The donkey's hardcore fans have been writing in asking what's up and what's gonna happen. Well, having been sent this picture of Bagmati Bridge during the Junjati Bund on Sunday, I can only refer you to my friends, the goats. They're the only ones who seem to know where they are going.

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That bund was an appropriate curtain-raiser to the autumn tourism season: announcing a nationwide chukka jam as a sign of things to come during Visit Nepal Ear 2011. Poor Yogi, tried his best to convince his fellow Adivasis to call the whole thing off, but to no avail. He should've known it was futile because NEFIN is answerable to a much more powerful force than HAN. This was probably the first-ever bund called by an NGO that is a direct beneficiary of Kathmandu-based aid organisations. No wonder the shutdowners announced beforehand that unlike public buses and motorcycles, blue-plated SUVs would not be vandalised and set on fire if found to be defying the ban on transportation.

It was when people started calling Sunday's shutdown an 'EU Bund' that DFID quickly disassociated itself from the NGO and even threatened to cut off NEFIN's funding, inadvertently letting the cat out of the bag. But the plot thickened when Comrade Lekhi confessed he had been under pressure from DFID to call off the bund, and said he had told the Brits in no uncertain terms to shove it. The Ass now learns NEFIN is split down the middle, and the bund was called by a faction that has fallen foul of the donators. Perhaps the same faction responsible for wall graffiti in Jawalakhel earlier this year that read: 'DFID don't fund NEFIN, they are cheats'? Political parties are supposed to be accountable to the people, but who besides their donors are Nepali NGOs accountable to?

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The authoritarians in charge of TIA have refuted an American intelligence report that the airport's security is lax. How can it be lax, when they have just put up a computer printout next to the x-ray machines (see pic) banning basket ball bats, bows and arrows, and hockey sticks? They have also added two more layers of rubber stamp security: one before the manual hand baggage search and one after the rubber stamp checker has checked the rubber stamp and added his rubber stamp to the baggage tag. That should do the trick. With such foolproof security apparatus, and when the line at the x-rays takes more than an hour to get through, how can the Americans call our security 'lax'?

The airport has demolished the ugly edifice at the Ring Road intersection and replaced it with a phallic symbol that is an even bigger phallus. This means we as a nation are now fully prepared for VNY 2011, and ready to impress the world with our monumental erections.

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It's now official: the Baddies have the hots for a return to the monarchy and are leaving no stone upside-down to get the mandalays on board. They were trying to elicit the support of the Hindutva-wallahs in India, but the BJP made it clear it wouldn't tolerate the Baddies in power. So that's that. Far from a sign of flexibility and ingenuity, the comrades batting for a 'cultural king' is being seen as a sign of desperation. We get it from those close to kingji that his ex-majesty is in no mood to talk to Awesome, and the Chairman is not taking too kindly to the royal rebuff, re.

ass(at)nepalitimes.com