Pakistani mobile phone users may no longer be able to send such texts (Note: These are imaginary messages on imaginary phones)
Pakistan’s mobile phone operators are reportedly considering a ban on the use of nearly 1700 “obscene” words. News reports out of Pakistan say that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has a list of 1695 words whose use in text messages it wants banned by the operators.
According to the AFP news agency, some of the words in English and Urdu include “quickie, fairy, Jesus Christ, monkey crotch, athlete’s foot, idiot, damn, deeper, four twenty, go to hell, harder, looser and no sex.”
I thought deep and hard about this and crafted this entirely fictional passage using all of the above words. I am guessing that expressions such as “monkey crotch” or “athlete’s foot” are originally in Urdu and are particularly colorful.
“Four twenty” most likely refers to the Section 420 of the country’s penal code that broadly refers to crooks, racketeers, swindlers, thieves, conmen of all manners. So here it is. I have used the proscribed terms in bold for your edification.
“It was 4.20 a.m. and the wee hour had blessed me with a boner. She lay next to me, deeper in sleep than ever before. Her lingerie had rolled up her right thigh teasingly revealing her yellow thong. Jesus Christ, I told myself, how can I resist her? With every passing second it was becoming harder (Get it? The pun? Harder) I woke her up and said, ‘Let’s have a quickie. I am told early morning sex is like a fairy tale.’ She was horrified by the suggestion and said, ‘You looser, you damn idiot, no sex now. You will get my athlete’s foot up your monkey crotch. Go to hell.’”
Incidentally, I have copyrighted this passage. I woke up up my intellectual property lawyer in California to take care of the copyright. I was surprised that he also used some of those very terms because I woke him up at 2.30 a.m. his time.
George Carlin had a list of seven words that one couldn’t say on American TV. He famously/notoriously (depending on your sensibilities) said, “Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.”
If Carlin were born as a comic in Pakistan, he might have given up his profession saying, “Oh bencho… yeh to badi lambi fehrist hai.”
