There is lame, beyond lame and something far beyond that

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While there are more important things happening like Mr. Nawaz Shareef acting like a prima donna who only wants to become prime minister for the third time at any cost even if means not passing the legislation that the parliamentary committee has been working on for 9 months and alienating the province of NWFP, the fact that he was finally called what he truly is (Remains of General Zia), Indians going mental about the US-Pakistan nuclear deal and the elections in Iraq, but I am leaving all that to other people to ponder on and focus of things of little importance because … well because I am like that only.

Senator McCain has really gone bonkers and has Sarah Palin campaigning for him – again – this time for Senate re-election bid. Did this guy not know that she is one of the factors that he did not make it to the Oval Office? He is like 119 years old and he still hasn’t learned the basics of elections: you do NOT ask someone as pea brained as Sarah Palin to campaign for you.
We all know how important facebook is to all its 200 million – and counting – active users but it sure has reached new heights when it is credited with rise in syphilis. One British public health expert has blamed Facebook for a resurgence of the sexually-transmitted disease syphilis and said that it has increased fourfold in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside – the areas where facebook is most popular – because facebook just makes it easier for people to meet up for casual sex. So what’s next? British NHS suing Mark Zuckerberg for the rise in the cost of treatment for all those syphilis patients? Can Zukerman be sued if facebook is used as personal ad for lonely hearts? By the way, it is learned that there is a film being made on Facebook and Zuckerberg. As if we have not made one twenty something extremely rich by over sharing our photographs with friends and family.

Iceland has been declared the most feminist country in the world – at least by Guardian – for practically closing down its sex industry. India, though still selling skin whitening creams in alarming proportions could be another country where follicle discrimination may end soon, at least on the runways. Here is the first female bald model of India strutting her stuff.

Among other journalistic feats to their credit, Fox news has stumbled up on something that the world had no clue about until now – cultural homosexuality. The good journalists at Fox News unearthed an eye opening unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan about the prevalent homosexual behavior in Pashtuns and how they are in denial about it. The unnamed study apparently is based on the scientific data which was gathered during an outbreak of gonorrhea among the interpreters working for US army. I do get the fact that people who watch/read Fox news are not the brightest of the lot but coining a term as clichéd as cultural homosexuality is bordering on idiocy of galactic proportions.

Last but not the least, the fine people at Café Pyala has pointed out that Jemima bibi is quoting old Private Eye covers in her tweets, perhaps in attempt to appear witty. This one does not even bother to cover her tracks. There is lame and there is beyond lame and there is lame so far off the handle that you cannot even reach it. This one goes into that category.

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BFFs

It certainly comes in handy to have a handsome bugger as your minister for foreign affairs.







See how Secretary Clinton totally ignores the Afghan dude.




Qureshi says, "Look, we caught the terrorists." Clinton says, "My my, aren't you a strong man."

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and now this. Aawwwwwwwwwwe, aren't we cute?

If nothing it offers interesting photo opportunities.

PS: Is it just me or have other people noticed that there are more handsome Foreign ministers now than ever before? Apart from Qureshi, we have a handsome poet in Shashi Tharoor and an absolutely yummylicious David Miliband. Even Clinton is a huge improvement if we compare her to Secretary Albright.

PPS: Qureshi's hair color keeps changing through out his pictures. What's next? Clinton and Qureshi going to the same stylists and sporting the same highlights as the eternal BFFs?

PPPS: Yes, its a very superficial post. I am very shallow, deal with it.
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Halal Kink

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Last time I was in Netherlands, I indulged in some serious blitzkrieg tourism, which was very exciting but did not leave me much time to actually notice the life in this little corner of the world. This time, my stay is for a much longer period so I do other mundane things like getting on a tram to go to work, buying grocery and cursing weather like locals do (have had just two and half sunny days in past few months). During this trip, I have more time to look around and see things as they are and among the things I noticed was the fact that for a population of 15 million people (that is less people than just the city of Karachi) they have an abnormally high number of sex shops.

Now, before you decide to pack your bags and move here, let me tell you that they don’t sell ‘sex’ in the shops per se (although that too is legalized here along with soft drugs), they do however sell everything else related to sex, be in performance enhancing drugs, risqué lingerie, toys, videos, fetish and bondage products and what not. It’s not just the big cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam (my home for a few weeks) or Den Haag where you can find these sex shops; tiny places like Beverwijk and Haarlem also have their fair share of stores selling kinky products. Not only these shops are in every town and city, they are also everywhere. In Rotterdam, you can take your kids for their McDonald’s fix and can browse in the sex shop in the same alley while they are waiting for their fries & coke or you can hop in to a coffee shop for some Hollandse Appeltaart near the university and find a shop selling kinky inflated life sized dolls next door.

Last night when I heard out about the first online Islamic sex shop, two thoughts sprang up instantaneously. First was how will a Islamic sex shop be different from any other regular sex shops and the second was that somehow someone Dutch had to be involved in it and I was right. Abdelaziz Aouragh is a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan origins and his webshop, El Asira, will start selling stuff exclusively for Muslims from this weekend.

Aouragh is a smart businessman, even before he started his business, he turned to a local imam for approval who sought guidance from another scholar in Saudi Arabia and found out that as long as products are halal and are meant to help sex within marriage, it’s all good. Heck, there is even a fatwa supporting that. I personally have no issues with people using whatever they want as long as it is consensual, but how in the God’s good name do you find out about whether a sex product is halal or not. Who will you go to find that edible lingerie is halal and a red-hot puppy mask is not? Would the halal search engine devote a special section on Halal kink and tell you which kinky shit you do is halal and which one is not? How the person who is selling the stuff online will find out whether the product he is selling is for sex within marriage, outside the marriage, with humans or with goats. What makes this shop halal and the other shops haraam? Is it the Arabic name or the fact that it is owned by an Abdelaziz rather than a Rutherford or a Cohen?

I am all for innovative entrepreneurship but dragging religion into everything just makes it more of a laughing stock and I think we have had enough of it. Be as twisty and crazy as you want, just don’t seek validation form a religious scholar for being that way. Making it religiously acceptable only takes the kink out of kinky and makes it mainstream.



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Twitter, Imran Khan and Aafia

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Twitter is amazing, not only it brings together people from all across the world, but any two or three people can randomly jump in to a conversation and have a whale of a time together. If you are lucky, you can annoy other people to hell and have fun at their expense. It all gets funnier if the people you make fun of are Z list celebrities who are also on twitter and are probably following you.

Another tweeter and I have had doubts about a Jemima Khan profile on twitter as we were not sure if it was a genuine account or not. So in a conversation last night I mentioned it to be a fake Jemima Khan account. Apparently she saw that, got pissed and in order to prove that she is the real McCoy she scanned her passport with all the details and put it up on twitter! I mean I know she is a blonde and not particularly bright (she married Imran Khan after all) but who puts up their passport on a public twitter account which is open for all?

As if that was not enough drama, some desi men with fantasies of skinny blonde British women falling for them jumped in acting like knights in shining armor advising Jemima to remove her passport details. She then put up another photo of her passport – minus the details – on twitter (she has later removed them both but a pal from across the border saved that passport photo & emailed it to me). I mean what were those gentlemen thinking, she has had a Desi man, she is not gonna fall for another one. One desi dude in one lifetime was enough, dontcha think?

Anyways, that got me started along with two other tweeters, Naheed and Mirza on all things Jemima and her erstwhile husband. Mirza shared that in another century, Liz Hurley and Imran Khan had dated. It just reminded me that in the same century, Liz Hurley and Hugh grant also dated and then Imran Khan got married to Jemima and then Jemima dated Hugh Grant and now perhaps Imran Khan is dating the whole Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan which makes it kinda really kinky circle. Mirza then suggested that maybe it’s time Imran Khan and Hugh Grant should get up close and personal. In any case, Jemima has beaten Mr. Khan when it comes to getting intimate with famous people of the same sex – remember the lip lock between Kate Moss and Jemima (it generates 183,000 links if you google it - in case anyone wanted to know that).

By that time, Jemima Khan got really angry and gave me two names; twalker (that’s twitter stalker) and tweak (twitter freak). Now I am all game for name calling but they have to be smart and inventive. If only Ms Goldsmith had actually spent some time in college in her younger days instead of playing house with an aging Lothario, she would have known that tweak is actually a proper English word found in all major English language dictionaries. Her exact tweet was something like this: “What a relief to discover you can block the tweaks (twitter freaks). I'm banishing dissidents like a despot.” Even the statement was kind of a let down. After writing 'expert' articles on democracy in Pakistan in esteemed publications like Vogue and Harper's, I never expected such naked despotic glee from Ms Goldsmith.

We decided to let go of Ms Goldsmith and stick to her former and far juicier half. Naheed asked us if Imran Khan has remarried and then started listing the names of all the women Imran Khan has ever been with but I suggested that we need to leave that alone. After all, if one starts listing all Imran Khan's women, 140 characters wouldn't be able to do him any justice. That man has been very very busy for most of his adult life and he is in now in his late 50s.

As far as Imran’s second round at nuptials is concerned, I have a feeling he will do a complete turnaround. In the past, much to chagrin of all the aunties (who were not really aunties back then) he had almost exclusively dated foreigners. Now, in his new Maseeha-e-Islam avatar, he will only take the plunge when 'Qaum ki Beti' Aafia Siddiqui returns. Imagine a wedding invite that says ‘Imran Khan weds Aafia Siddiqui’, would it not be a Jamat-e-Islami and Talibaan wet dream? If Ms Siddiqui agrees to marry Imran Khan, then nothing can stop him from becoming the most powerful man in Pakistan.

Naheed disagreed with me. She believes that Aafia Siddiqui will sell Imran Khan at the juma bazaar for a bucketful of ammonium nitrate, which got me thinking. Ms. Siddiqui is a paak baaz Muslim woman, she will probably not agree to a union with a former play boy who has been with MTV VJs (tauba tauba haram). In any case, if the choice of her last husband, Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and ten years her junior, is any indication of her taste, she is into young Jihadist boy toys, not old Romeos like Imran Khan.


PS: I still have Jemima's passport shot with me but I chose not to publish it, for obvious reasons.