There is debate among political anal-ysts about who started this trend of doing everything in points. Why do Nepal's political parties always have to pointedly point out their demands point-by-point? The blame must go to the Baddies who started it all with their 40-point demand on the Sher Budder govt in Feb 1996. As we know, they never waited for Lion Brave to respond to even one of the points and launched their pipal war. Then there was the 12-point agreement between the Baddies and Goodies, and along the way we had 19-point agreements, 14-point agreements, right up to the eight-point agreement, the NC's 10-point conditions and the secretive JNK-PKD five-point pact. The beauty about all these pointy things is that no one ever fulfilled any of the total 1,657 points that have been agreed to by various groups in the past 15 years. True to tradition, Baddie hardliner Com Kiran has issued a list of 18 deviations of Chairman Awestruck. Among them, PKD is accused of being a "fascist", "running dog lackey of the Indians", "revisionist", "corrupt", and the most damning of all: "bourgeois".

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This just in: the Special Committee that had formed a Sub-Committee to iron out contentious issues has found more contentious issues and the Sub-Committee has decided to form a Task Force to sort them out through a Working Group. If all this doesn't work, they can always form a High-Level Ministerial Commission which can then set up an Experts Panel and, if needed, even a Dispute Resolution Caucus, which should do the trick.

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Luckily, our national pride is intact because of the gumption of student Ruchit Regmi who has purportedly invented a plane that can be flown by thought-control. An investigative report in a national daily which shall remain nameless since it is so embarrassing to its editor, says Regmi has invented a head cap with sensors so the pilot can navigate the plane to its destination through difficult terrain in bad weather "through his thought and emotion". Regmi claims this will prevent crashes due to pilot error, but one minor point: what if the pilot starts involuntarily thinking about his girlfriend while on final approach to Lukla? Anyway, the Minister of Education thinks this Nepali invention worthy enough to cough up 20 laks of hard-evaded VAT-payer money to get Regmi a US patent.

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Our national pride suffered a major blow last week when our very own Khagendra Thapa Magar was unseated from his lofty pedestal of being the World's Smallest Man by an even punier Filipino. But all is not lost. We hear Khagendra is planning to be the world's shortest man to climb the world's tallest mountain and re-enter the Guinness Book. Poor Prakash ("Dear Leader") Dahal is going to be upstaged in his own Everest bid next spring if Khagendra beats him to the summit and steals all the headlines.

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Speaking of George, there is another reason to climb the world's highest mountain: peace and constitution. Apparently, Bal Tapaswi Gadyanchal (that's his name, I swear, not a new development region) has spent 27 hours on top in deep meditation. He now wants to present the snow from the summit (don't ask if it's still frozen) to President Ram Baron. Gadyanchal also has a 3-point solution for the 5-point problem of our (e)steamed lawmakers: "spiritualism, meditation and prembad". The Baddies sure could do with a bit of Prembad at this point.

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Every political party in Nepal adds a "Unified" prefix to its name just before or after it splits. The UML split down the middle just after calling itself the Unfed Marxist-Leninists. The Baddies called themselves UCPNM, and now they're sure to trifurcate. And just last week, the Nepal Janata Dal, which has only two members in the CA, split in two. One faction is led by Gayatri Sah, who became famous for selling her red passport. The other faction is led by a certain Biswo Uggerwal who said he'd donate a couple of karods to the party but never did and got beaten up for not keeping his word. Guess what his breakaway faction is called: Nepal Janata Dal (United).