A brain dead puppy

won big in the media this week, as floppy eared mutt "Lazarus" lapped up the NYT's attention at some big hoopy-doo dog show. Seems this adorable little kelb spent a quarter of an hour with no oxygen going to it’s little doggy brain.

But after receiving more medical attention than your average Iraqi village saw in all of 2006, up jumped doggy and all was well. Breathless hacks report that Lazarus rolled on his back to have his tummy patted!

Come on. Have a heart. It’s touching. Especially when you consider the sort of nasty dispositions that pampered spaniels can have.

So anyway, on to something completely unrelated: serial brawler Omar "Rocky XIX" Sharif has been sentenced for punching out a Beverly Hills parking attendant in 2005.

“Stupid Mexican” was the sound bite when Juan didn’t bring the Porsche quick enough.

The attack follows on a 2003 fracas in Paris in which the actor-turned-restauranteur head-butted a cop outside a casino and another the next year in India in which he beat down a fellow actor with a table lamp.

Rumors of an 11-city show tour with Mike Tyson have yet to be confirmed, but meanwhile Sharif—who was not ordered muzzled by the judge—will be attending “anger management counseling.”

Maybe an oxygen tube would have been more a propos.

…my only comfort

is knowing that these dispatches are being read by the world. That the world knows of my plight, and that my colleagues are extending themselves to their utmost to find me and release me from this hell hole.

“Al”—as the pudgy guy in the next cell but one continues to insist I call him (as in “I was once the next president of this country” I guess—is ailing. Coughing through the night and complaining that he’s going to die if they don’t let him out. When they move him we’re locked in our cells and he passes by, trussed and muzzled. Hannibal the Cannibal...

Hugh—wherever you're holed up with that pair of babes—it's not working. We rolled in from that little beach blanket go-gofest that we've always said we should give the interns (see what you're missing you bastard?) to find this scrap of sodden toilet paper tacked on the office door.

Give it up.

Our peace and progress

had a close call yesterday when a virtual revolution took place at Al Alzar Mosque, according to the Egyptian government news service, MENA:

Upwards of a dozen black jumpsuit clad fundies with long beards and crazy bloodshot eyes were shouting nasty things about the modernizing regime of Dear Leader Mubarak, when a few hundred valiant boys from the undercover Shebab Brigades stepped up to take charge. Despite the interference of the leering Jew leeches of the troublemaking Zionist foreign press, our boys used sticks to subdue the Muslim Threat in accordance with all legal standards. Peace was restored under the patronage of Dear Leader (PBOH).

We join the workers of Egypt and the Arab world in congratulating Dear Leader for guiding us on the path of reform. MENA

A mallet wielding astronaut

was arrested in Orlando last Monday. Dressed up in a wig and plastic underwear, and armed with a knife and pellet gun, Lisa Marie Nowak, who apparently went into space last year and didn’t completely come back, was there to do some repair work on her relationship with fellow space cadet Bill Oefelein; to whit, wacking his girlfriend.

While a Nation of Pearls investigation has revealed that Nowak’s mission (code named STS-121) was delayed repeatedly, our space correspondent was unable to confirm that it was because Nowak’s rubber duck got stuck under the brake pedal.

Meanwhile, gold-digging Playboy bunny Anna Maria Smith showed up dead, probably murdered by the offspring of erstwhile sugar-daddy Howard Marshall IX over the squillionare’s squillion dollar estate. Smith, who’s own spawn, “Danny,” up and died a while back, may have been receiving death threats since rumors began to circulate last month about an upcoming tell-all appearance in the pages of the soon to be launched print edition of Nation of Pearls.

At press time, Tony Blair, husband of Playboy bunny wannabe Cherie (shown above at a recent gala event), was unavailable for comment on the paternity of Smith’s newest child. Read into that what you may.

Back door art

is the title of Culture Minister Farouk Hosni’s current exhibition at the Institute for Sycophantic Art.

As usual, Hosni’s art is spectacular. Touchingly ironic, it shows the naked power of wasta as nothing else really can. Raw acrylics are smeared across the canvas in sweeping, arrogant strokes that dare the viewer to deny this man’s right to hang anything, anywhere, anytime. Including you.

“If my daughter stuck that on the fridge,” observed a critic who works for the international press, “I’d burn it and take her for a psychological assessment.” Or maybe it was the other way around.

Security at the show is tight, with paintings hung high to avoid urine splashes.

The minister, who is also a women’s fashion consultant, was unavailable for comment. But then again, his painting speaks for itself.

An underprecedented surge in readership

and a staff crisis, are driving us to take extreme measures. Nation of Pearls is expanding its contributor base.

A word of warning. Nation of Pearls is not a forum for sticking it to your favorite politician or professional rival under the cloak of anonymity. Nor is it a platform for trumpeting weird political theories and ideas that you can’t tell your friends about. Just because you can make up a name and sign up for a email account is no excuse to get fucked up and post shit that you wouldn’t spout in the real world.

Really.

Nation of Pearls is a serious publication dedicated to journalism of the highest standards.

If you think you can meet our standards, email our editorial board.

Fitna Ninjas

It's been a while since I saw something quite this impressive. Takes me back a piece, it really does. Must have been The Bogside, c.1974, when I awoke with a pounding headache on the backseat of some slag's Austin Minor, aroused by the sound of clattering feet and the whiff of burning rubber. We found this on the cover of The Middle East.













Minds me of an excellent documentary I co-produced a few years back.

Hang 'em high

says Fox News, breaking the news that Barak Obama is a servant of the devil. Oh yeah! Seems Mr. Mixed Heritage forgot to mention his past in a terrorist training camp in Indonesia.

Coming hard on the heels of revelations that the guy’s middle name is “Hussein” this could be the final wind of the towel around this foreigner-loving bastard’s head.

Meanwhile “Look Out! Here come the nuclear-tipped Arabs!” says Scratch McClunky (seen here in a recent file photo) over at Timely Inc. Apparently the Bush regime has been “intensely focused on making the Greater Middle East a better place.” Apparently the Isrealies acquired their nukes “out of a sense of insecurity.” And apparently Rosie looks good in a little pink nightie.

Dirka Dirka Mohamed Jihad, and goodnight from Prague, where the beer tastes like wine and boiling oil is poured on invaders from the east.

Fuck you Pat

What the hell was that shit? This is supposed to be a respectable journal. You were brought on for your “steady hand at the tiller of a news department.” You remember that phrase from the interview, you drunken sot? You said you’ld quit drinking. “Learned your lessons” was the phrase we heard. You’re turning this whole project into joke with your obscene rambling.

And fuck you Hugh too, you lying bastard. Toilet paper and mascara? Where have we heard that one before? Where have you holed up this time you plagarizing bag of feces? The Four Seasons again? Blowing next year's hospitality budget on Manhattans, cocaine facials and handjobs, probably. You selfish bastard. Prison Diaries my ass.

Sandy’s the only professional in this organization.

I quit.

I woke up bruised

in this cell, the morning sun pouring in through the bars on the window, burning my retinas. I have no recollection of how I got here. The raw cement stinks of must and there is a bucket in the corner for a toilet. Fortunately I have made friends with the old man who empties it. He was the one who brought me the toilet paper and mascara pen that I’m using to write this. He has promised that he can smuggle out my writing and get it to HQ somehow.

If he does that, I can only pray that my colleagues, my friends, my brothers, with whom I have shared so much over the years will find out through their networks where I am being held and bust me out of this hole before I am eaten by the cockroaches or driven mad by the screaming.

Why can’t they turn that TV down?

Until that happens, these will be my prison diaries and when we—my brothers, my fellow-travelers—are safely established in our sea-fortress we shall learn my words by heart. And they shall shine like a lighthouse for all who come to dwell with us.

Stand by.

Total Confustication

PC Joyce got out of bed on the wrong side this morning. Considering his bed is a-next the wall, it was a considerable discombobulation for him. His post may be be somewhat confustulating.

NoP points with pleasure to The Patrician Today's analysis of The Agronomist's analysis of the state of freedom in the country. In a ho-hum piece, the worthy British journal says that Egyptians are, rather like one of those lovely Rubensesque ladies in a whalebone corset, feeling the pinch—and in more ways than one.

By virtue of Egyptian media reporting on Foreign media which has in turn being reporting on Egyptian media (satellite TV, etc), we half expected the world to explode with a resounding pop half-way through this piece. Such are the existential perils of globalisation, my chums.

In the latest item in our popular ""Blindingly Obvious" series", NoP brings your attention today to another snappy little number in The Patrician Today.

"CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS MERE WINDOW-DRESSING, SHRIEKS ROCKET-SCIENTIST"

Megabrain-At-Law Doktor Mohammed Nour Hardhat has said that the constitutional ammendments that General Toad and his stooges are currently ramming down the well-worn throat of the Egyptian state aren't worth a flying fuck and that if only he was younger he'd give that saucy little wench from layout a good seeing-to.

Or did he?

Europe's engulfed

in the nastiest weather in decades. Hurricane force winds have been smashing up the shrubbery, tossing children about and fucking up the cheese. The top got ripped off Berlin’s central train station, and the Dutch have been ordered off their bicycles.

It’s the end of the world, and of course the Swiss don’t give a shit. They were out there windsurfing while the rest of us were having tree branches shoved into our bottoms. Honest to God, it was like waking up in an Egyptian police station.

Anyway, you don’t have to look too far to see who’s to blame. While the rest of the world was scratching its navel trying to understand why the Iraqies can’t hang a guy without ripping his head off, or what Kim’s really going to do with those giant bunnies, the Chinese went and shot down a weather satellite.

Could it be any clearer?

Nation of Pearls is proud

to announce that it has been picked as the official media sponsor of the HONK campaign. We received their press release last week:

HONK is Raid-based pubic awareness NGO and campaigning for public awareness of pollution and noise pollution issues in the Muddle Eats. Our slogan “HONK for a cleaner and brighter future” encourage moronists in the region to HONK their hones to show their awareness. We are sure we are meating with grate successes from the response that we have been hearing. Thank you for considering causes.

Stay tuned for associated contests and giveaways in the near—cleaner and brighter—future!

All in the family

We at NoP get all crackly and grinful when we look through the Diplomatic Pages of the sordid newsheets, and find that the Turd World has thrown up another confederation of dunces for our amusement.

This morning, The Gonorrhoea Daily has at last confirmed what we've been overhearing in the gents at the Nadi Diplomati: that horny old goat Nursultan Nazarbeyev, President Eternal of the Glorious Republic of Kazakhstan, will be in town in March.

Now, I hate the red carpet faffing that takes place when the red carpet gets rolled out for some visiting tin pot bone-breaker (except when the Yanks are doing them – then there's plenty of skirt to [THIS HAS BEEN CENSORED - ed.] over). Apart from sitting sideways in a monstrous gold Louis Farouq furniture, smiling like a hyenas and blethering on about bilateral ties, we hear that the old toads will be comparing notes on how to run the family business.

We know here, of course, that Jimmy the Kid is the shoo-in for the Cairo hot-seat, but pay attention to the fact that Nazarbeyev's charming female offspring Dariga is also lining up to be the next CEO of Daddy's business. And Dariga may actually have the balls to do it. Unlike our home Nivea poster boy, she's actually been known to criticize the paterfamilias.

She's also appeared on Kazakhstani Pop Idol, and seems to be quite smart and formidable. We certainly wouldn't want to meet her in an alleyway on a dark night. Jimmy, on the other hand, has not to my knowledge appeared on anything but daddy's Gulfstream.

But it won't be long, dear readers, it won't be long.

I am now a man on the run

from men in cheap suits.

They came yesterday late in the morning, or evening. They were dressed in flimsy houndstooth jackets that were bulging at the seams with their self-importance and loaded weapons. Three of them stood by the door while one crouched here, beside the bed, where I am writing this.

They wanted to know what I know about Sealand.

The Aichas were outside. Thank god (whoever you are) they were outside. Buying groceries and trying to rustle up some more opium. We had run out of supplies and the situation was desperate enough to justify sending them both out at the same time. But I am glad now that I did. These men were more than a pair of simple Imbaba girls could handle.

As soon as representatives of the state were gone I piled our meager belongings—no more now than a couple of bottles of rye whisky, our last four bottles of Xanex tablets, three tabs of acid, an envelope with the last of our cocaine and a couple of changes of underwear—into the back of the Caddy.

I am ashamed to admit that, in my ungallant panic, I was prepared abandon the girls to the tender mercies of the local farm hands.

But I was without success. The mill ground over a couple of times, coughed like coal miner on a winter morning, and gave up. The chill of doom sank into my heart as I headed back to bed. Now, in the gathering dark, I await the return of the girls so that I can send them out again, first to fax this in to HQ in the hopes that someone will read my words and come to our aid, and second to locate a mechanic versed in the mysteries of the Cadillac mill so that we can escape this place before the men in cheap suits return.

The Iraqi people owe America

a huge debt of gratitude, claims George Bush, but he admitted at the same time that hanging Saddam Hussein might not have been such a smooth move.

Bush, a member of a cult that teaches that the brutal execution of a Jew by an army of occupation (an event commemorated by many in weekly ceremonies in which the cannibalistic consumption of the “messiah” is re-enacted) was sufficient to absolve billions of Whities of responsibility for pretty well anything, seems surprised that wacking Hussein hasn’t worked the same magic.

Such are the machinations of the Caveman Brain.

In related news, David Beckham and his Rocket Scientist wife have been recruited by Scientologist Junior Wizard Tom Cruise.

Seems the football Messiah’s intergalactic alien lizard soul (pictured above with it's human face attached) just had to come home to LA to collect its million dollar a week paycheck.

And that’s the galaxy today.

It came to me last night

in a cloud of smoke as we were having some shisha on the hood of the Caddy. It was a magic thing that rose like a genie from the grey paste that Aisha had coiled atop the coals, her black-draped outline silhouetted against this town’s single streetlight like a gamousa beneath the moon.

“Nation of Pearls.” That beautiful notion couched there on the bed of Rushde’s limpid prose like a lobster on a bed of lettuce. It’s us: The Nation of Pearls. We are a nation, and we need a homeland. This was the genie: this was the magic idea.

And as I watched the slow swirl of the sewage in the irrigation ditch drifting northwards to the sea, I realized that this was a Holy Truth.

And so I call on you, you denizens of this far flung national brotherhood. This Lost Tribe of Babylon. To come together and: BUY SEALAND.

Each of us shall tithe as we are able, and more. And each of us shall have a passport and it shall be purple in color and our emblem shall be the pearl, glistening white. Shimmering there. We shall reside resplendent on our platform atop the waves and from her, our immobile Ship of Unstate, we shall engage in periodic acts of international lawlessness.

And we shall be a necklace of pearls, hung about the neck of the world.

Hiding from the Bad Men in Dark Glasses

From what we can see through the opaque windows of our secret Nile-side location, it seems that every bully in the playground is taking it out on the Brothers this week. And not in a nice way either.

Consider the cast:

1) The Presidency. King Toad belched out some bellicosity over the weekend that the Brotherhood is a "threat to Egypt's security."

Rumble Rumble Rumble. There's the mud-slinging. "Security" means nothing, apart from a bureaucratic segue to "More Oppression - Because We Need it."

2) Ministry of Fear. A well-Timed Round-up of MB'ers this morning. Nothing to unusual there, mind you.

3) The Council for False Teeth also got in on the action, the doddery old heads at the Shura Council managing to pull their tarbouches up over their eyes just long enough to nod assent to the 34 constitutional amendments that the Presidency slipped in just before Eid. Here comes a party-list voting system. Goodbye Brotherhood "Independents."

(4) The Justice System (cue canned laughter). Last week 12 or so political parties, most of them jokes, but with one serious one - the Wasat - had their applications to be licensed turned down again. If the regime were canny, they'd have licensed the Wasat to divide-and-rule the Islamist vote. But they're not, so they didn't. They're preparing the ground so they can get heavy on everything with a beard and short trousers, including Cat Stevens.

And finally, (5) The US State Department. Condi's something of a backroom bully, but her inaction is what really packs a punch in this playground. She's in the vicinity this week, ready to roll out the deafening silence when it comes to opposition parties and human rights in Egypt.

Seems simple. I wish I'd thought of it. Put your only political opposition through the wringer for a while, physically, to soften him up. Then slip through a truck-load of punitive legislation trussed up as a "democratic breakthrough." Watch as nobody cares. Retire to a safe distance. Write last will and testament. Have some more plastic surgery.

I would do something about it all, but I can't leave our secret location. And there's another Kahlua on the way.

Holy Shit!

Srinivasan Nageswaran, a recent immigrant to New Jersey from India, had a close call when a meteorite the size of a golf ball punched through the roof of his house and ended up in his crapper.

"It could have done great damage and destruction," said the understandeably shaken Nageswaran, seen here in a recent file photo. "It could have hurt our people." (Had our people been taking a dump at the time.)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Egyptian police have brought Imad Kabir to justice despite the whining of local bloggers. Kabir, caught on video smearing feces on a policeman’s broom handle, became the darling of vegans and Western pacifists by claiming that it was the police, not him, who were the aggressors in the incident.

Reform-minded President-elect Jimmy "The Nightstick" Mubarak has yet to release a statement, but is rumored to have exploded when he heard about the incident. A member of the Press Corps unfamiliar with the specifics of the matter is saying that Mubarak responded "What a fucking asshole!" after an aide passed him a screen capture from the video.

God, Vengeance, and the AC-130

Your normally benign Political Editor is not often stimulated by pictures of military equipment. Not a warlike man, PC Joyce. But, upon hearing of the apocalyptic airstrike wreaked upon al-Qaeda evil-doers in Somalia we thought we'd take a look. Last time, the US got their little BlackHawks in something of a pickle down in the Mog. So, this time, they came back with something bigger. Much bigger. Like this evil fire-breathing dragon of the SKY!

I hereby renounce peace. I am getting one of these. Fuck democracy with an airborne Howitzer.