The KKK are so mean, you guys. Not only are they racist, they apparently steal babies also. This is such a widespread problem in America that the Ramones sang a song about it and then Clawfinger covered it which I guess means the problem of baby-snatching white supremacists has spilled over into Scandinavia.
Also, my chapbook called Three Scenarios Leading to the Rape of a Teenage Girl in the Tropicool Icy-land Urban Indian Slum is available from mud luscious press and they only printed a limited number of them and that makes this chapbook like Armani but not really. If you are so upwardly mobile that you don’t want to buy my book (which is mean and breaks my heart) then you can buy the chapbook all by its lonesome. If you don’t want to buy anything and don’t own anything by Armani though you may have bought certain pavement items called Amrani , I’m sorry but we have no links for poor people to click.
In IndiaSoNotShining news, this article tawks about a practice in our one number country called the ‘finger test’ which is used to check if alleged rape victims who are also unmarried women have really been raped or if they’re just having a bit of a laff. Also, being a progressive kind of country, in this year of 2010 we’ve also apparently decided to set up a committee to consider, among other things, that maybe boys and men get raped too! Isn’t that mindblowing? What cutting edge and progressive things will we think of next, India? That setting people on fire is generally not a good way to make new friends? Now, this same article talks about something called Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code, and that says “outraging the modesty of a woman” is against the law. This means that you can sexually assault a young girl and the most that will happen is you will get in big trouble for “outraging her modesty”. So it’s not so much a sexual violence thing as it is a ‘shame shame puppy shame’ thing. Isn’t it neat how we take our morals and modesties so seriously? I mean, let us consider this petition It’s all about a really nice police officer who apparently was so steadfast in his moral policing of the modesties that he hit someone, made threats and humiliated people in public, all in the name of Tamil Culture. And while I am the last person with any right to speak on Tamil Culture, I have a very strong feeling Tamil Culture does not need peeps doing things like this in its name. I also have a strong feeling that Tamil Culture would appreciate if you sign the petition also. Remember that unlike the finger test, which only some of us leddies have to fear, moral policing, like dengue fever, can happen to pretty much anyone. And because I am chickenshit I want to say please moral police people, please don’t come after me for posting this because I am young and I want to live and I freely admit, I have no Tamil Culture so I think that means I am beyond saving but perhaps more importantly, please note that I don’t have any money.
Anyhoo, I recently watched a YouTube vid and came across a comment that was, without exception, the most awesomest comment I ever read. It goes something like this ‘Well I have a great sense of humor and I’m a very funny person and I don’t think this is funny.’ I feel we need to have moar peepal like this in the world so they can tell us what is funny and what isn’t. This also made me think of things I had read in the recent past which made me lolololo long time but in light of the awesome comment, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to find them funny at all.
How To Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina
I feel somewhat about the word ‘Other’. I feel somewhat about the fact that whoever is nonOther is called ‘Other’, like they have some kind of disease which means we have to put them over there in the Other ward away from the nonOthers. Which is why I sometimes like to think of The Other as a demonic breed of anchovies because sometimes that’s how they turn out in teh fictionz anyway and demonic anchovies sounds less offensive to me than Other. Anyhoo, I think we can all agree that the most demonic anchoviest of them all is Africa. Consider the fact that we continue to refer to people from Africa by their continent rather than their country. Binyavanga Wainaina took it upon himself to write this helpful article on how to write about Africa, which I thought was one of the funniest things ever. But apparently, writing about Africa is serious business and when you make fun of it, you’re being racist. Or something. Whatever, I thought it was hilarious but I’m still in racism jail so what do I know.
Why You Shouldn’t Find This Funny– There are probably peeps out there who actually have lists like this for writing about all sorts of demonic anchovy topics. I’m pretty sure there is a How To Write About Indian Slumdwellers list floating around and I believe this list has left the confines of our country and in keeping with the most powerful of all Indian aspirations, it has gone and settled in the West. Anyhoo, this piece caused Mr. Wainaina to be hit with an upgraded kind of concern trolling where the research and all the hard work is already done (which is awful nice because so many times, the Demonic Anchovy must do the research for the nonOther) and now, all the Demonic Anchovy has to do is say ‘Demonic Anchovy Approved!’ (I believe this is a portion of KalariNinjaSkillz #3). Mr. Wainaina himself describes it thusly “Novelists, NGO workers, rock musicians, conservationists, students, and travel writers track down my email, asking: Would you please comment on my homework assignment / pamphlet / short story / funding proposal / haiku / adopted child / photograph of genuine African mother-in-law? All of the people who do this are white. Nobody from China asks, nobody from Cuba, nobody black, blackish, brown, beige, coffee, cappuccino, mulatte. I wrote “How to Write about Africa” as a piss-job, a venting of steam; it was never supposed to see the light of day. Now people write to ask me for permission to write about Africa. They want me to tell them what I think, how they did. Be frank, they say, be candid. Tell it like it is. I have considered investing in a rubber stamp.” (from How to Write About Africa II: The Revenge by Binyavanga Wainaina)
On Wiscon… by Deepa D
This one is labeled satire and I’m guessing the label made it much easier for people to say ‘Well thankfully, I don’t read this kind of racist humor’ because clearly, she’s being totes racist to white peepal here. This is not like certain articles about Indian men that appeared in HuffPo that were totes NOT racist and which I am not linking to because that’s gross and also Google is your friend.
Why You Shouldn’t Find This Funny – To understand why you’re not supposed to find this funny, we need to understand what made the HuffPo article so LOL. It is a very LOL thing for someone who is not an Indian and not a dude to write something that is essentially LOL Injun Dudes Are So Injun! Because not only is it allegedly funny, it shows us that the author is not racist and loves all Indians very much. It’s the same thing that makes LOL Fat People Are So Fat!, LOL Females Are So Female! And LOL Deaf People Are So Deaf! jokes so terribly lol. Now, sometimes people will write something in the LOL genre but with the LOL removed. This means that the piece is written with an honest kind of earnestness which we are supposed to applaud and appreciate and not laff at because it’s totally NOT funny. So that means it’s not funny to satirize it either because that would be like satirizing kittens with cancer.
What’s tricky is that you may have actually seen white people write stuff exactly like this for realz about colored folk. And for the record, I have heard Injuns say similar things about non-Injuns. I have heard one religion say this about another religion, one caste about another caste, straight folk about teh gayz, abled about the differently challenged. And they have all been honest and heartbreakingly sincere and the reason why they are sharing these honest and heartbreakingly sincere thoughts with us is because they are so brave to have ventured so boldly into demonic anchovy territory and come out unscathed. And now, it is our most honorable duty to give them a Cookie, because that’s really what this is all about. Cookies. It is possibly the most time-consuming and melodramatic way to ask for a cookie. Mmmm, cookies.
It’s not really fair to include Mrs.Mortimer here because unlike Deepa D and Binyavanga Wainaina, I don’t think she wrote this to be funny at all. In fact, I believe she was so serious about this that she kind of employed KalariNinjaSkillz #5 here, which means the credit for this worthy treatise kind of belongs to Jesus, which kinda sucks for Jesus. From what I understand, Mrs. Mortimer wrote this, which is a religious children’s travelogue type thing about Africa, China and Hindoostan and all sorts of other places but she didn’t actually leave the Shire, as they say. She even says in preface “Its plea is not completeness, nor comprehensiveness, nor depth of research, nor splendor of description; but the very reverse,—” Which totes wouldn’t happen today, right? Amirite?
Why You Shouldn’t Find This Funny –I think that Mrs. Mortimer honestly believed the native heathens she wrote about really existed out there in the Far Off and they needed to be saved and she knew just how to save them. Which is condescendingly lol when you sit in 2010 and know that Mrs. Mortimer is safely tucked away in the 1800s. However. This is not funny when you consider that many people in the today still feel the same way about us heathens. And that’s actually kind of touching, like how people tracking you down and cutting you open to remove the alien being they think is living in your large intestine is touching. And I guess because some peeps still think this way, they still write this way and the only real difference between them and Mrs. Mortimer is teh internetz. For instance, we no longer say things like ‘The Turks are grave and the Persians lively. The Turks are silent, the Persians talkative. The Turks are rude, the Persians polite’ anymore. But we write things in the HuffPo that are for a LOL and about Injuns because we’re all really scared of Turks and Persians right now. In this century, we totes do not talk about the ‘devil priests of Ceylon’. But we make movies called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which shows Injuns making human sacrifices to the Goddess Kali and eating monkey brains. Mmmm, monkey brains.
Because this blog post is already too long, I end with this extremely important message. A reliable source tells me that there is a very little dude in Pondicherry hawking very little bags with great enthusiasm and violence while shouting ‘Indian Culture!’ So for those of you who were wondering where Indian Culture is, this very little dude in Pondicherry haz it in bag form and you can go get some if you want.
okbai