Welcome to The Score linkstorm edition, where we bring you assorted hilarity from around the web, but mainly ( ok only ) from Times Of India.
Standards of journalism in India have never been very high. As a nation, we seem to have an obession with kids falling into random holes, and people prophesying the end of the world every two days. Sensationalism is rampant, and integrity ielusive.
However whilst most of us were piddling on trying to make do, the Times of India seems to have attained whatever the newspaper equivalent for nirvana is. It is such radiant beacon of relevant news that looking at it is lethal for untrained eyes of ordinary people. Prolonged exposure sears your brain-cells off and you begin your Descent Into Lunacy ( cue in sinister music )
We have already told you guys how Times Of India got everything wrong about the death of Reverrse Polarity drummer. Clearly, the TOI is in such a high state of newspaper being that trivial details like names and circumstances do not matter.
Most people think that our articles are equal parts of invention and black magic, but we actually have a team of interns who we lock in the basement, who scour the web looking for interesting facts about music. And often the virtual voyage takes these intrepid indentured souls to Times of India. And often they come across stories like:
Mariah Carey threatens to kill hubby
Look at the murderous bitch!
Huh? She did? But celebrities are crazy right? Believable.
But the TOI does not relent, it will go on until until it breaks your mind:
IshQ Bector kills his girl friend!
Rest assured, Neither Mariah Carey or ‘IshQ Bector’ ( who is an indian hip-hop artist) have suddenly discovered homicidal tendencies and gone on killing sprees. The article is only tangentially related to these headlines in the first case, and not at all in the second one.
Some other gems :
Dog inspires Adele to turn veggie
What! Did she eat a dog? She looks like it! Did a pack of hounds chase her out of a steakhouse? WHAAAAAAAT?
Also, my personal favourite:
Snoop Dogg wants to release his own dictionary
Yes! This is the remedy for my poor grammatical iskills! Snoop Dogg, known for revolutionising the spelling of dogg, among other things, is the ultimate solution to our education issues. Finally the gaping void in the universe due to the absence of a doggitionary will be filled! ( I did NOT, infact come up with that word.)
The Descent Into Lunacy, starts spiralling uncontrollably at this point :
Why did Kafeel use a 320-GB hard drive?
The new face of terror, cellotaped together.
If you have more than 320 Gigs of memory on your computer, apparently you are a threat to national security.
If anyone sneezes, my name crops up: Rahman
WHAT does this even mean!!!??
The Times machine churns out articles on the web every two minutes, and the sheer gargantuan quantity of news apparently is compensation for the quality. And like any F1 car, the site is bedecked with ads and popups like festoons. Not for the faint of heart. There used to be a time when The Times was a canon of respectability.
What happened?
