U.S. and NATO forces in southern Afghanistan have reported feelings of revulsion at the number and ostentatiousness of local Pashtun men who publicly flaunt the 9- to 15-year-old boys that they’ve acquired as lovers.
The boys dress (and use makeup) like girls, dance, hold the men’s hands, and show off in front of others of their age.
According to a San Francisco Chronicle dispatch from Kandahar, locals explain the practice as partly regional tradition and partly a response to Islamic and tribal customs that make young females off-limits to men until marriage.
Local saying: “Women are for children; boys are for pleasure.”
The more fundamentalist Pashtun also point out that boys are “cleaner,” in that they never menstruate.
Maybe they
could work
up to a C-
Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, feeling under-respected academically, commissioned an in-state firm to create a direct-mail campaign highlighting the many benefits of a Drake education.
The pitch to potential students, which was rolled out in brochures and on Drake’s website, is called the “Drake Advantage” and is graphically represented (curiously, for an academic institution) as “D+.”
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa Fla. 33679 or go to www.newsoftheweird.com.)