Fashion tips for terrorists in G-al-Q. The good Turbanhead has a great photo spread:

The [al-Qaeda] manuals devote special care to teaching recruits how to pass unnoticed in the West, and include the following advice… Don’t wear short pants that show socks when you’re standing up. The pants should cover the socks, because intelligence authorities know that fundamentalists don’t wear long pants… You should differentiate between men and women’s perfume. If you use women’s perfume, you are in trouble.

Honey, if you’re a gender-confused fundamentalist? Sigh… where to begin.

Bombayite Vishal Patel scanned in ads from the semi-socialist ’80s, before good printing technology hit Indian shores. Nostalgic. He also fillets half-assed Indian comics (via Boing Boing):

This story ends like every other Chacha Chaudhary story, suddenly and abruptly, like the writer/artist suddenly realised that three pages were up. As a result, we’ll never know if Chhajju Chaudhary was ever brought back to Earth, or was kept on Mars for the sodomising pleasure of the Martian nobility.

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My mom did this to me every night @ dinner – ABCNEWS.com : Is It OK to ‘Hot Sauce’ Kids?

The practice of “hot saucing” a child’s tongue as a method of discipline may seem cruel to some parents, but those who regularly use the punishment say it teaches their charges valuable and long-lasting lessons.

Swami, as he is described, is on an epic mission – he is carrying his aged, blind mother, Kethakdevi, on his shoulders on an all-India pilgrimage.

The loving son carries two baskets on his shoulders, balanced by a wooden bar … In one, his mother, in the other his meagre belongings.

His spartan possessions include a stove and pots, a couple of rugs, some clothes, a gold-plate wristwatch and a mobile phone. [via the BBC]

“Oh hi. How are you? No, I’m not busy, just out for a stroll with my mother. You know, same old same old. Yeah, she can be a huge pain in the back sometimes, but she’s my mom and I love her. So when she said, carry me all over India, I said, why not, I’m not doing anything until 2013 anyway. But … it’s boring sometimes. And mom doesn’t talk much. So I’m really glad I’ve got unlimited night and weekend minutes on this plan. Enough about me though. What did you do this weekend, anyway?”

Why can’t we all just get along? [Via Kamat’s Potpourri]

The town I currently live in is so white that …

… the local bakery makes only white bread (no wheat) and the last sandwich shop I went to only made sandwiches with mayo — not one option had mustard!

… there is a chinese restaurant that bills itself as a “chop suey palace” (I’d take a photo but I’d rather not get arrested)

… the only kosher restaurant in town was a kosher irish place (it closed before I moved here in January, unfortunately). I can just see the menu — corned beef and latkes!

… there actually is a 7/11 that employs only white people. It’s like one of those mythical places you can only find by getting lost, and you can never get back there (none of the employees could read a map either)

But even out here they showed Harold and Kumar at the local multiplexes (both of them!)

First, they were going to hang a portrait of him in the U.S. Capitol Building. Next they were going to name a building somewhere in California after him. NOW they are thinking of commemorating him on a stamp! Dilip Singh Saund is the most popular brown man in America right now even though he’s dead.

There is only one problem as I see it. This idea is coming too late. Last week Stamps.com announced a partnership with the U.S. Postal Service which will allow anybody with spare change in their pockets to create a customized stamp. That’s right. Now you can put your own picture on an official U.S. stamp and mail it anywhere you want. That being the case, the once sacred honor of being displayed on a stamp, has been cheapened. How cheap you ask? Well to put it into perspective I took the liberty of creating a stamp of me, which I could now purchase from the USPS, and one of Saund. Honestly now, which one would you choose? Which one would you choose?

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It is bad enough that the women I meet at bars sexualize me by assuming that just because I am brown, I must have Tantric skillz. NOW my collegues at school are going to ask me, and all of you other brown scientists and engineers, if we are skilled in the Vedic methods as well:

What is the square of 85? In an instant, a 17-year-old boy said without blinking, “7,225.”
Kamlesh Shetty had used a trick from a quaint concept called Vedic math, a compilation of arithmetic shortcuts believed to have been written by ancient Indians who lived centuries before Christ, during a glorious period in Indian history called the Vedic Age. Its math has now crawled into the 21st century to further Shetty’s dream of cracking a nasty engineering entrance exam.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the word “nasty” was used in the above paragraph.

sorry vinod and abhi, but rather than end the “DRUM”/patchouli/”harold and kumar” debate on poor maria’s ass (because no ass deserves such responsibility or hardship), i say we send the cast and crew of the stoner movie that “couldn’t” to the following:

A Different Kind of Dude Fest: August 20-22. Washington, DC

This is not “just” a fest. It’s a space for men to take stock of their internalized sexism and to discuss strategies for change, for ways we can divest of patriarchy and be responsible feminist allies. To that extent, there will be:

(1)A website/zine/reading group project to foster discussion and self-reflection before and after the fest.

(2)Workshops and discussion spaces to explore issues of privilege, sexism and patriarchy, and to learn from non-gender privileged perspectives.

(3)Two nights of shows with amazing, pro-woman, pro-queer bands, many of which are involved in organizing the fest, where we can start following through with our obligation to not take gender dynamics for granted, and to forge new visions of collective liberation. And we may even have a little fun. Come!

for those of you who are utterly perplexed by this post, i implore you to go read the comments after this SM entry. it will all make sense then, dear ones.

now if you’ll kindly excuse me, i have to go berate my bf for not sympathizing with my vaginally-centered plight. he is obviously a privileged, sexist, patriarchal jerk who has not divested himself of the horrific issues that “harold” and “kumar” also suffer from….he is complicit! all of the other mutineers are! stop objectifying! patchouli for all!