famished for meaning

weird news:

for those who got the e-mail announcing this blog, remember i said that i wanted to name my daughter ‘rocky’ and my son ‘baby’? and you guys thought i was either retarded or exceptionally cruel.

well, it turns out that there are stranger parents out there. i got a mail from a guy today whose last name is actually BABY. in fact, he has the WEIRDEST name:

Br@ms Berr@d@ B@by (@ was used instead of an ‘a’ because i don’t want him to land here after googling himself)

and a few months back, i got an e-mail from a guy called: ‘inn0cent ud0chukwu’

now THAT is exceptionally cruel.

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weekend wrap-up / useless news:

i’m hooked on to ‘desperate housewives’. i feel terrible about it because i am usually extremely anti-sitcoms. i watched 14 episodes over the last four days.

i pampered myself by going for a manicure & pedicure (note to ali: i went for RED…happy?).

i have realized that of late, i feel unmoved by films. this is very unusual. i don’t know whether it’s just that the films are bad or i’m a cold, unfeeling beyatch. the only one that was slightly decent was ‘happenstance’. it reminded me of this poem (”love at first sight, by Wislawa Szymborska).

in other news, i have decided that i NEED to pick up some activity. i feel tired and ache all over every morning, when i wake up…it has to be the lack of exercise. i’m the laziest person i know: i pay by the hour to park my car right outside the entrance of my building, when it’s free to park it 3 minutes away (i just can’t be arsed to walk that much). my ex-gym called me up for the 10th time to ask whether i’d like to renew my membership. when i explained that i had visited the gym a whopping 5 times in 18 months, the girl realized that i was a lost cause.

you know what? lack of fat is a bit of a curse. at least if i was chubbier, my narcissism would have driven me to the gym or yoga class and i’d be fitter. as it stands, i look thin but am the most unfit old cow ever.

please make me feel bad/worse so that i pick up some sort of activity.

tell me i’ll die young or something.

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scary fucking shit:

you know i hate my city… i hate it because of a myriad of reasons - the latest addition is the fact that it is full of unbelievably frustrated men. remember my psycho stalker (he’s been quiet for a while now, so he’s no longer a worry)? well, last wednesday, i picked up my sis and drove home. after i parked up in a dirt lot right outside my building (but of course), she whispered that there was a man standing in the corner, with his dick hanging out. shocked, i walked over and realized that he was wanking, while watching the two of us!!! just like that, in public, at eleven in the night! i was SO fucking mad that i walked closer and whacked him with my hand bag (it was full of things, so it was quite heavy). before i could do anything else though, he just turned, grabbed me, and squeezed my boobs!! i screamed REALLY loud and he ran off.

i was stunned for about 5 seconds.

and then i burst out laughing.

as most of you know, i constantly make fun of my ’small but perfectly formed’ (as one man chose to describe them) breasts. there REALLY isn’t much to grab at…so the poor guy really got the short end of the stick.

anyway, i’m being extremely careful after that and this is actually one of the reasons i’d like to take up some activity again (like kickboxing), so that instead of being terribly, pathetically girly and hitting with a purse, next time, i can beat such men to pulp.

easy jetsetter’s comment on my last post made me realize that i’ve never written about my parents relationship. i guess it is something really sacred to me, which is why i feel that i may trivialize it by blogging about it.

i am not sure where my anti-marriage ideas stem from…i don’t know how or when i decided that marriage was a stupid idea and couldn’t possibly work. as i grow older though, i realize that my views are always either too idealistic or too cynical. i always thought that IF i married, it would have to be with someone i thought i could live with forever (anything less was stupid). yet, i also knew that i (probably) could never spend ‘forever’ with someone.

i’ve decided that i need to let go of my extreme ideas…and take chances. i think it was a conversation with my dad that helped change my mind. my mom was out of town for a day and he called me the evening that i was supposed to pick her up to make sure i would get his wife to him, safe and sound. and then he said that his friends had invited him over to their place but he declined saying that he was depressed because wifey was out of town. he said, “everything seems horrible without her, even YOU guys”. i laughed and told him that she’d only gone for ONE night, get over it.

he never realized it, in fact, i don’t know whether either of them realize how much i admire their love. i appreciate the fact that we have NEVER seen them fight in front of us…i have never heard either of them say anything bad about each other (unless you count the funny remarks regarding each others weight or choices in films or opposite sex). everytime i come home, they’re lying together on the bed, hugging, and watching TV. when she’s standing around in the kitchen, he comes up and hugs her from behind or pinches her ass! he doesn’t let her shut the bathroom door, because he feels that it puts too much distance between them! he doesn’t go anywhere (except to work), even when it is just to run an errand, without her. they hold hands. they still get each other flowers and cards.

and they still shag!!

oops! too much information?

anyway, apparently my dad was as commitment phobic as i am and really had no intention of marrying…on his wedding night, he quite honestly confessed to my mom that he was pretty sure he had made a mistake and that he would be divorcing her after three to six months, since that was the longest he could envision staying with someone. thirty years down the line, he realizes that he was kinda off with that estimate!

so while the world around me convinces me that all relationships are doomed from the start, that marriage is the begining of the end, coming home to my parents fills me with some sort of hope and the secret desire to find something close to what they have, even if it is just for a short while.

(more…)

so i went to watch an act yesterday at a stupid club. they’re called the funjabi’s - a play on the word ‘punjabi’ which refers to people that hail from the north of india (or pakiland). like most things in life, the act pissed me off. some bits were funny, sure…it was the white guy that just made me so mad that i wanted to lunge across and bitch slap him into oblivion. actually wait, it wasn’t him, it was the audience.

he wasn’t the LEAST bit funny. his stand up routine consisted of coming on stage, saying something stupid, then singing a hindi song (to the absolute amazement and delight of the desis) and when that didn’t work, he’d shout ‘bhenchod’ and the audience just about wet themselves - ‘OH MY GOD, it’s a gora speaking OUR language’ hai, hai, what a moment!! then he went on to sing a truly stupid song to the tune of a classic hindi song about how his shoes are from japan, his watch is gucci, his shirt is from armani, his cap is russian but HE is an ‘english hindustani’ at heart.

all the desis felt validated - a gora who wants to be a desi??? it is a bloody miracle, i tell you!!

they went wild and cheered and clapped.

i was MAD - really, really mad.

i wanted to get up and tell them, “you fucking fools, you paid 75 dirhams to see some gora make chutias out of you by ruining our songs and saying ‘bhenchod’? would you be so entertained if i got up on stage and said bhenchod? NO! because you are idiots - you are easily entertained by anyone of a different color using your language because you are still suffering from the colonial hangover - you aren’t over the british raj - you are out to prove a point. does a gora get entertained when you speak in english? NO, they EXPECT you to speak in english.”

my ex-boss looked like a gora, although he is an arab - years of american schooling and university also gave him an american accent. he was fascinated by india, bollywood, the culture, and he wanted to become a desi. he still does. but he also laughed at how easy it was for him to become the centre of attention at a desi party…all he really had to do was bust out some of the hindi (especially all the bad words that i taught him) and drop the names of a few actresses and all the desis would be in fits - once again, ‘hai, hai, what a moment - dekha?? now THEY want to be like US!”.

indian papers report all the time that hollywood is now copying their films. their stars have managed to get bit parts in a jackie chan film (as the exotic indian princess) - they are no longer being portrayed as doctors and pharmacists. they LOVE going on about how the west is now aping the east…

don’t they realize that by giving so much importance to anything/everything western, they are obviously still worshipping the gori chamri (white skin)? i hate how everything boils down to language, region, caste, race, color…i hate how every desi writer out there capitalizes on his desiness by constantly talking about stereotypes, most of which don’t even exist anymore. i hate how the theme of the show last night revolved around the token gora and arranged marriages - the fact that there wasn’t a SINGLE couple in the club that had had an arranged marriage said SO much (they kept on trying to find someone, but everyone who was married had had a love marriage).

the club was full of the city’s poshest, most educated crowd (half of them were the usual u.k. desis, since this act hails from the u.k.). i guess that’s why i am even more shocked that they couldn’t see past the lame, cheap attempt at humor. the script was silly, one wouldn’t walk out of there retaining even a single line or moment (and off the top of my head, i can recall quite a few classic bill hicks, eddie izzard or jack handey lines) and the skits were pathetic.

honestly, the “comedians” were let off easy - they sat up one night, decided that they’d put their gora friend on stage, make him sing an indian song and cuss a bit, and the desis would laugh a lot because they immediately felt better about themselves.

the funjabi’s really had the last laugh.

MORE A LOFT THAN A DAMASCENE CONVERSION

“An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind” -Gandhi

There is little better deconstruction of selective religion than this. Nowadays religion is used to lend authenticity to things people want to do anyway. Ali’s post citing the one verse in the Koran that refers to the allowance of beating a woman whilst many others appear to contradict that stance is mirrored in Western Christianity. Domestic violence here is frowned upon, and yet it exists and in many areas appears quite widespread. Murder, rape, assault, GBH etc. are criminal offences and yet the “eye for an eye” verse of the old testament is cited and seemingly used for justification to extol far greater international conflicts.

It has always puzzled me how people wishing to use the bible to defend reactionary and fundamentalist positions only ever seem to use the old testament. Is it that they do not know the new testament or simply that they choose to ignore the more progressive teachings in it? After all “eye for an eye” is in direct contradiction to Jesus’ principle that you must forgive those that have wronged you 77 x 7 times - no-one would think of taking that literally and, breathing a sigh of relief, kill their neighbour on the 540th time s/he has wronged them. So why do they cherry pick the parts to take literally? It is because it suits what they wish to believe in nothing more, this isn’t religion it is more a fundamentalist political doctrine based around an outdated notion of theology.

When it comes to the interpretations of the bible itself I remain astonished that some wish to take it all so literally to deflect scientific study. If you had a science book that was 2000 years old you might well expect that much of it would have been superseded by modern studies. That does not degrade the study or the original premise, nor does it do so to the method of study which can well form the basis of future expansion in this area. However to disregard well-researched and backed up scientific principles for something which has been written by a bunch of enthusiastic laymen some 2000 years ago is utterly barking and does the human race neither credit nor good. It seems that the more scientific evidence contravenes what the dogmatic theologians would have us believe the more said clerics seek to bury their head in the sand with a “La la la I can’t hear you” hands over the ears approach.

Islam is purported, were you to believe the hype out of the West, to be the other side of this great clash of civilisations. It is portrayed as a strange, violent, fundamentalist religion to be feared. And yet we are expected to believe the same is not true of Christianity? This in spite of the fact that the two religions are both mono-deist and in fact share very many of the same beliefs not to mention the same figures of worship. In fact of all the religions practised by humanity these two along with Judaism are perhaps the most homogenous. Perhaps therein lies the problem. Besides this great clash of civilisations hardly seems at the forefront when the Western leaders deal with the House of Saud who preside over one of the more repressive regimes in the Middle East.

It reflects poorly on us as societies that we seem to have such basic irrational concepts when it comes to a more metaphysical outlook. Is, and more prevalent, should religion be immune from the scrutiny to which we subject science and technology? If it is then we are destined to be constantly dragged back to a regressive and arcane past by outdated conservative tenets. It is time for religion to evolve or die.

I ought perhaps to declare that personally I think organised religion is horse shit but then many people think the same of socialism which I do believe in so it’s all dogma really isn’t it. It is all about giving you the guidelines by which to form your advanced moral code and live your life. If people choose to do so in an aggressive fashion then they will look for any justification by which to do so. It’s just that religion makes it so easy for the zealots not to even have to work for a bloody reason.

/rant!

(guest post courtesy of the red baron)

Three out of four voters in california believe medical marijuana should be legalized. They have passed the measure at the polls in opposition to existing American laws. I was recently talking to an otherwise young and healthy friend who also happens to be a strong supporter of the californian position on medical marijuana. He kept on pointing out the various opiates, barbiturates, steroids, and whatnots that are legally prescribed by doctors. Possession of such drugs without a prescription is illegal. Similarly, possession of marijuana would remain illegal without a prescription. The only reason why common sense wasn’t prevailing, he believes, was because of Big Pharma influence. For somebody with an impressively broad knowledge of various drugs, he just couldn’t understand the difference between a controlled substance and an illegal drug. You can beg your friend who went to the dentist for some leftover oxycontin or you can hand over a mini fortune on the street. But you can’t grow it in your backyard. Pot, you can grow in a pot in your studio apartment. Kids on street corners will hook you up for 10 bucks. Morphine is controlled in vaults. It is administered in controlled doses in controlled environments. Once you put such controls on medical marijuana its cost will shoot up and everyone will be looking for stronger stuff at similar prices. Or they will still get it on the street. The californian voters in favor of medical marijuana are not in favor of legalizing drugs. Or maybe they are. Damn hippie spawn. The american govt. stance against such measures is not trying to punish those already in pain. Or maybe it is.

Laws follow attitudes. If you are angry about the one verse in koran that allows hitting a wife, get angrier because there are many more verses that allow taking slaves. In wars past muslim warriors were even allowed to take the women of their enemies as slaves. But so did everyone else those days. There is still slavery going on in the world, even when it is universally illegal. No one is using religious texts or cultural norms to defend or justify them. There is a clear understanding those who engage in such business are doing it for the profits.

There are over 6300 verses in the Koran. Search for “wife beating islam” and Google spits out thousands of pages repeating the same single verse that allows hitting a wife. One could say even one verse is one too many. But there are many more verses that tell us to cherish and treat women with respect and equity. Those are not paid any attention either. I am not going to say that hitting a woman is not allowed in Islam. It is. But women are not hit because one verse in the koran allows it. I have never seen, heard, or read of any instance where a man has justifies his violent behavior by bringing up the Koran. They are hit because the men feel they have no other avenue left in the confrontation. Some men take that street at the first instance. Some men don’t know that street is even on the map.

Domestic violence in islamistan is not inspired by that singular verse. It is a cultural thing like every other culture. And at the heart of the matter, it is a personal thing. It needs to change but the change is not going to come out of questioning the Koran. The muslim mind becomes completely unreceptive at the first hint of questioning the authenticity of the text. The change has to come out of the culture. Every second Bollywood film has the male lead or other good guys slapping the woman when she gets out of hand. Watch old hollywood movies and the women are getting slapped around like nothing. Different cultures and different rates of change. One day soon one would be able to pick up a blunt OTC at the corner sav-on-drugs, and people will stop beating up their women. Or maybe not.

the internet, in fact all telecommunications in my country, is monopolized by one organization. this basically means that even if we hate their service, we have to suck it up and deal with it.

usually, it isn’t that bad - the only thing i have a major problem with is the internet. the speed and packages are fine but it is heavily censored - they actually play ‘parents’ or god and block everything that is deemed ‘unislamic’. sometimes, one can understand it - like the famous ‘belle du jour’ blog being blocked? ok, i see what you’re saying - she’s a prostitute, and is writing about her exploits and it is all so very unislamic…

but friendster?

apparently, it’s blocked because it is a badly disguised, hooking up forum.

ok, mayyyy be i see your point. after all, once i put my profile up there, i did get a number of men sending me naked pictures of themselves, with offers for sex, along with their mobile numbers…

but i LOVE (not) how they block absolutely anything that contains any suggestive words in the url. if one looks up anything on STD’s and the url contains (as it most naturally would) the word sex, then the site is blocked. sexualhealth.com is BLOCKED - i am sorry, you can not educate yourself regarding the various diseases you may be contracting while shagging, because it is UNISLAMIC.

it gets more amusing.

‘freemuslims.org’ is blocked.

doesn’t that just say EVERYTHING?

today, jon over at asshole roomate (good site, by the way) posted something about saudis (did you know they actually have a law against women driving? misogyny at it’s best) and islam. he linked to this page - it was blocked. since the post mentioned wife beating in islam (which by the way is ALLOWED, under certain circumstances), i googled it. the first result was this site, which was ALSO blocked.

i finally found the actual verse that jon was talking about, on a site that my service provider approved of.

here it is:

[4:34] The men are made responsible for the women, and GOD has endowed them with certain qualities, and made them the bread earners. The righteous women will cheerfully accept this arrangement, since it is GOD’s commandment, and honor their husbands during their absence. If you experience rebellion from the women, you shall first talk to them, then (you may use negative incentives like) deserting them in bed, then you may (as a last alternative) beat them. If they obey you, you are not permitted to transgress against them. GOD is Most High, Supreme.

charming, isn’t it? no wonder they were trying to block me from reading this - obviously it would piss any woman off!!

given the liberal amount of bad, bad, bad words and blasphemy that one can find on my site (including/especially the old one), i am just waiting for it to be deemed unsuitable for viewing in this country. i don’t know whether i will laugh or cry when it happens…imagine being unable to access your OWN webpage?!

frankly, i am surprised it hasn’t happened yet.

i am extremely excited about this new blog.

i can finally tell you stories about my silly city.

this feels unbelievably liberating.

if i go to madinat jumeirah, i can actually write about how much i love that place.

i wish i had done this before…i think this may help me snap out of my sulky, childish ‘i’m so bored’ phase.

i wonder (over-analytical me kicks in) whether i am craving change or excitement because i am in a real relationship that may actually go somewhere (gasp!). he laughs often and tells me that i would be the ‘runaway bride’. relax, i am not getting hitched. it’s just that there are no barriers anymore. i always chose men that i couldn’t marry, because they belonged to a different religion, different country. and this time, he is the same religion, same country and everyone keeps asking, ’so when are you guys getting married?’ - it gets on my nerves.

changing blogs, changing hair colors (drastically), changing the way i dress and developing a booty short obsession to replace the thong one seem to be the only way to address the fact that it doesn’t look like i’ll be changing my man anytime soon.