Dude, you’re gettin’ a dud

I had my Sony VAIO for four years before I had serious problems. I just got this Dell XPS M1210 this year. It’s already crashing and freezing continuously.

For someone who is starting a new job and writing a book manuscript, this is serious trouble. When I need to get a spot of work done, when I have a moment of leisure from the 2-year old, it is essential that I get that work done. When with 2 measly programs open, the laptop freezes up and chokes, I cannot. It is another story that Vista stinks to high heaven.

I am very unhappy that the money I spent – while still unemployed – has gone to waste.

A treasure chest for Lahore-lovers

Thanks to Baraka, a fellow nostalgic Lahorite, I have found Lahore Nama. The blog is a treasure-chest of jewels for those who love the old, old and very, very modern city of Lahore. Lahore is where I spent most of my life. It is one of the largest cities in Pakistan, just on the border to India, and the capital city of Punjab province. The river Ravi runs through it (or one should use the past tense, given the state of the river), and it is the scene of tremendous academic, religious, literary and cultural activity.

I am a denizen of the city – my father, who was born and raised there, describes himself as a “Lahore ka keera” (literally, a bug of Lahore, which means one who knows the city like the back of his hand). I still yearn for it everyday, and whenever I return, I discover secrets and jewels tucked away in its dusty streets and along its willow-lined canal banks. Mughal monuments, Sufi shrines, colonial architecture, the lively world of the inner city and the oh-so-chic world of the upper-classes – Lahore has everything.

And aint I a woman?

Muse inspired me to remember Sojourner Truth today. Other events – such as being a woman in this world – also moved me, of course. So here is her speech converted to poetic format by Erlene Stetson (here is the complete speech in prose).

That man over there say
a woman needs to be helped into carriages
and lifted over ditches
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages
or over mud puddles
or gives me a best place. . .

And ain’t I a woman?
Look at me
Look at my arm!
I have plowed and planted
and gathered into barns
and no man could head me. . .
And ain’t I a woman?
I could work as much
and eat as much as a man–
when I could get to it–
and bear the lash as well
and ain’t I a woman?
I have born 13 children
and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mother’s grief
none but Jesus heard me. . .
and ain’t I a woman?
that little man in black there say
a woman can’t have as much rights as a man
cause Christ wasn’t a woman
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world
upside down, all alone
together women ought to be able to turn it
rightside up again.

“What are we going to do about American women?”

Enjoy my new (satirical! satirical!) post at Religion Dispatches.

“We have to liberate them. We have to let them know that their way of life is evil at its core. Years of subjugation and conditioning have rendered them incapable of desiring something better. We have to empower them to hate their civilization, their culture, their people, their norms of gender and sex.

“Yes, I appreciate that it is an enormous undertaking, but since what we have to offer is so much better, surely it cannot be that hard. We have to teach them that they should abandon the men they trust and obey–all of them …”