How Kiraitu can become Raila
Mr Christian Fabre, a Frenchman, is the chief executive of Fashion International, a $100m (Sh7bn) company in Madras, western India.
Fashion International, The Times tells us, sources clothes and accessories for brands such as Kenzo and Lee Cooper and for the French chains Printemps and Galeries Lafayette.
Fabre spends only half of every month working at Fashion International. The other half he can be found 400kms away in the lush Kolli Hills.
In the hills, Fabre is Swami Pravananda Brahmendra Avadhuta, an ascetic Hindu monk who became a swami in 1988. The Indian faithful fall to their knees to kiss his feet, as any devout Hindu would do on meeting a Hindu monk.
As a swami, Fabre lives a life far removed from that of the owner of a fashion "empire" that employs as many as 62,000 workers in 35 factories in India and China - he moves about his holy estate stark naked! So there you have it. Sometimes, how you look is everything.
Indeed, last week, doctors in a meeting in London announced a major breakthrough in the looks industry. They announced that it was now possible to do face transplants. However, they also voted against making these transplants easily available, until the medical and psychological problems associated with them are better understood, we read in The Independent.
The current face transplants offered to people who have been disfigured by burns or disease use tissues from other parts of a person’s body, and can involve up to 100 operations.
Plastic surgeons now say that transferring a whole face would be technically simpler, and give cosmetically better results. Thus, one day, you can have Ministers Raila Odinga and Kiraitu Murungi quarrelling publicly whether Constitution Review boss Yash Pal Ghai should resign or not, and after a few weeks of silence, Kiraitu appears after getting a face transplant from Raila, saying he should stay. Exciting stuff!
Matters, however, are close to getting out of hand in Asia, where millions of women are paying for cosmetic surgery in order to conform to the Western ideal of good looks, The Times tells us. The in-things are the plumbing of the breasts, of course, to make them bigger; high nose; and round eyes.
A single Beijing plastic surgery clinic sees up to 200 women a week, and South Korea now has more plastic surgeons than the US. But, as with all such things, there is a dark side.
In China, over the last 10 years, 200,000 faces have been ruined during plastic surgery. A famous example is that of a 36-year-old Beijing restaurant owner. Her operation was botched, and she couldn’t open one of her eyes. Some of the nerves in her face were damaged, making it unbalanced. And when she smiled, her mouth moved sideways.
Even before the dust over the consecration of the homosexual Bishop Gene Robinson, the Supreme Court sitting in Massachusetts ruled that gay couples were legally entitled to get married under the state’s constitution.
Nothing unusual in that ruling, you might say. The unsual thing about this case, that has been widely reported, is in its origin. Mr David Wilson rushed his boyfriend, Mr Rob Compton, to a Boston hospital. Compton was quickly taken into the emergency room. Now if it had been a male-female situation, the spouse would have been allowed to be by the side of his or her beloved during surgery.
David was barred because the hospital said it wasn’t sure whether in such an emergency, gays can legally be considered a couple. Being America, the two joined hands with other gay couples who’d been similary mistreated, and sued. Thanks to a kidney stone, gays will soon be able to legally marry in Massachusetts. Now, if only David had not been locked out–
Recent days have brought better news for those who preach tolerance of gays. The new leader of the Conservative Party in Britain, Mr Michael Howard, appointed Mr Guy Black as the otherwise very traditional party’s media chief. Mr Black is gay, and the appointment, newspapers reported, "sends a modernising signal to the party".
Talking of lifestyles, this one has many people bowled over. Please meet the freegans. The Sunday Observer reports that freegans are a small but growing body of mostly young activists who think the world is too wasteful, and consumerism has run amok. They are found mostly in the West, and we shall find out why shortly.
In order to protest global consumerism, the freegans eat free food otherwise destined for garbage dumps. They pick and eat old, blemished, or surplus produce found in supermarket bins. They hope by so doing, they are making a statement about waste and what our lifestyle is doing to the environment.
Every year many industrialised countries throw away enough food to feed the starving people of the Third World many times over. Freegans, make no mistake, are not poor or homeless. They are very educated, some earn a lot of money, and can afford to eat in the best restaurants.
I suspect if you were a freegan in Nairobi, the poor could easily kill you, thinking you are either mocking them, or because you would be competing for something that they think they desperately need more than you do.
Finally, one time the wonder male potency drug Viagra dominated the market line no other had done in a long time. Viagra’s reign hasn’t lasted long. The new Cialis, according to press reports, is set to overtake Viagra as the drug of first choice for men with problems. A study shows 45 per cent of patients are choosing Cialis over Viagra.
It turns out, Viagra is also a very lucky drug and has now found a new market. Doctors in the US say it’s a success with premature babies with lung disease, cardiac problems, and other respiratory complications. Viagra opens up the arteries in the children’s lungs.
Very interesting indeed. There aren’t many things in the world, apart from mothers, who are useful to babies both before, during, and after a child is a born.
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Mr Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s managing editor for media convergence and syndication.
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