There is one day in the year when Nepali guys can make even bigger asses of themselves than they do the other days in the year, and that day is today. (And gals, I've just been informed, can make jenny asses of themselves.)

But the question troubling all able-bodied Nepali males of reproductive age is this: are we really prepared for this year's Guy Jatra? Can we in our heart of hearts, say with full self-assurance that our level of idiocy meets international standards? Unfortunately, the answer to both questions is: What's that question again?

It is only now becoming clear that we have been seriously lax on the irreverence front in the last fiscal year, and to make up for this deficit the government has formed a 127-member All-Nepal Guy Jatra Celebration Standing Committee led by the Primeval Minister to mark this year's Cowdung Day with wilder abandon than ever before. All government orifices will be required to eliminate with colourful lights their buildings for three nights, national flags will be sent to the dry cleaners, and Nepali missions abroad will be using this opportunity to apprise the leaders of their host nations of the rapid strides taken by Nepal in the field of farce and buffoonery after the restoration of democracy.

Back home, all of us in the press are required to mark Guy Jatra by mandatorily publishing the following recent news items from the national press:

Politics No Laughing Matter: Minister
KATHMANDU (RSS) - The Minister of Parody and Satire has said that he fails to see the joke in the ongoing political crisis in the country, and has cautioned all citizens to refrain from laughing out loud in public since it would hurt the morale of the armed forces.

The minister made the remark after inaugurating a three-day interaction programme on the theme "Are Our Politicians Clowns?" in Sat Dobato Thursday during which participants could barely suppress their laughter and fell into the aisles clutching their bellies.

Answering questions from journos in a post-interaction ambush, the minister warned: "How can they expect politicians to be serious about their jobs when they keep poking funny things at us? Don't they know it tickles?"

CIA sues CIAA
LANGLEY, VA. (Reuters) - The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has decided to take Nepal's Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) to the International Court of Justice in The Hague for infringement of copyright by adopting an acronym that could "create confusion among customers".

"We've been around for a lot longer, and the Nepali watchdog should have known better than to have a brand name so similar to ours," spokesman Stan Spooksky told a press conference at CIA headquarters at Langley Thursday.

Spooksky said that the CIA switchboards had "lit up like a fourth of July sky" after the CIAA watchdog announced a sweep of corrupt tax officials in Nepal. "A lot of people thought we were involved in the raids, and of course we are nowhere near that theatre of operations, we have our hands full here at home."

In Kathmandu, CIAA officials said they had received the court summons, but were not backing down. "If they don't like our acronym, tough," said a CIAA operative, but conceded: "We wouldn't mind dropping the last 'A', and negotiating a merger."

Nepal Has World's Largest Ass
KATHMANDU (Animal Planet) - The Guinness Book of World Records has added new entries from Nepal in its coming edition which includes a young Nepali scientist who has designed the world's fastest clock.

"It's a marvel of engineering, you just wind it up, and it will race against time to be ahead of clocks in any other part of the world," said Dr Baidyanath Upadhyayay of the Royal Nepal Academy of Scientific Technology. "This is another feather in Nepal's cap, since we already have the world's tallest dwarf."

In a separate development, a recent survey of wild asses in the trans-Himalaya have proved beyond doubt that Nepali asses are on average the biggest asses in the world. "Donkeys are usually small and stocky, but the hind quarters we measured had stature, and they made perfect asses of themselves," said veteran zoologist, Dr Roger Schnell.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist- Leninist) has been declared Nepal's most rightwing party, while the present government has been found to be the most-partisan partyless system in the world at the present time.