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India's pink posse hunts down bad guys

If you're a man in the Banda district of India who beats your wife, demands more dowry, or otherwise mistreats women, you'd better watch out. A posse of vigilante women clad in pink saris may soon come after you, and it's going to be ugly.

The "Gulabi Gang" (Pink Gang) uses sticks (lathis) and cricket bats to "teach erring men a lesson." In one instance, they chased a woman's abusive, alcoholic husband into a sugarcane field and sorely thrashed him. They also go after corrupt government officials. Last year, they stormed a police station after cops refused to register the case of a low-caste man simply because of his social standing.

That's priceless, Tom.

Is it very wrong of me to want to sent the Gulabi Gang after everyone who forwards stupid political emails?

My parents had a huge roll of paper freely available for us (read: me) to draw on, and it never once occurred to me to draw on the walls.

However, I was also deathly afraid of my parents, and that might not be the parenting direction chosen by Buffistas.

(catching up) Hope Noah is doing better this morning, Kat!

Hey, there are some Lulu Eightball fans here, yes? She has another book coming out!

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That Gulabi Gang kind of makes me feel the way I do when I read about how girls are catching up with boys in represenation in the juvenile justice system here. It's like... yay equality?

I have to take off work and stand in line at the Hollywood Office to pay a city tax/fine for something that I had no idea existed, and apply for an exemption for the same tax I had no idea existed. I need to register with the city as a Creative Artist.

I feel totally swindled. If I had known, I would have taken care of it because I'm responsible like that. But how the hell would I have known?

My husband has trained his coworkers well enough that they're starting to ask him about these stupid political e-mails before they forward them to everyone. Then my husband sends them a Snopes link to explain that no, Obama is not a SEKRIT MUSLIM OMG.

Another lady predicted that he would get elected and then assasinated, because "they wouldn't let a black man be president". Which, after I thought about it, didn't seem all that unlikely.

Every black person I've spoken with about Obama firmly believes this. Most of the women say that he shouldn't be running at all because he'll be leaving his little girls without a father as soon as he's inaugurated.

I feel totally swindled. If I had known, I would have taken care of it because I'm responsible like that. But how the hell would I have known?

That sucks Allyson. I was audited by NYS for 4 out of the last 5 years (amounting to $$$) for mistakingly exempting my father's retirement money that, according to their instructions, I could exempt. They waited almost the full five years to do the audit so I did it "wrong" every year after the first time. And it did not make me feel better when they clarifiedchanged the instructions following my first audit.