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The week in re(ar)view
Successfully contributing to stress related disorders since you read this

Guest birds must pay
Ministers have a lot to say. Some may argue that some ministers are too preoccupied with fashionable haircuts. Those who aren't busy with their hair are too busy dealing with the complexities of what lies under the hair i.e. the brain.
Finance Minister M Saifur Rahman has blasted the presence of the guest birds that come in droves each winter. He is so pissed at them terming them to be an utter nuisance. According to him the birds are no good whatsoever because they come to Bangladesh without reporting to customs and then 'invade our wetlands', 'gobble crops' and also insects. Makes you wonder whose expensive Bongobazar suit got pooped upon.

We rock………only to sink like one
December 21, you simply can't believe how good our textile industry is till you listen to commerce minister Altaf Hossain Choudhury. At a WTO meet it was argued that the Bangladeshi textile industry so competitive that that it does not need special favours. As a result textile exports were excluded from duty free and quota free market access. We are so good at making clothes that now we have to face bigger challenges like going head on against the big shot countries. This sounds like a bad script from the Mortal Kombat video game where you keep meeting increasingly deadly bosses till your head explodes.

So where does Altaf Hossain come in? Well, he thinks it is a great success for us that developed countries 'think' we are so damn competitive. We will also feed ourselves by 'thinking' that we have food on our plates. Seems our success is also our downfall.
He is optimistic about exporting frog legs though.

Appetite for destruction
December 24, on a differently non political note, a cargo vessel with 500 tonnes of salt capsized near the Chittagong port. It's a case of dust to dust, ashes to ashes and alt to salt. This happened after the cargo ship was rammed by anther smaller vessel. It's our way of showing love in the open seas by rubbing against each other.

On 25 December Mirpur businessman was shot and in a bid to protest a lot of Mirpur residents came out to break some cars around the roundabout. Does that mean the trader was shot by a car misfiring? Ummm, no, he was shot by toll-takers but most people felt it wasn't enough mayhem so they started breaking some cars instead.

As for the latest in our bombing reports, DITF (trade fir place) was also the site of a bombing. Luckily only four people were slightly injured.

By Gokhra and Mood Dude


A few of the modern ways


1. In the olden days we used to find boys plucking petals off a flower saying, “She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not …” Nowadays we find girls taking a box of matches and lighting each stick saying “He's hot, he's not hot, he's hot, he's not hot …”

2. Recent research has found a new usage for baggy pants that hang below one's shoes and goes dragging with the ground: the “Yo” public who wear such outfit subconsciously are helping the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) help clean the city with their pants and as they walk, stroll and run.

3. The modern fashion sense of girls is good news especially for the boys… salewar kamez with as low neck as possible is considered to be highly fashionable. Not to mention the fewer amounts of cloth, the tighter the cloth and the more amount of transparent cloth (in girls' outfits) is also considered highly fashionable. This is also good news for the girls as the less amount of cloth they wear and as chechra as they can get, they find more boys literally jogging after them, which is a lot more pleasurable to them.

4. I am still confused about the modern fashion sense of boys though… I still cannot find how wearing one's pants as low as possible and revealing one's undies can be anyway “cool” and be attractive to the girls…

5. Girl dominance is thrashing the city! The numbers of slaps the girls are imposing to boys recently are increasing at a cubic rate and so are the dumping cases. As the boys lay completely helpless, the muscles of girls are strengthening and let me tell you to be ready for Girls vs. Boys WWF to be started any moment now in Bangladesh. Not to surprise, it seems the more number of boys a girl can go out with and dump increases her popularity and “coolness”… and also shows how chechra a girl can get.

6. Blind dates rising from D-juice sims, Citycell aalap super etc. are turning out to be really popular… other than increasing the desperateness of parents' that their children are getting spoiled, they are doing a pretty good job making humans more efficient after all, sleep is a wastage of time (as per most of our parents).

By Adnan M. S. Fakir


Mosquito murder

Mosquiteos are worse than terrorists. At least the latter have a reason no matter how twisted. Mosquitoes are just plain annoying. So how do we get rid of them? Seems someone somewhere has become fed up with the buzzing, biting menace and spent a lot of time coming up with an expensive gizmo.

Using insecticidal spray is environmentally unfriendly and makes the nearby people quite unfriendly too. Not only that insecticide-resistant bugs are spreading around the globe. You'd think they are developing miniature gas masks.

The mosquito trap called the Mosquito Magnet works on a different principle altogether. It tricks mosquitoes into thinking they are about to get a meal. Although the invention may not look much like a person, from a mosquito's viewpoint it behaves like one.

Mosquitoes detect their victims in two ways: from the warmth of the body, and from the carbon dioxide in the breath. This device radiates heat and carbon dioxide much as a human body would.

Once she arrives at the box (only female mosquitoes are blood suckers; the males make do with plant juices), the hapless mosquito is lured through a slot in the side by a glittering pattern of lights. It's a new twist to the old spider welcoming the fly into the parlour routine.

Like many other insects, mosquitoes are attracted by light. But it has to be light of the correct frequency. This is provided by light-emitting diodes inside the trap. Once inside the box, the mosquito is sucked downwards by a fan and deposited neatly into a pool of water. There, she drownsfor although mosquito larvae are aquatic, the adults cannot swim. Reviews show that although rather finicky in operation, when working, these can pile up quite a huge collection of dead bugs.

So there you go, a simple and very expensive way to murder mosquitoes as the device costs roughly $300. While there are many other gadgets you might “want” more, this product is almost a need when under constant assault. Maybe Mayo Hanif should considering putting one up in every street corner.

As for a parting shot (or bite) those smelly candles traditionally used to ward off mosquitoes are called citronella candles.

By Ziad


RS Mailbox

Die PS2 die
Recently a lot of the game reviews have been PS2 or Xbox titles that are a lot of the times not available on computer. Doesn't anyone in RS play PC games anymore? I don't' have a PS2………..sigh!
Ayon

There you go, this week you have a PC game review (also available for PS2 and Xbox). Now don't tell us you don't like car games.

Mojo still there
Hi,
It seems most people simply cannot stand it when anything good is said about anything or anyone. Case in point is last weeks mail by Psycho Gal who simply felt compelled to write something whether it made any sense or not. All because Ananya from the previous week had the audacity to praise Rising Stars and some of its regular columns. Shame on you Ananya for daring to say something nice no matter how much you meant it.

Psycho Gals tirade really irked me because it was obvious she never reads Rising Stars but simply had to say something...anything, as long as it was derisive. She blames the staff for publishing "clichéd love stories and adventure stories that end up to be dreams". I am an avid reader and know for a fact that RS has not been publishing anything of the type mentioned for lord knows how long. Sometimes I think that RS has something against love as they are so sparse in publishing related material.

As for "Rearview" too bad some people do not have the stomach to swallow the harsh realities of life even when it is sugar-coated in a humorous manner. It is satire of political events and I doubt it will amuse anyone who doesn't give a rat's arse about what goes in the country. Anyone who does care should enjoy. I know I do.

Personally RS has shown great improvement content-wise as well as graphically. For a while it was becoming boring but in the recent months all these funny articles and the 'joss' illustrations make it worth a long hard glance every Thursday.

What really irks me is when people have something bad to say it should be true and not made out of thin air like the accusations dreamed up by our political parties. It's a worse farce when you have to hide behind a made-up moniker like 'Psycho Gal'.
Sincerely
Rudmila Khondoker

RS does not care about its readers
After reading the RS mailbox this week, I was tempted to write in again. I had been reading RS for quite a long time. I remember those days when my father was against English papers and I used to sneak the RS edition from my aunts house every Thursday. RS then, was full of fun, hilarious cartoons and jokes etc. It seems as if RS is gradually loosing its colour. Now, I am a regular reader of RS but no more does RS give me the same excitement and thrill. Truly speaking the jokes thrown by RS nowadays are no longer funny.

I had written to RS before, expecting, my complaints would be noticed but I guess RS hardly cares about its readers anymore. I truly agree with psycho-gal about the “rear view” column. I just remember reading through it once and usually I just brush over the titles. I really do miss the “shout out” column. RS should have a column for the general readers as well and I guess, “shout out” used to be a great one.

To make a long story short, I would just want to say RS needs to add more colour or else they would have to subtract a lot of readers from its list. Hope this mail of mine would not go unnoticed. We readers are really hoping for a change!
Anika

Shout out is out
Ok people, this is ridiculous. RS is doing a neat job of providing something for everyone. Give it some credit where it is due and stop whining so much. Love the new columns, the artwork and the game/movie reviews. I am curious if the cartoons are downloaded or done by someone in-house. Same goes for reviews.

One thing I don't miss is Shout out and glad that it is OUT. Everyone who told me they loved the column either wrote a message in it or received one. It never made sense to me. I think that's what online blogs are for. You talk as much as you want and don't waste precious magazine paper.

What would make RS perfect is the return of Pintu, a bit more of comics and lot more music interviews, reviews and what not. Oh and yes, please jazz up the text graphics a bit more like it used to be. It's too formal right now.
With a whole lotta love to RS
Tanvir Salim


 
 

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