Chp 208. Are you an average man? :)

Of late, many of us are bombarded with the vimax penis enlargement ads!

At first I thought these guys were going on a mega advertising spree but I grew suspicious when I started noticing these ads at sites such as bbc, ebay, technorati, ndtv, mtvindia, nat geo etc! And then whenever I come online from my sister’s laptop or from a Sify Cyber café, I could never see the same ads.

These are some of the ads:





At first I thought it was ip specific, kinda like a new hybrid of viral advertisement where the ad cookies determine whether you can access the ads or not based on your browser history (something like how adsense works where the displayed ads are based on the content of your particular post). I assumed that if you have cyber-nanny installed or your office bans you from visiting certain restricted sites like personal yahoo mail, orkut, myspace etc, then you may not be able to see these ads.

I was wrong.

Today as I was surfing for more details regarding this ad, I came across this interesting discussion thread.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1749920&tstart=0

Allison says:

As I mentioned yesterday this is a browser hijack malware and nothing to do with your OS, server side issues or anything similar.

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12th root of 2 says:

The answer is: You have a Trojan Horse called DNSChanger 1.1 or other variation that is causing unauthorized ads to load in place of various websites’ scheduled ads.

The Trojan Horse is most likely in (root) /library/Internet Plug-Ins, but don't bother to try to find it in the finder or with spotlight - It's invisible. A free trial version of MacScan will find it, isolate it, and allow it to be trashed.

Be sure to do a full scan of the entire hard drive –
I found the Trojan in the “main” library – not the user library. If you purchase MacScan, you can perform custom scans of smaller areas of the hard drive.
You don’t need to re-install Safari
You don’t need to disable your JavaScript
You don’t need to disable your Plugins
You don’t need to install blocking programs
Just get rid of the Trojan Horse!

So there you go. This is not an aggressive marketing pitch but rather a stupid malware. Come to think of it, when was the last time we received a proper decent penis enlargement advertisement that was not associated with spam?



I like the way this company directly attacked the "size doesn’t matter" theory:

Vimax.com

Don't buy in to the myth that says women don't care about the penis size. If you are small then it doesn't matter how good of a person you are, because you won't hold on to your loved one for long.

So basically, this company is all out to prove that romance is dead and all women are a Jenna Jameson or a Sylvia Saint or a late Linda Lovelace (err… I googled those names…)

Another point I just love:

You control the growth because once you reach your optimum size you could stop taking VIMAX PILLS. We say you could stop taking VIMAX PILLS because it is not necessary to be larger then 9 inches. Most women can only comfortably accommodate a 9 inch penis. Anything larger than that may be too large for most women. Nine inches or more then 9 inches, the choice is yours.

Haha this is so freaking hilarious! Imagine it is possible to change the size whenever we guys want?

"urrrm… honey, how was your day? Would you like the usual 9 inches for tonight or you prefer the 10 inches?"
"Darling, I had a hard day at office today… I just need to relax. Gimme just 8 inches for tonight if you don’t mind…"
"ok." (concentrates… 8 inches… 8 inches… 8 inches…)
"Ah! Here you go honey. Exactly 8 inches."



Even though the size of one’s manhood is what we guys sometimes joke about, I usually don’t find the same joke coming from the fairer sex. I’m just guessing it is no big deal (pun unintended). Because if this was really that big an issue, how come we do not find that many "famous quotations" by "famous people" regarding this.

Martin Luther King Jr. most definitely did not pep up the crowd with:

"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the size of their schlong."

Shakespeare too probably did not lament in angst:

"To resize, or not to resize: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The tiny weeny size of outrageous fortune,"

Back home too, can you imagine what it would be like had that magical song from Qayamat se Qayamat Tak went like this:

"Papa kehte hain, bada laand hoyega…"

mmmm…

(Please do pardon my brazen vulgarity on this particular post. Desperate ads require desperate measures.)

Judging from the advertisement above (Surprise her!), Cornelia the first wife of Julius Caesar would have probably said

“I came, I saw, I wasn’t surprised.”

Our man Julius must have been mighty irritated with all the Roman citizens enlarging their… spearitus. The last straw was when he was taking a leak in the toiletorium and Brutus entered to pee and whipped it out…

Julius exclaimed, “Et tu, Brutus!!???”

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Across many cultures (if not all), the size of one’s manhood is usually used as a factor to determine one’s manliness. The bigger the tool, the macho-er the fool, supposedly. Cellular phones are the only thing we men brag about who got the smallest.

And pornos and sleazy ads and irritating spam mails only seem to add more "truth" to the myth that the only thing women want in this world is a well endowed guy - somebody who can stand like a tri-pod, if y’know what I mean.

Sex & the city Samantha cried when the guy she really liked (finally) happened to have a "small one". And since many women worship her, men all over the world are making genuine attempt to make sure that doesn’t happen to them too. Because to be dumped by a woman purely because his "thing" is a thingie, most men would rather be dead than face that ultimate embarrassment.

Well, whether I cry or not, my first intention right now is to remove this freaking malware from my system. Shooooo. Fly away, you big horrible penis.

Special thanx to colleague Aalaap who twitted:

Everyone - edit your windows Hosts file and put "127.0.0.1 b1.adv.net" and rid yourself of this Vimax assault.

How to edit Host files in Vista

Aalaap also continues to blog about this with solutions for firefox, windows, mac and linux users :

Firefox users: Simply right click any of those ads and select "Block images from b1.adv.net..." and you're done. How I wish everything was this simple!

Non-Firefox users running Windows: You have to edit your Windows "hosts" file and add a fake DNS entry for the host "b1.adv.net"...

Cheers to all you average men out there!

If you find this post funny or are one of those users irritated with this Vimax Ad or even one of those guys who are "average", please feel free to digg this post!

Chp 207. Death seems a better option

...

I dropped my hard disk :-(

...

Chp 206. Age is NOT just a number

Remember decades ago when leather jackets and bell-bottom jeans were considered hep and clicking your fingers was all you had to do to be a great dancer? Ah… those magical years when our version of today’s gangsta hiphop was MC Hammer and how we would end up jumping every time the song "Jump" by Kris Kross was played? Remember how you just couldn’t stop listening to NKOTB’s "Step by step" and "Happy birthday"?

Now it is no longer considered cool to moonwalk or have a poster of Smokie or Madonna covering your wall (I’m not talking about this Jewish Kabbalah Madonna, I’m referring to the Like-a-virgin Material girl). But no matter how time flies by, certain things always remain. Like that song "Happy Birthday" by NKOTB –

Happy Birthday to you
You´re still young
Age is just a number
Don´t you stop having fun
…



Ah, doesn’t that song just makes you wish it’s true? Age is just a number? Reality is soooooo different from the things that we try to believe in.

I’m a guy, and I definitely do feel the sharp fangs of age digging deep inside of me every passing day. Every morning I spend more and more time in front of the bathroom mirror because the "surface" I’m washing is gradually increasing daily. Places where I used to apply shampoo a couple of years ago, I now apply face-wash

Growing bald is not my intention, believe me

And this is why I envy women so much. First of all, this baldness gene is from the XX-chromosomes, meaning it is because of my mom that I am bald. Likewise dad can blame grandma.

Secondly, signs of ageing for women show mainly on their facial features, which can easily be altered with the help of "advanced technology" like liposuction and botox, or even painless procedures like cosmetics.

A couple of days ago, I came across this site by OLAY which was extremely impressive.

There’s a neat viral there if you click on the "Click here to make your skin look younger in minutes" link.

OLAY, unlike brands like Fair & Lovely, position their brand on Anti-ageing, whereas Fair & Lovely seems to convey the message that "being fair is beautiful and dark is ugly". I am in the Advertising field, and if there’s one thing I hate more than corny stupid and careless Ads, then it is an Ad that seems to strengthen stereotypes and exploit discrimination. I once saw an NDTV interview where Prahlad Kakkar said he would never do a Fair & Lovely commercial because it goes against his ethics. RESPECT!

So here’s the really cool thing about this OLAY viral. Kudos to the Agency that executed this masterpiece (Hope it’s not one of our competitors here in Mumbai!!!)



Upload your own pic or use the existing ones, or if you have a webcam you can even take your picture directly for this app.



Once your pic is up there, you will receive information on the signs of ageing etc. If it was not for the metrosexuality hype, I would have never uploaded my pic in the first place



Start olay-fying your face!



With the built-in app, you can actually remove some of the wrinkles and lines etc. People familiar with photoshop might sigh "No big deal" but it’s quite a different thing to execute this online.

Caution though! Don’t over do it.

I wanted to see how young I could get and repeated the procedure a hundred times.

This is what I got.

…..
…..
…..
…..





I even registered for the free trial version!!! lolzzzz

How much more shameless can I get!!!! Hehehehe.

Comon, I’m an Indian. Anything I see labeled as "FREE" should be grabbed immediately Here’s the link: Free OLAY 8gms sample pack!

The best part is, for Mumbai and B’lore residents you have the MCOUPON option. I registered my mobile number and I received a code and instructions on how to redeem the sample pack immediately.

Let’s see now if I can really redeem that free pack… Or maybe they’ll reject my code saying I am beyond repair!

Whatever be it, it’s great to see good virals once in a while (The last time I saw a really good viral was the one on Gillette Mach 3. Dunno who did that but I really loved it!!!). And since this is my field of profession now, I have to keep an eye out for these things, and hey it’s good to have stumbled upon it so that I could tell my dear visitors about the site.

So knock yourself out, dear ladies and gentlewomen. Go register!

(sheeeeesh, the last line sounds like I am actually advertising the product! Damn, being a copywriter, it’s so hard to turn it off sometimes! I was with my girl the other night and I actually said "Honey, exclusive offer for you tonight! Avail of a fantastic surprise gift package by simply clicking here! Hurry before this multiple offer ends!"



hehe just joking. Who am I kidding? I’m a copywriter = I can't find a girlfriend.

Still, it was fun. Cheap thrills indeed!)

Chp 205. Online Tribal Warfare!

Online games are fun. Extremely fun. The only downside to playing online games is that sometimes it’s difficult to turn off your online avatar and mistakenly talk in online gaming lingo in the office!

“Congrats on the promotion! w00t w00t!”
“huh???”
“errr… congrats!”

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“You don’t know how to copy the text from a PDF file? Gosh, you’re such a n00b!”
*smacks* “And you’re such a perv!”

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“Our pitch is so good that the client’s account is definitely going to be pwned by us!”
“Why the hell would we want to pawn away a client?”

-------------------------

“Hey Kima we’ve just nailed the FMCG account! We’re doing their entire micro-site!”
“woooohooo!! All your account are belong to us!”
“sheeeshhh! So many grammatical mistakes and you call yourself a copywriter?”

Coming back to the topic of this post, can you spot the odd one out?



urrrrrmmm…. See it?

These are the members of our "Tribe" at a popular MMORPG game that I play called "TribalWars". In the past few months we have all gotten to know each other very well and many a times I have sacrificed my expensive HC (heavy cavalry) just to rescue a fellow tribesman from an enemy raid.



Good fun we all have, but then, you must be itching to ask me, what the hell is a 28 years old fart like me doing with a bunch of 14-15 years old???

People who don’t know me would probably assume I haven’t matured mentally, or that I’m a disgusting creepy paedophile!!!

I sincerely hope I am not under the radar of any Interpol agencies, and that my profile is not there in ICAID (Interpol Child Abuse Image Database).

I also hope Interpol doesn’t go through my "TribalWars" inbox, and even if they do, I hope they understand that when I threaten a 14yrs old that I’d love to RAM her with full force, it means just that - Attack her village with my large army of RAMs (battering rams), and nothing else beyond the imagination.

And some people who DO know me very well (my dear ex-girlfriend included) would probably exclaim, ah he still hasn’t grown up!

See, in my defense, "TribalWars" is a very exciting game! Here are the reasons why I loveeee this game.

1. It’s a browser game and it involves resource collection and research/upgrades and army build-up just like AOE, WarCraft etc. But being a browser game, it does not require any sophisticated installations. All you require is a browser (duh!) and a net connection.
   
   
2. The style of the game involves slow resource collection and slow movements. Hence you don’t need to sit in front of the game the whole time, which works out perfectly for me here in office as I just need to click on a few commands once every 3-4 hours. No precious office time is wasted.
   
   
3. It is a MMORPG ("Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game" for the uninitiated) which means players I am interacting with are real-time. Remember how excited you were when you played your first multi-player AOE death-match with a friend through an amateurish self-assembled LAN connection? It’s the same here, except I am playing with millions of people all over the world.
   
   
4. Once again I stress – it’s a lot of excitement that requires minimum attention, hence not distracting you from work in any way.
   
   
5. Being a strategy game, it also means you are slowly being trained in micro/macro management, hence it is like a crash course in MBA because you have to manage your economy shrewdly (no cheat codes), display marketing skills by enticing other big players to join your tribe, display HR skills by ensuring that there is good harmony among your tribesmen, and last but not the least, sharpen your "business strategy" by wisely forming alliances or taking over hostile tribes or having a good defensive back-up while attacking offensively.
   
   So I guess it is safe to say I am playing this game purely for its educational value
   

At first your village will look something like this:
[My village "Saiha" in World 25]



This is how my current village "Aizawl" in World 23 is:



And of course this is the dream village most of us are vying for!



And about the interaction with other players part, this is how your map would look like:





The dark blue villages are members of the Tribe I belong to.

Light blue villages are members of other tribes who are our allies [A very important part of the game].

Purple dots denote members of other tribes who are not our allies but with whom we have a "Non-Aggression Pact" [NAP] with.

Red villages are those villages and tribes who are neither our allies nor NAPs, but need not necessarily be enemies too.

Bright red villages are those who are officially declared as enemies. Right now our tribe the “Undead Knights” is currently at war with the "Knights of Fire", which is like 10 times stronger than us! We did nothing to provoke any of their tribe members but being a large Tribe I guess they just simply want to bully others. They may be strong, very strong, but together with our allies we intend to put up a good fight.

	Versus
[Undead Knights]		[Knights of Fire]

And this is what I love the most about this game. The moment war is declared in our Tribal forum, we all change our game style immediately from resource collection and building research to complete troops manufacturing.

At first your army may look like this:


[Taitesena is the name of my Paladin at village "Saiha", world-25]

And very soon this is how your armed force can look like:


[Khuangchera is the name of my Paladin at village "Aizawl", world-23]

I have proudly taken the names of Taitesena and Khuangchera, two of our bravest Mizo warriors from our tribal past, as my two special Paladins (we can have just one Paladin per world). I swear to live up to their names and bring out our glorious past and relive the gallant days of Mizo head-hunters! w00t! w00t!

Chp 204. Bicentennial resolution

I made a new blog resolution. Having crossed my 200th post recently, I am going to call it my Bicentennial resolution.

To read at least one fiction novel a month, written by somebody who does not belong to the mainstream group of fiction-thriller I usually read like Jeffrey Archer, Robin Cook (L), Robert Ludlum (L), Louis L’Amour (L), Tom Clancy, Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth, Mario Puzo and Ian Fleming.

Like how my good friend P would always criticize me: "sheesh, you guys are all so predictable! You’re all a bunch of typical stereotyped males with no appreciation for real literature".

And then we would get into a never ending argument about how my Ludlum main character could kick the ass of her Nora Roberts main character.

Anyway, jokes aside, such type of books, the number I have read, on my fingers, I could count, meekly.

Made a resolution to read such a book every month, and I’m telling you, the experience and journey were amazing right up to the very last punctuation.

The book I am talking about is "Half of a yellow sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and I highly recommend that you read it too.



Also available in other covers:



For those of you who were moved by movies like Hotel Rwanda and Sometimes in April and could watch them over and over again, this novel is a must read.

Even till now, I go teary-eyed at that part in "Hotel Rwanda" when all the foreigners were just about to leave in the bus amidst the rain and then suddenly a voice cries "No waitttt!" and then we see an exodus of people hoping to be transported along with the white people while the song of Wyclef Jean’s million voice** in Kinyarwanda dialect is played in the background.

Ni ryari izuba rizagaruka hejuru yacu? Ni nde uzaricyeza?

When will the sun return above us? Who will reveal it to us once again?

** nominated as best film song for the Golden Globe in 2005 and the Grammy Award in 2006.

Like I said before, this book was a totally new experience for me. It’s about the civil war in Nigeria during the Biafra separatist movement in 1967. Even though the war was coming from a woman’s perspective and had none of the usual Ludlum-Clancy style of counter-espionage and lethal upper-cuts that I’ve grown accustomed to, it was nevertheless an amazing piece of work, a masterpiece if I may say so, wherein I was transported all across the war ravaged country with each chapter engaged.


[ source ]

It’s like a drama, with lots of bloodshed, rape, sex, emotions, and innocence.

Having Rwandan best-friends for 4 years back in college, this novel definitely opened a sluice-gate for me. That, and also the fact that this bloodshed took place due to the same mistake the British made here in India – Conquering a particular region and then making a country out of it without considering any religious, ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences that have existed there for ages before they arrived. It’s like a déjà vu of what took place here in India.

Once again, I do hope you get to read this wonderful novel and I really must admit, the powerful and honest narration by the author is bitter-sweetly poetic.


[ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – source ]


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My favorite War quotes:

	War does not determine who is right - only who is left. -- Bertrand Russell
	When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
	I think war might be God's way of teaching us geography. -- Paul Rodriguez
	It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. -- Voltaire, "War".
	Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them. -- John Fowles (The Magus, 1965)
	We have women in the military, but they don't put us in the front lines. They don't know if we can fight or if we can kill. I think we can. All the general has to do is walk over to the women and say, "You see the enemy over there? They say you look fat in those uniforms." -- Elayne Boosler

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Interesting reads:

	The Nigerian Civil War - Causes, Strategies and Lessons learnt
	Quick Kill In Slow Motion: The Nigerian Civil War
	Reviews on "Half of a yellow sun"