Category: Culture

A Walk In Saudi Arabia

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Just when we’re watching the Enlightenment being burned alive by a pack of snarling university sophomores. . .
Just when we’re seeing common sense being sacrificed on the altar of pseudo social justice. . .
Just when we discover that the barbarians at the gates have kicked in the door and are actually pitching their tents in the garden. . .
And just as we realize that our society isn’t going to Hell anymore because it’s already renting a house in the subterranean suburbs. . .
It is at this moment that an anonymous Saudi woman puts on a miniskirt, goes for a stroll in the historic streets of Ushayqir and challenges the darkness to a duel.

For the uninformed, Ushayqir is part of an ultra-religious conservative area of the Kingdom of Saud, a vast patch of sand that exists entirely in the 8th century.  By law, women in Saudi Arabia, must be covered — toes to tonsils — in a black bag called an abaya.  They also have to cover their hair and, if they don’t want a boatload of grief, wear a veil.  BTW, they can’t drive cars, associate with unrelated men, go anywhere alone or even leave the house without permission.  Women in Saudi Arabia aren’t actually bought-and-sold property, but if the sandal fits, you might as well slip it on.  So, a woman walking around as casually as if she were in London, Rome or Paris is cause for alarm in the land that time forgot.  She can be arrested, imprisoned and even whipped.  Why?  She’s dangerous.  She is as dangerous to the established social order as any dissident author, any fiery orator, or any armed revolutionary.  She’s dangerous because she has the audacity to exist — and somewhere, sometime, somehow, some other girl might see her.

I don’t know if this is a Rosa Parks moment or not.  Quite frankly, I’m as ignorant as most Westerners about the nuances of the Middle East.  But I do know this.  While Western feminists and intellectuals may posture and pose, debating how many misogynists can dance on the head of a pin, this woman’s simple act of defiance is a very real candle in an increasingly dark world.

 

It’s Summer – Live With It!

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It’s not even midsummer and I’m grouchy already.  One more 50 calibre motorcycle screaming through my tranquil afternoon and I swear I’m going to ….  Actually, I’m probably not going to do anything except grumble about it in the privacy of my own head.  That’s the problem with summer: ya can’t do anything about it.  And now that I’m on the subject, here are a few other things — ya just can’t do anything about.

The price of airline tickets is never the same as the one they advertise. — According to some recent TV ads, I can go from Vancouver to London and back for $799.00 — except I can’t.  I guarantee you, if I show up at the airline ticket counter with $800.00, I will NOT — I repeat, NOT — get a return ticket to London and a dollar change.  Why?  ‘Cause there’s the fuel surcharge, the airport fee, the sales tax. the departure gouge, the baggage scam, the seat selection swindle, the in-flight menu con job and, I’m sure, the You’re-A-Dumbass-Tourist tax is hiding in there somewhere.  The truth is, by the time the airlines get finished with all their extra charges, the price of your $799.00 ticket is so outrageous that the only thing you’ll be able to afford to do, once you get to London, is beg in the streets!

Fast food never looks like the picture. — Take a look at a photograph of the Burrito Supremo, and it’s huge: fat and round and bursting with meat, peppers and melting cheese.  You can practically smell the fried onions.  Buy it and what you get is this sorry, deflated tube of hamburger and diced veggie surprise, wrapped in an dingy grey tortilla.  Pick it up and it sags in the middle and starts oozing orange out the bottom.  (Cheese sweat?)

Nobody but Stephen Hawking can understand a contemporary telephone plan. — Like everybody on this planet, I have a mobile phone and like everybody on this planet, the person who sold it to me gave me 20 minutes of gibberish and 30 seconds to make up my mind about “Which plan is right” for me.  King Solomon had more time to make a decision, and he had information he could understand.

And there’s more:

Emails that keep on giving, even though you’ve unsubscribed — daily — for the last two weeks.
The parent in front of you at the ATM who’s trying to teach their 4-year-old how to electronically renegotiate a mortgage.
The pedestrian who’s halfway across the street and can’t figure out whether to walk, run or hide from oncoming traffic.
Coffee drinkers who abandon their empty cups wherever and whenever the whim takes them.
Joggers and cyclists who insist on traveling side-by-side and driving anyone coming the other way into the weeds to get around them.  “Yeah, you’re healthier than I am.  Big wow!”
Wine snobs.
Trump haters who refuse to change the subject — even though you’ve told them 12 times that you’ve already heard what an idiot the guy is.

And finally:

There’s going to be somebody out there who’s more than willing to point out that these are all First World Problems. — Yeah, I know, and I’m sure you’re a better person than I am — but I’m hot and sweaty and I’m not hurting anybody.  Besides, admit it or not, sometimes, it just feels good to bitch.

This Computer Generation

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I have discovered the real reason that we have children and encourage our children to have children.

Last week, one of my lights went out.  A blue dot, it had glowed on a dusty, black molded plastic device on the corner of my desk.  Normally, since you can land airplanes from the various indicator lights shining around my house, I wouldn’t have cared or even noticed.  However, when this little bastard committed suicide, he took the Internet with him.

[Just so you know, I’m not a Luddite.  I love technology.  But I’m a Techno-dinosaur.  I don’t know a bit from a byte from a bot, and I don’t trust any of them because of my ignorance.  Techno-answers elude me because I don’t know the right techno-questions to ask.  In fact, I don’t even speak the language and — full disclosure — I don’t actually think in techno-terms.  Technology and I are like two pages of a closed book: we touch at every point of our existence, but we’re completely different.]

Anyway …  losing the Internet, without warning, was like suddenly being struck blind.  The panic was palpable.  I started thrashing around, waving my arms in the cyber darkness — propelling the mouse and hitting keys like a Rhesus monkey.  “Reboot!  Reboot!  They always tell you to reboot.”  I rebooted.  I swore.  I swore some more.  I started  randomly turning thing off and turning them back on again.  I unplugged.  I plugged.  I reversed cables.  I disconnected various wires and stuck them into a variety of other holes.  I realized I couldn’t remember what went where, anymore.  I unleashed a torrent of obscenities that is still hanging over the Pacific Ocean like a radioactive cloud.  I stopped.  I roared in frustration.  I wept.  I went for a walk.  I came back, sat down and looked at the dismantled mess on my desk.  This went on for three days and on the fourth day, I reached for the comfort of 2Oth century technology and telephoned my niece — my great-niece actually — on a land line.

Like Ground Control to Apollo 13, she methodically guided me through the reassembly process, calmly reconstructed the disaster, assessed the situation and isolated the problem.

“No, Uncle Bill!  The Internet doesn’t hate you; it’s your modem.”
“No, you can’t fix it.  You need to buy a new one.  Why don’t you get a good one this time?”
Then, she spoke gibberish for a minute and a half, and I dutifully wrote it all down.

The next day, I went to the retail techno-scoundrels with the note from my niece.  They pillaged my credit card and gave me a box large enough to hide their treachery.  Inside, there was a new black molded plastic device and a pamphlet of illustrated instruction.  I followed the instructions to the letter (picture?) plugged it in and — a miracle happened!  There was a little green light, shining bravely in the sun-drenched summer afternoon, and I knew I had been delivered.  I sank to my knees in praise of all that I know to be holy and thanked the Almighty that my sisters had indeed gone forth and multiplied.  Now I understand that, without a second, third and even a fourth generation to guide us through the labyrinth of technology, it would run amok.

And from there, it would only be a matter of time before we found ourselves up to our elbows in Terminators.