That's what we bloggers do best, or at least we Lebanese bloggers do best... Say "sorry guys, I was too busy to blog." Most of the time, we also like to add a long list of everything that have kept us busy lately, but usually we are too busy to tell our followers that we are busy.
So I started writing at 9:57PM, February 13, 2010. I am sitting at starbucks cafe (yeah yeah, I know a true leftist elistists, Queer Lebanese should be too proud to sit at starbucks and sip her coffee... Bite me. It is valentine's eve, in other words, it's my birthday. Today I turned 25 years old. I celebrated my birthday by cleaning all day, trust me, cleaning, masturbating, cooking, drinking, and smoking are the greatest pleasures in life.
Yesterday, I finished reading "Beloved" for Toni Morrison. The end of every book is sad and painful, especially if it is a novel, not a short story. You feel anxious and wish there was still a few more pages. This is what I felt when I was done with Beloved.
At every turning point of your life, you will suffer… No one and nothing can protect you. A long time ago Pazuzu decided that God was unable to save her out of her misery. She was right. But yet she lived to see another day. At every turning point she had to suffer. There were nothing to hide her away from it, it’s because Anguish comes from the inside, if you hide Anguish will occupy a greater portion of your own time and Anguish will scream into your ears. If you escape to the hands of Lover, Anguish will feel jealous and will haunt both you and Her, She will scream in your face telling you how you hurt Her and how you had no right to… even if you never hurt Her. If you run for your family their sincerely honest, yet hardly understanding, faces will be mirrors and in the mirror you will see Anguish. If you call for a friend, she will hug you, but then the second day you’ll wake up and the taste of blood would still be in your mouth, you run back to your friend and suddenly Anguish will grab your throat whispering in your ear that you are nothing but an annoying loser.
Anguish has a lover and that lover’s name is Tears. Anguish and Tears are soul mates; their love is a constant battle field where they satisfy their thirst with each other’s blood. Tears will make love to your soul, cuddle you and keep you warm. But then when the warmth is so delicious Tears will look around for Tears’ lover, then Tears will run after Anguish and they will renew their love over your body. Bruised and hurt you will search for Happiness but Happiness is a player, Happiness will always be close enough for you to hope but never too close for you might capture Happiness. You see Happiness is like a nymph, Happiness likes to laugh and dance and you can never dance as fast as Happiness or laugh as hard. Happiness knows that and will never let you tie her up.
And whatever you do, do not run after Hope! Hope is the most vicious of all. Hope’s lover is deception. Hope would do anything to please Deception. So whatever you do, don’t get anywhere near Hope!
In the end when all has failed Pazuzu, when she sat silently on the cold marble of her pedestal, she looked down at the world and a warm air caressed her scales and for a moment she knew what it was like to be human, how the soft skin of humans felt when the air gently warmed it. And it felt good.
She waved her hand for Lover, Lover was snuggled in the arms of Enemy. But Pazuzu screamed to her anyway, she yelled:
C’est vraiment bizarre comment tout d’un coup je ne t’aime plus, mais si en ce moment tu me regarde d'un œil tendre, le BonDieu dans toute sa gloire ne saurait que serait ma réponse.
Lover didn’t hear a word Pazuzu said, so Pazuzu went on :
Tu sais, la liberté … c’est une illusion… tu vois, les chaînes qui m’étranglent le sont aussi. Même la douceur de tes mains me dérange désormais, même l’odeur de ta peau ne me séduit plus… Enfin, je t’aime tu vois… Mais je t’oublierais tu le sais bien. Non tu ne le sais pas, car je ne t’oublierais jamais, à jamais je chanterais mais ça ne me ridiculiserait pas car personne ne le saurais, je chanterais si bas que moi-même je n’entendrais pas ma propre voix. Mais tu sais ce qui serait très sympa ? si tu cessais d’exister… créature du vent et du sable, je ne suis qu’une pauvre montagne arrête de m’éroder, disparais ! tes caresses me font mal…
The wind finally ceased and Pazuzu spread her wings and flew away, to where there is nothing but Silence. Silence is scary, she’s a black widow that ingests her venom without a scar. Captivated by her deep black eyes you will stare into her eyes helplessly as she drains your internal organs liquefied by her invisible venom. So it took Pazuzu great courage to break free. But freedom is an illusion and finally, Pazuzu gave in and fell to the floor. Remorse detected her scent and came to scavenge on her decaying soul. Remorse has long teeth and they hurt like hell. Remorse felt sorry when it hurt the painful moans of Pazuzu and just left her there to die so it can peacefully eat.
In deep sleep Pazuzu felt her muscles relax for the first time… and it felt good. Darkness reigned inside her closed eyes and she cherished the beautiful feeling of surrender.
Then morning came and gave Pazuzu another chance. Now she remembers nothing of her past, so when you meet her, make sure you never tell her about Lover, the mere mention of her name will unleash all the memories and bring back all the feelings that tormented her soul… let that be our secret!
Oh my God the horror! Oh the unforgivable crime! Oh the Blasphemy! I could they even dare do such a thing to such a pious believer, a good feminist like myself should not be subjected to such cruel acts of temptation. today, as I was opening my Google Docs I was horrifying scene of the following:
It's PINK! like EW i don't want pink. It's for Valentine's Day but I refuse and object! not only am I single (which makes Valentine the more painful) but I am also a pink hater! Well actually i don't exactly hate pink I just find this one very sappy and silly... So just so that history would remember this:
Pazuzu and her serpentine Penis objects and refuses and vows to avenge her wounded feminism!
It’s weird how life can turn around and twist us to the point of breaking us apart and then it would gather our broken pieces and breathe life back to our bones and we go on with our life as if we never suffer. Then years after it you would still think about it and remember it but the pain is gone, you still cry but you’re not sad anymore. It’s funny how so much suffering can be remembered with nothing but compassion and sympathy for the tortured child you were, I guess that’s a sign that it’s behind you. Ever since I cam to accept my troubling past I have gathered the courage to talk to a few people about it, I expected to find many people sharing some similar experiences but what I didn’t expect was to see how much they suffer remembering those moments of their lives, it must be so painful for them. It’s not the same for me…
Exactly a decade ago I was in my dark ages I was struggling with repeated suicide attempts as clearly all of my friends already know. Now a lot has changed, for the best mainly. But around 11 years ago, I was dragged by my mom to church it was at this time of the year, it was the last week of fast and there is this Christian ritual where they celebrate the suffering of the Christ, there were a few songs that cut right through me and touched my heart like no other experience would ever again and I cried. Luckily my mom didn’t see me cry back then, but something changed in me that evening and I was never the same. Over the next 2 years I would go from celebrating suffering to meditation, prayer and perpetual fast… then drop down into excessive guilt, self-hatred and of course suicide.
That evening I heard three Hymns that touched me, I’ll try to translate the other two but this is one of them. By the way, try to ignore the video itself it’s full of blood and doesn’t always convey the suffering in its true meaning…
***In the voice of mary****
Habibi Habibi (I didn’t translate habibi because there is no English word that could capture its Arabic sweetness) look at how you have become
Who has troubled you, who gave you this cup of vinegar that you would accept to drink?
Habibi, what wrong have you done, what despicable act have you done?
You’re exhausted and you’re wounded beyond healing
***in the voice of Jesus***
I was in the garden at night and I was troubled to the gut
I prayed and I prayed until I sweat
I said: God, if you may, save me from the pain ahead of me
In my heart incomparable grief, not even to drowning in mud
Like a sheep they laid me down on earth and crucified me
All those around me abandoned me as if I was a stranger
So I turned back to god, the only one that capable of helping me, the only one watching over the world
And to injustice succeeded sorrow, despair and bitter tears
Tied up, beaten as if I was the lowest of decadents
Whipped like the nastiest of criminals
And all for your sake, for your wellbeing, for you to be happy sane and secure
Look at me! Have you ever seen such suffering under the sky?
It must sound so awkward for an atheist to be moved by such a Hymn but it’s actually the memories that leave me speechless, there are things that I can never express, which is good I guess
It’s kind of odd how people with seemingly nothing in common may share such intimate details. It’s even weirder how you see the same pattern of ignorance and shame repeated around the world, I always thought it was my religious environment that caused this but as I grow older I come in contact, one way or the other, with people that had the same experience, take this postcard (from the postsecret blog):
I lived almost the same experience as an adolescent. I thought the changes on my body and its mutilation was God’s punishment for masturbation. But I was also raised to believe that God never I punishes… I was fucked up! And what was more fucked up is that I kept believing I was bringing the mutilation to myself and trying to fix it for a very long time, until I was 19. I am not sure why I lived this phase for so long. Even after the suicidal phase of my life ended at 14 the shame was always there, I always believed I’d never get married since my husband would be repulsed and disgusted by my looks. And I still feel terribly ugly! I am bitterly relieved to see people talk about the things that bothered me also. I often think of how many people still live in that hell, it’s unimaginable. How can a healthy child turn into such a crippled teenager? Simply by using the weapon of ignorance and adding the typical religious guilt. I grew up thinking I was the only human being with such extremely ugly genitalia! I thought everyone else had ones that looked like babies… Just as I lived my whole life thinking I was the only one who tried to herself in the world. This is why, whenever I am talking to someone, I do say that I tried to kill myself, hopefully I would contributing to breaking down that wall of silence that suffocates us all. Some people feel that my bitterness towards religions and the Church is irrational and doesn’t really make sense, inno I exaggerate. But I don’t! I suffered the same oppression, hurt and psychological mutilation as almost everyone around me. I was more vulnerable because I took it more seriously and religions, if they are true, should be taken seriously, so I suffered irrational suffering because I did the right thing, I believed them! Now I don’t believe them anymore and there are no half solutions, it’s either these religions are true or they are not! And they are NOT… So yes, when my brother comes to me telling me about what he learn in class today about GOD, I freak out! If my brother goes through what I went through because of those religious bastards I don’t know what I could do, all I can do is to hope he doesn’t. I just hope he survives it long enough to write about it as I write about it now, I’m sure he’d be a very happy adult if he does.
October, November, December … and January the come back As it is the case everytime I disappear, though I never intend to disappear in the first place, I do have a lot going on with my life. Yes on October the winter depression did come back and it’s been difficult to shake it off. But that’s not all, my social life has been more active, and again that’s not all. By the start of this year I broke my dating hymen and dated for the first time in my life! Don’t ask me for details, all I can say is that it was a very happy phase of my life but it is over now and I don’t want to talk about it. Meeming (that’s the verb deriving from meem) has been going very well, we celebrated our first year anniversary and we have many plans. My lab plan didn’t take off yet, because the more I know, the more I know I am lacking, now I am focused on studying how to commercialize and advertize my plan. Plus I need to narrow my project to a very concrete level… Still a lot of brainstorming to do! But I missed writing not that I wasn’t writing anything. So starting today I will link on this blog everything I write anywhere else on the web and just to keep you folks updated, I have written a few things on the meem blog:
As I wonder why politics refuse to let us go This one is quite old, back to the time when the Iranian president was bragging about how there are no gays in Iran… I stole the link from Shlemazl :P.
Plus there are entries from all the girls, from all styles and with all sorts of talk… Check them out they are interesting. Et merci Nomade pour avoir pris le temps de le voir. And to avoid any misunderstanding the comments are monitored by the lady in charge of the blog, Shant, any comment is welcome but the first time a person makes a comment, it won’t appear till Shant approves the IP address of the author. So it might take some time.’ Other than this I have been working on a new website: Biologus. It has been a long time I have been working on it, but didn’t have the time to properly take care of it, it’s still under construction, and I will also gradually move some of my science work posted here to that website, the point of the website is to be… a website! Not a blog, in addition to the fact that I have the intention to put its address on my CV so I want to work on it to gradually turn it into a professional website. SO far I have uploaded five articles to it:
Let me see… what else has happened? Well two of my articles have been published in the Beirut Marathon magazine, the first was titled “Running and evolution” (or something like that.. I know! I know! I suck! I should get a copy but I don’t have one) and the second was titled “Why running is better than a diet”. It must’ve been 6 articles by now, but the Marathon has been facing organizational problems and stuff… No problem. And I have one article published in the Haigazian University Herald… Now that was funny thing, I was asked to give an article by a friend of mine, I presented three and gave her the choice. She chose one of them Titled “iro0n Maiden” and in it I talk about the… Iron Maiden! Not the band, but the torture device, pretty cool huh? And that’s not it, when I saw someone showed me the magazine I was shocked to see that I was the least qualified people who posted anything on that page, there were a woman from a famous newspaper in Lebanon ( I don’t remember the title of the magazine) and there were a University Professor and I don’t remember the third… When my friend wanted to write a couple of words under my name to introduce me she wrote “Bio Graduate from the Lebanese University”… She didn’t want to write “Just a no one that no one else than me knows”:P
Anencephaly literately means the absence of a brain. It’s a very rare case of congenital malformation of the neural tube. The neural tube being the origin of the whole nervous system, it is a structure that develops early on and any defect on its level has dramatic repercussions. Technically: The neural tube is formed starting from the 3rd week of pregnancy. It’s formed from the thickening of a precise region of a tissue called Ectoderm, the rest of the ectoderm will form the skin and the neural plate will penetrate the embryo and later on form a closed tube (neural tube), the sensory cells scattered around in the skin. The neural tube will give the brain and the spinal cord. Unfortunately, in some cases this is not how things happen, the neural tube fails to close in the cephalic region. The tube is no longer a tube in that region, and the skin can’t climb over it and close it. Instead some underdeveloped nervous cells pile up, in a more or less organized manor without any bones to protect them or even skin. Not all kids affected die prematurely, 45% of them reach the term of their gestation, but none lives a lot longer than 6 days. They are born blind, deaf, unconscious, and unable to feel pain. Never in their short life will they gain any consciousness and most of them actually die because their rudimentary brain cannot regulate properly essential body functions. 95% of parents, once informed with their child’s situation choose to terminate it. Though medical intervention (reparatory surgeries for other defects that may accompany anencephaly, antibiotics, assisted ventilation…) may increase the life of such a baby, but most of the times the child is allowed to die smoothly and with as much dignity as possible. There is no cure for this defect, because by the time the case is diagnosed the development is already altered, and there is no way to fix it. The only weapon we have is folic acid which is known to reduce the prevalence of this defect, problem is that by the time a woman knows she is pregnant then it’d be too late! When I read this I can’t help but to remember all the babies/kids/people that only get a partial chance of living, the ones that are born with severe defects, the ones that are born in severe poverty, in war, in abusive families. I can’t help but to think of Layal. In my mind I keep on thinking: which one had a better chance? Which life was better? Certainly Layal lived till teenage and sure she actually KNEW the world, these kids never had that chance. But on the other hand Layal only had the chance to know a world she REALISE she would be deprived off, a world that she KNEW she never belonged to, and a world she SAW how she will leave… She felt pain and she realized she will die… Soon! Isn’t that much more cruel than leaving a world you never knew to care for?
This is very interesting, at first sight hilarious but actually very important to know. It’s a surgeon’s experience (his nickname is Orac) with “odd objects” that he extracted over the years from people’s rectum. I often heard that people would stick weird objects in their “posteriors” but don’t take my word for it… Read about his experience: Pulling it out of your posterior What struck me as odd is that it’s usually men that he has operated, I am sure that there were women, but maybe women don’t need to stick things up their asses so often. After all, if it is for sexual pleasure we can always get a guy or a dildo, men wouldn’t. But what about the psychological disorders… we have lots of that too!
While studying the other day, my brother was asked to compose an ending for a story about a nice sorceress that performs magic through music. Check out what my brother wrote:
Elle se servait de sa guitare pour attirer les loups, les serpents et les souris. Ils sont gentils. Les enfants qui viennent jouer s’enfuient parce qu’ils ont peur d’elle. Ils racontent à leurs parents et leurs parents décident de détruire la sorcière. Elle s’enfuie et les parents mettent le feu à la forêt. Tous les animaux s’enfuient.
In English :
She used her guitar to attract wolves, serpents and mice. They are nice. Children that used to go there to play ran away because they were scared of her. They told their parents and their parents decided to destroy the sorceress. She escapes and the parents burn the whole forest. All the animals run away.
I was wondering what should I understand from his creativity? They gave him a very peaceful, fluffy, plane subject that he turned into an epic melodrama about the destructive force of ignorance and kids. In fact, if you look closer, his story seems to be an alternative version of the genesis myth. Afterall, the big bad animals were living in perfect harmony till the kids and their parents destroyed everything out of ignorance and not out of bad intention. What’s funny is that no one in his story is evil but yet everything goes wrong! And above all I am intrigued by his conclusion: Ignorance prevails and goodness ran way?!
P.S.: Though I did fix numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes (and fixed fixed sentences all together), I did NOT contribute in any way to the elaboration of the whole idea. He did it all by himself and I only corrected mistakes when he was done.
I don’t know why I keep checking the BBC news, at times it just doesn’t seem to make sense at all. Now I expected some other bloggers to mention this but no one did and I just had to say a few things. This woman decides to go to this clinic cause it’s closer to home, right? That’s natural, we all do that anyway. Then she is informed that she must be a Muslim to receive treatment in this clinic AND that she needs to put a scarf too… What does she do? Instead of calling the police and informing them of this unethical and illegal act, she just goes there never the less and just wears some decent cloth. I don’t know if I were her I would inform authorities about it don’t you think? You see this reminds me of the time when I used to go to church every week, some priests, including ours, insisted that women should wear decent cloths and refused to give the girls undecently dressed the Eucharist… Remember that the only thing that denies you the grace of receiving the Eucharist is sin. So in other words not being dressed according to the codes decided by the priest is passable for sin, however, no priest is given the right to deny anyone the Eucharist, cause the priest might be god’s representative on earth but he is not god. The same goes for this doctor, he is not allowed to deny anyone medical treatment… right?
But let’s not insist on that point. So the woman goes there, without the veil, enters the clinic, then meets the dentist who gives her a lecture about Islam and the relationship between the man and the woman (typical religiously concealed sexism, I bet he even told her about how men can’t control themselves in the presence of promiscuous women!). Then, surprisingly, the woman accepts! Like Holly Fuck!! WHY?! I Why the hell does she take this shit from anyone?!
Wait wait, that’s not all, the dentist then demands her to go to the waiting room, wearing the scarf, and wait for a while before entering for the surgery! Like maybe he is giving her time to purify herself? But this time the woman finally revolts and refuses to go on and just leaves, without the scarf!
When the woman pressed charges the dentist certainly denied everything.
Being a woman that actually lives in an environment and encourages and glorifies such pudic acts, I have to say this, something doesn’t feel right in this story. In any normal situation the woman could have refused to go all together. The fact that she did go and she did accept to wear the scarf… But not in the waiting room! With all due respect I find this to be repulsively hypocritical! It’s her legitimate right to get the treatment she needs and no ultra religious sexist with power issues has the right to impose arbitrary rules on her, if she accepted then she must have some other motives behind her act! Now of course I support the fact that she would press charges against the idiot as late as it was, the guy should have his license canceled or something. He should be castrated then he won’t have any filthy desires towards women regardless of their dressing, now why doesn’t he do that?
But there is one last thing that intrigues me… When the woman went to the police, before making this whole subject public, why didn’t any female officer call the guy and try to arrange an appointment, just to check if the guy does refuse to treat some women?
Well, I promised to keep you people updated on my situation so far. Well here’s what happened: When I stopped updating a while back, it was because the month was over and I had to pay the internet bill, but back then I had made the decision to move to another provider but needed an additional 75$ for installation and stuff, so I decided to wait a month and then register. Then by the end of the month I realized that there is no need, I could move to my uncles’ place by the start of winter and they already have internet connection.
No, I wouldn’t be moving just to get internet access (that would be funny). In fact I am planning to move for three reasons. The first and most compelling reason is that I have a plan to start a small biotechnology lab and I have so many ideas how to develop it and everything, but I need the space, since my home in Jounieh is too small hopefully my grandparent’s home in Beirut is a better option.
In addition, I have started writing articles in the Beirut Marathon magazine: Running Middle East. Though I have no direct contact with the administration being in Beirut will help me more than staying in Jounieh.
Finally, I have become active in a growing and active society in Lebanon, the LBTQ women society (LBTQ standing for Lesbian Bisexual Transexual and Queer). All our weekly meetings are help is private and secret places in Beirut which makes it much easier for me to move to Beirut.
Now about our LBTQ society… The seed of this activism had started blooming exactly one year ago with the help and support of the helem association (The association for the protection of homosexuals in Lebanon.Quickly our community grew in numbers and in projects. During this summer it finally resulted in the launch the very first Middle East community for Lesbian rights, active on an Arabic soil: Meem.
Meem being a symbolically feminine letter in Arabic, symbolizing everything that the woman is in our community from her identity to her suffering, we had decided that Meem would only have one public aspect, our website: Meemgroup.org. The website is still under construction but some of its main features are already up and running.
Now the community is certainly secretive and private for the obvious reasons, first of all the privacy of our members is a need, considering the difficult situation in which we live and plan on improving. Second, our first goal is not advocacy of Lesbian rights, it is the internal empowerment of the girls to help them overcome the scars of a sexually repressed and repressive environment. Not that we don’t believe in the need to educate the general public on what we are and what we are not, no! Our advocacy will mainly be channeled through our cooperation with supporting organizations such as Helem or Aswat (the Palestinian Gay Women).
In addition to our website and our blog we have been organizing weekly support groups dealing with our communities problems and issues. We do have many other projects summarized here.
Now Meem is still young, it has succeeded in a very short while to gather a significant number of ladies (around 129) who simply appreciate other ladies but in order to sustain the ongoing effort we do need support, though financial support is certainly needed we most of all need recognition inside Lebanon and outside to ensure additional protection and additional efficiency.
So if you are interested in supporting, helping, encouraging, bashing us feel free to contact either me in person on my gmail account: Xie.medusa.stheno @gmail.com or directly contact the big bosses on the email: meem@meemgroup.org. And spread the word for others that I cannot contact myself.
Now this is funny. What I enjoy the most about this blog is the fact that I can be as anti-clerical as I like. Not that I hate the church, I honestly don’t, I do have beautiful memories from that phase of my life. However, the church never chose to be neither modern nor tolerant, it was on a few occasions forced to evolve, to drop its old teaching and to claim tolerance. Forced because they lost popularity, they lost power, influence, so they had to remake their image to a more modern one, with much softer values that would attract the new generations. You see, the new generations were rather attracted to Buddhism and Gnosticism in terms of spirituality. Especially in the Occident as we call it. People simply lost faith in the church as the path to reach heaven/God, the discovery of old scriptures convinced the Occident of many churches and not only one and only church, the recent memory of religious clashes between Catholics and Protestants fortified the belief that there isn’t just one Church but many churches, that no one hold the truth eventually the conclusion was inevitable: Christianity is not THE religion and religion is not THE goal of life.
This loss in followers that gradually degraded the Catholic church in its cradle (Europe) meant a huge loss in political power and in money. Then Miraculously came John-Paul II, a man that many regard as remarkably tolerant, good, modern, gentle and so on. Some praise him as the iron fist that shook communism in Poland, others praise him as the defender of poor people around the world, the man who renewed the church… A lot has been said about this man but let’s get back to earth, his presence, his actions and his decisions were all part of a good plan:
Attract the young generation: He gave the young generation a distinct place in the church they had camps and activities inside the Vatican itself, he emphasized on their role thus attaching them and using them for work that needs to be done
Looking like a saint Well you know how they teach us in the bible that the early Christians lived in total poverty? How they relied only on the help of God? How Jesus in person forbidden us from piling riches? Well every time the Catholic church went through a identity crisis, they did readopt that Saint appearance. Just as an example, remember the establishment of the Dominicans and the Franciscans , also known as the Mendicant Orders. These orders were established as a direct response to the rise of Catharism. These orders quickly spread like mushroom on wet lands, the prohibition of Catharism and the inquisitions favored the rise of Mendicant Orders on the detriment of Catharism naturally. But the fast expansion of Mendicant Orders expresses the need among the population for a better spiritual guidance. That’s what was going on since the dawn of the last century, and that is why the church has been trying to restore a stoic/humble/poor façade.
You see, a lesson that history has taught us, humans have an empathy/selfishness balance within them; rough environmental conditions favor selfish behavior, clement conditions favor empathetic behavior. This, in my opinion, partially explains the clash of cultures also. But in general the modern world is more at ease and satisfies its needs much more easily than before, especially in the Occident (again and again). That is why people would find a docile and soft Christianity far more appealing than a tough and powerful one. Christianity has the ability to fulfill that role, because Christianity in its beginning was a very oppressed religion, it was found and established in a hostile environment under constant threat, unlike Islam that spread quickly and establish an empire even quicker (the Coran being written under the guidance of kings not fugitives) and Judaism, a religion who’s holy books were written over a long period of time, and more often than not by an independent nation. So the New Testament is a tolerant book, because tolerance is usually the demand of the weak and the minority facing an oppressive majority. Christians in post-war Lebanon demand tolerance, Christians before the war demanded the right to preserve the Christian privileges by force.
So the Catholic Church, back at the good old days of John-Paul II tried to resurrect the memory of that old Christianity backed with a very tolerant New Testament…
However there are a few flaws that show the insincerity of this docility. The Church is only docile with the powers… So can we call it a resurgence of tolerance or reassessment of alliances?
Reinforcing the role of Africa and Latin America, but also the InterChristian, the Christian/Jewish and the Christian/Muslim Dialogue: Europe has always been the cradle of Catholicism and all Catholic Christians were subjugated to the central power of the Vatican, in fact all Catholic Churches were obliged to sing in Latin (except our Maronite Church), to pay the tax directly to the Vatican, the Pope was almost always an Italian… Many saw that the election of John-Paul II and his work afterwards was colossal and amazing, sort of like a liberation a modernism… Well allow me to disagree, though I do agree on these moves I don’t really understand how can people neglect the fact that John-Paul II’s election in itself indicated that the change within the church wasn’t the result of that pope’s election, on the contrary it is the change that brought him to power. In fact it was utterly absurd and idiotic to keep the power of the Church so centralized, it was absurd that Africans and Latin Americans would be so excluded of the church, it was absurd for people who never even come in contact with the latin alphabet to be forced to pray in Latin, thus pray in a language they cannot understand, the changes John-Paul II generated were the strict minimum that anyone would demand, he didn’t liberate the church he just didn’t want to fight the changes that were inevitably happening.
To understand why this is not such a great work, you should simply remember how big Latin America and Africa are in terms of Christianity, of blind belief and compare it to the atheist and small Europe. I am shocked it took them so long to take this step don’t you think? These are powerful groups that the church simply needs And think of their attitude toward other entities…
What about powerless minorities Now the modern society hasn’t just abandoned the old catholic beliefs like for example Muslims and Jews brought the plague in the medieval times or Protestants are heretics… They morphed their whole society, there were the emancipation of women, the gay pride, just to name a few. However, in an all-Male Vatican, the emancipation of women does seem absurd, of course don’t beat them but would they want to invert roles in society? Why do they refuse to bear children? Why do they demand to become part of the Ecclesiastic body? Why do they want to head the religious celebrations?
I am sadly speechless against these questions as they express the blindness and the stupidity of the people in charge, starting from the head of the church back then to the simple priests… They simply refuse to listen, ever since the election of John-Paul II and his work for the Catholic Church’s reform feminists tried and tried to reason with them, it just wasn’t heard, we just looked funny for him.
And allow me NOT to mention the homosexuality debate… The mere mention of such a subject is sufficient explanation in itself.
In fact the Church is still the dictator that it always was, it only started to realize who have become too powerful for her to oppress, those that are still not powerful enough are still oppressed
Condom anyone? Well it’s very very very very simple, what is the objection against safe sex? What is the objection against enjoying sex? What kind of modern church are we talking about? Why? Why? Why? Why?
My personal conclusion: It wasn’t that great and he wasn’t that much of a saint afterall
But wait! Don’t close the window just yet!
Well, I am not a big fan of John-Paul II but the last thing I wanted was the return of fundamental Catholicism. Yes I know many people cried out Nazi when Pope Benedictus was elected… and I know they were cruel, inaccurate and silly. But that doesn’t change the other aspects about this person. Benedictus is, just like John-Paul, the result of the changes that are storming in the Church and the world. And his ascendance to power was not the fruit of chance either. Three main points:
The absence of Greater enemies When John-Paul II was elected, the Church was threatened by new ideas such as communism, there were a sense of anti-religion, a sort of anti-religion imposed by politics, churches were being burnt Christianity was being attacked (along with other religions). At that time the Catholic church had to struggle against that current to preserve its political influence, after all communism and other ideologies failed to eradicate Christianity as a belief but did manage to eradicate the financial and political power of the Institution (the Church).
Nowadays, it’s different, attacking any entity is banned, there fore religions can’t be eradicated. However, a worse anti-religion has been established… the one that grows inside the individual, individuals are no longer against the church, they are indifferent to it! This is even more lethal than the political oppression.
Struggling against the Church is now being tougher, to distinguish itself from others, to affirm itself as THE right belief, sort of creating a new Identity for Catholics. It is no longer OK to agnostic/atheist/muslim/jew/Buddhist for as long as you are “tolerant” no you HAVE to be Catholic Christian to be GOOD.
Sadly this attitude is nothing but a regression to a time that we thought won’t come back.
The rise of extreme Islamism Fundamental Islamism has hasted many changes both in the Muslim Middle East, The Christian West and the Secular West. Though the Christian and the Secular West have evolved side by side and have become archenemies they do rely on the same population. The Secular West could be described as a dreamer for the past few centuries they have promulgated fundamentalism as THE problem, claiming that secularism and tolerance will solve all the problems and that others (Muslims for instance) will be friendly if we are friendly… Skipping many details we can say that this simplistic view of the Middle East failed to protect the Europe and the West against gruesome and unimaginable violence.
Up until recently, secularism was THE rule, among the Western population. The rise of Islamism and the apparent absurdity of this philosophy/ideology makes the Western population more inclined to the Fundamental Ideologies (throw the Muslims back to where they belong kind of ideas). One of the fundamental Ideologies is expressed by the rise of Christian Fundamentalism, remember when Benedictus claimed that Europe is unfaithful to its Christian roots and ungrateful to its Christian History. Unfortunately, people are now going to be more and more attracted to fundamental speech, and to be honest I am no longer sure if secularism/tolerance is the solution anyway, but I am certain that Fundamentalism is NOT.
As a final result, the Church tightens its grip and it launches outrageously intolerant remarks hiding behind the excuse of caring for linguistic precision! Just check this article:
Ok let’s consider that this source is not that objective or whatever! I am honestly tired of this! This is STUPID… there shouldn’t be any comments that could be interpreted in a negative way by unsubjective sources.
I have no idea why I have spent around 5 hours writing this!
I’m a bad bad blogger I know, but in the last couple of weeks I actually had a social life… do you people believe that?! I, Pazuzu, have a social life. I know you people are probably pissed off with my long absence but let me give you a quick view of the last few weeks and how I spent them. I am not sure if that will amuse you or make you hate me even more.
So on the 4th of July I had my biotechnology exam, the last of my exams and I did reasonably well. The same day I went out with some friends to Macdonald’s (yeah a bunch of adults enjoying our Macflurry) we stayed there from 7 till 10 or something.
The next day a friend of mine (A) invited me to go out with him and his boyfriend (C), being euphoric and super duper happy about my results I accepted and went out with them, it was very sweet and I had great fun, we had dinner at roadster and then ice cream and a couple of beers in a gay-friendly place. That was a Thursday, right?
Friday, I was supposed to go out with some friends but it didn’t work out, again (A) invited me to go out with him and his boyfriend, being thrilled about going out with this couple I accepted, but later on I was informed by (A) himself that he intended to break-up with (C)… All of a sudden I was no longer thrilled about it :-/… I really loved that couple they’re both awesome! Why did they have to break up, so I stayed at home that night (did I mention that I had left for my uncles’ place on Friday.
Saturday, I went out for a pseudo-pyjama night (we didn’t sleep there but we stayed up late and some of us slept there) with some girlfriends’. Again I had great fun.
Sunday, went out with (C) and (M) (she had organized the Saturday night out) and some other friends. We had lunch and laughed very hard.
Monday, I was too busy preparing for the defense of my thesis. I was scared and stressed and scared and worried and stressed and freaking out, but it went on great and I even scored 85/100! Do you believe that?! I, Pazuzu the #1 college failure, I scored 85 on my memoire! I was impressed! The highest grade I believe is 90, in the case of a memoire of course!
On the same day I met Jos at 2:30 am and we kept talking for 2 or 3 hours, then I left home, at 7 am (A) calls me inviting me to watch a movie and grab something to eat from crepaway in Ashrafieh (yes the very same place where an explosion took place a while back killing an elderly woman). I accepted and again it was very very nice, we watched shrek the third, it was very very funny. That night I slept in Beirut to avoid coming home at 12:30 am.
Wednesday, I came home, arrived home just in time to take G from his gym class and then I took him to macdonald’s for lunch, then when I came home I was TIIIIIIIRED. I’ve been suffering a headache and feeling so sleepy…. I wonder why?
So it has been more than a week since my last update, I think it’s because of the exams, studying didn’t exactly take all that much of my time, but the stress was lethal, I think I have been able to really study for the first time! Like REALLY study. Well at least for the physiology exam I had on the 27th, and to make a long story short there were a few points that really made the difference:
I was convinced of my ability to do well on this exam, confident with my knowledge in this field
I was aware and convinced that I needed to study for this in order to show the best out of my knowledge, because knowing a whole process and forgetting the names of the different components is useless
The Teacher is by all means: excellent!. With her you feel that you understand and you feel motivated to show how much you know, because you know that extra effort is noticed and rewarded, she knows most of us by name (at least she knows my name). I felt that I wanted to do well to impress her… Hope I did!
I had no real distractions, I was no longer trying to seek his attention, my brother’s school ended early and without exams so I had all the time to prepare for my exams, the internet addiction was surprisingly as bad as I had thought, I mean I always knew that my addictive personality was the real problem not the internet itself, but I had never assumed that – given the right circumstances and motives – I would prefer studying on chatting/blogging/reading
I was selfish, I thought selfishly, I acted selfishly, at least toward my extended circle of friends, during the last 3 to 4 weeks I have called none of my friends and didn’t even justify that absence to them when they called. Not that I am punishing them, it wasn’t even intentional! But you see, a few weeks ago I came to the conclusion that I am still not satisfied with my circle of close friends (except for very few who have proven to be great friends that I am proud of). I don’t feel that the attention I give to my friends is reciprocated, I do feel loved, but not really appreciated, I know it sounds silly or like something a teenager would say but think of it this way: I called them, they rarely called back, if they do they call to say “hey I have no units in my cell phone can you please call me”; I took the extra effort to detect every sign showing a bad mood, when they didn’t seem fine I’d try to talk to them about it and stuff, it’s not always that simple because if I am mistaking and they are feeling fine I’d risk looking ridiculous, but then again when someone needs your help you should provide it. However that effort was never done with me, most of my friends would just tell me I am being silly if I ever confide to them with my problems… SO why should I keep on making that extra effort? Some of them are now blaming me for changing!
So as a conclusion I ended up doing well on my exams, I am optimistic. Then two days later we had another exam and I had to work on my memoire none went that well… but I don’t feel like talking about those and finally I have my final exam on Wednesday, then the defense on my memoire on the 10th, after that I celebrate the end of the academic year with my old friends on the 12th (that’s the date of their defense) … And then I study for the exams I had failed (5 in total) then when I do finish all that…euh… nothing, that’s as far as my actual plans go, after that I have a myriad of plans that none seems achievable unfortunately. Let’s just focus on today, can we?
We’ve heard it all too many times, under all too many angles and from all too many perspectives. And since I am just an average main-stream, biased, westernized, uncivilized Middle-Eastern I must add my contribution.
The occident has often adopted one out of two attitudes toward the Middle East:
The colonial attitude: Easy to spot, circle and define. It consists on dominating and despising the Middle East, yes those adopt this attitude do admit the existence of intellectual and civilized Middle Eastern people, but they regard them as an exception, they often advise them to leave. This attitude results from a sense of western superiority over the Middle East. The USA is the most flagrant example of this attitude, but not all Americans adopt this attitude and not all non-American are exempt from it.
The Maternal attitude: Now this attitude is far more complex it’s usually a long term result of the first, once the occupation is removed the people of both the occupant and the occupied country tend to establish bonds, due to the cultural improvements/mutilations done to the original country of the occupied country. For example, in Lebanon, many regard France as the “mother” of many orphaned Lebanese. It was first the Maronite Christians who adopted such an attitude due to the hostility of their Muslim environment and the absence of any natural ally. In general, Europeans tend to have this attitude toward the Middle East, they regard Arabs and Middle Eastern nations as retarded nations that require support not military intervention.
However, people in the Middle East don’t see it that way. In order for our culture to resist globalization and Westernization, they adopt defensive mechanisms, usually they hold on to the old “they have everything but we have morals” attitude, yes we usually regard you Western people as immoral, stupid and going to hell. Many Middle Eastern people see the Middle East as roughly equal to the West but with some social and financial difficulties.
Now all my life I was raised under these influences, being born in this Middle East I was taught to take pride in our “morals”, something that the west lacks. As a Lebanese I was taught at the same time to be very attached to our unique position, to our unique role as pioneers in the Middle East. As a Christian Lebanese I was taught to be very fund of our connection to the West, for many Maronites we are not even Arabs. So you could say I stand with neither sides. But what has always amazed me about this Orient/Occident is the distinction but not the difference. Ok I am not sure how clear what I have just said may sound so let me explain.
Take the notorious Abou Ghreib scandal. When this scandal first broke out many Americans felt outraged, insulted infuriated! The press hammered President Bush for this scandal, they attacked him ferociously. It was unacceptable.
ON the other hand, many Arabs also felt outraged, insulted infuriated! The press hammered President Bush for this scandal, they attacked him ferociously. It was unacceptable.
But the two camps didn’t do so for the same purpose, the Americans did so as an act of moral protestation, an act of responsibility (the political forces and balances are certainly not to be neglected). The Arabs’ motive was to attack the Americans, sort of a defensive act to avenge the Arab impotence facing the American occupation of Arab lands.
In my own environment, it was neither reactions, when average Lebanese heard this news s/he was amused by the vulnerability of both the Arabs and the Americans demonstrated by the film. Americans were hit where it hurt most: Their idealization of their mission in Iraq, not only things didn’t go according to their own plan but their own units were sodomizing the Iraqis they were here to salvage. We were amused most of all by what seemed like the shallowness of both the Americans and the Arabs… What were they expecting? It’s war! Lebanon went through a very difficult civil war that had left us very accommodated to such atrocities. We actually laughed at Americans for being so surprised, like DUHHH! Everyone knows that these things happen during “interrogations”.
T he ex-general, who retired in January, spoke of other, undisclosed material on the Abu Ghraib abuse, including descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. He also told the magazine he saw "a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomising a female detainee," adding the video was never made public or mentioned in any court or in public. Maj Gen Taguba says all high-level officials had avoided scrutiny while the jail keepers at Abu Ghraib were tried in courts-martial. "From what I knew, troops just don't take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups," Maj Gen Taguba told the New Yorker, adding his orders were to investigate the military police only and not their superiors. "These (military police) troops were not that creative," he said. "Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority.”
And I find myself asking: Does it even need to be mentioned? Of course they knew! But then again, what does this attitude indicate? If not the fact that Americans just want what’s better than this. We as Arabs know what’s going on, we know that this is what is going to happen for as long as their will be power in the hands of some and a need to oppress the others there’s going to be torture and humiliation. Or is it just that we have given up on ourselves and, unlike Occidentals, we don’t work to improve our environment, we are too busy destroying each other…
Ok call me a geek if you like (actually I take pride in being called a geek anyway!). But I want to share these two articles with you:
Some Blood Diseases May Stem from Cells' Environment
By Nikhil Swaminathan
As part of my mémoire this year I had to study a little about leukemia (since it’s one of the diseases associated with Trisomy 21 (or Down’s Syndrome). Now by definition, Leukemia is the “a cancer of the blood in which new and functionless cells form and replicate at an uncontrollable rate; leukemia originates in the bone marrow and quickly spreads elsewhere” [1] or “A slowly progressing cancer that starts in blood-forming cells of the bone marrow. Leukemias are the result of an abnormal development of leukocytes (white blood cells) and their precursors. Leukemia cells look different than normal cells and do not function properly.” [2]
Now if you read a little about leukaemia you are most likely to stumble upon a statement like “The four types of leukemia each begin in a cell in the bone marrow. The cell undergoes a leukemic change and it multiplies into many cells. The leukemia cells grow and survive better than normal cells and, over time, they crowd out normal cells.”[3]. Now of course this is not the only site to make such statements, it’s a generally admitted fact that the problem with leukaemia is the cell itself. It’s probably the most logical thing to believe after all. That’s why many studies focus of finding genetic mutations of the lymphatic cells; this is also why we cure Leukaemia by killing these defective cells.
But a recent study, reported in this article in the Scientific American’s website suggests that maybe just MAYBE we’re looking at the wrong direction. MAYBE the problem is not in the lymphocyte itself but in it’s environment. Maybe the problem is in the set of substances surrounding the Lymphocyte. Now the study points the finger at a large spectrum of diseases grouped under the title of myeloproliferative syndrome: Any of a group of conditions resulting from a disorder in the rate of formation of cells of the bone marrow and including chronic granulocytic leukemia, erythremia, myelofibrosis, panmyelosis, and erythroleukemia.[4]
The Magic Touch: When vision lets you down
by Martina Mustroph
Now this is even more interesting, but this one is actually so well described I won’t say much and let you enjoy a few excerpts of what Ms. Martina actually wrote herself:
When you're typing, your senses of touch, hearing, and sight align. You feel, see, and hear your fingers touch the keyboard. Now imagine that you are outdoors and you feel a drop of water hit your hand. If you are like me, then it probably immediately occurs to you that it was a raindrop, so you stretch out your hand to see if more will come, and you look up at the sky for menacing clouds. Let's say the sky is blue and clear as far as you can see. Now your senses of touch and sight are at odds: your sense of touch just told you it was raining, but your sense of sight said it was not. In this case, you don't go running for cover; you choose to go with the information you get from your sense of vision and not the information you got from your sense of touch, probably because you only felt that one drop. But what if you don't get much more information from one sense than from the other? A team led by Jean-Pierre Bresciani showed people flashes on a screen. At the same time, a device tapped these people's right hand a certain number of times. The screen was set up so that it obscured people's right hand from their field of vision, and the flashes occurred where the right hand would be. People could only feel--but not see--their hand being touched. People were instructed to either count the number of flashes they saw on the screen or the number of taps they felt on their hand, but they were never told to pay attention to both simultaneously. The number of taps given differed from the number of flashes by plus or minus one.
They were never told to pay attention to both flashes and taps, yet apparently, people do automatically pay attention to both. How do we know this? Even though they were told to focus just on the taps or just on the flashes, their accuracy of counting changed whenever the second number of events differed from the one they were focusing on (in other words, the added taps or added flashes messed them up). Take a look at this graph of the results:
Did their counting variability also change? Yes!
One final thing: At the start of the experiment, Bresciani and his team found that when people are only shown flashes or only given taps, their counting is very reliable. When people are shown both flashes and given taps at the same time, there is another interesting thing that happens. Even though you're paying attention to flashes, feeling a tap messes you up. It only sort of works the other way. The effect of touch on vision is more pronounced than the effect of vision on touch. When you're paying attention to taps, vision only rarely messes you up. Seems strange, right? Actually, that's explained by touch being the more reliable sense. We appear to give more weight to the more reliable sense. The fact that vision, the less reliable sense, still affects people's counting of touch, the more reliable sense, means that we automatically process both, but then treat each sense with a weight corresponding to its relative reliability. If we just blocked out the information we get from one sense, then when counting taps, people should not be less accurate when flashes are added, but their count is affected by them, meaning that they do process the flashes.
Ok I don’t know, you’re probably snoring by now but this is, for me, fucking amazing! Do you know what this lady is telling us? Our Brain relies more on tactile stimulation than it does on visual one!
Massive Animal Herds Flourishing Despite Sudan War, Survey Reveals
And Finally let’s not forget to highlight the marvelous dissociation of scientific romance and real life shit, let’s highlight, yet again, the painful choice any self respecting ecophilic dreamer has to make: Environmental preservation or human preservation?
But again, there is no choice to make here. People are not being killed for the sake of saving the antelopes! No, actually the truth is much darker than this, people are being killed, as if they were animals, for no reason what so ever. Somehow animals are having a prosperous life, and somehow that pleased the scientists working on that study. Well I guess it’s good to know that Sudanese wildlife is receiving the luxury many Sudanese human beings are deprived of: LIFE!
Ok let’s be silly:
Compare my last entry to this one… Well what do you notice?
I discovered how to format my text to: “justify” I found the grail!
It’s actually very simple, the tag is < h1 align=justify> without the “space” after the “<”.
Ok ok! Ecologists have spent decades trying to make raise awareness and revive the naturalistic nature of Man, unfortunately, they miserably failed, they warned us about global warming, the yelled Apocalypse!... Nothing worked.
But I believe I have found the ultimate way to address the public is a Humanly comprehensible manor:
You see the principle is very simple, the body usually accommodates to heat stress by (among other methods of course) increasing transpiration (sweat). But there are certainly limits to how much a body can adapt (in this case sweat), so the body's water cannot drop for more than 0,5% maximum. Now, always keep in mind, sweat is an immediate reaction, a short term adaptation. Our bodies rely most of all on long term adaptation, so what happens is that our body needs to increase the amount of water it can dissipate by transpiration, the 0,5% being constant, the body will proceed by increasing its stock of water in the body hence increasing body weight.
Tell people that they will go fat if the climate continues to warm up and you'll see them doing everything to reduce the temperature. Now this approach is totally falsified and the increase of weight is insignificant but we don't need to tell them that much details, after all President Bush took the USA to war saying there are arms of mass destruction...
The main point is that people are hypocrites, there were a documentary a while back about medical tests for a disease very wide spread in Africa (wish I could remember which illness) but the project couldn't provide sufficient financial support to produce the substance as the disease is most spread in Africa and there fore the patients won't be able to pay money (it will be mostly donations and stuff) so there were not enough profit. The project was stopped. Then a few years later, this same substance was discovered to have beneficial effects on the skin, so it was incorporated into a cosmetic product... The project became profitable for pharmaceutical companies, so now the drug is being produced in parallel and dependently of the production of that cosmetic substance. Apparently, the beauty of rich women's skin is far more important than the lives of poor people. I wish I could scream against imperialism and the globalisation, but I can't because it isn't modernism that created this injustice, modernism just revealed it, and also revealed our impotence against it.
I was trying real hard to figure out what I can say about myself that none of my blog followers know, since I have such a big diversity of people that follow my blog, each group being in contact with a certain aspect of my life. Anyway I’ll try:
5 negative things about me
Since the middle of autumn or something like that I have been struggling with an agonizing state of depression, though I do have ups and downs but I can’t look positively to my life anymore, I can’t imagine what might make me happy in the future, as a result my concentration ability is even more reduced and I can’t get myself to do anything. I have been trying to get myself above this and to hold myself together but I feel like I’m sinking and I’m tired of struggling against the current… And though so many people are around me and would help me anyway possible, none of them can do anything for me.
I’m scared to lose my dad, not that he has any particular health problem but he’s sort of melting down, or maybe “losing his essence” the thought of my baby brother not growing up and experiencing my dad as an adult is almost intolerable
I was born in a poor family, all of my family is poor, from both my mom and my dad’s side. They were all born in poverty and will probably die in poverty too, in spite of all the effort my dad has put to provide a decent life we still live in poverty, and I fear I would be doomed to end up in poverty for all my life too
In my dark days I used to mash paper, I don’t know why but it made me calm down. I guess it was the physical effort that distracted me and appeased my agony
Over time I have often been called beautiful and smart but also ugly… But never was I called stupid. However I still feel stupid no matter what. My failures affect me far more than my successes, that’s why I am doomed to constant low self-esteem, I can never enjoy a compliment as I perceive it as biased or aiming to make me feel better. But insults, I take them very seriously, I consider them to be very honest and true, even if I know that the one saying them is just trying to hurt me for some reason.
5 neutral things about me
As a child I used to suck my lower lip, then they told me to stop, so I did. Instead I started biting my nails and fingers. When my teeth started to hurt I stopped biting my fingers and nails and now I bite my lips. The bad thing about it is that I can’t stand strong flavors, sour is no problem since I already hate it, but eating spicy food is kind of annoying especially that I love it so much. The positive thing about it is that no one tells me to stop since few people notice it and I like the taste of blood in my mouth when I get stressed (since I bite my lips more when I am under stress)
I have this obsession with making sense out of senselessness. I have a favorite fork, and a fork for each type of food, one type for mashing bananas and potatoes, another for eating fried potatoes, another for mesmerizing the food that I am ingesting (I like to call the my “favorite” fork ever). I have a favorite mug for milk, another for coffee, another for tea and yet another for eating cheese pita with tea. I have different panties for different clothing… etc etc etc… All this classifying comes from strict standards and I feel weird breaking these rules when I have to. No one really knows about these classifications but I am very fund of them. If I would put all this “matching effort” into choosing the cloth I wear I would have looked very very stylish! But sometimes matching cloth seems stupid while matching other stuff seems crucial
The only song that I have considered to be my favorite is: Fear of the Dark – Cradle of Filth.
I don’t like to tell anyone about my love for this song because I don’t feel anyone would understand it. So far very few people tolerated that music. In fact the only one who liked it was the person who introduced me to it: my brother. Though I don’t listen to it 24/7 I have kept this song in my “favorite songs” since the day I heard it for the first time. If I tell people about it, they think I’m wither trying to sound cool, or that I have a terrible taste in music!
I keep around me very weird old stuff, small empty pens, small scraps of paper. I am a collectionist by nature. Useless collections make me feel safe
My big toe is TOOOOOO big for the other. As a child my cousin and I used to laugh about it so hard. I miss that cousin, we don’t get to hang out together as much as we used to when we were children.
5 positive things about me
I am a devoted friend. In spite of all my insecurity I do know this for a fact. And this is why I refuse to be “socially smart” because then I would stop trusting my friends and to expect them to treat me well before treating them well. While I just give everything to my friends when I like them. And it’s not because of my own effort that I am this devoted, it’s because I was raised with very devoted parents… We never understood how could people be NOT devoted.
I am tolerant. Though that doesn’t help me blend into any society, I don’t like classifying people and hating them. That means that I don’t belong anywhere, as each group must be built on the hatred of another group
Both my parents had a very difficult past, with life threatening situations. But they survived and I am proud of them for being so perfect in a way. I have my problems with my parents, but for as long as they are ok I don’t think anything in the world can ever break me
My philosophy teacher in high school, when she read a literary small article I had written in a newspaper (it was the only time I do so), she told me I have grains of genius… she made my day! No actually she made my year!!!! In college, all the professors that knew me well say that I am a wasted talent, one teacher even said that he has “never encountered a better student” than me in terms of researching and compiling information… The fact that I am a wasted talent is so good to me because I feel like I’m a talent that was lost… at least I am talent!
My secret dream is to become a scientific journalist! But shhh… don’t tell anyone!
and since everyone else is tagged (and I am not sure if those who aren't tagged are still following my blog) I tag Jos :D Yalla you have to do this!
Stratten was laying face down on the end of Snider's waterbed, the side of her face and one of her fingers blown off by a 12 gauge shotgun blast. Nearby was Snider, lying on top of the Mossberg shotgun he had used to kill Stratten before turning it on himself; his face between his eyes was gone and his left eyeball was dangling out of its socket. Both of them were nude and covered in ants; Stratten's body was determined to have been moved post-mortem, and further examination of the body turned up several bloody fingerprints, determined to be Snider's. On her posterior were two perfectly formed bloody handprints, also determined to be Snider's. Next to Stratten's corpse was a home-made sex apparatus that Snider had designed to support a woman in a frog-like position for the purpose of anal sex. Police determined that after Snider killed Stratten, he fastened her corpse to the apparatus with medical tape and sodomized her for the next half-hour before un-strapping her and then killing himself.
Not that I would defend this guy or giving him any excuses, there’s no excuse to return Dorothy to life or change what has been done.
But in the end I have read a lot about the traumatism and the great agony that rape victims suffer from, how they never really heal, how some would start sleeping with their shoes on, in case their rapist come back (in that case they’d be ready to run away), how they sleep with the lights on, how they never trust men ever again…
And how many times have we heard about guys raping women then killing them, imagine the horrible death! Nothing’s more precious to a woman than her intimacy and rape is not the most pleasant memory to leave this world with.
This guy raped her after her death, she felt none of it. She just died and everything ended there, she never knew what happened to her body after it, so maybe death is a bliss after all. And maybe that guy did something right in the end.
And think of what he did to himself, I wonder what he felt. He must’ve felt so terrible didn’t he?
