A crisis that never was :-)

We all remember instances from our childhood when we managed to raise the terror level of the household to a flaming red, simply by making ourselves scarce at the wrong place and the wrong time - causing our panic stricken parents and sometimes even innocent-bystanders-turned-good-Samaritans to rush into a wild goose chase, to restore us to the proper state of mildly irritating visibility. Whether those disappearances were intentional or inadvertent is another matter altogether. I mused about the past when I saw a breathless story on CNN this afternoon about a 6 year old, but first, a joke to set the right mood:

--
The boss of a big company needed to call one of his employees about an urgent problem with one of the main computers. He dialed the employee's home phone number and was greeted with a child's whispered, "Hello?"
Feeling put out at the inconvenience of having to talk to a youngster the boss asked, "Is your Daddy home?" "Yes", whispered the small voice. "May I talk with him?" the man asked. To the surprise of the boss, the small voice whispered, "No." Wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, "Is your Mommy there?" "Yes", came the answer. "May I talk with her?" Again the small voice whispered, "No."
Knowing that it was not likely that a young child would be left home alone the boss decided he would just leave a message with the person who should be there watching over the child. "Is there any one there besides you?" the boss asked the child.
"Yes" whispered the child, "a policeman." Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee's home, the boss asked, "May I speak with the policeman?" "No, he's busy," whispered the child. "Busy doing what?" asked the boss. "Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the Fireman", came the whispered answer.
Growing concerned and even worried as he heard what sounded like a helicopter through the ear piece on the phone the boss asked, "What is that noise?" "A hello-copper" answered the whispering voice. "What is going on there?" asked the boss, now alarmed.
In an awed whispering voice the child answered, "The search team just landed the hello-copper." Alarmed, concerned, and more than just a little frustrated the boss asked, "What are they searching for?"
Still whispering, the young voice replied along with a muffled giggle: "Me!"
--

This afternoon, it was reported on CNN's breaking news that a 6 year old kid climbed a sort of an experimental gas filled aircraft and untying a rope, floated away thousands of feet up in the air. A massive rescue effort ensued and eventually the kid was discovered ..... in the attic of his home.

The most hilarious comedy happens in real life :-)

Thank you Mr.Columbus

Today, that is October 12th is celebrated as Columbus Day to mark the anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. Although the poor man had actually set out to discover a sea route to the 'Indies' and it was by virtue of navigational miscalculations aided by providence that he landed in America and actually thought he had arrived in India.

Aside from being thankful to him for not actually "discovering" India in the way he discovered Americas - which led to swift ethnic cleansing of natives and colonization of the latter, today we are also thankful to him for another matter that may seem unrelated to his exploits. You see, in this world 'ravaged by Global Warming' - this year snow decided to arrive rather early even by Minnesota standards. So even though most trees had never gotten the memo that it was autumn and time to let go of their modesty by way of shedding their foliage, the snow arrived as an untimely reminder of the same, loading up the still-green leaves with the white stuff.

Now, first real snowfall of the season, and that too on a Monday morning would have wreaked havoc on the commute by snarling up traffic for miles. Fortunately, part of the work-force, seems to be happily celebrating Columbus day by not venturing out on the roads to make things any worse than the white stuff already has.

For this reason alone, we feel compelled to thank Mr. Christopher Columbus today. And as a show of sympathy, we wonder yet again, how a competing explorer - Amerigo - got his name plastered on these continents when our blundering hero was the first one to arrive here and 'discover' it. Though, on second thought, United States of Columbia would somehow not be the same.

Embarrassing win....

We are all familiar with the concept of embarrassing defeats wherein one's opponent crushed one into the dirt, making one's efforts look pointless to the point of being absurd. But starting today, we will have to add a new phrase to our lexicon - 'Embarrassing Win'.

If you have still not had your fix of caffeine this morning, I recommend that you save some coffee and read this news instead. It is guaranteed to make you sit bolt upright, rub your eyes in amazement, then read the whole thing slowly again to make sure that you read it correct. Whether you agree with it or not, you will at least get enough excitement out of it to perk up to a fully awake state and without a milligram of caffeine.

Now why you may wonder do we cite this story in relation to our newly minted concept of 'embarrassing win'. Well! think about it from the perspective of the current winner/recipient of this supposed honor-
What is his crowning achievement to-date for deserving this award?
- Winning the US presidency? 43 men, albeit of paler skins have won before him.
- Middle-East peace? Nothing achieved yet.
- Is he an extreme peacenik, a total dove? Not really. He is or at least was a strong supporter of the Afghan war. So clearly not a no-War period kind of person.
- Genuinely brought a significant change to usher in world-peace somehow? Not really, and to be fair to him, 9 months (or is it 2 weeks as nominations were due on Feb 1st) is not really enough time to even understand the problem, let alone put forth a solution.

So what did he do to deserve it?
* Was it Removal of missile defense sites from Poland and Czech republic to appease Russia.
* Or was it Getting tough on Israel to appear more even-handed to Palestinians?
* He did get a resolution passed in the UNSC to a nuke-free world. An exercise in empty symbolism which doesn't hurt anyone while achieving nothing either. Kind of like the millions of resolutions passed to end world poverty.

Being an Intelligent and sensible person, though rather full of himself, one wonders what his reaction was when the news was broken to him. And I mean the real reaction, not the made-for-press 'humbled'. Surely, he cringed a little and thought- "let me at least accomplish a real goal towards world peace!"

By conferring the award on a partisan and hypocritical scaremonger - Mr. Al Gore, and the IPCC, the Nobel peace prize had been tarnished significantly, but with this they have really trivialized it into irrelevance.

But, I am sure, for the uncritical, die-hard supporters of the Obama phenomenon (can't simply call him a man anymore) this is one more reason to cheer. I am sure some of them are wondering what are the next laurels the great one achieves-
a few more Nobel prizes for literature (he wrote 2 books about HIMSELF),
he already has a grammy for reading - you guessed it - HIS BOOK about HIMSELF,
another Nobel for Economics for liberally multiplying govt spending by printing money,
other nobel prizes maybe for Sciences, an Olympic Gold or two and maybe even..
a fast-track saint-hood from the vatican?

The possibilities are endless!!