Pink paper's not for pansies

This weekend I read half of Celine’s Death of the Installment Plan, had hours and hours of the weirdest dreams – like Walker Texas Ranger trying to date rape me (but failing: sighs a deep wail of relief) – and was again chilled to the innermost centre of my spastic colon by reading the Financial Times.

Seriously, it was scarier than a Japanese horror movie and my reaction was completely physical – my legs went numb, my heart was racing, hot flushes and shivering sweats, and a constantly nagging bladder. All the stuff about Beirut, India and Russia… and then ultimately that interview with the journalist who has been jailed for interviewing Bin Laden. And the press freedom clampdown on what is broadly and problematically called “glorification of terrorism”.

Blegh. Maybe it’s just that I’m so secluded, and my one dosis of real news a week is crippling. Maybe it’s just the Financial Times.

So today I read the English newspaper of my company – a daily Bahrain paper. It was much more refreshing! For one thing, there’s the ongoing sagas of the maids: Adultery is illegal and there’s always the Delilah-like maids that seduce upstanding husbands. There’s always at least three pages dedicated to “Maid did @#$%” headlines.

These are then followed by two pages of photo-comics of the king’s activities for the last 24 hours – “King writes thank you telegram to other king”; “King receives important person”; “King sits next to prime minister”; “King receives thank you telegram for thank you telegram from other king”. Typical captions.

Then at least three “vanity” articles – some guy sells a record amount of socks or something that day and writes an article about himself and sends it into the paper. AND the paper prints it!

Yeah, fuck the Financial Times. Life’s good on white paper.