Friday, September 12, 2008

Crib It! : An Ode to Bollywood's 'Inspired' Finest!

by Anand Ramachandran, no stranger to plagiarism, alleged and otherwise!

Thanks to Bollywood stalwarts like Pritam and Sanjay Gupta, lots of us Indians have been exposed to great songs and movies from countries like Thailand, Iran and Korea which we otherwise would never even have heard of! Since we'd like to show our appreciation for the Modus Operandi of Mr.Pritam and Mr.Gupta, and since, like these stellar individuals, we have absolutely no originality, we thought we'd resort to cribbing from Michael Jackson's world famous hit, 'Beat It'.





Crib It! [Sing to the tune of 'Beat It!' by Michael Jackson]





They told me that they wanna hear a good song,

Needed it by Sunday, didn't have too long!

No time to compose, so turn the radio on

and Crib it!

Just Crib it!






Just heard a track that's been a hit in Thailand

No one over here will even know the band.

They'll never find out, so I'll do what I can

And Crib it.

Yeah they'll never find out . . .






So Crib It! Crib It! Crib It! Crib it!

Even Dr.Dre just did it

Steal a tune, baby, steal a whole song!

It doesn't matter, if it's right or wrong!






Just Crib It! Crib It!

Just Crib It! Crib It!

Just Crib It! Crib It!

Just Crib It! Crib It!






Need to make a film, I need to find a story!

Too bad that winning scripts don't really come for free.

Never mind all that crap, I'll just rent a DVD

And crib it. Just crib it.






Watch a bunch of films from North Korea, Iran

New Zealand, Poland, Togo and Afghanistan.

Throw in a few songs, and an actor named Khan!

We'll crib it!

Yeah they'll never find out . . .






So Crib It! Crib It! Crib It! Crib it!

If we're found out we'll fib it!

Watch a good movie, rip off a few scenes!

Even if it isn't clear what it means!






Just Crib It! Crib It!

Just Crib It! Crib It!

Just Crib It! Crib It!

Just Crib It! Crib It!






So Crib It! Crib It! Crib It! Crib it!

Plagiarism we'll exhibit !

Copy the music, copy the fights.

It doesn't matter, screw IP rights!






Just Crib It! Crib It! Crib It! Crib it!

Hope the public can forgive it!

Original ideas, we have got none!

We just lack basic imagination!






So Crib It! Crib It! Crib It! Crib it!

Rip off just a little tidbit!

Copyright matters won't get in our way.

If they try suing, we'll get a stay!






Just Crib It! Crib It! Crib It! Crib it!

Just Crib It! Crib It! Crib It! Crib it!


[fade]



Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Apple launches iThing – nobody knows what it does, but millions line up outside stores to buy one!

by Anand Ramachandran, a proud member of the socio-religious-hip-amazingly-cool-and-even-more-cool DELL XPS cult. What? There isn't one? Oh! Damn!


World renowned cool company Apple Inc. has launched their latest product, the iThing – a strange, minimalistic handheld device with no apparent features or uses. Now available in stores globally, the iThing is unbelievable sleek, sexy, desirable and useless. While even Apple has admitted that they have no idea what it actually is, this hasn't prevented millions of Mac fans from lining up outside retail outlets from the wee hours of the morning to be among the first to own one.


Apple's new iThing has no buttons, no screen and no features. Oh, well, at least the battery life is excellent - lasting about eight to ten hours.


“I'm a fan of anything Mac. I am proud that Apple have given me the opportunity to cluelessly stand in line for hours and pay through my nose for a product that I have no idea why I need!”, said a beaming Sankalesh Jimmy, conveniently stepping in to avoid embarrasment for any of the real-life Son of Bosey regulars, such as Tony Chacko and Nishraj Gurung.


“Mac fans. What idiots.”, snapped renowned windows fanatic Priya Krishnan, while waiting for Vista to recover from a critical crash on her Windows laptop.


“The iThing will revolutionize boring old things. Just like the iPhone revolutionized boring old phones, and the iMac revolutionized boring old Macs!”, said Apple supremo Steve Jobs, immediately regretting the last example and looking around shiftily to see if anyone noticed. “The iThing is the neXTstep in a proud Apple tradition of 'minimalist' design that makes products progressively more expensive and less useful.”, said Jobs, slipping in a quick in-joke that not many picked up on.


“The iThing is amazing. Unlike windows - it never crashes, is extremely easy to use, and has absolutely no features . .er . . problems.”, said a spokesman for Apple. “Let's just face it - it's just BETTER.”, he said.


““The iThing is amazing. Unlike windows - it never crashes, is extremely easy to use, and has absolutely no features . .er . . problems.Let's just face it - it's just BETTER ”, said a proud Mac user, exhibiting the well-documented Mac fan behaviour of cluelessly repeating Apple's marketing rhetoric, making people wonder why Apple need spokesmen at all.


“Hey, that's right! You're fired!”, said Steve Jobs to the spokesman, suddenly springing into action and instantly making Apple even more profitable. “We don't need any extra features, we don't need any extra employees. We're minimalist.”, he sniggered.


When someone nearby asked why people would be dumb enough to pay a large amount of money for something that has no actual use, Jobs retorted with a wink “If they believe that a company that stupidly squandered a genuine advantage, and made a decade of crummy mistakes, before regaining its market share a full twenty years later, is full of innovative geniuses, they'll believe anything! Besides, they lapped up the iPhone, didn't they?”


“Who says the iThing has no uses?” said Wildlife photographer and longtime Mac loyalist S.U.Saravanakumar. “Like all Apple products, it can be used to raise self-esteem, and to pick up chicks.”, he said, causing nearby Windows users to momentarily consider shifting to Mac themselves. “Not that I need it, heh heh!”, he added quickly.


“I would like to personally thank Apple for making 'I' the coolest alphabet in the world.”, said an excited Aravind Murali. “Who wants some Calamari?”, he asked, before trotting off with a Japanese looking individual in the general direction of Mahabalipuram.


As usual, other companies have been upset by Apple's instant success, and swung into action by announcing plans of their own. Sony has issued a press release that indicates that they will soon launch their own version of an overpriced, useless device called the er..uh..whateverStation. Microsoft has also said that they will issue an e-mail statement, just as soon as they can get IE to boot up. Nintendo was too busy making actually interesting products to respond to our messages.


Apple, however, is not resting on their laurels. They have already started work on making a TV remote control with no buttons (but with a nice, backlit Apple logo), and a gaming console that will have no actual games of its own, but which will come with an insanely cool virtual machine for running XBOX 360 games (just so that users can say “Did you know, you can actually run XBOX 360 games on a Mac? Wow!”)