I think that the culmination of all our greatest victories can be summed up in one or two songs. Name them.

Haunted

There's something haunting about a face found completely at random. I had searched "stars" for a background, looking for - and expecting - an astrological chart or two, and some beautiful pictures of the night sky. Incidentally, I stumbled upon Snehprabha Pradhan.

I'd just like to point out that the two most prominent women in Christianity are a virgin and a whore.

Is it meant to encompass all that lies in between? All women are welcome? Encouraged to join? Is it a religion for everyone?

Is it wrong that the messiah could have loved the whore and the virgin both?

I feel like I could have more to say, but right now my mind's drawing a blank. Maybe soon to come?

The inner workings of a thingy on a stick.

There's this book called The Tipping Point that is entirely dedicated to the study of fads. If people knew what made things so popular and what could suddenly trigger an entire city to generally get along nicer, no one can really tell.

Did you know that, statistically, New York is one of the safest cities in the US?

The book goes on to say that, in each of us, are millions upon millions of tipping points, little hairtriggers that will bring about the most drastic changes. Sometimes it's a car accident. Sometimes it's someone we don't know stopping to say hello. Sometimes it's falling in love. Whatever it may be, we are all subject to these triggers in different ways, and as soon as these hotspots are just brushed by the slightest presence, our world changes inside out and upside down.

So when you do reach that tipping point, when, for whatever reason, something happens and you find yourself changing, you can almost hear your mind rearranging itself, and you go through the course of a day feeling distinctly awkward and unsure just to wake up the next morning and find that you'll have togrow new skin all over again, when you find yourself at the brink of a tipping point so drastic, so dramatic, so fantastically new, take the plunge.

Then take the time to reflect on this one question: are you ever going to be happier?

I have three cousins living at the Rotana Hotel on Sheikh Zayed Road. I have three Lebanese cousins, aged eighteen, twenty-four and twenty-eight, living a million miles away from everything they've ever known and loved. I have three cousins living in a hotel because their house, the house they were born in, is now a pile of stones. As indeterminable as the pebbles on the beach.

I have three cousins, two of which attended the same university, two of which were playing basketball on the university courts less than twenty-four hours before it was reduced to blood and wreckage, I have three cousins living in a hotel for almost a month now. In the wreckage, a piece of the bombshell says it was manufactured in the United States of America.

I have three cousins who call their parents everyday and hold their breaths because there's a part of them that doesn't think they'll be there to answer the phone. I have three cousins, eyes dark and cheeks hallowed, who tell me that the house their parents have been hiding out in, the windows have shattered and the door blew in. I have three cousins who think their parents are going to die, and they don't know why.

This war is not waged against faceless strangers. This war is not taking place in a barren battlefield. This is my family. These are real people.

I just want it to stop.

Toilet paper. No really.
I think the lifespan of a sheet of toilet paper has got to be one of the most wretched existences in the world; worse than a dartboard. Here's a manufactured product whose sole purpose in its meandering existence is to wipe your ass. This is something that sits packed tightly like a cow on the way to the slaughter with its fellow doomed. It patiently waits for months at a time, only to be ripped from its cellmates and used as a scraping surface for your gentleman's ass. It is then discarded without a second thought, leaving it used, abused and no longer wanted. The sadness is overwhelming.

And those are the lucky ones, those are the sheets that get to fulfill their life's purpose. Think of all the toilet papers that will never fulfill their purpose of wiping your ass. Instead, you blow your nose on them, use them to clean up spills or, worst of all, wipe the toilet seat clean before you use it.

Please, my friends. Think of the toilet paper.

I'm rooted like a tree.

I associate parts of my person with the beads on my wrists and the links around my neck.

I associate parts of my person with strictly pointless aspects of my curls: soft, dull, eccentric, romantic.

I associate parts of my future with the troublesome affairs of the past and the wonderfully languid affairs of my present.

I associate myself with you.

The triadic state of undress is only of secondary importance. My primary concern is skin.

My own personal convictions aside, how accurate are the stereotypes about sex, sexuality and gender? How often do you see intelligent, educated women in power loafers stop and swoon over diamonds and other sparklies? When was the last time you saw a guy turn around because he heard the rev of an approaching Mustang?

And then, help me out here, I have an informative speech to present on Monday about the correlation between shock value and ethics. So let me ask you. How ethical do you think it is for a university student at AUD to walk into a classroom and pretend he's going to set off explosives within the hour? How ethical is it if it's a part of a shock-value advertising course? How ethical is it that he's been expelled for it?

Just general questions.

There. I have woohued.

So the chicken turns around and says...
I have way too much to say on gender roles in sexuality in past and present. I have even more to say on who is saying what.

Read more..

We're chained.

If I had to stop counting, I'm certain it would mean forgetting how to
speak, because the two are very closely related, you know. Quite an
intricate duo. Language and mathematics, and then again, quite like
any other duo. Batman and Robin. Dumb and dumber. Mozart and Salieri.
Exactly the same.

The trick with numbers is that there's something else to go on,
something consistent and almost always certain. Like how it's almost
always certain that six comes after five, almost always, almost every
time. It may involve skipping a few steps, but usually, almost always,
almost every time, it works out that six comes after five, if you look
at it right way up instead of wrong way down. You seem to have a habit
of doing that, you know, looking at things the wrong way down. You
should count more often, it helps to remember the way things go.
You should speak more often, too. So meek and timid. You're like the
little blind mouse that got crushed into an unrecognizable carcas by
the farmer's wife just because he wanted to run up the clock. What's
the matter with you anyway? You see evil, you hear evil, you may as
well speak it because it irks the most rancidly normal of the lots, it
irks the most boringly average among the crowds. And I am anything
but. So it makes me quench the common courtesy for a fellow being and
rip your throat out with my teeth.

You know, you must keep counting or your heart will stop beating. We
all need something to go on, to keep our pulses going, to remind us to
breathe when we wake up and realize that, crap, this is the real
world. Well. I suppose we do. It's not entirely certain, see, not the
way numbers are. We're not always sure that after we dream we'll wake
up, or that after we wake up we will dream again. It's not even
certain some times which is which, which is better, which is worse,
which we'd rather last in or which we'd rather burn in.

A whole new world of self injury. Fire leaves a scar behind that
doesn't go red with blood, that doesn't sting with a sharp edge of a
blade. Fire is slow, sure, and in every possible way more
geometrically beautiful. Fire defies the algebra of skin, cuts through
the intricate matrices of one two three layers, four five six issues,
seven eight nine beautiful beautiful surfaces. Such a beautiful dance,
in a fire going through ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen
layers of skin.

And then muscle.

And then bone.

And then, just a tiny taste of Hell.

To remind us to be good. To remind us to be faithful and pray. Be nice
to our neighbours and not have premarital sex. Worship is an essential
part of the cosmic countdown. We think we hurt, we think we know, we
think we're evil and then, nothing but Hell and it all kind of goes
out the window, kind of like the whole time we thought we'd been
counting, we'd been looking at numbers the wrong way down.

Well, at least we'll always have the freedom to speak.

This past weekend.

Tuesday was the opening for the matinee I've been rehearsing for since last semester, and all in all, I was pleased. The first show had some blunders in it from both my costar and I while the second show went very smoothly. Except at the end, when he started to cry, I mean actually real-life cry, and I nearly panicked. Nearly.

One of the judges (since this is part of the Troupe Fortnight Competition) came to both shows, and then told my director to send me to his office immediately after the show. He then spent half an hour persuading me to join his cast for a "highly professional rendition of 'Blood Wedding'." I had to decline. I'm busy enough with classes and I'm directing a full-length production. I really must say no.

He also told me, however, that I was nominated for "best actress". So yay.

Thursday morning, I was at the University of Wollongong at 9am to start the Wollongong Cup Public Speaking Competition 2006, an inter-college competition. I participated in the impromptu category, just to give myself another chance since I'm still somewhat sore about getting third in forensics last year (damn! was it really last year?). So I did. And I was the only AUD representitive that made it to finals.

We were all at the awards ceremony, with no idea about who had won what, and cheered insanely for three people that had come in second in oratory and story-telling and one that had come in third in radio, my former-director no less. When impromptu came up, I waited for them to call out third: Wollongong.

Second place. I was, at this point, nervous for the first time all day. What if I didn't even qualify in the top three? Second place, the American University-

My team went nuts, cheering and clapping!

The American University in Sharjah.

Oh.

Now I was really depressed. And then...

*stretch and breathe*

Due to increasingly frustrating technical difficulties dealing with Woohu and the internet connection in the dorms, I am now unable to even view my own journal. The problem shall be rectified as soon as I have the time to march down to the supervisor and have a nice chat. In the meantime, I love you all. Thank you. *bows*