searching for answers

A while ago I wrote about how people were finding my blog by searching for the word "choot."

Of course, in most juvenile fashion, I found this incredibly funny back in February when I started my "...is a choot" series. (Incidentally, this is still true. Six hits last week were accounted for by the keywords "choot", "indian choot", "choot video", and, wait for it... "blood choot". Disgusting, I know.)

Also in February, I discovered that it is widely known among Pakistani internet users that if you isolate google keyword searches by region, you will find that the word "sex" is most widely searched for in Pakistan, and "animal sex" is particularly popular in Karachi. (I just came across an excellent post on this at Five Rupees).

Allow me now to point out yet another bit of googling hilarity. This one comes from Google Zeitgeist, which publishes a country-by-country list of the 15 keyword queries that have most gained in popularity over the course of each month. (During May in France, for example, you might expect a huge jump in searches for "Sarkozy"). Well, it turns out that in Pakistan, during March, the #10 query on this list was "male models". Above "cricket world cup 2007", which came in at #11.

Again, I leave the analysis up to you. I am merely a purveyor of facts.

a show by any other name

The L Word is a TV show on the Showtime network about a group of women, mostly lesbians, living in Los Angeles. It's something of a soap opera, with terrible dialogue. It does, however, contain some steamy scenes that make it mildly bearable. But before all you pervs who found this blog through weird searches get all excited, that's not what this post is about.

The show is typical of Showtime's repertoire, which often brings into the spotlight issues that many are not comfortable with. The issue in this case is: lesbians. The show has a number of items on its agenda: Making people talk about lesbians; Asking questions like 'What does it mean to be a lesbian in America in 2007?' And most importantly, pointing out that apart from the way they have sex (which is totally hot), lesbians are just like the rest of us.

All that is fair enough. But I have a problem with the name. I'll explain. The show is about a group of women. The bigger issues are dealt with through the women's stories, but for the most part it's a soap opera about these characters, who are individuals in their own right. Calling it "The L Word" implies that it is a show about lesbians that happen to be these characters, rather than one about these characters who happen to be lesbians. In other words, they are implying that this is a show that represents not these lesbians, but all lesbians. It's like doing a show about a group of black people and calling it "Black People." The "L Word" is, after all, just an 'edgy' way of saying "Lesbians."

I understand that this is the first big show about lesbians, and therefore groundbreaking. But what about the second show about lesbians in, say, 2012? Will it just be called "The L Word 2"? I also understand that many lesbians are proud of the show for bringing their lifestyles into the mainstream. And they should be. But part of bringing something that others consider alternative into the mainstream is to not put a label on it that says "ALTERNATIVE" in big block letters.

adnan siddiqi is a choot

Some of you may have noticed that I cross-post my cricket posts on cricket.bloggers.pk, a sort of combined forum for Pakistani cricket bloggers to get better outreach for their posts.

Well, I recently posted michael holding is a choot there, and here is a comment I received from a fellow named Adnan Siddiqi.

"Your voice could be heard if you had no't (sp) prefered (sp) to choose censored words. I hope you can make a difference between a personal blog and a collabrative (sp) forum?

thanks"

First of all, I didn't prefer to choose "censored" words. No words in my post were censored. Mr. Siddiqi would like for some of them to have been, but they were not.

In any case, I recently wrote about the differences between the real argument for free speech and the not-so-important argument about being able to do whatever you want for no reason whatsoever. Well, here's an example of the former.

I am not asking Mr. Siddiqi to read my articles, and I am not certainly not asking his opinion on them. God knows I have a painful time trudging through his overlong posts to edit them. He does, however, get 100 times the hits I do, so he's probably doing something right... But that's not the point.

I also noticed that he has a link on his blogroll to a site called "Fucked Company." I can only assume he endorses this site. So my guess is that Mr. Siddiqi has one of two problems:

1. It is fine to cuss in English, but the word 'choot' is particularly offensive.

2. There is a difference between posting on billu.net and cricket.bloggers.pk.

Of course, he mentions that it's the latter, but I do have a sneaking suspicion that if I had merely substituted for an English term (say, 'pussy'), it would not be quite as much of a problem. In fact, I have written some pretty nasty things in English on cricket.bloggers.pk that seem to have gone unnoticed, which is a particularly disturbing double standard.

As for the second point, I will admit that for a while I was hesitant to post darrell hair is a choot pt. 2 in its entirety on cricket.bloggers.pk, but more out of respect for the creator of the site (Teeth Maestro) than anything else. But Mr. Maestro went on to express disappointment that I had censored the post, since he is a true champion for free speech. Add to this the fact that I am one of the three official site editors, and I set about the task of expressing my opinions in most unbridled fashion.

It may be a collaborative forum, but it is still a forum for free expression, and I should be able to use whatever words I wish, as long as I talk about cricket. That's what makes it interesting. If everyone expressed their thoughts in a predetermined template, there wouldn't be much point in collaborating, would there?

"Don't block the blog" is the word on the street among Pakistani bloggers. Well, don't temper the blog either, I say. Otherwise everyone's blogs will start sounding like tepid, watered down drivel...

why so crabby?

Somebody has left the following comment on last Monday's post:

"this is a crab site there is no picz"

Needless to say, I am distraught at the quality of readers my site is attracting...

(It's okay if they're reading this - I deliberately used big words like 'distraught' and 'quality' so they wouldn't understand.)

epic tetus

I have just discovered that there was once a philosopher named "Epictetus." I wonder if he was as 'full-bosomed' as his name suggests...

ma homeys

So apparently up until 1975, the country we now know as Benin was known as the Kingdom of "DaHomey"! How brilliant is that! I wonder if that's where the word comes from...

spelling bee minus

Here's an excerpt of an email I received from Columbia, that they sent out to all prospective students. Basically they are showing off about how hot their visiting speakers are, and how so many of their faculty have recently won big prizes etc. So they say:

Next, two Columbia University Scholars were recently awarded a Nobel Prize. Orphan Pamuk, a Scholar in Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures and a Fellow with the University's Committee on Global Thought, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

"Orphan Pamuk" indeed. I almost want to rescind my application immediately...

hos by any other name

Dog commented on the whole business of name-discrimination based on what are perceived to be black or white names etc. I'd like to follow up with a personal anecdote.

A few months ago, I emailed a guy off Craigslist for tickets to a show. It was 2 pm, the show was at 8, so this guy had 6 hours to sell them. His ad said he had wanted to go but now he couldn't so he was selling at face value. Great. So I emailed him, and included my number in the email. An hour and a half went by without any response.

Just for the heck of it, I asked a friend of mine with a rather more 'pleasant-sounding' name to send another email. Lo and behold, within 10 minutes he received a phone call, and within 45 minutes we had the tickets.

Which means if I had been the only one who contacted him, he would probably still not have sold them to me. He would rather lose 160 bucks than talk to someone with a funny name.

Name discrimination is alive and well.

Asshole.

messing with nature

This wonderful article describes how some idiot named Jean-Michel is dissing the crocodile hunter for having too much of a "hands on approach" to nature television. Here's what he says:

"(He would) interfere with nature, jump on animals, grab them, hold them, and have this very, very spectacular, dramatic way of presenting things. Of course, it goes very well on television. It sells, it appeals to a lot people, but I think it's very misleading. You don't touch nature, you just look at it. And that's why I'm still alive. I've been diving over 61 years — a lot many more years than he's been alive — and I don't mess with nature."

I have two things to say:

1 - Why are we still talking about the crocodile hunter? Why are we so surprised that he's dead, seeing as how his entire life revolved around openly dealing with wild crocodiles?

2 - Don't diss on him dude. He's dead. Let him be. It'd be funny if this Jean-Michel guy died diving tomorrow. Then I could say "I sat on my ass jerking off and never left my house. That's why I'm still alive. And I've been jerking off for 13 years -- I don't mess with nature."

keeping your hair on

Excerpts from a hilarious piece in the Guardian about Darrell Hair's potential future as a reality TV star:

"Though fair and balanced members of the Australian commentariat (and is there another kind?) have rallied strongly behind the beleaguered official, some naysayers in Britain and in Pakistan have suggested that if he and his colleagues fail to produce sufficient evidence of Pakistani ball-tampering during the ICC inquiry, Darrell will be effectively be "finished".

What nonsense. Precedent - in fact the entire drive of contemporary culture - suggests that should the unthinkable happen, it will be a matter of days, if not minutes, before he begins his new career as a reality TV star. The sole purpose of the modern medium, for Guardian readers still clinging to dinosaur channels such as BBC4 and Artsworld, is to prove that there are always second acts. It's not optional: it's the rules. So if Darrell may be assured of anything in these difficult hours, it is that smirking, jaded telly executives are even now dreaming up vehicles for him, probably running along the following lines:

-- Hair Force
One. Armed with only a copy of the Geneva Convention, no-nonsense Darrell is parachuted into various global troublespots, where he must play diplomat between warring factions and attempt to broker a peaceful solution. The problem with being an international umpire, Darrell once remarked, is that "you have to travel to places where you are out of your comfort zone", so producers are banking on fish-out-of-water hilarity to ensue.

-- That's Just Hairsay! Madcap linguistic quiz show in which Darrell presides over two teams; with panellists to include Freddie orsyth, Dennis Wise and Su Pollard. Slated rounds include "Is that a euphemism you're tampering with in your pocket?", where teams must tease out the meanings behind popular newspaper expressions like "holds robust views", "is Australian" and "has made controversial calls in several matches featuring sides from the Indian subcontinent".

-- Hairlooms. Valuation show in which members of the public are invited to offer up treasured items for Darrell's consideration. He must decide swiftly whether the artefact in question dates back to the Ming dynasty, or was in fact fashioned by Janet Ellis on Blue Peter circa 1984; any dispute on the matter will result in the object being immediately and permanently forfeited. Unreasonable? It's the rules."

the story of bulbar

By popular demand, here is The Story of Bulbar in it's original form.

"bulbar was a choot... he had five fingers and no friends... or was it no fingers and five friends... that i do not know.... smiley face....ever since i met bulbar he was a misguided foool... not to be harsh but hey cho\\oot thats the museum face.... not bulbar!!! he screamed above the noise of the alligators... didn';t you see, it was bulbar all along??? yeah, i guess i knew all along, said the guy.... why? not todayyy//... bulbar... ohhooooo... like a song my choot....bulbar..... not bad yaaar ... said the friend of bulbar...... i haunt you... bit like the weezer song... bulbaaaaaaaaar jinsenf...\\\\feff.... said bulbar... sorry kayge... you said bulbar... i said whispering chinese... not chinese qwhispers... why??? bulbar said so that ss why.... not bulbar again!!! so i sett;ed it with the courts.... wait for bulbar.... hes a star...on the car.... debate for bulbar when the sun is in in the stars bum bum!!!! waking up like bul;bar he said muthafucka waitup its bulbar bul;bar bulabr

pepsi pepsi pepsi mujhe lu\oge bolein...; hi peppsi hello bulbar loge bolian i aint an actor im not a star and i dont even have my own car./

...im nnooooooooooooooot bulbaaaaaaaaar tonight

im nottttttt bulbarrrrrrrrrr agaiiiiiinnn toooo naaaaiiightt...bulbarr

bulbar is in my car i told bulbar just sleeeeppp i ate a bar
i had a cigar

bulbar but now i sleeeeieieieieieieieeeeep

dhun dhun"

--- 12 Sep 05

michael schumacher is a pizza delivery guy

So I tried looking for the English translation to Applausi Per Fibra. Didn't find it, but I did come across a forum where they were discussing the linguistic origins of the song Dragostea Din Tei by O-Zone. (The one that goes numa numa yay etc). The song is actually Romanian, but there seems to be some disagreement on this forum, to say the least...

Of course, I didn't have a chance to read through all bloody 57 pages of it, but here are some choice excerpts:

"Saying to romanian people that the song is in chinese ... is like going to Michael Schumacher and telling him that he isn’t driving in F1 competition... he is a pizza delivery guy..."

"U kno how sum languages sound thet same. Like spanish and i think its french or italian sounds the same(i cant remember which 1) Maybe it just sounds like spanish but may not be spalled the same. or it could be a mix of different languages. And the song has been made over so it may have been made over in spanish english french etc. but the original song is romanian. Im not saying im right sum1 else could be right but this is what i think and i hope this helps a little. Imnot saying u have 2 believe me or anything its ur opinion and u can believe whatever u want."

"I’m a romanian.... and if you say that i am chinese, german ,spanish or french i think i would still say that i am romanian... this is what you are doing... you are telling me that i’m not a romanian .. and this is not my language... is like telling you that shakespeare was bulgarian, caravaggio was from turkey, napoleon was the ruller of russia... whouldn’t you english, italian and french people get iritated?"

"ITS FUCKIN ROMANIAN U DICKS! IM HUNGARIAN BUT LIVE IN NZ! I WENT TO HUNGARY IN THE SUMMER AND IT’S FUCKIN ROMANIAN!"

"lol omg you are all idiots, and its more funny when someone talks like they know what they are saying, and they think they are right, its fucking arabian you idiots, if you watch the news now adays, youll hear some of these words in the background. i am an indian, i would know"

Amazing...

learning urdu

Here are some excerpts from what Wikipedia lists as the difficulties faced by English speakers in learning Urdu:

" -- The phonetic mechanism of some sounds peculiar to Urdū. The distinction between aspirated and unaspirated consonants will be difficult for English speakers. In addition, the distinction between dental and alveoloar (or retroflex) consonants will also pose problems.

-- Pronunciation of vowels: In English, unstressed vowels tend to have a "schwa" quality. The pronunciation of such vowels in English is changed to an "uh" sound; this is called reducing a vowel sound.

-- The 'a' ending of many gender-masculine words of native origin, due to romanisation, is highly confused by non-native speakers, because the short 'a' is dropped in Urdū (i.e. honā).

-- The Verbal concordance; Urdū exhibits split ergativity; see Ergative-absolutive language for an example.

-- Relative-correlative constructions. In English interrogative and relative pronouns are the same word. In "Who are you?" the word "who" is an interrogative, or question, pronoun. In "My friend who lives in Sydney can speak Urdū," the word "who" is not an interrogative, or question-pronoun. It is a relative, or linking-pronoun. In Urdū, there are different words for each. "

Ummmm.... What the fuck are they talking about?? Ergativity?? Relative Correlative constructions?? The poor blogspot spellchecker went nuts! If native english speakers could only understand this article they might have a better shot at learning Urdu...