My own private Turkmenistan

All of us mourn for the passing of Turkmenistan's president-for-life and Turkmenbashi Saparmurat Niyazov -- and not just Pakistan, of course. After all, who hasn't experienced times, when life is going a little rough, where we thought about that great man and all that he has accomplished, and said to ourselves, "I, too, can do great things! Someday, I too will rename three months of the calendar, write a rambling book of my deepest thoughts, and have a gigantic copy of that book put in the middle of my hometown, with a device to turn a page of that book every day and read out over a loud speaker what I've written therein!"

I'm telling you, it's thoughts like those that get me through the day. More days than you care to imagine.

But getting back to the great man himself, I thought we should honor his memory with a short list of just some of his great accomplishments:

1. His face is on the country's currency. Also its teabags, vodka, postage stamps, pretty much every vertical surface, quite a few horizontal surfaces, ...



2. He renamed January "Turkmenbashi" (after his own glorious leadershipness); he renamed October "Rukhnama" (the title of his book, the best-selling title in all of Turkmenistan); and, of course, he renamed December "Gurbansoltan" after his own mother. How sweet is that??



3. He introduced his own line of cologne



4. He banned Turkmen singers from performing to recorded music and newscasters from wearing make-up



5. He created a big gold statue of himself in the capital city that rotates to follow the sun



6. He banned gold teeth, beards and long hair in young people, because they're all a bunch of hippie freaks



7. He banned all hospitals and libraries anywhere other than his capital

That last one, to be honest, might not have been the smartest for someone with heart problems. But who's to say his heart wasn't in the right place? Well, let me rephrase -- he meant well, right?