Hardware for Women in Pensacola
Sign along Palafox, a main shopping street in Pensacola:
A little closer:
Yes. It’s a jewelry store. I LOVE their creativity – great advertising 🙂
Saudi Arabia: Women Driving Will Have Sex, Report Says
I am sorry, but if this were a joke, it would be hilarious. It IS hilarious, or it would be, if it didn’t impact so darkly on the lives of so many women.
So my friends in Saudi Arabia, here is the solution. Let the women drive. Tell the men not to have sex with these driving women, not until they are married. Tell the men that no matter how much the women beg, to keep themselves pure, and not to let these women tempt them away from their purity. Teach the men that it is a CHOICE, and that they can behave themselves honorably, and withhold themselves from these driving women who want to have sex with them.
That’ll teach those women 🙂
From the Huffington Post
Saudi Arabia: Women Driving Will Have Sex, Report Says
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A report given to a high-level advisory group in Saudi Arabia claims that allowing women in the kingdom to drive could encourage premarital sex, a rights activist said Saturday.
The ultraconservative stance suggests increasing pressure on King Abdullah to retain the kingdom’s male-only driving rules despite international criticism.
Rights activist Waleed Abu Alkhair said the document by a well-known academic was sent to the all-male Shura Council, which advises the monarchy. The report by Kamal Subhi claims that allowing women to drive will threaten the country’s traditions of virgin brides, he said. The suggestion is that driving will allow greater mixing of genders and could promote sex.
Saudi women have staged several protests defying the driving ban. The king has already promised some reforms, including allowing women to vote in municipal elections in 2015.
There was no official criticism or commentary on the scholar’s views, and it was unclear whether they were solicited by the Shura Council or submitted independently. But social media sites were flooded with speculation that Saudi’s traditional-minded clerics and others will fight hard against social changes suggested by the 87-year-old Abdullah.
Saudi’s ruling family, which oversees Islam’s holiest sites, draws its legitimacy from the backing of the kingdom’s religious establishment, which follows a strict brand of Islam known as Wahhabism. While Abdullah has pushed for some changes on women’s rights, he is cautious not to push too hard against the clerics.
In October, Saudi Arabia named a new heir to the throne, Prince Nayef, who is a former interior minister and considered to hold traditionalist views, although he had led crackdowns against suspected Islamic extremists. His selection appeared to embolden the ultraconservative clerics to challenge any sweeping social reforms.
Prince Nayef was picked following the death of Crown Prince Sultan.
Florida – Florida State Rivalry
When our son attended FSU. we wouldn’t even put an FSU sticker on our car because feelings run so high in Florida depending on which school you attended – or even whose team you support.
So you have to laugh when you see a good sport like this. I don’t know what the bet is, but it has to hurt to be sporting a huge Florida State flag for an indeterminate length of time (we’ve been seeing this truck for a couple months now.)
Hungry Baby
Who knows what a cat is thinking? This morning, I found the Qatari Cat’s baby by my side of the bed. Sometimes I find him at the foot of the stairs. Never in the Qatari Cat’s chair. But when we came home, I saw this:
Cats and Coffee
Have not posted any of the ICanHazCheezburgers.com for a long time, but I found some cute ones today:
Ramadan Joke from Hayfa
Thank you, Hayfa!
Michael and Mohammed
Two guys lost in the Sahara desert, one is David and the other is Michael.. They were dying of hunger and thirst when they suddenly came upon an oasis, with what looked like an emirates with a mosque in the middle..
David said to Michael: “look, let’s pretend we’re Muslim, otherwise we’ll not get any food or drink. I’m going to call myself “Mohammed”. Michael refused to change his name, he said: “My name is Michael,and I won’t pretend to be other than but what I am…Michael”..
The Imam of the mosque received both well and asked about their names, David said: “my name is Mohammed” Michael said: “my name is Michael” The Imam turned to the helpers of the mosque and said:
“Please bring some food and water for Michael only”
Then he turned to the other and said: “Marhaba Mohammed, Ramadan Kareem”…!!
Thelma and Louise in Saudi Arabia
An editorial cartoon from my friend Grammy, in Texas, from today’s paper:
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani: I Do Not Come to You by Chance
This book, the first novel from Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, is hilarious, with moments of pathos, and a fresh point of view.
Amazon.com recommended it to me as I was busy buying books by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; I thought ‘OK, I’ll read a series of Nigerian books as part of my summer reading.
Young Kingsley Ibe is the family’s first born male, and with that status goes many privileges – and responsibilities. After graduating with a Masters in Chemical Engineering, he has no success in his search for a job with an oil company in Nigeria, and consequently loses the love of his life, Ola, to another who has secure employment.
Worse, his retired father has a stroke, and the family discovers that with all the fees required, they haven’t enough for his continued care, so Kingsley must approach his uncle, Boniface Mbamalu, more familiarly known as Cash Daddy, for funds to transfer his father to a long term care facility, and, later, for his father’s funeral.
Serious Kingsley’s eyes nearly pop as he sees the life his uncle is living, cars, women, designer watches, shoes, suits and all the trappings of new wealth. Soon, his uncle makes a convincing case for Kingsley coming to work for him, the better to help out his family of mother, brothers and sister, now that he is the senior male in the family.
Kingsley discovers he has a gift for the work – which is writing 419s, those scam letters which I frequently publish in this column. I loved being on the inside, learning how strong possibility e-mail addresses are netted, how response e-mails are massaged – not unlike fund raising techniques by charitable organizations in the US. Kingsley’s education helps him achieve enormous financial success in a very short time – but he finds that all the cash and designer goods in the word do not solve his problems nor make him happy.
I learned a lot about how successful many of these scammers are, and how the money made is spread throughout the Nigerian communities. The author takes a balanced view, balancing the way the cash makes life easier for people – a lot of people, because the rich man has many obligations to his community, balanced against the disgust, and sick fear felt by his religious mother and aunt, and his one time girlfriend, when they learn the work he is doing. They are disappointed that a man of such promise has sunk to making so much money in a dishonest way. The book also does not deal sympathetically with those who have given or lost money to the scammers, nor, in my opinion, does the ending satisfy.
This is one of the funniest parts of the book – a group of Nigerian scammers is about to meet with a representative of a major US investment firm. He thinks he will be meeting with the Nigerian Minister of Transportation to discuss building a new airport; the reality is that Cash Daddy, in disguise, will be pretending to be the minister. Kingsley protests that Cash Daddy looks nothing like the minister, and Cash Daddy responds:
“Let me tell you something . . . Me, I really like these oyibo people. They’re very very nice people. See how they came and showed us that the ground where we’ve been dancing Atilogwu has crude oil under it. If not for them, we might never have found out. But Kings,” he dragged in his dangling foot and sat up in the tub, “white man doesn’t understand black man’s face. Do you know tht I can give you my passport to travel with . . . Even if your nose is ten times bigger than my own, they won’t even notice?”
It was a fascinating book. I understand better now why 419 scams work. (419 is the section of the Nigerian criminal code making scam e-mails a crime; thus the crime is called ‘a 419’) There are some very funny and very insightful moments in the book. It is no where near the level of literature that you experience with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, but there is more humor, and the book shows a more modern day Nigeria. Not a bad summer read, but not great literature.
Did you Tell Him We’re Going Dancing?
I was laughing as I heard AdventureMan talking with his Saudi friend, making a time when they could get together. I knew he had called about tonight.
“Did you tell him we were going dancing?” I laughed as I asked him.
“Uhhh . . . no,” he said.
This is new to us. We are taking dancing lessons, ballroom dancing, at the YMCA. We both had those lessons you take in eighth grade, but we’ve forgotten most of what we learned. I don’t care about going dancing, or fancy dresses, or competitions. I don’t even watch dance stuff on TV; I just don’t care that much. These classes are something we’ve wanted to do for a long time, and it really takes us out of our comfort zones.
We really are having fun. The first lesson – not so much. It is hard work! It doesn’t come naturally, it comes with PRACTICE! Lots of PRACTICE! It’s like fencing lessons, or horseback riding, or karate, or gymnastics – After a while, your body knows what to do, but at the beginning, it can be a little excruciating. As for AdventureMan and I, we mess up a lot, but we laugh a lot too. We are getting better, but best of all we are having a lot of fun. These kinds of things rewire your brains; it may not be easy, but it is good for us.
And I am still laughing, thinking of AdventureMan not telling his friend that he was going dancing with his wife, LOL!
The Minority Prayer
I listen to National Public Radio in my car and in my project room. I finally figured out how to stream WUWF, my local station. Until today, unless I wanted to use my wind-up radio, I had to stream KUOW in Seattle, or NPR which I like because it has so much BBC.
I am really delighted to figure out how to stream WUWF, because it has a lot of local news and events I might miss streaming one of the other stations, and I also like hearing who the sponsors are, so I can tell them how much I enjoy National Public Radio.
So today I am listening to Talk of the Nations, a segment on Pakistani-Americans, and this particularly articulate young lawyer mentions ‘the Minority Prayer.
Do you know what that is? I didn’t. But I laughed when he explained it, because we have prayed it so often living overseas . . .
He was talking about when attending a Muslim-American Lawyers National meeting, and how the buzz spread that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, and how they all sent up a quick minority prayer – “Please, Lord, don’t let it be Pakistan where he was found” – and of course, it was Pakistan. He was very wry, and I enjoyed listening to what he had to say. At the same time, I was grinning. I cannot count the number of times we have heard rumors – in Germany, in Kuwait, in Qatar, in Tunisia, in Jordan – and prayed . . . “Please Lord, don’t let it be the USA who did this . . . ”
It’s very much an expat’s prayer.
If you want to listen to the interview yourself, you can find it here.
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