Lack of adventures in Aniraz land: Lately my adventures revolve around the dangerous and undesirable task of getting out of bed in the morning and hauling my sleepy self to work. Its getting harder and harder. It is a wondrous event if the brave and bold Aniraz actually manages to get to work without spilling chai all over her freshly singed jalbab or burning herself while making toast (what did I tell you about dem appliances, they’re out to destroy me!).

Oh and I’ve got the amazingly perilous chore of waking up Abez every day. I’ve got horrible scars from confronting the sleeping beast, and the nickname of ‘Gomra’ (which means head bump in Urdu) after being kicked upside the noggin while trying to get Abez to class. This is all deadly stuff and should only be attempted by trained professionals.

Driving to work isn’t that bad. I get to be a speed demon and leave majorly moustachioed Punjabis in my dust. With our pocket sized Silver Bullet I can weave between bigger cars and squeeze out ahead of the pack. There, I soar.

But then all the fun ends when I pull up at the office and have to leave my shiny car can and go inside my dank office and become the editing troll that I am paid to be. Sigh, alas and nepenthe.

I like to think of my office as my cave. Aniraz the editing troll enters the cave, shuts the door tightly against irritating intruders, turns on the fan, looks for malicious bugs that may have booby trapped my chair, hangs up her car keys, throws her brief case on the funny wobbly wicker table, plops down and gets to work.

It’s quiet and cool in my cave of concrete and book shelves and the monotonous whirr of the fan lulls my brain to half awareness. I do my editing and preparing of the day’s news on auto pilot, and can rarely remember a single news item by the time I’m done. The only bright spot is I do a little blog surfing and I read the international news on the web. Then I return home and fall into a semi comatose state of vegetation. The end. Tada!

Info you could have lived without: A new juice stall opened in the village by my house. Its called Pehlwaan Mango Juice. A Pehlwaan is a burly dude, like a meathead or a hick. Incidentally, Mr Pehlwaan Mango Juice shop doesn’t have any mango juice, only apple. I guess when you’re meathead, there isn’t much of a difference between apples and mangos.

Update: I still can’t juggle, I haven’t even tried to throw knives at the walls to make them stick menacingly lest me mum pinch me for messing up her walls, I can’t whistle, I can’t do the moonwalk and I’m a failure as a human being. However, I can make some really snazzy lemon squares and I draw great stick people.

To believe or not believe, that is the question: The Neo-Conservatives have sabotaged my diet. Its part of their plans for global domination.

Adventures in Aniraz Land

Not that I have any adventures… I just thought it was a nice opening. Now I’ve got to dig up some strange adventurish memory.

Probably the wildest escapade I had this year was a spur of the moment trip to Karachi that Abez, my kid brother and I made. We’d been wanting to go down for a visit to Karachi for back-to-back weddings in the khandaan but all the flights were full and we had a very small window of opportunity to go. Finally, one day I came home from work and my dad asked me if I wanted to go to Karachi the next day. I said yes, and next thing you know we were packed and at the train station in ’Pindi.

We could only get seats on the absolute bottom of economy class for the 31 hour trip, since it was wedding season, which put us in a totally over-packed cabin with only enough space for our butts. It was really awesome though. From the security of my niqab I just sat there and watched all these cool people on the train that I’d never have a chance to observe/interact with normally. There was a wide mix of people on the train, though they all shared poverty in common. There were Pathans, Punjabis, Mohajirs, Afghans, Sindhis, gypsies and us, whatever we are. Most of the people in the general cabin were young men or middle aged men going home to be with their families, or journeying to Karachi for work. There was also an elderly Afghan lady traveling alone and a really nice family with a bunch of kids who sat across from us.

I’ve decided most Pakistanis are really generous and hospitable to one another. On every meal stop people would open their little sacks of food (yep, the folks on the train really were so poor they couldn’t afford the icky food at the station, and believe me, they weren‘t missing a thing. Twas majorly nasty, but that is another story for another day) and would offer whatever they had to who ever was near them or looking in their general direction. Most of the young guys didn’t have much on them to eat, mainly peanuts or dal mung (salty lentil insanity), but the ones whose wives or mother’s had packed their meals would share the wealth and invite the other guys to join them. The family who sat across from us (a mother, her youngish brother, two sons and two daughters between 13- 4 months) packed a lot of food and kept on trying to feed me and my sibs even though they could tell that we were well off. We had our own stuff of course, kinoos, Tuc crackers (my family eats more Tuc crackers than probably the whole rest of Pakistan combined), nimko (more salty insanity), hot chips and of course, home made cookies from mom.

Btw, a funny way you can tell if a family is poor is if the women aren’t wearing any gold. Pakistanis are insane about gold and if you’ve got two pennies to rub together, you’ll make sure your wife and daughters have at least one piece of gold jewelry. The mother was only wearing a couple silver rings, and though she was very well spoken and had amazingly well mannered kids, you could tell she was sort of poor. But still, she offered the best of what she had to us.

For the 21 seats in the cabin there were only four berths, which were reserved by a few lucky people in advance. But still, even though it was rough sleeping on a moving train, and since we were the last cabin (the caboose if you will) on a rickety ancient railgari ours was an especially rough ride, people would sleep a few hours, then get off and offer their berth to someone else so they could get some rest. It was a big relief for my kid brother, since at 6’3, he didn’t fit very well on the seat and needed to stretch his long legs. And it was a big relief to me too, cuz although I didn’t sleep on the berth, getting my huge brother’s head off my shoulder where he’d slumped to after falling asleep sitting-up was a blessing.

It got really cold at night and Abez and I were basically shivering in our sleep when the sweet lady with the kids covered us with one of her many fuzzy blankets. She also propped our feet up on her side of the bench so we could extend our legs and pulled her stuff to one side so we could lay down a bit. God bless nice people man, they really rule.

We brought a checker board and passed it around the cabin. Apparently, everyone loves checkers but me. Go fig. Abez and my lil brother played checkers grudge matches, though I don’t remember who won. I read Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and tried to do some writing (to little avail, it’s hard writing when the world is swinging back and forth). We talked to the nice lady in front of us and laughed at the cute things her kids did. Mainly though we just sat and enjoyed the ride.

When we finally chugged into Karachi people started gathering their stuff and making themselves presentable (once again, thank the lord for the jalb, hijab and niqab cuz I‘m sure I was hideous). One guy had a cell phone and was calling his family to let them know he’d arrived. Another person asked to use it and without any hesitation, the guy handed him the phone so he could call his family. Before long, the cell got passed around the cabin, and it was the cell’s owner doing the passing. I guess he didn’t mind sharing to make sure people called those they needed to call.

There was also a little boy, maybe 12 or 13, on the train who was traveling alone. He looked really poor (he didn’t have food or money on him, so the old Afghan lady fed him from what she had) and had never been to Karachi and didn’t know where he was supposed to get off. All the Karachi guys in the compartment tried to help him figure out where his sister lived, since that was where he was heading, and which station he should wait for. One older guy told him he’d stay with him to make sure he got to where he was going. When we stopped at our station, he took the little boy by the hand and walked him down to a conductor

I was a little disappointed when the trip was over, but when that distinctive Karachi smell hit me, the smell of dust, sweat, barbeque, diesel exhaust, boiled eggs, wood fires, incense and the sea, I didn’t mind so much. Funny thing is, it smelled like home.

I waited and waited for my brain to stop misbehaving and pull its weight like a good little organ thing, but it refuses. Almost two weeks have gone by and I haven’t been able to type a reasonably sensible blog. I get started on one idea, and I forget what's going on half way through and end up deleting it. If this keeps up I’m going to put in for a transplant, or atleast a transfer.

Ever hear of the term Trafaldamorian? Its an extraction from a book called Slaughter House Five by some dude, Kurt Vonnegut. In the book the main character gets abducted by aliens and is made to live in a human menagerie. The aliens are called Trafaldamorians and their form of reading involves looking at a page full of unconnected words, where a general feeling is derived from reading the words with no sentences. I think my writing is really Trafaldamorian. Its not linear, it doesn’t have a set beginning, body or conclusion, and it really makes little sense except in a weird floaty way. This is bad man. I’m supposed to be some sort of writer-ish thing, not an alien.

So if my writing doesn’t make sense, then we shall blame it on the aliens....

Sigh... I burned my hand and its hurting. You see, my specialty for my dad’s restaurant (Abez bakes snazzy cakes, my mom makes the lasagna and burgers) is....... drum roll please..... the grand and amazing gyros! Strange specialty to have, processed meats.... I don't want to think about what this may mean.

Yeps, I’m the only one who knows the recipe for making Islamabad’s only real gyros. Its a secret I’m taking to my grave, whether I want to or not. Really though, its no big mystery. I’ve got like 10 copies of the thing floating about my house, but every time my dad comes home and announces “We’re out of gyros!” suddenly my mom and Abez declare, with much bowing and scraping, “Only you can make it Aniraz, its your thing, we wouldn’t dream of infringing on your space.” Everyone else refuses to make the danged stuff, so I’m stuck with it every time. I keep telling them to quit being snots and follow the recipe so I can get a break, but they’re slippery little beasties. Yeah, so after slaving away at my office (you may all say “aaaaw” here) editing stuff that I swear KILLS brain cells, I’ve got to come home and start messing with 13 lbs (that's 6 kgs for you imperialists) of beef and lamb. Anyways, a couple of hours later, the gyros is cooked, I’ve burned my hand and I smell like boiled beef. Don’t I sound lovely? And you guys wonder why I’m so irritable. If it comes down to it, I suppose I could always move to England.

You know you’re a desi when..... You put toothpaste on a burn. You brownies, don’t deny it. You know every time you bonk your arm on an iron or touch a hot pot your ammi says “Ay beta, here let me put some tutpest on that,” and though common sense tells you to run away, you always let her.

I couldn’t find any burn ointment so I grabbed my Minto and smeared it on my hand. It doesn’t really work though, except perhaps like a placebo, but it makes me happy and minty fresh. This is something I never did living in the States, since my ammi is an Amreeki and my abbu has way too much common sense to tell me to rub oral hygiene products on wounds, so I guess living here in Pakistan has effected me through osmosis. Yikes man, next thing you know I’ll start putting Vicks on everything including broken bones and acne.

I’ve lost my mind. If you see it wandering around tell it to go home.

Saving Private Lynch story 'flawed'
By John Kampfner from the BBC

Private Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war, and the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict.

But her story is one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived.

Private Lynch, a 19-year-old army clerk from Palestine, West Virginia, was captured when her company took a wrong turning just outside Nasiriya and was ambushed.

Nine of her comrades were killed and Private Lynch was taken to the local hospital, which at the time was swarming with Fedayeen. Eight days later US special forces stormed the hospital, capturing the "dramatic" events on a night vision camera.

They were said to have come under fire from inside and outside the building, but they made it to Lynch and whisked her away by helicopter.

Reports claimed that she had stab and bullet wounds and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated.

But Iraqi doctors in Nasiriya say they provided the best treatment they could for the soldier in the midst of war. She was assigned the only specialist bed in the hospital and one of only two nurses on the floor.

"I examined her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated ankle," said Dr Harith a-Houssona, who looked after her.

"There was no [sign of] shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound - only road traffic accident. They want to distort the picture. I don't know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a bullet injury."

Witnesses told us that the special forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital.

"We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital," said Dr Anmar Uday, who worked at the hospital.

"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried 'go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital - action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan."

There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Harith had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance.

But as the ambulance, with Private Lynch inside, approached a checkpoint American troops opened fire, forcing it to flee back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.

When footage of the rescue was released, General Vincent Brooks, US spokesman in Doha, said: "Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen, loyal to a creed that they know that they'll never leave a fallen comrade."

The American strategy was to ensure the right television footage by using embedded reporters and images from their own cameras, editing the film themselves.

The Pentagon had been influenced by Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies, notably the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer.

Bruckheimer advised the Pentagon on the primetime television series "Profiles from the Front Line", that followed US forces in Afghanistan in 2001. That approached was taken on and developed on the field of battle in Iraq.

As for Private Lynch, her status as cult hero is stronger than ever. Internet auction sites list Jessica Lynch items, from an oil painting with an opening bid of $200 to a $5 "America Loves Jessica Lynch" fridge magnet.

But doctors now say she has no recollection of the whole episode and probably never will.
__________________________

I don’t know about you guys, but I found this article REALLY disturbing. Stage management of war is something you’d expect to read about in a horrible future-scape distopia sort of book, not in the news section of the BBC website.

I guess part of me is still stubbornly American (though once I figure out what part it is, I gonna call me an exorcist), which explains why I’m slightly surprised by the US government’s blatant manipulation of its own people. I guess all those years of indoctrination in school back in the States, where they pound it into you that America embodies freedom and truth, has left some permanent damage. Why else then am I shocked to read about this when its not the first time I’ve read about something like this?

And what makes me even sillier is that, as a Journalist, I’m pretty well versed on propaganda and spin doctoring. I guess its just the idiotic conceit of the government that has taken my breath away. Its awfully convenient that this Lynch chick has developed amnesia and can’t remember that she wasn‘t shot or beaten, or being held captive by the doctors, or even held against her will (the doctors actually CALLED and TOLD the army to come and pick her up!). But what about the doctors and people at the hospital? Didn’t the government think that maybe they’d talk to someone and the truth would get out? And surprise surprise, they did talk. But here’s the really sickening part, I’m sure the white dudes in pin stripes who planned all this knew it would come out eventually, and they knew that when the American public heard about the puppeteering of the whole thing, they’d STILL believe the government. After all, if a couple Arabs are telling you one thing and Uncle Sam is telling you another, you sure as hell don’t trust them damn aay-raaabs do ya? Sigh.

And once again, I’m going to lambaste my fellow journos. Lol, I think every five blogs I’ve gotta complain about them. Its policy or something. But anyways, its really disappointing that the “embedded media” (think of scabies) was in on the whole thing and reported the “rescue” of Lynch. Hey hey, whatever happened to the Defenders of the Truth? Arg! The news dudes willfully participated in the phony rescue and reported it like good little soldiers. Used to be reporters were part of the system that kept governments in check, informing people about their transgressions and giving a voice to those who have none, but now they’re just tools for propaganda. No more ethics, no more professionalism and no more thinking for themselves.

Add this purposeful dissemination of disinformation to my hugely long list of reasons why I’m no longer living in the US. When even the news is censored and fictionalized, how do you expect to be informed about the world? How can you know what to believe in and where and when to act? You’d have to rely on foreign media and the Internet, but even then, when everyone around you believes what the press/government is telling them and you’re claiming the opposite, then you’re just nuts. If you try to debate, then you’re made to feel like some sort of insane conspiracy theorist, or a Hitler-loving anti-Semite (I swear, this is the most amazing ‘everything goes’ label people are using these days. I’ve heard Jews called anti-Semites for questioning and arguing.) and worst of all, unpatriotic. Somehow, its anti-American to think for yourself and question what you’re told. Scary.

When I first read George Orwell’s 1984, I thought it was really out-there and unlikely, or at least, that sort of hold on the public wouldn’t be seen in the modern world in our life time. I don’t know about that any more. Everything begins somewhere, and maybe this trend manipulation of the news and the news audience by the government is the beginning of that sort of Orwellian control.

Neeeenoooooneeenoooneeenoooo

Amn’t I a ray of sunshine today?!

I'm still suffering from an extreme case of brain deadedness-itis, also known as writer's block. So instead of blogging when I'm making no sense, I'll just borrow this old dead dude's poem for your reading enjoyment.

The poem sorta relates to my question about the purpose of a person's existence. Its my favorite poem and is sorta a motto for me "Be proud of your blackened eye, it isn't the fact that you're licked that counts but how did you fight and why." Great stuff. Wish I could write like that.

How Did You Die?
by Edmund Vance Cooke (1866 - 1932)

Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it.
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there-that's a disgrace.
The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts;
It's how did you fight and why?

And though you be done to death, what then?
If you battled the best you could;
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he's slow or spry,
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
But only, how did you die?

*******BOOOOYAAAA!!********

I’ve got no thoughts. None at all. Sorry yos. My brain is preoccupied with the adventures of Salamandastron. Talk amongst yourselves.

Your topic of discussion is......

How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?

No wait, that's a dumb question.....

What is the best thing you can do with your life?

There ya go. A worthy question!

STARK RAVING MAD!!!!

There is a legitimate reason why I’m such a grouch. Its cuz the world is insane and sometimes I feel like I’m the only sane one here. Other times I just feel like a freak, and really, in the eyes of the majority of people alive today, I am.

To most, I am a freak because I have willfully, and to them illogically, chosen to believe in God. And I’m not just content with the belief in God, I’ve got to believe in the validity and importance of religion. That's fine in itself, as long as a fellow doesn’t go overboard, but of course, I do go overboard. I believe in Islam, which is considered the craziest, most barbaric, oppressive, chauvinistic cult ever to survive 1423 years. That in itself, isn’t always necessarily a bad thing. I could be one of those ‘moderate’ Muslims, or even better, a liberal like Salman Rushdie and Dr Riffat Hussain. But I’m not. I’m a fundu. I believe in the perfection of Islam and don’t think that any man has a right to re-write God’s laws for his own inabilities and weaknesses.

I get so tired of being thought entirely alien and incomprehensible by most people. There IS a reason why I follow my faith. I DID think about it. It WAS my choice. And NO I don’t need to be saved.

It is so amazing that to so many people, my choice to dress modestly, guard my chastity, refrain from intoxicants, be respectful to my elders, avoid interest, be fair in my dealings and attempt to be pious marks me out as a relic of the past. In this modern age, apparently man needs no religion. Funny though, if you look at crime stats, the amount of war, genocide, murder, barbarism, theft, rape, suicide and general chaos of the world, it seems like religion is EXACTLY what we need. Nothing like the fear of eternal punishment, judgment and retribution to put consciousness and accountability into a person.

Those of us who willfully choose to live life by a moral code seem to grow more few by the day. Sometimes I feel like we’re a dying species. I ran from a country where immorality is institutionalized only to find another country dead set on the same road to social rot. I left after watching so many of my friends give in, fall off the path and cave to the constant barrage of temptations. I saw people who I thought were so holy, so perfect, step away from Islam and their own sense of propriety. They are still lost in the dark, clutching at us as we pass them by, but unable to move forward.

I’ve heard fundus likened to two things: one, an Amish man in the center of New York, driving his horse-carriage as SUVs, sedans and minivans pass him by. He has no part in the construction of the spires of glass and metal that dwarf him, he adds nothing to the ’progress’ of mankind, and his kind will die out within a generation, losing its members to the pull of the ‘real world.’

And I’ve heard Muslimahs likened to nuns. A nun is a person for whom the purpose of life is not pleasure, not pride, not meaningless accomplishment, but rather life is meant to be lived for God. A nun covers her head to protect herself from the distractions of attraction, shuns vanity, the ego, hatred and vice, in order to do the best with her life to please He who has created her.

Of course, being called a nun is comparatively nicer than being called an Amish dude (and I‘ve nothing against the Amish, not that they‘re probably online and reading this), but neither of them are thought to be compatible with the rush of the world.

Makes sense though doesn’t it - that Muslims really aren’t part of this world. This world is built on illusions.

We wrongfully believe that all that man accomplishes is through is own greatness. The fact that humans, ugly, base, violent, selfish, hurtful and hateful have managed to survive through the ages and make astounding bounds in thought without first wiping out all life on earth seems too miraculous to me.

We faithfully and stupidly believe that man was created through evolution, by the amazing, inexplicable, un-proven and even still illogical development from a single celled organism. Scientists are still working out that little problem of the origin of matter and then the perplexing issue of the lack of fossil proof to verify the complete evolution of all beings from a previous form.

We think we can cheat death, through exercise, diet, safety and through ’vigilance.’ Man has existed for thousands of years, but we still haven’t been able to delay the pulling of our souls from our bodies for even a second. But don’t you mind, we’re working on it, aren’t we? Just step into this freezer and we’ll thaw you out when science has found a cure for death.

Pretty lies, wishful thinking, delusions, illusions and nonsense.

“Know that the life of this world is only play and idle talk and pageantry and boasting among you and rivalry in respect of wealth and children; as the likeness of vegetation after rain, where of the growth is pleasing to man, but afterward it dries up and you see it turning yellow, then it becomes straw. And in there Hereafter there is grievous punishment and forgiveness from Allah and His good pleasure whereas the life of the world is but a matter of illusion. (Qur’an 87:16-17)

The Muslim is like a traveler in this world.

Hadith, according to Ibne Masoud: The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) slept on a mat. When he got up there were markings on his body (from sleeping on a rough surface). I said “Allow me to make a (comfortable) bed for you. He replied, “What do I have to do with the world? The example of the world and I is that like a traveler who stays under a tree for a little rest for a while, and then leaves it and moves on.” (Tirmidhi)

A traveler in a foreign land may look fondly on the splendors of the place he visits, and may desire some of its beauty for himself, but he knows that he is only there for a short time, and must carry as little as possible with him. His stay, like his life, is only temporary, so there is no need to horde, race, and fight for the trifles of this foreign land because he’ll soon have to leave. He has a better home to return to, where his work and his efforts will yield more permanent benefits.

For the believer, this world is a prison, and for the disbeliever, it is his paradise. You can choose to have paradise now, for the small period of time you’ll live, or you can choose hardship now and eternal paradise later. Allah has left the decision completely up to us.

Today I feel like Elvis. I had a peanut butter and banana sandwich for breakfast, and I feel the need to slap mounds of gel onto my jet-black hijab, style it into a mountainous pompadour and shuffle about in blue sued shoes. Supposedly, the secret to Elvis’ great girth in the end was his thang for friend peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I didn’t fry mine though, but I still have this urge to jump on my desk and sing “You ain’t nuthin but a hound dog.”

My momma rules. She secretly put candy in my briefcase. Really, there is nothing quite so nice as finding cool things hidden away in your bag/purse/coat/whatever put there by someone who loves you. The other day Abez covertly put some chewy mints in my purse, which made me happy (she probably thought it was a week’s supply, but for me, it was only an hour’s, mwuhahaha). Today, my mom gave me Warheads (the amazingly sour candy, not the weapon of mass destruction), caramel things and butterscotch candy.

I should tell ya’ll, I’m a candy connoisseur. I’ve got this whole candy rating system in my head, and I love and cherish the really good stuff. For me, excellent candy is interactive, meaning it’s chewy, or stringy, or powdery, or anything but simply hard candy, and it’s generally sour and fruity.

Yep, so I love me Now’n’laters, Nerds, Lemon Heads, Blowpops, Sour Patch Kids, jelly things and the list goes on. I don’t eat this stuff by the pounds though. Like a wine lover, I enjoy them by themselves as a dining experience. I seek out new and exciting candy, enjoy it, and add it to my list of yummy things, but I only buy/eat them once in a while. Lately though I’ve been bribing myself to stay awake at work and be productive by giving myself candy. I don’t know how long the system will last though, methinks I am already getting wise to it :::looks left and right shiftily::.

This is bad man. When I first started this blog thing I promised myself it would be informative and insightful, not just a collection of my really weird thoughts. I don’t want to waste you guys’ time and brain cells on my oddity and I don’t want to just be tooting my horn and polluting the world with greater nonsense. So I have to find something to write seriously about….. erg. Lemme shuffle through this pile of papers to find some inspiration (On a side note, the nurses here use the word ‘inspiration’ as ‘inhalation’ so I keep hearing ‘Yes, please take a deep inspiration, now exhale.’ It sounds hilarious when some chick in a white uniform seriously tells me to take an inspiration, its like ‘Please ponder the meaning of life for a sec’).

Yerg man, the only thing I found remotely inspiring is an extremely crappy kids magazine that has a whole page dedicated to ‘messages,’ which all generally revolve around the whole guy-girl ‘I-love-you-why-won’t-you-chat-to-me-you-are-my-life-I-will-die’ stupidity. Bah, bleh, snerk and spew.

It’s pretty depressing that even in so-called ‘Muslim’ countries like Pakistan, the social disease of dating-pre-marital stuff is abound. Its like all I read and all I see about the cursed ‘youth’ (oh how I’ve come to loath this label) here is that their lives revolve around clothes, music, movies, fooling their parents and finding someone, or anything, to ‘love’ them.

And what makes it worse, is that kids here, they’re just play-acting what they’ve seen on the movies and in the media, they don’t really have the gritty knowledge and dark wisdom of what dating entails and leads to that those of us raised in the West have. All you see in movies, on sitcoms, on the net and in books is the pursuit of love, and these kids honestly take that one facet of a person’s existence, the love of a significant other, as being the end all and be all of life. So they’re just fuddling about in the dark, plunging in headfirst without a glance at the jagged rocks below, being absolutely retarded, getting hurt, hurting other people and generally going insane.

When you grow up in a society like the US, you get a rather graphic hands-on education about dating, seeing your friends get messed up, knowing teen moms (or worse, knowing girls who’ve had abortions), seeing guys go manic after their girlfriends dump them and just watching kids destroy their lives because they’re playing with fire. You become jaded and wise in the ways of the world, and know how to protect yourself and know why Allah has told us to avoid these things. But kids here, they’re just immature, ignorant, stubborn and hormone-driven.

Anyways, the wise and grouchy Owl wants to grab all these kids and scream at their faces. But alas, I know that would be counterproductive. I cannot live other peoples’ lives, I cannot make them believe and understand as I do, so I just gotta be. I have to be an observer as these kids learn the hard way that fire is hot, and sticking your hand into it time and time again is going to continually result in the same thing. A burn.

But hey, maybe if someone just lets me get on TV ….. yesssss….. ::::laughs maniacally, coughs, dies:::::

Oh yeah, and if you’re reading this then I get to reason with you instead. So ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages: BE GOOD! Stop and think about the end result of the action you’re about to take. You will not be an exception to the rule. You are not special.

Hmmm… I don’t think that was what I was looking for by way of an intelligent blog, but oh well. I feel a little better now.