Butt-Billboards: Signs Of The Times?

Do you believe in signs? You know, those little incidents that foretell coming doom; small inconsequential nothings that, when ignored, turn into harbingers of death or divine signals of assent?



I don't. Well, that's not true - I do when it suits me. When I kept failing exams when I stayed up all night to study, I took it as a sign that God wanted me to rest more. When my discman broke, I took it as a sign to lobby for an mp3 player. When my mp3 player - well, nothing happened to it yet, but I still want the new iPod nano!



Anyway, yesterday something definitely was trying to speak to me. However, I feel I can be excused for not taking it seriously, because my sign was on someone else's ass.

What is with women's jogging pants that have words written across the butt area? Women say we have only one thing on our mind and don't respect them for "who they are inside" (or something), and then they go and buy jogging pants with "juicy" written across their ass. Even if the most decent and non-perverted person (me) came across one of those, he would have to stare at her ass just so that he could read what was written! Evil. Then there are those instances when the 'butt-billboard' says something that makes no sense whatsoever. I remember when one of my friends introduced his girlfriend to the boys. She was nice, very attractive, but as they were leaving we noticed she had '1994' written across her ass. This spawned a half hour discussion filled with good and not so good humour on what that date could signify (Date of manufacture? Best before date? Hit counter?)

Yesterday while in Colombo I saw a girl wearing one of those pants. This time, it read "Justice". This was even more bizarre then "1994", and I was forced to repeatedly look back just to make sure it said 'justice' and not 'just ice' or something. Little did I know that this was my 'sign'.

I was looking for a new graphics card for my PC, and I had my mind set on the nvidia 8600GT. After going store hopping, I finally found a place that offered it for a very reasonable price. So I go to the ATM, check if I have the financial stability to survive this onslaught on my accounts, and head back to the store all glowing. A different sales person meets me, and I tell him I'm here to buy the 8600GT. He takes it out and says "Here you go. Oh but this isn't real".

"Excuse me?" I say, "what do you mean?"

"It's fake. Made in China."

"But it says 'Nvidia GeForce 8600GT' on the box!!"

"Yes. It's fake. Wait a minute"

He then calls someone who extracts a large glossy box from some hidden counter and passes it to him.

"This is the real thing. This one is very good, great performance, solid capacitors used."

"And the other one is fake?! Ok, how much is the original?" I ask, though my heart was already sinking with dread.

"Twice the price of this one" he says, deflating my hopes and demolishing my measly budget.

After much deliberation and repeated pleas of "Are you sure?!", I decided to pass on this fake card, simply because even the sales person was not convinced of it's performance and there was no way I was blowing my limited funds on a chance like that. I left the store, but not before thanking the sales person for his honesty.

Then we went to this new Indian restaurant for lunch. I was in the mood for some good Indian biriyani, and so were the rest of the family, so we agreed to get three portions of chicken biriyani.


"Three biriyani's", we tell the waiter, as visions of a nice heavy Indian meal flood my senses.

"Ok. Chicken?", he asks.

"Yes."

"Ok. Err. By the way, it is fried chicken ok?"

"Eh?!"

"In the biriyani. Fried chicken."

Apparently, this so-called 'authentic' Indian restaurant served a very un-Indian chicken biriyani, one where the chicken was not cooked in the biriyani but was just deep fried and added to the rice later. Now, let me just mention here that my mom is Indian and my dad has studied in India, so they both know quite a deal about Indian food, and so they proceeded to destroy the waiter. The poor guy apologised, and suggested other dishes we could try instead.

After taking our new order, I couldn't help but wonder what was wrong with universe. I'm so used to people trying to cheat me at every corner that it was unnerving and confusing to come across not just one but two incidents where someone actually was honest with me!

Justice indeed. I'm paying more attention to them butt's from now on!