Up With The Birds.

 

Might have to go where they don't know my name

float all over the world just to see her again

but I won't show I feel any pain

even though all my armor might rust in the rain.

 

A simple plot

But I know one day

Good things are coming our way.

Oops, I Think I Just GRADUATED! :’)

It feels odd, and fuzzy. The formal printed certificate finally made the realization tangible enough to hit home and I thought 'hey, when did I grow up?' I can't believe I'll never have to go to school again, see any of these people again or that I'll give up on a huge part of my daily life ever since I knew how to call life for what it is, you know? This tiny virtual life where people aren't that mean and life isn't that hard, and news is nothing more but how the pizza's not stale today because they've just unloaded a fresh batch, getting at its possible worst hearing that the head nun passed away and discussing how she's been a living heritage of this school from its first baby steps well into its golden 5th decade. Looking back on all the years I spent at school, it wasn't nearly as bad as when I decided to hit life's playground. Look at me, I'm actually being nostalgic about an inept closed community. Who would've thought man. Me and feelings, oh well.

Haha, it's almost like these tribal missions of woes and hallows they used to send savages out on to assert their manhood and win the chief's daughter's hand in marriage, and somehow I managed to come back with the severed head of a wild boar. It certainly doesn't feel like it, it feels like I'm a big fish in a little pond who was prematurely released in the ocean. These people are sending me out to real life under the impression that I should know how to go with it by now. I just hope they don't ask for their money back when they realized that I'm not nearly what they bargained for. It's one of these few moments you appreciate that the government couldn't give less of a fuck about you. If it did, I'd definitely be in trouble.

I was talking to my grown-up friend then; that's what I call him because the first day I met him he'd just come back from a presentation and was fresh in a suit with a briefcase in hand, looking like the textbook definition of the financial advisor he is. A man in his late twenties, with wit so sharp that it's almost cruel seeing it confined in a blue collar. We have this joke going on, where he leads me into the dark corridors of life and I call him an old man. He was saying how from here on in,  everything is like high school, except there's more money and sex and people are constantly getting older. I was confused because from where I'm standing, that doesn't sound much different, except that it's actually easier to come by, statistically speaking. That's when he started whining about growing up in the 90's. There was really no reason to this story other than the fact that that's probably how I'll remember today, it'll be the day I advised a tax advisor about life and confused him with the numbers.

Cringing Is Good For You.

I’ve been studying Maths II for about 12 hours now. To the untrained in the excruciating abilities of national certificate curriculums, that’s the equivalent of having your soul sucked out by a dementor, without the kiss part.

And as usual, when I get to study for that long, my head finds it funny to press me with every embarrassing memory it could possibly find. They vary in intensity, usually proportional to the amount of concentration I may be trying to put in at the time. Around the time I hit integration it triggered the time when I managed to lock my friend out of his car, lock myself in, get my head stuck in a revolving door and get stopped by security twice, all in less than 5 hours. Time rates initiated a series of images for all the times my friends thought it was funny to take my shoes off and place them on high surfaces, being a door ledge, a shelf or maybe just holding it up in the air, only to have me jumping barefoot up and down trying to reach it, closely followed by the time my friend thought it was funny to pick my up and throw me in the air a couple of times, which made everyone curious as whether they’ll be able to manage it enough to wanna put the theory into experiment, that time when a huge Christmas tree fell on my curious 7-year-old self because I liked it so much I wanted to drag it back home with me, and of course the memory of how my fixation on my glow-in-the-dark sneakers was cured at the age of 12 when the lights went out in a department store and I guided  a giggling crowd of seniors out to the street.

And before you know it, all the slips, headfirst crashes and awkward sentences I ever came up with were incoming. Images of when I sat on a spaghetti plate my friend placed on my chair for safekeeping, bounced ass first off a trampoline, drowned in a kid’s ball pit because apparently, the minimum height limits were put there for a reason, choked on an important meeting,  was nervous around my crush that I hand shook his finger and not his whole hand, closely after bumping into his torso and falling flat on my back in sight of no less than 14 people, tried to catch an object and got it straight in the face were rushing in.

The cringing inevitably called for a study break, since maths seemed to have developed the ability to turn my psyche against me, and in that study break I found a cure. All you gotta do, is laugh at yourself, then it’s not that bad anymore.

You didn’t expect a magic pill, did you?

That’s What Hope Sounds Like.

Of A Cherry On Top Of A Crap Cracker.

Realizations are always a bummer. They come in all shapes, sizes and packages, some friendly and easily undoable with a nice strong mug of coffee, like finding that you’ve retweeted Unicorn Glitter Tits the other night, and some are impossible to fix if you don’t have a time machine, but that’s what Alzheimer’s is for.

I don’t know why everybody hates Alzheimer’s, it’s there to make being a half centenarian more tolerable. It’s blessing granted by nature, the cherry on top of a crap cracker,  in the form of slight dementia to a certain select. Imagine having lived that long and you still remember every single little thing you did wrong, that’s torture.

Granted, some of them develop a humorous tinge over the years, like the memory of your young self bumping into your, then much taller, crush’s torso trying to find him in  a dark movie theatre, or the memory of having your head stuck in a revolving door because you were too busy sedating your mother’s nerves on the phone to bid your time when entering the medieval vice, or that other memory of how your reaction to the geography teacher stating that the same water has been around since the beginning of time going through purification cycles of evaporation and condensation was to raise your hand and blatantly ask her if that means we’re drinking dinosaur pee, or maybe that other memory of you crashing face first into a lamp post because you were excited about finally getting your hands on the latest copy of the Harry Potter series that you couldn’t possibly wait till you’re home to read it.

However, most of them fart out an insufferable hue of guilt that only keeps growing over time till its sheer monstrosity eats you up; munching its way through your cranial mazes that you can almost hear it drilling its way to your conscious sector.

And that’s why I could never understand why people find Alzheimer’s a liability. I mean, it’s almost a blessing, even more so that it’s incurable. People would pay to have that! They wish on genies to undo their blunders yet they manage to be hypocritical enough to shoot it down when granted.

What’s so horrible about not recognizing acquaintances, forgetting recent conversation and events, and ultimately losing the ability to spot danger? That’s bliss, people. That’s an Undo button provided on a silver platter!

Nature finally gives you the opportunity to start anew and you finally want to clamp on to your problems? All the ex’s, the dead relatives and friends, the people you’ve lost over things you’ve done wrong, your career dilemmas, your petty worries, your consequences, your shit and your mistakes, everything is taken back. You’re no longer held at fault for any of that, because you’re no longer there, but somehow you still are to see all of those people inexplicably nice, and even the ones that never show up, you’re given the courtesy of not remembering them. It’s the solution to all of your problems, and it’s flagged preposterous?

Alzheimer’s give people the chance to be happy over the re-discovery of little things. Re-learning how to work a toaster would make their day, or perhaps tasting coffee for the first time after 68 years of drinking it every morning, taking a long bubble bath having forgotten how awesomely it relaxes all of your muscles, talking to the person you love and getting to know them all over again, re-living all of the beautiful things and forgetting all of the horrendously ugly things. So you forget how to swallow in the process, too bad. I’d rather forget how to swallow if it means I forget about a lot of other crap. The setbacks are the price you pay for the chance you’ve been given to be happy again, for what little time you have.

Why do people want to cure Alzheimer’s? Because they’re selfish. If they’d stop to think about the happiness of the supposedly afflicted, they wouldn’t be so sure about whether they’re jealous because they can’t contract it and would rather drag the person back into their petty reality and provide  them with the guilt dose they relished.

People have been getting drunk, high, popping pills and risking their life on extreme sports to get that one little break from conscious thought, they’ve been destroying their lives trying to find that little anecdote to memory with all forms of destructive escapist habits, they’ve been trying to build a time machine ever since they knew how to call time for what it is and when they find it, they try to cure it. How does that make sense? You’ve just been re-born you fucking morons, why are you trying to take that away?

The nerve on humans. Once a dipshit, always a dipshit.

The Herring Adventure

This is the story of one of the many times I attempt to feed myself and it goes catastrophically wrong.

So I wake up from about 13 hours of sleep, and I’m inevitably hungry. I try to put it off with generous amounts of carefully brewed coffee, and it doesn’t work, so I resort to trying to find edible leftovers in the fridge, which doesn’t turn out well since my mom’s storage system needs a deciphering manual. However, I manage to find two odd looking packaged herrings. And that’s where it all started.

I get out the plastic bag with a fish drawn on it, and it looks rather embossed. To my inexperienced self, I thought that’s just the packaging and when I open it there’ll pieces of herring carefully aligned to emboss the picture. I was horribly mistaken.

I open up the package only to be met with a horrifyingly whole and very alive looking fish, which sends my body into convulsions, reducing my powers of speech to variations of grurghrugheghurgheghgegh aaaaaa grrrghhhh.

I repeatedly try to approach it, but to no avail. To my vivid imagination and starving self, the thing was alive and almost moving. I had a corpse of a living thing lying on the counter and I had no means of removing it, putting it back or trying to turn it edible, and my toes had given up on their duty to keep my balance, since I’d been reduced to hopping around with my toes cramped into odd formations. It had eyes and fins and everything.

Since I could neither leave it there nor cook it without losing my motor functions, not to mention the fact that I had no idea as to how I’m supposed to cook it in the first place, my logic leads me to two things: a) There has to be pan and oil involved. b) There has to be instructions on the packaging.

So I hopped around, making sounds that, to a neighbour, would sound like I’m having my my joints popped out of their sockets in a medieval vice, and got a pan, filled it with oil, and held the packaging in midair with scissors in one hand and a towel in another. There were no instructions to be seen.

Being caught between a rock and a hard place, I get out of the kitchen and try to beg my sleeping dad to get up and remove the corpse, telling him I wasn’t hungry anymore. My efforts failed to penetrate his REM cycle. So I try to wake my mom up begging her to either get up and help me or tell me what to do, I managed to penetrate her REM cycle, but only enough to reach her subconscious. She mumbled something about leaving it there, no oil involved, defrosting and a vivid description of the cats she was dreaming of at the time.

So here I am, in the middle of the apartment, with a corpse in the kitchen and no idea how to dispose of it. I tried to summon the powers of Jack the Ripper and found his advice on the boiling point of human hearts of no help. After extended psychological turmoil, I decide to get myself together and brave through it on some sort of quest to prove to myself that I’m not a pussy, since there was no way I’m eating that thing if my life depended on it.

I go back into the kitchen, which activates another episode of me jumping around the place spewing jargon. I had the mental image of myself in a morgue identifying a deformed body, and found myself rather inclined towards that version of the plot than the one I currently had to deal with, for at least I’d have sufficient evidence in the latter plot that the subject is sufficiently dead.

It seemed perfectly logical at that point to stuff it into the microwave, since my knowledge about the whole cooking culture involves me stuffing things into the microwave, only to have the magical waves render the object suitable for human munching. There was of course the teeny tiny little problem of how I’m going to get the fish into the microwave without my having to touch it, keeping into consideration that telekinesis is not a valid option. Another one of the Indian rain dance episodes was initiated as I propped the thing with the longest ladle I could find onto a plate, with my heart halting to a temporary stop when it tumbled my way. With some ninja moves, I managed to balance it there, and shove it into the microwave, set it to a minute and run for my life.

The sounds and view of the fish moving in agony was plain torture, I felt like Neville when Mad Eye Moody performed the Cruciatus curse on that spider in front of him. Time was up and I got out from behind the doorframe where I’d hidden incase something exploded into a shower of fish guts.

Comparing the before and after, the fish looked like something out of a horror movie. It had curled upwards, its eyes popped out and there were juices oozing out of all sorts of perforations from its bloated body that seemed to lose length and gain width on some sort of deathly equation. The position of the fish on the plate looked as if I’ve been performing  an exorcism, and vaguely resembled this:

Another Indian rain dance later, I decided that I had to do this. I approached it, took a deep breath, positioned the scissors, closed my eyes and let out a yelp as I severed its poor head. I got a fork and knife and proceeded to surgically gut it into perfect little squares, removing what then appeared to be poo and was later identified as eggs, since in no way could a fish be this diarrheic without ingesting oodles of chocolate which I couldn’t possibly imagine finding its way to the ocean.

After the excruciating process, both to me and the poor creature, I got rid of the evidence with the precision of a serial killer and stuffed it in the fridge. I had to talk myself out of turning vegetarian for 2 hours afterwards, settled on not eating anything with a face for sometime and swore on everything holy that never, ever, for as long as I live, will I attempt to cook again.

Of Espresso Pebbles, Jeep Wranglers & Wedding Vows.

Today’s been a weird happy day with bouts of craving pickled lemons and wanting to cry your problems into the jar and proceeding to eat lemons pickled with your own tears while pretending to be a halfassed cannibal, then ignoring the impulse because you don’t have pickled lemons anyway and you’re rather consoled by the fact that you liked Louis CK before he made it on the 2012 Times’ 100 influential people’s list, right before you found out that Rihanna was on there too and wished you’d closed the tab without hitting the next button and cursing yourself for your insatiable need for knowledge that has been conveniently triggered because of your impending finals’ force-feeding and cramming that caused this traumatic realization by making you want to click that next button into the wondrous world of things you don’t know yet.

In case you also have the need to count everything and was trying to keep track of how many times I flipped from happy to sad, it’s 4 times in the last paragraph raised to the power of pi in the last 24 hour window, which made me proceed to make an infallible equation to stop that pattern and that is the following: Whatever you do, don’t watch The Rum Diary, and cupcakes are bad for you. The combination is lethal, so don’t go there unless you run out of bytes and food. Maybe not even then, but anyway, you get the point.

I’ve been sleeping a lot too, I think it’s another one of the whole finals-are-in-a-month effect. And when I say a lot I mean the going to bed with a scab and waking up to find that it’s not there anymore kind. I slept so long I grew up a little. Also, my left middle finger decided to cramp at the joint and now I can't bend it. Ironic? I’d say convenient. I’d make it a point to run into everybody I hate today if I didn’t have to wade through a pile of books to get to the door.

Since my body is not used to this whole ‘sleeping enough’ thing, I woke up this morning groggy enough to head-butt the door, bump my laptop into the wall, squish dad’s foot then lose my balance and trip over only to fall right on his poor hand. Luckily enough, he managed to straighten them on time or else I would’ve broken it trying to go through with my quest to reach the couch after heroically getting out of bed in one piece. My dad’s reaction was a full-fledged ‘HOW THE HELL ARE YOU GONNA DRIVE? YOU NEED A GPRS INSTALLED IN YOUR OWN BUTT!’

The Kübler-Ross Model slightly shifted in my behalf when he started considering a Jeep Wrangler to keep me alive, since the logic that ensued included thinking of a car that can take the highest ratio of brick walls to people. Since he could do nothing to improve my own co-ordination, he was hoping a 4x4 would help, but he reconsidered it when he thought about all the people I’d squish as opposed to just run over or hit and his philanthropist senses eventually took over. So now I don’t get a Jeep wrangler, my head hurts, my middle finger is on the offence and my laptop has battle scars.

My mom then went out and got me a weirdass sleeping gown with angry birds all over it because it ‘made her think of me after what happened this morning.’ My dad refuted her logic by saying that angry birds can hit a target, and I hit something and then called it a target. Needless to add, they wouldn’t let me hear the end of it, but that doesn’t mean that you, oblivious reader or alien checking out our planet, shouldn’t.

So I was watching Gilmore Girls this morning and Lorelai was getting married to Max Medina and she started thinking about her wedding vows, which in turn made me think about my wedding vows. After serious thought that went on for an average of 7 minutes, I honestly couldn’t come up with anything other than ‘You’re cooler than Coffee’ because my train of thought kept getting interrupted by internal conflict and a lot of voices berating me for ever telling such a blatant lie. There couldn’t possibly be anyone who’s cooler than coffee. So I moderated it to ‘You’re as cool as Coffee.'

And that was probably the worst thing I could have ever done because, to my head, it was more plausible that love doesn’t exist than the fact that I’d find someone, look him in the eye and firmly believe that he is actually as good as coffee. The fact that I’d conjure up such a thought, of having a person, a human being, be up to par with something as gracious as Coffee. Coffee has been there for me more times than I can count, it has been the emotional support and the pick-me-up, the one making sure I don’t nod off in all-nighters, the one staying up to make sure I see it first thing in the morning before I go to school, sticking around in the cab till I was ready to face reality of a long day with bullies. It was there when I was heartbroken, pissed, sleepless, plain bored and grieving. The one who was there when I was nervous before an important meeting and needed to prop my logic with something other than googling all the topics I could remember being ignorant of. And I’d actually have the nerve to meet a mere human and lie through my teeth, or even worse, believe that he’s as cool as coffee? The fuck was I on.

And that’s when I decided that Gilmore Girls makes me think when it shouldn’t because that’s not what it’s there for and I’d just taken part in a leisure massacre.

Then mom swooshed in and saved the day, having updated my ample stash for a rainy day with chocolate-covered coffee beans and espresso pebbles, and the world was okay again.

Of National Anthems, Anagrams & This Life Thing.

So I’ve been thinking. On one hand, I’d make an excellent feminist; it it didn’t involve liking women. On the other hand, I’d make an excellent chauvinist; if it only involved hating women, not liking men as well. I’m not really sure where that leaves me, other than that field beyond right and wrong where people who hate their species exist, along with the German neuter article and the psychopaths of the world.

Which explains why when I was watching Gilmore Girls this morning while writing in my journal and the realization of what the fuck I was doing hit me, I got the sudden urge to off myself, which was inexplicable in its philanthropist sense, as if I’m somehow doing the universe a world of good by it.

Also, I’ve been humming the national anthem to a country I can’t place all morning, it’s rather annoyingly victorious and sounds like the lullaby of a toddler who’s finally reached the cookie jar. I’m not sure what to make of that either.

This whole life thing has been getting harder and harder, and I'm reduced to living with the fact that I missed more classes than I can afford to get tutored for, both metaphorically and literally in that sense. It has reached the chronic stage where friends are probing for growth acceleration in attempt to put an end to their frustration at the sight of my crashing into brick walls. I never thought life was quite that hard, why people had to read all those Dude 101 books when they could just watch the Godfather trilogy or whether pizza delivery guys who worked this late realized they’re doing a better job than most of the suicide hotlines out there. Apparently, there’s more to it than that, and it’s not getting better that I’m not a kid anymore and now I realize I’m enough of a grownup to go to jail, and not juvenile hall, if I slaughter someone.

A friend, upon reading the progress of this post, pointed out that I may be referring to an introvert, and that I may be right to introduce them to the wonderful world of ‘Anagram Magic’ which comprised the most part of his childhood, explaining that it’s ‘getting fun out of people without having to talk to them or go through with the formalities of human communication, kind of like prostitution for introverts.’  Needless to add, it’s on my most visited tabs now. Birds of a feather flock together, no? Well, maybe just together but not really talking anyway.

Also, today I realized that the one thing I may have added to humanity’s stock is the discovery of a new strain of headaches, ones that are so bad that the pain starts leaking to your neck. I'm not really sure I’m enthralled by my contribution, but it’s definitely better than nothing.

I Was Gonna Write A Blogpost About How I Feel, But This Pretty Much Sums It Up.

Of Nothing In Particular.

I’ve grown into the habit of watching a couple of episodes of Gilmore Girls over my morning coffee. I found that it eases one into reality quite smoothly, much more competently than real life does. I don’t think the luxury was ever offered in the first place.

I haven’t been able to talk much lately, a lot has been happening. And now that I can, I realize I don’t want to. Communication is overrated, if animals can do without it then it’s probably how the natural course of things meant for it to be. Where has evolution got us anyway? I don’t see felines waging war on canines anywhere.

And words to the wise, never underestimate the comforting powers of re-reading your harry potter book series. If there’s a handbook on how to reset your psyche, they’d be listed as #1.

Why Do You Always Say Yes When You Really Mean No?

It's Gotta Get Better, Because It Can't Get No Worse.

Of Matchmaking Moms, Misdated Birthdays & Bieber Last Names.

I’m writing this post on the loo, for a lot of reasons. Most prominent of which is the fact that it’s about the only place a sanaweyya 3amma student can have time off and not have parents screaming the sound of conscience at them on how to better implement the precious remaining fragments of their time. Another is the fact that it’s probably the core of everyone’s comfort zone, even tho they may not get themselves to admit it. So now that I’ve jumpstarted your imagination to this beautiful mental image, I will now proceed to rant about things you equally don’t give a fuck about.

My birthday is originally on the 11th of December, 1992. It’s also on the 7th of January, 1993. It’s one of those family conflicts that never got settled, my dad insists it’s the latter and my mom states it’s the former. As unsettling as the whole matter is, I’m more inclined to believe my mom, because I don’t know about you but I think in this context, it’s a lot more disturbing to believe that your mom was confused about the day she gave birth to you as opposed to the more digestible decision of ‘hey, maybe my dad just completely repressed that memory for a month until he got himself to like babies and admit that one exists in his own house, just not enough to register that it has for a month now.’

Also, 11th of December sounds more in tune with how my life seems to be about, a near-miss, or how George Carlin chooses to put it, a near-hit. It’s a day away from being memorable yet has a mathematical air of symmetry about and gives off the feeling that something’s off. It’s like a huge analogy of everything that my life is and has been about since I knew how to call it for what it is.

I don’t know what got me to think about that, but then again none of these posts make sense so suck it moron. However, I think my train of thought got derailed right about where I ran into a diarrhea of baby posts on Facebook with chicks typing theatrically prolonged and admittedly squeaky awwws everywhere in sight and it got me thinking about how much I hate babies.

My mom’s a piece of work. Most would argue that goes for everyone’s mom and embark on hour long debates whose mere objective seems to be about showing just how much their mom’s more of a cuckoo than yours, and you grow up having it as one of those unsettled bets with your friends that you tackle when you run out of conversation one day, and they’d always try to win with the same passion as every other day.

Let me further elaborate. I woke up this morning to the news that my mom got me the sheets I missed and had trouble procuring since I got bullied senseless at school and none of the chicks are really helpful if they can help it. On asking how she managed to do that, she says that she hit it up with a guy about my age that she didn’t know, and was sure I didn’t know either, and convinced him to let her copy the papers for a juice box and the promise that she’ll introduce us the next class. That was about 18 hours after the heated argument where she decided that all of my problems would be solved if I managed to flirt with one guy per class because they’re a lot easier to take advantage of than the more experienced and vicious chicks. Now, in her defense, cultural gaps have treated her to worse ditches. And, to be honest, the comic relief is worth the trouble really, but no matter how much I try to make her understand how it works around here, the conversation always has the same pattern and I find myself always coming to the same punch line: ‘Oh my god mom why mom why did you do that mom you don't..alright, okay thank you mom, okay, thank you, great.’

It got me thinking about life again, and how maybe they’re more of built-in, free of charge anger management courses that are integrated as part of your training into becoming a functional adult and maybe one day someone else’s parent. The logic went as follows. Nine times out of ten, you always get the irrepressible urge to take a baseball bat to your mom’s head. Ten times out of ten, you’re not allowed to by the natural course of things and the fact that you really can’t help how much  you love her regardless of the numerous cringing opportunities she ladles onto your plate 24/7. And then you get to that aha moment where you go: Life, I see what you did there.

Maybe twenty or thirty years from now, if the blog host handles it and I still manage to have these entries when I’m some oblivious turd’s mom and stumble upon this post, it will make all the sense in the world.

Along the lines of culture shocks and what they may get you into, I’ve had quite an odd morning. I’d like to break the news to all the fellow coffee addicts in the world that I managed to sleep for the uninterrupted impressive number of 16 hours last night and I have no idea how that happened or how to maybe make it happen more often. I’m not very happy about the fact anymore because it got me into a tight corner with a couple of friends where my deep seated comforting sense of the hold I have on my own linguistics was shattered when I failed to understand a friend’s status, link it to spoken English, and misread one of his friend’s last name as Biebers. And for the life  of me, I couldn’t get them to empathize that I meant no harm but rather genuinely couldn’t spell his last name.

And for now, since my glorious mug of coffee is done, I leave you with a post that I’ll undoubtedly regret 2 seconds after I click publish and get back to work. Top of the morning everyone.

Freud, It’s Really Not That Hard.

This picture has everything you need to understand a woman’s psyche. You’re welcome.

Of Oreo Milkshakes, Short Circuits & The Mark Haddons Of the World.

I’m starting to think that people who listen to electronic music think too much that lyrics just don’t cut it for them anymore, they could always find fault with it, all they really need is a soundtrack to the credits rolling in their busy heads, something that sits well with the purring and crackling of their cranial engines.

It’s gonna be harder to find someone else who’s as sarcastically lashing as Mark Haddon and is equally inclined to believe they’ve been put in the wrong body, and should’ve been a dude after all. But hell, that’s what’s life is about, innit? Making you feel inadequate in the most creative of ways.

It got me thinking whether that’s why bad things happen. The big dude in the skies thought that maybe if life was bland and alright all the time, people would get bored after a while. With that same logic that presumably trespasses that of humans’ by a couple of bigfoot leaps then postulated that if life was great most of the time, people would have nothing to wake up for the next morning; they’d have accomplished everything they ever wanted out of life before they hit the glamorous two-digit privilege. Shit is there to make us not want it enough to give tomorrow and ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

Or that’s how I choose to see it, because I don’t know about you, but I’d hate it if life was a series of unfortunate events knotted and buckled into the shambles that are what is left of you with absolutely no hope of relief in the horizon. Or maybe I’m discovering the joys of the delusional phase after lingering around the angry phase for too long.

Maybe that’s why he left all the forums unanswered, he probably thought an army of seraphim and a fleet of cherubim wouldn’t make for enough admins to handle all the counter-arguments when people have to face one absolute truth once and for all. It’d take a lot longer than eternity to clear that up.

A couple of weeks ago, I would’ve laughed at whoever attempted to make me look at the bigger picture, and see that somehow things work out for the better even though we might not see or expect them to with so much bird poop clouding the windshield, but right now, I think smashing headfirst into that tree was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me.

You may not get it. But some of these posts are written so that only certain people could, and most are written in a way that only I could. So, again, don’t try to analyze my head dumps for calcium, and for the sake of all that is holy, fingering my poop to make sense of your own life is not only pathetic, it’s a new level of sad that has bypassed trekkie gatherings.

About the bigger picture, a funny thing happened today. It was funny because it wasn’t supposed to be. The little quips that are lost in the rush of every day’s folds and later erased to refresh your RAM. However, taking a glimpse at life from my mom’s glasses set light on a lot of things. Running for top of the list is this: Parenting is not for the faint of heart.

Me: Mom, do you have any idea how many times I get the urge to kill you throughout the day?

Mom: Yes actually, do you have any idea how many times I get the urge to run for my life throughout the day? You’re a fucking scary kid.

There is one thing I’m learning to appreciate though, and it is my tendency to entirely detach from reality and the entities roaming it when it gets too much. Psyches have restore points too. Mine seem to be automatically updated and set to a functional point of time and crash back to it without conscious prompts. Dad has always said that if it hadn’t been for my short circuits, I would’ve probably choked a kitten with my bare hands before I turned 6.

Man am I thankful for em short-circuits.

Work is starting to feel more and more like school as days go by. They’re doing the same mistake, getting people competitive to the point where they’re ready to bite each other’s heads off to get ahead. If only I could’ve taped my elementary school years and played it back to them for proof that it’s a failing regime that kills every hope of passion for the actual damn thing and turns people into death-eaters. Oh well.

A new friend of mine put up a decent fight with the cashier because her milkshake didn’t have whipped cream as it so promoted in the flyer. For the first time in almost half a decade, I’m starting to remember what it felt like to spot shit out without sky-scraping billboards flashing and pointing at it two feet away.

Life Lesson #332: اللي يسأل مايتوهش؟ اللي يسال يتوة بدينه علي فكره

Of Feuds, Scape Goats & Mordor.

Things have been pretty weird lately. Last night I got a really desperate text from a random number asking me for a ride, and I replied. Then the next morning I realized I have no idea who that is. Also, I don’t remember what I texted back saying because I was half asleep, which is a rather scary thought because I usually don’t turn down people asking for rides. And this morning when I tried to call back to find out who it was or what I said on the slight off chance that I’ll have a stranger following me around when I leave the house, they didn’t pick up. Now my instincts are telling me that I’m gonna die. Those same instincts are telling me I need coffee.

Also, my call register says I called a friend, and I have no recollection of the incident, and my friends list is missing 3 people and I have no idea who they are.

Now that you know what I'm dealing with, I don’t know whether I wanna find out what actually happened or if it’s better to just sit here and face the palm of fate whenever it decides to hit. Or, in this case, a stranger and three incensed friends.

It’s an interesting morning, to say the least.

Life Lesson #331: When you haven’t slept for a number of hours that exceeds 4 times your current age, stay away from technology as much as you possibly can.

Well, until I’m sober enough to link enough dots to figure out what just happened there, let me ramble on about my week.

I blew up in a stranger’s face last night in class. To my stressed out self, it seemed perfectly plausible to pitch a minute long repartee – most of which I don’t even remember – to her innocent ‘Excuse me, has class started yet?’ that includes but is not limited to ‘And what the fuck does that have to do with me? Last time I checked, I wasn’t listed on your emergency contacts for when you need a brain transplant. And stop following me around like a zombie. I don’t know you, and I don’t want to. So take that little bum of yours and scamper off to the frigging receptionist to ask about class and stop wasting my precious credit, my page loaded a minute ago.’

As if the language switch didn’t shock her enough. To be honest though, I’m glad I didn’t punch anybody in the face. I’ve been feeling like it lately and my level of consciousness at that point didn’t afford such an intricate calculation of the circumstances it would entail had I still felt like it when she was staring at me with those big puppy eyes of hers.

For all of you who think Karma will be giving it to me soon with a big momma slap across my juvenile cheek, it already has, that’s sort of my little version of ‘Bitch, it’s payback time.’ As if it wasn’t enough that I lost about 4 people in the course of the past week, with their crowd of faithful followers which added up to a huge sum and, as a consequence, a huge bite out of my social life, they turned to hate texts which turned into hate calls overnight. You know, the ones where you obliviously pick up to find out that a friend is greeting you with the most fluent verbiage of hateful cussing that hits just the right spots and sends your subconscious into convulsions. That’s what usually happens when a good friend, who knows enough about you to tailor the perfectly hurtful strain of sentences to your psyche because they’ve switched sides, that kind of thing. I’ve been wondering how long it would take them until I get hate e-mails and somebody feels loyal enough to invest their college funds in a hit man that swooshes in to end our misery, but by the looks of it, it’ll be sooner than I expected.

Things turn ugly pretty fast, and nothing is quite hard to handle than having friends turn ugly when your own ability to retort is that of a 9-year-old who dropped their ice cream.

Oh and did I mention that I have enough hate tweets on twitter to dub me a hash tag worthy of Justin Bieber?

Splendid week.

I have a meeting today, that conveniently includes two of the people who want my head on a silver platter, and I’m hoping that they’ve had their coffees this morning because I really can’t handle ghetto slander as much as I give off the impression of being capable of handling. I’m too short for this shit. Oh well.

I guess this is what it feels like walking into Mordor as a hobbit.

Wish me luck.

Lle ume quel.

So as I was sitting her possibly ruining what remains of my life by wasting precious time watching online sitcoms, I realized a lot of things, like for instance, people would have so much more time to do something productive if they didn’t have to work, or perhaps how it took me four years and a half to realize that the people I was hanging out with were absolute pieces of shit, or how they showed the entire series of Lord Of The Rings about 5 times in the past two months that I could probably recite them better than my assigned Arabic texts (I really wanna speak Elvish by the way I think it’s totally cool.)

I realized that I miss my dad’s Tom Thumb bedtime stories and that there was really no reason to stop them at all, except maybe the fact that I stopped participating in the public’s march to their beds when night falls by the time I turned 10. Here I am, not sleeping for 6 days and I sleep halfway through one of my dad's tom thumb bedtime stories. Now that's what I call magic.

I realized that there’s a hotdog line called British Bangers, even though there’s everything wrong with that, I’d probably lose count before I hit the word limit for a blogpost. I realized that I attract condescending Wonkas, that I am one and I’ve been suppressing it for too long. Hell, if I let it loose I’d probably beat Louis C.K. at his cynical diarrhea of verbiage with Busta Rhymes’ ability to pack a book in 30 seconds and beat the Penn & Teller Bullshit Show at smashing the common beliefs of thousands, but then again that would make me realize how much stupidity I’m surrounded by in painful HD more than I already do and I’d probably kill myself before I turn 27.

I’m rambling, and I got class.

The Wrap-up.

I got a long week ahead of me, a couple of simulation finals, an important meeting and classes with tons of work to muddle through, but coffee’s the silent guardian that makes sure your body doesn’t give up on you as long as your head is still up and functional.

I found an old version of Hallelujah, the cover by Leonard Cohen, and it’s making me wanna fish out the sheet and work on it till my fingers are numb, but I don’t have time for it till next Sunday, so I guess I’ll have to wait for then.

I’ve come to learn how to say el 7amdulilah, and I now get the feeling everyone was talking about that I never got before. I can sleep now too, I don’t have to read through my very boring copy of ‘A Million Little Pieces’, about a rehabilitating drug-addict, whose depressing air and very poor manner of writing never failed to send me fast asleep. I don’t need that now, and for that, too, I’m grateful.

Most nice things, and I mean really nice things, are short-lived. It seems as if that sort of knowledge works both ways too, rendering all ephemeral things nice, giving them a hue of beauty that only thrives in a time bubble. Almost like Coffee, no matter how big the mug is, the ring is bound to stare back at you at one point or another. The ‘nice’ part, however, is that now you know that it’s a part of you. A fraction of it might end up in a strand of hair that you’ll trim in 20 years, some of it will to construct that wisdom tooth coming out, some might end in a nail that you’ll bite off watching Dawn Of The Dead, a couple of sips would go into the new inches you’re sprouting, another will go into the make up of your complexion, the sugar will make you drudge on two more hours through that stubborn physics binder and the rest will be absorbed by your growing body. And you chug it down to the last sip.

‘Baby I have been here before. I know this room, I've walked this floor. I used to live alone before I knew you.’

Now that there’s no going back, and it’s all over, there are three things it all came down to. I have never been more grateful with the turn of events, I never left, and I think I might need to get used to the fact that my dad is the only who will never really leave, no matter what happens.

Some things are bought at too high a price, but I’m grateful because now I know they were worth it.

El7admdulilah.

'There's a blaze of light in every word. It doesn't matter which you heard; the holy or the broken Hallelujah.'

Cheers!

But Love Is Not A Victory March.

‘I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come all of this way to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand right here before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.’

Of Red Bull, Cake & History.

Life Lesson #316: When you think about it, and I mean really think about it, you’ll find that the real problem lies in the fact that cyanide smells like almonds.

Life Lesson #317: Whatever you do and no matter how hard you try, in two out of three contexts on average, you’ll still be an asshole.

Life Lesson #318: More has been lost than gained on the account of right and wrong, but then again nothing has been lost or gained on the account of not giving a fuck. Which is better? Trying to find out would require a million casualties. Life, well played.

Life Lesson #319: It is always folly to invest without a dependable profit prospectus. And no matter what books say, you will always learn that after going completely bankrupt.

Life Lesson #320: 'Can you build a spaceship out of history?' - 'No.' - 'Then history is bullshit too.'

Life Lesson #321: If AIDS was god's way of punishing homosexuals, then why does god love lesbians so much? That's right, get your head out of your ass.

Life Lesson #322: ‘And the strangest thing was waiting for that bell to ring, it was the strangest start.’

Life Lesson #323: The only consolation is finding an honest answer to the one question: “Was it really worth it?” And the bad news is that there’s no answer to that question that’s not up for debate. Conclusion? The idea of consolation is the only consolation you’ll ever get.

Life Lesson #324: ‘Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.’ – Albus Dumbledore.

Life Lesson #325: There comes a time in a man’s life when the only emotional recovery he finds within reach is his Harry Potter and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book collection.

Life Lesson #326: ‘One day, humanity will conquer disease, and after that we’ll conquer aging, and after that we’ll slough off our mortal coils. No longer tied to location, we’ll spread out through the cosmos at near light speed. We’ll continue experimenting and theorizing until we’ve determined the exact limits of knowledge. At which point, nothing will remain to explore. Discovery will end, love will be dispassionate. Hope will be meaningless, art will have no purpose. Religion will have no transcendence. Having conquered our deaths, but not the universe’s, we will enter a  collective hyper-ennui and begin the slow somnolent march back toward oblivion. The only scintilla of meaning in the last waltz of Torpor will be the stillborn wish to have lived and died back when we were made of warm flesh and the gentle lapse of sunlight in the summer dusk was enough for our happiness. So in the grand scheme of things, what’s really the point of nihilism if you can’t use it to buy stuff?’

Life Lesson #327: The human psyche works in mysterious ways. Who would have thought it’s plausible that the sight of cake now sends me into a fit of tears?

Life Lesson #328: Bottled messages are the reason closure isn’t so hip anymore. They’re often lost in the tide. If it makes you feel better, think of all the radio signals in outer space that were never picked up. Someone bothered to send them so much that his efforts fired them beyond the coverage of man.

Life Lesson #329: Too much love can be almost as destructive as no love at all, if not more profoundly scarring too. The reason everyone is trying so hard not to give a shit is that loss is not something you get used to. Peace, as opposed to War, was never custom-crafted for the idealistic, but then again it has never really killed anyone. The irony lies in the fact that all wars started because someone loved a person or an idea too much, and peace was about two people deciding that not giving a fuck is probably best for all parties involved.

Life Lesson #330: Red Bull gives you wings, that’s why you crash so hard.

All I needed was a call. It never came.

Real Friends Bake Chocolate-Coffee Cakes For You On A Bad Day.

Because when everybody else bails, some obscure badass soul will come out of nowhere and make it all better. You just gotta know where to look.

Bittersweet.

Life Lesson #312: To every kid out there, I just wanted you to know that when parents told you to do the right thing at all costs, they left out the part that says but you're probably gonna be alone for the rest of your life for it. I just thought you should know that it’s one of the entailed costs before you decide to be a good person.

Life Lesson #313: 'The truth has pain in it. It has bitter sacrifice, loss. It has blood and tears and poignant moments of powerlessness.'

Life Lesson #314: ‘'They show you a place in your head where you remember why we were never meant to be alone. And you try and act surprised.'

Life Lesson #315: ‘And the hardest part was letting go, not taking part. You really broke my heart.’

Airplane Mode.

Airplane mode is a setting available on most cell phones, smartphones and other electronic devices that, when engaged, suspends many of the device's signal transmitting functions – thereby disabling the device's capacity to place or receive calls or text messages – while still permitting use of other functions that do not require signal transmission.

I wish I didn’t have to make that choice ever so often. When a pattern seems so adamant to loop every four years of your considerably short life, you start to think whether you deserve it after all. You start to project the unpleasant results onto how you are and you start thinking, hey, maybe it’s my fault after all. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I’m the one who activates it regularly, almost as if it’s a deadline that you have to hit on a certain date set on your subconsciously scheduled calendar. When you’re so flagrantly different than everyone you’ve ever met, whether or not you think it’s the right thing, you start to think that maybe you really do bring it upon yourself to be in so much pain. Which leads to the ultimate question: ‘But do you really deserve the pain?’

You’d think that after a while you’d learn, get something out of it and maybe have a firm grasp on what went wrong to try and fix or avoid it, but it’s always the same thing. And whether or not it is after all your fault, you still blame yourself for it.

Is the right thing worth it? After all you have loved, and you have been loved. The kind of love that’s so strong it’s almost crippling, the kind that has a person willing to put themselves for someone else if it means it’ll protect them and guard them from harm, even if it means it’s you that has to go down instead, and almost as an automatic response you’re willing, and that registers as irrelevant, hardly a cost to haggle down. The one that obliterates your survival instinct and renders you incapable of having it as a valid option to begin with, knowing full well that it’s not the type that can be reciprocated. The kind that makes your well-being sound like a selfish pursuit. That kind.

And you’re met by an incomprehensible resistance. You’re fighting against the other person’s survival instincts, and you can’t seem to get your head around how their survival instincts are set to kill them when yours are set to die for them. How does that even make sense in the natural order of things? Why do you have to make a choice of either having two go down or just one, when neither seems fair?

That’s where the grey area comes, the one that argues that it’s their personal choice that you have no hand in and should accept. And, again, you start wondering. If it’s a personal choice, then does that mean that the protective instinct you have is wrong? Does it mean that in that context, you’ve found a loophole in the mechanism of human communication? That you’re a faulty prototype that was marketed and circulated then dropped like a hot potato and eventually, the CEO decided that retracting it from the market would mean more financial losses and decided to just leave you there till your stock has self-replenished? The update is more lucrative and there’s no sense in further investing in a losing hand?

And yet you still try to comprehend it. Is it still a personal choice when you’re tied up watching someone you love and care about so much hurt themselves? Suicide is a personal choice. If your son let you know that he was gonna shoot himself in 8 hours, would you stand back and say son, you do what you gotta do, but I certainly don’t like it?

It doesn’t make sense. If it’s wrong to go the extra mile to save someone from themselves because it entails trespassing on their personal choice, then why is it still an option in the human psyche? Why is the impulse still activated? Is it put there to torment humans? Is it another loophole that sets our world apart from a utopia? Are you a faulty prototype, a travelling soul that lost its way from the chivalric medieval eras? Is it only tolerated when put in the context of a parent to their child because it can’t be avoided but ostracized in lesser forms of relationships like a friend or a loved one? I don’t get it.

And when you’ve done everything you could against their defense mechanisms, you’re left to handle a conflict with your own. You can’t get yourself to stick around and watch them hurt themselves because it’s too much pain, and leaving would cut off your own air supply, because you loved too much. And it seems cruel. It’s cruel that you have to make that choice ever so often. And you always do the same thing, because it is no longer a choice. You willingly obstruct your own coverage, and you no longer have signal, hoping that it would cause the least damage and leave you pseudo-functional.

Flight mode –other names include airplane mode, offline mode, and standalone mode – is a setting available on most cell phones, smartphones and other electronic devices that, when engaged, suspends many of the device's signal transmitting functions – thereby disabling the device's capacity to place or receive calls or text messages – while still permitting use of other functions that do not require signal transmission.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama doing a traditional Hawaiian ha, or exchange of breath, with a student from Kamehameha Schools who performed at welcoming ceremonies on his arrival on Oahu, Hawaii, on April 13, 2012.

Growing Up Is All About Getting Better At This: