In THAT Club?

You know how you’re dating someone and he hasn’t been living under rock, and you’ve been around the block, and between you, you’ve shagged just about everyone you know?

It doesn’t bother me much.

In fact,  I rather like the fact that you’re winning slightly over all his exes, the way your favourite boots are winning over the sensible options, chocolate eclairs are winning over grapefruits, and 2 1/2 Men reruns are beating the pants off the nine o’clock news.

Unfortunately, as the relationship progresses, you start gleaning little details about those that have come and gone before. And this is when a slight feeling of minor iffyness can hit you like a ton of bricks. Not jealousy, but Marxism: do I really want to be in a club, the memeber of which have been this bloody silly?

Ever the picture of discression, I will not specifiy the sillyness. Let’s just say that when you have, like the Better Man,  twenty-odd years of lassies under your belt, you are bound to have come across a few examples of female folly (including but not limited to strange taste in condiments and one really poor decision in a basement).

In short: winning over competition such as this constitutes a failing.

But then again, considering what a Mötely Crüe that has preceeded the Better Man – I suppose he’s got even more right to be feeling Groucho.

I’ll Know Whom You’ll Be Doing Next Summer

And while on the subject of technical…uh, stuff: here’s a site that has got me rather uncomfortably perched on a fence, (an action rather fitting for my new birdy self). www.bok.nu.

It tells you what you will like too read. And with whom, most likely.

Rather a bland selection of titles, but still, a better way of finding internet shags than those based on height.

First Apochalyptic Jockey Sighted

Did you know that nowadays, combining the number eight (8) with an end parenthesis ()) automatically inserts a smiling yellow ray-banned man into your List of Important Things. Like so: not 8())

Twitter – The Cuckoo’s Nest

Last May, I read an article somewhere about this thing called Twitter. It was supposed to be the new Facebook. Always happy to find new ways of wasting my office Broadband I logged in. And was greeted by a big fucking Meh.

Exactly one person that I remotely cared to follow was on the damn thing. Since his desk faced mine, going on-line to see what he was doing seemed slightly overkill. I could tell well ’nuff  by IRL inspection whether he was typing, or going out for lunch, or bantering with the interns. Also, the giggles of the interns was a twittering in the truest sense, needing no www.backupchoire.com. 

Logging out again, I forgot all about it and went on to become a productive and contented member of society. Unfortunately this state of grace was not to last.

Lately, various Swedish media have been filled with I-have-bought-into-latest-time-waste-slightly-ahead-of-local-curve-and-want-to-tell-the-world-I-am-not-a-long-tail-(when-in-fact-I-am-rather-the-end-of-the-Great-Danes-wagger)-style articles.

Naturally, I have rejoined.

Which was foolish, really: for it turns out I have opened the door of a veritable Pandora’s chicken-coop. Twitter, it seems, is not something you can take in moderation. Twitter is not something riddled with Pirate invites that make you turn away in disgust. Twitter does not let you sleep, nor does it look kindly on bathroom breaks. In fact, if Facebook slightly crippled your work ethich – consider Twitter the avian flu of your career.

Abyhoodle. Not wanting to have sacrificed myself for no good, I have decided to make my experice into something that might be used to innoculate others against the disease. Or at least, serve as a warning example. I give you:

Eight Stages on Way to Being a Twittering Fool:

1) first, you have to re-add all the people you know on Facebook, re-add your profile picture from Facebook, and re-add your vitals from Facebook, leaving you empathizing with Sisyphus – Sisyphus with a bad case of deja-vu

2) then, to your horror, you discover you may  “follow” random famous people – like Stephen Fry, poor man. (At least they do not mince words at Twitter, the lingo is very up-front stalky).

3) as the number of famous people in the world is infinite, adding them will take from mid-morning through lunch.

4) after lunch, you realise realise that a lot of the feed’s you have added belong to blogs already in your RSS,  leaving you empathizing with Sisyphus – with Sisyphus with a bad case of deja-vu.

5) then you realise that all the famous people you follow hoping to read about their latest brainiac adventures are also typing, going out for lunch, or chatting up the interns, leaving you empathizing with Sisyphus – with Sisyphus with a bad case of deja-vu.

6) then you realise that everyone you know is posting non-stop. And that everyone, now, is rather a large number.

7) this is when you bury your head in the sand. but it won’t work. while you bury your head, the tweets will just keep amassing.

then you realise that something is profoundly wrong with a civ. that has turned its productive force into headless chicken. unfortunately, by now your feathers are coming off in lumps and your poo is toxic.

Solution? I can see only one stone that might kill this bird: luckily, it is hurling towards us with speed. It is only a matter of time before Media Agents across the world burst into simultanous seminars on ”Twitter – New Uses in PR”.

After which we can all happily attend its wake, downing great big beakers of virtual ale and eating roast fowl.

Bitches Brew

There is a certain demographic group that I despise. Unfortunately this type is, as a group, every bit as thriving as its individual members are wizened. I am talking about  female co-workers who haven’t gotten as far as they would have liked in life, forgot to have kids, and are now taking their daily struggles out on one.

Their chief strenght is sucking the will to live out of any and all.

Their  non fertile, dried up, shrivelled husks produce no more juice, only a thick phlegm, that can be coughed onto innocent standers by. 

They have awesome oral weapons: emitting a shrill, high pitched screeching, while simultaneously blinding victims with the uglyness of yellow teeth.

They move in packs, blocking acess to coffee-machine, printer and smokers corner. They tend to rant and have no sense of a phones silent mode. Most of all though, they Look at one, when one is not buttoned to the hilt.

Fortunately though, there is also another type of co-worker: elderly, male, and bringing choclates to one when one is stranded at desk and has no possible way of leaving in time for dinner.

She’s a Lady

My maternal grandmother is a little old lady. A silverware, needlepoint, geranium steel lady. A Lutheran work ethic, frugal breakfast, nice cashmere lady. A bake it yourself, baste it yourself, weed it yourself, stitch it yourself lady. Today at dinner though, new sides were revealed.

She met my Grandfather, the Supreme Court Judge, at the racetrack.

And she has begun, at ninety, to sometimes by her meatballs ready made.

Got Meat in Pocket

Perfection in the flesh lay spread in the hall on coming home from a Perrier and Ceasar dinner with Cuz H.

It wasn’t Vouge, or Harpers, nor any food for thought such as NYRB, but instead the glorious publication Meatpaper – Your Journal of Meat Culture.

Truffled with insightful pieces on topics such as offal, a DIY story on making lava-lamps out of Prosciutto, and richly illustrated with Bacon-on-Webster -type close-ups it has me feeling quite the lecherous old man.

Oh, and just noticed the finance section killer headline: meat-onomics.

I must pursue immediately and in solitude.

Thank you, H.

Social Calendar and Biological Clock

Tick tock tick tock brrrrrrrriiiiing. Of the four or so friends and relatives who are currently in an interesting state, two are so close to bursting that their social lives – and thusly mine – are affected.

We make plans, conditionally, the conditionally being they might be in labor instead of at the restaurant.

We hang out in places – like living-rooms – with tried and true sofas.

We watch Juno on DVD and cry at the end.

And we wait, almost giggly, for the beginning.

Poetry+Islam= Poetry-Slam?

Atypically, I decided to do some research. Here are some actual facts I’ve found on the Shiaite-Lit discussed in last post.

1) Poetry is big(ger) than fiction.
2) Spoken Word, or storytelling, is more culturally/historically typical than writing stuff down.
3) This is the link to Palestinian Literature on Wikipedia

4) There are 468 hits on Palestine Fiction on Amazon, including this one

5) This is The Book I obviously have to read, while you wait with bated breath, to know more.

Wonderful Wizard Oz

I do not care deeply about the sufferings of others, as epitomized by the multiple conflicts in the Mashreq. I even fell asleep trying to watch Syriana last night – and it had George Clooney in it, no less.

The explanation for this lack of interest is as embarrassing as it is simple: lack of knowledge.

The vast majority of people seem to have bought Jihad: the Cliffsnotes, enabling them to rest comfortably assured on guilt and solution. Me, I still hum and haw equally at death of all and sundry, irresponsibly irrespective of which heaven/hell they are bound for.

Sure, I studied history. But just enough to hypothesize about it repeating, not enough to be sure beyond doubt of Who Started It, It being Israel-Palestine, or Afghanistan, or Iran.

To me it looks a grubby mess of Colonialism and Antisemitism, Zenophobia and Anti-Feminism – the only agreement seeming to be, in the face of Science, on the goodness of raw oil.

As for whether an egalitarian feminist development of Muslim culture without the interference of West is possible (that is, peaceful progress without armed men Bestowing Liberty onto less responsible, and most disturbingly of all, oddly dressed, peoples) it seems to me a problem more complex than how to keep a sling-back on while hurrying for the bus. Alas, I’d rather leave it well alone.

But it will not be left alone, at least not while am reading book by Amos Oz, Sipour Al Ahava Vehoshekh or A Tale of Love and Darkness. It has got me thinking, dammit, and therefor I suspect it of being Good Literature. When was the last time I heard about or read a Great Palestinian Novel?

Never. Which poses a few questions:

Firstly. What are the odds that the same majority that HAS read Placing of Guilt for Dummies, has also read hard to come by works and let the artistic depiction of a struggle affect their deep understanding of the conflict?

Secondly. Literature not being found easily on the Internet does not mean it does not exist. But what if there is actually a per cent lack of Palestinian fiction? Is a People without a voice more or less likely to be repressed than a Nation producing Nobel-class texts?

Thirdly. In case there is great new literature coming from Gaza or the West Bank at the moment – is the fact of it not being translated and/or promoted abroad a sign, or not a sign, of the world being willing, or unwilling, to listen and empathize with their side of the story?

Fourthly. Does my assumption that modern Palestinian literature would have to be topical – suffering war-time topical – signal that Palestinians have been reduced in the eyes of many to a point where love-stories, plain and simple tales of coming of age, or works dealing with the every day angst of every day life, would seem abberations, forgettings of primary concerns. Like if life went on.

And so:

I refuse to believe that the One book being read in Gaza is the Fusty One. It would be very enlightening to be given a sample of the rest.

Maybe it would even get me chanting, loud and clear, one way or the other.