Can't this government do anything right? Why announce a schedule for power cuts if you're not going to follow it? Load-shedding is supposed to start at 8PM, but the power comes back at 6:30, throwing all our meticulously laid plans haywire. If you are going to give us power ahead of schedule warn us beforehand so we can stay home.

A group announces a bund tomorrow for six districts surrounding the 'Mandu and we all make our plans accordingly, arranging alternative transport, postponing flights, booking a rickshaw to the airport or getting up at three in the morning to get out of town before the tyre burning and windshield smashing starts at Kalanki. On the eve of the strike, the government foolishly and irresponsibly reaches a 36-point agreement with the agitating party and has the bund unbunned, thus wrecking all our carefully fallback options. If a bund has been announced why have it called off, it is far less expensive to let it go ahead.

This government has decided to be incompetent, feckless and inefficient and that is good - because over the decades we have become accustomed to our governments behaving idiotically. That is why it would be good if the government of the day notified the citizenry beforehand if it changes its mind and decides its going to be a smart ass. That way we would be prepared for any nasty surprises.

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Have to hand it to this coalition for forgetting that it is actually in the government. The party that heads the government regularly threatens to overthrow itself. The main coalition partner is chronically on the verge of resigning from the government, but never really gets around to doing it. The militant youth groups of the two parties are always at each others' throats. It's true, the UML is behaving more like an opposition party than the NC. So after Butwal is closed down for a week, PKD and JNK decide things have gone too far and decide to smoke the peace pipe. They sign a 9-point agreement in which the two parties, which are in government, decide to instruct the government to investigate the murder of Prachanda (Namesake) Thaiba. Homely minister Leftist God then promptly declares he can't catch the culprit because he is being sheltered by the Baddies.

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And that would have won the Ass' Absurdity of the Week Award hands down had it not been for the parliamentary hearings of the new ambassador appointees. The ambassador-designate to DC was hauled over the coals for past conduct unbecoming of a gentleman. But it was physicist Ram Swarthy who took the cake for his statement before the committee that if he was made envoy to Britain he'd get hold of some radioactive fuel rods, bring them back to Nepal and build a nuclear reactor to end the load-shedding.

The feud in the foreigner ministry hasn't ended with Harry Thapa tattling to the committee that Suresh Pradhan was unfit to be envoy to Deutschland because he had leaked the draft of a new treaty with China. Jawohl. But committee members immediately smelled a rat: the prime minister's foreign policy adviser couldn't be going on a witch-hunt without first clearing it with his boss.

Harry, it appears, has dossiers on everyone he doesn't like in the foreign ministry. After Pradhan he is going after Pradumna Shah. Maybe his strategy is to make such a nuisance of himself that he'll get an ambassadorship which he has been pining for ever since being a royal adviser.

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Comrade Yummy, after spending many years underground, is going down under on a tourism promo junket. Before that she had arranged a bungee photo-op at The Last Resort. But it was a wasted effort because she got her timing all wrong and decided to dive into the Bhote Kosi before the photographers and cameramen got there.

The scions of the comrade leaders are not setting a good example for marital bliss. CPG's son, Sanjiv, has decided to divorce his wife and when she didn't agree, she was locked up in a room. Awesome's son Prakash himself divorced Prabha, the daughter of Comrade Post Bahadur.

ass(at)nepalitimes.com