After dreading for one long month, then getting Spider in exchange of hard-earned 50 rupees, then doing an indepth analysis that could be measured in micron thickness, guess what I found? A heavy, nasty punch of despair on the butt. And I give the whole piece extra lameness points for making sure that nothing useful comes out of the pages, no matter how much hard you look.
It encompasses just about every eye-rolling, groan-inducing, focus-on-the-trivial, big-picture-missing flaw I’ve ever seen in any issue of Spider ever. Its all about chaotic title from hell, through blandly useless cover story, sprinkled with some disparate slobbery articles, heavily supported by garish ads, to some alien last nail in the coffin, or was it last byte?
Bookstall boy even has stopped laughing at me stealthily, he laughs now openly and also wink at other people present in the shop, when I ask him in low voice to give me the Spider. Its all about that amorphous title. He is right, how could a sane person buy anything with that title. Some hellish lines, some diabolic cartoons, and then to add insult to injury, the impalpable taglines. I don’t think this is just a coincidence, its some sort of *international conspiracy* going on.
After overcoming all sorts of ads, I fished out Eds note truimphantly, but my froth went back into my nostrils, when I was through with it. Some editorial trickery then told me that people are still praising and finding the Spider useful in the Inbox, and oh yes, what the hell, someone atleast is benefitting from Spider by getting that whooping flash drive.
Reading newsbytes was like eating a moth-eaten bread smeared with stale butter. I honestly dont know why, but now I am observing a strategic decision from Reba Shahid. She is now sending her “ace” author Nizar Diamond Ali first to face the music, and boy does he face it. He faces it like I face my boss, or if this doesn’t make sense, he faces it like Shaukat Aziz faces Bush, got it? if your answer is still no, then its clear that you are spending way too much of your time either reading Spider or picking your nose. They are same things, because you get immense relief, when you finish doing them.
Follow the cover story if you must, but only if you first swear a solemn oath not to blame me when you get to the end and say, “My God, that was a colossal waste of time.†I mean they are still discussing that whether Internet is evil or not. Should we use it, and if we use it, how should we use it. I think they should straight away declare that from now on every one in Pakistan would only follow the weblinks given in the Spider Bible.
Then comes our bad old, Hafsa Ahsan, she grudingly spew out an article in rapid fire about why should IT isn’t making it in Pakistan and then after producing some alarming noises, blame it all on PTCL. When she was gone, I came out of from behind my safety hole and with shuddering hands proceeded further. On the next page, I was slapped hard, as another Hafsa told me in loud whisper that blogging isn’t what I always thought it was. She just ripped apart my sweet dreams, and in a bare bone, monotone abysmal lack of understanding harangued about ifs and buts of blogging. She also cautioned me senseless, “if you don’t stop blogging and start using Apple, you’ll burn in hell. But as rigid as I am, I would say that, as According to Spider, Microsoft is supposedly in line with Satan, but because it has a few features that i really like. Now you can slap me. Btw, I’m not a Microsoft fanboy either.
Hamza Mudassir put some bandage upon my face, butt, heart, brain and some other parts, but it proved futile when I got real spanking from Reba Shahid’s mourning about the ills of IT education. She again was weeping that why we are using windows and why not everyone was eating Apple, and that is why we are so behind in IT. What a royal crap.
Then there was a coverage of yet another PASHA event. Some blokes made speeches, there were some meetings, photo session, talks about dreams, which even Quaid-e-Azam didnt see, and then the scribe didn’t tell us that what was in the refreshments. Then, golly goshie, Mr Diamond was there again, discussing some elusive species of worms and other insects. He even produced one out of his hat, though I was expecting some rare diamond. It was incredibly boring and disgusting. The only good thing about his article is that I have finished it and I dont have to read it again.
Graffiti was there, smiling as ever, and the freebie tools were also ok, if not killing. We also had some dude from neighbours telling us with sheer lack of technical scruples that it would be good idea to set up broadband connections in the villages and farmers could say goodbye to their cattle and start a call center.
Who cares? By the way I am saving issues of Spider for my grandkids. They would make a nice deterrent for them.
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