First of all, the Ass would like to take this opportunity to lay out the Red Carpet and give a hearty Lal Salam to our new Comrade Minister of Miscommunications and Disinformation.

Mr Mahara's new office at Singha Darbar still has a portrait of His Majesty Prithibi Narayan Shah the Great hanging on one wall and it is great to see that the good minister has hit the ground running by weighing in on the Miss Nepal Beauty Pageant from being broadcast on state television.

Bravo, it shows the \'Badis have their priorities right. Of all the problems that beset this country that needed urgent attention, of course it was Miss Nepal. That was what was holding us back from ensuring peace, development, and democracy. And now that we've banned it everything will be hunky-dory.

The Ass's mole in the ministry tells him that given the times we live in, the minister may be considering holding a Miss New Nepal pageant instead that will celebrate the revolutionary spirit of Nepali womanhood in all her comradely glory. That contest will do things differently: the Interview Round will be replaced by a Revolutionary Speech Round, the Swimsuit Round with the Sub-machinegun Round and the Miss Photogenic Smile with the Miss Red Salute.

At this rate and given the historical Maoist penchant to manage media, it will be only a question of time before they also suffer from the 'Aishwarya Effect'.

Remember how under the Panchayat NTV was turned into a home movie broadcasting service of the royal family and ultimately made Queen Aish as unpopular as she was? Comrade Mahara, a word of advice: Maoism has been tried on humans before, and it doesn't work.

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As the Maoists' Kathmandu in-charge Comrade Hit Man (yes, that's a real name) looked on during the memorial at the Khula Munch for 18 of the Maoists killed in Gaur, Awesome surprised Laldhoj by telling him at the last moment to give a speech. Baburam looked visibly surprised. That wasn't part of the plan, but Hit Man seemed to know. Anyway, the Maoist ideologue-in-chief went ahead and delivered the usual tirade against America and then blamed the media for being critical of the Maoists. Exact quote: "Musa mare pani hulla garne haru."

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Across the street at the Ministry of Works and Bhautik Karbahi, Baburam's better half Comrade Hasiya Yami is settling down nicely and bringing a breath of fresh air to a government department in charge of Melamchi and other works-in-making.

One of the most tangible differences after the Maoists were inducted into government is that the inductees have replaced their Boleros with Pajeros. Just hope we're not headed in the direction of what the Mitsubishi SUVs have come to connote in Nepali politics.

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Nepal's brain drain was bad enough before, now it is getting worse. Just about everyone in the army is angling for a UN peacekeeping job somewhere, including those involved in some pretty nasty tricks. On the week that two Nepali experts left Kathmandu to join peace monitoring in southern Sudan, the UN brought two Sudanese for peace monitoring in Nepal .

The Ass tried to figure that one out, and has a simple question: why can't the UN keep the Nepalis in Nepal and the Sudanis in Sudan and pay them UN salaries? After all, they know their own countries better than anyone else.

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OK, time to call a truce in the media's ongoing battle with UNMIN. We give up, you win. If you stop poaching our journalists we will stop trying to sneak into cantonments to take pictures of the insides of containers.

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