I am alive.
but busy....
and Anarki's cheap shots have nothing to do with this post....
nice post...
i just been busy with a project and have finished it this week (Department CD)
next post (soon) will be much more, promise.
and also, no net in home now, wire troubles, have to check upstairs,
so lazy
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Tag! You're It
mates, i never send offlines/chainmails or anything, plain lazy, be it a salo ala muhammed or the friend you always care about is A B C type...but since this tag's received by two friends i respect, Haneen & Hassan, i gotta comply, and i gotta do 14 since i've been double-tagged, you *@&#(@*&.... : )))) :))) i'll do 8.
I CAN :
1. speak english as good as i write it, i tried it, they thought i was from the BBC.
2. do the moonwalk
3. play guitar
4. speak Libyan (as evidenced in Amman, they thought so)
5. touchtype, my oldest trick in the book, they always eyepop when i do it.
6. accept anyone despite of his background (even, say, Jews, given that they do the same)
7. Conivnce all classmates to act in a slew of embarassing movies, incl. a parody of a first-person
shooter, a fake TV station on the streets, a rockband complete with fake wigs and an advertistement for a chinese calculator.
8. Attempt any bet given to me by guys, incl. Kissing guy u don't know and walking in college with ur hair in disarray (believe me, that caused a commotion.)
PLAN TO DO :
1. MUSICWISE: Buy electric guitar, write an eastern-influenced rock song, learn all arabic scales and some harmoy/melody stuff as well as try to understand Oud, get a kick at Violin & Paino. Play with a band and somehow play live somewhere. Learn sheet music, basically, kick ass musically.
2. Gain weight, i weight a lousy 62. i plan to be 70-75 which fits my height.
3. Stay in Iraq as long as possible before my parents forcefully drag me outta here, call me crazy but i like it here.
4. Develop an interest in political matters at least in terms of becoming an educated everyman, my hunger is already building and am currently reading two books : 'American Empire and the Raid of Iraq' by Muhammed H. Haykal (guy on Jazeera tv) and Huntington's Clash -again-
5. Deepen religious feelings and try as much as i can to suppress sexual impulses and the overwhelming desire to spank particular someones. Attain a more religious posture strictly based on moderate islam teachings, Amro Khalid-style. At least one day pray all five.
6. Learn to swim, i try all the time but my friends just go once or twice before quitting it. I planned to learn this summer by going to the river but i didn't....LAAAZY
7. Improve driving skills : I suck at driving, mainly because i didn't drive much and that little was last done six months ago before dad sold the car just when it fell into my lap. this is much needed right now, althu the treacherous gasoline prices, wicked traffic jams and populous carjacking suggests otherwise.
8. Relearn the capitals of all the world's countries like i did when i was 7 years old. Used to be an Atlas-freak who was so freakishly glad he discoverred a country called 'Andora'
CAN'T
1. sleep like a normal human being, either sleep all the time, never sleep (30+ hours a piece of cake) or sleep all morning and stay up all night, Batman-wise.
2. keep toilet seat down
3. talk more than 10 words per day to my grandparents for fear of inciting fight.
4. not negotiate a taxi driver into a humiliating fare. - to pay him more in the end, if i think he desrves it-
5. not sleep in Dr. DMA's lectures.
6. not laugh in Dr. DMA's lectures.
7. not get dismissed in Dr. DMA's lectures.
8. spend a day without computers.
I CAN :
1. speak english as good as i write it, i tried it, they thought i was from the BBC.
2. do the moonwalk
3. play guitar
4. speak Libyan (as evidenced in Amman, they thought so)
5. touchtype, my oldest trick in the book, they always eyepop when i do it.
6. accept anyone despite of his background (even, say, Jews, given that they do the same)
7. Conivnce all classmates to act in a slew of embarassing movies, incl. a parody of a first-person
shooter, a fake TV station on the streets, a rockband complete with fake wigs and an advertistement for a chinese calculator.
8. Attempt any bet given to me by guys, incl. Kissing guy u don't know and walking in college with ur hair in disarray (believe me, that caused a commotion.)
PLAN TO DO :
1. MUSICWISE: Buy electric guitar, write an eastern-influenced rock song, learn all arabic scales and some harmoy/melody stuff as well as try to understand Oud, get a kick at Violin & Paino. Play with a band and somehow play live somewhere. Learn sheet music, basically, kick ass musically.
2. Gain weight, i weight a lousy 62. i plan to be 70-75 which fits my height.
3. Stay in Iraq as long as possible before my parents forcefully drag me outta here, call me crazy but i like it here.
4. Develop an interest in political matters at least in terms of becoming an educated everyman, my hunger is already building and am currently reading two books : 'American Empire and the Raid of Iraq' by Muhammed H. Haykal (guy on Jazeera tv) and Huntington's Clash -again-
5. Deepen religious feelings and try as much as i can to suppress sexual impulses and the overwhelming desire to spank particular someones. Attain a more religious posture strictly based on moderate islam teachings, Amro Khalid-style. At least one day pray all five.
6. Learn to swim, i try all the time but my friends just go once or twice before quitting it. I planned to learn this summer by going to the river but i didn't....LAAAZY
7. Improve driving skills : I suck at driving, mainly because i didn't drive much and that little was last done six months ago before dad sold the car just when it fell into my lap. this is much needed right now, althu the treacherous gasoline prices, wicked traffic jams and populous carjacking suggests otherwise.
8. Relearn the capitals of all the world's countries like i did when i was 7 years old. Used to be an Atlas-freak who was so freakishly glad he discoverred a country called 'Andora'
CAN'T
1. sleep like a normal human being, either sleep all the time, never sleep (30+ hours a piece of cake) or sleep all morning and stay up all night, Batman-wise.
2. keep toilet seat down
3. talk more than 10 words per day to my grandparents for fear of inciting fight.
4. not negotiate a taxi driver into a humiliating fare. - to pay him more in the end, if i think he desrves it-
5. not sleep in Dr. DMA's lectures.
6. not laugh in Dr. DMA's lectures.
7. not get dismissed in Dr. DMA's lectures.
8. spend a day without computers.
Friday, October 21, 2005
Notmuch
' you and me, will all go dow in history
with a sad statue of liberty
and a generation that didn't agree'
- System Of A Down, Mesmerize
p.s. the verse has nothing to do with the subject here, but it's just so cool i had to put it, plus i am overdosing on System Of A Down at the mo.
i didn't read Quran after i returned home from last post, and haven't done so in the past 10-so days.
i regret this.
SONG : System Of A Down - Violent Pornography
Naturally, i treated nu metal and all that was related to it with disgust, it copied the more intellectual rock/metal's noise without the important riffs/melodies or songmanship, and it is basically a watered-down Frankenstein that's weaker than all the parts it was chawed off from, be it white or black music. Aside from Linkin Park (which has more to do with good teenpop than with good rock) i found little use for KoRn, Bizkit or SoaD, the latter was different, original and their eastern Armenian influences sometimes harped on my ambition to incorporate eastern/western music, they ruined their more digestible moments however with cartoonish blasts of thrash metal. All this changes with their latest release, 2005's Mesmerize simply put, mesmerized me....compared with Toxicity, the changes are not apparent, but they are both subtle and hugely effective - for starters, the songwriting has grown considerably, allowing the band's cartoonish foolishness to blend seamlessly with the more oriental exotica in a pattern that was lost in the band's earlier songs - in the past, i would say a SoaD's album has about 10% of good stuff, now it has 10% of okay stuff and 90% of cool. a new classic! they treat it with such intelligent, texture and accessibilty that bewilder the most stalwart of music construction : witness 'Violent Pornorgaphy' first a somber middle-eastern funeral, followed by a parody of a comic break, a SoaD thrash, and finally a triumphant Nickelback chorus, what's amazing is that all these styles, as disparate as they are, connect somewhat strangely. The album smokes and is a genuinely fresh air into a stale, depressing scene. i also listen to Dream Theater's original Images & Words, but while i have nothing against Petrucci & co's indulgent, repetitive songs that still contain a mighty riff/solo at times - they are nowhere as endlessly inventive as this band. can't wait for Hypnotize.
(so i didn't read quran r u happy now, u sicko pervert? - keep on writing about Sex In Iraq btw, people need to know how much of George Constanzas we all are, and kudos for Blackrose's sudden metaphorsis, to quote me : التلفزيون صار ملون)
F.Y.I. : the blog title Sex In Snow, was coined by myself after reading it on a passerby's t-shirt...
the allusion is that In Iraq, Sex is like Snow because it never happens unless by mistake...
a friend told me that i write better than Anarki13, this is so honorable it almost makes me kneel on my knees....thank u Pentra, and thank u 13, my goal is always to challenege myself to write btetter than u, in good spirit, of course.
my favorite Anarki13 quote :
'Like old spy vs spy cartoons but less entertaining'
- in reference to Sunni/Shi'ite melodramaticization by some sides
Back In Black....black being the color of light.
currently posting on UPS supply...
whilst i have a coupla ideas to post about, gonna delay 'em for now and write about trivailties as my brainwaves do not fit the climate right now.
Stuff's been flying about in Iraq recently (Ex-Prez gettin' it, referrendum klawat), i wanted to vote but couldn't, and even if i could my grandparetns had me sit down yesterday and told me very clearly that i wasn't about to go munching anyplace other than home on the reverred day, i could've been a teen spirit and ousted this but i didn't feel like it, one doesn't need to know the science of psychohistory to figure that it's pretty much predetermined that the referrendum will be passed, in any means necessary.
excerpt from Iraqi's Konfused Kollege Kid diary at 15 Ocobter 2005 :
3 pm Woke up, felt cranky, tv flicking...
4 pm pretence of studying
5:35 pm iftaar, lively noodle soup and some weird stuff...good
7 pm brief hangout with dudes
8 pm home
12 am guitar
4 am slept
i pretend not to care, but i've been gettin' too politikal 4 my own good these days, if i went , i guess i would've no-ed it, not due to my respective Ayatollah saying so, but because it smells too fishy, with Sunnis's sinusodial comments on the day before and Shi'ites insiting on it happening, legally or not. i once read an early copy of it, what i read i didn't like - one part insisted that Iraq is a free country with its Shi'ite Majority and sunni and kurds (why does it insist upon on shi'ite being a majority?) from that day, i distrusted it.
Federalism benefits lotsa people, but mostly USA. Shiites, who are largely under religious leadership would feel like it as it gives their leadership more control (althu i really can't see Shi'ite liking this more than Iraqi identification) and surely Kakas are all hupped up on the Kurdistaan dream.
Yippie yay! Went to 13's yesterday because i wanted him to draw me some artwork for the CD of the dept. (more on this later) and sucked his CD collection dry of discs, he told me about some guitarists who would be more than interested in me too, gonna check that for future reference.
Dry throat. I am past eating 15 minutes in order to write for ur dogs, so here's the deal, since this post will go down as one of my worsts....gonna hip it up by introducing my picture, i don't look that cute in real life, btw....
and oh, anybody wanna abduct me, please be an alien. (don't think anybody'd intereested, even for all the Jarrar hype, i KNOW it was about the beard and not the blog, -from 13, who knows jarrar personally, i even posted about that and I WAS RIGHT...NYA HA HA HAAAAAAA)
I called Avg Iraqi these days, nice fella, we talked for 30 minutes on the cell phone! generous dude (him not me, i miscalled him) at 2 am, i am waiting for a chance to visit him, probably this week.
Kid's classic albums of all time:
celebrating SoaD's Mesmerize, i am dishing out my eternal list of my most trasured albums, this was started ever since i started listening to music back when i was 15, and i vowed never to erase a name no matter what, so it may contain some embarrasing content :
arranged by relative impact upon me :
1. Metallica - S&M
2. Soundgarden - Superunknown
3. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP
4. Michael Jackson - Dangerous
5. Michael Jackson - HIStory
6. System Of A Down - Hypnotize
7. Metallica - LOAD
8. Metallica - ReLOAD
9. Metallica - Garage, INC.
10. Metallica - The Black Album
11. Guns N Roses - Appetite For Destruction
12. Metallica - Master Of Puppets
13. Iron Maiden - Brave New World
14. Metallica - Ride The Lightning
15. Metallica - ...And Justice For All
16. Nirvana - Unplugged In NY
17. Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory
18. *N SYNC - No Strings Attached
19. Aerosmith - Permanent Vacation
20. Backstreet Boys - Millennium
joke of the day : my ex-gf was a paranoid in every sense of the word, always awaiting for something to break us up...if she trips and falls, she would tell me it was a divine punishment and we would have to break up - only to call me back three days later...once i was byebyeing her in messenger when i tried to sound all romeo so i tried spanish : 'adios'
only to be replied with a somber 'what?'
Kid : What
Paranoid Chic :....don't talk with me again
Kid :(switches to arabi) hay shbeech, adios means bye in spanish
Paranoid Chic: u mean something else, Kid, why do u always have to be so dirty....?!?
it was only when i wrote the word in arabi when i knew what she meant.
good thing i broke up with her for real.
so to all of u,
ADIOS
The Ever Wisecracking Kiddo
with a sad statue of liberty
and a generation that didn't agree'
- System Of A Down, Mesmerize
p.s. the verse has nothing to do with the subject here, but it's just so cool i had to put it, plus i am overdosing on System Of A Down at the mo.
i didn't read Quran after i returned home from last post, and haven't done so in the past 10-so days.
i regret this.
SONG : System Of A Down - Violent Pornography
Naturally, i treated nu metal and all that was related to it with disgust, it copied the more intellectual rock/metal's noise without the important riffs/melodies or songmanship, and it is basically a watered-down Frankenstein that's weaker than all the parts it was chawed off from, be it white or black music. Aside from Linkin Park (which has more to do with good teenpop than with good rock) i found little use for KoRn, Bizkit or SoaD, the latter was different, original and their eastern Armenian influences sometimes harped on my ambition to incorporate eastern/western music, they ruined their more digestible moments however with cartoonish blasts of thrash metal. All this changes with their latest release, 2005's Mesmerize simply put, mesmerized me....compared with Toxicity, the changes are not apparent, but they are both subtle and hugely effective - for starters, the songwriting has grown considerably, allowing the band's cartoonish foolishness to blend seamlessly with the more oriental exotica in a pattern that was lost in the band's earlier songs - in the past, i would say a SoaD's album has about 10% of good stuff, now it has 10% of okay stuff and 90% of cool. a new classic! they treat it with such intelligent, texture and accessibilty that bewilder the most stalwart of music construction : witness 'Violent Pornorgaphy' first a somber middle-eastern funeral, followed by a parody of a comic break, a SoaD thrash, and finally a triumphant Nickelback chorus, what's amazing is that all these styles, as disparate as they are, connect somewhat strangely. The album smokes and is a genuinely fresh air into a stale, depressing scene. i also listen to Dream Theater's original Images & Words, but while i have nothing against Petrucci & co's indulgent, repetitive songs that still contain a mighty riff/solo at times - they are nowhere as endlessly inventive as this band. can't wait for Hypnotize.
(so i didn't read quran r u happy now, u sicko pervert? - keep on writing about Sex In Iraq btw, people need to know how much of George Constanzas we all are, and kudos for Blackrose's sudden metaphorsis, to quote me : التلفزيون صار ملون)
F.Y.I. : the blog title Sex In Snow, was coined by myself after reading it on a passerby's t-shirt...
the allusion is that In Iraq, Sex is like Snow because it never happens unless by mistake...
a friend told me that i write better than Anarki13, this is so honorable it almost makes me kneel on my knees....thank u Pentra, and thank u 13, my goal is always to challenege myself to write btetter than u, in good spirit, of course.
my favorite Anarki13 quote :
'Like old spy vs spy cartoons but less entertaining'
- in reference to Sunni/Shi'ite melodramaticization by some sides
Back In Black....black being the color of light.
currently posting on UPS supply...
whilst i have a coupla ideas to post about, gonna delay 'em for now and write about trivailties as my brainwaves do not fit the climate right now.
Stuff's been flying about in Iraq recently (Ex-Prez gettin' it, referrendum klawat), i wanted to vote but couldn't, and even if i could my grandparetns had me sit down yesterday and told me very clearly that i wasn't about to go munching anyplace other than home on the reverred day, i could've been a teen spirit and ousted this but i didn't feel like it, one doesn't need to know the science of psychohistory to figure that it's pretty much predetermined that the referrendum will be passed, in any means necessary.
excerpt from Iraqi's Konfused Kollege Kid diary at 15 Ocobter 2005 :
3 pm Woke up, felt cranky, tv flicking...
4 pm pretence of studying
5:35 pm iftaar, lively noodle soup and some weird stuff...good
7 pm brief hangout with dudes
8 pm home
12 am guitar
4 am slept
i pretend not to care, but i've been gettin' too politikal 4 my own good these days, if i went , i guess i would've no-ed it, not due to my respective Ayatollah saying so, but because it smells too fishy, with Sunnis's sinusodial comments on the day before and Shi'ites insiting on it happening, legally or not. i once read an early copy of it, what i read i didn't like - one part insisted that Iraq is a free country with its Shi'ite Majority and sunni and kurds (why does it insist upon on shi'ite being a majority?) from that day, i distrusted it.
Federalism benefits lotsa people, but mostly USA. Shiites, who are largely under religious leadership would feel like it as it gives their leadership more control (althu i really can't see Shi'ite liking this more than Iraqi identification) and surely Kakas are all hupped up on the Kurdistaan dream.
Yippie yay! Went to 13's yesterday because i wanted him to draw me some artwork for the CD of the dept. (more on this later) and sucked his CD collection dry of discs, he told me about some guitarists who would be more than interested in me too, gonna check that for future reference.
Dry throat. I am past eating 15 minutes in order to write for ur dogs, so here's the deal, since this post will go down as one of my worsts....gonna hip it up by introducing my picture, i don't look that cute in real life, btw....
and oh, anybody wanna abduct me, please be an alien. (don't think anybody'd intereested, even for all the Jarrar hype, i KNOW it was about the beard and not the blog, -from 13, who knows jarrar personally, i even posted about that and I WAS RIGHT...NYA HA HA HAAAAAAA)
I called Avg Iraqi these days, nice fella, we talked for 30 minutes on the cell phone! generous dude (him not me, i miscalled him) at 2 am, i am waiting for a chance to visit him, probably this week.
Kid's classic albums of all time:
celebrating SoaD's Mesmerize, i am dishing out my eternal list of my most trasured albums, this was started ever since i started listening to music back when i was 15, and i vowed never to erase a name no matter what, so it may contain some embarrasing content :
arranged by relative impact upon me :
1. Metallica - S&M
2. Soundgarden - Superunknown
3. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP
4. Michael Jackson - Dangerous
5. Michael Jackson - HIStory
6. System Of A Down - Hypnotize
7. Metallica - LOAD
8. Metallica - ReLOAD
9. Metallica - Garage, INC.
10. Metallica - The Black Album
11. Guns N Roses - Appetite For Destruction
12. Metallica - Master Of Puppets
13. Iron Maiden - Brave New World
14. Metallica - Ride The Lightning
15. Metallica - ...And Justice For All
16. Nirvana - Unplugged In NY
17. Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory
18. *N SYNC - No Strings Attached
19. Aerosmith - Permanent Vacation
20. Backstreet Boys - Millennium
joke of the day : my ex-gf was a paranoid in every sense of the word, always awaiting for something to break us up...if she trips and falls, she would tell me it was a divine punishment and we would have to break up - only to call me back three days later...once i was byebyeing her in messenger when i tried to sound all romeo so i tried spanish : 'adios'
only to be replied with a somber 'what?'
Kid : What
Paranoid Chic :....don't talk with me again
Kid :(switches to arabi) hay shbeech, adios means bye in spanish
Paranoid Chic: u mean something else, Kid, why do u always have to be so dirty....?!?
it was only when i wrote the word in arabi when i knew what she meant.
good thing i broke up with her for real.
so to all of u,
ADIOS
The Ever Wisecracking Kiddo
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Depression & Ramdan...
Okkkkkkaaaay...
First and foremost, Happy Ramadan, now i know this is my blog and my first rule when i started out is to throw out all the formalities and keep the bullshit at a minimum. But to me this is no bullshit, it is HOLY SHIT...it means to me, when i say it i say it will all my cardiac muscles, all one of them.
Happy Ramdan to all of u guys
I am just out of Mosque now, i prayed Eishaa ( Nighttime Prayer) and paid dues with the extended Taraweeh...
since i'm in a holy mood, gonna lay the goods down on this thing...
a muslim prayer's buliding blocks are Ruka3a (literally translated means KNEELS), a kneel can be subdivided as it involves going through a ritualistic motion but we won't go there for clarity's sake...there are five standard prayers a muslim's gotta do everyday, Dawn (2 Rukaa), Noon (4 Rukaa), Afternoon (4), Sunset (3) and Night (4)...the average prayer lasts for 5 to 10 minutes...
Now in Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, Muslims everywhere must not eat from Dawn tilll Sunset...which initaites the Breakfast mode. in addition, Night prayer is extended into an optional (but preferrable) prayer called Al Taraweeh...which is 20 Rukaa in total but u can pray as many as u want of those (in the last 10 days, Al Taraweeh is extended into Al Tasabeeh, an additional 10 Rukaa)
Phew! Judging by the look on ur face....a muslim's got nothing to do all day long but pray...right?
Anywaaay...way off course here, let me get back to my
People have been giving me the stick a lot recently about being blue.
It saddens (pun intended) me that u good folks think of me as this, because in reality i am not as sad as i sound.
I mean, for Allah's sake...13....i ain't that way in real life? n'est-ce pas/!? u pissed me off when u said that, so fuck u ...
(i don't really mean it, btw, u know me :) )))
(and happy ramadan to u too)
Okaay, my friends, i am not a bullshitter, so when i say i'm not all sniffy and weepy i really am not, i could've been so sometime earlier in my life. but now i ain't. it's just that i normally like irony, darkness, sarcasm and evil music by my nature, it's just the way i am, whilst i could relate to the stuff in my more temperamental days, matter of fact, the reason i sometimes feel a little cranky is that i'm a little ashamed at myself for having such an empty, happy, free-form life.
and now to prove it, i am gonna tell u about a happy hippy day i had last Thursday, me and my mates decided to have our Breakfast in a restaurant, so we didn't go back home and stayed all day long in college, we managed to sneak through the Internal *residence for students who come from outside Baghdad* cuz recently visitors have been prohibited from doing so...after taking a nap (and the customary pillow fight) we took a hike to Al Mansoor, now here comes the fun part.
i took my Handycam with me that day to college cuz we had some video projects to be included in our Departemnt CD (Post about this soon) and a handheld external MIC. The conclusion we reached was inevitable.
It was me shooting and my pal holding the mic, after rehearsals on my pals, we hit the streets, bumping into every guy we meet and pretending to be some dopey local TV channel...oh, the poor dudes, NOBODY even suspected us....it was a small friggin SONY HANDYCAM for God's sake...and the mic was half-broken, it had a cord that i put in my pocket...but let me tell u, as soon as u put the camera in their face they'll automatically follow the motions :
'What do u say to the iraqi people in the holy month of Rumdaan?'
The answer depends from shifty-eyed youths who cap u off with oneliners or in a most unfortunate case a haji who took us so seriously that he threw a whole disugsting mess of consitution, crisis and political analysis....i had to put my mouth on my face to distort the gigglies...
we then follow that with our own silly version of the Ramadan riddle :
'We have a riddle for u, what is the thing that u keep looking for? and when u find it, u throw it?'
Now surely we win here, i can safely present this to any TV Channel and tell em nobody will asnwer this becaues even if they know it, they won't be able to tell it for sake of diginity...
a guy was scratching his nose...my friend said : 'U R SO CLOSE U R SO CLOOOOSE TO THE ANSWER'
oh, the brutality!
i had so much fun that day, aside from accidentally eating a chili and having my mouth burn me for 10 minutes...then scrathcing my eye whilst some chili residue was on my hand and hvaing my eye AND mouth burn for the next 20 minutes...
i couldn't stop laughing that day...at everything, it was such a fun fun day... i just love being back where i belong....
Here's a good thing for all u paranoids to show that this whole Sunni/Shiite stuff is made up first and foremost by some few goddam sect-loving dudes who were embraced by US...thinking they do justice by dividing : we were seven friends waiting as the food came in our laps...three of us were shiite and four were sunni...Shhite eat 15 minutes after Sunnis do, so we agreed on eating in the exact middle, i ate 7 and a half minutes after i usually do.
and i was glad.
i went back home and played Fog El Nakhal all over again. I am Iraqi, and i am proud of that.
hey 13 where r u? i can't wait to play with somebody now that my usual jamming partner has gone (a Kurd, who hauled his ass to Dhouk now)...
oh and my good friend the Average Iraqi called me the other day, i will visit u one day soon, promise.
Constitution's due next sunday, i wanted to vote but i was too late, they had closed by 9/1 so i didn't register. My grandma won't, too.
i am so comfortable now, at peace with the world.....this is such a holy month, congratulatiosn to all of u.
i am in a net cafe right now, i will go back home and probably recite some Quran cuz i haven't done so in a long while...
Ahhhh.... C ya....
Kid
First and foremost, Happy Ramadan, now i know this is my blog and my first rule when i started out is to throw out all the formalities and keep the bullshit at a minimum. But to me this is no bullshit, it is HOLY SHIT...it means to me, when i say it i say it will all my cardiac muscles, all one of them.
Happy Ramdan to all of u guys
I am just out of Mosque now, i prayed Eishaa ( Nighttime Prayer) and paid dues with the extended Taraweeh...
since i'm in a holy mood, gonna lay the goods down on this thing...
a muslim prayer's buliding blocks are Ruka3a (literally translated means KNEELS), a kneel can be subdivided as it involves going through a ritualistic motion but we won't go there for clarity's sake...there are five standard prayers a muslim's gotta do everyday, Dawn (2 Rukaa), Noon (4 Rukaa), Afternoon (4), Sunset (3) and Night (4)...the average prayer lasts for 5 to 10 minutes...
Now in Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, Muslims everywhere must not eat from Dawn tilll Sunset...which initaites the Breakfast mode. in addition, Night prayer is extended into an optional (but preferrable) prayer called Al Taraweeh...which is 20 Rukaa in total but u can pray as many as u want of those (in the last 10 days, Al Taraweeh is extended into Al Tasabeeh, an additional 10 Rukaa)
Phew! Judging by the look on ur face....a muslim's got nothing to do all day long but pray...right?
Anywaaay...way off course here, let me get back to my
People have been giving me the stick a lot recently about being blue.
It saddens (pun intended) me that u good folks think of me as this, because in reality i am not as sad as i sound.
I mean, for Allah's sake...13....i ain't that way in real life? n'est-ce pas/!? u pissed me off when u said that, so fuck u ...
(i don't really mean it, btw, u know me :) )))
(and happy ramadan to u too)
Okaay, my friends, i am not a bullshitter, so when i say i'm not all sniffy and weepy i really am not, i could've been so sometime earlier in my life. but now i ain't. it's just that i normally like irony, darkness, sarcasm and evil music by my nature, it's just the way i am, whilst i could relate to the stuff in my more temperamental days, matter of fact, the reason i sometimes feel a little cranky is that i'm a little ashamed at myself for having such an empty, happy, free-form life.
and now to prove it, i am gonna tell u about a happy hippy day i had last Thursday, me and my mates decided to have our Breakfast in a restaurant, so we didn't go back home and stayed all day long in college, we managed to sneak through the Internal *residence for students who come from outside Baghdad* cuz recently visitors have been prohibited from doing so...after taking a nap (and the customary pillow fight) we took a hike to Al Mansoor, now here comes the fun part.
i took my Handycam with me that day to college cuz we had some video projects to be included in our Departemnt CD (Post about this soon) and a handheld external MIC. The conclusion we reached was inevitable.
It was me shooting and my pal holding the mic, after rehearsals on my pals, we hit the streets, bumping into every guy we meet and pretending to be some dopey local TV channel...oh, the poor dudes, NOBODY even suspected us....it was a small friggin SONY HANDYCAM for God's sake...and the mic was half-broken, it had a cord that i put in my pocket...but let me tell u, as soon as u put the camera in their face they'll automatically follow the motions :
'What do u say to the iraqi people in the holy month of Rumdaan?'
The answer depends from shifty-eyed youths who cap u off with oneliners or in a most unfortunate case a haji who took us so seriously that he threw a whole disugsting mess of consitution, crisis and political analysis....i had to put my mouth on my face to distort the gigglies...
we then follow that with our own silly version of the Ramadan riddle :
'We have a riddle for u, what is the thing that u keep looking for? and when u find it, u throw it?'
Now surely we win here, i can safely present this to any TV Channel and tell em nobody will asnwer this becaues even if they know it, they won't be able to tell it for sake of diginity...
a guy was scratching his nose...my friend said : 'U R SO CLOSE U R SO CLOOOOSE TO THE ANSWER'
oh, the brutality!
i had so much fun that day, aside from accidentally eating a chili and having my mouth burn me for 10 minutes...then scrathcing my eye whilst some chili residue was on my hand and hvaing my eye AND mouth burn for the next 20 minutes...
i couldn't stop laughing that day...at everything, it was such a fun fun day... i just love being back where i belong....
Here's a good thing for all u paranoids to show that this whole Sunni/Shiite stuff is made up first and foremost by some few goddam sect-loving dudes who were embraced by US...thinking they do justice by dividing : we were seven friends waiting as the food came in our laps...three of us were shiite and four were sunni...Shhite eat 15 minutes after Sunnis do, so we agreed on eating in the exact middle, i ate 7 and a half minutes after i usually do.
and i was glad.
i went back home and played Fog El Nakhal all over again. I am Iraqi, and i am proud of that.
hey 13 where r u? i can't wait to play with somebody now that my usual jamming partner has gone (a Kurd, who hauled his ass to Dhouk now)...
oh and my good friend the Average Iraqi called me the other day, i will visit u one day soon, promise.
Constitution's due next sunday, i wanted to vote but i was too late, they had closed by 9/1 so i didn't register. My grandma won't, too.
i am so comfortable now, at peace with the world.....this is such a holy month, congratulatiosn to all of u.
i am in a net cafe right now, i will go back home and probably recite some Quran cuz i haven't done so in a long while...
Ahhhh.... C ya....
Kid
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Truly Confused, with a 'C'
HUGE WARNING : This post is the amaglamation of three posts i have previously planned, one is the Mundane & Inevitable, Pt 2 post promised in my very first post, the other about the cultural identity between east/west, and the last about my own inability to withstand my ignorance amidst crushing uprise of crisis in Iraq, due to my non-Politics nature of the blog, i have sought to merge all three posts into one exorcism pot to get rid of them, resulting in a most unfortunate mess of ideas, u have been warned.
HUGE WARNING 2 : I am a twenty-years Iraqi guy trying to talk politics, therefore a huge amount of bullshit may occur at times. I apologize in advance.
"Don’t know what I want but I know how to get it
"I wanna destroy the passer by cos i wanna be anarchy"
- Sex Pistols
Anrachy can be fun, right? especially on the records...
My american cousin is 14 years old, he visited amman for two months and i was there for one month, a nice fella in his inside but completely ignorant, a severe disrespect for almsot everyone and esp. adults, at night he goes prowling the neighborhood screaming anarchy and ringing doorbells.
I watch him in silence. In seeing him, I understand what the Abu Ghareeb prison scandals are all about, they are mainly here to have some ignorant fun. Nice fellas, but they don't really care....think about it, about 99% of the good deeds u do or anybody else does ain't really about being good, but about FEELING good about yourself, all these 1st-world guys who feel ur pain aren't really. Nobody cares for u but urself, never ever forget that.
Would u care to see the homes destoryed, the families torn apart, the wail of twenty black-dressed women as they mourn an 'oops, sorry i shot ya' case as their helpless banshee fades out to nothingness and repeat that nefarious Sid Vicious laugh again?
I read Riverbend's Sepetember 11 entry, i couldn't help but feeling the dramatic fake overtones that capitulated some points to the advantage of appealing to a crowd, a card usually played by iraqis unconsciously due to the upbringing of Saddam's regime, which inforces the prose of horning and hooting, i esp. liked the way the RC fell out of somebody's hand....
Lemme tell ya what i was doing, i was watching some stupid thing on Iraqi National TV (probably Cartoons, considering it was about noon, and when it cut my first gut feeling was HEY WHAT THE F****...when i saw the planes hit the towers....i was 'huh?' it was a strange moment, in the sense that America's been hit! the unquenhcable giant! World War goes awry? Call America, You Win...Communism, Nazism, Faschism....the amazing power that u could depend on, has been hit! but i wasn't really shocked...i wasn't flustered, cuz ya know why? as a person, it didn't matter to me one bit. It ain't the center of the world to me.
and on some level, there was a happy voice chirping....
Sure, my condolesnces, they clearly are nice guys, but then again sorry folks, that's why i am here for, to tell u the truth and make u understand more about us. I only read Sci-Fi, and the biggest lie about Sci-Fi in my case isn't aliens or space travel or energy portals, but the unified earth.
There ain't no way in a million years that earth could be unified, unless it'd be wiped out by a singular race, Earth is the only stage required for mankind's theatre in a precondition set by God, or Nature if u please to call him that. Simply put, Human Racism is quite built-in everywhere, u cannot deny it, even in our holy books...ur identification with ur own race must be strong, cuz theese are the only people u can really count on...Unfortunately.
As Sam Huntington's Clash Of Civilizations points out quite vividly...i ain't talking about bloody masscre, it's about cultural ID.
To me, and surely to many other Arabs who won't admit it, Osama Bin Laden is much like the voice of Saruman, ur reasoning quite assures u that he is wrong, but his low, gentle voice lulls u into a dreamscape of the glories of our Arab Nation, a nation about greatness, justice, and truth. His peaceful speeches that belie the usual madman gloating of the exterme guys blanket the countless atrocities committed by his group, who i think of as enemies of Islam before being enemies of anybody else, cuz they run contrast to the tolerance that was always part of the religion (as opposed to, say, the violent killings done in Spain at the time of Elizabeth & Ferdinand against anybody who ain't christian)
MOVIE PLOT : In post-war Iraq, a forgotten laboraotary that has been kept notoriously in secret until now has been developing a time-machine, head engineer, Falah Hussein, is accidentally kidnapped by Abu Musaab El Zarqawi, no sooner than El Zarqawi learns about the machine than he decides to return back to the times of prophet to ask for guidance in the jihad against unbelievers, El Zarqawi, armed with an AK-47, was aiming after Mecca's libeartion but misses it and returns eight years earlier, when muslims were 40+ members huddled secretly in some house, before even reaching them, armed with an AK-47, he wipes out half Mecca's population in a Jihaad frenzy, thus causing a large population of present-day arabs to fade into nothingness, their parents being dead before their conception.
My point is to say that if one takes a message from the prophet, fighting is nothing but the last option, and battle must be openly and accepted upon, muslims were tortured by the dozen earlier on and the Prophet would do nothing but say : 'Patience, patience'. One must gather his own strengths first.
Arabs are frequently humiliated in movies and books, being shown as illiterate, dirty foul creations of nature, brianless apes shot down by Indiana Jones...a friend of mine sent me a link to Franz Kafka's stories, one of them 'Jackals & Arabs' offer several implicit (& explicit) insults to our race, especially striking is the simple equality between Jackals & Arabs, as if we are some sort of animals.
Arab Nation is a great place, dudes, even if me saying so at the current moment with a lot of disbelief, it ain't now, we've been too much run in the mud to see how great we are, but i tell ya, it's got lotsa cool stuff, it illuminated the Dark Ages of the West. In examining many productions, u find a determined negligence and/or insult of the arab role, for example, in the movie Genghis Khan, Arabs are always mentioned as Persians, and once when an arab envoy is sent, he is humiliated in the most enderaing fashion exclusively of all other races...(interestingly, the hero of that 60s Hollywood film is Omar Shariff, an egyptian).
It's Friday, i listen to the weekly speech given by the nearby mosque's Imam at noon, he concludes that Katrina is the hurricane Allah sent to punish nonbelievers, and upon raising his hands in the traditional pryer to god, the usual drone of 'Amen' that usually is no more than a sheepish static is rendered to an exciting uprise, admiteddly, we are moved to believe this.
If one believes the Koran, there were many bad guys who were terminated with hurricanes & wind (Aad, Thamood) and my Imam did a great demo of these, come to think of it...are America genuinely bad guys collectively??? God and Religion are frequently mocked about in the Western lifestyle and frankly even though i enjoy many of the American Way of Life's liberalism, i would never think of it as the utopian way of life for anybody, when Oprah asks Aishwarya Rai (sorry for misspells) what Indian women think of American Women, do they consider us bad cuz we have sex? Man, i almost blushed! Would u think of Shurooq Faiq, Uday's favorite TV whore asking that anytime soon?
هل تعتقد ان النساء الامريكيات ينيجن هواية؟ انصل على 7791212 للادلاء برأيك
I watch FRIENDS everyday, i have a hoot and enjoy it everyday, and i feel brutally ashamed everyday. it's probably one of the most dangerous products of the West cuz it promotes dangerous ideas in a fun, hip form that u'd love to do....sex has become more and more an easy subject for me along the guidelines of such daily discipline, think of what could that do to a collective youth? while in theory i am supposed to find that enthralling, psychologically it is not. It feels MORALLY wrong. Deep down inside, where u can't lie.
Bottomline, American Way of Life is a negative influence even amongst me, a guy who's supposedly American in all his ways of life.
These feelings of humilition, and longing for the true extent of our civilization are some of the factors that fuel arab desire for a better day, if u ask me, American should encourage Islamic study, not oppress it, thus fueling resistance even more.
MOVIE PLOT #2: A disgusted taxi cab driver is fed up with the way life is and his disconected mirror-talking self finally explodes in a catharsis of anger and frustration that threatens an entire city.
now substitute Travis Bickle for Islam Extremist, NY City for World. these terrorists main psyche gripe is not derived from simple American hatred, but also from a feeling of shame from themselves as well. If u could feel for Bickle, shouldn't u feel sorry for their disillusionment? Had America learned to feed these inferiority feelings, it would have been a great deal off.
I haven't posted in so long because aside from going to Amman to do some stuff with my parents i have been doing some serious thinking about the objectives of this blog.
Surfing thru the iraqi blogosphere at the time of creation of this blog i was genuinely bored, there were all ur ABCs, the typical politiblogs that are bound to appear, already targeted at foreigners and stock-full of the usual goddam heated exchanges of opinions and fights that already inundate the television, media and local sittings. it was horrible stuff and i actually thought that i would achieve something by talking about how life actually goes about in Iraq for a collegeman who really doesn't care about that crap as one might possibly be led to believe, we have a life going on!! Looking back, i haven't even achieved this --- largely due to the fact that as a person i am not quite normal enough to convey the typical iraqi twentysomething.
For a farily approximate male iraqi in his 20s deviant from the Political and Candycoated Hypocrisy types, check out my friend's Caesar Of Pentra, a not-getting-any, but still able to acknowledge Rumdan & Aimaa with the usual stereotypical dialogue imprinted by heart due to Iraqi's neccesity of learning copious lenghts of useless text in Saddam's time, i sat nearby him whilst he created his blog.
I read Truth About Iraqi's last post, it was strong and to the point, but he again played the dramatic card, although quite in place....We had our peace, life was in order, u knew what to do and do not and if u followed these hypocrisy well u could lay ur head at ur pillow at night at ease ; while America was watching Seinfeld, Iraqis were watching The Family Of Hajj Mitwali.
Now it is complete and heinous anrachy, u actually don't know what to fear cuz there are already so many of them. Death is quite in fashion these days, it is quite difficult now to talk about girls and guitars or whatever when it has blown up so out of proportion. It was different when i started this blog, it has become unbearable now.
Before i left Iraq, a person got whacked at the end of our street, he was sitting at a Police Capt's house with two other guys & capt when armed maskmen made swiss cheese out of them.
I was passing by the house when the corpse was mailed-in, the chorus of wailing women send shivers down my spine to this very day.
Next day, other end of street, taxi guy gets whacked by the taxi fare.
Eh... who's to blame?
Two days ago i seeped through my messenger list, there were two guys online, was a faroff acquanitnace, the other was an american soldier, i met him a few months ago in some chatroom or something.
i clicked on him and said hi, as i was doing so, a queer sensation built up inside of me, i have never experienced it before in regard to american soldiers.
it was hate. blind and angry
what have u done to our country?
It is so hard to be of mind when u are filled with hate, which if i may point out, is a sudden heating sensation that rushes through ur canals and seeps through ur heart so vividly, fearfully rendering ur thought inanimte as it pushes u to do something....
I urged to fight my hate down because it is the reason of errors, besides America has done so much for me as a culture, all i read is Western novels, i play rock'n'roll offsprings - a pure American invention - and sometimes i even think in English lanuage, i have never been proud of this. Our Arab culture has so many great hot stuff, it's a shame we always tend to think of it in the context of a tribal, degenerate spirit, it's got tons of cool, folks!
By mistake I played Fog El Nakhal on my acoustic guitar, i couldn't get it out of my head, it's amazing how such beautiful, beautiful music has been made by mindsets i have always considered muddy and stubborn. I was spellbound by surprise, mostly...
They got it all, irony, sex, u name it,
This is a joke from an old book of my grandpa:
a wiseguy told a lebsian once : 'O Sister, bananas are delicious'
to which she replied : 'true, but it inflates the belly.'
LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
See? everything is down there, sharp wits could rework these fun bits into a modern whole not in ur usual 'enhancing the image of East in West' by importing Western franchises, what is needed is a revival that has a distnict stamp of the East but incorporating a new cool into it.
This can be even implemented in religion, such as the case of brilliant Amro Khalid, whose unorthodox teaching beliefs of not scaring ya off with a sword and frown, his brilliant understanding of the contextual arab youth and intelligent aversion to politics have served a great deal in his re-shaping of traditional religious sermons that absolutely nobody actually listens to (youthwise). This cynic has shed his tears twice over his lectures.
Kiddos, i guess i talked a lot of crap here but anyways it's my blog so there ya go...
U might've noticed that i got no standard point of reference, one moment i'm Mr.Religious wet-eyed the other i'm sex-obsessed freak....that is my exact defintion, 'Konfused' as all arab youths are, intermingling higher causes with the usual dabble, only now the gimmick has faded and the grim reality of the black world has dawned on an unsuspecting kid, hence the true C obliterates the fancy K in this post's title.
This is probably my most confusing post.
Sorry dudes, next time.
I hung out with 13 twice so far, i'm gonna call him up today for another hangout before i leave to Iraq tomorrow night, 13 returns with me but in a separate car cuz he's got his family, i am eager to meet all my friends again despite my pop's growing concerns over the situation in Iraq (and speaking of mass media confusion, my pop kept asking me about my friends, who's Sunni/Shiite, do u talk abotu stuff like that? CALM DOWN, it hasn't grown to that yet in Baghdad at least, don't know about other places but u don't have to know this to survive...)
LIFE IN IRAQ GOES ON....DON'T LISTEN TO THE FUCKING TEARMONGERS.
BUT I HAVE TO SAY THAT AS OF NOW THE TOILET IS CLOGGED.
Btw, i would love to meet some iraqi bloggers like 13 here did, on my wishlist mostly is Salam Pax, who i feel is an older, more political version of myself (i was particularly mesmerized by the fact that he is homo, HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? dude! i so wanna talk to ya - not that way though- , i told 13 about that and his eyebrows arched....it's quite cool, in Iraqi Gay who openly admits that is powerful, did he ever talk about that in details? it's probably the reason he don't believe in religion either...anyway i'll talk about that later)
Also i'd like to meet Baghdad's Mistress, who hasn't been writing for a long time, and my nice friend Haneen With Love (so nice to hear from ur comment, as soon as i saw it i wrote this) and last but not least the Neurotic Wife.
i think i'll see Average Iraqi soon too....
Peace....
and speaking of Amman, what the hell is gone wrong with the blashempous guys who design the pedes, (where i come from they're called shutt-afas, erm, don't know what u guys call it but it's basically a bowel made of porcelain or somesuch that shoots out water to rid ur esteemed other hole from so much crap), these guys are (*#&@ murderers, we have three bathrooms in our appartment in cozy Western Amman, in each i'd have to take a different sitting position [lowering rear, lowering rear with an acute -oooof- angle, u name it]....aside from that, i guess it was a refreshing change from the usual array of practical jokes back in Baghdad : electricity, water and ra-ta-tat)
A Nice Day...
The Kid Himself
HUGE WARNING 2 : I am a twenty-years Iraqi guy trying to talk politics, therefore a huge amount of bullshit may occur at times. I apologize in advance.
"Don’t know what I want but I know how to get it
"I wanna destroy the passer by cos i wanna be anarchy"
- Sex Pistols
Anrachy can be fun, right? especially on the records...
My american cousin is 14 years old, he visited amman for two months and i was there for one month, a nice fella in his inside but completely ignorant, a severe disrespect for almsot everyone and esp. adults, at night he goes prowling the neighborhood screaming anarchy and ringing doorbells.
I watch him in silence. In seeing him, I understand what the Abu Ghareeb prison scandals are all about, they are mainly here to have some ignorant fun. Nice fellas, but they don't really care....think about it, about 99% of the good deeds u do or anybody else does ain't really about being good, but about FEELING good about yourself, all these 1st-world guys who feel ur pain aren't really. Nobody cares for u but urself, never ever forget that.
Would u care to see the homes destoryed, the families torn apart, the wail of twenty black-dressed women as they mourn an 'oops, sorry i shot ya' case as their helpless banshee fades out to nothingness and repeat that nefarious Sid Vicious laugh again?
I read Riverbend's Sepetember 11 entry, i couldn't help but feeling the dramatic fake overtones that capitulated some points to the advantage of appealing to a crowd, a card usually played by iraqis unconsciously due to the upbringing of Saddam's regime, which inforces the prose of horning and hooting, i esp. liked the way the RC fell out of somebody's hand....
Lemme tell ya what i was doing, i was watching some stupid thing on Iraqi National TV (probably Cartoons, considering it was about noon, and when it cut my first gut feeling was HEY WHAT THE F****...when i saw the planes hit the towers....i was 'huh?' it was a strange moment, in the sense that America's been hit! the unquenhcable giant! World War goes awry? Call America, You Win...Communism, Nazism, Faschism....the amazing power that u could depend on, has been hit! but i wasn't really shocked...i wasn't flustered, cuz ya know why? as a person, it didn't matter to me one bit. It ain't the center of the world to me.
and on some level, there was a happy voice chirping....
Sure, my condolesnces, they clearly are nice guys, but then again sorry folks, that's why i am here for, to tell u the truth and make u understand more about us. I only read Sci-Fi, and the biggest lie about Sci-Fi in my case isn't aliens or space travel or energy portals, but the unified earth.
There ain't no way in a million years that earth could be unified, unless it'd be wiped out by a singular race, Earth is the only stage required for mankind's theatre in a precondition set by God, or Nature if u please to call him that. Simply put, Human Racism is quite built-in everywhere, u cannot deny it, even in our holy books...ur identification with ur own race must be strong, cuz theese are the only people u can really count on...Unfortunately.
As Sam Huntington's Clash Of Civilizations points out quite vividly...i ain't talking about bloody masscre, it's about cultural ID.
To me, and surely to many other Arabs who won't admit it, Osama Bin Laden is much like the voice of Saruman, ur reasoning quite assures u that he is wrong, but his low, gentle voice lulls u into a dreamscape of the glories of our Arab Nation, a nation about greatness, justice, and truth. His peaceful speeches that belie the usual madman gloating of the exterme guys blanket the countless atrocities committed by his group, who i think of as enemies of Islam before being enemies of anybody else, cuz they run contrast to the tolerance that was always part of the religion (as opposed to, say, the violent killings done in Spain at the time of Elizabeth & Ferdinand against anybody who ain't christian)
MOVIE PLOT : In post-war Iraq, a forgotten laboraotary that has been kept notoriously in secret until now has been developing a time-machine, head engineer, Falah Hussein, is accidentally kidnapped by Abu Musaab El Zarqawi, no sooner than El Zarqawi learns about the machine than he decides to return back to the times of prophet to ask for guidance in the jihad against unbelievers, El Zarqawi, armed with an AK-47, was aiming after Mecca's libeartion but misses it and returns eight years earlier, when muslims were 40+ members huddled secretly in some house, before even reaching them, armed with an AK-47, he wipes out half Mecca's population in a Jihaad frenzy, thus causing a large population of present-day arabs to fade into nothingness, their parents being dead before their conception.
My point is to say that if one takes a message from the prophet, fighting is nothing but the last option, and battle must be openly and accepted upon, muslims were tortured by the dozen earlier on and the Prophet would do nothing but say : 'Patience, patience'. One must gather his own strengths first.
Arabs are frequently humiliated in movies and books, being shown as illiterate, dirty foul creations of nature, brianless apes shot down by Indiana Jones...a friend of mine sent me a link to Franz Kafka's stories, one of them 'Jackals & Arabs' offer several implicit (& explicit) insults to our race, especially striking is the simple equality between Jackals & Arabs, as if we are some sort of animals.
Arab Nation is a great place, dudes, even if me saying so at the current moment with a lot of disbelief, it ain't now, we've been too much run in the mud to see how great we are, but i tell ya, it's got lotsa cool stuff, it illuminated the Dark Ages of the West. In examining many productions, u find a determined negligence and/or insult of the arab role, for example, in the movie Genghis Khan, Arabs are always mentioned as Persians, and once when an arab envoy is sent, he is humiliated in the most enderaing fashion exclusively of all other races...(interestingly, the hero of that 60s Hollywood film is Omar Shariff, an egyptian).
It's Friday, i listen to the weekly speech given by the nearby mosque's Imam at noon, he concludes that Katrina is the hurricane Allah sent to punish nonbelievers, and upon raising his hands in the traditional pryer to god, the usual drone of 'Amen' that usually is no more than a sheepish static is rendered to an exciting uprise, admiteddly, we are moved to believe this.
If one believes the Koran, there were many bad guys who were terminated with hurricanes & wind (Aad, Thamood) and my Imam did a great demo of these, come to think of it...are America genuinely bad guys collectively??? God and Religion are frequently mocked about in the Western lifestyle and frankly even though i enjoy many of the American Way of Life's liberalism, i would never think of it as the utopian way of life for anybody, when Oprah asks Aishwarya Rai (sorry for misspells) what Indian women think of American Women, do they consider us bad cuz we have sex? Man, i almost blushed! Would u think of Shurooq Faiq, Uday's favorite TV whore asking that anytime soon?
هل تعتقد ان النساء الامريكيات ينيجن هواية؟ انصل على 7791212 للادلاء برأيك
I watch FRIENDS everyday, i have a hoot and enjoy it everyday, and i feel brutally ashamed everyday. it's probably one of the most dangerous products of the West cuz it promotes dangerous ideas in a fun, hip form that u'd love to do....sex has become more and more an easy subject for me along the guidelines of such daily discipline, think of what could that do to a collective youth? while in theory i am supposed to find that enthralling, psychologically it is not. It feels MORALLY wrong. Deep down inside, where u can't lie.
Bottomline, American Way of Life is a negative influence even amongst me, a guy who's supposedly American in all his ways of life.
These feelings of humilition, and longing for the true extent of our civilization are some of the factors that fuel arab desire for a better day, if u ask me, American should encourage Islamic study, not oppress it, thus fueling resistance even more.
MOVIE PLOT #2: A disgusted taxi cab driver is fed up with the way life is and his disconected mirror-talking self finally explodes in a catharsis of anger and frustration that threatens an entire city.
now substitute Travis Bickle for Islam Extremist, NY City for World. these terrorists main psyche gripe is not derived from simple American hatred, but also from a feeling of shame from themselves as well. If u could feel for Bickle, shouldn't u feel sorry for their disillusionment? Had America learned to feed these inferiority feelings, it would have been a great deal off.
I haven't posted in so long because aside from going to Amman to do some stuff with my parents i have been doing some serious thinking about the objectives of this blog.
Surfing thru the iraqi blogosphere at the time of creation of this blog i was genuinely bored, there were all ur ABCs, the typical politiblogs that are bound to appear, already targeted at foreigners and stock-full of the usual goddam heated exchanges of opinions and fights that already inundate the television, media and local sittings. it was horrible stuff and i actually thought that i would achieve something by talking about how life actually goes about in Iraq for a collegeman who really doesn't care about that crap as one might possibly be led to believe, we have a life going on!! Looking back, i haven't even achieved this --- largely due to the fact that as a person i am not quite normal enough to convey the typical iraqi twentysomething.
For a farily approximate male iraqi in his 20s deviant from the Political and Candycoated Hypocrisy types, check out my friend's Caesar Of Pentra, a not-getting-any, but still able to acknowledge Rumdan & Aimaa with the usual stereotypical dialogue imprinted by heart due to Iraqi's neccesity of learning copious lenghts of useless text in Saddam's time, i sat nearby him whilst he created his blog.
I read Truth About Iraqi's last post, it was strong and to the point, but he again played the dramatic card, although quite in place....We had our peace, life was in order, u knew what to do and do not and if u followed these hypocrisy well u could lay ur head at ur pillow at night at ease ; while America was watching Seinfeld, Iraqis were watching The Family Of Hajj Mitwali.
Now it is complete and heinous anrachy, u actually don't know what to fear cuz there are already so many of them. Death is quite in fashion these days, it is quite difficult now to talk about girls and guitars or whatever when it has blown up so out of proportion. It was different when i started this blog, it has become unbearable now.
Before i left Iraq, a person got whacked at the end of our street, he was sitting at a Police Capt's house with two other guys & capt when armed maskmen made swiss cheese out of them.
I was passing by the house when the corpse was mailed-in, the chorus of wailing women send shivers down my spine to this very day.
Next day, other end of street, taxi guy gets whacked by the taxi fare.
Eh... who's to blame?
Two days ago i seeped through my messenger list, there were two guys online, was a faroff acquanitnace, the other was an american soldier, i met him a few months ago in some chatroom or something.
i clicked on him and said hi, as i was doing so, a queer sensation built up inside of me, i have never experienced it before in regard to american soldiers.
it was hate. blind and angry
what have u done to our country?
It is so hard to be of mind when u are filled with hate, which if i may point out, is a sudden heating sensation that rushes through ur canals and seeps through ur heart so vividly, fearfully rendering ur thought inanimte as it pushes u to do something....
I urged to fight my hate down because it is the reason of errors, besides America has done so much for me as a culture, all i read is Western novels, i play rock'n'roll offsprings - a pure American invention - and sometimes i even think in English lanuage, i have never been proud of this. Our Arab culture has so many great hot stuff, it's a shame we always tend to think of it in the context of a tribal, degenerate spirit, it's got tons of cool, folks!
By mistake I played Fog El Nakhal on my acoustic guitar, i couldn't get it out of my head, it's amazing how such beautiful, beautiful music has been made by mindsets i have always considered muddy and stubborn. I was spellbound by surprise, mostly...
They got it all, irony, sex, u name it,
This is a joke from an old book of my grandpa:
a wiseguy told a lebsian once : 'O Sister, bananas are delicious'
to which she replied : 'true, but it inflates the belly.'
LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
See? everything is down there, sharp wits could rework these fun bits into a modern whole not in ur usual 'enhancing the image of East in West' by importing Western franchises, what is needed is a revival that has a distnict stamp of the East but incorporating a new cool into it.
This can be even implemented in religion, such as the case of brilliant Amro Khalid, whose unorthodox teaching beliefs of not scaring ya off with a sword and frown, his brilliant understanding of the contextual arab youth and intelligent aversion to politics have served a great deal in his re-shaping of traditional religious sermons that absolutely nobody actually listens to (youthwise). This cynic has shed his tears twice over his lectures.
Kiddos, i guess i talked a lot of crap here but anyways it's my blog so there ya go...
U might've noticed that i got no standard point of reference, one moment i'm Mr.Religious wet-eyed the other i'm sex-obsessed freak....that is my exact defintion, 'Konfused' as all arab youths are, intermingling higher causes with the usual dabble, only now the gimmick has faded and the grim reality of the black world has dawned on an unsuspecting kid, hence the true C obliterates the fancy K in this post's title.
This is probably my most confusing post.
Sorry dudes, next time.
I hung out with 13 twice so far, i'm gonna call him up today for another hangout before i leave to Iraq tomorrow night, 13 returns with me but in a separate car cuz he's got his family, i am eager to meet all my friends again despite my pop's growing concerns over the situation in Iraq (and speaking of mass media confusion, my pop kept asking me about my friends, who's Sunni/Shiite, do u talk abotu stuff like that? CALM DOWN, it hasn't grown to that yet in Baghdad at least, don't know about other places but u don't have to know this to survive...)
LIFE IN IRAQ GOES ON....DON'T LISTEN TO THE FUCKING TEARMONGERS.
BUT I HAVE TO SAY THAT AS OF NOW THE TOILET IS CLOGGED.
Btw, i would love to meet some iraqi bloggers like 13 here did, on my wishlist mostly is Salam Pax, who i feel is an older, more political version of myself (i was particularly mesmerized by the fact that he is homo, HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? dude! i so wanna talk to ya - not that way though- , i told 13 about that and his eyebrows arched....it's quite cool, in Iraqi Gay who openly admits that is powerful, did he ever talk about that in details? it's probably the reason he don't believe in religion either...anyway i'll talk about that later)
Also i'd like to meet Baghdad's Mistress, who hasn't been writing for a long time, and my nice friend Haneen With Love (so nice to hear from ur comment, as soon as i saw it i wrote this) and last but not least the Neurotic Wife.
i think i'll see Average Iraqi soon too....
Peace....
and speaking of Amman, what the hell is gone wrong with the blashempous guys who design the pedes, (where i come from they're called shutt-afas, erm, don't know what u guys call it but it's basically a bowel made of porcelain or somesuch that shoots out water to rid ur esteemed other hole from so much crap), these guys are (*#&@ murderers, we have three bathrooms in our appartment in cozy Western Amman, in each i'd have to take a different sitting position [lowering rear, lowering rear with an acute -oooof- angle, u name it]....aside from that, i guess it was a refreshing change from the usual array of practical jokes back in Baghdad : electricity, water and ra-ta-tat)
A Nice Day...
The Kid Himself
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Quickie Reaffirmation Post : Ottham Abd El Hafid
Hi folks...
I finished exams today!!!!
t.g! not particulalry easy questions (our teacher is Dr. Ali, or Dr. Spoonfeeding, the toughtest nut in the dept, we had a long-running relationship of tension, largely due to his sarcastic half-smile control freak personality that clashed with my class-clown antics....but i had labored over improving things and he was so okay with me today and even gave me a pat on the back as i was scribbling - i felt a shameful shred of love - students aren't supposed to like teachers no matter what, rule #1 - for him and lovable shred of shame at myself for having my ass taken outta class by him two times and a half....errr....
SONG : Guns 'N Roses - Perfect Crime
it took me a long while to like Axl Rose's romantic whine....but after six months of trying Novemebr Rain became a favorite and i ended up buying an MP3 collection, my favorite song off the Illusion 1 disc, which suffers from a healthy amount of fillers and pompous production which largely contradict the raw hunger that is supposed to be what Guns N Roses is all about...'Perfect Crime' is a serious exception...an out-of-control barrage of dirty Aerosmith/Stones riffs that play like a nervous trainwreck on crashing drums played at breakneck speed with varying time-signatures and punk-rock ethos, Axl Rose is brilliantly domineering, his nonstop vocal stealing the show as well as Slash's rollicking excellence....a powerful distillation of the greatest band assets, see also 'Think About You' from Destruction.
Yippieee! finally free, i celebrated today by sleeping naked [why the hell do eurpoean guys do that, anyway? our country is the most likely place to ever do that, btw :)] and here i wake up tired and feeling as battered and worn as a springy mattress on a seedy second-floor tenant somewhere in El Shi3la....
[cringe]
that's my funnybone breakin'....anyways, back to basics, aside from what's hot and what's not, i promise u some focused posts now that i have not much on my mind to do aside from playing guiatr and dreaming of chix and workin' on the Department CD (an ambitious project which i treat like my masterpiece) - more of that later....
I couldn't let this slip me by...as i was returning home today via our beloved Kia public-transit system i noticed the black death-rag [what is it with me & death rags, as if not they have become a common sight in Iraq nowadays] of one Otthoman Abdul-hafid, underneath it was written, who gave his life to save the lives of those in Al Aimma bridge. My face was flushed into a docile, life-realizing smile - to the horrible amazement at the dude sitting opposite me, who happened to look me in the eye then- it was the best death any1 could wish for, his ticket to heaven being asssured....
if u're not familiar with Otthman's tale, go here (Arabic)
and read 13's for the english - abridged - version. (btw 13, i left ya a comment at my Grendizer post, check it out please)
his story fills me with a nice, warm feeling...the sort that starts out at ur heart and proceds to fill u up ear to bottom, like an expanding amoeba...it makes me look around at the world around me, a world i usually regard with deep suspicion, unease, and dissatisfaction with understanding and pateince at the whole shibang of mess, i was at one time in my life highly connected with God, and i tell ya, there is no feeling more pure and divine than this. More of this later too...
i just wanted to acknowledge the boy and his family and may hop into this someday and let them be sure that his deed was not passed without notice, even in the heart of heartless 20-year-old horny cases like myself.
God Bless u, my friend...U R not forgotten.
Out & About...
Kid
I finished exams today!!!!
t.g! not particulalry easy questions (our teacher is Dr. Ali, or Dr. Spoonfeeding, the toughtest nut in the dept, we had a long-running relationship of tension, largely due to his sarcastic half-smile control freak personality that clashed with my class-clown antics....but i had labored over improving things and he was so okay with me today and even gave me a pat on the back as i was scribbling - i felt a shameful shred of love - students aren't supposed to like teachers no matter what, rule #1 - for him and lovable shred of shame at myself for having my ass taken outta class by him two times and a half....errr....
SONG : Guns 'N Roses - Perfect Crime
it took me a long while to like Axl Rose's romantic whine....but after six months of trying Novemebr Rain became a favorite and i ended up buying an MP3 collection, my favorite song off the Illusion 1 disc, which suffers from a healthy amount of fillers and pompous production which largely contradict the raw hunger that is supposed to be what Guns N Roses is all about...'Perfect Crime' is a serious exception...an out-of-control barrage of dirty Aerosmith/Stones riffs that play like a nervous trainwreck on crashing drums played at breakneck speed with varying time-signatures and punk-rock ethos, Axl Rose is brilliantly domineering, his nonstop vocal stealing the show as well as Slash's rollicking excellence....a powerful distillation of the greatest band assets, see also 'Think About You' from Destruction.
Yippieee! finally free, i celebrated today by sleeping naked [why the hell do eurpoean guys do that, anyway? our country is the most likely place to ever do that, btw :)] and here i wake up tired and feeling as battered and worn as a springy mattress on a seedy second-floor tenant somewhere in El Shi3la....
[cringe]
that's my funnybone breakin'....anyways, back to basics, aside from what's hot and what's not, i promise u some focused posts now that i have not much on my mind to do aside from playing guiatr and dreaming of chix and workin' on the Department CD (an ambitious project which i treat like my masterpiece) - more of that later....
I couldn't let this slip me by...as i was returning home today via our beloved Kia public-transit system i noticed the black death-rag [what is it with me & death rags, as if not they have become a common sight in Iraq nowadays] of one Otthoman Abdul-hafid, underneath it was written, who gave his life to save the lives of those in Al Aimma bridge. My face was flushed into a docile, life-realizing smile - to the horrible amazement at the dude sitting opposite me, who happened to look me in the eye then- it was the best death any1 could wish for, his ticket to heaven being asssured....
if u're not familiar with Otthman's tale, go here (Arabic)
and read 13's for the english - abridged - version. (btw 13, i left ya a comment at my Grendizer post, check it out please)
his story fills me with a nice, warm feeling...the sort that starts out at ur heart and proceds to fill u up ear to bottom, like an expanding amoeba...it makes me look around at the world around me, a world i usually regard with deep suspicion, unease, and dissatisfaction with understanding and pateince at the whole shibang of mess, i was at one time in my life highly connected with God, and i tell ya, there is no feeling more pure and divine than this. More of this later too...
i just wanted to acknowledge the boy and his family and may hop into this someday and let them be sure that his deed was not passed without notice, even in the heart of heartless 20-year-old horny cases like myself.
God Bless u, my friend...U R not forgotten.
Out & About...
Kid
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Sweet Childhood Reminscing (too lazy to spell)...
I just found this site and i'm almost in tears....
this, my friends, is the penultimate anime in Iraq, it is THE definitive cartoon for any iraqi kid (and strictly male, at that) of our generation, the sort of classic u'd sigh in relief upon seeing as the younger, less-understanding generation scoffs and laughs at u....this is a cultural stamp thing for crap's sake! a friend of mine has the entire 74-episodes on his HDD and he won't give me but five....damn him, i don't wanna seem like a kid but i never got to see the last twenty or so....i am filled with a ridiculous happiness right now, DOOOKFLEED....say what u say but hey that's me...i am a kid inside (hence the blog name)
i learned to play the main theme on my acoustic just now, amazingly it is played one the age-old arabic scale known as Hijaaz!!!!
my final is two days due, btw
Just go here
this is a good informative site, also check out goldoroakgo.com
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Eiffel 65 Song ....Drunken Ramble...
I never drank alcohol, it's against my religion.
but i guess this must be what it feels like...
Uhhhh....where to start...burrrp...
SONG : EAGLES - Life In The Fast Line
This is really driving me crazy, we all know the eagles for the one song i wouldn't bother to name 'Warm smells of colitas'....but lately this one can't get out of my head, it's a bluesy hard rock and roll tune of the kind i'm supposed to hate but i think my musical philosophies's going thru changes recently, this is probably due to Aerosmith....Don Henley's vocal is right-on, especially the call-and-response 'Uhhh' on the chorus, as for the lead work at the end....wham....the other Eagles song i play these days is the R&B 'I CAn't Tell You Why'...
i can't seem to remember when i wrote last here but it seems like a long time, well, i wouldn't want to let my fans (all two of them) disappointed so i guess i'll have to apologize in some way :
sorry.
phone line broke down again, i am currently posting from a net cafe...actually i couldn't post all last week because i wasn't home for most of it.
oh, well.
it just seems to me that my Zodiac Star sign bullshit or whatever has encountered a solid Cosmic Belt of The Constellation Disappointementa, the kind that cringes, one by the other they hit me and i just keep taking em cold-hearted, you know the kind, the sort that leaves u disconneceted and numb from the rest of the world, as if that was not my way of life already - i am now looking through the universe in blue.
da-boo-dee-da-boo-dai
this blog was supposed to be a general rant to help me forget the frantic pressure of living in this place and now i can see that no matter what u do u cannot ignore the politics...it is a fact and we cannot ignore it....even some of my good pals have already caved....when i first started this i thought i'd change the world with my anti-politics stance but few people have paid notice.
can't say that i care much currently....
i am not going to bother u with my negligible comments on the political situation these days, there are already a dozen of excellent politiblogs, u want that, go read them....Al Aimma bridge was probably one of the worst things that ever happened so far, Sunni? Shiite? some people say kids did it for fun...
we were bypassing Babil's hotel yesterday when i saw a black rag on the wall, these black rags in iraq are known for proclaming the death of a certain fella and where his funeral (fat'ha in arabic, in coincidence with the first sura of El Koran, the relation is that this chapter (sura) is the one read usually in funerals) ; funny thing, in Amman they use a small white A4 paper printed in Word, but i kinda like the rags more....anyway, this particular one wasn't a death notice, it said more or less this :
'The shoes of the martyrs of Al Aimma bridge is a CROWN on the head of Amro Mosa and his associates'
wtf? i asked around but nobody knew what this is for....it was kinda funny...
قنادر شهداء جسر الامة
hee-hee...
my contribution to the subject...
watched the stuff happening in New Orleans, it was weird seeing the Hawasim saga of looting and hooting in the US , it serves to remind us that after all we're all made of the same dust and bones under the hood...
my own personal dilemmas....it all started a day after Al Aimma stuff, i have this late-night ritual of falling asleep in front of TV, only lately the 'falling asleep' bit has changed to 'catching rats', i couldn't sleep till 6 so i decided to go wash up and go to college instead, some stuff broke out about exams and i thought i'd just check em and go back to my beautiful bed by 10, only as usual i hung out with my buddies and it was nothing but 2 when i finally took a Kia (sort of a transit system) home...guys called me and said they'd like to come over, i thought what the hell but not too long cuz i wanna get some sleep....they came over and it was all fun & games till 5...when they said they'd like to go to this Fat'ha of a guy in our college (his pop was popped two days ago, his mom died from an explosion a month ago and his uncle was shot six months ago as well - poor sod) i didn't know the guy well but it was a horrible tragedy and i felt obliged to be present...i asked my pal : 'how long is this going to take?'
'oh, an hour, no more'....
it was 5PM, i haven't slept for 25 hours now - i last woke up 4 PM yesterday!!!
i said what the hell...it turns out that our friend here has to take his mom & sis and then pickup his grandma and then deliver them all someplace before doing the actual thing, and amids traffic jams and picking up two more buddies we reached the place by 8 PM and stayed the last 10 minutes of the ordeal, i almost kissed the guy by mistake....
when we got back to the car i hadn't slept for like 28 hours and was starting to get the screeming mimis in my head when all of a sudden my friend's mom calls and say some stuff broke in our region and armed guys fill the streets, so we were shut off - AHHH GREAT! i called grandma who give me a violent reproach for even thinking of staying over at a friend's house like my friends would do (and did) - she's afraid we're gonna smoke and hire a hooker or something and ordered me to get my ass to my uncle's place...
when they told me we reached uncle's place it was 9 (29 hours) and just when i thougght i'd get some corner where i could be all by my lonesome i found my uncle's wife and cousin in the front yard, there was no electricity and they had locked themselves out....keys and phone with my uncle and he's nowhere to be found...we have to find him...she told me
Well smack my ass and call me Sa3di!
for a second i felt a little voice inside me that insisted to come up to my mouthpiece and tell that fat ridiculous woman to shut the hell up and stop being such a bitch and go cook us some dinner, it was a small selfish voice of somebody who felt the whole world was against him, but it was there, when i opened my mouth what came out instead was :
'No problem, we'll call him from my friend's house'
AAARGH....i felt like i'm in a comedy film where i am the guy who's getting picked on by some sort of cosmic joker...it would feel funny tomorrow i told myself...called uncle and turns out he's straneded on a highway, car won't start at 10 PM and my uncle has a history of heart-attacks, SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT.....where could u get a crane sometimes this late???
it was not until 10 when my uncle came after the car miraculously worked again (bad street-sold gasoline) and munched on a few meatballs and said goodnight to my relatives in a calm, collected way that diagonally opposed the bottled-up suffering inside....
30 hours of no sleep, a man could die if he didn't sleep for 72 hours, i woke up at 4 AM
....looking for rats....anyhow, i couldn't go back home again and the next two days were spent trying to sleep in the noon and mooning dracula in the nightime, i got back home three days later...
i got my midterm grades too, 17/30, unpromising...i have to work hard for my next Tuesday exam...
and last but not least my guitar teacher SAAD ZAI finally did it and fucked me real good, i felt gutted to the bone, the one thing i felt proud about that i could actually do some good at has been taken away from me, mainly playing guitar...he has been scolding me for the past 4 lectures but frankly i've never paid attention cuz they were mostly stupid 1-2-3-4 stuff.. i've been playin for 2 months on my own before i took him and has learned to play some stuff, mainly 20 chords and some songs Nirvana's The Man Who Sold The World - i recorded a version with vocals & drums & bass & a pseduo-electric guitar (acoustic with wah-wah effect) on Cakewalk, as well as Behind Blue Eyes, Karma Police and Hotel California...turns out my sitting position is wrong...i usually ignored him because he's this academic dictator, i saw hundreds of guitar players and they didn't all conform to this unique hand or body position....my disappointemnt came when i went yesterday to a friend's house and he told me the exact same things....shit...shit...shit....i have to relearn all eh old crap....
uhhhh...
girls? i have a new fantasy these days about a girl in our college, she is a muhajaba (wears headdress) and has been making eyecontact with me forever, when i lashed back at her with stares she withdrew and is now avoiding me whenever she sees me with a scared look but i see her looking at me when she thinks i'm not paying attention....nice eyes, but mostly leadership mother hen qualities and the biggest ass i've ever seen are her ass-ets, this may be just me, but all my major crushes are on girls who wear headresses, i am a pervert - the thought of having sex with a veiled girl is somehow, weirdly appealing....
i still talk with my online-met acquaintance girl from time to time
and no words from my ex-girlfriend for a 10 days, ta-da! a world record! we usually re-hooked every three days after every subsequent fight (the batting average for her was probably 14 fights a month, the other 14 being truces and my attempts to fix)...
i am drunk with words, and have no place to go with this ramble, it's a bad post but that's how it's meant to be....i'll write more when i have purpose....
adios
but i guess this must be what it feels like...
Uhhhh....where to start...burrrp...
SONG : EAGLES - Life In The Fast Line
This is really driving me crazy, we all know the eagles for the one song i wouldn't bother to name 'Warm smells of colitas'....but lately this one can't get out of my head, it's a bluesy hard rock and roll tune of the kind i'm supposed to hate but i think my musical philosophies's going thru changes recently, this is probably due to Aerosmith....Don Henley's vocal is right-on, especially the call-and-response 'Uhhh' on the chorus, as for the lead work at the end....wham....the other Eagles song i play these days is the R&B 'I CAn't Tell You Why'...
i can't seem to remember when i wrote last here but it seems like a long time, well, i wouldn't want to let my fans (all two of them) disappointed so i guess i'll have to apologize in some way :
sorry.
phone line broke down again, i am currently posting from a net cafe...actually i couldn't post all last week because i wasn't home for most of it.
oh, well.
it just seems to me that my Zodiac Star sign bullshit or whatever has encountered a solid Cosmic Belt of The Constellation Disappointementa, the kind that cringes, one by the other they hit me and i just keep taking em cold-hearted, you know the kind, the sort that leaves u disconneceted and numb from the rest of the world, as if that was not my way of life already - i am now looking through the universe in blue.
da-boo-dee-da-boo-dai
this blog was supposed to be a general rant to help me forget the frantic pressure of living in this place and now i can see that no matter what u do u cannot ignore the politics...it is a fact and we cannot ignore it....even some of my good pals have already caved....when i first started this i thought i'd change the world with my anti-politics stance but few people have paid notice.
can't say that i care much currently....
i am not going to bother u with my negligible comments on the political situation these days, there are already a dozen of excellent politiblogs, u want that, go read them....Al Aimma bridge was probably one of the worst things that ever happened so far, Sunni? Shiite? some people say kids did it for fun...
we were bypassing Babil's hotel yesterday when i saw a black rag on the wall, these black rags in iraq are known for proclaming the death of a certain fella and where his funeral (fat'ha in arabic, in coincidence with the first sura of El Koran, the relation is that this chapter (sura) is the one read usually in funerals) ; funny thing, in Amman they use a small white A4 paper printed in Word, but i kinda like the rags more....anyway, this particular one wasn't a death notice, it said more or less this :
'The shoes of the martyrs of Al Aimma bridge is a CROWN on the head of Amro Mosa and his associates'
wtf? i asked around but nobody knew what this is for....it was kinda funny...
قنادر شهداء جسر الامة
hee-hee...
my contribution to the subject...
watched the stuff happening in New Orleans, it was weird seeing the Hawasim saga of looting and hooting in the US , it serves to remind us that after all we're all made of the same dust and bones under the hood...
my own personal dilemmas....it all started a day after Al Aimma stuff, i have this late-night ritual of falling asleep in front of TV, only lately the 'falling asleep' bit has changed to 'catching rats', i couldn't sleep till 6 so i decided to go wash up and go to college instead, some stuff broke out about exams and i thought i'd just check em and go back to my beautiful bed by 10, only as usual i hung out with my buddies and it was nothing but 2 when i finally took a Kia (sort of a transit system) home...guys called me and said they'd like to come over, i thought what the hell but not too long cuz i wanna get some sleep....they came over and it was all fun & games till 5...when they said they'd like to go to this Fat'ha of a guy in our college (his pop was popped two days ago, his mom died from an explosion a month ago and his uncle was shot six months ago as well - poor sod) i didn't know the guy well but it was a horrible tragedy and i felt obliged to be present...i asked my pal : 'how long is this going to take?'
'oh, an hour, no more'....
it was 5PM, i haven't slept for 25 hours now - i last woke up 4 PM yesterday!!!
i said what the hell...it turns out that our friend here has to take his mom & sis and then pickup his grandma and then deliver them all someplace before doing the actual thing, and amids traffic jams and picking up two more buddies we reached the place by 8 PM and stayed the last 10 minutes of the ordeal, i almost kissed the guy by mistake....
when we got back to the car i hadn't slept for like 28 hours and was starting to get the screeming mimis in my head when all of a sudden my friend's mom calls and say some stuff broke in our region and armed guys fill the streets, so we were shut off - AHHH GREAT! i called grandma who give me a violent reproach for even thinking of staying over at a friend's house like my friends would do (and did) - she's afraid we're gonna smoke and hire a hooker or something and ordered me to get my ass to my uncle's place...
when they told me we reached uncle's place it was 9 (29 hours) and just when i thougght i'd get some corner where i could be all by my lonesome i found my uncle's wife and cousin in the front yard, there was no electricity and they had locked themselves out....keys and phone with my uncle and he's nowhere to be found...we have to find him...she told me
Well smack my ass and call me Sa3di!
for a second i felt a little voice inside me that insisted to come up to my mouthpiece and tell that fat ridiculous woman to shut the hell up and stop being such a bitch and go cook us some dinner, it was a small selfish voice of somebody who felt the whole world was against him, but it was there, when i opened my mouth what came out instead was :
'No problem, we'll call him from my friend's house'
AAARGH....i felt like i'm in a comedy film where i am the guy who's getting picked on by some sort of cosmic joker...it would feel funny tomorrow i told myself...called uncle and turns out he's straneded on a highway, car won't start at 10 PM and my uncle has a history of heart-attacks, SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT.....where could u get a crane sometimes this late???
it was not until 10 when my uncle came after the car miraculously worked again (bad street-sold gasoline) and munched on a few meatballs and said goodnight to my relatives in a calm, collected way that diagonally opposed the bottled-up suffering inside....
30 hours of no sleep, a man could die if he didn't sleep for 72 hours, i woke up at 4 AM
....looking for rats....anyhow, i couldn't go back home again and the next two days were spent trying to sleep in the noon and mooning dracula in the nightime, i got back home three days later...
i got my midterm grades too, 17/30, unpromising...i have to work hard for my next Tuesday exam...
and last but not least my guitar teacher SAAD ZAI finally did it and fucked me real good, i felt gutted to the bone, the one thing i felt proud about that i could actually do some good at has been taken away from me, mainly playing guitar...he has been scolding me for the past 4 lectures but frankly i've never paid attention cuz they were mostly stupid 1-2-3-4 stuff.. i've been playin for 2 months on my own before i took him and has learned to play some stuff, mainly 20 chords and some songs Nirvana's The Man Who Sold The World - i recorded a version with vocals & drums & bass & a pseduo-electric guitar (acoustic with wah-wah effect) on Cakewalk, as well as Behind Blue Eyes, Karma Police and Hotel California...turns out my sitting position is wrong...i usually ignored him because he's this academic dictator, i saw hundreds of guitar players and they didn't all conform to this unique hand or body position....my disappointemnt came when i went yesterday to a friend's house and he told me the exact same things....shit...shit...shit....i have to relearn all eh old crap....
uhhhh...
girls? i have a new fantasy these days about a girl in our college, she is a muhajaba (wears headdress) and has been making eyecontact with me forever, when i lashed back at her with stares she withdrew and is now avoiding me whenever she sees me with a scared look but i see her looking at me when she thinks i'm not paying attention....nice eyes, but mostly leadership mother hen qualities and the biggest ass i've ever seen are her ass-ets, this may be just me, but all my major crushes are on girls who wear headresses, i am a pervert - the thought of having sex with a veiled girl is somehow, weirdly appealing....
i still talk with my online-met acquaintance girl from time to time
and no words from my ex-girlfriend for a 10 days, ta-da! a world record! we usually re-hooked every three days after every subsequent fight (the batting average for her was probably 14 fights a month, the other 14 being truces and my attempts to fix)...
i am drunk with words, and have no place to go with this ramble, it's a bad post but that's how it's meant to be....i'll write more when i have purpose....
adios
Monday, August 29, 2005
Youth Of Iraq, Episode 2
Hey...
today was subtly pleasant, i was supposed to review for my finals but as usual i delayed it for yet anohter day, spent the noon in front of the TV/PC. Bored out quickly at 5 and went out with a few friends before finally hanging out with Bashaar Al Kaisi's bro back in my room, strumming California (we're picking up where u left us, u know who u r)...
so i am in a musical mood currently and decided to continue on my quest to explain what exactly has been going through my head for the past...six years...
*deep breath* hookay...
i have a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake, i didn't like it much when i first bought it but i found myself quoting from it over & over again.
BOOK: Stephen King - Everything's Eventual : 14 Dark Tales
Stephen King is way overrated, he writes in a great style, but it is so mercilessly repetitive that it eventually wears out its welcome, and the horror plot is usually rubbish - reading this short-story collection reminded me of an old Iraqi saying : 'Searching shit for melon seeds'....of the 14 tales, 2 were instant-classics 'All That You Love Will Be Carried Away' about a travelling insurance salesman whose only reason not to commit suicide is his pastime of collecting
bathroom graffiti, and the last 'Luckey Quarter' which ends things hopefully for a change, both stories are literary ones, not horror. the rest of the 12 vary from farily okay 'Autospy Room 4' about an alive man about to be accidentally
chopped up in the autopsy room told from his viewpoint, and 'The Road Virus Head North' was decent, but most end incomprehensibly and one is plain unreadable 'Eluria'. Never scary, but read it for the style. All That U Love is a must-read though.
All in all, uneven. (3/5)
in part 1, i left u at the door of my musical ambitions door after scouring what is called the Iraqi Metal Scene for lack of a better word. Today i am supposed to introduce u to whatever's been going on inside my own mind for the past years of musical meditation.
Music is kind of sacred to me, it hasn't always been that, i grew up in a mostly religion-adhering family, i learned early on that music does not sit well with religion side to side. However i hummed the occasional tune or two. Most iraqi teens
dig Arabic music, as they are supposed to do, however arabic pop these days is either a watered-down conversion of western aesthetics or all-out sex-driven heaving of overfed meat cows dancing their asses to the traditional one-two-three sound of dumbuk and nai. Many people listen to western music, but most have it figured out as either another Mr. Cool item or a mindless pastime, a devout hardcore minority is present nonetheless and these guys are knee-deep in either hip-hop or rock. I was first interested by music, like every other teen in his insecure, early days by the pop tunes of boybands...i ate, drank and slept Backstreet Boys when i was sixteen, fact : they called me AJ and for a good reason (those who know me will figure it out), we were freaks me & ma buddies, especially me, apparently i had just
discovered dirty words and we had this notebook (i found it a while eariler) in which we re-wrote all their songs to dirty versions, I was particularly fond of Larger Than Tonay's - (for those in-the-know, i was in Baghdad College) three
months later i was bored and turned to...who else? the King of Pop, who epitomized western music for all its best (& worst) in Iraq, i did six months of Michael, and i still listen to him every now & then, after half a year of making funny
shapes out of my shoes (i can moonwalk and do all his stuff pretty good, guys still come up and ask me to do it - i have his exact figure). music felt pretty stale for me, and that was when the Eminem mania was building up (early 2000), a friend introduced me to Marshall Mathers LP, prior to that, i figured Will Smith as all the rap that matters but that album blew my socks away...it is still one of my classic all-timers and Eminem is undeniably witty though repetitive at the moment, his style is so original, i was just getting to know Dre & Snoop & all that Pac/Biggie when my musical values were furiously shattered and after that time (March 2001), the world never looked the same again.
That was when i first heard No Leaf Clover.
No Leaf Clover is, by far, the closest composition that ever got to my all-time favorite song award, the foremost fusion of words and music I have ever heard in my whole short life. Never has a song offered such power, emotion, and atmosphere as this one. While lyrically the composition is vague and daunting, with such everyday indistinguishable words, the mirroring of their ideas into the music is what makes Clover totally mind-blowing, I never knew anything about music other than it's just a way of spending just a fun time. the actual analysis of this classic took me about six months, before that, I just listened, but I never expected the impression to be so awesome, I was too lowbrow to express my feelings anyway - eventually it changed my whole outlook on music as not just a tool for having fun, all the silly, kitschy pop music seemed absurd and meaningless, it frightened me that a band with such depth, detail and intelligence actually exists, and if only a tenth of music was as good! It taught me to carefully examine artistic works:books, photos, pictures, songs. Everything had whole new dimensions upon closer inspection. Consequently I found out that this line of thought has even influenced my usual real life relationships and social judgment of persons.
My entire world was upside down, those very bare-chested drug-addicted longhaired who i absolutely DETESTED became my philosphers and new world preachers. By unearthing Metallica - and heavy metal - i attained a new 'different' stamp from my social standpoint and also found a very powerful outlet to express my frustrations, i connected with the music that i have been looking for in years. Dark, intelligent and subliminal. When u first get into heavy metal, u think that anything that doesn't have distorted guitar in it is pop-crap or sellout songs, i tried the other metal offerings but i couldn't really find more of the music/lyric juxtapoisitionng that i was feasting upon.
it was only by chanc that i happened to watch a weird video by a band called Soundgarden (Black Hole Sun, naturally) and the respective album, Superunknown, brought radical new ideas hammering down to me, prior to this, grunge & alt.rock were classified in my brain as pop. but Superunkown taught me that the very same concepts i digged could be that much more scarier if they were injected INSIDE the classicist pop-song radio-ready 4-min outfit, a deep, bitter and dark irony that was always present in Chris Cornell's voice - the song THE DAY I TRIED TO LIVE is the absolute realiziation of a radiosong that says I LOVE U but really says FUCK U ALL TO ROTTEN HELL. It was the ultimate album for lost souls of Generation X, it was everything that Nirvana was supposed to be but really wasn't.
Which bring me to an important point.
Kurt Vonnegut once said : "People capable of liking some paintings or prints or whatever can rarely do so without knowning something about the artist, the situation is social rather than scientific. Any work of art is half of a conversation between two human beings, and it helps a lot to know who is talking at you. Does he or she have a reputation for seriousness, for religiousity, for suffering, for concupiscence, for rebellion, for sincerity, for jokes?
There are virtually no respected paintings made by persons about whom we know zilch. I dare to suggest that no picture can attract serious attention without a particular sort of human being attached to it in the viewer's mind. Pictures are famous for their humanness, not for their pictureness.'
This is vital. In many cases, the image of a certain performer is so intertwined with his music that it is impossible to separate when u r listening to, case in point, Nirvana.When i didnt' know absolutely NOTHING about the adventures of Kurt Cobain, i just picked up a compilation done by a friend of Nirvana songs, it had 'Teen Spirit', 'About A Girl', 'Come As You Are' , 'All Aplogies', etcetra etcetra...i kept playing it over & over...trying to understand what's the big deal?!? This is life-changing music??? i mean sure it's not bad, but its' not immortal as, say, Metallica [to me]. i came by Metallica though S&M, a high-brow concept concert performed with a symphony backing them up, throughout the concert, James Hetfield didn't strike me as the kind of guy who would go and have ten bottles and shoot up and scream at the top of his voice. No, sir, i thought of him that time as a scary prince of darkness who would finish the set and have a quiet dinner with his wife and kids and read TIME magazine (u can imagine my shock upon seeing Live Shit! Binge & Purge...) anyhow, in a short while i got to know all about Generation X, the trials and tribulations of Cobain and how he was pushed into the throne and his all anti-star stance and suddenly all his music made sense to me...ghosts of wallowing in self-ironic depression and mockery of the mainstream as well all that was in-between suddenly became impinged, but it was not by the MUSIC, it was by the PERSONA. MTV Unplugged became a classic and i kept listening to him. But I know now that people like him because of his personality, because of what he stands for, not for his musical ideas - which is basically punk-rock in its simplest form, it is virtually hard to separate the two - his lyrics are admittedly meaningless, he glued them up from separate poems but people have him labelled as performer capable of 'intense emotional songwriting'...well, u get the point. The same can be said of bands like The White Stripes, System Of A Down and Radiohead.
The sort of music i am looking to be able to create one day is should be ambitious in scope, utilizing sounds and instruments for a greater cause, so far i have only hinted at what music sends shivers down my spine, in order to clarify things up, here's a song, i suggest u listen to it before trying to understand what is said here :
Radiohead - Karma Police
This is a mid-tempo song based on paino and an acoustic chord strum, with a melancholy, ellegiac tone in the verses, during which, singer Thom Yorke sings this :
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radioKarma Police, arrest this girl, her hitler hairdo, is making me feel ill and weak i've crashed her party
I don't know what the singer meant to say here, but i have my own personal interpretation, it may not stand true, but i like it and it is the result of my previous exploratino of musical landscapes. This song is about a person living his life guided by some sort of 'moral code' that he set for himself : Peer pressure, attempts to look cool, whatsoever...thus in the verses, he is assuming his supposedly cool alter-ego, a false state of mind he made in which he procalims his
'Karma Police' to arrest several people he finds inapporporate or uncool, the verses are disenfranchied, but this free-word associated is what adds to the mystery, this coolness is fake, and is exposed by Yorke's tone, very unhappy and out of touch...in the break, a cold voice intones :
This is what u get, This is what u get, This is what u get, when u mess with us...
Basically, a man crushed by his own confusion.
I like the unorthodox chorus so much, it has my favorite trick of initial restrain followed by an unexpected cathartic blast brighter chords resonate as Yorke repeats in a voice filled with stupid but true happiness, it is a minute of release from
all this complicated modern-world pressures melded all in one line, the lyrics is negative but is rendered by Yorke like a man on drugs, it is his only refuge, a minute of simply losing all that pretence and complication and return to a more
simple state of mind, be yourself :
For a minute there, I lost myself
For a minute there, I lost myself
For a minute there, I lost myself
For a minute there, I lost myself
by the end of the chorus, u already see the depression creeping up in the end of Yorke's wail, as if the minute is over and we're back to pretending more of not liking people we are not, bottling our true feelings inside : basically living in
Iraq.
OK Computer, a development of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon is about difficulites in living in the modern world, and this song is the amplification of that subject.
This is ambitious, complex music, it offers sublime depth into it, it is wrong to appraoch music with this kind of mathematical mentality usually, because sometimes free-form sponatenoity usually leads into great results, but all i am meaning to say is that i don't like rock music because it's full of blood and demons and chugga-chugga riffs, Bob Rock said it best : 'It's good to say kill kill fuck fuck, but it's better to say it for a reason.'
It's the reason that i'm betting my life on.
SOUNDGARDEN - HEAD DOWN
We see that smile, We see that smile, We see that smile on your face
We hear you cry, We hear you wail, We steal that smile from your face
We see you laugh, We see you dance, We take that away everyday
We see you cry, We turn your head, Then we'll slap your face
Bow down, Bow down, Live your life, Head down, Head down, Hide that smile
Head high, Head high, You've got to smileHead high, Head high, You've got to smile!
We see you try, We see you fail, Some things never change,
We hear you cry, We hear you wail, We steal that smile from your face
Bow down, Bow down, Live your life, Head down, Head down, Hide that smile
Head high, Head high, You've got to smileHead high, Head high, Head high like a song you like!
These lyrics are not much by themeselves lying on a piece of paper, but Cornell has the trick of combinig sound and words into somehting truly its own :
A strange number from the classic 1994 Superunknown written by bassist Ben Shepherd. The song starts unassumingly, with an unfocused acoustic and some shuffled drumming in the background; the acoustic surprisingly jumps headlong into a structured riff with percussion catching up with some busy lumbering. An electric guitar of the Black Sabbath detuned variety soon joins the fray, with an electric in front and an acoustic in back, the texture invoked is subtly queasy and hollow, from that texture comes out a hypnotically sympathetic Chris Cornell. Awash in cymbals, Cornell wears the tone of crooning, heartfelt sympathy, the kind of sympathy seen generously dealt from higher authority towards the lower, tortured spirits of peasants. Unlike real life -fortunately- all his sympathy is criminally and truthfully fake, starkly
disbelieved by the lyrical value of his affection, with such haunting sympathy, the assumed dictatorial governor concernedly addresses his cracked citizens of worship, telling them very dearly that he is the reason behind their suffering, so they should bow down and go home, live their lives, and, in true dictator fashion, the much-maligned hopes of victory is evoked passionately with the contrasting last lines 'Head high, Head high, you've got to smile', at which Cornell rises from his hypnosis into a higher, hopeful survival pitch. Having fulfilled that, the texture is disoriented again by the very first acoustic shuffle of the song, which transits the song into one of the most powerful riffs of the whole album, then again towards the electric/acoustic medley, before going back for some more discipline from his majesty.
You know what made me think of it this way, ever heard the Ba'ath's slogan: 'Head High, You're from Iraq?'
Well this was a bit confusing, but it's 4:49 AM so there ya have it
Out & About
today was subtly pleasant, i was supposed to review for my finals but as usual i delayed it for yet anohter day, spent the noon in front of the TV/PC. Bored out quickly at 5 and went out with a few friends before finally hanging out with Bashaar Al Kaisi's bro back in my room, strumming California (we're picking up where u left us, u know who u r)...
so i am in a musical mood currently and decided to continue on my quest to explain what exactly has been going through my head for the past...six years...
*deep breath* hookay...
i have a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake, i didn't like it much when i first bought it but i found myself quoting from it over & over again.
BOOK: Stephen King - Everything's Eventual : 14 Dark Tales
Stephen King is way overrated, he writes in a great style, but it is so mercilessly repetitive that it eventually wears out its welcome, and the horror plot is usually rubbish - reading this short-story collection reminded me of an old Iraqi saying : 'Searching shit for melon seeds'....of the 14 tales, 2 were instant-classics 'All That You Love Will Be Carried Away' about a travelling insurance salesman whose only reason not to commit suicide is his pastime of collecting
bathroom graffiti, and the last 'Luckey Quarter' which ends things hopefully for a change, both stories are literary ones, not horror. the rest of the 12 vary from farily okay 'Autospy Room 4' about an alive man about to be accidentally
chopped up in the autopsy room told from his viewpoint, and 'The Road Virus Head North' was decent, but most end incomprehensibly and one is plain unreadable 'Eluria'. Never scary, but read it for the style. All That U Love is a must-read though.
All in all, uneven. (3/5)
in part 1, i left u at the door of my musical ambitions door after scouring what is called the Iraqi Metal Scene for lack of a better word. Today i am supposed to introduce u to whatever's been going on inside my own mind for the past years of musical meditation.
Music is kind of sacred to me, it hasn't always been that, i grew up in a mostly religion-adhering family, i learned early on that music does not sit well with religion side to side. However i hummed the occasional tune or two. Most iraqi teens
dig Arabic music, as they are supposed to do, however arabic pop these days is either a watered-down conversion of western aesthetics or all-out sex-driven heaving of overfed meat cows dancing their asses to the traditional one-two-three sound of dumbuk and nai. Many people listen to western music, but most have it figured out as either another Mr. Cool item or a mindless pastime, a devout hardcore minority is present nonetheless and these guys are knee-deep in either hip-hop or rock. I was first interested by music, like every other teen in his insecure, early days by the pop tunes of boybands...i ate, drank and slept Backstreet Boys when i was sixteen, fact : they called me AJ and for a good reason (those who know me will figure it out), we were freaks me & ma buddies, especially me, apparently i had just
discovered dirty words and we had this notebook (i found it a while eariler) in which we re-wrote all their songs to dirty versions, I was particularly fond of Larger Than Tonay's - (for those in-the-know, i was in Baghdad College) three
months later i was bored and turned to...who else? the King of Pop, who epitomized western music for all its best (& worst) in Iraq, i did six months of Michael, and i still listen to him every now & then, after half a year of making funny
shapes out of my shoes (i can moonwalk and do all his stuff pretty good, guys still come up and ask me to do it - i have his exact figure). music felt pretty stale for me, and that was when the Eminem mania was building up (early 2000), a friend introduced me to Marshall Mathers LP, prior to that, i figured Will Smith as all the rap that matters but that album blew my socks away...it is still one of my classic all-timers and Eminem is undeniably witty though repetitive at the moment, his style is so original, i was just getting to know Dre & Snoop & all that Pac/Biggie when my musical values were furiously shattered and after that time (March 2001), the world never looked the same again.
That was when i first heard No Leaf Clover.
No Leaf Clover is, by far, the closest composition that ever got to my all-time favorite song award, the foremost fusion of words and music I have ever heard in my whole short life. Never has a song offered such power, emotion, and atmosphere as this one. While lyrically the composition is vague and daunting, with such everyday indistinguishable words, the mirroring of their ideas into the music is what makes Clover totally mind-blowing, I never knew anything about music other than it's just a way of spending just a fun time. the actual analysis of this classic took me about six months, before that, I just listened, but I never expected the impression to be so awesome, I was too lowbrow to express my feelings anyway - eventually it changed my whole outlook on music as not just a tool for having fun, all the silly, kitschy pop music seemed absurd and meaningless, it frightened me that a band with such depth, detail and intelligence actually exists, and if only a tenth of music was as good! It taught me to carefully examine artistic works:books, photos, pictures, songs. Everything had whole new dimensions upon closer inspection. Consequently I found out that this line of thought has even influenced my usual real life relationships and social judgment of persons.
My entire world was upside down, those very bare-chested drug-addicted longhaired who i absolutely DETESTED became my philosphers and new world preachers. By unearthing Metallica - and heavy metal - i attained a new 'different' stamp from my social standpoint and also found a very powerful outlet to express my frustrations, i connected with the music that i have been looking for in years. Dark, intelligent and subliminal. When u first get into heavy metal, u think that anything that doesn't have distorted guitar in it is pop-crap or sellout songs, i tried the other metal offerings but i couldn't really find more of the music/lyric juxtapoisitionng that i was feasting upon.
it was only by chanc that i happened to watch a weird video by a band called Soundgarden (Black Hole Sun, naturally) and the respective album, Superunknown, brought radical new ideas hammering down to me, prior to this, grunge & alt.rock were classified in my brain as pop. but Superunkown taught me that the very same concepts i digged could be that much more scarier if they were injected INSIDE the classicist pop-song radio-ready 4-min outfit, a deep, bitter and dark irony that was always present in Chris Cornell's voice - the song THE DAY I TRIED TO LIVE is the absolute realiziation of a radiosong that says I LOVE U but really says FUCK U ALL TO ROTTEN HELL. It was the ultimate album for lost souls of Generation X, it was everything that Nirvana was supposed to be but really wasn't.
Which bring me to an important point.
Kurt Vonnegut once said : "People capable of liking some paintings or prints or whatever can rarely do so without knowning something about the artist, the situation is social rather than scientific. Any work of art is half of a conversation between two human beings, and it helps a lot to know who is talking at you. Does he or she have a reputation for seriousness, for religiousity, for suffering, for concupiscence, for rebellion, for sincerity, for jokes?
There are virtually no respected paintings made by persons about whom we know zilch. I dare to suggest that no picture can attract serious attention without a particular sort of human being attached to it in the viewer's mind. Pictures are famous for their humanness, not for their pictureness.'
This is vital. In many cases, the image of a certain performer is so intertwined with his music that it is impossible to separate when u r listening to, case in point, Nirvana.When i didnt' know absolutely NOTHING about the adventures of Kurt Cobain, i just picked up a compilation done by a friend of Nirvana songs, it had 'Teen Spirit', 'About A Girl', 'Come As You Are' , 'All Aplogies', etcetra etcetra...i kept playing it over & over...trying to understand what's the big deal?!? This is life-changing music??? i mean sure it's not bad, but its' not immortal as, say, Metallica [to me]. i came by Metallica though S&M, a high-brow concept concert performed with a symphony backing them up, throughout the concert, James Hetfield didn't strike me as the kind of guy who would go and have ten bottles and shoot up and scream at the top of his voice. No, sir, i thought of him that time as a scary prince of darkness who would finish the set and have a quiet dinner with his wife and kids and read TIME magazine (u can imagine my shock upon seeing Live Shit! Binge & Purge...) anyhow, in a short while i got to know all about Generation X, the trials and tribulations of Cobain and how he was pushed into the throne and his all anti-star stance and suddenly all his music made sense to me...ghosts of wallowing in self-ironic depression and mockery of the mainstream as well all that was in-between suddenly became impinged, but it was not by the MUSIC, it was by the PERSONA. MTV Unplugged became a classic and i kept listening to him. But I know now that people like him because of his personality, because of what he stands for, not for his musical ideas - which is basically punk-rock in its simplest form, it is virtually hard to separate the two - his lyrics are admittedly meaningless, he glued them up from separate poems but people have him labelled as performer capable of 'intense emotional songwriting'...well, u get the point. The same can be said of bands like The White Stripes, System Of A Down and Radiohead.
The sort of music i am looking to be able to create one day is should be ambitious in scope, utilizing sounds and instruments for a greater cause, so far i have only hinted at what music sends shivers down my spine, in order to clarify things up, here's a song, i suggest u listen to it before trying to understand what is said here :
Radiohead - Karma Police
This is a mid-tempo song based on paino and an acoustic chord strum, with a melancholy, ellegiac tone in the verses, during which, singer Thom Yorke sings this :
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radioKarma Police, arrest this girl, her hitler hairdo, is making me feel ill and weak i've crashed her party
I don't know what the singer meant to say here, but i have my own personal interpretation, it may not stand true, but i like it and it is the result of my previous exploratino of musical landscapes. This song is about a person living his life guided by some sort of 'moral code' that he set for himself : Peer pressure, attempts to look cool, whatsoever...thus in the verses, he is assuming his supposedly cool alter-ego, a false state of mind he made in which he procalims his
'Karma Police' to arrest several people he finds inapporporate or uncool, the verses are disenfranchied, but this free-word associated is what adds to the mystery, this coolness is fake, and is exposed by Yorke's tone, very unhappy and out of touch...in the break, a cold voice intones :
This is what u get, This is what u get, This is what u get, when u mess with us...
Basically, a man crushed by his own confusion.
I like the unorthodox chorus so much, it has my favorite trick of initial restrain followed by an unexpected cathartic blast brighter chords resonate as Yorke repeats in a voice filled with stupid but true happiness, it is a minute of release from
all this complicated modern-world pressures melded all in one line, the lyrics is negative but is rendered by Yorke like a man on drugs, it is his only refuge, a minute of simply losing all that pretence and complication and return to a more
simple state of mind, be yourself :
For a minute there, I lost myself
For a minute there, I lost myself
For a minute there, I lost myself
For a minute there, I lost myself
by the end of the chorus, u already see the depression creeping up in the end of Yorke's wail, as if the minute is over and we're back to pretending more of not liking people we are not, bottling our true feelings inside : basically living in
Iraq.
OK Computer, a development of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon is about difficulites in living in the modern world, and this song is the amplification of that subject.
This is ambitious, complex music, it offers sublime depth into it, it is wrong to appraoch music with this kind of mathematical mentality usually, because sometimes free-form sponatenoity usually leads into great results, but all i am meaning to say is that i don't like rock music because it's full of blood and demons and chugga-chugga riffs, Bob Rock said it best : 'It's good to say kill kill fuck fuck, but it's better to say it for a reason.'
It's the reason that i'm betting my life on.
SOUNDGARDEN - HEAD DOWN
We see that smile, We see that smile, We see that smile on your face
We hear you cry, We hear you wail, We steal that smile from your face
We see you laugh, We see you dance, We take that away everyday
We see you cry, We turn your head, Then we'll slap your face
Bow down, Bow down, Live your life, Head down, Head down, Hide that smile
Head high, Head high, You've got to smileHead high, Head high, You've got to smile!
We see you try, We see you fail, Some things never change,
We hear you cry, We hear you wail, We steal that smile from your face
Bow down, Bow down, Live your life, Head down, Head down, Hide that smile
Head high, Head high, You've got to smileHead high, Head high, Head high like a song you like!
These lyrics are not much by themeselves lying on a piece of paper, but Cornell has the trick of combinig sound and words into somehting truly its own :
A strange number from the classic 1994 Superunknown written by bassist Ben Shepherd. The song starts unassumingly, with an unfocused acoustic and some shuffled drumming in the background; the acoustic surprisingly jumps headlong into a structured riff with percussion catching up with some busy lumbering. An electric guitar of the Black Sabbath detuned variety soon joins the fray, with an electric in front and an acoustic in back, the texture invoked is subtly queasy and hollow, from that texture comes out a hypnotically sympathetic Chris Cornell. Awash in cymbals, Cornell wears the tone of crooning, heartfelt sympathy, the kind of sympathy seen generously dealt from higher authority towards the lower, tortured spirits of peasants. Unlike real life -fortunately- all his sympathy is criminally and truthfully fake, starkly
disbelieved by the lyrical value of his affection, with such haunting sympathy, the assumed dictatorial governor concernedly addresses his cracked citizens of worship, telling them very dearly that he is the reason behind their suffering, so they should bow down and go home, live their lives, and, in true dictator fashion, the much-maligned hopes of victory is evoked passionately with the contrasting last lines 'Head high, Head high, you've got to smile', at which Cornell rises from his hypnosis into a higher, hopeful survival pitch. Having fulfilled that, the texture is disoriented again by the very first acoustic shuffle of the song, which transits the song into one of the most powerful riffs of the whole album, then again towards the electric/acoustic medley, before going back for some more discipline from his majesty.
You know what made me think of it this way, ever heard the Ba'ath's slogan: 'Head High, You're from Iraq?'
Well this was a bit confusing, but it's 4:49 AM so there ya have it
Out & About
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Strangers Have The Best Candy....
Shit...
'How did things ever get so far?' - Vito Corleone
SONG : naaah....
This is a man altered writing here.
U can never fully comprehend a catastraophe until it touches u in some way.
It's been a week since i last scribbled around here, the reason for absence was that i didn't feel like it, or like doing anything for all that matters, plus there's this ever-present exam looming around everything i do lately (i do a lot of things, except studying) and today i finally took my final mid-term, which gives me a break for a week until the encore - that being the FINAL eggzamz.
Well, as i said earlier, shit.
Let me tell u about something that shook me up a bit past week, i was bored, goddammit, but i didn't want this!
I recieved the news whilst innocently bystanding a casual family conversation in the living room, two of my relatives were discussing the kidnapping of someone, the usual Iraqi small-talk these days, pretending an interest, i asked about the name of the guy. they told me it was Haji Amir, and the weirdest thing happened.
I felt my heart sink to my underwear...something like the slight ruffle u get inside ur belly when an elevator going down stops.
Haji Amir! of all the people! they chose the nicest, most loving, caring person. Now i am not a religious dude per se...but i have enormous respect for these people and i wish i could get my act together like them if i could, and Haji Amir was one of the most charming, do-gooders i ever met. An old friend of my father's, i remember him when my dad used to take me out swimming with his buddies, Haji Amir was a hugely-built bearded man with an effacing smile and a tolerant nature, he spent his past few years building mosques. He also had the gift of charisma, and this is from a guy who only spoke to him five words in the past two years, these words were spoken after a Friday prayer, i told him how tough the preacher was and he just laughed, it was the most negligible small-talk ever, and yet i distinctly remember coming out with a big shine inside me and huge grin on my face. Have u ever met somebody who can make u feel very good abotu yourself and the world in general? He was like that, a pure man of God, many men of God are not pure, but Haji Amir was different, and some MOTHERFUCKERS abducted him from a mosque-building location and then butchered him after a few days of torture after picking up the money and running.
God damn it. Of all the people! i felt very shaken by the horrid reality of the world that day, everything felt so dark and for the first time i sensed the true extent to which this country is kcufed-up, forget the gasoline/electricity/water shortages, this country is going to pot...
now i am not an emotional person, i have learned through years of conditiong to my enironvement to harbor apathy and convey distance, but that day i discovered something that i already know, i am terribly sensitive inside....and the stark nakedness of the safana made my apathy unbearable...
my pillow had spots on them the next day.
they did this huge funeral for him and they buried him at Abu Haneefa, his black-rags can still be seen around Adhamiya, rest in peace, Amo Amir, u r in our hearts and prayers, this is God's will and we cannot do anything to it, This may be a blessing for u, now that u have passed through it all. Despair and sincere sadness overwhelms me even today as i write this.
I had several other things to tell u, but since we are discussing abductions, let me give u some more abduction stories. some of this may get me in trouble, but i don't care anymore.
THE ONE WITH THE 3ALAAS
This story is fresh, i know the guys in it.
a rich kid's son is usually seen toting around his mobile and laptop like he doesn't care somewhere around Baghdad, some people don't like that, so they give him the candy and ask the father to cough it up, the father coldly responds that he does not want the boy and that they may keep him.
the next day the the boy is released with apologies and even money thrown in for good measure.
nobody knows what happened until one day the mother of the father wrestles it out of her husband....it seems that the father had many connections, so after he hung up on them dudes he called up some contacts he had with Al-Mahdi's army (Saadir guys), these guys told him that in every major region of Baghdad there is a certain person known as El 3alaas (literally translated means : The Chewer) who is responsible for ticking off people suitable for abductions and informing interested gangs about them. a traffic control, a pimp, whatever, so the Mahdi people went to 3alaas and they beat the shit out of them until he told them which gang and the next day the kid is freed, courtesy of Moqtada & Co.
Don't u just love the weather these days?
There were cigarette burns on the boy's leg (that's what the money is for, anyone?) and he told his father that they used to give him capsala pills (which is the iraqi equivalent of drugs) and burn him with cigs, gangs have no fun.
THE ONE WITH THE PRAYER
Same thing, abduction of a kid. Kid tells gang he wants to pray, gang is amazed at his : YOU PRAY?!? they treat him like a queen and bring him Kebab for dinner before setting him free the next day.
Huh? maybe i'll try saying I WENT TO MECCA on my turn.
THE ONE WITH THE FATHER'S PRIDE
Gang abducts daughter. Calls up dad, Dad is one of these traditionalists, girl's-honor-is-like-a-candle kinda guy. He is rude to the gang and show no fear of them, calls em doggies and pimps and fuckers and offers no money for them screwing his daughter, he tells them to bring her here so he could kill her himself. The gang tries all sorts of stuff with him but to no avail, one day a gang member personally comes to the house and proclaims that the gang leader wants to meet with the father, the father says yes, the gang appears with all cars and fancy stuff and they bring the girl with them, the gangleader comes forward and he says to teh father that he swears that they have never ever touched a single hair of her and that he was impressed and he is turning her back with no money at all....one thing leads to another and everybody's a-laughing over tea.
This is a little out there, but the i know the guy who told it pretty good and he don't show off, maybe he highlighted some, plus it coulda happen if u r really lucky.
FAKE BOMBERS? Taxi driver is a brother of some guy at our university, he drives a '95 Daewoo Prince which is kinda fair deal for a car in Iraq, the fare consists of a bearded arab who kept telling him abotu the prophet and all that Gafaar Abassi talk when all of a sudden they wtiness an american tank...arab tells him to pull over there....taxi driver looks at him weirdly 'no, i can't'
'pull voer here and today u're having lunch with the prophet in heaven above'
'but i already had lunch!'
poor guy lets go of his car and runs, only to find out blocks later the arab guy driving his poor car back the route he came.....
Fun? Yeah, good ones to enjoy while we're in this dumpster hole...let's see what else? what about the one when they kidnap the guy and want money and slit his throat and throw him in the dumpster after bailing with the money???? a gazillion stories are like this, and this semi-war frame sure isn't helping either, it's pretty much a gangland aroudn here, nobody goes to the cops, all negotiations is settled with the gang. but u see there are a lot of dead Sunnis nowadays and it could get pretty ugly....
i have no hopes for this country anymore, i am feeling currently what both Neurotic Wife and Anarki13 have felt about in some eariler time at their respective blogs as well as countless other iraqis, this is so UNGODLY....it gets me so pissed off at everything that all i want to do....is....
well....why, go around and shoot stuff, naturally i'm an Iraqi cha moo hechi el hachi yaba? - so i guess i'd keep it shut and take it like a chicken
Unlike 13 who went and strummed Bob Dylan i was at a loss to put some westernized death song for my Haji Amir, oh i have plenty...Clapton (Tears In Heaven) and the overwrought Cobain/Leadbelly (Where Did You Sleep Last Night) but i feel the only thing that serves him right is a passage from the Holy Quran :
سلام بما صبرتم فنعم عقبى الدار
الله يبسط الرزق لمن يشاء و يقدر و فرحوا بالحياة الدنيا و ما الحيوة الدنيا في الاخرة الا متاع
We are of God, and to God we return.
Out and About, Stay Safe (Stay Home)
The_Kid
'
'How did things ever get so far?' - Vito Corleone
SONG : naaah....
This is a man altered writing here.
U can never fully comprehend a catastraophe until it touches u in some way.
It's been a week since i last scribbled around here, the reason for absence was that i didn't feel like it, or like doing anything for all that matters, plus there's this ever-present exam looming around everything i do lately (i do a lot of things, except studying) and today i finally took my final mid-term, which gives me a break for a week until the encore - that being the FINAL eggzamz.
Well, as i said earlier, shit.
Let me tell u about something that shook me up a bit past week, i was bored, goddammit, but i didn't want this!
I recieved the news whilst innocently bystanding a casual family conversation in the living room, two of my relatives were discussing the kidnapping of someone, the usual Iraqi small-talk these days, pretending an interest, i asked about the name of the guy. they told me it was Haji Amir, and the weirdest thing happened.
I felt my heart sink to my underwear...something like the slight ruffle u get inside ur belly when an elevator going down stops.
Haji Amir! of all the people! they chose the nicest, most loving, caring person. Now i am not a religious dude per se...but i have enormous respect for these people and i wish i could get my act together like them if i could, and Haji Amir was one of the most charming, do-gooders i ever met. An old friend of my father's, i remember him when my dad used to take me out swimming with his buddies, Haji Amir was a hugely-built bearded man with an effacing smile and a tolerant nature, he spent his past few years building mosques. He also had the gift of charisma, and this is from a guy who only spoke to him five words in the past two years, these words were spoken after a Friday prayer, i told him how tough the preacher was and he just laughed, it was the most negligible small-talk ever, and yet i distinctly remember coming out with a big shine inside me and huge grin on my face. Have u ever met somebody who can make u feel very good abotu yourself and the world in general? He was like that, a pure man of God, many men of God are not pure, but Haji Amir was different, and some MOTHERFUCKERS abducted him from a mosque-building location and then butchered him after a few days of torture after picking up the money and running.
God damn it. Of all the people! i felt very shaken by the horrid reality of the world that day, everything felt so dark and for the first time i sensed the true extent to which this country is kcufed-up, forget the gasoline/electricity/water shortages, this country is going to pot...
now i am not an emotional person, i have learned through years of conditiong to my enironvement to harbor apathy and convey distance, but that day i discovered something that i already know, i am terribly sensitive inside....and the stark nakedness of the safana made my apathy unbearable...
my pillow had spots on them the next day.
they did this huge funeral for him and they buried him at Abu Haneefa, his black-rags can still be seen around Adhamiya, rest in peace, Amo Amir, u r in our hearts and prayers, this is God's will and we cannot do anything to it, This may be a blessing for u, now that u have passed through it all. Despair and sincere sadness overwhelms me even today as i write this.
I had several other things to tell u, but since we are discussing abductions, let me give u some more abduction stories. some of this may get me in trouble, but i don't care anymore.
THE ONE WITH THE 3ALAAS
This story is fresh, i know the guys in it.
a rich kid's son is usually seen toting around his mobile and laptop like he doesn't care somewhere around Baghdad, some people don't like that, so they give him the candy and ask the father to cough it up, the father coldly responds that he does not want the boy and that they may keep him.
the next day the the boy is released with apologies and even money thrown in for good measure.
nobody knows what happened until one day the mother of the father wrestles it out of her husband....it seems that the father had many connections, so after he hung up on them dudes he called up some contacts he had with Al-Mahdi's army (Saadir guys), these guys told him that in every major region of Baghdad there is a certain person known as El 3alaas (literally translated means : The Chewer) who is responsible for ticking off people suitable for abductions and informing interested gangs about them. a traffic control, a pimp, whatever, so the Mahdi people went to 3alaas and they beat the shit out of them until he told them which gang and the next day the kid is freed, courtesy of Moqtada & Co.
Don't u just love the weather these days?
There were cigarette burns on the boy's leg (that's what the money is for, anyone?) and he told his father that they used to give him capsala pills (which is the iraqi equivalent of drugs) and burn him with cigs, gangs have no fun.
THE ONE WITH THE PRAYER
Same thing, abduction of a kid. Kid tells gang he wants to pray, gang is amazed at his : YOU PRAY?!? they treat him like a queen and bring him Kebab for dinner before setting him free the next day.
Huh? maybe i'll try saying I WENT TO MECCA on my turn.
THE ONE WITH THE FATHER'S PRIDE
Gang abducts daughter. Calls up dad, Dad is one of these traditionalists, girl's-honor-is-like-a-candle kinda guy. He is rude to the gang and show no fear of them, calls em doggies and pimps and fuckers and offers no money for them screwing his daughter, he tells them to bring her here so he could kill her himself. The gang tries all sorts of stuff with him but to no avail, one day a gang member personally comes to the house and proclaims that the gang leader wants to meet with the father, the father says yes, the gang appears with all cars and fancy stuff and they bring the girl with them, the gangleader comes forward and he says to teh father that he swears that they have never ever touched a single hair of her and that he was impressed and he is turning her back with no money at all....one thing leads to another and everybody's a-laughing over tea.
This is a little out there, but the i know the guy who told it pretty good and he don't show off, maybe he highlighted some, plus it coulda happen if u r really lucky.
FAKE BOMBERS? Taxi driver is a brother of some guy at our university, he drives a '95 Daewoo Prince which is kinda fair deal for a car in Iraq, the fare consists of a bearded arab who kept telling him abotu the prophet and all that Gafaar Abassi talk when all of a sudden they wtiness an american tank...arab tells him to pull over there....taxi driver looks at him weirdly 'no, i can't'
'pull voer here and today u're having lunch with the prophet in heaven above'
'but i already had lunch!'
poor guy lets go of his car and runs, only to find out blocks later the arab guy driving his poor car back the route he came.....
Fun? Yeah, good ones to enjoy while we're in this dumpster hole...let's see what else? what about the one when they kidnap the guy and want money and slit his throat and throw him in the dumpster after bailing with the money???? a gazillion stories are like this, and this semi-war frame sure isn't helping either, it's pretty much a gangland aroudn here, nobody goes to the cops, all negotiations is settled with the gang. but u see there are a lot of dead Sunnis nowadays and it could get pretty ugly....
i have no hopes for this country anymore, i am feeling currently what both Neurotic Wife and Anarki13 have felt about in some eariler time at their respective blogs as well as countless other iraqis, this is so UNGODLY....it gets me so pissed off at everything that all i want to do....is....
well....why, go around and shoot stuff, naturally i'm an Iraqi cha moo hechi el hachi yaba? - so i guess i'd keep it shut and take it like a chicken
Unlike 13 who went and strummed Bob Dylan i was at a loss to put some westernized death song for my Haji Amir, oh i have plenty...Clapton (Tears In Heaven) and the overwrought Cobain/Leadbelly (Where Did You Sleep Last Night) but i feel the only thing that serves him right is a passage from the Holy Quran :
سلام بما صبرتم فنعم عقبى الدار
الله يبسط الرزق لمن يشاء و يقدر و فرحوا بالحياة الدنيا و ما الحيوة الدنيا في الاخرة الا متاع
We are of God, and to God we return.
Out and About, Stay Safe (Stay Home)
The_Kid
'
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Just A Quick Follow-Up
Hello children...
Well, i have several posts going parallel in my mind right now, but i haven't got the mood just about now so i'm going to give u a quick follow-up on my date....
two days ago, it was 12 AM and i was about to start my daily night-ritual, which involves falling asleep in front of the DVD watching F-R-I-E-N-D-S or whatever's on the TV (ain't sayin much), anyway, when suddenly i got the urge to do that most treasured late-night activity, a sacred tradition giddily carried on generation to the next, namely, prank calls.
After messing up my buddies real nice i got quickly bored and decided to send an SMS to the chick, i had this Jokes book ever since i can remember and i've memorized a few lines, and the line that i picked was nothing short of outrageously rude.
'The word of the day is LEGS, why don't we come back to my place and spread the word?'
Suicide, i know, but i assessed the situation and got the results as this : She's too risky to be with (she invited me to the fucking G-Zone for crap's sake to meet people), too unlikely and requires some effort on my part, so if i blow it quickly it would be better for both parts. Plus, if my judgement is correct, she will yield after a few apologizes and then we'd have something to talk about.
now if you knew me in person u probably know that i am very accident-prone, and the worst part of it all is that I always know what I'm doing is going to get me in trouble but I do it anyway, i sent my message and waited for hell to freeze over...
the response was really late, but it was just what i wanted, the usual HOW COULD U? shit...
anyway, i tried calling but she would refuse my calls.
The only thing left me to do is to get to speak to her, and once that is accomplished, she would be mine.
Next day, I switch my SIM card with my grandma and call her, i was going for pretending i'm one of the guys she used to work with, it was about time to see if my accent was going to work for real.
I dial-up, the phone rings for a few moments and i can feel my body growing a little intense, i go to the bathroom for privacy...
'Hello?'
'Hello....am i speaking to X please?' Very quickly in a businessman tone, or at least what i hoped it would be.
'Sorry?'
'amispeakingtoXplease?'
'uhhh....yes'
'Yes....sorry to bother you, my name is David Uterburger, i work for XYZ, i apologize again but i have some leftover reports here which i need your assistance in, so if u don't mind coming to the company tomorrow morning, say 10-ish?'
'Yeah...i think i can but i guess i have some plans to work out u know, visiting Karkuk and maybe a few of my relatives but i guess i can, couldn't u find anybody else?'
YES!
'No, sorry but u r the person for this particular job'
'Ok, what time do u want me to come?'
'10-ish, 10 o'clock tomorrow morning if u may'
'Ok, i will be there...what's your name again?'
'David...Uterburger'
'hard name'
'yeah......by the way,Kid says sorry' I didnt' say KID, i used my other nickname which 13 knows and hopefully won't spread around...
Silence
'What?'
'Kid says sorry'
'Kid from ZYX?'
'What ZYX?'
'the company he works for'
'no, not that kid, the kid u went out with two days ago'
'Oh, that kid, that stupid annoying Kid'
'yeah'
'How do u know him?' JEEZ! WHAT A DUMBASS, or my accent was very well, thankuverymuch
'Because I am him'
Silence....
i switch to arabic
'Ba3i, Ani Asaf walla chan shaka wallah'
From her tone, i already knew i was winning
'U stupid, annoying Kid, how could u? SPREAD THE WORD, u mother...'
'fucker?' she bursts out laughing
'Sorry, sorry i knew it was too harsh but..'
'Okay don't do it again'
'(laughs) u never knew me from Adam, right?'
'yeah, u r the right person for the job'
'I won't do it ever, so we're friends again?'
'Yeah sure u can call me anytime...'
'Okay, bye'
'bye'
and that, is that.
:)
Well, i have several posts going parallel in my mind right now, but i haven't got the mood just about now so i'm going to give u a quick follow-up on my date....
two days ago, it was 12 AM and i was about to start my daily night-ritual, which involves falling asleep in front of the DVD watching F-R-I-E-N-D-S or whatever's on the TV (ain't sayin much), anyway, when suddenly i got the urge to do that most treasured late-night activity, a sacred tradition giddily carried on generation to the next, namely, prank calls.
After messing up my buddies real nice i got quickly bored and decided to send an SMS to the chick, i had this Jokes book ever since i can remember and i've memorized a few lines, and the line that i picked was nothing short of outrageously rude.
'The word of the day is LEGS, why don't we come back to my place and spread the word?'
Suicide, i know, but i assessed the situation and got the results as this : She's too risky to be with (she invited me to the fucking G-Zone for crap's sake to meet people), too unlikely and requires some effort on my part, so if i blow it quickly it would be better for both parts. Plus, if my judgement is correct, she will yield after a few apologizes and then we'd have something to talk about.
now if you knew me in person u probably know that i am very accident-prone, and the worst part of it all is that I always know what I'm doing is going to get me in trouble but I do it anyway, i sent my message and waited for hell to freeze over...
the response was really late, but it was just what i wanted, the usual HOW COULD U? shit...
anyway, i tried calling but she would refuse my calls.
The only thing left me to do is to get to speak to her, and once that is accomplished, she would be mine.
Next day, I switch my SIM card with my grandma and call her, i was going for pretending i'm one of the guys she used to work with, it was about time to see if my accent was going to work for real.
I dial-up, the phone rings for a few moments and i can feel my body growing a little intense, i go to the bathroom for privacy...
'Hello?'
'Hello....am i speaking to X please?' Very quickly in a businessman tone, or at least what i hoped it would be.
'Sorry?'
'amispeakingtoXplease?'
'uhhh....yes'
'Yes....sorry to bother you, my name is David Uterburger, i work for XYZ, i apologize again but i have some leftover reports here which i need your assistance in, so if u don't mind coming to the company tomorrow morning, say 10-ish?'
'Yeah...i think i can but i guess i have some plans to work out u know, visiting Karkuk and maybe a few of my relatives but i guess i can, couldn't u find anybody else?'
YES!
'No, sorry but u r the person for this particular job'
'Ok, what time do u want me to come?'
'10-ish, 10 o'clock tomorrow morning if u may'
'Ok, i will be there...what's your name again?'
'David...Uterburger'
'hard name'
'yeah......by the way,Kid says sorry' I didnt' say KID, i used my other nickname which 13 knows and hopefully won't spread around...
Silence
'What?'
'Kid says sorry'
'Kid from ZYX?'
'What ZYX?'
'the company he works for'
'no, not that kid, the kid u went out with two days ago'
'Oh, that kid, that stupid annoying Kid'
'yeah'
'How do u know him?' JEEZ! WHAT A DUMBASS, or my accent was very well, thankuverymuch
'Because I am him'
Silence....
i switch to arabic
'Ba3i, Ani Asaf walla chan shaka wallah'
From her tone, i already knew i was winning
'U stupid, annoying Kid, how could u? SPREAD THE WORD, u mother...'
'fucker?' she bursts out laughing
'Sorry, sorry i knew it was too harsh but..'
'Okay don't do it again'
'(laughs) u never knew me from Adam, right?'
'yeah, u r the right person for the job'
'I won't do it ever, so we're friends again?'
'Yeah sure u can call me anytime...'
'Okay, bye'
'bye'
and that, is that.
:)
Monday, August 15, 2005
Weird Iraqi Online Date....
Huya...
this post was supposed to be a continuation of the previous musically-oriented episode but these require some effort on my part to write and arrange age-old theories in a circumcised version, so i'm gonna bail for the time being.
Anyway, 13 advised me to write sponatenosluy, so here goes...
SONG : Iron Maiden - The Nomad
This song contains one of my favorite solos of all time, this is the only solo that can physicallly bring wet tears to my eyes, it is so pretty and structrued. It has influenced me a great deal on the possibilties of mixing eastern melodies with heavy metal, this song is a little known album track from Brave New World (2000) my only favorite Maiden album, although i enjoy pretty much all the catalogue in general.
yesterday i went out on a date, it was the first date ever for me (i'm a loser, but hey i admit it) and also i don't think first dates come as weird as this...
i never was much of a romantic, too busy thinking about stuff...some people could drown in a vase of red flowers but for me it has always been tits and asses all the way along....i'm a pretty dawi guy lemme tell ya, i remember having my first chickie adventure at the nubile age of five, this chick's legs puzzled the heck out of me and i kept sliding balls under the couch she was sitting on so i could attempt a glimpse....to no use, in the end just as she was leaving house i quickly sniggled like the idiot i am and attempted a last-rites snapshot, all i could see was creepy white shit, i immediately hauled my ass upstaris and hid under the stairs, everybody (grandma, her & husband - DAMN!) had a moment of panicked silence.
Next week she asked me, i told her i was 'playin' hide and seek with my sis'...innocence is a beautiful thing.
Anyway, i am not going to delve into a full-fledged girlfest here and just scribble a bit about latest updates...i found this girl about a month ago through a website while i was in amman, i wrote to her just for kicks, hi became helllooooo and all of a sudden i was knee-deep into conversation, apparently she works for a foreign company, she was born in 1985, i always see eyebrows go up whenever i tell this to friends. Anyway, the girl was different than the usual, all of a sudden i found myself telling her about a sorry episode where i videotaped myself dancing naked with my guitar and, it was just so relaxed and casual and unnatural! i asked for her number and she gave it right away, however she always furiously heaved off all the clusmy pickup lines i managed throughout the phones and the IMs, we were (and still are, i guess) still casual friends, i had previously talked to iraqi girls online (and had got more than my share of troubles) but this was just, something else.
When i got back to iraq, i called her, and we set up a date but she stood me up (expected move), i didn't expect to see much of her afterwards, i still saw her online but talked to her less and less as time went on. She had introduced me to some of her friends (american, one a soldier - webcam proof) and one day they told me that she is had troubles cuz she ran away from home, her parents split up and she used to live with her granny but one day she just flipped! as a 20-yr-old iraqi male i had often thought of packing up all my shit and running away on numerous fights and occasions but there was always a connection to my family that denied all differences in the end, what kind of a girl is this?!? i was thinking that she'd probably fall in the wrong hands eventually, especially in times like these...but it was so out of context, she wasn't the usual brownskin porverty girl who would sell her pride for food, her manners was a string of the laughable upper-class VOY-cliches intertwined with an american teenage puberty stage...
i tried to reach her, her phone was locked.
to cut a long story short yesterday i find a misscall and i re-call to find that she had visited Kirkuk to see her mother and is now back in baghdad, she had quit working to continue college...i was feeling desolate so i rang up the date again and she immediately agreed, in her easygoing manner with anything.
We fixed a place in Mansoor, i went there with a couple of my buddies so in case she'd stand me up again i could have a ball with 'em...they were fidgety as all horny hormones and we went out with me tryin' hard to be neat but in the end teh fuckin' sand took care of that, both of my buddies looked like they were scouting nearby dustbins for leftovers, complete with the extended beards and torn trousers...i guess they did that just to piss me off in case she sees me with 'em...anyways, i went there, nobody in sight, she called shortly though and told me in a raspy voice to turn around the next corner and cross three intersections before turning right, and to buy her two phone cards.
What the?
i told her i had money for only one card, she said okay and byebyed, i figured hell i needed a card anytime, so it wasn't much of a loss anycase, i went nearby and bought a 10$ card after farting out a bit with my hormone-chllaneged colleagues...she called me and i told her i'm just around the corner, she asked about the card and told her i got it she said to put it in my phone and call her...
i felt in a bad spy movie, as if i passed some sort of intricate test...well to quote a wiseman once said : fuck the world. i shrugged and steered my Renault-12 (heh, heh, try to figure out that one, Billy) towards the destination, all of a sudden the place become hush-hushy and quiet, perfect for kidnapping, raping and all other fun games, my friends bailed at this point, i got lost and eventually called her, she directed a bit and finally i got it.
i reached the place, it was blank and had no expressions, extended high wall.
several gadgets outilned the wall, i ringed something and then fidgeted over what looked like a speakerphone. A harsh voice said : 'Who is this?'
'It's me, you told me to just come over here right (she couldn't guide me correctly and she sought the help of who i hoped was this striking chap), u're Dafdoof, moo? (name is fictional, sure as shit)'
'Do u work for El Mujahedeen' curtly and decsivie, his voice sounded like someone breaking pencils over the edge of a table repeatedly....whack
'Ha ha...no'
'Do u have a gun' Whack...
'no'
'step backward for the camera' i did so.
the door lazily opened, i was greeted by the muzzle of a shotgun, then a smiling black man, to the left of him was a tall brownskin and behind them stood my girl.
i smiled smirkly, somehow i expected this shit.
i greeted everyone and to my surprise she just took me and and we left, just me and her.
How could she trust me? it felt like a draem somehow, she told me everything about the companies and her family and how she works with americans, for all i know i could easily have fixed a date with some bearded fellas who would've been more pleased to slit her throat after raping her and collecting some good ransom money as well (this was in fact suggested to me by a friend, my eyes lit with wonder, no wonder iraq is fucked up! even the people u think u know most!!!)
i figrued either foolishness from her part or there's a catch somewhere. i didn't want to know, this was just out of boredom, and it was just for today.
i walked her around until 9:30, it was a pretty quiet date, she had already formed the idea that i was funny and she laughed at everything i said, which was very little, i was just prodding most of the time cautiously, i didn't hit on her ever (aside from a casual remark about her scent) and mostly listened to how everybody at work hits on her...anyway i retruned her via taxi someplace where a guy from her relative side could pick her up, the guy greeted me and didn't seem at all nervous from me, but he sure looked like any other honor-pride combo of iraqi mustache i've seen!!! it was a weird day, my preconceptions with iraqi soceity were somehow left-center...everything was wrong for me, people were wooing everywhere we went, men are truly animals, we'd walk into a store and all the salesman would fix their fuckin' eyes on her, seeing me staring at them, they'd shy away and sometimes not...fuckin' animals.
i had already seen her before, but it's always something else to watch a person in full-flesh mode for the first time, especially one u've known for a considerable period of time and had already imagained his physique all by yourself.
She was pretty, white, what struck first and foremost was her gray expressionless eyes that looked too old and too wise for the dimensions implied by her figure, age and speech. it was the eyes of a mother, hell, a grandmother, it added mystique.
she walked shoulder high, like a patrol officer.
Today i woke up and went to college and returned my routine, we belong to a social classifciation called probably 3tall Bataal, which is basically a bunch of guys who talk about women all day long and never talk to women at all.
Well, i don't want to get mixed up with her too much, she's dangerous to be with, so i guess i wouldn't repeat what i did too often, there are other factors that i couldn't write about, such as the jealousy of the ameircan soldier for some reason and how he tried to sabotage our relationship. For now she's just a friend, a unique friend, if you may...
well, this was too long and distorted, i am sorry but hey that's sponatoneity...
Out & About...
this post was supposed to be a continuation of the previous musically-oriented episode but these require some effort on my part to write and arrange age-old theories in a circumcised version, so i'm gonna bail for the time being.
Anyway, 13 advised me to write sponatenosluy, so here goes...
SONG : Iron Maiden - The Nomad
This song contains one of my favorite solos of all time, this is the only solo that can physicallly bring wet tears to my eyes, it is so pretty and structrued. It has influenced me a great deal on the possibilties of mixing eastern melodies with heavy metal, this song is a little known album track from Brave New World (2000) my only favorite Maiden album, although i enjoy pretty much all the catalogue in general.
yesterday i went out on a date, it was the first date ever for me (i'm a loser, but hey i admit it) and also i don't think first dates come as weird as this...
i never was much of a romantic, too busy thinking about stuff...some people could drown in a vase of red flowers but for me it has always been tits and asses all the way along....i'm a pretty dawi guy lemme tell ya, i remember having my first chickie adventure at the nubile age of five, this chick's legs puzzled the heck out of me and i kept sliding balls under the couch she was sitting on so i could attempt a glimpse....to no use, in the end just as she was leaving house i quickly sniggled like the idiot i am and attempted a last-rites snapshot, all i could see was creepy white shit, i immediately hauled my ass upstaris and hid under the stairs, everybody (grandma, her & husband - DAMN!) had a moment of panicked silence.
Next week she asked me, i told her i was 'playin' hide and seek with my sis'...innocence is a beautiful thing.
Anyway, i am not going to delve into a full-fledged girlfest here and just scribble a bit about latest updates...i found this girl about a month ago through a website while i was in amman, i wrote to her just for kicks, hi became helllooooo and all of a sudden i was knee-deep into conversation, apparently she works for a foreign company, she was born in 1985, i always see eyebrows go up whenever i tell this to friends. Anyway, the girl was different than the usual, all of a sudden i found myself telling her about a sorry episode where i videotaped myself dancing naked with my guitar and, it was just so relaxed and casual and unnatural! i asked for her number and she gave it right away, however she always furiously heaved off all the clusmy pickup lines i managed throughout the phones and the IMs, we were (and still are, i guess) still casual friends, i had previously talked to iraqi girls online (and had got more than my share of troubles) but this was just, something else.
When i got back to iraq, i called her, and we set up a date but she stood me up (expected move), i didn't expect to see much of her afterwards, i still saw her online but talked to her less and less as time went on. She had introduced me to some of her friends (american, one a soldier - webcam proof) and one day they told me that she is had troubles cuz she ran away from home, her parents split up and she used to live with her granny but one day she just flipped! as a 20-yr-old iraqi male i had often thought of packing up all my shit and running away on numerous fights and occasions but there was always a connection to my family that denied all differences in the end, what kind of a girl is this?!? i was thinking that she'd probably fall in the wrong hands eventually, especially in times like these...but it was so out of context, she wasn't the usual brownskin porverty girl who would sell her pride for food, her manners was a string of the laughable upper-class VOY-cliches intertwined with an american teenage puberty stage...
i tried to reach her, her phone was locked.
to cut a long story short yesterday i find a misscall and i re-call to find that she had visited Kirkuk to see her mother and is now back in baghdad, she had quit working to continue college...i was feeling desolate so i rang up the date again and she immediately agreed, in her easygoing manner with anything.
We fixed a place in Mansoor, i went there with a couple of my buddies so in case she'd stand me up again i could have a ball with 'em...they were fidgety as all horny hormones and we went out with me tryin' hard to be neat but in the end teh fuckin' sand took care of that, both of my buddies looked like they were scouting nearby dustbins for leftovers, complete with the extended beards and torn trousers...i guess they did that just to piss me off in case she sees me with 'em...anyways, i went there, nobody in sight, she called shortly though and told me in a raspy voice to turn around the next corner and cross three intersections before turning right, and to buy her two phone cards.
What the?
i told her i had money for only one card, she said okay and byebyed, i figured hell i needed a card anytime, so it wasn't much of a loss anycase, i went nearby and bought a 10$ card after farting out a bit with my hormone-chllaneged colleagues...she called me and i told her i'm just around the corner, she asked about the card and told her i got it she said to put it in my phone and call her...
i felt in a bad spy movie, as if i passed some sort of intricate test...well to quote a wiseman once said : fuck the world. i shrugged and steered my Renault-12 (heh, heh, try to figure out that one, Billy) towards the destination, all of a sudden the place become hush-hushy and quiet, perfect for kidnapping, raping and all other fun games, my friends bailed at this point, i got lost and eventually called her, she directed a bit and finally i got it.
i reached the place, it was blank and had no expressions, extended high wall.
several gadgets outilned the wall, i ringed something and then fidgeted over what looked like a speakerphone. A harsh voice said : 'Who is this?'
'It's me, you told me to just come over here right (she couldn't guide me correctly and she sought the help of who i hoped was this striking chap), u're Dafdoof, moo? (name is fictional, sure as shit)'
'Do u work for El Mujahedeen' curtly and decsivie, his voice sounded like someone breaking pencils over the edge of a table repeatedly....whack
'Ha ha...no'
'Do u have a gun' Whack...
'no'
'step backward for the camera' i did so.
the door lazily opened, i was greeted by the muzzle of a shotgun, then a smiling black man, to the left of him was a tall brownskin and behind them stood my girl.
i smiled smirkly, somehow i expected this shit.
i greeted everyone and to my surprise she just took me and and we left, just me and her.
How could she trust me? it felt like a draem somehow, she told me everything about the companies and her family and how she works with americans, for all i know i could easily have fixed a date with some bearded fellas who would've been more pleased to slit her throat after raping her and collecting some good ransom money as well (this was in fact suggested to me by a friend, my eyes lit with wonder, no wonder iraq is fucked up! even the people u think u know most!!!)
i figrued either foolishness from her part or there's a catch somewhere. i didn't want to know, this was just out of boredom, and it was just for today.
i walked her around until 9:30, it was a pretty quiet date, she had already formed the idea that i was funny and she laughed at everything i said, which was very little, i was just prodding most of the time cautiously, i didn't hit on her ever (aside from a casual remark about her scent) and mostly listened to how everybody at work hits on her...anyway i retruned her via taxi someplace where a guy from her relative side could pick her up, the guy greeted me and didn't seem at all nervous from me, but he sure looked like any other honor-pride combo of iraqi mustache i've seen!!! it was a weird day, my preconceptions with iraqi soceity were somehow left-center...everything was wrong for me, people were wooing everywhere we went, men are truly animals, we'd walk into a store and all the salesman would fix their fuckin' eyes on her, seeing me staring at them, they'd shy away and sometimes not...fuckin' animals.
i had already seen her before, but it's always something else to watch a person in full-flesh mode for the first time, especially one u've known for a considerable period of time and had already imagained his physique all by yourself.
She was pretty, white, what struck first and foremost was her gray expressionless eyes that looked too old and too wise for the dimensions implied by her figure, age and speech. it was the eyes of a mother, hell, a grandmother, it added mystique.
she walked shoulder high, like a patrol officer.
Today i woke up and went to college and returned my routine, we belong to a social classifciation called probably 3tall Bataal, which is basically a bunch of guys who talk about women all day long and never talk to women at all.
Well, i don't want to get mixed up with her too much, she's dangerous to be with, so i guess i wouldn't repeat what i did too often, there are other factors that i couldn't write about, such as the jealousy of the ameircan soldier for some reason and how he tried to sabotage our relationship. For now she's just a friend, a unique friend, if you may...
well, this was too long and distorted, i am sorry but hey that's sponatoneity...
Out & About...
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Youth Of Iraq, Episode 1
Today i am going to discuss the bacterial existence of rock music in the underground iraqi scene, my good friend Anarki13 has already given a brief biography of the only fingerable band, Cascuda, and its relationship to the supernode of the iraqi music scene, Saad Zai, in a recent post at his blog, it's very informative, check it out and come back here.
My main point is thus :
Iraqi metal music sucks.
What i would like to discuss here is a more inside look at this confused, huddled mess of a community, as well as the role of metal music in the arab world in general, and my own selfish little ambitions and fantasies corresponding to music as an art form that reflects emotion, erm, yeah...in hope that my prespective may complement the one of 13's, giving in overall a general rough sketch of the whole shibang.
SONG : Audioslave - Number 1 Zero
One particular trick i like in a movie/book/song : Initial restrain followed by a great twist of events make the twist itself that much more powerful, one of my favorite song strcutures is a slow lazy song that sounds boring at first but suddenly gets spilled out in the middle by quite possibly one of the finest riffs i ever heard (a la Bleeding Me or Karma Police)Cornell, treasured for his ability to choose the exact words and vocal melodies to transcribe to the music, is on autopilot here, still he manages one of his trademakrs : moaning lines of
submission mostly throughout the verse, 'i will be the dog/be the little bird in your straw and sing you a song', however, by the 2nd bridge, sour signs of strength comes up : 'Just when you think u left me blinded, I will be creeping right up behind, and if I need to, I will keep you in the corner of my eye', what immediately follows is a primal explosion of the preverse triumph of an underdog, a single riff that gives the song a reason for existence. Tom Morello's best riff, hands down...Out Of Exile is way better than the ramshackle meat'n'potatoes debut, but the band still has some way to go.
Guitar Radih...
From the land that gave the world the wheel, the code of laws and the bortokala there is an ugly feedback sound driven by people that look like just me and you...17 year olds locked up in their rooms performing holy headbanging rituals, the community of heavy music in iraq could be approximated in say....200 hundred people max.
The main players are these :
1. Saad Zai :born in 1950s, a frail, small-built man with a disease (kidney?) is also the best guitarist in Iraq, (Anarki claims middle east, but dude, come on! what do u know???), praciting guitar since the early 80s, Zai is a currently a music teacher, i have taken 2 lectures so far there, his place is an exact reflection of the iraqi music scene : a small dark room with lots of electricity wiring for the several sources of electricity (natinonal and not), a perpetual mess of guitar gadgets, a dirty paino upon which heaves of stuff can be located, writings on the walls, an obscure MESS...but amongst it all stands a virtuoso, he had written a number of songs for an album he recorded on Cool Edit software (Death Wishes, i have a copy) as well as being probably the main reason for the existense of the band Accrasscida....single, christain, good-natured, humorous, hospitable, but u cannot feel that he is misplaced, he should be somewhere else.
2. Cascuda (real name : Accrasscida i think, but we just call 'em Kaskoda), did about six or five live gigs, they are :
1. I CAN'T REMEMBER WHEN OR WHERE
2. Al Orphali Hall, outside in a garden, this gig is taped, u can get a copy from Saad Zai, 3 CDs, bootleg quality...they sing songs such as 'Mission Impossible' by Bizkit and a few originals
'Psycho', 'The Youth Of Iraq' etc etc...(2001?)
3. Al Ribatt Gig, i attended this one. (Spring 2002) they sang covers of Metallica 'Forwhom' , Slayer 'Seasons/I Hate You combo' and SoaD 'Aerials' as well as the nameless originals
4. Al Hindaya Gig [i think] (September 2004)
5. Al Sayed Hunting Club, (October 2004)which they left midway through due to conflicts with the club's management who allowed no headbanging after witnessing some thirty people headbanging to For Whom The Bell Tolls, i was there too.
6. Al Fanar Gig, free gig, small. (July 2005)
Now, here is my assessment of the situation :
The iraqi music scene, if it continues in this direction, shall suck infintely and without question. the music released are just stupid, generic and done by people who play the music but don't know how to understand it nor present it. (Don't look at me, I just listen)
Here is an excerpt from an interview with Waleed R, ex-vocalist (currently in Canda) and easily the most dominant member of the band :
Waleed: We sing songs about real stuff, like death, stuff we see everyday, not fake stuff like love songs.
Har...
This is the exact goddamn problem with iraqi metalheads (oh please, i feel so lame saying iraqi metalheads, as if they are widespread) in general, they all think they know something u don't....a glimpse of the supernatural, or poser-preppy-shit, nose way up in the altitude of flourscent lights, as a matter of fact, the kid's opinion is presicely the immature, stupid, generic, laughable portarayl in which he humiliated himself during his memorable appearance at the MBC2's programme eariler...once i remember me & 13 talking about that, he summed up by saying in response to my allegation that Rabiea had the fire and wildness to lead, 'sure, but we don't need an ass'....i imagined Rabieaa's body equipped with a big butt and when he takled the two buttchecks will unfold in a series of...uhhh...well, it wasn't far from truth, actually.Waleed Rabiea portrays an arabic youth whose identity has been completely washed away by western values, as a matter of fact, 'reality' of what happens in iraq is as far away from his songs as [weak metaphor here] and by jove! , u just don't see the images of a Saddam Hussein's execution into a death metal rant, this state of mind, in my opinion, is exactly what should be avoided, it is the essence of poserism, it is not real, it is PATHETIC.
Give him credit though, the kid has ambition (Scuda's actually dream of Ozzfest! HAR!!!!), and on stage he is the only person with any presence, banging and not caring about whatever anybody thinks about him.
CULTURE SHOCK
I am at Accrasscida's Al Ribaat gig in early spring, 2002. I study hard for my baclaorea exams and they're talking about an upcoming war, u could smell it on the streets and yet here i am alongside say 100 hundred in a half-full hall, 99 of these are men, mind ya...and all of a sudden, dark arpeggios fill the room, music comes pouring out, before plunging into a series of death metal songs (one of which, The Youth Of Iraq, is a pro-Saddam song, but nobody in the audience knew that, he might as well be singing about the ingredients of a well-cooked Dowlmah), I suddenly get struck with the feeling, which I am sure almost 90% of the crowd shares, what the hell am i doing here? it is so un-cultural?!? so unreal!!!? SO POSING, i gotta go
home and worry about poverty and Saddam and exams and drink tea and go around drviing a car aimlessly pretending to look at el heteet or some such iraqi stuff, Fog El Nakhal Fog....i look around me, and it is easy to see the same thing flowing through the crowd like static, nobody is willing to lose their cultural identity, every now and then every guy around would try headbanging for acouple minutes, but there is a slight microsecond that suggest his incompatablity, everybody knows this, even the band, who just stand and play, except for Rabiea, who is the only guy with the willingness to lose it all for a deathmetal chant and the glorious sound of guitar (which was almost muted throughout the entire concert, Zai personally told me that nobody in Iraq knows how to set up a guitar live)
Why is this?
this is not culture clash, this is culture shock.
To sum up why, it is safe and a bit pretentious to say that the artform displayed was not sufficient enough for the recipients to lose the cultural identification, it wasn't all-encompassing, at their best the crowd cheered mostly due to the bassist's rendition of 'Last Of The Mohicans' because it is the one most identifible with the cultural unit, the cheers were hollow, they weren't real ; still, they were there cuz they were an iraqi band, their peers, the band was adequate, acceptable, don't get me wrong and like said earlier, they reflected the generic boneheaded metal stupidity expected from 19-year-olds obsessed with sex and death well. Their best known song, 'Psycho' is a mediocre attempt at a Judas Priest song sung with a Manowar attitude
'Psycho's on the run, Psycho's on the loose'
real stuff?
The band suffered the same pressure as well, they weren't into their music too much to make the audience let loose in the same infectious manner, they were as reserved and cautious as any jerk so basically music was huh-huh, peer pressure, etc etc....it's just by-the-numbers, really.
For music like this to prosper, its creators should possess the mentality to interpret their art to the reciepents by more INTELILGENT methods, both musically and lyrically. This will be explored later.
IRAQI METAL.
the above is a two-word sentence, for an iraqi metal to survive, they would have to focus on one word of the couplet, and forget the other infinitely
I.e. they could either focus on being IRAQI, selling out, using the publicity that they get from current media dissection of the land to get ahead, still they won't get so far if they don't have something different once they make the spotlight.
2. Or they could be metal, totally dropping any identification with their own origins, if they want to appeal to a western market, the result will be a complete loss of potential, the possibilties for a band from iraq could have dozens of interesting elements to them, if in the right hands, a band with talent could express the tragic stories and presicely the correct approximation of the color of their country WITHOUT sounding preppy, and by god, we have already a dozen of faceless metal bands, and if so, they have a very hard time going up the ladder.
Ahem, erm....well...
Hereby I am going to lay down some of the thoughts that I have kept confined to my own about errr....a standard by which a band formulated in Iraq, or the arabic world in general, may actually attain some respect....
You are transported by a whimsical bolt of my mind into my Dreamscape....there are two doors, one to the right, pale yellow with dents and the other with a cool black sheen...before u have the opportunity to enter my perverse erotic universe i quickly spank....usher you to the left, my musical ambitions door. here I am going to say stuff that has grown into my own insecure, improbable parallel universe, I am going to sound big and in-the-know, but pardon me, it is my fantasy after all, i have the right, i am THE CREATOR.
I just wanted you to understand that...
Scandivian Metal, New Wave Of British Heavy Metal....Would U Expect so See Jalghi Metal up there sometime?
To Be Continued....I gotta get me the Zs!
Out & About...
The Kid
My main point is thus :
Iraqi metal music sucks.
What i would like to discuss here is a more inside look at this confused, huddled mess of a community, as well as the role of metal music in the arab world in general, and my own selfish little ambitions and fantasies corresponding to music as an art form that reflects emotion, erm, yeah...in hope that my prespective may complement the one of 13's, giving in overall a general rough sketch of the whole shibang.
SONG : Audioslave - Number 1 Zero
One particular trick i like in a movie/book/song : Initial restrain followed by a great twist of events make the twist itself that much more powerful, one of my favorite song strcutures is a slow lazy song that sounds boring at first but suddenly gets spilled out in the middle by quite possibly one of the finest riffs i ever heard (a la Bleeding Me or Karma Police)Cornell, treasured for his ability to choose the exact words and vocal melodies to transcribe to the music, is on autopilot here, still he manages one of his trademakrs : moaning lines of
submission mostly throughout the verse, 'i will be the dog/be the little bird in your straw and sing you a song', however, by the 2nd bridge, sour signs of strength comes up : 'Just when you think u left me blinded, I will be creeping right up behind, and if I need to, I will keep you in the corner of my eye', what immediately follows is a primal explosion of the preverse triumph of an underdog, a single riff that gives the song a reason for existence. Tom Morello's best riff, hands down...Out Of Exile is way better than the ramshackle meat'n'potatoes debut, but the band still has some way to go.
Guitar Radih...
From the land that gave the world the wheel, the code of laws and the bortokala there is an ugly feedback sound driven by people that look like just me and you...17 year olds locked up in their rooms performing holy headbanging rituals, the community of heavy music in iraq could be approximated in say....200 hundred people max.
The main players are these :
1. Saad Zai :born in 1950s, a frail, small-built man with a disease (kidney?) is also the best guitarist in Iraq, (Anarki claims middle east, but dude, come on! what do u know???), praciting guitar since the early 80s, Zai is a currently a music teacher, i have taken 2 lectures so far there, his place is an exact reflection of the iraqi music scene : a small dark room with lots of electricity wiring for the several sources of electricity (natinonal and not), a perpetual mess of guitar gadgets, a dirty paino upon which heaves of stuff can be located, writings on the walls, an obscure MESS...but amongst it all stands a virtuoso, he had written a number of songs for an album he recorded on Cool Edit software (Death Wishes, i have a copy) as well as being probably the main reason for the existense of the band Accrasscida....single, christain, good-natured, humorous, hospitable, but u cannot feel that he is misplaced, he should be somewhere else.
2. Cascuda (real name : Accrasscida i think, but we just call 'em Kaskoda), did about six or five live gigs, they are :
1. I CAN'T REMEMBER WHEN OR WHERE
2. Al Orphali Hall, outside in a garden, this gig is taped, u can get a copy from Saad Zai, 3 CDs, bootleg quality...they sing songs such as 'Mission Impossible' by Bizkit and a few originals
'Psycho', 'The Youth Of Iraq' etc etc...(2001?)
3. Al Ribatt Gig, i attended this one. (Spring 2002) they sang covers of Metallica 'Forwhom' , Slayer 'Seasons/I Hate You combo' and SoaD 'Aerials' as well as the nameless originals
4. Al Hindaya Gig [i think] (September 2004)
5. Al Sayed Hunting Club, (October 2004)which they left midway through due to conflicts with the club's management who allowed no headbanging after witnessing some thirty people headbanging to For Whom The Bell Tolls, i was there too.
6. Al Fanar Gig, free gig, small. (July 2005)
Now, here is my assessment of the situation :
The iraqi music scene, if it continues in this direction, shall suck infintely and without question. the music released are just stupid, generic and done by people who play the music but don't know how to understand it nor present it. (Don't look at me, I just listen)
Here is an excerpt from an interview with Waleed R, ex-vocalist (currently in Canda) and easily the most dominant member of the band :
Waleed: We sing songs about real stuff, like death, stuff we see everyday, not fake stuff like love songs.
Har...
This is the exact goddamn problem with iraqi metalheads (oh please, i feel so lame saying iraqi metalheads, as if they are widespread) in general, they all think they know something u don't....a glimpse of the supernatural, or poser-preppy-shit, nose way up in the altitude of flourscent lights, as a matter of fact, the kid's opinion is presicely the immature, stupid, generic, laughable portarayl in which he humiliated himself during his memorable appearance at the MBC2's programme eariler...once i remember me & 13 talking about that, he summed up by saying in response to my allegation that Rabiea had the fire and wildness to lead, 'sure, but we don't need an ass'....i imagined Rabieaa's body equipped with a big butt and when he takled the two buttchecks will unfold in a series of...uhhh...well, it wasn't far from truth, actually.Waleed Rabiea portrays an arabic youth whose identity has been completely washed away by western values, as a matter of fact, 'reality' of what happens in iraq is as far away from his songs as [weak metaphor here] and by jove! , u just don't see the images of a Saddam Hussein's execution into a death metal rant, this state of mind, in my opinion, is exactly what should be avoided, it is the essence of poserism, it is not real, it is PATHETIC.
Give him credit though, the kid has ambition (Scuda's actually dream of Ozzfest! HAR!!!!), and on stage he is the only person with any presence, banging and not caring about whatever anybody thinks about him.
CULTURE SHOCK
I am at Accrasscida's Al Ribaat gig in early spring, 2002. I study hard for my baclaorea exams and they're talking about an upcoming war, u could smell it on the streets and yet here i am alongside say 100 hundred in a half-full hall, 99 of these are men, mind ya...and all of a sudden, dark arpeggios fill the room, music comes pouring out, before plunging into a series of death metal songs (one of which, The Youth Of Iraq, is a pro-Saddam song, but nobody in the audience knew that, he might as well be singing about the ingredients of a well-cooked Dowlmah), I suddenly get struck with the feeling, which I am sure almost 90% of the crowd shares, what the hell am i doing here? it is so un-cultural?!? so unreal!!!? SO POSING, i gotta go
home and worry about poverty and Saddam and exams and drink tea and go around drviing a car aimlessly pretending to look at el heteet or some such iraqi stuff, Fog El Nakhal Fog....i look around me, and it is easy to see the same thing flowing through the crowd like static, nobody is willing to lose their cultural identity, every now and then every guy around would try headbanging for acouple minutes, but there is a slight microsecond that suggest his incompatablity, everybody knows this, even the band, who just stand and play, except for Rabiea, who is the only guy with the willingness to lose it all for a deathmetal chant and the glorious sound of guitar (which was almost muted throughout the entire concert, Zai personally told me that nobody in Iraq knows how to set up a guitar live)
Why is this?
this is not culture clash, this is culture shock.
To sum up why, it is safe and a bit pretentious to say that the artform displayed was not sufficient enough for the recipients to lose the cultural identification, it wasn't all-encompassing, at their best the crowd cheered mostly due to the bassist's rendition of 'Last Of The Mohicans' because it is the one most identifible with the cultural unit, the cheers were hollow, they weren't real ; still, they were there cuz they were an iraqi band, their peers, the band was adequate, acceptable, don't get me wrong and like said earlier, they reflected the generic boneheaded metal stupidity expected from 19-year-olds obsessed with sex and death well. Their best known song, 'Psycho' is a mediocre attempt at a Judas Priest song sung with a Manowar attitude
'Psycho's on the run, Psycho's on the loose'
real stuff?
The band suffered the same pressure as well, they weren't into their music too much to make the audience let loose in the same infectious manner, they were as reserved and cautious as any jerk so basically music was huh-huh, peer pressure, etc etc....it's just by-the-numbers, really.
For music like this to prosper, its creators should possess the mentality to interpret their art to the reciepents by more INTELILGENT methods, both musically and lyrically. This will be explored later.
IRAQI METAL.
the above is a two-word sentence, for an iraqi metal to survive, they would have to focus on one word of the couplet, and forget the other infinitely
I.e. they could either focus on being IRAQI, selling out, using the publicity that they get from current media dissection of the land to get ahead, still they won't get so far if they don't have something different once they make the spotlight.
2. Or they could be metal, totally dropping any identification with their own origins, if they want to appeal to a western market, the result will be a complete loss of potential, the possibilties for a band from iraq could have dozens of interesting elements to them, if in the right hands, a band with talent could express the tragic stories and presicely the correct approximation of the color of their country WITHOUT sounding preppy, and by god, we have already a dozen of faceless metal bands, and if so, they have a very hard time going up the ladder.
Ahem, erm....well...
Hereby I am going to lay down some of the thoughts that I have kept confined to my own about errr....a standard by which a band formulated in Iraq, or the arabic world in general, may actually attain some respect....
You are transported by a whimsical bolt of my mind into my Dreamscape....there are two doors, one to the right, pale yellow with dents and the other with a cool black sheen...before u have the opportunity to enter my perverse erotic universe i quickly spank....usher you to the left, my musical ambitions door. here I am going to say stuff that has grown into my own insecure, improbable parallel universe, I am going to sound big and in-the-know, but pardon me, it is my fantasy after all, i have the right, i am THE CREATOR.
I just wanted you to understand that...
Scandivian Metal, New Wave Of British Heavy Metal....Would U Expect so See Jalghi Metal up there sometime?
To Be Continued....I gotta get me the Zs!
Out & About...
The Kid
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