The Police in concert - and a few surprises

So we saw the Police live in concert at the MCG last night. I'm still not over it, but at least now I can speak and write about it. It was absolutely amazing not just because they rock but because it was so weird to see them at all - they did break up in '85/'86, after all. Seeing them up there after being a fan for almost as long as I can remember and knowing that it was all over for most of that time was simply surreal. And I can't honestly say I know any other band quite like I know the Police. I actually have everything they've ever done as a band, plus a lot of what they've done solo. I know the band history. I even spent enough time poring over their biographies as a teen to have random details at my fingertips years and years later. But most of all, I know their songs so intimately that each time they'd vary the chords or beat slightly to start a new one, I'd know the words even before I registered what the song actually was and basically sang along with the whole concert.

On the whole, they didn't vary the songs very much from the album versions, and even where they did I knew where they were going because I've listened to so many concert recordings. Most of the variations were the kind the Police themselves made back when they played, but some were more Sting-y. Interestingly, they didn't really play any of the songs Sting has sort of absorbed into his own repertoire. I'd have loved to hear Bring on the Night, Low Life, Demolition Man or Shadows in the Rain, for instance. I don't know if that was deliberate or whether they just didn't feel like doing them. The set list itself was the same they've been playing throughout. They opened with Message in a Bottle and then went into Synchronicity II, following that with Walking On The Moon. Then came Voices Inside My Head, When The World Is Running Down. Don't Stand So Close To Me, Driven To Tears and Hole In My Life. Everyone went suitably mad for Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic and Wrapped Around Your Finger was really really good with Stewart Copeland using gongs, chimes, bells, xylophone, and all manner of percussion to give it that air that it has. De Do Do Do De Da Da Da was a fun follow up. Then we had Invisible Sun, which was accompanied by lots of images of children living in poverty. That theme continued with Walking In Your Footsteps, but then they changed the pace again with Can't Stand Losing You followed by Roxanne and then 'closed' with King Of Pain ( I think). They came back with So Lonely and Every Breath You Take, and then came back again to do Next To You before leaving the stage for good.

Fergie opened for the Police. Yeah. It was odd at first, but she was actually quite good - she's one hell of a performer and sings her guts out. Yes there's lots of posturing and posing - that's what her music is like after all - but along with that she did a Black Eyed Peas medley and, what was most surprising, a few covers of Guns and Roses-type music that were actually quite fun. I could have done with a little less ass-shaking (Yes, you have a bottom. Wow. I'm thrilled to bits for you. Really I am.) but that's really my only gripe and even that's a bit forced because it was, as I said, good fun.

The big shock though, was Fiction Plane. We weren't seated yet when they started playing so I couldn't see the stage, but I remember thinking, man, that sounds a lot like Sting, only it can't be because that's not a Police song. We might not have gone down at all, only the music was echoing horribly in the hallways so we thought we'd go ahead even though it was about 7pm and we knew the Police wouldn't be on till 9:30. I vaguely remembered that there were two opening acts listed on the ticket so I figured this was whoever it was that wasn't Fergie and thought they sounded pretty good once we got away from the hallway echo and started making our way down the steps to the ground (did I mention that we were on the ground? Not in the prime, thousand-dollar seats, obviously, but not too far from the stage either and the perfect distance from one of the big screens.). And there on stage was someone who was clearly not Sting by my god did he look like him. And sound like him. This is what he looked like. Go look. It's uncanny. And then I remembered that yes, Joe Sumner* has a band and yes, there was something about him touring with the Police. But it was weird to actually see someone whose existence I've been aware of pretty much as long as I've known anything about the Police. Anyway, I got over the weirdness enough to quite like the band and want to hear more. They're playing tonight at the Ding Dong Lounge in Melbourne and while I don't know if I'll make it, they're definitely worth a look.

* To clarify: I assumed that anyone reading this would be aware that Sting's actual last name is Sumner, and that his eldest son's name is Joe and would therefore get the reference. Obviously that wasn't entirely reasonable given that not everyone was a 14-year-old Police fangirl.

AKC's top ten dogs

The American Kennel Club has released a list of the ten most popular dog breeds in the US. Beagles have been on the list since 1915, apparently so that wasn't a surprise. Neither were the Labs and Retrievers, but I was quite happy to see German Shepherds at number 3.

This just makes me want a dog even more, but we can't at the moment - we don't have the space and even if we did I don't think the our building allows pets. When we do, though, I'm thinking of adopting a shelter or rescue dog instead of getting a puppy. While I love raising puppies and I think they're quite possibly the most adorable things in the world, I want a grown up dog. Of course it'll probably have to be trained to some extent and will need time to settle in too, but that's easy enough to do with all but severely traumatized dogs (and I don't think shelters would be handing those out by the cartload anyway.). Plus, with a grown up dog, what you see is what you get. Whatever the breed characteristics and parents' temperaments, a pup will develop its own personality and it may end up clashing with that of its owner. It's easier to gauge whether you'll get on with a grown up dog

Ideally, I'd go for a German Shepherd, but really any big, sturdy, intelligent and preferably slightly goofy dog would do. Dogs generally aren't stupid and generally are at least slightly silly, so that's not a tall order, really. I may also have to reconsider the size because of space and time constraints (though really if you can't give a dog the time it requires you might not want to get one at all). Jack Russells have recently tripped my radar and I've found the ones I've met absolutely adorable. And even though they're little, they've got tons of energy and I've seen them keep up with much bigger dogs. Beagles have some appeal too, though I tend to prefer sharp-muzzled dogs - I feel for some reason that I can read them better, but that's probably because those are the kind of dog I've always had. While I might consider adopting a Lab or a Golden Retriever because of the two lab mixes we had back in Islamabad and because they're such incredibly sweet natured and intelligent animals, I just don't see myself connecting with them the way I do even with random Shepherds or Russells (yes I stop to pet dogs on the street if they approach), much less my late, wonderful Shepherd, Pooks.

Some places I'll be looking at when the time comes (or now, really - no harm just looking, right?) include:

The RSPCA's adoptapet site which lists animals awaiting adoption in its shelters across Australia and allows you to search by animal, state, and shelter. On the left nav bar, you'll also find information on the adoption process, animal selection process, pet care and maintenance, as well as good reasons why shelter animals are the way to go.

Another great site is Pet Rescue, which lists a large number of independent shelters across Australia. It's not owned by any one shelter but is instead a volunteer-run service that enables shelters to place their rescue animals up for adoption online. The amount of information provided about each rescue animal is, from what I've seen, pretty thorough and they'll tell you right off whether the animal can be moved interstate. They too have lots of other information available and also put forward a good argument for adopting rescued animals.

For a straight list of Australian dog rescues and shelters, there's always About.com's list.

The price of happiness

In his article In Praise of Melancholy, Eric G Wilson writes:
I for one am afraid that American culture's overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society's efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?

My fears grow out of my suspicion that the predominant form of American happiness breeds blandness. This kind of happiness appears to disregard the value of sadness. This brand of supposed joy, moreover, seems to foster an ignorance of life's enduring and vital polarity between agony and ecstasy, dejection and ebullience. Trying to forget sadness and its integral place in the great rhythm of the cosmos, this sort of happiness insinuates that the blues are an aberrant state that should be cursed as weakness of will or removed with the help of a little pink pill.

He goes on to talk about the role of melancholy in creativity. He's not advocating the kind of depression that can be self-destructive or dangerous to other people, but talking about a kind of sadness or melancholy that comes from the knowledge that we are essentially fractured ephemera, but which makes us appreciate what time we do have and makes us strive towards some kind of wholeness.

That reminds me of something Coleridge said about the necessity of opposites. If we didn't have sadness, how would we appreciate joy?

Wilson's book, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy will be published this year.

Thursday music

The Kooks. I first heard this at least a year ago and scribbled the song title (She Moves In Her Own Way) on a piece of paper so that I'd remember to get it. I found that little scrap of paper a few days ago - having forgotten completely about the song and the band - and since then have been addicted to this song.

"Morality"

I've heard the terms 'moral' and 'morality' thrown around often and what irks me is that it is assumed that these must flow from some kind of religious foundation. So it was heartening to read Steven Pinker's article The Moral Instinct in the New York Times yesterday. It's a fairly long article and just about all of it is quotable so I'd suggest just going there and reading it from beginning to end. It talks about what we perceive as moral, why we do so, how the 'moral sense' can be tricked, and how it evolves as we adapt to changes in our world. It's a very interesting read that will probably surprise, interest, and possibly upset you, all for good reason. I'll be looking into his books in the mean time - I've spotted a few titles that sound like they'd flesh out my own research into language rather well.

Realism

Ian McEwan on literary realism:
The kind of fiction I like and the kind of fiction I most often want to write does have its feet on the ground of realism, certainly psychological realism. I have no interest in magical realism and the supernatural--that is really an extension, I guess, of my atheism. I think that the world, as it is, is so difficult to capture that some kind of enactment of the plausibly shared reality that we inhabit is a very difficult task. But it is one that fascinates me. I have just re-read a couple of Saul Bellow novels, Mr. Sammler's Planet and The Dean's December. I really get a thrill from his engagement with the momentous task of what it is like to be in the 20th century in Chicago or even Bucharest, what the condition is, what it's like, how it is now. This is something that modernism shied away from--the pace of things, the solid achievement of weight in your hand. So I remain rather committed to that. But also to what is psychologically real--the small print of consciousness, the corners and vagaries of thinking that when you read them in another writer, and they are done well, you just know they are right. Not only because you had this thought to yourself, but because that way of thinking seems so ineradicably human.

From The New Republic.

Thursday music

Gosh the week passes by fast when you're not doing much of anything. Well ok, I'm reading a bit, but I'd do that anyway so it doesn't count.

This came out when I was in DC and is one of the songs that remind me most strongly of it, even though I hate the ending about as much as I like the beginning (of the song, that is).

In with the new

Overall 2007 was a pretty good year. I finished my MA and found out I'd got the scholarship for my PhD the day after I graduated. I presented a research paper at a conference, taught an undergrad course, read my brother's first book, worked with students with disabilities, saw the Cure live, dyed a quarter of my hair purple, did some translation work, wrote a fair amount, blogged reasonably often, managed to swim a bit, moved house, and bought a bike that I'm (re)learning to ride. I also met some wonderful people who, along with the people I met last year, have all made Melbourne feel like home.

It wasn't all good though - most notably, the political situation back home went from bad to worse, with Bhutto's assassination capping it all. I'm still not sure why 'protests' are so self-destructive, at least in South Asia, but the apparent sway emotion seems to have over reason is a bit frightening.

Politically, 2008 doesn't seem like it'll be any less scary, at least for the first few months. It is unlikely that there will be a move towards issue-based politics in Pakistan - personalities and dynasties are where it's at and, to be fair, where it's always been.

Personally, I'll be starting my PhD (have I mentioned that enough yet?), probably learning a new language as well as improving my reading speed in a couple I already know, learning to ride that damn bike, writing more and developing the ideas I've been kicking around lately, and maybe seeing the family at the end of year.

Ameel and I (well mostly Ameel) will be updating our Things We've Done section in the next few days, chronicling our activities of the past year. We also realized while at a friend's new year's eve party last night that it had been exactly six years since we'd first met, which was quite a nice note to end the year on.

Oh.

Looks like I'm doing a PhD then. Details need ironing out but hey, I got that scholarship. I guess it's a good thing I graduated on Monday then, huh? And I remembered when to doff the hat and where to look and how to get off the stage. We took lots of pictures, some of which Ameel has put on his blog, and only realized afterwards that I had the hat on backwards for a lot of them.

Moving music

We move in four days so, naturally, I've only sorted about one set of shelves. But that's because I've been doing something far, far more important: making a playlist. I don't think I can stress the importance of the playlist in moving enough. Sorting, packing, cleaning, moving heavy things around - all must be done to music. And not just any old music, either. The right kind of music.

For me, that means Springsteen. Oh yes. From Dancing in the Dark - which I danced around to in our half-empty living room in Geneva - to the gorgeous Radio Nowhere which I have on repeat at the moment and pretty much everything in between. It's probably because I've been listening to him my whole life that I associate Springsteen with moving, but there's also something about the songs. Think of Badlands, Thunder Road, Born to Run, Brilliant Disguise, Murder Inc., Glory Days, Human Touch, Lonesome Day, Worlds Apart, and most of the other songs like them - don't they seem to require some kind of movement? You can't just sit there, and it's not just happy dancey music either. You need to be doing something, preferably something that involves lifting heavy things and traveling.

There are others, of course. Some, like We Built this City by Starship (or were they still Jefferson Starship back then?), Fleetwood Mac and Foreigner seem to always have been there. But over the years the playlist has expanded to include Jackson Browne's Running on Empty, Cher's Walking in Memphis, The Passenger (both Iggy Pop's original and Siouxsie and the Banshees' cover), Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper and Burning for You, Leonard Cohen's First We Take Manhattan and, of course, Everybody Knows, Melissa Etheridge's Bring Me Some Water, the Indigo Girls' Galileo, Least Complicated, Closer to Fine and Hammer and Nail, pretty much everything by the Police, and the La's There She Goes. Currently, they're all sitting lined up with Sisters of Mercy's This Corrosion, Placebo's Bitter End, Gin Blossoms' Hey Jealousy and Found Out About You (gotta love the intro), Dallas Crane's Curiosity, the Cars' Magic, the Stone Roses' Waterfall and She Bangs the Drums, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones' Royal Oil  and The Impression that I Get, and Something with Numbers' Apple of the Eye.

I'm still looking for the old Sponge and Killing Joke songs I used to listen to but haven't had much luck so far. Found the video for Plowed which I loved listening to while flying. There's some videos of Millennium here and there as well, which is encouraging. But these are simpler songs more suited to actual traveling. With sorting and packing, you need - I need - a good, strong beat first of all, but then lots of instruments doing something else entirely. I'm not a fan of lead guitar - I'd rather a great bass line and lots of piano and horns instead.

So there you go. The actual playlist has many many more songs in it, but these are (or look like they're going to become) staples. I'm still mining my mp3 folders for songs with that something extra going on in them and will hopefully have an even longer list by the time I'm done. In the mean time, suggestions are welcome.

Is it Friday already?

Oosp. Things aren't actually upside-down yet, but they're about to be. Starting right after this post, actually. But anyway, this time next week we shall be unpacking boxes and officially moved in to our new place. Oh and I graduate on Monday. I'd be excited but I really hate ceremonies and I don't know anybody I'm graduating with so it's a bit of a pain. Ameel and some friends of ours will be there, but frankly I'm a little sorry to put them through the 2.5 hours of watching people walk across a stage. I'm a bit sorry about putting myself through it too. Bah, humbug.

But to make up for somehow missing Thursday, here's that iPod advert song:

And since you're going to want to sing along, here are the lyrics.

Moving time

As the post title might have told you, we're moving! We just did the requisite signing and I'm about to book the movers and then the sorting shall begin. I'm really excited. I absolutely love moving (and yes, I have been told I'm not right in the head already, thank you). How much do I love moving? When I was about 17 months old and made my first move from Sri Lanka to Islamabad, I apparently packed myself into one of the boxes the movers had brought over. Panic and drama ensued, but I missed it all because I was napping. My second move, from Islamabad to Geneva, happened when I was 4 and I remember being constantly underfoot (and being stepped on as a result) because I wanted to 'help' by packing all my toys myself. Since my parents didn't want to tell me that they'd dumped my toys, I was told they'd got lost on the way. Bad idea. I was 7 when we moved again and I made bloody sure every last toy got packed and sent off properly. Of course then we put them into storage and rats ate them, but that's not the point.

The point is, I love moving because it gives me a chance to review where I've been, pick and choose what I want to take with me, and discard the rest. It's a clean slate, a fresh start and all that. Even when it's a tiny suburb-to-suburb move like this one, it's still a good way of clearing out the stuff I invariably accumulate when I'm in one place for any length of time. It's as if things - papers particularly -  get sucked into my orbit and I can't shake them loose - a bit like the way staticky cellophane just won't come off - unless I do something drastic like move house. And as I discard physical objects, I often end up discarding a lot of baggage of the other kind as well. I decide again and again whether something I've carried with me for years and years is really really really worth keeping and sometimes, even though I've always thought I couldn't possibly be without it, the time comes to let it go. It's always a bit of a surprise, but it happens. Some things I don't think I'll ever get rid of, like my two Sri Lankan good luck devils or the little amethyst ring my mother got when I was born, or ticket stubs from the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey, or the other random little things that it makes me happy to look at because they remind me of where I've been - that I've really been there and I didn't imagine it all.

What I certainly haven't imagined is the deadline we're working to now. It's not that bad really - we've packed and moved a six-bedroom house in a day so this little shoebox and its contents shouldn't be a problem. At least in theory. What actually happens remains to be seen.

The PC police strike again

Sunday's edition of Australian newspaper the Age carried this story about how early Sesame Street shows dating from 1974 and earlier are too un-PC for today's child. Apparently Oscar, the Cookie Monster, and even Big Bird are inappropriate role models since they are unhygienic and antisocial, gluttonous, and delusional (remember when Snuffy was imaginary?), respectively, and therefore unfit for children to watch because, you know, children are little simpletons who might think that all these things that all these strange looking puppets do are somehow ok in the real world.

Say what?

There are a couple of assumptions here that I have a problem with:

1. Children are too stupid to distinguish fantasy from reality and will therefore ape any kind of behavior they see on tv.
2. Children must be protected and ushered through their childhoods with as little contact with reality because it might scar them for life.

First of all, children are not that stupid. Even the children of the delusional, gluttonous and socially retarded members of my generation are not that stupid. Their parents, on the other hand, I can't vouch for. But I do know that most children are able to separate make-believe from reality, even when they don't want to, which is why fantasy, particularly for children, has always had a place in human culture. One of the first things we're taught is limits; what we can and can't do is spelled out for us constantly as we grow up. It is important, therefore, to be able to escape into a world with no (or different) limits so that we may exercise our imaginations safe in the knowledge that what we are doing is imaginary.

It seems to me that it isn't children who confuse fantasy with reality but their parents. Witness the rising tide of emotionalism and deliberate Oprah-style renunciation of rationality in exchange for touchy-feely "you're all special because you think you're special" nonsense. Yes, for the price of one DVD, you too can have the secret to untold wealth, happiness, success and good teeth.
Which takes me to the second issue: reality. Reality means the stuff in the real actual world. You know, the one out there, that comes packed with grouches, hedonists, delusional people, and a whole lot more. Given that you're going to have to deal with them anyway, mightn't it be a good idea to have a practice run or two? Or maybe just the exposure so that when you come across someone who doesn't think you're the specialest special little thing in the whole wide world, you can actually cope?

The article also quotes the head of children's programming at the ABC (that's Australian Broadcasting Corporation) as saying that even if a tiny minority of children mimic the behaviors they see on screen, the program in question should not be shown. By that logic, children shouldn't be shown anything at all or allowed to read or speak or play or think because you never know when exposure to something as radical as scarfing down a plate of cookies could do serious damage to their psyches. And if we stunt an entire generation of children in the process, so what? At least they'll all be svelte and clean and utterly unimaginative.

I am not a parent (and things like this make me even more glad that I never need to be), but I certainly was a child and I seem to remember the biggest lessons coming from those two people who had the job of raising me, not the silly images I saw on the telly. I wonder, in all our analysis of the effect of anything and everything on the fragile psyches of children, have we forgotten entirely about the role of parents?

Memory Meme

Penni's guest-blogging at Inside A Dog this month (twice the fun!) and did an earliest memory meme, so I'm picking it up too. Hey, I should be blogging and writing and am doing neither at the moment, so this is a good thing. Seriously.

My earliest memory is of sounds - my father brushing his teeth, the clatter of crockery when my family had breakfast, more clattering when my grandmother came home from work, the car horn when my father came back from work, the sound that the front door of my grandmother's house made when someone opened it, the different sounds each ceiling fan in the house made. Layered on top of that are smells - porridge and toast and chocolate milk and laundry and slightly damp clothes being ironed and the smell of the jasmine we'd collect in the evenings to make into garlands. The dominant smell isn't really a smell though - it's the dry, slightly grainy smell that seemed to follow the sunshine around. Inside, outside, in cars, in other people's houses, I could smell it underneath all the other smells. These are all Islamabad smells and sounds though - I don't have any memory of Sri Lanka that I know of.

The first full thing I remember is the day, when I was about 2 or 3 years old, that I realized adults didn't always tell you the truth. I'd asked about something - I don't recall what but, knowing me, it was probably badly-timed and 'inappropriate' - and had received some sort of vague, nonsense answer. I was walking up the four steps that linked my parents' room to the rest of the house and I remember the moment not just because it was when it clicked that the answer I'd got wasn't true but because it was when I realized that I could tell. I remember also realizing pretty quickly that it wouldn't be a good idea to tell the grownups that I was on to them. Instead I decided that I needed to learn to read asap so I find out for myself.

I remember my mother being ill and in bed a lot and being kept away from her because of it, which I didn't mind because the room she was in always smelled metallic and cold. That's also probably why I have so many memories of my grandparents. One very clear memory is of looking at the Margalla hills from the back windows of the house and being fascinated by the shapes at the very tops of the hills. Trees, as it turned out, but my grandfather saw me looking and told me that they were monkeys who were observing my behavior. I still get a little creeped out when I see them.

I don't remember what my mix of languages was pre-Geneva, but I do remember not speaking Punjabi because one day my brother and I decided to make an effort to speak it (or rather I decided and since he had nobody else to play with, he had to go along with me). Our parents were very amused and of absolutely no help at all, which was frustrating because I wanted to learn it. Later when we moved to Geneva and the number of languages around us diminished enough for me to pick up on the Turkish my parents spoke, I tried doing the same thing, with the same result. They didn't want us to learn Turkish either.

I do agree with Penni about first-borns being the memory-keepers of the family. Being older, I naturally remember more than my brother does, but the odd thing is that I often seem to remember more than my parents as well. Actually it's probably not more overall but just more things specific to our family unit since I didn't have the 'noise' of work and family and friends and all that. On top of that, since we moved around so much, my brother and I were probably a lot more focused on our parents and each other than other children our age.

Hey if anyone decides to do this meme, let me know.

Here comes summer - and this time I'm ready, punk

Even though I'm dreading the trip to the library that I have to make in just a bit, I think I might not be entirely unhappy about the coming of summer. I generally like the end of the year, and I generally dislike the heat. Of the two though, it seems my fondness for the last two months of the year is greater than my dislike of the heat, specially when Australia seems to enjoy it so much (barring the bushfires, of course). Holidays, Christmas, carols by the lake, long lazy days - I think I see the appeal.

Now the thing is, the way I know for sure that the season's turned is not the weather forecast as such but my nose and arms. There's a difference in the way the air smells and feels in each season, just as there is before rainfall. In autumn, the air begins to feel more dense and seems to hit the front of my nose as I breathe. That first whiff of ozone means that winter is setting in. When the air expands enough to carry the smell of grass and flowers, it's spring. And when it expands so much that it fills not just your nose but your whole mouth with every breath, it's summer. Which is unfortunate, because summer is also when everything starts to stink.

You know what I'm talking about. Bad smells just don't seem as bad in winter - either the air is too still to carry them or it's windy and you're too busy feeling miserable and cold to register this annoyance at the tip of your nose. But in summer, with every air molecule taking up far more space than is decent, odors invade your consciousness, forcing you not just to smell them but to taste them as well. Even relatively good smells can turn cloying or unpleasant in this kind of weather.

On the train today, for instance, people had clearly taken their cue from the predicted high of 36 degrees Celsius and been extra generous with the deodorant and other nice-smelling stuff. In itself, this is something to be appreciated and encouraged, specially on tightly packed trains and trams. But when you mix that many different smells together in that kind of concentration, they will blend to create an overall scent. Unfortunately for Melburnians, the smell they seem to create when they all huddle together on public transport is: Baygon. And I don't mean the politely scented bug sprays you get here in the first world, either. I'm talking about the stuff they sell in South Asia: unadulterated poison that can stop a rat-sized daddy-roach in its tracks and half choke you to death in the process.

Still, it was better than that other harbinger of summer: body odor. There is something inherently upsetting about BO, I find - something as invasive and offensive as cigarette smoke in a closed room. Much like cigarette smoke, BO is often also unapologetic. It has no problem with its existence; you're the one with the problem. Which is why I dread sitting in the aisle seat in trams because sooner or later it will get crowded enough and someone will reach for the strap hanging above my head and, in doing so, will expose their stinky underarms. Being short, standing doesn't really provide any respite - it can, in fact make it worse if, as often happens, I'm about armpit-height to the (usually male, usually large) offender.

So I have devised a strategy.
It's simple, really. Carry a can of antiperspirant deodorant and, when confronted with a foul armpit, spray liberally. If the recipient raises a fuss, you can always claim self-defense. Think about it. Rather than waiting it out by burying your nose into the recesses of your handbag or just hand or sleeve or anything else you may have with you that smells better than these atmosphere polluters, DO something about it. And since you can't very well carry around soap and water to offer them a wash, this is the next best thing. It won't keep the smell away so much as mask it, but hey, the goal is to make your own life easier, not give hygiene lessons.

Vigilante deodorizing. Give it a try today.

Catching up

I've been hibernating the last few months and have consequently missed out on a lot that's been happening online and off. The biggest news, of course, is that Musharraf has declared a state of emergency in Pakistan, leaving himself the only law of the land. L'etat, c'est lui, indeed.

Kyla has been writing about the situation steadily and about her participation in the Lahore protest on  Nov 5.

Ameel has blogged about the situation as well, explaining rather well why Musharraf was able to gain our trust and support back when he took over and why people with foresight and a grasp of history insisted that, for all the good he may have been doing, having him around was still a bad idea.

Both Kyla and Ameel have linked to other blogs that are reporting on happenings on the ground.  The Internet's the only source of information we have really since television and radio channels have been taken off the air and newspapers are not allowed to print anything critical of the government. GEO is alive and well online, though a notice on the site says that they're not putting too much content up because of the heavy traffic they've been getting. Dawn is also operating online despite having been muzzled by the new press ordinance. I don't know if there's a difference between their print and online versions at the moment since I haven't got access to the newspaper itself.

I've said this elsewhere so I may as well do so here: the crap the US and UK are spouting about democracy and the elections and their 'insistence' that both be returned is just that. It's for show only. If members of civil society and the government were able to predict that this would happen if Musharraf stuck around too long, so was the US (and when I say 'US' I mean the States as well as its little pets). Yes, democracy and the constitution should be upheld and elections should be held, yes the army should get out of government, but the idea that it should or could be done because a foreign government that is interested only in using the patch of land that happens to be Pakistan says so is unacceptable. What earthly difference does it make to the US what kind of government exists in Pakistan? The fact is, it doesn't. So long as said government does not interfere with the US's goals in the area, it's really none of the US's concern who runs the country.  This very visible media-friendly hand-wringing is, to mix metaphors, a lot of lip-service to public opinion back home (since some of them might actually know what a Pakistan is and will therefore be concerned that their super-duper government isn't effectively enlightening us benighted savages) and little else.

So instead of listening to their protestations and proclamations, divert yourselves with  Musharraf's amended press ordinance and the now-suspended constitution of Pakistan.