In-defense of Page Three

or How I learned to stop worrying and love the pomp

On the 13th of Sept (Mon), PTOI carried a really hilarious article titled Why Pg 3 is numero uno. So hilarious that it's a pity that Blogger doesn't provide animated emoticons like the latest Yahoo! Messenger, or else I could've shown you why I looked like the spitting image of the caricature for ROTFLMAO while reading it.

How else, apart from hilarious, do you characterise statements like the ones quoted in it?

"(It's) my way of keeping in touch with the younger generation" - our Hon. Member of Parliament. "... I'm in touch with them because they can "meet" me through Pg3."

"I stop exercising in the mornings to read Pg 3" - Seema Malhotra (Weikfeld's head)

"Read Pg 3 to know how to live life" - Satish Tandon (Md, Alfa Laval)

"It's nice to see that at this age, they still want me on Pg 3" - Dr. Mujumdar (Chancellor, Symbiosis.

I have tears in my eyes already. A direct hotline to the MP, better than exercise,
a guide to life itself and a faithful servant of the senior citizen - all rolled into one! Stunning! Before I got too carried away in hoary sentimentality, I remembered what the professor's wife told a young Richard Feynman...

The article convinced me like never before. Now I see why all pages are Page Three-ed. There are simply too many celebrities requiring direct interaction with the public.

The article mentions two kinds of people: those who love the articles and those who complain despite reading the articles (mainly because they aren't featured). There's now a new category : cribbers with internet access and blogger accounts and too much time at hand. Recent surveys have shown a sudden spike in the readership levels among readers of the third category. I fight off the dog each morning to grab my copy of PTOI to make my contribution to this blog. Guess that makes me a faithful reader.

I didn't realise how much dark matter there was within me. I could've been a theoretical physicist and Anakin Skywalker.