ust how serious the parties are about elections can be gauged from the fact that they have already consulted the astrologers about auspicious planetary alignments for polls and have come up with two dates: March 16 or April 10.

Let me get this right. GP is accused by kangresi hardliners that he is too republican and making friends with communists. Meanwhile, PKD is accused by baddie hardliners for being a closet royalist and making overtures to "nationalist monarchists". Do you also get the sense something ain't quite right here?

This can only mean one thing, in this Ass' humble opinion, that if both are making the radicals angry both are the only sensible guys in their respective parties, and deserve our support.

Shame on Outlook, therefore, for belittling our awe-inspiring dear leader by doing that hatchet job on the Rolex Revolutionary and printing a rude cartoon showing him with a potbelly, wearing a Rado, riding a Pajero, with Set Wet gel in his hair, and standing dangerously close to a bottle of Red Label. Just for the record: our Comrade Chairman wears a TAGHeuer, not a Rado, and he rides a Bolero, not a Pajero, his gel is Gatsby not Set Wet and he's put on 12 kg not 15 kg. Can't these Indian mags get anything right?

...

Although the three summiteers at Baluwatar are now nearing a consensus, the meetings this week got off to a rocky start with Girjau getting so worked up he needed artificial supplemental oxygen during a particularly heated session in which Macoonay was reduced to yelling through his muffler. "Do what you want," the prime minister is reported to have told his two leftie interlocutors after MKN had the temerity to insist that the prime minister resign if the elections can't be held on Chait 28.

In a rare outburst, Comrade Macoonay is supposed to have retorted: "Of course you should resign and start taking some responsibility around here." The prime minister is reported to have finally shown some flexibility on the Maoist proposal of a roundtable conference by saying he'd had no objections to a tea party.

At this point the Ass's moles have a slightly different take on what happened next. Koirala family sources say it was actually the prime minister who got up and walked out, but UML sources say it was actually their supremo who did the stomping and this suddenly left His Fierceness thrust into the uncustomary role of mediator. It must be said here that Comrade Fearsome is under doctor's orders not to get too worked up about the state of the nation lest his hypertension goes high tension again. In fact, party hardliners have been told to lay off the chairman for the time being and aim all their barbs at BB.

...

Which is probably why Comrade Red Flag has been bringing in reinforcements from India for moral support, big guns like fellow-traveller Ananda Swaroop Verma. Why do we have to troop off every now and then to Hotel Kamal to listen to these self-professed Nepal experts from the south of the border who want revolution in every country except their own? This is where the line between the intelligentsia and the intelligence community gets a bit blurred.

Anyway, meteorologists have detected a certain warmth in relations between the Injuns and the Maoists with Comrade Awesome possibly being invited soon on an official visit, which means the Chairman's trick of spooking the Indians by going off on a nationalist tangent after talking to the Chinese delegation worked like magic.

And now that Shailaja Auntie has failed her physicals for ambassadorship to Delhi, that leaves the field wide open for the Maoists to step in. Hey, how about sending BB?

ass(at)nepalitimes.com