OP-ED: Men in shorts

Men wearing shorts are always more successful. The laptop, smartphone or tablet, from which you are reading this text, was invented by men in shorts.

Your microprocessor, hard drive and operating system… all invented by men in shorts.

They created e-mail, instant messaging and social networks.

And before these things they made penicillin, vaccines and WCs.

It’s due to these men in shorts that we live 70 years on average, rather than a miserable 25.

As for men wearing trousers, who do care about everything, especially about shorts – they haven’t invented anything except for the aftafa.

Fulton made a steamboat; Gillette – a safety razor; Prince Albert – the World Fair (also referred to as The Great Exhibition); Eiffel – a tower; Armstrong – ‘one small step for a man.’ All the men in trousers had was their aftafa.

When the nude Greek figures appeared in the Crystal Palace of the first World’s Fair, the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed strong indignation, appealed to the congregate and was immediately told where to go.

So, the secular state is more effective. That certainly doesn’t mean that everyone should necessarily be atheists, since militant atheism is essentially the same as religion. What should be taken from this is that it shouldn’t be one’s business what another person wears or whom he/she sleeps with. Mankind has had to deal with militant Christianity, Islam and atheism. There haven’t yet been militant agnostics. That’s probably because a sermon starting with the words ‘Be doubtful!’ would sound wacky.

Therefore, if a country strays from the path of secularism, there will be trouble in their future – hunger, domestic violence, complete fear, humiliation, and the public execution of Pokémon.

If faith is an abstract concept, religion (‘let’s call a spade a spade’) is a political one. Shorts are seemingly something concrete, but they’re actually abstract. Shorts are in your head. You can wear trousers or a skirt, but the shorts represent your sense of humor, they are a courageous statement and an ability to think outside the box.

These time-honored and primordial shorts surely were in the heads of Fulton, Gillette, Prince Albert – even old Armstrong had them under his spacesuit, actual, not metaphysical, shorts.

These same shorts were missing from the mind of an unknown man – the one who invented the aftafa.

*Men’s shorts – an apparel that’s been little less than a red rag to many locals and has effectively become a meme of sorts in Azerbaijan.

*Aftafa, a forerunner of the bidet, is a pitcher filled with water.