Satire

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Chop chop
I hate revolutionaries

October 5, 2001
The Iranian

The greatest and funniest entertainment you can find nowadays come from people who want to change the world. You know the type: The people who make asses out of themselves to prove a political point; the rebels who want to make their mark everywhere they go. Those who want to make the world a better place, fight evil, stand up and be counted. What a bunch of crap.

Is it me or the world has gone madly political? Where did all these revolutionaries come from? Was I sleeping and missed the boat on this? What's going on here? Do we really need to make radical political statements to be noticed? What happened to meeting our yuppie friends in coffee shops, ordering latte and reading poetry?

Let me give you some examples.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you my new hero. This guy is IT. A man who has given new voice (a strong and unmistakable voice I might add) to resistance and revolution. A man who has redefined the labor movement and has taken the act of defiance to the next level.

These are actual events and I kid you not:

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - A Peruvian man who last year sliced off his penis to draw attention to his jobless plight on Monday chopped off one of his testicles in front of the parliament building, police and hospital officials said.

Veliz, now a poorly paid laborer, hacked off his penis last September outside parliament after failing to meet the Congress head to ask for work. It was successfully reimplanted.

Witnesses said Veliz shouted at the door of Congress that he wanted to see Congress President Carlos Ferrero.

"When he couldn't see him, he got out a sharp knife and cut off his testicle," a policeman, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

A man who is willing to cut off his own apparatus for a political cause deserves a round of applause. I personally would never sacrifice my equipment for anything, anyone, or any cause but I sure enjoy watching the next guy doing it to bring worldwide attention to a noble political cause. Desperate times require desperate measures. A wise revolutionary once said, "Man has nothing in life if he's unwilling to sacrifice his greatest possessions for a cause."

What greater scarifies can you possibly make but to give yourself a vasectomy in front of the whole town. Now that takes balls.

Let the man be our guide. Let's learn from other people's experiences. To make political statements, let us all drop our pants and cut off our testicles to show the world that we really mean business. Nothing is more dramatic than watching thousands of testicles rolling down the street like small, lively, bouncing marbles. That would get attention and bring Christiane Amonpour and her entire CNN crew to the site. The days of silent protest and passive resistance are over. It's time for action, and I mean a dramatic shock to the system.

Let's shift our attention to another political and revolutionary group. These guys are a few sandwiches short of a picnic. You know the ones I'm talking about the mighty Talibans. When it comes to making political statements these guys bypass all mortals and go directly to the source.

Here is a statement taken directly from one of their web sites: "Talibans understand dilemmas of western women living in materialistic societies. Very same women, who suffer from unrealistic expectations, are starving themselves to death to look like models. We Talebans have rescued Afghani women from western diseases like anorexia and other materialistic taboos."

I was not aware that anorexia was such a big problem in Afghanistan. And I guess Mullah Omar has been proactive in addressing this issue by forcing Afghani women to stay home day and night. But Omar has gone about resolving this problem the wrong way again. All the good mullah had to do was to open a couple of Burger Kings and he would not have found a single Afghani lighter than 250 lbs.

Now, here is my personal favorite:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- ... A man was taken into custody in Orange County, south of Los Angeles, sometime after the September 11 attacks... During an initial search at the county jail he was found to have a large tattoo of suspected mastermind bin Laden on his chest. Underneath was written: "Osama bin Laden".

Making political statements such as displaying your idol's poster on a wall is one thing, but tattooing Bin Laden's face on your chest? What was this guy thinking? Our boy in Orange County might as well tattoo "Hey, I'm a terrorist!" on his forehead and get it over with.

All I want to know is where do you get a tattoo like that? Do you just walk into some random tattoo shop and tell the counter boy, "I want a picture of the ugliest, most hated SOB out there right here on my chest. Spare me the sentiment and make it large and noticeable. I'm going all out."

This guy is a revolutionary who carries his party identification card close to his heart. But could it be that the night before our guy was arrested, he passed out in some wild drinking/orgy party and his buddies played the ultimate cruel joke and tattooed his chest with bin Laden's picture? Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Well, I don't expect to see him anywhere near public pools for a while.

Comment for The Iranian letters section Comment to the writer Siamack Baniameri