1. Hum Saath Saath Hain: Remember the massacre of the black bucks? No, no, not the raids by the income-tax department on film stars...but the episode of the deer and the Bishnoi. HSSH was being filmed when Salman Khan and Saif Ali Khan decided to do some shooting of their own. If that isn't reason enough to boycott this film, here's another - Salman Khan, the topless man. There's, of course, some confusion on that score. Does `topless' refer to his shirtlessness fetish or to the fact that all his muscles seem to be concentrated between his two ears?

2. Madhuri Dixit: The belly belle has gone and gotten hitched - to an NRI surgeon! What a betrayal! She couldn't find a mate among the half billion males in the country; she didn't even marry an Italian. That leaves M F Hussain minus his muse. So now he can go back to strewing newspapers across the room. Critics call it art, we call it litter.

3. Mohammed Azharuddin: The former Indian skipper has been axed. He goes down under, not Down Under. Kapildev has his revenge for Azhar's attempts to curtail his career. As for Indian cricket, well, aren't personal clashes more important than quality?

4. The Infotech Bill: The sarkar will try and regulate the Internet, as simple a task as this Government actually governing. It's also expected to boost e-commerce; perhaps we'll see a boom in porn sites. Plus, it will also curb fraud. Does that mean that the RSS website gets banned?

5. The Ban on TB6: Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley decided to ban an obscene channel, and, surprise, it wasn't Jain TV, but a purveyor of Russian softcore. But doesn't that go against the BJP's promise of transparency?

6. Ram Vilas Paswan: Wants to bring the web to every village. Shouldn't some one tell him that you need telephone lines for that. But then politicians rarely bother will such mundane details. Or is it that this Dalit leader and reality are not compatible. It seems so, since he also wants to become the Chief Minister of Bihar. Anyway, if Paswan does unto the Communications Ministry what he did to Railways, we all had better start keeping pigeons.

7. Ram Prakash Gupta: The new Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. Even Lucknow politicians hadn't heard of him. He will unite the squabbling BJP factionse in the State - by having them all gang up in opposing him. According to a very unreliable source Atal Behari Vajpayee was the unanimous choice to replace Kalyan Singh. Because of his talent for accentuating a mess and then earning accolades for bringing it back to the original level of messiness. But Vajpayee refused. He locked himself in the loo and still refuses to come out.

8. The Phantom Menace: Finally in India, this Star Wars prequel is the ultimate fantasy - how to make billions from a film with no plot, quality or originality and where the really astounding special effects are those of people lining up to buy tickets to watch it. Coined a new cinematic term: `May the farce be with you.'

9. George W Bush: Bush Jr (does that make him a scrub?) doesn't know who India's Prime Minister is. Don't blame him; we wish we didn't know either. He also believes that the coup in Pakistan will bring greater stability to South Asia. Obviously a man who would lose to Dan Quayle in a spelling bee.

10. Jyoti Basu meets Mamata Banerjee: And no fireworks! What a bummer! Considering that both are on a short fuse...