Middle Eastern Debates

So, the beginning of the Middle Eastern Debates were today. I gave a rough-edged, sketchy, and somewhat rushed speech, but I can blame that on the way Chris controlled the television camera to pan away from me. Whatever. I'm optimistic about the next few days of debate. But first, some time off for the weekend. If anyone wants to hang out, call or IM me; I got a relatively full weekend but I can shuffle stuff around easy.

I'm a little worried about Sharif. He says he has something on me (Olmert) in the debate which I apparently don't know about. It involves nuclear weapons...and me giving them to someone. Plus he wrote a 70 page paper to prep. But I can play psychology well enough too. We shall see what happens.

Today, after school, a couple of friends and I walked downtown to the Commons. After grabbing the obligatory coffee, we...no joke, we hacked a sack for I swear like two hours. Something transcendental about it; I definitely improved mad skeeelz today. Granted, we did eventually leave and chill over at Sasha's. And then saw 300. It's my 3rd or 4th time seeing it, but it doesn't get worse, it just becomes more...internalized. Unfortunately, it came at the cost of coming home at around 12:30AM.

It's strange, but I have a sudden urge to listen to Japanese-German techno music. What's it with those two countries, producing the cheesiest shit ever? Maybe it's a post-axis-of-evil syndrome of some sort...perhaps one day, North Korea and Iran will come up with their own versions of disco-house. Oh god, I'm so politically incorrect.

...and now I know why everyone hates Israel.

I hesitate to call it Math Class Zionism, but that's what it was.

That was OUR fucking table.

____________

On a totally different note:

[22:17] yuvali611acs: ok we can escape
[22:17] inqualcanto: i don't fit in with people, i don't smoke pot, i'm not vegitarian, i spend half my money on clothing, i play jazz, and i don't like hippie folk music
[22:18] inqualcanto: szdjklgsdkljasdgf

I also find it funny how the number of tags on this post is disproportional to its size.

The United Nations/New York

Isn't the UN being a little unrealistic?

They try and mediate a war. They try to outlaw war crimes, they urge captors to respect prisoners' rights, and they keep people from attacking civilians.

But isn't that like a family therapist trying to mediate a conflict and telling his patients, "Stop! Nothing below the belt! Can't you people LISTEN, you can only hit each other in the stomach!"

_____________

The Israel-Palestine conflict sucks.

I'm losing friends faster than I make them.

This whole Arab-Israeli conflict thing which I'm supposed to be researching is really getting to me. I didn't realize that I would lose so much of my normal life outside of being Ehud Olmert, but I find myself putting off my friends, trying desperately to stay rooted in normal life instead of worrying about the conflict every day. I'm so physically unattached to the conflict in any way, but in some perverse little way, it's become a dismal part of my life.

And I can't even claim to understand the conflict. All I can claim is that thinking about it so much is making me angry. It's made me denounce religion to the point of hatred. And at the same time, my mood swings and depressive tendencies have led my mom to tell me that I need to stop placing my friends in such high regard and I need to start believing in something. She clearly insinuates religion. I'm only mildly offended because I know she has good intentions.

But at the same time, why should I ever place my friends in such a low regard? I felt particularly horrible yesterday night when I realized that I had maybe 5 real friends and no explanation why. And her response was that people tend to end up with only one real friend as they age. So I thought to myself, what the hell is the point of life?

Maybe that's what happened to the Palestinians and Israelis. Maybe they couldn't deal with the prospect of having no friends so they started to believe in nothing but hatred towards the enemy...they live for nothing else! Religion aside; this is no religious war anymore, or even a geographical war. No, I am almost convinced that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a war of ethics.

And today I became so frustrated with my state of mind that I ended up bitching about nothing. I complained about nothing...about the prospect of being unhappy for the rest of my life and the lack of real friends. When she told me I was being self-centered, vain, and unrealistic, I panicked. I panicked because firstly I was scared she was right. She was right, though. I do think of myself too much. I also panicked because I had the notion that she would forever know me as the self-centered, vain, unrealistic kid that can do nothing but sit on his ass and complain.

But that doesn't keep me from complaining about nothing. Oh, look at me! Right now I have everything I'd ever want! I have a house, clothes, food, and most of all, I have opportunity. I thought of the Israelis who feel so physically insecure that they keep M16 rifles in their trunks, or the Palestinians who are so engrossed in their own hatred that they would be willing sacrifice their own life to annihilate others. And I'm complaining because there's something wrong with my life that I can't even identify.

Something tells me that when these debates are over, I'll feel a lot better.

___________

Star-crossed lovers quit West Bank

By Matthew Price BBC News, Jerusalem

The couple married three years ago after meeting in Jerusalem

She is a 26-year-old Jewish Israeli. Her name is Jasmine Avissar. He is a 27-year-old Palestinian Muslim, Osama Zaatar.

Jasmine and Osama's is a love story, and it tells you so much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They met when they worked at the same place in Jerusalem, and three years ago they got married. First they tried to live in Israel, but the Israeli authorities would not allow Osama to join his wife there. Then they tried living in the occupied West Bank, but some Palestinians made life difficult for them. Now they've given up and are moving to Europe.

Strangers

"We ran out of choices of finding any solution to live in either Israel or Palestine," says Jasmine as she packs her bags.

"We were naive and thought we could win this fight but we can't. So we have to go abroad and start a new life."

Jasmine We were naive and thought we could win this fight but we can't Osama The moment I decided not to be part of the mainstream I was told that I was not a part of my country anymore

Jasmine already has permission to go. Osama hopes to follow her soon. We go up onto the roof of their village home. The sunlight is so harsh you have to squint to look at the view. Stone walls hold earth terraces onto the hillsides, olive trees hundreds of years old are dotted across the landscape.

"I feel like a stranger here," says Osama. "Even in my homeland. This place is a holy land, but they're killing each other. It's like it's already a lost cause."
"Here there's no chance. I just want to start again."

Under investigation

They are an almost unique couple. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian society has accepted their marriage. On official Israeli documents, Jasmine tells me her marital status is described as "under investigation".

"Our marriage was a human thing. We just fell in love," says Jasmine. "The society around us is making it political."

"I feel like a refugee. The moment I decided not to be part of the mainstream I was told that I was not a part of my country anymore."

A taxi turns up, and Osama helps Jasmine with her bags. The drive takes them through occupied Palestinian lands. They pass a tall grey Israeli army watchtower. They drive through army checkpoints. Israel has been in control here for almost 40 years.

Given up

"Even here in Osama's homeland I am superior as an Israeli," says Jasmine, as she looks out the window.
"It's easier for me to move around. The soldiers let me through checkpoints. They don't arrest me like they might arrest Osama."

A final embrace at the Israeli checkpoint Osama is banned from crossing

Jasmine has given up on her own country. "Jewish people were abused for thousands of years, but my nation has switched from being victims to being abusers.

"That's hard for me to acknowledge. The Jewish people are occupiers now, and we are racist."

The car arrives at a final checkpoint. We stand next to it, and Osama tells me why he has also given up on his own people.

"There were threats. People said if I brought my wife here we'd be in danger. Even my friends said that. They say I am a traitor."

"It makes me wonder whether I want to be a Palestinian any more. Some see me as some sort of Israeli envoy. It's a shit feeling."

Seeking safety

They turn and walk the short distance to the checkpoint that leads out of the West Bank and into Israel. They put down their bags, and hug one another. There's a short kiss. I ask Osama what he hopes for from his new life.

"I want to be able to walk in the street and not be stopped by the Israeli army or police. I want to feel safe. I have never felt that."

Jasmine smiles. "I just want to be a normal couple, with normal problems about rent, and money. I don't want to have these huge gigantic problems interfering in our marriage."

Even now though they are not quite free. Osama cannot go through the checkpoint with Jasmine. They don't know when he will be able to join her in Europe. They are still a couple caught in the middle of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

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Dismal world.

You ask me to stop looking down, because when I look down I see cracks in the hardwood.

You ask me to look at towards the horizon, because things will look better. But when I look towards the horizon, the floor looks all the same.

Every square inch...a hundred blemishes. It ends nowhere. Dear god, extrapolate.

Why is the world so dismal?

300

300 kills people.

Zodiac

Ah, so many movies, little time. Well. In that case I'll stop posting about the movies themselves. Camille thought she wanted to see the 300, but we got to the theatre and it was (inevitably) sold out so we picked anything that might have been worth watching.

Zodiac. You know, the one that everyone hears about in movie theatre previews but no one actually knows or wants to watch. It's sort of just...there. Well yeah, I figure I understand why no one's all that interested in it; the fun is in the thinking about the film itself.

It's a long film so, don't worry. You'll have time for your little contemplative muses and theories. At one point, I am convinced that the cop's wife is the killer. For no apparent reason; such an idea just happens to strike me. Because it's so surreal. It's also based on a true story. Real life is surreal. But if you don't see it for the funny plot and mediocre cinematography, you must see it for the acting. There won't be a single character you can possibly hate.

Guess this means I'll have to watch 300 another time.

____________

Goddamn all these dinner parties my parents are throwing; I didn't even realize they had this many friends. I mean; my dad's antisocial as hell and my mom spends her time trying to bake a better Pain de Campagne. Where'd they get these guys anyway? Yeah. Ah, one last night, another one today. I need to get out of this house.

Oh, but I smell Thai food.

____________

Life tastes good.” —Coke

Or at least, it should. Antisociality for me has never quite come so often or without such reasoning.

My mother caught me sulking and she immediately launched into a 15 minute lecture about how she thinks that ACS is detrimental to my psychological health. She thinks that while the entire inclusion thing is great, you tend to rely on your friends too much. Well first of all, maybe that's what an ideal world should be more like, and second of all, fuck off and don't tell me how to live.

Please, dear god please don't tell me I'm emo. I heard a lot of that shit today (no names). No. I'm not fucking emo. I just happen to be a little antisocial right now.

Pan's Labrynth

Watched it last night with Camille and Yuval. Honestly, I don't have much to say about the movie. Surreal as it was, it was a movie you could generally understand just by watching closely and carefully. While complex and emotional, you didn't need to think, all you needed to do was feel. But I did wonder what I'd do if I was the girl. Or more importantly, what would my fantasy be?

That's all for now. I know I haven't posted in a while. And that's because my winter break was taken up by hanging out with friends, going to New York City with Sasha (and Yuval, who happened to be there; yes, I've been spending a lot of time with her recently), and trying to cram for a background paper on Israel that was due Wednesday.

Funny story though, on Wednesday, my 320GB external hard drive crashed...along with all my data, all my stories I've ever written, all the music I've ever listened to, all the photos I'd ever taken, all the schoolwork I'd ever done (including the essay), but most of all, the heart and soul of my inner existence. Needless to say, it's back up and running, and Satan has finally handed back my life from two days of unequivocal torture.

I shall end here, as I need to catch some sleep before school tomorrow. Viva la Revolucion!

Winter Break

If I go to New York with Sasha for the weekend, my week will be complete. Alas, I will not finish my Facing History paper I so desperately need to do. But there are other things in life than just school. Like black walnuts, for example. There are a lot of those lying around on the ground.

I need to play the drums. Really bad.

deathbygunshot

Thought it was time to upload some drawings I've done since my last drawing post on Picasa.

You cut-throat, you! ...You're lucky I don't stuff your beard down your gullet! ...But get out, viper! And take care that you don't cross my path again! Sheer off, filibuster! Outz of my sight, you gallows bird! Baboon! ...Carpet Seller! Paranoiac! Pockmark! Cannibal! Duck-billed platypus! Jellied eel! Bashi-bazouk! Anthropophagus! Ceropithecus! Psychopath!

- Captain Haddock, in the French comic Tintin: The Red Sea Sharks

?

I feel horrible. Like I just fucked something up really bad, but I'm not sure what.

I just lost five pages of work on my essay

licking your lips
taking in the momentary pain
as a helpful reminder that
you are still alive

biting your tongue
tasting your own blood to make sure that
it is really your own, because
you are still alive

gritting your teeth
resonating through your skeleton
ready to box with your machine
you are still alive

beating yourself
senseless on the keys on your board in
retaliation for its faults
however, it's quite obvious that

it was you who forgot to save your work

Cool cycling products

But at a mere 160 USD, these are probably more affordable:

Snow

Edit: A haiku in response to yesterday's poem:

don't mind happiness
today is a different kind
i'm so fucking bored


_______


Given that there's no school tomorrow, and that it's STILL snowing now, I need to think up something to do quick, so I don't end up rotting in front of my computer. I also just tried to tag this post with "snow" fourteen times, but Blogger refused to comply. I'm not sure as to why it would ever do such a thing.

Soul at the Hands of Confinement

Edit: We just dug the postman out of a thick snowbank. Makes me feel alive.

__________

look at yourself;
trapped with your coffee and your biscotti and
your chocolates
sitting by the fireplace you wish you had
look at yourself;
turning the cellophane on an architecture magazine
keys on a board
watching the outside turn from blue to gray to white
look at yourself;
wrapped up in a fleece blanket in
yesterday's old sweater
have you ever been happier being trapped?

__________

I believe I've just had my first sleepover in a long time yesterday. It wasn't going to be, but by midnight last night, the roads became unnavigable and my parents declared that they were staying home. So Yuval and I stayed up until 2AM until she fell asleep on the couch watching Marie Antoinette. At three she woke up and decided that the couch was probably not the best place to spend the night so we went upstairs and woke up at 7. Amounts to...4 hours of sleep?

Upon awakening, it's a white and blustery Valentines Day in Ithaca, New York. Temperature is 20 degrees Fahrenheit, accumulation is close to 24 inches, and the world as we know it has come to a standstill.

Even the television reflects the mood today; there's cooking show after knitting show after cooking show after woodworking show, after cooking show. That's the thing about blustery winter days. Everyone wants to cook. Including me. The heat of the oven, the radiance of the stove, the comfort of biting into fresh blueberry muffins...it's what we all desire. Succumb to your appetite and you will be rewarded. It's nothing but an extension of human survival.

And yes, it is indeed Valentines Day, but I can't help but muse on how many couples are really on their fur rugs under their crystal chandeliers by their fireplaces, getting it on, on a day like this. Call me a pessimist in a loveless world, but I'm pretty sure the number of those couples right now...is coherent.

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentines Day. ♥

Vogue

I have a secret pleasure. Vogue Magazine.

The full nature of this rather embarrassing pleasure presented itself last night when I was at Hollywood Video selling fruit with Sasha and Sarah. Bored and hungry, Sasha and I decided to go out to Wegmans, and grab dinner to bring back. Sarah requested a Vogue and a plastic fork.

About a quarter of an hour later, we returned with a turkey sandwich, a grapefruit, a cookie, a plastic fork, a Vogue, iced tea, and cold hands. Sarah, quite angry because we were gone for two minutes more than we said we would be, opened the Vogue and we read through. Sarah and I wrestled control for the magazine for over an hour afterwards, pausing only for fifteen minutes to simulate anal sex with Sour Patch Kids. It didn't go well for our customers.

Sarah: "Dammit, Mirko, give me the magazine!"

Mirko: "Stop it! I'm reading it!"

Sasha: "You're gay."

Sarah: "Why would you EVER want to read Vogue?!"

Mirko: "YOU'RE the one wearing a fleece sweater!"

And I shut up.

___________

Scientists to save 5,000-year-old embrace

VALDARO, Italy, Feb 12 (Reuters Life!) - Italy won't split up its Stone Age "lovers."

In a Valentine's Day gift to the country, scientists said they are determined to remove and preserve together the remains of a couple buried 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, their arms still wrapped around each other in an enduring embrace.

Instead of removing the bones one-by-one for reassembly later, archaeologists plan to scoop up the entire section of earth where the couple was buried, they told Reuters.

The plot will then be transported for study before being put on display in an Italian museum, thereby preserving the world's longest known hug for posterity.

"We want to keep can them just as they have been all this time -- together," archaeologist Elena Menotti, who announced the discovery a week ago, told Reuters.

Their removal will be a relief for archaeologists who had to hire extra security to guard the rural site outside the northern city of Mantova after the discovery made world headlines.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next >

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.

The Paris Metro

The love affair does not show itself above ground.

Above ground, life is normal. Above ground, the traffic will feed off its own cacophony, inherent in a giant—indeed global—anarchical system of automobiles and boulevards and traffic lights and horns and police cars. Above ground, the people will live. They will eat, sleep, fall in love, and indeed they will repeat the process until their death, which by that time, the death of one man will equal the birth of two. And above ground, there is sky, there are clouds, and there are stars that will one day exponentially expand humankind’s potential energy. Because above ground, life is normal.

The bells at Notre Dame had just begun their seven-o’clock cacophony when Isabelle’s feet skittered down the flight of stairs into the metro. A right turn into the metro system and Miss Chavanoz would not see sunlight again for half an hour.

As the walkways twisted through U-turn after U-turn, she and her hair were greeted by the cool, mechanical, and somewhat musty underground breeze that was an aspect of subway stations everywhere. They tasted differently everywhere, of course. Tokyo had wheat and no sugar. Madrid had vanilla, and lots of it. In New York, there was more vinegar, and much less salt, until you left Manhattan. In Barcelona, there was olive oil and no canola. Singapore however, was an odd, unexplainable void of sensory deprivation. Indeed, if aluminum and glass had a scent, then Singapore would have been overpowering, but alas, scent was absent in the MRT.

But here in Paris—oh yes, she would never forget the scent of Paris—there was a macabre dissonance to it. It never quite stayed the same for more than a few minutes, and if you wait, you can experience almost every scent known to mankind, from the gag-inducing squalor of the Rafflesia flower, to the comforting smell of old newspaper on a concrete bench, to the lulling and addictive Tuscan meadows captured in the perfume of the nearest bourgeoisie. If you had the misfortune of missing the subway train just as it was rolling out, you know about the full orchestra of odors that shall assault the passenger for a full three minutes—or one hundred and eighty seconds—before you are saved by the fast gust of wind that precedes the subway train and its open doors. Once inside the carriage, however, the odors are still present. If you know what you’re doing, you won’t have caught a train during rush hour, and the only scent you have to put up with is the urinal residue left over by the SDF who had found themselves locked up in the subway train all night with no way out. If you care enough about your nose, you can move away from these areas and often find your scentless refuge towards the middle of the carriage.

But some people, like Isabelle, have no choice but to travel at the heat of Parisian rush hour. In such a situation, the bodily odors inside the subway carriage will make you wish you were back out on the platform: it was as if you had just walked in on a grand orgy of nasal pollution, when suddenly the metal doors behind you cut you off from the rest of the world, and for the next one hundred and twenty seconds, you are drowning.

On her short trip between Cite and the Gare Montparnasse—a trip that shall cost you 1.40 euros—Isabelle’s subway neighbors would all be cubicle-weary warriors, regiment after regiment of black suits, white shirts and red ties. In every new city she visited, she waited for the moment they would simultaneously turn to her with their glowing red eyes, stick needles and tubes into her neck, and assimilate her.

But alas, little that occurred could match such an exciting idea. The cavern of black suits remained nothing but a cavern as solid as the rocks that comprised of it......

A gramme is...

It's February 5, 2007.

[22:10] EarnestWinkle: do the facing history?
[22:10] inqualcanto: yea....mostly
[22:15] EarnestWinkle: what was the turkey a metaphor for
[22:16] inqualcanto: hama
[22:21] EarnestWinkle: and whatd you say for why he used such extreme violence
[22:24] EarnestWinkle: jeez man
[22:24] EarnestWinkle: no need to write an essay here
[22:24] inqualcanto: hama = tribalism + authoritarianism
tribalism = showing off + "dog eat dog"
authoritarianism = overwhelming force
thus (showing off + dog eat dog)overwhelming force = extreme violence
thus hama = extreme violence
[22:26] EarnestWinkle: how much crack did you just smoke
[22:27] inqualcanto: just a few grammes
[22:27] inqualcanto: a gramme is better than a damn
[22:27] EarnestWinkle: touche

The Last King of Scotland

Charming. Magnetic. Murderous.

When you're fooled into sympathizing with the bad guy, you can't help but question yourself too. When that bad guy is Idi Amin, there's something wrong with you. Except that I think there are few people who wouldn't think, "Oh, wow, this guys actually kind of cool." Until you learn about the shit going on.

I gotta say the one thing I loved best was the way the movie ended with the Entebbe hijacking and the events that led up to Gallagher's escape from Uganda. Oh, and Forest Whitaker is amazing in this film, I should add.

________

On Friday, Sasha and I went down to Juna's to grab some coffee and talk like we normally do. That day, we were joined by Lukas who had just gotten out of an internship interview with the Ithaca Journal.

So we covered the basic subjects, and then Sasha had to leave, and Lukas and I went to get some pizza from Neds, when we learned that neither of us had the three dollars we owed Neds for the the pizza.

"I have a debit card," says Lukas.

"No swipe...no swipe thing. I don't have," the rather rude pizza man says.

With no money, and no pin number for the ATM, we don't have a choice. We start looking around for people who have money, yet no one will give us any. I grab my bag and search through the deepest crevasses for loose change. In the end, we come up with $2.50 cents, a full 50 cents short. Problem is, we already ordered.

"You owe me fifty cents, next time," he tells me.

Shit, I think, what is this guy trying to do, jack me out of money later? But what choice do we have? We just spent money we didn't have. So we accept and go eat pizza while laughing about it. In the back of my mind, I know that if I come to him on Monday, he's going to ask for a dollar or two. I'm cool with that, but I'm not cool with letting him play me like that.

But my mom comes in with fifty cents and thus we are rescued.

:-/

I don't like Facing History as much as I should.