love of the country. "



WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?

Plato: For the greater good.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Oliver North: National Security was at stake.

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken- nature.

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus: For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

Ronald Reagan: I forget.

John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.

Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.

The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.

Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.

Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.

Othello: Jealousy.

Dr Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.

Mrs Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.

Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.

Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.

Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.

Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.

Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.

Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter)

Hamlet: That is not the question.

Donne: It crosseth for thee.

Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.

Constable: To get a better view.

Monday, January 09, 2006

NAC Talk


I just visited the Alliance page, the Youth Council page and finally the NAC page hoping to find details for the symposium to be held this Saturday at Columbia University. The information has not been displayed. I wonder if the event is an in thing. Only a few people will get invited. I did get an info email from a friend in Texas a few weeks back, and I had an e-correspondence with one of the key organizers soon after. I got the impression it was an open meeting.

But then at the NAC page I noticed something of interest: Letter to President Jimmy Carter. I got told I got expelled from the Nepal Democracy Forum for going public with that letter. I knew that could not have been the reason, and now I stand proven by none other than NAC itself, not that I miss the Forum. It is too closed for me. I like things more open.

I proceeded to check out a few more items at the NAC page. This is vastly interesting: Exploratory meeting with HE Ambassador, Mr Kedar Bhakta Shrestha. This apparently happened a day or two before the royal coup. You got to notice the timing of it all. I sometimes wonder if the diaspora Nepalis are just a bunch of homesick people who talk of Nepal not necessarily with a service motive, but so as to bond among themselves. Because sometimes the attitudes, actions and comments are so off the mark. Look at some of the stuff.

He emphasized that the Diaspora, should forcefully communicate to the political entities of Nepal that if the political forces do not respond positively to well meaning calls for peace, they would lose the support of Diaspora. The Diaspora expects political entities in Nepal to respond responsibly, otherwise Diaspora could soon lose interest in Nepali affairs and the movement could lose steam. In the final analysis, the Diaspora should take a stance and expect Nepali political entities to respond accordingly.

Golley, what is this supposed to mean? I am at sea.

The Nepali diaspora social organizations are like America when only white men with a ton of land could vote. Some of the professionally accomplished individuals have formed a few clubs. Something is better than nothing, but one wishes the organizations would get more mass based.

Yesterday I got to spend some time with Dinesh Tripathi. This guy is so highly accomplished. He has been called the Arthur Kinoy of Nepal by the National Lawyers Guild, USA. But no Nepali organization in the city bothered to organize a talk program around him like for so many other lesser visiting Nepali dignitaries. (
Dinesh Tripathi In New York, Dinesh Tripathi: In Person) To me this is so obviously a Madhesi-Pahadi thing. He is so totally in the lead for the most important thing the diaspora could do for the movement in Nepal. If and when there is a need, he will be taking the lead for global legal action against the king and the army top brass. He has been doing the homework for it in concert with several of his Ameican colleagues. But it is like blacks fought on behalf of the US during World War II and came home to segregation.

Me? I fall in a slightly different category. I have no ambitions to climb the leadership ladders in the so many Nepali social organizations in the US, not my cup of tea. I am only interested in the democracy movement. And my work goes on through specific projects. But the occasional slights I do take offense at on behalf of the 13 million Madhesis in Nepal. If not me, who? I think more Madhesis need to feel that way.

All Nepalis in America are non-white, which is half way to black. But some of the most racist comments I ever heard have been from Nepalis, and I actually went to school in the South. What are you supposed to think, that these Bahuns are white! Golley.

I think a concerted effort has to be made to reach out to the tens of thousands of Nepalis in the US. Let people donate $10 and pose for group photos to express solidarity to the movement in Nepal.

At some level the organizational dysfunctions are also amusing, like biologists watching lizards or something. The Nepalis are a colorful bunch.

But the work of democracy is on, in both Nepal and in the US. That is the good news.

Mr. Krishna Nirola, President of ANA (Association of Nepalese in Americas) announced that a total of $22,000 (twenty two thousand dollars) had been collected for the families of Nepali victims of terrorist attack in Iraq. The families in Nepal had been identified and the money will be dispensed to those families. He thanked all contributors and coordinators of this valuable effort on behalf of ANA. This was welcomed with resounding satisfaction by the audience.

I wish the NAC did some fundraising also for the various projects. So far mum has been the word.

Nepal Needs To Be Hitting The World Headlines: Write To The Media
Advisors, Doers, Donors, Supporters, Cheerleaders, Spectators, Whiners
Flickr Tag: NepalDemocracy
Googlebombing An Autocrat King
Diaspora Dynamics

In The News

RPP expels ten CWC members, including Home Minister Thapa, from the party NepalNews
Maoists raid a bank in Surkhet
Alliance to blacklist candidates of municipal poll
US suspected of using Nepal soldiers as guinea pigs NewKerala.com, India

न्युयोर्कमा अधिकारबारे बहस

कास

काठमाडौं, पुस २४ - अमेरिकी कानुन व्यवसायीको संगठन 'नेसनल लयर्स गिल्ड' ले नेपालमा कानुनी राज र मानव अधिकार बहालीबारे अभियान थाल्ने भएको छ ।

संगठनका न्युयोर्क च्याप्टर अध्यक्ष मार्टिन स्ट्रोलरले शुक्रबार न्युयोर्कमा आयोजित कार्यक्रम सम्बोधन गर्दै उक्त जानकारी दिनुभएको हो । नागरिक स्वतन्त्रताका लागि लडिरहेका अमेरिकी कानुन व्यवसायी, कानुन प्राध्यापक, न्यायाधीश र अनुसन्धान कर्ताहरूको छाता संगठन हो । कार्यक्रमलाई नेपालका तर्फबाट अधिवक्ता दिनेश त्रिपाठीले सम्बोधन गर्दै माघ १९ पछि नेपालको खस्कँदो मानव अधिकार स्थितिबारे अवगत गराउनुभयो । उहाँले राज्य स्वेच्छाचारी हुँदै गएको, गैरन्यायिक हत्याका यताना र नागरिकलाई बेपत्ता पर्ने क्रम निरन्तर जारी रहेको उल्लेख गर्नुभयो । त्यसैगरी राज्यले पत्रपत्रिकाहरूमा माथि आर्थिक नाकाबन्दी गर्ने, प्रेसको घाँटी निमोठ्न नयाँ कानुन ल्याउने, एफएम स्टेसनमाथि आक्रमण गर्ने क्रम तीव्र पारेको त्रिपाठीले जानकारी गराउनुभएको थियो ।

Visitors

9 January01:47Hong Kong S.A.R. (infolink.hk)
9 January01:59D. E. Shaw & Co., New York, United States
9 January07:01Bluewin AG, Switzerland
9 January07:09Netscape Communications Corp., United States
9 January09:15Takta Co LTD, Iran
9 January10:22Dubai Internet City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
9 January11:29Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
9 January13:47Rogers Communications Inc., Canada
9 January14:59Barak, Israel
9 January19:15Demon Internet, Netherlands, The
9 January20:57Masaryk University, Czech Republic