Time to send out a Mayday alert for May. The Maoists are planning a decisive indefinite general strike (hey, didn't they agree to a moratorium for NTY 2011?) and a Valley Blockade to enforce a regime change in May. The Ass' thought on this, for what it's worth, is that if this govt has to go then 'tis better it went quickly and saved us all the trouble. Awesome's desperation to dislodge the 'puppet regime' showed in his Tundikhel speech, but in private he was overheard recently complaining that Mohan ('The Doc') Baidya was "getting too radical for his own good" by suggesting that they topple the govt and grab power on May 29. Meanwhile, Bahun Baddies are up in arms against Comrade Hitman for padding up his command with Newars. Hitman is hitting Newar businesses in town for donations, filling his warchest.

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The Chinese are here to fix the height of Mt Everest once and for all. The negotiations have reached a delicate stage. This is the world's tallest border pillar and till presstime, Nepal was refusing to budge from the internationally accepted height of 8848m, while the Chinese were sticking to 8844m. What's the big deal? If Qomolungma is equally owned by Nepal and China, why do the Chinese want the lower figure? What's in it for them? For some obscure reason the Chinese want to measure the bedrock, while Nepal wants to count the icing on the top. Before a new Gorkha-Tibet war breaks out over this issue, let's find a peaceful negotiated settlement and get Apa Sherpa's expedition to pile some rocks and make a 4m high cairn on the summit. Everybody happy?

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The long and short of the MRP (Middlemen Refundable Passport) saga is that we are now not going to get the new passports even by June. Which means the only alternative is that if we can't have passports printed in India, Nepalis may have no choice but to carry Indian passports. A certain institution that can't be named because the case is now sub judice (Latin: "We want our share") has just put a spanner in the works and sabotaged the whole deal so we will be deprived of the only document that proves that we are citizens of a sovereign nation. ICAO gave us 10 years to make new passports, and we couldn't even do that. We now have till 2015 to convert all MRPs to e-passports with chips, but the Ass bets his left buttock we'll botch that one too.

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The latest from the Nepal Taekwondo Federation after Dipak Bista broke down and cried at the press con before his Singapore trip is that our illustrious martial artists vandalised the Khel-Koot Mantralaya and roughed up the karmacharis. The reason: members of the Tae Kondo Federation were not selected for the Singapore tournament so they vented their ire by physically assaulting the doors, windows, chairs and tables of the Ministry of Youth and Sports to practice their gyeokpa. Said a Federation spokesperson: "They didn't listen to us so we were forced to do todfod." Instead of being called a Democratic Federal Republic, Nepal should just be renamed a Tae Kondo Federation.

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This govt sure has its priorities right. The latest cabinet decision is to award a concessionaire a permit to set up a mall inside Singha Darbar. We all knew there is a supermarket epidemic in Mallmandu, but somehow the government secretariat had seemed to be immune to it. Now, civil servants will have access to a 24-hour convenience store, cyber café and a commie seri.

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Nepal Police has belatedly decided to force overweight cops to shed kilograms by forcing them to attend Ram Dev's mass yoga. But that's never going to reduce their girth. A better idea would be to re-assign them to a food-deficit area in the Far West not yet served by road or air.

ass(at)nepalitimes.com