Tinkerbell smothers.

عرض وطلب

2010-09-14T15:31:00.001-07:00

تتضائل المساحات المشتركة
وتستمر فى الانكماش والتقلص
فتبقى متفرج عن بعد، فاشل أولى تنفس
وتستسلم لألم المعدة الناتج عن الفراق
ولكن نعلم جميعا أن اختلاف الاتجاهات
يفسد كل ذكريات النبيذ والويسكى وأفيهات العشرين
كما نعلم أيضا أن مع انتهاء تاريخ صلاحية الألفة
يأتى تجار آخرين لفترينة أمك

Change is a beautiful stranger.

2010-08-21T16:19:00.000-07:00

I now tell mad thrashing cab drivers to slow down.
It's like, for the first time in 24 long years,
There is finally something to look forward to.

بلوك بارتى

2010-07-17T08:16:00.000-07:00

نبيذ أحمر من بلدان أوروبية وغير أوروبية..
لم أذهب الى أى منهم.. أو أى من جيرانهم..
لثلاث ليالى وأيام.. متصلين بخيط من الذكريات..
سمكه لا يتعدى شعيراتى الحاضنة لبالوعة البانيو..
عشر أشخاص.. يعرفون اسمى ثلاثى.. ورباعى..
ولكنى لا أمضى معهم أكثر عمقا من ذلك..

لا أستمتع بالنبيذ مع من يعرفوننى جيدا..

بيضتين من مصر

2010-07-03T14:55:00.000-07:00

Here I am, back to the womb where I came from. Sitting

in a dark room on a bed with speakers filling up the only

vacancy that separates the world from my ears…

wondering why everyone here wants me to be miserable

because I am single, while I wonder why every single

everyone doesn't realize I am miserable because I am here.

حكمة

2010-06-27T03:45:00.000-07:00

كل الفرص تأتى مرة واحدة.. فتأتى أيضا متعة عدم انتهازها..

Routine Retirement of a Replicant.

2010-04-25T13:57:00.000-07:00

I love you much.

I don't remember the number of slaps both of my parents gave me, neither collectively nor separately. For they were many. I don't even recall any with despair, nor grief, nor self-pity. I don't think anyone who wasn't beaten by their parents is any better than I am. They just had it differently - not necessarily better. I love both of my parents, much.

I get a heartbreak every time I know you are fucking her. I get a reel of pretty good porn running through my mind of the ways you do it. The best porn I've seen. The only porn I've seen. Walk out on me, dear. As emo as that sounds, break my heart over and over again. One day, we're gonna wake up and you'll find no more whole pieces to break, I'll find no heart to feel the knife twist either.

I don't know much.

On nights like these, I realize I am only a Replicant. Copy pasting all my experiences over and over again, never with wisdom, always with pain. But again, I don't blame you, dear. You are just a face among the masses, a clown among a circus, a heartless in any odyssey. I was cursed by a high waist, putting pressure on my stomach making me throw up frequently at your memory. Also making my lungs smaller, less healthy and covered by a paint of French bosom that doesn't go with the rest of my Egyptian body. I was also cursed by a fish memory, one that makes me run to you at your sight by mere coincidence after you've made a vow to fuck me over. I have to live with those. Those are my own problems.

I pray to the forces above, below and even within, though. I pray I remember not to let my guard down. If I never let my guard down, never to expect nor trust, I'll just live through everything like I lived through a parent's slap. Mechanically. Mechanically. I want you dear, mechanically. If I gain back this capability that I lost over the years with silly hope that anything can get better, I'll never have another break not after a million parent slaps, not after being kicked out of a grey Polo belonging to those you let your guard down in front, not after you fuck her sideways, 69, back or front, porn soft or gore.

I never look at you.

How am I looking on your petri dish, you who pushed down the first domino? Am I squirming in pain or is my faking pleasantness getting to you? I don't mind your silver laboratory utensils as you move me underneath the transparency of your microscope lens. Just don't poke my eyes out often with your rubbing in. Pushes through the upper half are perfectly fine for now. But again.. those won't keep a constant supply seeping out of the ooze of my worm body.

Tell me about results, dear. Does the anger and successfully contained grudge give you a hard-on? Or does the strength I wake up in after each of your experiments turn you on more? Feed me in. I can help you. I can help you fake the remaining years of your life. Shall never let down the picturesque I weave you, year after year, that of a grass greener on my side to you, that of something I can never get to me.

The first of a million pushes.

علقة الجنينة

2010-04-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

Killing the inside out

All my organs are electrified. I look at them in any mirror and they’re just hung there, rich of electric current webs– that which used to be my blood veins. I particularly have a beautifully lit liver, with a mesh of optic-laser-like wrap. How lit they are making a silhouette of a finely tuned skeleton.

Purgatory is the finest shape of Christianity

The only man who can make a woman happy is unhappy. He is going back and forth through his mind. He is wretched to the extent that he asks me for advice. Like a hermit, he lives in a bleak desert with dark haired Filipino nurses, haunted skyscrapers and a father whose only deed is the half an hour he took to be his father. But even there, as poetic and unreal he is, he manages to weave details of life out of those ghosts.

Hated by the Sun

There is a garden. By day, it has all sorts of plants I don’t know the Latin names for. Even though it’s hated by the sun, it still manages to look beautiful from afar in the light. The lights suck you in. You know there are four militia standing on the top of the four trees, found at the four corners of the round garden. Thirty two naked men are blindfolded, running around the garden as the militia whip the skin away from their flesh. The garden, unlike the Sun, is Sisyphean; the light seems to get weary and fade away, yet the whipping continues…

398 slaps received

Not everything that happens needs time. Time makes it easy to prove something existed or happened. Elapsed is an art and history is the masterpiece. But every time I am pulled into this pitch black room and I am slapped by hands that can’t be that powerful and made of human material at the same time, I know time is a luxury for those who can keep track of it. The slaps are followed with an angry monotonic gush asking me to man up. I ask how. I scream how. I burst in tears. I burst in blood. All interrupted by world class slapping asking me to man up. The organs are never lit in this room.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s

I lived my life staring at a stage of human acquaintances trying to show off how much they achieved, how much money they made, how needed they are, how the world will stop if they ceased to exist. Everyone seemed to be motivated by a goal, seemed to achieve it, and seemed to be satisfied too – for why else would they show off what doesn’t bring satisfaction? As I faked cigarette breaks outdoors, I made imaginary friends. One day, I read “I met a genius” by Charles Bukowski carved on the hidden part of the wood of the stage door. The next day I met him, younger than I am, faking cigarette breaks and making imaginary friends. He told me it doesn’t have to be this way. I never kissed him but I walked away from the stage building as I felt him, behind my back, lighting a cigarette and reading the poem carved on the door.

Google "define:" fail.

2010-03-20T17:19:00.000-07:00

I was selected to attend a three months script-writing workshop with a target output of writing a feature film. It’s something I always wanted to be tutored its guidelines. The workshop was reasonable in price, in timing, and in geography relative to where I live and work. More importantly, the workshop was sponsored by an Islamic community service centre – which I assume didn’t know my national ID says “Christian” when I was accepted- thus having room for me to play different mind tricks along the way with people from conservative stubborn backgrounds and all, apart from the usual conservative Copt school of thought which I happen to have dived deeper in. Guaranteed fun in other words.

The film I will have to write will have to be void of any sex. I can’t currently imagine how I – or anyone can write a long feature script that won’t strike you with the dumb idea of dude-there-is-sex-going-on-but-we-won’t-show-you-nah-nah-na-na but that’s another story. Yet that condition is feasible.. shameful and lame, yes.. but doable. The feature will also have to serve a “purpose”, I am not quite clear what’s the definition of this either but I trust myself on faking it when I have to. And finally it will have to be constructive in addressing that purpose.

Constructive... How will I ever be able to fake that?

I didn’t go.

Puttanesca.

2010-03-10T14:10:00.000-08:00

Before I gave up wondering why everything

was a lot of nothing worth losing or getting back,

I took out a jar of olives, a bottle of capers,

a container of leftover tomato sauce with onions,

put a generous portion of each in olive oil

just hot enough but not too hot,

along with some minced garlic and a whole can of anchovies,

until the mixture smelled like a streetwalker's sweat,

then emptied it onto a half pound of penne, beautifully al dente,

under a heap of grated pecorino romano

in a wide bowl sprinkled with fresh chopped parsley.

If you had been there, I would have given you half,

and asked you whether its heavenly bitterness

made you remember anything you had once loved.

Michael Hefferman

Of sweat pores, Samia Roushdy and Hamid Sinno.

2010-03-05T15:56:00.000-08:00

If there is to be a wonderland inside of Cairo, all the bastard fairies would have chosen Shoubra. A city inside a city with rules unspoken, only known to those who reside it long enough. That’s how my first love affair was like anyways.

It was always summer restricted, even though winter is the season when girls shop for love affairs. That was the only season I survived staying up late in that first-floor balcony on a very quiet street. Across the narrow street was another building, full of Shoubra residents. Some were noisy and veiled, some were old and retired and read newspapers in balconies during mornings – let it be winter or summer. I preferred all the noisy and veiled people in the neighborhood; they smothered us with food with and without occasions. On the last floor however, lived the family of Samia Roushdy, with the whole sons and grandsons formula.

There wasn’t much to do in the summer nights of the early nineties. If you were noisy and veiled, old and retired or a Samia Roushdy grandson, you spent your time guessing which pores will your next humid sweat particles come out from. Nobody used air conditioners in Shoubra. Not in the early nineties. Some do now, but the bastard fairies are working on killing them quietly in their sleep and giving back their place of residence to those worthy of it.

I usually waited till my grandmother found her balancing point in her sleep, and my aunt found hers on the sofa in front of a Mervat Amin movie on TV in a dark hall with a couple of flies making love on the light of the screen. I would then sit in the balcony, pretending to do nothing – and yes, that is doable, but I was really staring upwards to the third floor at the window where the Samia Roushdy grandson showed up sometimes. On the very few occasions he lit the room, he was never by the window, but probably doing something inside the room – a purpose he originally needed the working neon lamps to serve, with more than two flies gathering up and making love on the lit-lamps occasion. Thus, I never saw his face on the times he decided to quench my thirst and show up by the window. All I ever had, was a scene of the upper half of a man, lit by faint poor street lamps, resting one elbow on the window, smoking a cigarette with the other arm, topless and guessing which pores will his humid sweat particles come out of next. As he blew out smoke that eventually fell upon my hair, his radio blew endless tunes of Alphaville, Whitesnake and Supertramp, which were carved in my head.

Winter would come. His closed window would leave me lonely and my pores would leave me bored for no sweat particles would come out at this time of year. I would only depend on Khaled Habib and Nevine Shoukry and the Classic Rock show coming out of poor Casio radio speakers, knowing this is what the Samia Roushdy grandson is listening to behind that bleak closed wooden window.

Years passed and the bastard fairies couldn’t hide me for long and I was plucked out of Shoubra. I went to a lot of other places, which forcibly had air conditioners. I got introduced to people who were not noisy and were not veiled but who smothered themselves in Koky chicken nuggets and McDonald’s home delivery. And as time passed by, I blended in and eventually forgot the Classic rock vows we took and the two-floors apart love we made.

But here I am, in a time that can no longer be called the nineties, sitting in a room that had no air-conditioner, with Hamid Sinno’s voice pouring out of speakers that were neither poor nor Casio, and sweat pouring out of pores even though it’s a winter night. He would open his mouth to tell me how beautiful I am, but I ain’t listening. He would ask me if I intend to say anything witty from my “How about..” series, but I sit there doing nothing – not pretending. I would actually see his face in neon light, hand-memorize it in the dark and see it again in early morning light. I don’t seem to listen to any flies making love now. However, this is not Shoubra and those are not my rules, so I just fine tune and restrict the love I make to the amount he is willing to take – unlike what I’ve done with the Samia Roushdy grandson.

Don't Look.

2009-12-10T18:27:00.000-08:00

Nobody needs no saving around here. I hope we're clear on that.

We're just going to ride together in your car, hopefully a public bus,

hopefully even a train. We're going to go miserable places like

Alexandria and Fayoum, for no longer than one day, for only when

you go to a more miserable place do you feel relieved.

There won't be any talking around here. No sparse comments

about how good the food is, nor non-frequent comments about how

you enjoy red wine on winter afternoons with some French cheese

that none of us can pronounce its name right. But I don't speak

French, and I won't be able to point out your phonetical sins, only

because there won't be any spoken phonetical sins in the first place.

Nothing much will be going around here. We will read books on the

most lighted bench across the beach, or while lying on grass,

blinded by the sky light in the background of the parted thighs

of them books. If you like a particular paragraph or verse from yours,

save it for later use in one of your little pockets. And you'd better

have a few pockets...

We will go back the same way we came, we shall never switch

the medium. There will be a lot of similar rules around here.

Be it car, bus or train, it has to be the same back and forth.

You can then share what you've saved up. Make it brief.

We'll be putting music till we part, a lot of it. Sincere effort has to

be made avoiding the talk, since the most exciting sincere

form of attraction is between opposites that never meet.

Hung up.

2009-12-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

I was counting the white stripes the other day,

Passing under the car, like I usually do,

On them winter nights,

When I heard Creep playing on the radio.

I held out my hand to press a button,

That had a plus sign on it, like I always do.

He tried to hold it as it was on my way back,

To whirl my hair that's been straightened the other day,

For the sake of passing time on a winter afternoon.

I pulled it away.. He asked why..

"I don't know, I am with someone now,"

I said, with my hand on my lap.

But I don't know if that's true, I didn't say,

He believed me and tried again.

bely bely bely.mp3

2009-11-28T15:37:00.000-08:00

بمناسبة كومبو الأعياد

وأنه كلنا هنروح عند ستو

نأكل لحمة أو نفرقع بيرة

كل سنة وانتوا طيبين

واهداء خاص

أغنية الأستاذ طاهر صالح الجديدة

بجد نفسى العب

من زمان ملعبتش

بلى كشرى وبلى عادة

وجعليظة بلى سادة

كل دى أنواع

(البلى البلى البلى)

عايزة تطلع عايزة مهارة

فيها نيشان وانا الصنارة

وهى دى حلاوة

(البلى البلى البلى)

من يوم ولادتى من طفولتى

وانا بالعب عند ستى

كنت بأغلب كل الحارة

كنت شاطر فيها بتارة

مفيش عيل فى زمانى كسبنى

(البلى البلى البلى)

محدش كان يقدر يهزمنى

(البلى البلى البلى)

بجد يا ناس البلى وحشنى

(البلى البلى البلى)

بجد نفسى العب

من زمان ملعبتش

لعبت طسة وترنجيلة

مثلثات وترنجانة

وهى دى أنواع

(البلى البلى البلى)

تركيزها بيبقى مية مية

عايزة سرعة من اللى هى

وهى دى خطورة

(البلى البلى البلى)

مليانة لحدى محدش قدى

غلبت عبد القادر وجدى

كسبت جوايز أخدت ميدالية

وكأس كبير على شكل بلية

مفيش لعيب فى الدنيا يغلبنى

(البلى البلى البلى)

مفيش واحد قدر يهزمنى

(البلى البلى البلى)

بجد يا ناس البلى وحشنى

(البلى البلى البلى)

Death is the road to awe.

2009-11-27T11:27:00.001-08:00

The counting of breaths and trees,

The Clint Mansell/Radiohead competition,

Falling in love with men and women on billboards,

Drunk dialing and above all,

Playing Zuma in wet eyes.. and winning.

It will all come back again.

In a heartbeat.

2009-11-11T13:21:00.001-08:00

There was a girl I used to know. She had the inextinguishable fire in her eyes and she grabbed life by the balls. Of the few times I met her, she was telling the story of her divorce, as she tried hard to keep the smoke of her cigarette away from her 4 year old daughter. She shopped for groceries after a long day at work, carried at least four big bags of miscellaneous items nobody really needed, her handbag, and a bottle of wine, and finally climbed the four floors of her building till she got to her apartment’s door. Breathless as she was, she chose not to put everything on the floor and get out the keys from her handbag… as not to dissipate her remaining energy on dos and re-dos, but rather to ring the bell instead and just fling inside to the kitchen. Once… twice… three and maybe four times. Her husband, who was watching TV inside, opened the door and shouted outrageously at her for ringing the bell. Ungrateful as he was, he found a bottle of good red wine being shattered into pieces over his head. Their marital relationship didn’t really pick up since then.

Unlike everyone on our table, her reaction seemed completely natural to me, the normal consequence to impatience, intolerance, non-cooperation and non-controllable lust for putting the blame. But everyone thought that wasn’t the right thing to do, probably even my mom… for she never did it.

Severin, Severin.

2009-10-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

How about you call me Venus as I dress in animal fur?

صحيت فى ميكروباص... شاكرة جدا، حطيت سماعات الام بى ثرى – اللى كنت اصلا استهلكت اخر بطاريته بمنتهى الشهوة فى الليلة السابقة – فى ودانى، عشان اتفادى اى استظراف أو استلطاف متوقع تجاه أى شئ يرتدى حمالة صدر فى ميكروباص – بغض النظر اذا كان يحتاجه أم لا. يفرق بينى وما بين السواق رجل بيقول على مراته "الجماعة" ولابس اخضر فج... ولكن السواق كسب نقط احترام، مش بس عشان اخد غرزة ما بين تلات تريللات من غير لما يشد اهتمامى... ولكن ايضا، عشان ضيع كل رصيده على السواقين اللى وراه بيشرحلهم ظروف الرادارات والكمائن...

وعادى يعنى... يستمر سواق الميكروباص فى أخدان الغرز ما بين التريللات ويتغاضى عن الثلج اللى بيزحلق العربية تحتيه... فهو على رأى المنادى... برنس الطريق... فيقرر الشاب الفج فى أنه يخدش الكادر الكوول للسواق ويسمح أن موبايله يرن برنة صراخ واحدة بتولد والموضوع بيقلب أن هى بتضحك بهيستيريا... بديهى جدا... كلنا اتسرعنا... وبديهى جدا سرق الشاب الفج الكادر من برنس الطريق... فزى اى راجل لابس أخضر... هو عاشق تافه للانتباه...

كنهاية طبيعية لأى اتنين مصريين فى الموقف ده... انتهى الأمر ان الشاب اللى عنده "جماعة" بيسمع السواق نكت عن البلديات من الموبايل... وكل الركاب... كأى ركاب مصريين طبيعيين... سمعوا كل النكت للأخر وبلعوا البضنة بمنتهى الشهوة...

وعلى اخر الطريق كدة... على الغرزة الأربعتاشر... الراجل اللى ورايا لقيته بيقول "يعنى انت ينفع الطريق كله كدة تشغل نكت عن البلديات؟" ننظر احنا التلاتة... أنا ، ناسية تماما انى المفروض باسمع السماعات اللى فى ودنى، الشاب الأخضر فى بداية احراجه ، وسواق الميكروباص فى المراية الأمامية.

يجلس خلفنا راجل وامرأته وابنته... صعايدة... وصعايدة يعنى صعايدة... جبهتهم واسعة ، تكاد تكون كارتونية... وعينيهم واسعة... وجلدهم قمحى بيلمع من اللون اللى مينفعش تبصله باستمرار... فيرد الشاب الأخضر فى منتهى السسّينة... "انا مالى يا عم ده هو اللى بيقول مش أنا..."

تنظر المرأة الصعيدية أمامها ، وكأن هذا الصوت يصدر من حشرة خضرا... لا تستاهل رحلة الى عبوة الفليت... بل فقط غمزها فى قعر أقرب قبقاب... برضه من غير أى انتباه من عينيها... فتقول...

"هو فى رچالة غير فى الصعيد؟ هو فى مرچلة برة الصعيد؟"

وكأى فتاة قاهرية تافهة ، من أصول صعيدية لا أعلم عنها الكثير... توقعت أن ينظر سواق الميكروباص والحشرة الخضراء الى زوجها ويوبخوه عن ما صدر عن "جماعته" أو يطلبوا منه أنه يلمها... ولكنهم غاصوا فى صمت... وتبللت جبهتهم ، الغير بواسعة كثيرا... ولم يجدوا الجرأة أن ينظروا اليها فى عينيها...

كسر سواق الميكروباص ذلك الصمت بمنتهى التردد والتهتهة ليقول "أيوة يا... ستى... أنا أصلا... عندى... أصل صعيدى"... فأنهى أقوى مشهد سادى رأيته فى حياتى.

iPray.

2009-10-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

God..

Give me the money to travel around the world,

the seyaعa to always discover good new music,

the health to drink like a vulgar pig,

and the ears to hear you calling me "Mahfouz".

Sea of Beads.

2009-10-07T15:46:00.000-07:00

For some reason I’ve been lying in a quick sand of beads for as far as I can remember. It’s been there ever since I was born. I choke on beads, eat beads, shit beads, and breathe beads. I have never had a good sleep… never with eyes closed, back stretched and legs in sloth… beads can’t make beds, can’t make pillows either. I took it for long enough now. Yet something has changed, since early last year. Somewhere along my skin where my hands cannot reach, a hole was created and the beads flood inside of my body, making me heavier, weaker, not fitter… not happier… like a pig stuck in a cage, sometimes on antibiotics. And no amount of alcohol can help me believe the lie I’ve been enforcing upon myself… that I am as strong and I am doing a good job grabbing life and people by the balls, as I always did before… and always survived.

I never stayed long enough, not to call those beads – or anywhere – home. The sea of them beads flows mercilessly and forces change. And I’m sick of change, of light bags, rental houses, evil omens and lie-convincing alcohol. Now all I wanna do is stand right in front of you, look you in the eye and spit out an avalanche of beads right at your face. To be specific, I want to bull-eye your eyes and create holes somewhere along your skin, where your hands won’t be able to reach or sew, and I will fill you with beads… make you a pig dead… in a cage… with no alcohol.

Something in the Way.

2009-09-11T15:28:00.001-07:00

Randy 'The Ram' Robinson: Goddamn they don't make em' like they used to.

Cassidy: Fuckin' 80's man, best shit ever !

Randy 'The Ram' Robinson: Bet'chr ass man, Guns N' Roses! Rules.

Cassidy: Crue!

Randy 'The Ram' Robinson: Yeah!

Cassidy: Def Lep!

Randy 'The Ram' Robinson: Then that Cobain pussy had to come around & ruin it all.

Cassidy: Like theres something wrong with just wanting to have a good time?

Randy 'The Ram' Robinson: I'll tell you somethin', I hate the fuckin' 90's.

Cassidy: Fuckin' 90's sucked.

Randy 'The Ram' Robinson: Fuckin' 90's sucked.

Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler

Nosferatu.

2009-09-06T12:23:00.001-07:00

There is no camouflage in the air. Not at all, no. For I stand, a flapper, naked under a short black dress, mounted by a glittery tilted hat and with weaved spider-web stockings around my thighs. There is not even color in the air. It’s all black and white, even my red lipstick… even the black smoke coming out of my cigarette. Passers-by don’t quite grasp it, for they look at me and spit out remains of chewed tobacco at my flapper shoes and look at me with disgust. It’s quite understandable; they are pretty much disappointed at the uncountable Tom Waits strippers I failed to become. I don’t really care that much, lonely towns make lonely flappers.

From time to time, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives me a call on my old 1918 Nokia. I am always standing by that same corner when he calls. I tell him not to worry too much… “Fitzzie, ye need not worry too much,” I always say. He never listens to me, always has to check on me. He’s a nice guy… His sister Ella too. They live uptown now; don’t get to see much of them anymore. Ella sings too. Ella is the flapper all other flappers follow. It’s a lonely lonely corner ever since the Fitzgeralds left. The whole district can agree except that they have them Tom Waits strippers now.

It was a black and white humid Monday when he passed by my corner. It took a minute or two till he spotted my eyes under the piles of black liner I have on. It took less not to spit any chewed tobacco, but a little bit longer to get me on my knees. “All `em Tom Waits strippers you failed te be,” he said as he smeared the lipstick off of my lips, “don’t know what ye will become.”

But Parov Stelar knew… damned well.

حكمة الأسبوع

2009-08-04T10:22:00.000-07:00

حديث ما بينى وبين صديقة قديمة جدا ليا.. نسميها اكس يا ريت.. ونسمى الشخص اللى بنتكلم عليه واى

اكس: انا شايفة انك تصاحبى واي

انا: نعم؟

اكس: ايوة.. انتوا لايقين جدا على بعض

انا: ازاى يعنى؟ انا عمرى ما فكرت فيه وانا وهو مننفعش مع بعض

اكس: لازم تفكرى.. الواد تحفة.. ومزة.. وتعرفوا بعض من زمان.. ونفس اللايف ستايل
(مفهمتش اوى ايه لايف ستايل دى بس نعدى يا ريت)

انا: انتى شكلك اتهبلتى

اكس: انتى اللى اتهبلتى.. ما هو يا اختى احسبيها صح
الواد معاه باسبور.. مفكرتيش لما الاخوان يمسكوا هتترمى انتى فى انهى داهية؟

انضف بقى

2009-07-06T14:14:00.001-07:00

For those who have gotten close enough to me, they can tell how far I have gone loathing any production created by TV. They have definitely heard me whining and giving speeches about how I puke a little in my mouth because of the bleak lame stupidity-combo present among each TV actor’s face. How my stomach squirms in pain whenever my eyes fall on a scene with too much lightning – like any TV scene should… and would. And further, how I have troubles with my breathing pace whenever they play those fake sounds of people laughing in the background forcing – for some unjustified reason – each and every one of the audience to laugh, all in a herd, all in turn, all in puppet smiles. Oh and let me not forget that words like “episode” and “season” give me goose bumps. Give me time to dwell upon… the dumb script-writing, the repeated jokes, the camera movements… and finally after skipping some dwelling-upon, my worst part, those who sit around me, watch TV productions get obsessed with them or laugh at them. For those who have gotten close enough to me, none of you know that I used to tongue-lash my brother whenever I walked into our living room to see him watching an eye-scarring scene produced by an amateurishly disgusting crew on TV. I used to rush away to force the television apparatus out of my eye sight after I have shouted at my brother…

“انضف بقى”

I have not however, closed all doors, and when finally someone broke through my racist Nazi TV walls, I thought I’d just admit it and share…

Christopher Titus was introduced to me in a setting of a very few favorite people, as all good things get introduced in such settings. Faced by a sigh or two of resistance from my side, which did not last for long, for I have long given up on catering my own personal elite inclinations among the sitting-on-sofas-and-watching-MTV-in-an-air-conditioned-room generation. But Titus was not like any MTV-watching in any air-conditioned room. Finally, someone has written something so wittingly for TV, that made me survive one and two… and three and four “episodes”… someone who speaks a language I understand and have perfectly practiced… someone who knows where I am coming from and went all the way to meet me there… and finally, someone who made me not take notice of all the elements, previously mentioned, that make me feel worse than PMSing while watching a TV production.

Dysfunctional families – or whatever those carefully dressed-up toffee-munching people who love giving big names that sound awful to normal things, give to it – are the main theme of the Titus show. Coming from a family of a psychopathic schizophrenic mother who loves her children for beer-filling her mugs at bars, and a drunkard father who is an expert at self-esteem demolishing and loving his children for being his scapegoats, and finally a brother who takes it all as lightly as Titus does, the scene is weaved, very much like most of that of most of the families I have known. Titus creates a world of sarcasm and light black comedy… giving a middle finger at what the world forces us to see as an ideal family portrait, and how guilty we grow and how self-destructively we follow in the footsteps of what this same world paints to the likes of us… product of “dysfunctional families”.

But no, hell no.

And now the drugs don't work..

2009-06-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

Today is Thursday.
I slept in.
I had a pepsi for breakfast.
I saw my therapist.
We talked about you.
We doubled the dosage.
All I can think is
one more time from the beginning.
Let's get it right.
I have nothing else to say.
I will just go watch The Office
and when I laugh out loud I will
look next to me and realize I am alone.

Anonymous

A Moment.

2009-06-30T08:47:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this is true to you but for me
sometimes it gets so bad
that anything else
say like
looking at a bird on an overhead
power line
seems as great as Beethoven
symphony.
then you forget it and you're back
again.

Charles Bukowski

Berserk.

2009-06-21T15:04:00.000-07:00

Let’s lie down on the wet grass on an autumn morning with my sweatshirt stuffed against my back, allowing damp greenery to ache my stomach strip. Don’t lie on your back, but rather on your side, allow me to be in your sight. Balance your head on one hand and hold the e. e. cummings poetry book with another. Read a poem for me out slowly, as I puff my smoke at God. Give me the book. I shall read one too. By-passers will not grasp my attention and will not interrupt the flow of words out of my lips… nor the smoke.

Allow us to go shop for groceries and buy chocolate bars and coffee jars. On our way home and as you drive, I will remove the branding tickets off of everything we shopped for – for we promised to keep our kitchen brand-free. I shall not litter any street with those removed tickets – let it be ugly or beautiful. I’d keep them in a plastic bag and get rid of them in the trash can on the sidewalk on the right of our house’s door.

Shower. I won’t. I’ll leave the coffee jars in the bag, grab two chocolate bars, and throw them on the table by the sofa. I’ll put on some music and intentionally list two or three tracks to play before “Private Investigations”. I’ll lie again on the sofa with my damp sweatshirt stamped against my back allowing the warmth of home to soothe my stomach strip. By the time you are next to me, it will be one track away from Dire Straits’. By the time we are half way through the chocolate bar, it plays. Lips.

Let’s make babies so that on the days you choose to ignore me, I’ll drive across town to get them to spend time with Omar. He will teach them what they cannot be taught in schools and what they can’t learn from you or me. There is no need to bring up Omar when one of them is always putting ear-speakers and so-not-depressingly feeding on Salinger. They got that from me.

I’ll drive back across town and shop for wine bottles that I shall let the baby in the backseat remove the branding ticket for. I’ll secretly get some bourbon too. But before I throw anything in a trash can, and before I throw any chocolate bars on the table and definitely before I prepare any playlists, I need you to know… My hands are scarred from touching all the wrong people.

Of Fish and Bourbon.

2009-06-16T15:22:00.000-07:00

There is a bleak piece of furniture in the only room I can stay the night in these days, which I fail to recognize what it is called. It has four drawers and two compartments where I put all my stuff and I don’t order any of them. Ordered stuff get on my nerves, I mess up my clothes whenever I find them tidy to tell you the truth. If I get into a girl friend’s house and find her clothes ordered according to colour and her shoes according to heels, I secretly declare she’s not a friend anymore. There are a lot of items on that piece of furniture, that I don’t recognize what they’re called, ranging from stuff that I use daily like slim perfume containers and black-framed eyeglasses all the way to shoe boxes that have items inside their hollow stomachs, that I never use. I know you’ve noticed how I’ve remembered the perfume and the glasses, but I like to pretend I forget things. It is a newly acquired habit, for when I actually forget things; I can always blame it on my fish memory. For example, I can save the guilt trips I am forcibly injecting into myself today for forgetting the card I was given by the most important salt-n-pepper haired man in a multinational corporate, on my fish memory that I convince myself I have… but that’s another story.

There is a bleak piece of furniture in my room and the only reason it exists is for a half empty bottle of JnB to sit on.

I get home and that’s all I can stare at.

I travel the distance between my bed and the piece of furniture. I raise a shot. I raise a second. Now I can get back to bed harmlessly and safely. I can get back and convince my body to sleep and beg my mind not to think of today. I don’t want to think of today nor any other day. There are things I have to forget like how I know things are getting from bad to worse, from expected failure to utter failure, from temporary safe to permanent hollow and from phases of vulnerable to classic modeling of lonely.

Years down the line, I might not have a room which I know I shall stay the night in nor the cash to afford proper bourbon. However, I wish I can still depend on bleak pieces of furniture having a cheap bourbon bottle on top and my earned fish memory.

Self-closing Tags.

2009-06-09T15:48:00.000-07:00

The younger sister sucks on my knees without any consideration to the bone joints her teeth are carving into. It’s been years since she was born and breast feeding has never really been her thing. She sucked the life out of our mother’s breasts and now years down the line; my knees are the only source for her to feed, to breathe and to smother her ugliness with further life. I throw my head back, at first glance; it looks like it’s out of ecstasy. My upper body on that wooden chair might look like that of a woman getting her long-awaited treat, but when one looks closer, my hair is falling on the floor – out of frail, my lips are growing whiter – out of motherhood. I wish I have the strength to let that groan out. I wish my moans were any audible to express the pain. They’re not though, gratefully not making her misunderstand my pain for wanting her to halt. She never stops; she smothers her lips with blood, teeth with flesh and body with gluttony.

Outside there is night. The suckling sister wolf-runs outside when she hears the footsteps of a man. I fall off the chair, thirsty and drained. I jump unconsciously back and forth between the white light I see when I close my eyes and the sounds of my younger sister being humped outside. I fall for the white light again and she brings me back. Orgasm after another, my little sister saves me for that light was pulling strongly… enough.

Beware of the old lady who brings apples to your house. She stands before me with the classic basket of full ripe apples in her left hand and her fake smile in her inviting right hand to pull me off of the floor. I bite off her hand and spit it inside the basket she holds in her left hand and thus her smile goes back to her more familiar smirk which in turn goes back to her face.

By the time I stood up, she vanished into thin air. I go outside the already open-door and run at full throttle on my four limbs. My hands give me a strong front force as the asphalt cuddles the wounds on my knees and increases them. I run not for very long away from the house but I find myself getting back to it. When I wondered how could I run away from something and still get back to it… I was answered that this world is small.

Whenever he is around, I can’t look at his face. I look down at my naked stomach and I find red rays of sunlight coming out of it. There… there it is my definition of love. The red rays wrap my fair body and choke me against them. When he decides to hold me, I don’t feel any arms nor body – for the rays and straps of light are already pressing too hard on my skin.

I open my eyes to find me still lying on the floor, this time – naked. The rays are gone but a certain pain down there suggests there has been a man – one I have never felt. This time I don’t bother to get off of the floor but I could hear my sister licking the rest of the mud off of my knees so that she can have her brunch.

Thy Button-sewn Eyes.

2009-06-06T04:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve been awaiting the new Henry Selick with stretched toes and bitten fingernails. In my opinion, Selick’s peak was in 1993 when he coupled up with Burton’s story to create the immortal “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. Selick’s career so far has been brief and non-vibrant ever since; I personally believe the reasons can be summed up in Selick constantly failing to find a grotesque hard-core dark content that he can fine-tune into a more pleasant film. I mean, working with Burton in the early nineties will definitely leave you for a while starving for an equally mind-blasting content.

Nobody can ever tell if Selick gave up or had a hard time with mediocrity, but then came Neil Gaiman with his 2002 9-pages novella “Coraline”. Frequently compared to Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” and described to have been found scarier by adults more than children, “Coraline” was the awaited content for Selick to convert into his new 2009 stop-motion film. He did a great job, making a festive out of the simple illustrations one can find in a 9-pages comic strip using the concept of stop-motion. The same one used all over by the Burton-infused “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Vincent”; defined by Wikipedia as an “animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own”.

My initial reaction after watching the movie was not all that impressed; especially that it had neither a Danny Elfman soundtrack nor any rhyming literature-orgasmic Tim Burton conversations. However, it grew on me, for the rest of the day; I couldn’t get the story out of my mind. I mean, this is sheer genius. Coraline, the unsatisfied ignored-from-her-parents-blue-haired kid gets to find a secret door where she gets inside to get to her “other family” who get her everything she wants and lacks in her “real life” including waves of good food, a better garden, better neighbours, pure attention from everyone’s side… correct pronunciation of her name. However, since there is no such thing as a free lunch, her other mother tells her that she can stay there forever if she wants to, on the one condition of “sewing buttons in her eyes” for her to be just like them. If I read this novella when I was a child, I would have probably been blind by now for I would have definitely tried to sew buttons into my eyes… I mean what sort of grotesque drug was Gaiman on. It had been a long time since someone gave me a simple metaphor I can dwell and day dream about. Coraline left me with a mission of acquiring the novella in my possession – even though this whole possession of things stuff was never really my thing – in addition to his Sandman comic series especially when he gets to introduce Death as the older sister, tag lined “How would you feel if Death was your older sister?” but that’s another story…

كولد تيركى

2009-06-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

نسيت شكلك. بأحاول افتكر ملامح وشك وبتيجى وتروح بسرعة قدام عينايا... كأنوار رعاشة على صالة رقص... كل اللى فاكراه منك هو جسمك الضئيل... الضعيف... الممل...

طول عمرى فاكرة أنى بأتشد للناس اللى عارفة هى عايزة ايه... بس لما بأفكر دلوقتى فى أخر اتنين أو تلاتة شدونى على مدار السنة اللى فاتت... كلهم مش عارفين حاجة... وقرروا أنهم ميقرروش... وجسمك الضئيل، الرفيع، الممل كان بيكملى البورترايت ده... بتاع الشاب اللى مش عارف... مش بس مش عارف هو عايز ايه ولكن مش عارف أى حاجة... ضد جميع معايير الصحة التافهة... ضعيف... غير قادر على أى شئ...

من اللحظات المهمة فى السينما وغير السينما... لما يضرب قائد حرب الأرض بركبتيه فى استسلام ضوضائى... درعه على شماله ملقى فى منتهى الهزل، وسيفه على يمينه... وذراعيه مفرودتين أمامه... ليس كمسطرة فارعة قوية ولكن كجزع شجرة هفأ على وشك الانكسار... وعلى وجهه نظرة... "ها؟ ايه تانى؟"... بالنسبة لى ده من أكتر الأشياء المثيرة حاليا... وده اللى شدنى فيك... أنك ضعيف... هفأ... زيى بالظبط.

كل ده دلوقتى مش موجود... اللى موجود بس شوية أنوار رعاشة رقصا على مزيكا اليكترونى... فخورة أنا بالمرحلة دى... وفخورة بأسلوب الكولد تيركى اللى اتبعته عشان أوصلها... الهفأ عمره قصير... يقدم مواساة تافهة يجب أن لا تستمر أكتر من شهر أو شهرين والا تحولت المواساة الا مآساة... وبعديه مفروض يختفى تماما... مش مفروض يظهر فى أى لقاءات اجتماعية خفيفة... مش مفروض يتشاف له صور ولا يتسمع له مكالمات تليفون... مش المفروض يتشاف اسمه على تليفون... بالظبط زى البار مان اللى بتعيطله وانت سكران... بعد لما تفوق مش عايز تعترف بيه أو بأى ارتباط كان يوصلكم...

جسمك الضئيل.. الضعيف.. الممل.. لا يثيرنى حاليا...

Hot Stuff.

2009-05-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

Bloody 2009. Everyone around me has lost their job, been laid off, graduated with a 3.68 AUCian GPA and can`t find a job, or got back from an Arab country ball-broken and sucking on their lower lips with disappointment. One missing category is one that includes myself – those losing their jobs slowly... like someone wrapping a plastic bag around their heads for a slow masochistic death. Everyone knows that the IT community has been a melodramatic scene all over the world for the past five months – but we`re Egyptians and this is Egypt, the only immune place on Earth against all sorts of bullshit – unless of course, it has to do with cute slaughtering of 300,000 wild pigs, relating it to religious discrimination and getting the whole world to scratch their heads at what the hell Egyptians were thinking – but that`s another story.

But sigh, how long could this Egyptian shield stand against cancerous recession? They have already halted all sorts of raises, bonuses, allowances, cash-outs, promotions and social events at where I come from. Signs of poverty have already flourished all over my working place – the bathrooms are not working, cold drinking water is a rare commodity, sugar for your coffee is sometimes not a possibility and every white collar neck around me is too depressed – unlike their usual hyper over-excited unjustified bloody annoying optimistic happy attitude – knowing this is only the beginning.

Now here it comes, a twelve year old movie, one that knew very well it shall be appreciated twelve bloody years later. The Full Monty ladies and gentlemen, yes AND GENTLEMEN, is here to tell you that there is always a way out of what seems to be a “fookin` hell”.

This Week's Accquired Fact of Life.

2009-04-06T02:41:00.000-07:00

A person who doesn`t drink is more stupid than a person who does. A person who doesn`t drink yet smokes up is the dumbest of them all.

Trentemoller`s Moan.

2009-03-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

There are not a lot of things I do for distractions - that is because I don’t do distractions. Yet there are those who master wars of silence and magical powers of killing you with their detachment. Those people exist, and they consume you and eat you out and ruin your day.

One of them actually pushed me to do distractions today. My first trial was Jack White – knowing me, and how all my friends are named Jack. I asked him to wake Meg up and meet me down their alley. It wasn’t long before we were in London, exchanging roles to play Jack’s favorite Bleeding-on-Red-Stripes shooting thing on dull forsaken rooftops. He killed me twice and I confused Meg for having her period several times too.

After lunch in Paris and coffee in Rome, we had the afternoon stroll in Prague. I was walking next to Jack and we were not holding hands, he wasn’t putting his hand on my shoulder and I wasn’t putting my arm around his back. In fact, we weren’t physical at all – knowing me and how odd that is with all my Jacks. He asked me if I was as ugly as he is and I expressed how relieved I was with the fact that he was Meg’s brother, and how this way, I can be comfortably and intensely attracted to both of them – be manipulated by them, enslaved by them, enslaving and sexualizing them with all possible permutations of 3. He let out a brief grin and called for Meg – who was a bit ahead of us. She walked side by side with him, he put his hand on her shoulder and she put her arm around his back.

Meg asked if I talked to Heath today, she didn’t even glance at me as she asked – which made me think her words were drumsticks on my ear drums. I had to disappoint Meg soon and tell her how the person I thought was Heath was only a fake bastard – but I chose not to, I only replied;

“Heath Ledger is dead. He’s expecting us in a few.”

She let out a comfortable rare smile of hers and I thought I heard her say “Okay.”

I went back home to find the fake Heath eaten out by an army of white ants that happens to live under my bed. It made me happy and I kissed the ants one by one because I don’t need to do any distractions anymore. However, I thought I’d still give the Whites a call in a couple of days – after all, I was wearing Meg’s bra.

raison d`etre.

2009-03-26T02:56:00.000-07:00

you do it as if it’s natural,
like the puff following the drag,
or the breath following the dive.
you do it as if it’s unnoticeable,
you can even speak in the background,
look around, glance and smile.
you do it and you’re unaware.
you are completely unaware,
that when your finger runs on my skin,
the world stops,
time pauses - my heart stops - my breath stops.
your touch is natural,
like an e. e. cummings poem.
it is my raison d`etre,
yet you are completely unaware.

شو غريب الشكل باياك

2009-03-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

- طب وشو قالت أمك؟
- ولا شئ... راحت اشترت حجاب وما بدها تلبس كم قصير
- شو عم تحكى؟
- تعرف شو كمان قال؟ قال المسرح حرام... والسينما حرام... والروك أن رول موسيقى خلاعية.
- شو يعنى خلاعية؟
- يعنى السيكس. وموسيقى السيكس من عمل الشيطان. خد بقى.
- هلا بول أنكا صار عميل للشيطان؟ شو غريب الشكل باياك... طب شو قال عن الموسيقى العربية؟
- قاللى أم كلثوم معلهش.
- أم كلثوم؟؟ ما أم كلثوم ما بتغنى الا السيكس.... عن جد، شو غريب الشكل باياك.

The place we can be alone.

2009-02-27T06:33:00.000-08:00

It’s bloody simple really. Never own a wardrobe nor a fancy big mirror in your house and you`ll never have trouble. Don`t spend any money on hanging posters on the four-walled white room and do not… I repeat, DO NOT… hang your clothes properly after you come back dead and tired after a long day. It can be a lot easier, if you stop thinking about owning a dog or a cat or an endangered family of Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing Butterfly… and of course, don`t even consider plants. Always remember that things that run on electricity are better than those which need fire, and those that only need your hands are even better. Don`t cook a meal you don`t want to wash the utensils for. Don`t cook at all, I mean, what`s really better than food that you bring from a third party that only needs you to throw away some bags and cartoon paper after you`re done – kindly forget about the associated environmental guilt. Remember that every few months; you will be invited to a place with full fridges and some fancy almond-fudge-and-rosemary-hinted dip for your movie crackers… never get comfortable. Don’t feel uncertain about inviting people over, only if they don`t come from a full-fridge background – and trust me, most people do. On second thought, invite whoever. Do not envy them. Do not whine. Do not compare.

Kindly note that clothes are recyclable – as you buy new ones, remember you did so because there are old ones that you do not need – and there is someone who does whom you can give them to and can gain you extra points on whatever religious/moral schema you`re following. This makes you pack a lighter bag. This makes you move easier and faster. Do not own a bar, only a bottle or two if you need cocktail them together – I mean, how would you feel if you threw away most of them, or even worse if you had to carry them? However, never make your place void of wine. Red Wine. Dark clothes. A lot of dark clothes. Bleak colors, which match anything and everything. Remember that fashion does not determine which clothes to wear, but rather how tolerable and match-able they are – what good will an orange brown-polka-dotted chiffon scarf do you if you need to wash it every time you wear it?

Friends are recyclable too. Friends are determined by a few dimensions – space, time and money. Don`t get over too intimate with people, because if you lack one of the previously mentioned elements, this intimacy will not be maintained. Thus, don`t feel bad about it and don`t re-evaluate your metrics and standards of whom you should trust or whom you shouldn`t. Everyone is a passer-by and it`s never proven otherwise.

Remember that you are in a position that everyone else wants to be in but they can`t. Think that way. Think that way with a lot of Nutella and the previously mentioned red wine. Whatever you think, just never feel home.

Adagio For Time.

2009-02-23T05:11:00.000-08:00

"Dear Mother: I have written to tell you my worrying secret. Now don’t cry when you read it because it is neither yours nor my fault. I suppose I will have to tell it now, without any nonsense. To begin with I was not meant to be an athlete. I was meant to be a composer, and will be I’m sure. I’ll ask you one more thing — Don’t ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football. —Please—Sometimes I’ve been worrying about this so much that it makes me mad (not very)."

Samuel Barber - (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981)

Hell is not hot.

2009-02-03T15:35:00.000-08:00

Save all your efforts. It makes me feel more paralyzed seeing you squirm in front of my eyes, trying and failing and repeating. Everything I fake, I fake it for you. I don`t mind doing it, but I mind you believing it. It makes me feel as if I am acting – which I probably am doing, but I don`t feel it till I am believed. Kindly lie down next to me, let`s watch the stars and hear each other breathe. Let`s pretend we are interested in what we tell each other, it`s ok – we can nod too. I`ll lend you one of my speakers and I`ll let you think now you know what I am all about. Let me lie to you and tell you how I`ve never met anybody who makes me feel like you do. I can linger on about how my life was in its particular normal time frame before you came. Please don`t ask me if I ever smile though, I haven`t memorized those lines yet. Forgive me if I pause for a few seconds before I return your emotional revealing, sometimes I just need to – recollect. I am only here because I have nowhere else to go. You can do all you wish, I am the puppet in your realm that shall not object. But whatever you do, kindly only believe me when I reveal that… I am as ugly as I seem.

Cat Blues.

2009-01-28T15:51:00.000-08:00

All of us have grown hearing to all stories about victims. Black people are victims of a go-way-back history of racism. Women are victims of violence, harassment, sexual exploitation and a bunch of big-worded titles that I am not interested in recalling. Palestinians are victims of… of basically everything you can think of. The result behind living such a childhood full of such Utilitarian slavery, is that I am simply not moved anymore. It gets really awkward sometimes, when people are all sympathizing around me and everything, and I can’t help control the muscles of my grin. Furthermore, what’s even worse, is that I get really tense when I find people around me still get “surprised” by things. I don’t think anything in this world is neither surprising nor original. All things have been said and done before so recurrently – like those stories of victims – to the extent that even paying attention to any happening scenario sounds just silly – let alone, indulging in any so devotedly.

Apparently, that’s not the case in the other side of the world…

Now call me a racist, but I am sure all of you have noticed how Americans living in Egypt get all hype, excited and enthusiastic about the dumbest things. I don’t get to deal much with any really, but on the short occasions that I do, I let my friends do the talking. However, last night I was sitting with an American on my right and an Eastern-European on my left. None of who was hot, to at least take away from their unjustified excitement about everything. I was asked if I like cats. I told the truth – “No, I don`t really like them, but I happen to be one.” The American twisted in his chair to look at me as the Eastern European asked how that was possible. I declared that I firmly believe I have cat genes and all, that I carry the whole cat-like attitude and manners in addition to physical traits like my eyes switching color according to mood and light. They were all so impressed and I was suddenly surrounded by gasps and no-ways and wows and all. I tell you, it filled me with goose bumps. So I fought back by simply continuing to hold my serious face and controlling my grin’s muscles on a very rare occasion… and I said with question marks all over my cat-like hair… “I am not so sure whether it was my dad or my mom who decided to sleep with a cat though.”

Their wows and no-ways faded into a very awkward situation that their waves of sudden silence could not mop away. That’s it. Nobody laughed. Nobody found humor in what I was saying. So I just kept my serious face and turned the whole thing into a really serious wondering business of who my cat male and/or female ancestor might be. I tell you, it’s a rough rough world out there.

It`s not April.

2009-01-22T06:32:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine just sent me those. Mo was having a smoke outside his corporate premises when he stumbled over those couple in heat.. It`s not even April and lust is in the air..

I absolutely heart them.

Vitiligo.

2009-01-21T13:29:00.000-08:00

Bleak white paint can fall off any building in Cairo – it`s not particularly the least polluted place in the world. It falls off buildings in chunks and has a random vitiligo sort of look. However, there is this particular building in Heliopolis that faces one of Cairo`s most classy most expensive sporting clubs. It also happens to face the residence of our president. The second floor’s balcony is the only balcony of the building that has its paint off – in a random vitiligo sort of front. Now that’s not a very important thing for anyone to notice really - not the people going inside the club on wheels costing hundreds of thousands of pounds and not to the people standing in public transport buses waiting wrathfully for the parade of black cars to pass by as the First Lady goes out to do some shopping. It is a noticeable fact to tree counters, but that`s another story.

That other sunny morning there was a woman standing in that balcony. She seemed quite pissed. She was shouting at the top of her lungs, her hair seemed rough and has probably been uncombed for years. There was this vibe that she has been beaten up… psychologically as well as physically. It was quite awkward, for I tried to see what or who she was shouting at there was only the sporting club, the presidential residence, two lanes to allow herds to come and go in addition to the famous Heliopolis railway. It was too theatrical, for she was using her four limbs to let out her what-seemed-to-be endless recurring state of wrath. I could feel it… I mean, she seemed quite pissed. There was nobody staring at her but me. I was there for ten minutes, during which she only went inside the flat only once to only come out and resume more dramatically her fight-against-nobody-in-particular. It has occurred to me that her only wish was to locate a physical target – and only then perhaps, her verbal monologue of anger can turn into a physical bloody orgasm of violence.

It has also occurred to me the paint has fallen off her vitiligo balcony by her years-long persistence scratching of the walls. I mean, she seemed like she had gruff nails and all.

Swimming Pool.

2009-01-20T15:24:00.000-08:00

Imagine a world that has an Ingmar Bergman, without actually the Ingmar Bergman inside Ingmar Bergman. I have sat for a film course that required me to watch Bergman over a cold Fall semester in Cairo, at least once a week. I really know the ups and downs of that dead director corpse like the palm of my hand. He has a few good glitches, one has to admit. But it wasn`t until tonight, that I have realized, that one can enjoy a Bergman`s Persona without the awkward Bergman clichés that force your blood to boil, your toes to tap and you to bite your nails.

Swimming Pool – Francois Ozon

I am just a Charlotte Rampling whore.

افهموها بقى

2009-01-09T14:45:00.000-08:00

"بجد أنا ذنبى ايه؟
أنا تعبانة أكتر منك...
أنا عند ستو... محدش عارف حاجة...
أرجوك رد على...
هأموت نفسى لو مردتش عليا...
أنا عايزاك جنبى ومحتاجة لحضنك...
والله هموت نفسى بجد"

لابسة فستان سواريه لسة مخلصش وواقفة على كرسى بلاستيك عشان الترزى يقدر طول الكعب. حواليا مليون مراية ولقيت الرسالة دى جت على الموبايل من نمرة غريبة. الأول افتكرته واحد بيستظرف عايزنى اكلمه اسأل مين لأن ده بقى الطبيعى خلاص... وبعدين قلت ممكن تكون واحدة وباعتة لنمرة غلط... طبعا عشان انا قلبى حنين قلت هأكلمها لما أخلص البروفة واقولها أن النمرة غلط... انا قلبى حنين اه بس مش لدرجة انى اقاطع الترزى يعنى... وعموما اللى بينتحروا بيترددوا شوية... فأكيد معايا ومعاها وقت... بس بلاش ننسى أنى مسطولة، فنسيت اكلم النمرة... الكلام ده كان امبارح...

النهاردة افتكرت الموضوع تانى... وضميرى وجعنى يعنى... وقعدت بقى اسأل نفسى طب لو الأنسة الروشة دى أنسة رومانسية وكدة... وعملت أى حاجة فى نفسها... عشان فاهمة أن الدنجوان نفضلها وأكيد مخها الدرامى هيوصلها أنه أكيد بيخونها وعشان كدة مش بيرد... وطبعا البنات فى حوارات الخيانة دى ممكن تموت نفسها أو يجيلها انهيار عصبى بالمستريح...

أنا: الو

هى: ايوة؟

أنا: حضرتك بعتيلى مسج امبارح

هى: لأ مبعتش حاجة... مين معايا؟

أنا: أنا صاحبة النمرة اللى بتتصل بيكى... وانتى بعتيلى مسج

هى: طب قلت فيها ايه؟

أنا: قلتى انك هتموتى نفسك وان محادش عارف حاجة وأنك عند ستك

هى: أه انا بعت المسج دى لخطيبى

أنا: لأ انتى بعتهالى أنا... وأنا قلت أقولك لحسن تفتكرى أنه بينفضلك ولا حاجة... وتموتى نفسك وذنبك يبقى فى رقبتى

رقعت ضحكة من النوع بتوع الأفلام العربى اللى حافظين مش فاهمين وعايزين يبينوا أن صاحبة الضحكة فتاة ليل ذات خبرة
هى: يا حبيبتى ميرسى أوى... أنا كنت باعتة المسج دى لخطيبى بس هو أصله عامل الخاصية دى يا أختى اللى هى لما تتصلى بيه يقولك الموبايل مقفول وهو لا مقفول ولا نيلة

أنا: أه عارفاها.. دى مودية ناس كتير فى داهية

ضحكة أعلى من الأولانية
هى: أه ولاهى... انا اسمى مروة

أنا: ازيك يا مروة، أنا مبسوطة أنك مموتيش نفسك

هى: لأ يا حبيتى متخافيش عليا... احنا بنهدد بس يعنى... بس ميرسى أوى أوى يا حبيبتى

أنا: طيب يا مروة... المهم أنك فرفشتى... سلام أنا بقى

هى: باى يا جميلة

قالتلك احنا بنهدد بس... افهموها بقى...

Legs, Wheels and Rails.

2009-01-07T14:11:00.000-08:00

I walk for hours. I stopped counting trees and streets as I do. Street after the other, song after the next and wet tissues are left as my breadcrumb. It is as dull as that. Sometimes, I crave for action though. I walk late at night in dark secluded streets and daydream of a bunch of idle guys stopping me with a small knife or two asking for all the money I have. I also daydream about not giving it to them and insulting them coldly without blinking. Sometimes, I daydream about them hurting me and leaving me with scars, and running away with it, but I never daydream of letting go of my bag or wallet. Sometimes, a bleak car stops by interrupting my daydreams. Usually, I drift to walk on the sidewalk, thus making it clear that I am not for sale… but sometimes, I daydream about getting in and sticking a knife or two between his legs – yes, the ones I stole from the bunch of idle guys, again without letting go of my bag or wallet.

When my phone rings, I never hear it. But when I do feel it, I get really pissed. It usually interrupts my daydreams and my trail of wet tissues. However, that doesn’t really happen much. I am just playing popular over here… my phone never really rings. It did a lot today though, because it happens to be Christmas and people happen to believe am Christian and all. And it pissed me off… it really did. But I never really hear it…

When I am not walking, I am on public transport. I love buses, only if I am sitting by the window’s side. I stopped counting streets and trees as I ride… I promise I stopped. Sometimes, it’s too public though, and people can spot my eyes getting wetter and wetter, but I am too lucky, for when that happens, I find a man asking me for my ticket. I fiddle all over my many winter pockets and get him out all the tickets that don’t belong to this bus line. That’s when my eyes stop getting wet, because you know, it’s not really funny anymore. The man looks at me and tells me that it’s fine – because he really thinks am sexy and good looking and all and that is enough for him to make him bend the basic rule of his job. Right after the man gets out of the bus, I find my ticket though, sometimes I want to stick it in every passenger’s eyes staring at me with the what-a-hot-lucky-bitch expression… but I don’t do that, I just stare outside again and work on getting my eyes wet.

I am thinking currently of stopping at every Metro station, getting out of it and walk for an hour or so around the surrounding region. I am thinking of doing that over the weekend, but I am not sure which areas will be more suitable for day and which will be more suitable for the night. It really excites me that there are a lot of Metro stations, let alone two lines.

I walk for hours.

الى كل المصريين المحموقين مع احداث غزة

2008-12-28T13:38:00.000-08:00

يا سيدى، اغفر لهم... لأنهم لا يعلمون ماذا يفعلون
لوقا 34:23

Eyes Up, Jaw Down.

2008-12-17T14:43:00.000-08:00

The bartender understood perfectly that I am the only woman he shall not crave for, for he didn’t want to lose my weekly drunken session of confessions. I didn’t want to start lying to him either. Our meetings have been mostly weekly, not before eleven or so. I didn’t like walking into that blues bar with them couples sober enough to notice me or them solo men unlucky enough not to have found a lady companion for the night. I’d slip in around midnight, take my place on the bar and exchange a nostalgic hello with the bartender.

The bartender also understood perfectly that I love fooling myself that I am not a bourbon addict, and thus pours me martini and vodka in V-shaped glasses for the first hour or so. It doesn’t take long before I am devoured from those cheap perfume drinks and I give in to bourbon.

For some reason, I was dressed in a silver dress that night. I gave in to the flapper inside of me mercilessly. And what are my nights really but a series of give-ins?

I didn’t spend that much time at my usual bar seat. For when Tom Waits started disciplining his piano, with his half dimmed eyes trying to shield his irides from his intensive smoking habits, I was sitting at his feet on the glossy floor. My head was tilted on the leg of the black drunken piano and my thighs were spread on the floor. The whole idea was to stare at him from that angle, my eyes pulled upwards, my jaw dropped downwards. His face through his instrumental piano hands pretended I was not there. Without looking back at the bar, I could tell the bartender was jealous. However, through the V-shaped bourbon trip and the helplessness at Tom’s feet; he showed me what it is to love a man.

Just Throw It.

2008-12-15T05:00:00.001-08:00

As we were having lunch at work, it was inevitable to speak about the Bush incident and watch it over and over again on TV with the satisfied fairy-tale-like expressions on everyone's faces. The mockery spark was born, and we brainstormed different ideas on how this will be a rich soil for a lot of parodies in the upcoming period. I particularly suggested an idea about a Nike ad. An hour later... a graphic designer colleague who was sitting on the same table sent me this...

It seems like it was hastily made.. but thought I'd share it with you.

Confessions to come.

2008-12-13T15:14:00.000-08:00

Let’s face it. I am 22, good-looking and single on my official papers. Hence, it became my mother’s weekly habit to insinuate the presence of prospect grooms who talk to her personally or to members of our bigger Orthodox family about “tying the knot”. The first time this happened – which was right right after my graduation, I have sunk into a great state of bewilderment and relative depression. I had to talk my grandmother and my aunt (whom I considered my favorite person among this very big fat family) out of it. Using many conversational tools I have acquired, including seriousness, anger, sarcasm and light humor to indicate that this topic is out of question. Notice that I never had to talk my mother out of it, because this lady has known me well enough to fear approaching me on such topics. Instead, she asks other ladies of the family to talk to me about it.

I have gained a great deal of immunity though, which has always been the case with my family matters that force a psychological war. Thus, every time my mother re-opens the subject, I nod without attention, fall silent watching TV waiting for her to finish speaking about this week’s groom, maybe say a sentence or two along the lines of “Elly feeh el kheir, ye3meloh rabena”. However, today was a little bit different.

She started the conversation the way she always does… “A male friend of mine…” I also interrupted the way I usually do, without glancing at her “ya mama er7ameeny, 3arees tany?” And she spat out the usual… “ya benty sebeeny akamel”… And I helplessly gave in, to the TV’s remote-control of course. Today, the keyword “forty-five” caused me to pause my aimless switching through the channels, to squirm on the sofa in order to force my body to face her and attentively listen. She concluded “…I was really shocked and I just told him, I am sure you’ll meet the right woman”. I asked if he was really forty five. She nodded. My second question was… “Do you mean he has salt and pepper hair?” She nodded again. I spat out; “Shit, that’s hot”. My mother looked at me that confused look of hers… the one I know very well.

Worthless.

2008-11-30T14:37:00.000-08:00

You realize you are a worthless bitch when in one week you’ve heard about five murders and three rape accidents in Cairo and have witnessed a demonstration about the welfare of atomic energy scientists in Nasr City… and all you can daydream about is shooting yourself in the head.

Fear tastes.

2008-11-22T15:04:00.000-08:00

Things are not going to be okay. I thought time will heal a lot of things and I put a lot of stake on it, but nothing can help me out of this. I am not miserable... I am scared. I think for the first time in my life, my knees are shaking of tomorrow. Partially because I know my misery will never go away, but more importantly, because of the recent changes I have been witnessing.

I've been buying Vodafone cards only to find there are ones in my wallet that I haven't consumed and I don't even remember when I bought them. I've been forgetting appointments I apparently gave to people. I've been forgetting names of people. Lack of concentration is a bitch - and it won't be long before I lose my job. I've been forgetting all those little details that seem so little to everyone but seem like mega sins to any corporate fella. Last week, I sent an email to a client in the UK without a subject header - can you fucking imagine? I've been boasted off with for the past years at my mastery in verbal and written communication... but alas, I am a mediocre 22 year old maid who can't tell what day is today without looking at her Windows blue tool bar. I am failing constantly to be the corporate bitch because of my lack of concentration, and at those depression times, it won't be long before several corporate bitches slit each others' throats to take my place.

That's not where it stops... After I lose my job and I am penniless, I will probably go down a Heliopolis street to have a walk for a break or so, because that will be all I can afford. However, even then, I shall hurt myself greatly. Last night, I walked into an iron piece hanging out of a wall and it hit my forehead and glasses... I am so lucky it didn't break my glasses or I would have lost my sight, but now my forehead is swollen greatly. Furthermore, I nearly killed myself crossing the street three times in the past seven days because I can't 'concentrate' enough to remember to look sideways for crossing cars.

Thus, I am scared. And I am scared greatly. I am scared I will wind up as a victim of tasteless repetition. I am scared I will always be a slave to heartbreaks... an open door for a man to come inside, break and shatter my insides, light his cigarette out with his foot on the floor of me and leave without a word. I am afraid, very afraid, I will have to spend more time thinking about how to avoid my parents' pressure than ever wondering what do I want for myself. I am scared I will never get out of my past... I will always suffer yearning and nostalgia to people who were never deserving. I am... only afraid.

بتنجان

2008-11-21T05:20:00.000-08:00

“I could say,” her mother went on, “that living among the hakujin* has tainted you, made your soul impure, Hatsue. The lack of purity envelops you – I see it every day. You carry it with you always. It is like a mist around your soul, and it haunts your face like a shadow at moments when you do not protect it well. I see it in your eagerness to leave here and walk in the woods in the afternoon. I cannot translate all of this easily and except as the impurity that comes with living each day among the white people. I am not asking you to shun them entirely – this you should not do. You must live in this world, of course you must, and this world is the world of the hakujin – you must learn to live in it, you must go to school. But don’t allow living among the hakujin to become living interwined with them. Your soul will decay. Something fundamental will rot and go sour. You are eighteen, you are grown now – I can’t walk with you where you are going anymore. You walk alone soon, Hatsue. I hope you will carry your purity with you always and remember the truth of who you are.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*hakujin: The white people.

سبحان الله.. كلام الأمهات لازم يكون فيه جو البتنجان.. سواء الأم فى الأصل مصرية أو من اليابان..

Fuck Me.

2008-11-20T15:23:00.001-08:00

Since the author of this blog is everyone's spoiled brat, and thus finds random movie files on the hard disk of their laptop - while they have no clue how they got there...

..they are obliged to pay it forward.

Thus, the author of this blog recommends you to..

Baise Moi.

:/

2008-11-15T14:47:00.000-08:00

She refused to tell me her name. Google refused to tell me her name. She poured half the bottle of gin down her throat the way she always did. Purgatorio looked at her then stared at his gin bottle. Before she put the bottle down, he had already poured himself another drink… with ice - crushed. I stopped him from raising the glass to his mouth and put him some lemon remains. He stared at me and all he said was “:/”.

I never was able to break my mirrors.

Stills... are only stills.

2008-11-13T13:44:00.000-08:00

Those photographers with black cameras stuck to their noses and grinning mouths to fake looking indulged and professional drive me crazy. Photography was never an art - I am sure I. G. will agree with me on that. To me, photography is too new age, too kitschy – too “Paolo Coello” to say the least. If we go a few years back – four or so, one could have taken a Calculus book or two and went to Cilantro Merghany to study on a Friday morning. That was always a quite resort – apart from all the domestic civil wars and all. But then… things grew too quiet. One Friday morning, I was solving some mathematical problems on Integration by Parts and I looked up for a second away from the Calculus drill, to see everyone around me has grown long – but not too long - hair, smoked Kent cigarettes, held a Paolo Coello book in one hand, an American coffee mug in the other and had an expensive mobile phone on the table – that can save several ringtones to several people, but which had Buddha Bar’s “Secret Love” as its one and only ringtone.

The air grew too stinky… I left… to no avail of course.

Now those people wear out their eyes on a Brazilian journalist’s cheap philosophical words in the morning and spend the money left in their pockets – after extravagantly spending it in Diwan Zamalek and Cilantro Merghany, and isn’t that what’s money is made for my dear new-age intellectual friend? – at night, on photography classes and tripods and camera accessories. Then comes the harder part… what should be photographed.

If you are not a photographer, you will not understand what kind of a-fucking-important-thing-this-is. Those people go far… real far. There are several types. The most expected of which are the nature sissies. Those spend whatever money is remaining in their pockets – after the Diwan Zamalek, Cilantro Merghany and make-Kodak-a-bigger-corporation shopping spree – on trips to places you probably never heard of – which is the part I greatly appreciate. However, after our devoted photographer has travelled by bus with other fellow photographers or by his new-age Jeep Cherokee to a place that is very far far away and full of desert and some stones they refer to as mountains and after our devoted photographer takes them pictures and satisfies his/her sissy sexuality towards Mother Nature… you look at them pictures and you just wanna look them in the eyes and tell them that they could have just drove to Sha2 Al Te3ban or to the stones-full Wadi Degla to capture the same exact photos of some sands and some stones – but you wouldn’t wanna tell them that, after all nature sissies can be quite amusing in other aspects of life – of which I can’t remember any right now.

Nature sissies are very easy to spot and are the gum that loses its sweetness after a very very short while. The more interesting kind is the intellectual highly-educated new age stratum of detectives. Those Sherlock-Holmes of photography have such a sharp eye – you wouldn’t want to fart in their presence. The first step is that they spread in poor areas or areas that are so very full of “culture” – sigh, I have to use their vocabulary for a second, bear with me. The trick is that the more the photo they capture satisfies two elements, the more they get too proud of themselves and each goes home – him thinking he has a bigger sexual organ and her thinking she has bigger boobs. The first element is how contradictory is the picture to the bourgeoisie-ness of your expensive camera… for example, picture that street kid who is too dirty and is begging for a McDonald’s fry off of your lunch, or that door porter sipping on tea and dragging on a Cleopatra “Soopaarrr” – the more your picture reflects agony of the Egyptian nation and the more it is an option for a cheap Leftist newspaper, the more you gain points. See, here comes the feeling of purpose and hey-I-just-found-an-existentialist-answer sort of pride. The second element is how the elements in the picture appear as if they didn’t know the picture was being taken – even though the flash is made to blind them, but never mind. Now that’s very easy to achieve with things that don’t breathe – like a sheesha that you pay 1.25 pounds for (remember, we are in a poor area) or a broken wooden window pane. However, things get slightly more complicated as you take pictures of begging children or door porters – thus, our devoted photographer might want to tip them to pretend they don’t notice his flashy existence.

Another type of our devoted photographers is them with a details-fetish. Now those can take 9 to 99 pictures of those tiny salt and pepper containers found on restaurants’ tables, put them up on Facebook, add a caption to each and every one of them and never bother to convince the world of the difference between those bunch of pictures that just look the same to me – let alone the need to take one in the first place – because they “know” their artistic sense of “details-capturing” is well communicated. I will not indulge into details about this kind – I dated one of them.

Let’s be fair, though. There is this guy whom I consider the only Egyptian photographer who has any taste and style to what he’s doing. But again to me photography, will always be an everlasting failing technique to bring soul to stills… and soul cannot be flavored with poses nor with expensive devotion – but rather with drunken smiles on a table having some empty bottles of wine on it and perhaps a caption saying “Cairo 2005”, “Alexandria 2006”, “Beirut 2009”…

Necessary Invitations.

2008-11-09T13:35:00.001-08:00

Mr. Mahmoud Hemeida-

You are cordially invited for a French billiards game. This will be an all day event and it is going to take place between our steel brain compartments – serving as the sides of the French table. We have been informed that you prefer snooker; however, the steel lacks the pockets. In addition, French billiards has proven to be very existentialist and supreme, in the sense that no one ever gets the whole point of it. You are encouraged to bring a friend; in fact, you are encouraged to bring your Catholic snooker companion – the one who owns our favorite Snooker and Billiards place and who usually stares at our curves as we miss our shot. If not, you can always French your score on a sole basis. Your favorite drinks will be served with topless escorts. There is no dress code – unless you want to have one. It won’t be necessary to have any clothes in the first place.

Your acceptance of this invitation will bring a lot of purpose and gratitude to our steel brain compartments.

Thank you.

Jigsaw falling out of place.

2008-10-23T14:57:00.000-07:00

Just as I grab your attention,
Just as you write my number down,
Just as our drinks arrive,
Just as they play your favorite song,
Just as I read your book,
Just as you read mine,
Just as you pay attention,
Just as you hold my hand,
Just as you light your cigarette,
Just as you want to kiss me right here right now,
Just as you think you touched me,
Before we pretend we’re there,
Before you get bored,
Before you hang up on me,
Before you run away,
Before I get lost between the notes,
Just as I dance,
Before you hurt my eye balls,
Before we pretend our lives are great,
Before we lie to each other,
Before you glance back,
Before I pretend I don’t,
Just as I dance, dance, dance,
Come on, let it out – not just once, not just twice,
Just as the beat goes round and round and round,
Pay attention… jigsaw falling out of place.

My second blog.

2008-10-19T15:22:00.000-07:00

Check out my second blog :)

About Me.

2008-10-19T14:30:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I make love to Thom Yorke.

زيارات عشتار

2008-10-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

لا أفقه كثيرا فى الطب النفسى... ولكنه مهنتى التى أجبرت عليها وورثتها أبا عن جد... لا أشعر بشئ تجاه أى من زوارى المرضى... ولا أشعر بالشفقة... فى ما عدا واحدة...

تزورنى عشتار حوالى ثلاث مرات شهريا... تدخل من باب مكتبى وتنظر الى سريعا وتحيينى... ولكن لا تحيينى بيدها.... تجلس على الكرسى أمامى وتنظر الى الأرض من خلال شباك سيقانها... أحيانا تشعل سيجارة... ومعظم الوقت لا تبكى... تشكو عشتار من حياتها العاطفية... والجنسية... تشكو من الوحدة ومن الاحباطات التى تنهال عليها...

تجبرنى عشتار على أن ابتكر لها حلول ونصائح فى كل زيارة لها... وأشعر أنها تعلم أنى أغير منها أحيانا وأحبها أحيانا أخرى... منذ اسبوعين أعلنت لى عشتار كم حبها لموسيقى جو كوكر... فنصتحها فى أن لا تخلع قبعتها أبدا...

أما هذه المرة... فنصحتها أن تستمر فى ارتداء نظاراتها...

:)

Push Thy Glasses.

2008-10-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

Mothers wear glasses. They can’t formulate full sentences either. Thus, the mother walks on the school’s playground with steady steps, as if her high heels don’t sink in the sand or anything. She is too impatient and bothered about why she had to go pick up her daughter, who was detained, for reasons that weren’t revealed on the phone.

Mrs. Madelene also wears glasses. She can formulate long full sentences, for she is the English teacher. Her sentences are grammatically correct too. Mrs. Madelene isn’t as fashionable as the lady with the steady steps walking on the playground who is approaching her. Mrs. Madelene usually pushes up her glasses with her middle finger.

The daughter doesn’t wear glasses. She doesn’t formulate sentences at all. She has hair of equal length and no waves. She has straight lips with no curvatures or smiles. She also has blank eyes that blink mechanically. The daughter sits in a room not so far from the playground, and bets Mrs. Madelene is pushing up her glasses using her middle finger.

The English teacher smiles at the mother. The mother returns the smile coldly. Time seems to stroll slower and slower to the mother, as Madelene starts speaking of weird issues that the mother doesn’t seem to comprehend at all. Weird issues include her daughter’s odd behavior, isolation, silence, insecurities, skepticism and a whole lot of other words that only English teachers say and understand.

Daughters don’t speak to mothers, especially fashionable mothers. There is something about a fashionable mother that turns off the tongue of a little girl, as if it’s a locked door that has a “Do Not Disturb” sign. Fashionable mothers pity English teachers with vast sweaters and short manly hair. They constantly steal looks at their watches in presence of them, teachers.

Mrs. Madelene may be an English teacher, but she still is smart. She spots the mother’s boredom and impatience towards their conversation. She may be an English teacher, but she oddly has temper. She scolded the mother in a rough tone about how she should spend more time talking to her daughter versus her hairdresser.

Fashionable mothers are mean and weak. After demeaning Mrs. Madelene and taking her daughter into the car, she thinks about what the teacher told her. It doesn’t make much difference if the mother screwed the teacher over; she still knew she had a point.

“But nobody wants to play with me…” the daughter replied, as she pushed her mother’s glasses up her nose using her middle finger.

Drawing by Bashir M. Wagih

Prisoners don`t make love.

2008-10-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

There are doors. Doors usually have knobs, sometimes a glass window that is not so see-through. Some doors have only knobs from the outside, those are prison doors. Prison doors usually have an opening at the bottom that closes and opens also from the outside. Prisoners cocoon behind prison doors. Prisoners sometimes sit, sometimes pee in a rusty stinky toilet that is in the very same cell. The toilet doesn’t have a mirror hanging somewhere near it. Prisoners sometimes sleep like embryos, sometimes they graffiti using their scratchy finger nails. Prisoners don’t make love. They don’t wear watches. They definitely don’t know what day is today either. Free citizens make love. Free citizens plan vacations. Free citizens save money for their phone bill to have romantic phone calls at night. They pity prisoners. Prisoners pity them back. Prisoners don’t want to be free citizens and they don’t want to hear anything about their activities.

There are prison personnel. Prison personnel have gruff voices. They have big bellies. Prison personnel use very bad vocabulary. They slip plates through the openings at the bottom of prison doors for the prisoners. Prisoners never want those plates, but the opening only opens from the outside as previously mentioned. The plates are persistent. Plates will contain news about American elections. They will tell prisoners about Sarah Palin’s new sex toys and the phone number of her hairdresser. Prisoners don’t have hair. The plates tell prisoners that, a 100-years later, it is 1929 all over again. The plates will tell prisoners, who do not eat, that they will starve and their families will starve and their children, yet to come, will starve too. Prisoners don’t make love. Plates are honest; they will tell prisoners they look ugly, old and cocooned. Prisoners never have a mirror. Prisoners never understand why they are forced their plates each day… for all they need is to sleep like embryos.

Prisoners pretend to sleep like embryos, hoping plates will grow empty.

1- "If I go down the street to buy a pack of smokes..."

2008-10-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things that I hear and I really think how much I want to be put in a situation where I can say such utterances. This "Put On My Lips" series focuses on this list.

1- "If I go down the street to buy a pack of smokes, I'll walk into nine men you've fucked."

The Boondock Saints.

Sanity is easy.

2008-09-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

I am the sanest person that you're going to meet. Yes, I tell you, my sanity is something that people sets examples with... all the time. It's true, if you don't believe me go ask anybody we both know, I can give you my parents' numbers too. Everyone enjoys my company, they like it when I speak and when I listen, everyone loves my jokes, I always have a large table with a lot of booze, laughs and people. The people are never the same each year, but it doesn't matter. I have a few flaws - but again, they are made up for by my big table. I mean, it's not a big deal if I cry all the time, is it? Today, I cried when I listened to Massive Attack's "Live With Me". I also cried when I watched the court scene from Kramer Vs. Kramer when Meryl Streep was asked if she thought she was a failure at the most important relationship she ever had. My blanket had cherries, hearts and flowers drawn on it, so I cried. My mother cooked then asked me how I was, so I cried. My father told me that the door porter's son died this morning, so I corrected him and said "you mean the little girl?", he nodded, so I cried. In the elevator, on my desk, in the bathroom, in Aldo - the Korba branch, during conference calls to the United Kingdom and the United States... I am a crying devotee. Sometimes, I am on my way to meet people - who love it when I speak and love it when I listen - but my parents decide to go out as well, so I make a few phone calls pretending I am sick and nauseatic and can't make it to my big table, yes the one with a lot of booze and laughs... so that I can stay home alone and cry. I mean, one wouldn't waste such a chance of uninterrupted crying, would they?

It's easier to win. It's easier to be a healthy woman, with a bright face, shining eyes, expensive perfume and well-done hair. It's also very feasible to lead a healthy relationship, one that's full of big tables that are full of people and laughs, the sounds of cheek kisses, cell phones declaring the arrival of late night messages and choosing the same plate off two different menus. Again, it's a lot easier to smile in photos and to choose to answer your cell phone. Easy to remember the names of the actors rather than the director and easy to have your picture taken rather than take somebody's. I mean, isn't it very easy to call up a friend and blabber thoughts and complaints instead of sending letters to yourself? It's easier to befriend popular women whose photos come up in magazines with a caption saying "ياسمين وميار والجميلات" rather than the girl at the back. The capability to laugh at weakness, that's a piece of cake too, in addition to making fun and public ridicule. It's easier to hate Radiohead and Anathema. Impressing people and having them yearn for the next time they meet you, is also very easy. It's a favored easy thing to make fun of addicts and women and people who are biased-against without any second thoughts. It's easier to go mainstream, to be liked and loved and favored and yearned for. It's easier to be a hero, to be a slave to drama, to make a god out of Ledger because he overdosed... I am a loser - but still the sanest person you're ever going to meet.

Murk inside, murk outside.

2008-09-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

“I am supposed to act like they aren’t here, assuming there is a ‘they’ at all. It may just be my imagination. Whatever it is, that’s watching… it’s not human. Unlike little dark-eyed Donna, it doesn’t ever blink. What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me – into us – clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone’s sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I’m cursed… and cursed again… and I’ll only wind up dead this way… knowing very little… and getting that little fragment… wrong… too.”

A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick

no-reply@companydomain.com

2008-09-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Tinkerbell-

This email is sent to you upon nobody’s request. Personally, I felt the need to send it to do myself a favor. You might not understand this, because you do not vent out your disgust when you are filled with it, instead you suck it inside. Upon observing you, I realized this is not a very healthy trend to follow – thus my disgust is to become a subject of this letter.

I have known you now for around six weeks. You probably never noticed me because you are self-indulged, even though we spend quite some time together on a daily basis. It is needless to mention that we are not friends, even though I thought that this is going to change by time and I wanted it to. You can be stuck in an elevator for six hours with somebody you don’t know and you won’t bother to initiate a conversation, because you believe the probability that you will not be disappointed is too low. However, from what I have seen during the past period of time, I do not think I want to commit such a crime to myself – your friendship or even companionship.

Tinkerbell, self-indulgence isn’t your sole problem. Let me rephrase; self-indulgence is too light to describe what you have. You move in a bubble and you do not wish to change that. You know that your five senses collect data that aren’t necessarily accessible by others, and you do not wish to give this up. Thus, you are a very selfish creature, indulged in your own needs and world, separated from what everyone around you want to take from you or even give to you. The words you utter out that are not in the form of a song’s lyrics are too minimal. The number of people you trust, who don’t happen to be dead, musicians or movie-makers, doesn’t deserve to be mentioned. You have absolutely no friends.

In addition to the increasing self-indulgence, you are going to suffer from decreasing self-confidence. Every day I have to look at your miserable face and I have to tolerate it. Your unhealthy hair, your eyes that squint, fragile skin, elf ears and weak physique send me an unbearably negative vibe. Let alone your pathetic moves; your playing with your hair, your restless legs, the veins that show on your hands upon different movements, your breath… They all give me something that I can hate just for the sake of doing it, and isn’t that what you do? You hate things and people, undeserving of your bubble, just for the sake of it? I forgot to inform you, that as I was forced to stare at your stagnant face today; I noticed a white hair growing on your left side. It is right in the front of your face, Tinkerbell. All your hair is going to turn white and your eyes won’t remain magnetic for long. The people that try to get to you will decrease day by day as you turn into a bubble – that is not so beautiful. I wait that day impatiently.

I do not feel any sort of sympathy or compassion as I tell you all of this. Why should I when those who should care about you… simply don’t? Let’s start by your family, who constantly fail to touch any trail of your isolated island. Your friends? I already told you… none. Sometimes a man can be interested in your magnetic eyes – that won’t stay so for long, as I previously mentioned – but it takes a maximum of a month before he realizes how worthless you are.

I tell you all of this, Tinkerbell, partially because I just want you to feel worthless as much as I think you are. I also want to fill you with self-loathing. However, more importantly, I tell you this, because I hope you can do me and yourself a favor and stop showing up every day for me to stare at your face for hours. I don’t care where you rot, but don’t make it here.

Thanks,

Dell Desktop Screen,
Company Name
no-reply@companydomain.com

One thousand rules and one.

2008-09-19T16:01:00.001-07:00

I am having an excessively exciting reading experience on this.

It's been such a long long time since I said such a thing. I wonder if he wants to adopt any 22 year old women. If not, then I wonder if he wants to marry one.

Napalm Love.

2008-09-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

That’s the truth. That’s the simple bloody truth. Tomorrow I will wake up early in the morning, will snooze the alarm for 15 minutes, or sinfully for 20 if I was to give myself a treat. I will turn on my laptop, to put on some music that I don’t really wanna listen to, then leave it to go shower. I won’t forget to put some water to boil. As I get out of the shower, all dressed and smelly with glittery body lotion, I will pour myself a hazelnut flavoured cappuccino. I’d probably munch on some biscuits, sip on the cappuccino, listen to some music and stare at a white and blue website that I’ve been checking for a while now. That will probably take around 20 minutes, my lazy morning treat. I’ll get down and I’ll good-morning a door porter, whom I don’t really like but have no authority to just burst into his face and tell him how much I just hate his guts for no apparent reason. Apparently, I just nicely good-morning him, because he has a nice wife and a nice little girl – so basically two women save his ass every morning, but that’s another story. I get out my mp3 player and I stick the two headphones in my ears, and the bloody thing always plays “Napalm Love” as the first track, in other words, it has the same seed for its random number generator – but I wouldn’t want this talk to go any more technical. I cross the street and then cross a very big square with a lot of intersections. If this was any normal day, I’d walk for a couple of blocks and await my usual bus to work. But no, tomorrow I will trample over a gun that is just lying around in the square and that caught nobody’s attention but mine. I pick it up and it’s fully loaded. I point it to my heart and its dirtiness makes a mark on my well-ironed white shirt, one of those shirts I wear to work and all. I pull the trigger without hesitation. On the contrary, I do it with the energy the hazelnut-flavoured cappuccino filled me with and with the same extroversion that I spread around… and that’s the simple truth.

عبادة القهوة السادة

2008-09-12T04:42:00.000-07:00

العقل المدبر لهذه المدونة بتقولكوا تسيبوا اللى فى ايديكوا واللى فى رجليكوا واللى فى اى طرف تانى وتروحوا مسرحية "قهوة سادة" النهاردة بمركز الابداع الفنى بالأوبرا.. العرض بيبتدى الساعة 10 مساء.. ولكن لازم تكونوا هناك من الساعة 9 مساء عشان تعرفوا تلحقوا تذكرة.. التذاكر عددها محدود جدا وكل واحد لازم يستلم تذكرته بنفسه وليس لهم مقابل مادى.. العرض مستمر لحد يوم 25.. سبتمبر او رمضان كله واحد.. بس نصيحة تروحوا قبل يوم 25 عشان يبقى عندكوا وقت تروحوا مرة او اتنين كمان..

اه يا كافانا اه

2008-09-04T03:57:00.000-07:00

يا جماعة انا ابتديت اقلق على اناتيما وعلى عيلة كافانا كلها... ماشاء الله يعنى ربنا ينعم عليهم زيادة ويزيد حالة الفرح والتفاؤل اللى هما فيها دى... بس يعنى لازم نعرف ايه سر التغيير ده... ماهو مينفعش بعد لما يثبتوا انهم يستحقوا الثقة اللى ادينهالهم وياخدوا توكيل الاكتئاب بتاع ملايين المعجبين والمعجبات... يخونوهم كدة ويتحولوا الى كائنات متفائلة مستحمية بتظهر الصبح والدنيا ملونة والزرع اخضر والسما زرقا وشكلهم مزز ولابسين شيك جدا وناقص تشم ريحتهم الحلوة... لازم نطالب بمبررات... مينفعش كدة... انا خايفة شوية كمان الواد فينسنت كافانا يقول كلمات زى اللى بتقولها مادونا فى البومها الأخير...

من الاخر يعنى... لو دى مرحلة وهتعدى ربنا ينتعهم بالسلامة، ولو مش هتعدى لازم مبررات... عايزين نعمل زيكوا يا جماعة...

Eye Candy.

2008-09-02T14:43:00.000-07:00

Finally, something made me drool..

The Black Angels' logo...

Inspired by Nico...

She's the classic favourite.

White-Collar Blabber.

2008-09-01T01:54:00.000-07:00

Apparently, my silence is annoying a lot of people. Even my father, whom I’ve always thought goes into competitions of silence with dead fish – and eventually wins, can’t tolerate my silence. But what do I have to say? I don’t have anything to say to anyone, not even here, even though that’s supposedly an anonymous blog and all. In fact, I hate this blog, because all I ever blabber about lately is personal outbursts, and I have no fucking clue why are you here reading this. It’s bitter to admit it or write it down and then read it later. It highlights the fact I’ve already reached, that nobody has control over anything. Oh, I miss the good old days, when I thought and people thought I am a master of puppets and I am the control goddess that they look up to when they’re lost. No, that’s another lie, I don’t miss those days, and I wouldn’t want them to be back, no, no, not at all. I don’t want anyone to believe in me, it sets standards. And I fight standards now. I fight standards so hard, that if you saw them standards, you’ll find explicitly sadistic scars on its bloody face. I mean let’s face it, my greatest fear was mediocrity, now I don’t fear it anymore – I embrace it with devotion. There was once shining glamour inside my chest, which attracted travelling wanderers, and now it’s gone. There was once a business I led and my title was “The Dream Merchant”, but not anymore. And in mediocrity, I am lying around - in sloth and sweet laziness. At least, I admit it.

I pray my father stops getting annoyed with my silence… but that’s the maximum I can do about it.

Were you serious?

2008-08-29T15:31:00.001-07:00

To those who preferred Ledger as the Joker.. were you serious?

The Only Enemy.

2008-08-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

وكان يشتهى أن يشبع من الخرنوب الذى كانت الخنازير تأكله، فلا يعطيه أحد - لوقا 15:16

And I couldn’t help but compare where I was and where I am now… And there was the new definition of brutality. Questions are not made of words, but of knives that are made of steel. The what-have-I-done dilemma is like a Samurai fight scene from a Japanese movie that has made it to the American charts, with the sounds of clashing long swords and flying warriors over walls and all – all in my head. Let alone the can-I-ever-get-a-second-chance whirl of uncertainty, which sucks out the air from your lungs and leaves your eyes dry from tears that need to fall. Needless to mention, the what-was-I-thinking and the do-I-deserve-a-second-chance-in-the-first-place. All of course, are masters at infusing me with self-loathing, guilt and sweet temptation to further linger in a filthy abyss.

Years ago I would have fallen with eyes closed and had hands to catch me, but now, I find ways to coil my limbs during the fall so that I only get bruised – rather than hit my head or lose sight or grow a Donald-Duck sort of head-soreness with flying birds and/or stars around it… and of course be in a state that allows me to go to my too-white-collarish job the next morning. And the bruises never last long, for they are refreshed with new ones. And I forget the pain… but I don’t forget him. Tell this to Purgatorio and he’d tell you “He’ll be back” with that slow-Bango voice of his. Tell this to Gouda and he’d say “I am proud you made the comparison” with his manly voice of confidence. Tell this to H. and she’d blabber out “There is hope” with a tone that tells you she is far from convinced of what she’s saying. Tell this to him… “Now it’s her turn to suffer,” with a tone I’ve never heard before.

I am my only enemy.

صباح الخير يا...

2008-08-22T04:41:00.000-07:00

بنحب نصبح ونقول.. حمد الله ع السلامة يا احمد سامى

Cruellaville.

2008-08-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

“You should never have to watch as your only children are lowered in the ground,
I mean you should never have to bury your own babies.”
Dave Matthews.

My experiences with death are not that many.. The first time I ever went to a cemetery was yesterday.. It erupted inside me a bunch of thoughts that I don't want to write down, because I don't want to keep a registry of them, because once I forget them I don't want a way to remind me I ever had them in the first place.. In all cases, you shouldn't live to bury your own child, you just shouldn't. No, you shouldn't.

Fighting Dorian Gray.

2008-08-08T15:59:00.001-07:00

I had a portrait that I hung inside my heart because I didn’t want anybody else to see it – for I am sure that if anyone did, their eyes will fail to see it the way I do. Through the years, I didn’t mind change to seep through anything – including my physical traits, my social circles, my phonetics and spelling, my religious core, my drinking hard core… and any other core that there is. But I won’t let change touch that portrait. I fought so hard for it to remain the same way I see it. And I’d burn with jealousy when someone claimed they saw him the same way he looks in my portrait – but I won’t show it, because I am a very hard-to-see-through person and all, trust me I am… I mean I must be.

That portrait was more important to me than the person it impersonated. In my darkest nights, I’d kneel on my knees, clasp both hands, weep out my eyes and pray. I didn’t listen to Souad Massi or Billie Holiday and united my state with a miserable blue woman’s voice nor did I listen to Mohammed Mounir and felt how “7a2ee2y” he is and how I must know everything about life just because he’s on my playlist. I didn’t whine to girl friends over the phone, even though sometimes I’d do that to Purgatorio online – but only sometimes. I didn’t use my recently-acquired hard core drinking habits to fake drunkenness and call him up instead of kneeling in front of his portrait. I didn’t do any of that… I just prayed.

I prayed for dreams that were the victims of genocide, I prayed for a future that might have flourished, I prayed for resurrecting the past, I prayed for a final chance… but above all, I prayed for forgiveness. But just like those millions who pray daily to their own God, for the flourishing of Egypt in churches or for the freeing of Palestine in mosques… none of what I prayed for ever came. And again just like those millions… I still prayed.

The existence of my portrait slash god corner could have remained longer and grew stronger, for I am full of persistence and all… I mean I must be. However, there is this one thing that I couldn’t fight back – for he came and ripped off his own portrait and how I have seen him for all those years went down to the abyss. He’d boast off how low and cheap and sinfully human he has become and how lustfully he fucks obsessive mistresses, and that all those traits can’t belong to a god… and he’d go a step further to prove it by scratching the inside walls of the heart with blades. Apparently, he thought I deserve all that and all.

Now I am portrait-less, with a rectangular space that looks awkwardly clean other than the rest of the wall in the place of the portrait, which was removed. I don’t want any votes for a god, thank you, I am better off. It really hurts though, that he took away the only imagery I looked up for; it’s just not his right – he can vanish and lust and fuck, but not alter the portrait I had.

I am idle now on them dark nights... and I really don’t want Massi, Holiday or Mounir around.

Resistance.

2008-08-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

There is nothing particularly sexy about rusty steel huge dirty pieces of junk that look like they are leftovers since the Industrial Revolution, which are full of holes from bullets that light seeps through bluntly without permission the same way a prostitute would look at passing prospects, which look like they are leftovers from the war that killed your remaining sibling and only lover, which amateurs use to practice shooting to add further holes or to simply enlarge the existing circles, which have no talent and no assets to utilize to fly away from the earth prints their weight has made, which are thought to be ugly by even the insects that reside inside them for shelter away from human steps, which have no god to pray for, which have no sexual organs to make love and seep out their self loathing, which are detested by the breeze that passes by. No… nothing particularly sexy… not at all, no.

Do You Folks Like Coffee?

2008-07-31T17:25:00.000-07:00

The author of this blog recommends...

Dethklok.

Small Crimes.

2008-07-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

She’d wear next-to-nothing clothes and stand there every night for the trick the audience awaits.

He’d wear a tuxedo and a black hat and say a few warm-up thrill phrases to the audience.

She’d stand hand-folded against a wooden wall for him to throw the knives around her still body.

He’d throw confidently.

She’d not bleed if he misses, not in front of the audience, not in front of him.

He’d miss.

She’d wonder if sometimes he misses… on purpose.

July 2008.

2008-07-22T17:19:00.001-07:00

Even though July is not yet over, but I decided I will write about it now. The reason behind this is that the remaining week in July will probably be just like the previous three weeks – and that’s exactly why I fucking love this month.

July 2008 is the intermission month after my graduation and before the start of my white-collar career. I didn’t really make any plans for it but I felt that it’s going to be different. I thought I’d find ways to indulge in the summer frenzy or do things that have been pending for a long time because of university obligations, like having that planned photo shoot for example – but to be honest; I didn’t do anything out of what I planned. This month has been spent in absolute dumbness and extreme sloth. No energy whatsoever was exerted, not to do anything memorable nor to even try to think of what I want to do. I spent days in bed and nights listening to music and reading lyrics – too lazy to even type on instant messaging applications. I so proudly declare that I failed to finish any of the things I intended to utilize this month of idleness to, like the book and the script. I gave appointments that I got late to, I started reading books that I never finished, I stopped looking at my watch that frequently, I listened to musicians more than I listened to people, I took long showers, sipped on a lot of wine, stared into nothingness, counted my hair and counted trees while riding in slow cars as we drove through without having a real destination. I shut down all my receptors to those who demand me to do things that involve any sort of thinking, like both my parents who each of them has their own vision of what I should do and how I should do it, and like friends who might bring up unpleasant subjects that involve love tales from the past or any social drama. Furthermore, I built a big wall surrounding my senses against bad vibes intentionally forced upon me. And I have done all of that with great persistence and sweaty devotion.

This month is one week away from its death, and I salute it, for all of the idleness and sloth it brought me. I didn’t know what it is to be in total darkness, not knowing what you are doing or where you are going and yet not caring to move a hair to change any of that – till this month came.

I might still have that photo shoot though…

Suicide Is Painless.

2008-07-20T16:22:00.000-07:00

The author of this blog recommends...

MASH by Robert Altman.

Cocoons Don`t Fly.

2008-07-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

She: Oh by the way, I saw M. yesterday.

He: You did?

She: Yes, she came with us to finish that business thing.

He: How is she?

She: Fine.

He: Where is she?

She: Starts work soon… She is avoiding everyone obviously.

He: Is she okay?

She: I don’t think so.

He: Does she fly now?

She: What?

He: Does she have wings and all? Does she fly? That’s what she told me when she left… that I prevent her from flying.

The Real Nigga.

2008-07-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

Dear J,

Writing letters and not sending them has turned out to be a very effective habit, because in our case silence and distance are the only humane actions we can take. I have been minding my own business lately and have been away from that social tub we used to share for a long while now – not intentionally and it’s all temporary, but let’s say that that’s the most humane action to take. A lot of things seem to attack my immunity shield though, like whenever I trample over certain people and they mention you and your current affairs, or when I walk into a Cilantro for pure peeing purposes and my eyes find a "Maws Tawt". Even with my great efforts to minimize my friction with things like those that remind me of past times, I go home to speak to Purgatorio who speaks about Snowhite who reminds me of you – I think you and Snowhite share a lot in common, but that’s another story. It’s not only Purgatorio, for even Mariah speaks of you and of how she misses the good old days, and I feel a lot of pity towards her, for she is all the way in Austria and has no clue what she is talking about is now an illusion. Bottom line, people like speaking about you.

I heard about the new girl. I heard she asks about me and that she doesn’t particularly like me. I heard she will go throw herself from the highest mountain if she knew you and I met by coincidence down the street without even saying “hello” – that is of course after she shreds your body to pieces with blood and flesh and bones and all. That’s a matter of habit to me though; I am used to girlfriends doing evil spells and voodoo dolls for me. I heard she is a kitten stuck up a tree and that you save her every day, I also heard she climbs up the tree again just because she is the pretty girl who likes to be saved. I heard the guys don’t like her. They secretly miss the good old days and they secretly miss me. They miss me putting ice in everyone’s glass and watching over the glasses and refilling them with whiskey without them having to ask. I heard they miss me playing cards and them not having to worry about bottle-openers in cars because my teeth are amazing and strong. I heard they miss themselves talking freely with you, for your new girl doesn’t like bad words – because in the past, things like that wouldn't have mattered. I heard they miss me roaring with them in football matches, raving hard and even rocking harder. I heard everyone misses me and misses us together, but they just won’t admit it to you. I heard the girls miss me too. I heard the new girl is obsessive and weird, that she picks up on all your phone calls and stalks you. I heard she lies to the girls and tells them that you are busy or away or not willing to talk to any bitch of them. I heard everyone misses me that rumours started spreading around about me, that I now live in the Northern Coast, or that I am married with children in Ukraine or that I am a coke addict who won’t let people see her in such state. I heard everyone misses the real nigga I was but nobody will ever tell you such a thing. I heard you nearly stopped drinking because you claim it brings you nausea and all, but everyone just knows that you do that out of respect to her Islamic beliefs. I heard she fasts with Christians too, out of solidarity and some drama talk. I heard enough.

All of what I heard doesn’t make a difference to me; I will still be the shadow in Ukraine who is married with children, or to be honest, the coke addict spreading her feet in Northern Coast sands. But I can’t help but wonder… is that what you wanted, a pretty kitten up a tree?

Sincerely,

The Nigga.

تسكر وتفتكر

2008-07-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

لم يذهب اللواء سالم كثيرا الى الكنيسة، فكان يعتقد أن الرب يرعى شئون الجميع، ولكن ليس شأنه هو. هذا لم يغضب اللواء سالم كثيرا، فهو رجلٌ فخورٌ بأنه بنى تفاصيل حياته معتمدا على نفسه. إضطر اللواء سالم للذهاب الى الكنيسة عندما توفيت زوجته التي أحبها كثيراً. وقف اللواء سالم أمام باب قاعة الرجال فى زيّه الرسمى الذى يعطيه الهيبة، ولم يسمح للدموع أن تهرب من عينيه، حتى عندما رأى إبنته، التى كانت شاحبةً على غير عادتها ولا تستطيع المشى فى خطٍ مستقيم من فرط دموعها. لم يُعر اللواء سالم اهتماماً كبيراً لما يقوله ضيوف العزاء، فكلهم يقولون نفس الكلام المحفوظ... "البقية فى حياتك" أو "تعيش وتفتكر"... ولكن أصدقاء اللواء سالم القدامى كانوا ينظرون فى عينيه ويقولون "تسكر وتفتكر" ثم يذهبون للجلوس فى الركن تحت أيقونة السيدة العذراء ويحتسون القهوة التركى في صمت.

Coins Of One Face.

2008-07-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I am on the dancing floor among a raving crowd, trying to dance the animal inside out of me, and I clasp my eyes shut. I have to close them lids, or else those around me will interrupt my trip. However, I still can feel them lights quickly drawing all sorts of coloured rays on my body, like endless quick knives thrown at a woman in a circus trick. Sometimes, I feel I am the queen of this world. But suddenly, a huge robotic mechanical arm will quickly close its knuckles on my waist and notch me quickly out of the crowd. It’s like when I pluck a hair of my eye brow or when a kid wins that arcade game and the arm picks them a teddy bear as a reward– that they never really wanted. I fight back, and I beat the iron arm around my waist, but I wind up with sore knuckles and the grip of the arm gets tighter tearing my cloth – and the arm shakes me, as if it is after something hidden inside me that it wants to fall out of me.

* * * * * * * * * * *

There are other times, when I am a woman wearing a nice simple dress with light colours that fit with the morning party I am attending in a garden. Usually, there are people around me chitchatting, sipping on champagne and commenting on the colour changes the morning light brings to my facial features. But suddenly, I am able to crop everyone out of my sight. I smile the smile of a teenager who is excited they heard the door close as their parents finally got out of the house. I run to the buffet in excitement that doesn’t fit with my high heels, then gently lay down my champagne glass on the white cloth covering the buffet and I start throwing dishes. There is nothing more relieving than throwing one after the other at totally random targets, laughing like an uncontrolled beast, breaking my French-manicured nails and having a few bruises due to my carelessness. I’d suck on the blood that escaped my finger and I’d throw more – making noise, making a mess, making the crash I yearn for.

* * * * * * * * * * *

But there are those times, when I am walking a dog, having my hair raised up in a practical manner and wearing shorts and a T-shirt, in a Cairo street where by-passers don’t stare at each other. I keep walking and I don’t care where my legs take me. Then another dog, which a by-passer is taking for a walk and doesn’t care where his legs are taking him, either, grins and growls at my dog. The by-passer and I will stare at each other, even though we have been avoiding that, and the eye-contact will give birth to that spark of challenge, rivalry and awaited violence. A mud pool will pop out of nowhere and the two dogs will stop their growling because they have a better play to watch now. The by-passer and I comprehend each other pretty well – the purpose of this mud fight is shallow and doesn’t deserve to be mentioned, but its mercilessness and the anger it reveals are the commons aims we share. The proper mud fight lasts for hours till we are completely breathless, then we’ll get out, wash the mud off our weary bodies with some water, air dry, look at each other and smile the business-like smile of “goodbye” – so will the dogs.

طب بالنسبة للفيل؟

2008-07-12T17:11:00.000-07:00

تقريبا نسيت يعنى ايه مصر الجديدة... كان بقالى فترة بعيد... وبقالى فترة ماتفرجتش على الزحمة والنيون الكتير من كرسى العربية اللى جمب السواق... والمطبات والمقبات... والبوليس اللى فى حتت غريبة... وتقريبا نسيت ازاى سكان مصر الجديدة اللى بيسوقوا بيتحمسوا جدا فى استعراض التخريمات الجديدة من الزحمة... وازاى على عكس مناطق اخرى، الشحاتين بيسرحوا بفل وكيوى... وازاى ان العربية اللى جمبى غالبا فيها ام صاحبتى فلو سمحت بلاش نكسر عليها...

المهم النهاردة كنت فى مصر الجديدة، فى عربية، وطلع اقتراح قديم أوى وعليه تراب ومسمعتوش بقالى كتير...

"بوريو؟"

"بووووورررررييييييوووووووو طبعا..."

"يلللللللاااااا بيييييننننننا..."

وبعد ساعة الا ربع مثلا من الزحمة والتخريمات وسباجيتى العربيات... وصلنا لمحل من المحلات المشهورة بتوع العصيروالبوريو والشبح والباتمان والى اخره... وللأسف الراجل احبطنا تماما... لأن مفيش بوريو من امبارح...

"طب ايه يا شباب.. نروح حتة تانية؟"

"لأ فكك.. انا هاخد مانجا.."

"وأنا هأخد فيل.."

وكله طلب... ومصدقتش عينايا لما الراجل رجع تانى... كل الطلبات نازلة فى كوبايات بلاستيك مقفولة من فوق ومحطوط في كل واحدة شفاطة... وأنا اللى هو بصيت بصة اللى هو... "أنت بتشتغلنى؟!!!"

يعنى أنا المطلوب منى أنى اشرب عصير مانجا من شفاطة؟ طب وبالنسبة للفيل؟ أنا اصلا مبطيقش اختراع الشفاطة ده... وبأتهرب منه فى جميع الأماكن... ومبأطيقش الكوكاكولا الفونتاين... ولما باشرب اى حاجة لازم اشربها بلغوصة ولازم ارفع رقبتى على قد انا عطشانة قد ايه... والكلام ده ماشى على العصائر والصودا... ووحياتكوا البينا كولادا...

لكن حرام لما الموضوع يوصل انه محل عصير فى الشارع فى مصر الجديدة ينزللى مانجا فى كوباية بلاستيك... وبشفاطة... طب ولو كنت طلبت قصب؟ كنا هنقضيها بلاستيك برضه؟ وكنت هتجيبلى اتنين شاليمون بدل من واحدة عشان تضحك عليا بتضاعف الكمية اللى انا باسحبها... ماهو قصب يعنى...

ارحمونى بقى !

Euphoria.

2008-07-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

My eyes hurt from all the Oriental eye liner I have put into them but I am too hesitant to go wash them, for I am afraid that if I do, I will ruin the mood I am in. There is nothing more that I want than the spontaneous state he puts me in. That’s all I need at this point in time and he is God-sent. I am addicted to his recklessness and his lack of plans. I am in love with the fact that he wears no watches and forgets his phone in the car wherever we go. We pause time in a special glass capsule he creates, and I am in love with it. He doesn’t write and doesn’t read what I write. We speak a language that is much different than this one I am using right now, one that is full of cartoon-like metaphors, one that is full of spongy terminology and beautiful misspellings and sexy bad grammar, one that takes someone like him to recreate. Let go.

كل ما أردته

2008-07-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

كل ما أردته هو احتساء بعض النبيذ الأحمر، وعدم التفكير لدقائق معدودة...
كل ما أردته هو بعض التحدى واستعراض بعض الأفيهات الجديدة اثناء لعب الطاولة...
كل ما أردته هو انتظار موعدنا القادم، الذى لا يحدد غير قبلها بساعات...
كل ما أردته هو التفكير فى مقتنيات يابانية، واستعراضها امامه عند توفرها...
كل ما أردته هو بعض الغزل، بعض الشغف، كثير من المزيكا، كثير من الأفلام...
كل ما أردته هو الكثير من الضحكات الغير المبررة التى تأتى بعد أفراح البيرة...
كل ما أردته هو كل تلك الأشياء التى شجعنى على وجودها، وبالتالى اردتها دوما...

ولكن لا... فلماذا ننتظر الغد الذى كان سيحتم علينا قطع كل هذه الأشياء...
فلنقطعها الآن... فكلها لا تستحق الوقت التى تستغرقه...

لا أريد أى منها الآن.

Intense.

2008-07-06T16:21:00.000-07:00

What if I told you I have expanded my senses? True, true, I have managed to temporarily widen the radii of the senses I have - by means I don't wish to disclose.

I was able to see more than I usually see, in fact, my eyes have turned to cameras with good mechanical tripods and rotating reels. They could bring into focus those that deserve focus, like a Penelope Cruz coming from afar, only to find out that she's a woman as old as my parents but won't allow her wrinkles to affect the choices in her drawer. She has had her share of the two-camera screen, so the focus moved to a strolling family down the European kerb - it was a new visual game, how they remained in focus as I could still see other moving things in the background that are hazy and out of focus.

I have always been told that 7-UP, my current #1 drink on the cold-drinks charts, is made out of lemons. Honestly, I never spotted any resemblance between 7-UP and lemons, till I expanded the radius of my taste. What happened is that I could feel a half-circled sour lemon relaxing and tanning on the middle of my tongue after each sip I took from the soft drink can. I started looking into the 7-UP can and shaking it to see if there were any half lemons lying inside there... I even started wondering if I was unaware of the fact that I might be drinking tequila and forgot a half lemon inside my mouth - like most heavy tequila consumers would, but I found no lemons in my mouth either. Every sip I took was a complete sour-lemon peak.

There are very few things in life that I find orgasmic, and one of them is when I am able to feel the music with my heartbeat before I actually listen to it. I did that too. Every other beat coming out of those speakers sent a pulse to my heart, which in turn sent a tune to my ears. And that's how I expanded my listening, by feeding on the heart. The beat won't change, it won't speed, it won't become more intense - and unlike rock music, it won't reach a peak. It will remain the same, but with each repetition of it, I was sent further every time. It looped with the same beat, frequency, tone... but I was thrown further and pulled back to my starting point, like a basketball gaining speed in its player's hands. It didn't take long before I was in absolute trance, progressively moving from realm to realm.

I could feel more. I could feel each and every hair on my arm move with the soft breeze coming out of the air conditioner. It is very rare, because usually I don't feel hairs on my body moving every time I walk into an air conditioned place. This time, I could and it was tickling - very tickling. And there was nowhere to go, no matter how itchy it gets and how I move my hand on my skin, I was still tickled. It didn't take time before I started to enjoy it and smile as I was tickled.

I can't smell, really, so there was nothing to expand.

The experience was thrilling, being exposed to all of these changes simultaneously. I'd go there again... and again.

ياض

2008-07-05T16:36:00.000-07:00

احمد مكى دخللى من سكة جديدة وغير متوقعة... زى ما تقولوا كدة اخد يو-تيرن من ورا دماغى ودخل من غير لما الحقه... والفيديو كليب يحكيلكوا اكتر

بس الأهم من ده...

"خر خر خر ياض... خر خر واسمع ياض"

:)

2008-07-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

نكسر سكة الكآبة اللى اتخذها البلوج ده بقاله شوية عشان نقول...

"مرة واحد فرفور شاف تمساح، قال "اييييييه دههههههه
Lacoste!!!""

:))))

In Brief.

2008-07-03T17:11:00.000-07:00

Bid On Me.

2008-07-03T13:53:00.000-07:00

Let's say I go on a boat trip, one that goes to Guatemala or Germany or the Northern Pole. The boat crashes into dramatical pieces and I don't drown - even though I can't really swim. Instead, I wind up on an isolated island or so, somewhere where the only living creature next to me is star fish that don't make any noise at all - no, not at all. How many days will I spend continuously screaming?

Kindly place your bets.

The place I live in has no 'Welcome' door mat.

2008-07-02T14:16:00.000-07:00

Look closely at the background colour of this page. It is black, isn’t it? That’s for a reason of course and it’s not only that I have personal fetishes towards black. The only reason most web pages are not in black is because it will be expensive to print them out – but apart from that, it’s absolute expression. I want you to stare deep into it and imagine there are no words in white, no lines and outlines, no coloured thumbnail of Tinkerbell and no white bars of the explorer you are using. Can you do that? Are you doing it? Good.

Now, I want you to take this a little bit further. I want you to imagine this blackness filling your whole screen – yes, I am sorry you’ll have to interrupt any important navigation of other web pages or personal instant messaging windows. Have you done that? Great, we’re doing well. I will ask you another favour – I want you to put off any music for I want you to listen to the sound of this blackness. Yes, I know you can’t hear anything, but you will.

This is the hardest part, for you have to trust me on it a little bit. I know trust isn’t the easiest commodity people can share nowadays, but give me some – I mean how many blog posts have we known each other really? I want you to stretch your hands into this blackness of your screen. There… can you feel it? That blackness is liquid and you can listen to your hands playing with its viscousity. Now, stretch both hands and make them dripping with blackness. Make everything around you dirty, painted and smothered with this blackness. Don’t worry and be generous – the black paint will never ever run out. When you feel your hands are dry and the paint you are applying is not so generous, come back for more from your screen. Keep repeating, till everything around the room is black and you can’t see any light. Make sure you cover that light coming from underneath the door – it can ruin the whole thing, you know. Those tiny details – you have to pay attention to them, we don’t want any light around.

Are you there yet? It’s okay; there is no need to rush. I wouldn’t want to rush my first visitor.

Welcome home.

Stop crossing my mind, for this is private property.

2008-07-01T16:41:00.000-07:00

It is hilarious - the amount of things you think belong to you.

My latest efforts, if any, have been solely dedicated to shut off my mind. Out of absolute selfishness, I don't want to impress the world with my usual smartness, I don't want to think straight - to be fully honest, I don't want to think at all. Sloth and dumbness are realms that, I believe, are the only ones worth of my attention during those days. It is only one month to me becoming a white collar lady and I am not going anywhere. I can't travel and I can't move anywhere away from this white-walled apartment... and I don't mind it, as long as I can shut it off. But even this, is apparently too much to get.

It is hilarious - the amount of thinking you need to think to stop thinking.

So I followed the scientific method, I "dealt" myself a fine bottle of Old Jack Tennessee Whiskey, got filled with different realms of music and delegated the job of picking the finest fruits of European and American cinema that I didn't yet watch, to my devoted brother. And I have all of this right here... and I am happy about it. But there is a missing ingredient.

It is hilarious - the amount of vibes and emotions you collect.

Personals ruin things. I've learned this lesson so many times, but to no avail. I am turning 22 in a month, and apparently I can't yet fine tune the amounts of vibes I get from people. There is a bouquet of people, that I can't believe I don't have control over the way they make me feel. There is a certain somebody that I can't breathe well when we talk because of the amounts of lies I can see through but yet he keeps telling. There is another certain somebody who figured it's the right time to have second thoughts about me just when I started to intensively think of him. There is a third somebody who won't stop pressuring me as if I have all the answers in the world up my sleeve. There is a fourth too, who thinks I am the reason behind the world's misery and doesn't hesitate to constantly stress that thought. I hope none of them reads this. But if they do...

Kindly stop crossing my mind, for this is private property.

Portraits From Words: II- The Doctorate

2008-06-28T16:18:00.000-07:00

Portraits From Words

II- The doctorate.

دى بتريح الزبون...

I have known the doctorate since we were high school girls with unfolded ties, short skirts, dark manicure, coloured Chupa Chups and the whole package. It is pretty random how we met, for I was sitting in a lonely armchair, bored to death and was humming some Beatles tune, when she joined in. We moved from Beatles to Eminem to Metallica when she asked about my name. Boring school days passed by and we got to know each other more, getting to know details about daily activities, families, issues – you can use the word “friends”, yes. And this has lasted for several years, for me to witness the amount of darkness that can be disguised behind a white medical coat.

There are two uniform things that didn’t change about the doctorate ever since; the first is that she always forced people to sympathize with her without giving them a solid reason to feel sympathy for. For some reason, she always felt that she is the world’s center of unfairness and misery. I have put great efforts to get into her darkness – let’s not forget about my magnet – and I succeeded. Her darkness is justifiable with what she has witnessed yes, but the unique thing about her, is that she never exerted any effort to get over it – she absolutely liked where she stood, a headquarters for sympathy.

The second habit of hers is that she loves to “teraya7 el zeboon”. The doctorate with all her prestigious education and her seven years old medical certificate never has her own opinions. She is well aware of the pathetic human nature, and how humans get attracted to those who agree with them, not who argue with them – and she has always been so witty to agree with people, regardless of what they were saying. But that technique was more like Chinese food – spicy and delicious, yet makes you get hungry in no time. She is jaguar-fast in making best friends, yes… but even faster in making enemies. Yet, there is a villain inside her that works around the clock and absolutely fires back at anybody who shows their teeth at her – and in no time, her white coat will be covered with their shredded flesh and blood. However, she is fastest at cleaning herself up and adding back an angel halo that fits with the whiteness of her new coat.

The doctorate is not an ill-mannered person. She is always there around her best friends if she has nothing better to do or when she is single. She likes to befriend social keys that lead her to pools full of fish so that she can practice her witty fishing techniques. When the doctorate is done fishing, she will go away with her caught fish, for as long as it takes to consume the fish tricks and would then throw it all away. A “social climber” may not be the exact term… but it says a lot, for she has no hesitance to turn against those closest to her for better fishing chances.

If you ask me, I will not know where the doctorate is now. She is probably walking her dog, cooking vegetarian food, listening to French love talk on the phone or sipping on a bottle of Egyptian red wine that is hidden under her bed. In all cases, I hope the doctorate finds some light.

Portraits From Words: I- Purgatorio

2008-06-27T04:43:00.000-07:00

Portraits From Words

I- Purgatorio

ده اللى هيخلى الاسكندرية تروح لبنان...

There is a magnet hidden somewhere in my body that attracts darkness, and them dark people are two types; those whom you regret knowing and those whom you are grateful you knew. Purgatorio was of the second type and he wasn’t a genius kid. During school days, he probably gave up his lunch to bullies in the men’s room and wasn’t the type of guy whom the captain would immediately pick for the football game. Let me tell you, he has had problems with his voice since he was two… and was nicknamed “Bango” for he always sounded slow like someone who smoked a lot of cheap Egyptian weed. Bottom line, Purgatorio wasn’t the flashy kid at school and currently he’s not one of those flashy successful business men in their late twenties who never get food stuck between their teeth and never ever let their skin show between their pants and socks. And in those “mediocre” details, lies all his greatness.

In my opinion, Purgatorio is a muse and is a pillar of support. He has had it the hard way, for the past quarter of a decade. Nothing turned out well for him, he has enjoyed the whole bouquet of bullshit, yet he never whined. Amid the bouquet’s peaks and classics, he’d check out on the ladies of his life and make sure they are alright and busy watching TV – then he’d have his own few moments chasing dragons.

It can get a whole lot frustrating to convince Purgatorio to write and not rip off what he wrote right away, even though to my eyes, he is the most talented writer. However, regardless of the art behind his words – his stories were able to move a city like Alexandria to want to go to Lebanon to kneel on its knees to his Snowhite asking her to be merciful and to allow things to be fixed. This Snowhite business requires books to be written and I am not the person and this is not the place. It is enough to mention that Purgatorio… isn’t the giving up kid. And in this lies further greatness.

But God won’t just let us be – or at least won’t let him be, for they obviously share a lot of unfinished business. Purgatorio now feeds on gin – yes, the most bleak of all spirits – every night, spends his day earning MS certificates with all its permutations in a white-collar sense that doesn’t go along with his darkness, spends his free time contemplating Lebanese asses as he sips on Starbucks products, spends his elevator times with Indians who make everyone uncomfortable… and secretly thinks about his long-missed old lady or about Snowhite.

وتستمر وتستمر وتستمر

2008-06-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

بالصدفة اخدت بالى انى كتبت المقامر بالضبط من شهر... وضحكت... على الاحباطات التى تستمر وتستمر وتستمر... ثم تتسرب وتتوغل وتقتل.... ثم تحييك مرة اخرى لتستمر وتستمر وتستمر...

تعبت

شارب وبيمول

2008-06-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

محسن: لو سمحت ، كنت عايز اشترى بيانو

العامل: اتفضل معايا...

محسن: ثانية بس ، انا عايز بيانو من غير صوابع سودا

العامل: نعم؟

محسن: معلهش ، شوفلى بس طلبى عشان مستعجل

العامل: مفيش حاجة اسمها كدة

محسن: يا سيدى مالاكش فيه ، انا عايزه كدة

العامل: ثانية واحدة

يذهب العامل الى المكتب فى الداخل ويخرج ومعه رجل كبير فى السن، مسيو فينسنت

فينسنت: ايوة خبيبى؟

محسن: عايز اشترى بيانو... بس من غير صوابع سودا

فينسنت: اه طبعا طبعا خبيبى، بس انت عارف ان ده عمره ما اتصنع

محسن: لأ طبعا اتصنع، انا شفت ناس بيستخدموه

فينسنت: طب معلهش خبيبى، ايه رأيك تاخد بيانو عادى وبلاش تلعب صوابعه السودا

محسن: لأ، اخاف العبهم بالغلط

فينسنت: هممممم، طب وانت هتلعب شارب وبيمول ازاى؟

محسن: احنا فى 2008

فينست: هو انت تعليمك فرنساوى.... ولا لاتينى؟

محسن: لاتينى طبعا...

فينست: واضح، واضح... بس قوللى خبيبى، انت ايه مشكلتك مع الصوابع السودا؟

محسن: انا باخاف العب الصوابع السودا، لحسن حياتى تبقى زيهم

فينسنت: انا معرفش انت ميولك فى الموسيقى ايه، بس انت عارف ان احلى الحاجات بتتستخدم الصوابع السودا؟

محسن: انا فاهم، بس دول اعداء النجاح... انا باحب الروتينية والملل بتاعة الصوابع البيضا... بتحسسنى بالأمان... أنا متأكد ان حياتى هتبقى هايلة ومنتجة لو انا فضلت العب ع الصوابع البيضا بس...

فينست: خياتك ايه خبيبى؟ انت شكلك من اللى بيتفرجوا وبس...

محسن: يعنى ايه؟

فينسنت: يعنى زى ما انت مش هيحصلك حاجة وحشة لو ملعبتش الصوابع السودا، فانت برضه مش هيحصلك حاجة كويسة... انت صعبان عليا خبيبى...

محسن: طب يعنى انا اعمل ايه دلوقتى؟

فينسنت: باردون خبيبى، انا محبش يكون ليا دخل فى اسلوبك ده... جوود داى.

10 Things to Do in Job Interviews.

2008-06-24T14:27:00.001-07:00

There are secrets that I’ve learned throughout my interview experience… and it’s time to spill them since I am settled on a job – or at least that’s what I think.

• When kept waiting with a secretary, who is probably pretending to do something of value, flood her with questions. The questions shouldn’t be too fast, they should be interrupted with pauses so that she has the time to get back to what she was doing so that you are able to interrupt her again. Questions can be along the line of “Can I use your personal computer for a second, I need to edit my resume to say that I PMS twice a month, just in case this sort of info is important around here?” or “Do you have a come-to-work-in-a-bikini day? I heard that’s the reason why Google is taking over the world.” Or “How do mermaids reproduce?” or my personal favorite “Do you know the abbreviation for “Fornicating Under the Consent of the King”?”

• When breaking the ice with a male General Manager or interviewer, tell them you prefer Bourbon… On the rocks.

• When left waiting alone in a room with a camera, make sure you initiate conversations with E.T. who will always listen if you keep pointing your finger to the ceiling, periodically stamping your feet on the floor and scratching your belly.

• When left waiting alone in a room without a camera, stand behind the door and eavesdrop, till your interviewer comes to slam the door and hit you in the head. Look at them and say “I’ll take that for an acceptance, I start in a month.”

• When breaking the ice with a female General Manager or interviewer, compliment her by saying that you love the Revlon long-lasting-not-to-be-removed-easily lipstick she is using, and when she smiles in gratitude, ask her if she uses it because her husband works here as well.

• If asked about the type of work you prefer doing, and you start explaining about how C++ is way better than Java, start drooling a bit, moving your body a bit restlessly and make sure you finish your answer by saying “C++ excites me, like really excites me… I can code in C++ for hours and hours because it excites me *bite lower lip*… I had troubles with my ex-boyfriend because of my Object Oriented fetishes but I understand that will be no problem here… right?”

• When asked about your expected salary, simply state that all you care about is covering your crack bills.

• When the security guard stares at the religion in your national ID for long, offer him a cigarette, point at the ID in his hands and mention that it is forged and you’re Jewish, from an Israeli family that prosecutes Palestinian little children out of mere boredom, but you need the ID to get around here.

• When asked about your strengths, your reply should be that you are as patient, considerate and sane as Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted. When asked about your weaknesses, your reply should be that you are as calm and vulnerable as Hannibal Lectar.

• When you end an interview, say “Bye sweetie, have a good day” or if you like the interviewer, “Bye darling, but off the record, are you doing anything tonight?”

After the Curtain.

2008-06-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

The girl: Daddy, I wanna go to the bathroom.

The father: Not now.

The girl: But why? The show is over and the makeup is hurting my eyes.

The father: I am sorry baby, we must wait. What makes a good clown a good clown is that they know they should keep their drawn smiles after the curtain, and you’re not only a good clown, you’re the best trapeze in town.

The girl: But daddy please, my eyes hurt, nobody will see me, everyone’s leaving.

The father: Maria, I said you can’t and that does it. You never know who is looking; you can do whatever you want in your room. When you grow up, you’ll understand.

The girl: Mommy, I wanna go to the bathroom.

Maria: Not now. We’re still after the curtain.