A menstruating woman's bill of rights

This is the topic for a post that has long been in the inbox.

It might never see the light of day and chances are the family (both immediate and extended) will make me take it down with a day or hours after it is posted...

(original title was going to be "Andha moonu naatkal" or "those three days")

It was one of those from the heart posts, going over my(?!) experience of the women who were/are dearest to me going through uncalled for hardships in the name of god, country, religion and culture during times when they should be treated like royalty.

All this was triggered by the usual etcahi (saliva contact), pathu (think of it as microwaving food half eaten), theetu (impure in a germ context) debate in this household. Something I promised to eradicate as a child, at least when I became the head of the family.

In any case, this is a Pre-post.. sometimes it is worth the pre-post to see how well the real post will be received! No?

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Mendocino - Flowers and trees

A few photographs of the flowers, trees, random birdies and wild animals on the recent trip.

The flowers and trees..

The birds..

and finally the wild animals..

When we went to pay the day fees for the Russian Gulch state park (you pay 6 dollars per vehicle for an all day pass and can go into any state beach on the coast for that fee! you just put the pass on your dashboard and you are good to go..) the park employee gave us a map of the coastline. On one side of the map was an ad for the canon parks photo contest that is currently on..

The first sample photo on there was ?

A lighthouse photo by AP. It was great to see a blog buddy's photo there..

If you have not yet entered this contest, strongly encourage you to!

and good luck!

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Copy wopy, plagiarize vagiarize...blog shwog..

Have been watching how the mommy blogger circle is catching up on plagiarizing of posts. Kiran, who I read regularly (especially her self deprecating posts crack me up) was copied. So were other Mommy bloggers.

One possible theory based on a funny conversation I had at a party recently with a friends friend.

Me : So what are all those guys in that circle doing these days?
FF : Most of them have gone back to India over the last two years.
Me : what about that dude? and his roomate?
FF : "that dude" is still here. His roomate went back and is now settled in UP and he is doing great.
Me : what does he do?
FF : Oh, he is making a lot of money in advertising!
Me : Wow! that is nice. didn't know that he was into advertising..
FF : No NO.. not that type of advertising. He is making money by generating internet traffic!
Me : ????

FF goes on to explain

FF : He has hired a lot of women, mostly women with kids who want to work parttime from home. They all generate a network of websites using blogger and generate cross traffic. The people he hires read other blogs, pick up things of interest and create cross linked blogs. He promotes these and gets a cut on the ad. revenue!

Me : My god.. this puts Amway to shame by a wide margin! This is like the Borg that keeps assimilating things in star trek! Even people who are not part of the original clique will get sucked into this ring!

FF : exactly!

This conversation is now three months old. I guess the whole thing is so legit that it has blurred the difference between real traffic and fake traffic.

Imagine a thousand people clicking on each other's blog ad's a few hours a day..

now Imagine some dude laughing his ass off watching people who pour their heart out in blog posts realize

1. they have been plagiarized
2. they are fuming
3. the more they fume the more traffic comes to these sites
4. the copycats get to make money and blur the lines
5. they can calmly lose a few of the sites and start new ones and keep making money

It is a funny world, no?

ps. Not sure if that is what is happening here, but thought all bloggers should know that there is such an outfit out there with hundreds of "employees" working on a blog generating company!

pps. How do you find out if you have been plagiarized? Is there a utility? Or like the iphone ads say "is there an app for it?"

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