the pakistan team is a choot

My last post about the Pakistan team was about how awesome they were. And here I am writing another incendiary choot post with them as the subject. I'm not schizophrenic, and it's not that my opinion has changed. It's just that the team navigates so effortlessly between being "the shit" and being "just shit" that you can't really blame a person who tries to evaluate their performance on a day by day basis.

So anyway. They sucked yesterday. They were so completely lackluster and undominating that it was depressing to watch. Pakistan is the most nondescript team in this tournament. Apart from a vague reference to Mohammad Yousuf, it'd be hard to identify any one particular strength of this team with any degree of certainty.

Everyone has their own view on what went wrong. They may all have different opinions, but they're all correct, because the fact of the matter is that everything went wrong. Rana continues to suck balls, Imran Nazir is a jackass, and the "senior" batsmen played like idiots. Omar has summed it all up pretty well, so no need for my redundant analysis. I will add only that Azhar Mahmood would be an infinitely better choice than Rana. In fact, I was going to write a "Rana is a choot" post, but that would be unfair. Everybody sucked.

Umar Gul was the only one who actually put in a solid performance. The next game should be called Umar Gul vs. Ireland. It's not like anybody else matters.

Of course there is a chance that they will now play brilliantly and make me eat my words. Let's just say I've never wanted so badly to be proved wrong...

a tale of two pities

As the World Cup draws near, we are being hit every day with news of another player that must miss out for such and such reason. Each of these incidents is a shame, because the whole point of the tournament is to bring together the best talent in the world. But few are as interesting as the two most recent tragedies.

First, it's official. Shoaib and Asif are out, due to "injury." I put the word in quotation marks because I, like many, don't believe they are really injured. The conspiracy theory, for anyone who hasn't heard it yet, basically says that they are waiting till the nandrolone is completely flushed out of their bodies before they test. That way they might miss the World Cup, but won't have to deal with the prospect of a life ban.

Meanwhile, around 8000 miles away, New Zealand's Jacob Oram is grappling with a personal dilemma of his own. Having fractured his ring finger, Oram has been told by doctors that he will have to sit out the World Cup. But with himself and the rest of his team in tremendous form, Oram is so desperate to play that he is considering amputating the finger in question.

So here's a pair of players that are feigning injury to avoid having to take a urine sample for the duration of the World Cup. And there's another who is willing to injure himself just for the chance to play.

Here's a couple of men who have tried to patch up numerous problems by piling complication upon complication. And there's a man who knows how to cut to the chase. Literally.

Surely there's some middle ground somewhere.

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cross-posted at cricket.bloggers.pk

oranges and lemons

A common motivational statement goes something like this: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Turns out, you could also make the Taj Mahal. Or that big Jesus statue that sits on the cliff above Rio de Janeiro.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the Fête du Citron, an annual festival on the French Riviera in which people get together and make gigantic sculptures out of oranges and lemons. It's all pretty fantastic.

It also gives me a chance to post about something that makes me happy, to silence all you "billu.net is too angry" folks. You know who you are.





It also makes me think of a recent post by 4e44. How the heck do you find out that you have the uncanny ability to make sculptures out of citrus fruit? Is it discovered by your parents when you're young? "That billu, he's good with his hands, he's going to grow up to be a famous orange sculptor."

I wish. All my poor parents could say was: "That billu, all he'll ever be good for is writing a blog detailing how everything in life pisses him off."

Well, billu.net may fall short of the proverbial lemonade, but it's the best I can do with my lemons.

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.

blood will have blood

Shoaib, Asif to Get Complete Transfusion from Razzaq's Blood

In order to remove all traces of Nandrolone from their urine in record time, the PCB has launched an incredible and impressive secret campaign. Adbul Razzaq, an important, yet replaceable, member of the squad, conveniently fractured his knee just minutes before leaving for the Caribbean. In an interview, he appeared completely befuddled as to how it happened. Chloroform, anyone?

Meanwhile, the rest of the squad, including the reserves, and even a few spectators, have already pissed in cups and been cleared by some drug testing authority in Malaysia. Wasn't the movie "Entrapment", starring Sean Connery, filmed in Malaysia? Didn't Connery play Bond for a while? Wasn't "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" the worst film ever made? Exactly. That's shady too.

Doctors in England will be performing the world's first (maybe 100th – who knows, first sounds better) complete blood transfusion and muscle sieving procedure to remove the controversial nandrolone from Asif and Shoaib's bodies. They will then use Abdul Razzaq's blood to fill them up again. It's dramatic, it's crazy, but it just might work. As long as they don't somehow infuse the two with Razzaq's somewhat insipid bowling ability, it sounds completely foolproof.

Of course, questions abound. Is the procedure safe? In particular, will Razzaq survive after donating every ounce of his blood? The answer is: who gives? We've got Azhar, haven't we? They're practically the same person.

If all goes well, Shoaib and Asif will be nandrolone-free and ready to roll when Pakistan take on the Windies in a couple of weeks. In fact, they might as well pop a few more doses while they're at it.

co-authored by Omar

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cross-posted at Omar Loves Cricket and cricket.bloggers.pk

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...

every f%#$ing thing is not censorship

Here's an interesting piece in the New York Times. Basically, students at Middlebury College have been told they can no longer cite Wikipedia as a source in History papers. For some reason this has created a big furor.

Apparently this article has been making the rounds, and a lot of campuses are starting to talk seriously about the issue. As usual, the New York Times has painted the issue in broad black and white strokes along the lines of: "Some professors are so old school they want to ban laptops altogether, and others so hip they have robots for TAs."

But jokes aside, it does seem as if a lot of students are very vociferously against any such policy. The article cites one writer in the Middlebury Campus in particular who says that the ban heralds "the beginnings of censorship."

Of course, as enlightened semi-divine beings, we all have a problem with this on a very visceral level. We like to say things like: "Censorship and academia are mutually exclusive," "Censorship is modern fascism," and other similarly wordy rhetoric that doesn't actually mean shit.

How is it censorship for a professor to say that a student can't cite bloody Wikipedia as a source in an academic paper? If you want to cite lyrics from Smash Mouth's "Can't Get Enough of You Baby" in an Economics paper about supply shortages, and your professor says you can't, is that censorship too?

No matter how much we may hate to admit it, an academic environment is actually pretty regulated. If it weren't, we wouldn't learn anything. Everything doesn't have to be free all the time. Talking about free speech just for the hell of it only detracts from the real (and incredibly important) argument for freedom of speech.

Of course, if you do want free expression, then everyone should have the right to exercise it. So how's this? You are free to cite Wikipedia to your heart's content... and your professor is free to flunk your ass out of school.

michael holding is a choot

In one of my earliest posts, I applauded Michael Holding for sticking up for Inzi and pointing out double standards in world cricket. I also noted that this was against my better judgement; that he is, in fact, an idiot, but that his statement on that occasion had thoroughly impressed me.

Well, his statement du jour is no less impressive. Unfortunately it's for all the wrong reasons. Mr. Holding is back to his old ways. The ways, in short, of a choot.

His latest little nugget of idiocy goes something like this: "Fuck all these bullshit teams in the World Cup, cut to the chase and have the good teams play each other. Maybe include one of the little teams so they feel awesome. "

Before I continue slandering him, let me point out that I agree. Two months is too long for a world cup, and especially with super 8s instead of super 6s there is little point in watching the first round at all. So instead of eight associate teams, have, say, four, but don't screw them over completely. A lot of those teams work very hard to get there.

But that's not the point. The point is that he said this not only in public, but at a World Cup reception for Bermuda, an excitable new member of the World Cup pantheon that had invited him to be their guest speaker. Now, at least he's not being hypocritical. And I respect his right to have that opinion. In fact, as I said, I kind of agree. But don't go to someone's party as their guest if you're only going to tell them they suck balls. That is just brazen and insenstitive. All in all, it's the work of a choot.

And there's more. At the same function, he went on to say (in paraphrase) "Oh, and by the way, don't blame us West Indians if the World Cup sucks. It's part of our culture to do things at the last minute, so we tend to find all this 'buying tickets in advance' bit very confusing. "

Hm, well, Michael, not everyone has the luxury of living in the Caribbean. If someone travels halfway across the world to watch a game of cricket, he damn well better be sure months in advance that he is going to be able to get into the stadium. And accomodating reasonable people like that is a good way to start if you're going to organize a worldwide tournament. Besides, it's not such a confusing concept if you think about it...

chooting my own horn

It has been brought to my attention that people enjoy my crudeness here on billu.net. In particular, they seem to enjoy my use of the word "choot." How do I know this? Well, for one, my Darrell Hair is a Choot pt. 2 post was a hit. Teeth Maestro, among others, lauded it for the "pure, untamed quality" of my style. Others called it "angry", "caustic", "brilliant", and "a bit too much".

Well, maybe not "brilliant"... But still.

Another, more interesting, way in which I made this discovery was via good old Google Analytics, which tells me that 14% of billu.net's visitors over the past week found it by googling the keyword 'choot.'

This is both amusing and disturbing. Turns out billu.net is the 15th item returned by Google in a 'choot' search. Over time, I hope to improve this rank.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term 'choot,' it is an Urdu/Hindi cussword on par with, say, 'asshole.' Literally, it is the word for a woman's... um.. thang.

For those of you unfamiliar with my above usage of the term 'thang,' it means 'vagina.'

In any case, to satisfy both of these newly emerged target markets (choot seekers as well as untamed quality enthusiasts) I have decided to begin a series of posts titled "...is a choot." In this series, I will direct my wrath at people whom I deem to be bastards/idiots of the highest order, worthy of a post all their own.

Fans of billu.net will know that compiling such a list should not be a particularly difficult task for me.

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Note: Readers of Omar Loves Cricket and King Cricket may recognize my newfound penchant for a series of posts as mildly derivative. Some of these readers may then scoff at my lack of originality. These readers can fuck off.

can you be the next pakistani opener?

Position Available: Opener for the Pakistan cricket team (National Squad) - temporary position

Position Requirements

No experience required.

Age - Must be young. Under 25, with minimum domestic or international exposure.

Preference for candidates from “warring tribal areas.”

Required to score 100 on debut
…and 50 every 20th game thereafter.

Cover drives must be spectacular
…no other shots required
…the worse your pull shot, the better your chances
…proper technique is severely frowned upon

Must flash aggressively at every 3rd delivery well outside the off stump
…contact with delivery optional

Must get out on every 5th such aggressive flash
…contact with delivery not optional

Bandana wearers encouraged to apply.

Must have the diving agility of a cheetah
…but the catching ability of a snail

Must be able to bowl legspin or off break
…however, not required to take wickets (please see note)

Note: In the event that a wicket is taken, or if said player does in fact have wicket taking abilities, the PCB and team management cannot be held responsible for the consequences. The ICC will suspend said player for one of the following reasons:

a) Throwing
b) Match-fixing
c) Match-fixing and throwing
d) Bringing the game into disrepute
e) Bringing yourself into disrepute
f) Bringing iguanas into disrepute
g) Bringing koala bears into disrepute
h) Bringing antique furniture into disrepute
i) Not bringing anything to repute whatsoever
j) All of the above

Complicated numerical nomenclature will be supplied for every law created/cited in the process of having said player banned for just enough games till he/she is completely demoralized and out of form.

Terms and conditions

Short term contract only, 1-1.5 tours
Must be willing to travel extensively, across continents, on a moment’s notice

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co-authored by Omar

cross-posted at Omar Loves Cricket and cricket.bloggers.pk