Christmas and the Pope Suck

Yesterday was Christmas and although it was not white, it was beautiful out because the temperature was not below livable conditions and the sun was shining brightly the whole day. We had dinner at Abena's and played Taboo. Fun times. However, I have decided that I officially hate Christmas. Not because of any religious reason. And not because it has lost its meaning either. But because it's a holiday. Why, oh why, do people like holidays so much? Everything closes for Christmas and the damn bus and train run on "Sunday schedule" so the few things that are open can't be reached. So if you don't really have anything to do, you must sit and watch one episode after another of Real Housewives to kill the time. So, overall, Christmas sucks. Kind of like New Years, Easter etc. but more so because more places are closed for Christmas than for any other holiday.

Also, this past week Benedict that senile idiot was allowed to talk again and once more he has been spewing rubbish in between his incoherent stutters. This time he's calling on humanity to protect against "destruction of himself", and describes the urgent need to save ourselves from homosexual acts likening the struggle to saving the environment and endangered species. This is of course based on the idea that a man and a woman procreate, but two men or two women don't. The idiot forgot to mention how he plans to save humanity from Catholic priests who not only REFUSE to procreate, but spend their sexually deprived lives touching little boys in their naughty areas. Why do people like this live so long?

My favorite article on the issue can be found here: http://www.dailysquib.co.uk/?c=117&a=1608

I'll also copy and paste it below. Some lols for the hols:

Pope 'Spreading Fear' of Catholic Priests
December 24th, 2008
by Alexander VI

ROME - Italy - The Pope has been condemned by his own clergy for arguing that mankind needed protection from homosexual paedophile Catholic priests much as the rainforest needed protecting from environmental damage.

They usually prey on unsuspecting choir boys in the vestry, they are well known for grooming young boys with sweets and promises of Jesus' penance.

Yes, the Catholic priests who have vowed celibacy are a threat to the worlds church congregations and must be stamped out.

"Buggery has been a tradition that the church has closely guarded for many centuries. It is strange that the Pope seems to be railing against this Catholic tradition. Catholic priests are some of the most perverse, debased individuals on this planet. I have seen some of the most degenerate deviants tremble in fear when in the presence of a Catholic priest, because they know that they are nothing compared to the priest in abhorrent deviancy," a Vatican source told the World Priests Federation Newspaper.

The Rev Felcher Arbuthnot, vicar of St Felchinton’s Church in Putney, southwest London, and founder of the pro-Catholic Priest Inclusive Church movement, said: “I am extremely disappointed. This is not much of a Christmas message. This will not change anyone’s mind. Homosexuality, paedophilia, buggery and debauchery are a church tradition which has lived on for thousands of years.”

The pope who was a member of the Hitler Jugend brigade when he was a child, is well known for conducting dark rituals within the catacombs deep under the Vatican.

"Obviously the Pope is trying to change the image of the Catholic church as a cesspit of base perverse behaviour to one of a more civilised image. I'm not sure whether this PR stunt will work. I mean look at his face. It's a picture of evil and satanic debauchery that brings fear into everything it gazes upon," Max Clitford told the Sun newspaper.

*********

GAY in NEPAL?!

Prolly not a good idea, right? But Nepal's Supreme Court says it's okay to be gay in Nepal. Really? Ya... really. And you can get gay-married in Nepal too...

It's okay to be gay in NEPAL

Hindus are better than Mormons

Mormons suck

Jesus hates Mormons

Catholic priests are going to Hell

Goodbye Schnookies

Yesterday at around 2:30pm CST, Schnookies entered kitty heaven. This entire ordeal has been playing out for over a year now... 13 months, to be exact. It began when Schnookies attacked Megan's roommate Kimberly quite savagely, and then turned on me when I stepped in to end the fight. By the time that hullabaloo was over, both Kimberly and I were bleeding and bruised. I have no idea what triggered the attack, because Schnookies has always been an extremely loving cat, and she was always so friendly to strangers. As a matter of fact, I was constantly worried that one day I may forget the door open for a little too long and she'd get kidnapped by someone who was drawn to her friendliness. So needless to say, this erratic behavior caught me way off guard. It turned out to be one of many such episodes. She was turning even on people she had known and loved, like Adam. When my roommate Ben moved in, I had to confine Schnookies to my bedroom for the two months he was here, and once in a while I tried to let her out, but she always went to attack him. She would scream and flail her long-clawed arms so hard that even I was afraid of her.

After Ben left I resolved not to get another roommate because I didn't want to have to confine Schnookies to my room. It made me sad to have her living in there, all day, by herself. So for about a year I was paying 450 dollars extra per month, just so Schnookies could be free. But soon enough this became a problem and I finally decided to get a new roomie and put Schnookies back into the room for the long term. I put up an ad in a craigslist forum asking for help from anyone who may be familiar with feline behavior, and I got some very good feedback. What Schnookies seemed to be suffering from is called Feline Redirected Aggression. This is a rare psychological illness that occurs when a cat becomes aware of another cat close by, say the neighbor's cat that Schnookies liked to look at from a chair by the back door, and is unable to defend her territory from this cat that she can see but can't interact with. So she redirects her aggression to humans.

I went ahead and booked a ticket to Hawaii a few months ago, knowing that Megan would be able to handle Schnookies just fine while I was gone. This would be my first vacation in about 15 months. Megan is the only person Schnookies doesn't seem to mind, maybe because she took care of her as a kitten for two weeks that I was gone. Anyway, when Jenny arrived, I decided after a couple weeks to let Schnookies out and see how she handled the new person. To my surprise, Schnookies was just fine with her. No problems at all. Perhaps she had gotten used to her smell and the sound of her around after two weeks of being here. So Jenny agreed to take care of her while I was gone. Problem solved, I thought. Fast forward to Wednesday when I got a call while working on my lab meeting presentation. Jenny is screaming outside the apartment, where she is standing bleeding with her friend Christina. Schnookies has gone crazy again. So, no more chance of Jenny taking care of her while I'm gone.

I figured euthanasia was unavoidable at this point. I could not bear to leave her alone in my room for 10 days, only broken by once-daily visits form Megan to change her litter and food. That would drive anyone insane, especially a cat that loves open spaces. Worse yet would be to put her in a shelter; she would never be adopted by anyone and would live the rest of her life in a cage. So I made the appointment for Saturday at 2.

I felt this overwhelming sense of guilt from Wednesday night straight through to now, as I type this the day after. The problem with having to do this was that Schnookies LOVED me, and she was very loyal to me. As a matter of fact, she was almost obsessed with me. She always had to have me within sight. If I showered, she wanted the door open. As I cooked, she would sit on the stairs or just outside the kitchen to watch. When I watched TV, she would be nearby, if not on my feet. Every evening when I came home, she would either be by the window waiting, or come rushing to the door as soon as I opened it. We peacefully coexisted in my room for all the time she had to spend in here. When I called her name, she would respond with a meow. And I had trained her not to use her claws when she played with me because they would scratch me. She knew very well how far she could go with her playing. With the exception of her rare outbursts, she never harmed me. And so my sense of having betrayed her has been great and at times overwhelming. But when all is said and done, it is something I had to do. I can support an entire family in Trinidad for $450 a month. To think I threw that away for so long just because my cat was acting crazy may seem equally crazy to the casual observer. In the end, I did what was best for Schnookies and for me. And unfortunately, I have to live with the consequences. Included in those consequences are these extremely guilty feelings that perhaps, on some level, I murdered a loving, loyal pet so that I could take a vacation. I know that this is not true and that eventually, this had to happen, but for now the idea still haunts me a bit. Perhaps it would be worse to not care at all; with that thought, I console myself.

My mind still hasn't gotten used to the idea that she is no longer with me. Every time I open a cupboard or closet, I close it thinking, "Schnookies will jump in here and ruin everything if I don't close this." Each time I enter my apartment, I look for her running to greet me. It makes me sad all over again when I realize that she's not here to do any of those things. Time will heal that wound, I hope.

The folks at the Humane Society of Missouri - where I took her for the procedure - were nothing short of AMAZING. When I walked in, they took my information and directed me to a room. Megan accompanied me as my driver and shoulder to lean on. We walked in and they asked if I'd like to deal with the payment before or after, and when I chose before, a gentleman came and took my credit card and then brought the bill for me to sign. All the while, they wore sombre, but compassionate, faces. He offered his sympathies for my situation.

Next, the vet and an assistant came in and told me what to expect. I signed the euthanasia consent form and they took Schnookies away. They explained they were going to administer a sedative, and then attach a catheter to her arm for the euthanasia drugs. They told me they would bring her back in about 15 minutes and then I could have "five minutes or five hours" with her if I wished. They said to take all the time I needed. I was, needless to say, crying throughout the whole ordeal. They gave me tissues and kind words.

When they returned with her, she was very sleepy and she was wrapped in a towel, with just her little head and front paws sticking out. They warned me ahead of time that upon death, some animals undergo a muscle movement that causes their legs to stretch out as if they are taking a last breath. They asked if I could handle that sight and I said yes. However, the towel was going to prevent most of that from being visible. She looked very peaceful and at ease. I scratched her head and she purred. The vet told me she gave just enough drugs to calm her, but she could still hear me and see me. So I told her that I loved her and then gave the okay to administer the drugs. Within 30 seconds, the vet checked her heart beat and said very peacefully, "she's gone." And with that, my Schnookies had breathed her last. As I cried, the vet asked if I would like a paw print of hers, and I said sure. She smiled and said she'd be sure to mail me one. Above the call of duty, I thought and turned around to get my coat. What I hadn't noticed when the vet brought Schnookies back in was that, as my back was turned and my mind focused elsewhere, the assistant had placed a small stuffed animal and a letter on the chair. So when I was ready to leave, I was greeted by this soft grey kitty with a pink nose, sitting on an envelope. I asked if it was for me and she smiled and said yes, and something along the lines of, "we know this is hard for you and wanted to do whatever it took to make it easier."

Beamer rescued Schnookies from a box of kittens out in someones yard way out in the county. He brought her to me and she enjoyed two full years of love and good company - more than what her siblings likely could ever dream of. So altogether I am grateful for the time I had with her and know that there was no other way around this end. She went peacefully, purring as I scratched her head and her little ears. If there is such a thing as pet forgiveness, I have absolutely no doubt that she will forgive me for what I had to do yesterday. I hope that I will never have to go through such an ordeal again.

Prop 8U

I would like to add a proposition to the California ballot, which I will name proposition 8U. It will be similar to proposition 8 "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" except it would say:

"Only marriage between a good-looking (wo)man and a good-looking (wo)man is recognized in THE WORLD."

This is because I do not believe ugly people should be allowed to get married. I personally hate ugly people, and the worst thing we can do for the world is allow two ugly people to get married and have fugly babies.

I realized this when I went to the facebook page of a "friend" of mine and saw that, because she is a devout, loving, Allah-fearing Catholic, she supports proposition 8. Unfortunately, it turns out that she is also ugly. I thought this was only an external thing but when I saw her stance on the proposition, I soon realized that she is ugly both on the outside and inside. Luckily, she is not yet married (nor do I imagine she ever will be, unless she meets a very kind, blind man some day) so we still have time to save marriage. This got me to thinking about all the things we actually agree on when it comes to marriage. We both agree that marriage is sacred and we both agree that we must protect marriage. How we will protect it, however, is where we differ. She wants to protect marriage from gay people. I want to protect marriage from ugly people. And on this difference, I have divine backing.

I know I have divine support because I know that Allah hates ugly people. How do I know that Allah hates ugly people? Because he made them ugly. If he loved ugly people, he would have made them gorgeous. But Allah evidently loves gay people. This is clear because he made them fabulous. How many straight people do you know that are fabulous? Right, I thought so. As you can see, this logic is irrefutable.

To this end I urge everyone to support me in the future when I create proposition 8U and ask you to stand with me to protect marriage and the human race from God-forsaken, ugly, fugly people. Thank you, and may Allah continue to bless us all. And if you're ugly, may Allah start to bless you in some other way, like with money or something.

I am worried about Barack

Yesterday I had the profound pleasure of listening to Barack Obama speak live here in St. Louis. This man is the closest thing my generation has had to MLK, JFK or even Ghandi. Yes, I said it. Barack Obama is my new hero. I didn't start out on the Obama wagon, but this man is amazing. Inspirational is the word that comes to mind. My favorite part of his speech, a part that really struck a chord with me, was when he said:

"Some of us had grandparents or parents who said maybe I can't go to college but my child can; maybe I can't have my own business but my child can. I may have to rent, but maybe my children will have a home they can call their own. I may not have a lot of money but maybe my child will run for Senate. I might live in a small village but maybe someday my son can be president of the United States of America."

In the simplest terms, this is what the American dream is. That here in America, everyone has the opportunity to work hard and better their circumstances for themselves and for their children. And no other politician has ever been able to talk the talk AND walk the walk in the way that Barack Obama has. I love this man. I really, really love him.

But I am worried. Something that really disturbed me yesterday was the complete lack of security. When Biden and Palin came to Wash U for the vice presidential debate, they shut down every street their motorcades passed on. They closed off the campus. They emptied adjacent parking lots and buildings. They set up roadblocks. They took every single security measure one can imagine. So, with this in mind, my friends and I were sure there would be lots of security. Lo and behold, when we finally got to the front of the line, we were greeted by a set of metal detectors that WERE NOT BEING USED. They just shuffled us through the metal detectors that had been TURNED OFF!

Now I have read about this before. In late February, the New York Times published an article "In Painful Past, Hushed Worry About Obama" where they discussed the problem of security for a presidential candidate whose race has ignited a firestorm of threats against him, for starters. With the militant right-wingers shouting "kill him" and "off with his head" at Palin Klan rallies, you'd think that walking into a large field a few hundred meters from this man would require some form of screening. But no. Nothing.

Michael Shaw, writing for the Huffington Post, is also a little concerned. He describes the same scenario we witnessed yesterday: lines stretching for city blocks are easily cleared when security is thrown out the window.

These are dangerous times. We have hope for the first time in 8 long, tumultuous years. We cannot afford to have that hope snatched from us because of sloppy security. I will wait for 10 hours in line if I have to, so to Barack's security people: please, do your job and stop this nonsense.

Time to Sleep

For those of you now joining, it has been over an hour that I have been here laboring in my attempt to undo the sins of neglecting my child, aka my Bloggie, for over three weeks. I think that this marathon posting session has gone quite well, and when I read the posts tomorrow, I will be as surprised as you about just how many random, distinct thoughts I was able to come up with during my mental diarrhea session. Please scroll down about four posts below this to begin reading what tonight has had to offer. I shall see you again soon. Allah bless.

I am Getting Tired... of Joe Lieberman

This marathon posting session is wearing me out. But this is the price I must pay for not posting a single thing in three weeks. So on Thursday evening Wash U hosted the Vice Presidential debate, and I was lucky enough to be able to find myself on campus to stalk Joey B and Sarah P. We actually lucked out and chose a street to stand at where their motorcades passed on their way to the debate hall. This was a lucky choice because they have several routes available and at the very last minute the route is revealed to the local police manning the intersections, so no one could provide any information on where we should stand in order to see them. The entire operation was quite amazing. Biden stayed downtown, and by most guesses so did Palin. So to shuttle them from downtown to the campus, they shut down every freakin street - including sections of highway - declared a no-fly zone in the near environs,(so I was told by another bystander) and had a helicopter follow each of them from above every length of the way. I didn't see either one as they whisked by us because I was stupid and was too busy trying to capture the brewhaha on my camera, which only picked up flashing lights. YouTube capture mode my ASS. Megan, however, who was standing right beside me, saw them both. Biden waved. Palin didn't. Maybe it was my 5ft x 2.5ft "SHOW ME CHANGE" sign that upset her. Oh well.

The highlight of my evening came about an hour before that motorcade-viewing event when Joe Lieberman, shamed Senate D-Lister (and D don't stand for Democrat here buddy) walked in through the D-list entrance that students who won the lottery to attend were using to gain access to the debate hall. I got my very own chance to heckle him and heckle I did. "Joe! Come back to us!" I shouted. He turned around to face the handful of people standing around the area and looked at me. "Come back from the dark side. We miss you. Obama misses you. He wants you back. Come back Joe, come back from the dark side!"

And you know what he did? He didn't ignore me; instead he laughed quite heartily and waved. It was definitely one of my prouder moments. I could have simply booed or jeered. But Joe Lieberman, being the Judas that he is, must be so used to jeers. It would be like throwing water balloons at the ocean and hoping you could get it wet. What he is probably not used to is a good, heartfelt heckling. And he acknowledged me, rather than ignoring me.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I am pleased that 25 years ago Muzza chose life, because today I can say that because of that choice, I was able to heckle Joe Lieberman in person.

But really, that sort of thing is protected speech in this country. No cop - and there were many around - moved an inch while I did my dirty little deed. God Bless America fo sho, yo.

Nothin But The Benjamin... and the Grants

For the first time in my life today I have held a US one hundred dollar bill. This was very exciting. I have bought several things in my life worth over a hundred dollars: my phone, my ipod, my camera, my computer, my freedom from the Williamstown Police Department etc. However, I have used a credit or debit card to pay for each of these things and on the rare occasion that I've paid cash for something around the 100 dollar mark, I've paid for it with a bunch of twenties. Having five twenties does not carry the same joy as having one Benjy. So how did I come by my Benjy?

Well, I finally have found me a roommate. Yes, someone will now pay half of my rent for me, allowing me to leave the poor house for the first time in about a year. The feeling of financial freedom has corrupted me so much already. Case in point: roomie arrived this evening around 5:30pm. By 10:30pm I had charged $30.00 to my credit card, with nothing to show. Food and drinks. And the sad thing is that I had dinner at home. Maybe someone is gonna come bail ME out if I could just find a way to spend around 700 billion more. Anyway, my point is that roomie paid me her share of the rent in cold hard cash. One Benjy and seven Grants. Who knew Grant was on the fifty? Who knew there was a fifty?! Not I.

Anyway, to celebrate my first real genuine Benjy, I have decided to document it by taking a picture of it and posting it here in my Bloggie. So I set it on my coffee table ontop of a magazine and snapped away. But upon reviewing my picture, I noticed something intruguing. Thanks to the remarkable and brilliant Williams College marketing team, I have Williams memorabilia everywhere. And so, as I snapped my Benjy sitting proudly on my coffee table, so too did I snap my Williams alumni magazine. And I got to thinking about what the real value of this picture was. It was my Benjy, which today is valued at 100 dollars, and by the way things are going will be worth two Canadian cents by next week, but also, my Williams connection. Somebody, somewhere, paid $160,000 so that I could be a Williams alum. So the true value of that picture is actually $160,100.00 which is pretty insane. Okay, I am a dork.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

A few weeks ago I was on the metrolink on my way to a destination I shall not here disclose when a woman entered the train at the Skinker station and took a seat in front of me. She seemed to have known the man who was sitting next to her because she immediately began speaking to him, and he to her, even though she was carrying a book, and even though every other time I've seen her on the train she has been intently focused on the book she was reading during that particular week. This woman is a serial reader. She reads a different book every week. Perhaps she may read a different book every day, but since I only take the train to this particular destination once per week, I only see the different book every week. There is no reason to believe she is not changing books every 15 minutes, even. But a weekly change is most realistic to someone like me, who took over a year to read Rushdie's Midnight's Children, which I then claimed as my favorite book, but this has nothing to do with my point.

The woman sat in front of me. She spoke to the man. They were engrossed in their conversation. But as I looked ahead, I noticed something strange on this woman's back. There was a little spider sitting quietly just around the area of her shoulder blades. Now I am terribly afraid of spiders, and I was wont to scream like a little bitch and run away crying, however I was in public, and if being a brown bearded man on a train dangerously close to the anniversary of September 11 wasn't a bad enough thing, I decided that perhaps I should not take the screaming route. So I looked at the spider and it had not budged. However, it had the potential of moving at a moment's notice, and if it decided to, it could go anywhere. Anyway, the spider was clearly a boy spider, so I am going to refer to "it" as "he/him" from now on and occasionally I will call him by his given name, Spidey. So Spidey was about one quarter of an inch from one end to the next, and he looked very gross.

As I sat there, with my eyes fixed on him, his eight eyes perhaps fixed on me and everyone else around him, I contemplated what I should do. Should I reach over and squish him? First of all, that would have been gross. He would squish all over my hands, and I would have spider guts all over me. Secondly, my squishing him would require me to make contact with a complete strange middle aged woman on a train. It could even be misinterpreted as a caress. She may be offended, but even worse... no, much worse, she might enjoy it and try to get some more. So then I wondered, maybe I should tap her on her shoulder, sufficiently far away from Spidey, and say, "excuse me ma'am, but you have a spider on your shoulder blade." This, however, I realized could then result in a panic on the part of the woman, who, in her panic, could end up throwing her dirty, creepy, crawly, eight eyed monster onto ME.

So after weighing my options, I decided that the spider was, in many ways, a reflection of myself. Here I was taking a trip on a piece of public transportation that I was not necessarily fond of due to the tendency for me to encounter unpleasant things during my journey. Likewise, Spidey was trying to get to his destination also, and to do so, he needed to make use of his own form of public transport: a middle aged woman, and would encounter anti-spider terrorism in the form of large human beings trying to squish him for simply choosing to live his life and not be ruled by fear (of being squished). This was still worth it to him because he has a wife and 10,000 children waiting for him on the other end of his journey. After thinking of it this way, I sat contentedly in my seat and said/did absolutely nothing.

And I felt good about myself.

OMA

Oh. My. Allah. I have not posted since September 12. This is completely unacceptable and I do apologize. However, at the moment I think I will make up for this lack of posting by unleashing a wave of verbal diarrhea (or as we spell it in the Queen's English diarrhoea) in successive posts until I get so tired, I pass out. So here goes.

I have not posted for nearly a month because Ramadhan has kept me busy. I was fasting all day, then going to the masjid on evenings for dinner and prayers, and then coming home and trying to drink as much water as I could before it was time to do it all over again. When you have to drink large amounts of water across small amounts of time during the night, all that really happens is that you drink, pee, drink and pee more. There's no time to blog. Alas, Ramadhan is over and now I am here again, reaching out to you, my sympathetic audience, for your love.

To be honest, I miss Ramadhan. I miss the routine, the masjid, the free dinner, the feeling closer to Allah. I even miss skipping breakfast in the morning. Today, I was in a hurry for work because I woke up around 10:00am, and I was on my way out when I realized, "damnit, I didn't have breakfast." I was so disappointed that I had not in fact eaten at 4:00am as I had become accustomed to, and was now forced to, by a matter of habit, to eat something before leaving the house. It is these little things that make me miss Ramadhan. That, and the fact that Allah is just a lot more benevolent during Ramadhan than say, during any other ordinary month like Shabaan. He said so Himself, no kidding.

Anyway, that's it for that. As promised, I must now write another post. Look up ^^^

Sad Picture

The image to the left is of a child laying in the streets of Warsaw sometime in the 1940s, dying. It is the picture I promised to show you last time. I have borrowed it from a fellow named Martin Frost who has it here. I highly doubt he has the sole rights to it and cannot bother to track the owner. I need to use it for this post. Anyway, I learned of Jewish ghettos, a good example of which is the Warsaw Ghetto apparently pictured here, in my Jewish Studies 101 class with Sarah Hammerschlag during my senior year at Williams. When I was writing a paper for the class, I went online to read a bit more about the conditions under which Jews lived in 1940s Europe. I came across this picture of this little girl laying on the streets dying. It is one of the saddest images I have ever seen. For one, I adore children. I think children are wonderful little creatures that deserve all the love and affection any society can lavish upon them. Nothing makes me happier than to see a happy child, and nothing enrages me more than to see a child being abused. Secondly, I have this weird thing about death. I think that people deserve some form of company in their final hours, and think it extremely sad for someone to die alone. So when I came across this picture of this tiny child curled up, dying, alone, you can imagine that it made me very sad.

I think the image represents a powerful lesson for what can happen when we as a society begin to dehumanize people. When I was young, one of my cousins decided she'd major in history in high school. I thought, what a strange choice. Why would anyone major in history? She tried to explain how important history is, and how mankind has always repeated history, over and over, and if we cannot learn from the past, the future would be a dark place. I didn't buy it at the time, but as I grew older, I began to understand what she was talking about.

When the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and others hold their conferences denying the Holocaust, they're in effect shooting themselves in the foot. More and more when I read the papers and listen to the news, I am realizing that there is a growing distrust of Muslims and Arabs here in the West. As a matter of fact, Obama's Muslim connection, albeit very weak (his father, who left the family early in his childhood was a Muslim before leaving the religion) has been used against him publicly. Of the dozens of times I've heard the topic addressed, only once did I hear anyone say, "so what if he's a Muslim?" It's becoming increasingly acceptable to publicly scorn anything Islamic in America. And if we as a society are not careful, maybe images like this one may not be a thing of the past, but, Allah forbid, a thing of the future.

Oh Ramadhan, How You Complete Me...

I received a letter from Islamic Relief USA a few days ago. The organization is part of a worldwide agency that seeks to alleviate poverty in various parts of the world. I usually send my zakaat (obligatory annual Islamic tax on savings which goes to needy causes) to them, so they have me on their mailing list. In it, Anwar Khan, the general manager, writes:

"I remember while on assignment in Mali, the children sat quietly in over 100 degree heat with no coverings over their heads. When they ate, they ate quietly, 10 children sharing one bowl of oatmeal and two pieces of meat. No child fought with another for food. Each child licked their fingers, making sure they ate every grain of oatmeal from that bowl. These children were lucky to get a meal that day. Thinking of how children here bicker over food while these poor children in Mali ate with grace and dignity had a profound effect on me."

I think that for about 335 days of the year, it is easy for me to take for granted the things I have. I tend to take basic things for granted like clean, fresh water, a comfortable place to sleep; breakfast, lunch and dinner and how many ever in-between snacks my heart desires. This may sound like a somewhat cheesy cliche, but for most of the year, I really don't think about these things. However, for 30 days each year, when bound by religious tradition, I cease to eat or drink (or, dreadfully, curse and gossip) from sunrise to sunset, I become a lot more aware of what it is like to go without these things. So when I do break my fast in the evening, it is with great humility and gratitude that I look at my plate of food and my glass of water and think, "wow, I am lucky." It has also helped me to become more sympathetic to the hungry person. I personally would never say no to a hungry person requesting food. I deny people money all the time; I don't think it's necessarily wise to give a street dweller cash because you never know what they're going to do with it. But I'm very likely to buy anyone who asks a sandwich, or a piece of fruit or something, because I know what it feels like to be truly hungry, or thirsty. I've put a link to the charity in my links section, so hopefully when this bloggie makes it big, people will go and see what it's about.

Now fasting isn't only about feeling hungry and sympathizing with those that are. The main idea of fasting is to develop self-restraint. I can easily fake a fast; no one would know if, when I come home during the day, I shovel down a meal and head back to work. Or if I woke up at 9 and had a huge breakfast. So the point of the process really becomes a personal one; between you and your maker. Or for atheists who find some good in fasting, between you and nothing. Either way, it fine tunes the self discipline and the self restraint. Yesterday I almost got into a huge shouting match with my coworker again, but I said, yo, I am fasting. I might as well go over to the break room and drink me a good big glass of water than yell obscenities at you. So in the end, we were able to discuss our issue in a civilized manner. Lucky for her, because the last time I just cussed and yelled a lot. So I'm learning to curb that kind of gangsterness and ignorance as well, which is good. And I feel much better resolving a problem than resorting to simply overpowering her with my loudness/lewdness.

So these are the gains I make from fasting in Ramadhan. As a matter of fact, I think they are so universally useful, that (Allah forbid) if I should ever cease to be a Muslim, I would probably still fast a bit now and again. It makes sense that Ramadhan happens every year though, because as with all good lessons, one tends to forget... a reminder every now and then works well.

Next time: a horrible image that has stuck with me forever and why I don't ever want to forget it.

Fasting is hard, yo

Ramadhan started September 1 for me this year, and I've been less inclined to write than ever. I say it started "for me" because, like everything else in the Muslim world, there is a great degree of difficulty in choosing one day and abiding by it. I chose Monday, but my mosque chose Tuesday. This is a very difficult thing to explain to a non-Muslim reader, but it has to do with tradition versus, well, reality. Tradition says to look for the new crescent moon on the 29th of Shabaan, the month that precedes Ramadhan. If you see the crescent, the next day is Ramadhan 1; this is how a lunar, rather than solar, calendar works. If you don't see the crescent, then the next day is Shabaan 30, and since Shabaan can only have a maximum of 30 days, that means the following day is Ramadhan 1. But reality says that in America, your Judeo-Christian boss does not give a shit whether you see a moon or not. They want to know, will you be at work or not? And they don't want to know at 7:30pm on Sunday that you won't be there Monday because of a religious holiday, as happens at the end of Ramadhan. So you have to plan things ahead. Some wise Muslim scholars, realizing that it does not conflict with core Islamic principles, have decided to fix the calendar ahead of time based on astronomical data. But other scholars do not like this "innovation." These scholars also like to wipe their asses with sand when they shit. Given my penchant for toilet paper, I also predictably enjoy the convenience of the fixed calendar, so Ramadhan for me began on Monday. Whatevs. Allah knows best.

Anyway, so it turns out that having to wake up for breakfast at 4:00am and then not eat or drink (or curse!) again until close to 7:30pm is more draining on me than I thought. First of all, I never realized what a HUGE bitch I can be when deprived of caffeine. Luckily, after a week of no caffeine whatsoever, my body has adjusted to not enjoying its usual two cups of coffee per day. My body has however not adjusted to the fact that Gunjan still exists, making caffeine deprivation the second hardest challenge of Ramadhan thus far.

In reality though, I thought fasting would help me be more productive, but this has not exactly panned out. Massa predicted this; that smart neuroscientist that he is! He told me he didn't see how it would be possible to concentrate while fasting. The brain needs glucose, he said. I assured him all would be well. I figured that with no lunch break, and no time to waste preparing coffee, drinking coffee, cleaning my mug after coffee, and thinking about how good it feels to have had the coffee, I would have much more time for work. Instead, I think of preparing coffee. I think of drinking coffee. I think of looking at my mug when there is just a small ring of milk around the inner base, where coffee once flooded. And I think of how coffee used to feel in my tumtum, as I listen to my tumtum growl and say, "feed me; why are you doing this to me." So I guess I was wrong and Massa was right. This is not the first time this has happened.

The next time I get on here, I shall educate you a bit about fasting in Ramadhan and what it's all about. Also, we'll discuss whether I, an otherwise irreverent and somewhat "bad" Muslim, have gained anything from fasting. What's there to gain? Stay tuned and you'll find out...

I really am getting old!

Thanks to the stress of my prelim (round 2), I had been up late for many nights over the past couple weeks studying. I started snacking late, eating lots of sweet and fatty foods, and going to sleep on a full stomach. Eventually, I started feeling fatter. My jeans felt a little more difficult to get into, and it hurt like a bitch to pull them off without undoing the top button; something I have done all my life. I hoped that maybe, there was a possibility that all my jeans shrank when I washed them last. However, on Wednesday I looked at myself really well in the mirror and lo and behold, I noticed that I am beginning to develop a spare tire. My stomach is beginning to poke out a bit. It seemed to me that my love handles were about the only thing on me that were well-defined. So I went to the gym and weighed myself, and believe it or not, I gained FIVE pounds in less than two weeks! And those five pounds were sitting right on my waist.

Now to me, there's nothing wrong with having a few extra pounds. Especially on men, a little extra weight can sometimes be a good thing; men don't need to be slim and slender to look good. A bit of a gut is easily overlooked if a man has well-defined arms. However, when you're small like me, a tire around the waist looks TERRIBLE. You run the risk of looking malnourished and just plain screwed up. As a matter of fact, five pounds is approximately four percent of my total body weight so this is quite a gain. Back in the day, I could do anything and not gain weight; I could eat anything at any time and the scale wouldn't budge. All through college, I ended most nights with a sandwich in the snack bar before bed.

As such, there is no clearer sign to me that I am getting old than this sudden drop in my metabolic rate. Because I am complicated and have all of these complexes, I fear getting fat. This is mostly tied into my fear that getting fat would make me less attractive to someone I may be attracted to as well as my correlation between fatness and unhealthiness and hence death.

As I was walking back from the gym, I saw this guy who works in a store on Euclid. He is friends with a friend of mine, and so I had been introduced to him and have sort of talked to him a few times. Although he seemed very friendly, I always thought that he acted really awkwardly around me, and it sort of made me feel weird until one day he confessed to me that he has a huge crush on me. I was very flattered, although the feeling was not mutual. I felt a bit embarrassed, but I was still happy to know and now I see his awkwardness in a different light. Anyway, so as I was walking up Euclid after firmly establishing that I am getting fat at the gym and feeling a bit blue about it, this guy passed me. I said hello, and the customary quick "how are you?" I was expecting the usual, "good, how are you" to which I would reply "good" and he wouldn't hear it because he would have been past me by then, but instead he replied, "better now!" with a smirk. For the first time in my new fat life, I felt good about my physical appearance.

Anyway, now that Ramadhan is here, I am hoping that my daytime starvation combined with nighttime exercise and protein drinking will help me both lose the fat and gain some muscle. We'll see how that goes...

I'm Back!

My dear loyal readers, and by dear loyal readers I mean Chris, I have been MIA for a while. This is because of the extremely stressful process of partially re-doing my qualifying exam, which felt more like doing an entirely new qualifying exam, which felt like shitting out a frozen porcupine, but the good news is it all ended yesterday and I PASSED! Yay!!! I am officially a candidate for the PhD in molecular cell biology. In other words, I can now continue life doing what I was doing before, but without a gun to my head. This is a great relief for me, because given that my parents have a very good retirement fund planned, that fund being me, I need to do well in life. No pressure.

Now time to continue my life. However, from all emotional indicators, my life isn't as peachy as I think it could be. This year when I turned 25, I felt rather blue and depressed about it. First of all, I turned a quarter of a century. That is a milestone, I think. However, I didn't have that much to show for 25. And while some people who tried to console me used the usual educational achievements as the "things" I had to show, those types of things were not exactly the yardstick by which I measure success, per se. I think that it is a good thing when people do well in school and progress further educationally, and that such achievements do mean that the person has had some amount of success, but I am not sure it means anything if you haven't done any good in your life. I'm not one who usually measures a person's worth by things like where they went to college, or IF they went to college because I'm pretty sure that there are as many things interesting about someone because they didn't go to college as there are about someone because they did. Anyway, so I was blue about turning 25 and people consoling me about my "achievements" didn't help because to me, when I am lying on my death bed, seeing the afterlife floating towards me, I am not going to be calling out to my diploma to save me. I figure that in order to lay dying and not feel absolutely horrifyingly desperately F-ed, I need to be able to look back on my life and know that I had done good things. That somehow, because of things that I did, someone, somewhere, who is not related to me, has had a better life.

Now don't get me started. I seriously lack good things to look back upon and it's beginning to carve a little hole in my soul. Hence my turning-25-depression. So I pledged to myself that by the time I have another birthday, if Allah spares my life to see it, I will have something to look back upon and at least be satisfied that the hole in my soul is slowly closing. Now I recognize that "doing good" is all relative. Some people may consider giving a handjob to a homeless man in the park doing good. I mean, if you think about it, there aren't that many people willing to do it, and it would probably make the man happy. But this is not what I mean. I am looking to provide longer lasting happiness; the equivalent of a daily handjob, in my previous example. So I responded to a craigslist ad seeking an "intern for a nonprofit". I figured, hey, if they're a nonprofit, they must be doing good. They need someone to research grant opportunities and do office work part time. It's an unpaid position, which is great, because I want my payment in afterlife points and money tends to nullify afterlife points sometimes.

It turns out the nonprofit is an established organization called "Doorways" that provides housing and medical care for people living with AIDS. Perfect! I have an interview next Thursday, but the woman accidentally responded to my email address with the words, "good candidate, me thinks...", so I get the idea they think that at least on paper, I'm a "good" candidate for the position. This should also make for some very interesting blogging, if I do end up a part of that institution. So this is where my life is headed and hopefully, next year at the end of May, my soul will be less porous.

Somebody Got a New Phone...

... and it wasn't me! It wasn't anyone I know either. So how do I know that somebody got a new phone? Is it because statistically speaking, as I am writing this, somebody somewhere in these Great States will get a new phone? No. It's because I have been inundated with a barrage of calls at the strangest f-ing times from a wide variety of numbers. We've all been on the giving and receiving ends of wrong number dials before. It's not a new thing. But few have had to deal with the stress I am currently undergoing because some hoodlum got a new phone.

It all began around Sunday night/Monday morning when I was sound asleep in my bed at about 12:53am. My phone rings and I do not recognize the number so I silence it. Now my new phone is quite cool because you have the option of leaving the alarm on with the ringer off. So if a call is received, the phone will not ring, but it will ring to wake you up in the morning. Thanks to Shabana, however, I no longer use that option because she has filled me with the fear of not being in contact should there be a night-time emergency. As such, I always sleep with my ringer on now. And that means sometimes being woken up at odd hours by Beenie calling from Paris, but it's a small sacrifice. Well, it WAS a small sacrifice. Back to Monday morning. At 12:53 I silence the phone, only to be disturbed again at 12:54 by the same number. No message was left, mind you. So I silence it again, thinking if even it is a friend calling from a land line, at least they'll leave a message and I'll check it right away. No message. I fall back asleep, and lo and behold, bitch calls again at 12:57. I pick up and she is speaking some incomprehensible rubbish. I inform her that she has a wrong number and that it is ONE THE F@*K AM and do you know what she did? She HUNG UP ON ME! I was actually polite. I did not actually use the F-word. I said, it is 1 am please stop calling me. She did not even apologize!!! What a whore!

So what did I do? I called that bitch back at 6:00am and then hung up. One point me.

Several other phone calls came throughout the week, each from different numbers. Another middle-of-the-night set of calls came on Thursday at 3:30am. This time I picked up and made moaning sex noises until the man on the other end hung up. He too received a 6:00am call. I automatically wake up at 6:00am every day for a few minutes. I am weird. But it is working well with my new phone calling lifestyle.

My most interesting call happened this morning around 9:00am. It came from an 888 number so I figured, maybe it's Trini calling with a calling card or something, better pick up. I pick up and it's an operator assisted call... from a CORRECTIONAL FACILITY!

Oh. My. Allah. Who the hell has a new number close to mine with friends who call almost exclusively after midnight and now, from jail?! I didn't bother to accept the operator assisted call because I really didn't want to be explaining to some felon that he has a wrong number.

Did I mention that I am scurred?

Accent on de Trini

I have officially lost my accent. My beautiful Trini accent is no more. Or so I have been led to believe. It used to be foreigners who could not tell the difference between one English accent and another who would tell me they thought I was American. They were usually Chinese or Korean. That was okay, because I probably would not be able to tell the difference between Chinese and Korean when I heard those languages spoken; and they're completely different languages! But recently American people have been telling me I sound like an American. And this hurts. Not that I don't like the American accent; I just love my Trini tongue more. The richer Trini kids who tried to be cool in school always spoke with slightly American accents. So after spending 2 years in Canada between the ages of 5 and 7, my accent was permanently changed to a more "upper class" Trini accent, though truth be told we were from the gutter. So it may be true that I never had an authentic Trini accent to begin with, but at least I had one. Why does it matter?

Well, in America, having an accent can be an advantage in some social circles, especially educated ones. In Kentucky or Alabama, people will just not understand you and may lynch you. But in more educated social circles such as university campuses or the East and West Coasts, some people enjoy hearing words said in a different accent. This leads them to listen to you more if you speak with an accent because the mundane act of listening to someone speak is spiced up a bit when there's an interesting accent to go with it. Of course this depends on the accent with which you speak. Jamaican accents are almost universally accepted as the accent of a pot smoker who is totally chill; probably not good for board meetings. German accents may not go over well with those of the Jewish persuasion; just a hunch. Indian accents are terrible. Learn to speak properly and suppress the urge to use the accent whenever possible. British accents are the creme de la creme. You can say anything with a British accent and sound sexy and sophisticated. "You are a low down nasty son of a bitch" said with a British accent is often mistaken for a compliment in America. As a matter of fact, the British accent is so damn hot that it can make being a prostitute seem glamorous. Doubt it? I looked at one episode of "The Secret Diary of a Callgirl" (don't tell Muzza) and she was discussing all sorts of whoresome details, but with a British Accent. I never knew whoring could be so chic.

My Trini accent has usually been well-tolerated, and actually the more Trini someone speaks, the more American people seem to like it. Unfortunately, I am losing it. This all began when people started asking me to repeat things. I HATE repeating myself. So I learnt early on during my first weeks here in America that I needed to pronounce my r's differently. That Connecticut was said as if there was a 'd' in there somewhere, and that 'butter' actually had no t's (budder). "Pass the budder" always gets me what I want; "pass the butter", not so much. Alas, my accent has become seemingly permanently changed due to my desire to conform. And this takes away from my specialness, which is not going over well with my ego. Popping my collar has not helped, nor has trying to undo the damage because I can't remember how it is I used to speak in the first damn place! Sigh... maybe I need to go home and immerse myself in Trini-ness for a while...

60 Dollar T-shirt

I am a very bad spender. I am an even worse saver. But I guess that is redundant because if you have bad spending habits, you're prolly not saving much. Unless the bad spending habits are like Papa Bear's... his bad spending is due to the fact that he does not spend at all. But I can bitch about that another time.

As you may be aware, Gereshisimo is getting married in Chicago this weekend and I'm going to witness the union of her chocolate face self with her vanilla face parter John. I cannot tell you how excited I am to see their children (whenever they have them...) because it is no secret that multiracial babies are superior both genetically and visually to pure-bred ones, on average. I say on average because I am perfect, although I am pure bred East Indian, but I am an exception. But I digress.

As I tried on my clothes for the wedding, I realized that due to my dark chocolate complexion, I looked a bit strange in the "wrong" light without an undershirt. It is times like these that I consider bleaching my skin, if only momentarily. White people never really have to worry about this problem of contrasting under a white shirt. One more reason why being brown can be hard sometimes. Anyway, so my only undershirt has a very obscene Banana Republic print on the front (it was 8 dollars at the outlet; give me a break). So I decided I would go buy me a new, plain white undershirt at Macy's. I went all the way to Macy's by train so that I could save money instead of going to, say, Union Station, which is closer but likely to charge more and have less variety of plain white t-shirts.

However, as I walked past the men's shoe section, I noticed they were having a SALE. And this is always what ruins me financially every month. Shoe sales at Macy's. To make a long story short, I ended up buying a nice pair of white Lacoste shoes for 40 dollars (SIXTY PERCENT OFF!!!) which was a steal. I was lucky enough to get the last pair and it was my size. Those shoes had my name on them and there was no way I was letting someone else come and take them away from me. However, by the time I got my 3 pack of plain white t's, I had spent 60 dollars, which is far more than the 10 I went all the way there to spend in the first place. Bah. At least now I have a pair of Lacoste shoes and I can be cool like that lead singer of One Republic, who is the only other person I have ever seen wearing them. Unfortunately, no one knows his name. Regardless, I am cool.

Now I'm off to Gesh's union. See you on the flip side!

Sad Faces

I think it's no secret that I hate ugly people. It's very difficult for me to face the day with all the horrors it brings me when there are ugly people around. It becomes just too much to bear, you know? I mean, a thunder storm, bad day at lab, cat shits on the carpet... all bearable. But add to that having to interact with an ugly person, and BAM! Unbearable. This is why I refuse to be friends with an ugly person. It's definitely a deal breaker. Unless you have money of course; or a hot mom/dad. Because that means you're probably going to become better looking as you get older, and if you don't, you can at least afford plastic surgery to buy a new... well, face. That said, I draw a very clear distinction between ugly people and people who look sad.

The sad faced person earns my deepest sympathy. I don't know what it is about a person who looks sad all the time that gets me so very blue but it does. I remember there was a girl at Williams who came for a summer and she was extremely weird. Tall, lanky and weird. Her skin had never seen a ray of sunlight. To add to her weirdness, she was allergic to sugar. I kid you not. She was also somewhat rude to me and a bit of a downer overall, but I mean, I gave her a break because how much would it suck to be allergic to sugar?! I would be sad all the time too. And I'd be a bitch, just like she was. But there was something that prevented me from being totally bitchy back to her, and for some reason I remembered her today and I remembered what it was: her face. She had a sort of turned up nose as if to say she scorned the world and everything in it, but more than that, she had a SAD face. The haunting, daunting, sad face.

There is a woman who works at Subway here on Euclid and she too has a sad face. Part of me just wants to walk around the counter and give her a hug and make her a sandwich for a change. I have decided that if I ever were to become very wealthy, I would walk in there and give her a $10,000 tip. Just to make her happy.

I got the opportunity to put a smile on Sad Summer Williams Girl's (SSWG) face on her last night at Williams, and it was very satisfying. Okay, get your mind out of the gutter. I was not that generous. She was actually baking some cookies for someone, which sadly she was unlikely to eat (because she's allergic to f-ing sugar), and she was missing an ingredient: raisins. She was SO pissed because someone had taken her raisins from her storage space. Luckily, I had this phase during my sophomore year where I thought I was a raisin person and bought a whole set of them, only to realize I was actually not a raisin person at all and would never be found just snacking on raisins (who does that anyway?). So I was able to produce a few small packets of raisins, and SSWG's frown turned upside down and she... SMILED. I didn't like her at all, yet I was SO happy. I am weird.

People have theories. I have heard that we hate others most for what they represent of ourselves or something like that. Or we hate others because of our fear that what they represent may be something we're trying to hide or whatever. Hence the idea of the homophobic homo. Like Larry Craig who voted against a federal law that would have prevented employers from discriminating against people based on their sexual orientation. This would have been a regular run-of-the-mill douchey Republican thing to do... had he not also enjoyed smoking anonymous cock under the bathroom stall divider when he wasn't voting to deny himself a job after he got kicked out of the Senate. Ha!

Anyway, maybe sad faced people make me - someone who is used to entertaining, to cheering and to making people laugh - maybe those people set off a little fear inside of me. People who can only very temporarily look happy, and when they do, they seem in pain because of it, make me sad. I want to help them; I want to do whatever it takes to make them happy. This, in a way, is not as selfless as it would seem. I simply want to sleep well at night, and this sad faced person's face is going to haunt me if I don't at least temporarily make them appear happy. Ugh, I am complicated.

Charter Should Go into Banking

Charter Communications is perhaps the biggest sham of a company I have ever known. I think Enron was more honest to their clients than Charter. Regardless, because the bitches have a monopoly in St. Louis, and because St. Louis is sort of like a developing country, albeit poorer and less developed, I am stuck with them for my cable and internet. The good news about sham companies like Charter however, is that just like the amoral banks that make billions off of poor folks, Charter also has no true way of keeping track of all the money they steal from their customers. All they know is that it's a lot. And so they can lose some and they'll still be okay.

Case in point: today when my internet setter upper guy was late, I called Charter and complained that I had lost two hours worth of wages waiting for him and was likely to lose two more. His window of arrival was between 10 and noon, according to the appointment and I called at 12:45pm. So Charter offered me a $20 credit. I politely protested that 20 dollars won't account for four hours worth of lost wages and since they were charging a connection fee, it would be nicer if they credited that amount instead. And you know what? They agreed! They credited me $49.99! Amazing.

Some people might call me an ungrateful asshole and say that this should make me agree that the company is actually not bad, and that it actually does care about its customers, but I beg to differ. Try calling them and you'll see what I mean. They don't even know who is in charge of what in that place. I asked for new internet and one rep told me it would decrease my bill by $1.00 to add internet because they would "bundle" it. So I said, great, let me call back when I am sure I can set up the appointment. I call back about 5 days later and a new rep says it will increase by $45.00. So I ask, how is this possible, that is $46.00 more than what I heard last time. He got annoyed and "double-checked" and then decided it would only go up by $11.00. Eventually we agreed on something between 4 and 10 dollars, which he was sure to inform me was a huge favor. Since when do you barter for an internet price? We do that in Trinidad, but for fish in the market, not for internet!

Just to end, I am pasting an online chat session with Charter reps for your amusement, and in case you suffer from low blood pressure, this is sure to help. The query is legit; they sent me a message by mail the other day about programming your DVR from any computer if you have a Charter internet account. I threw away the letter because at the time I had been "picking up" a "complimentary" wireless signal at home and had no account or any reason to get one. My complimentary signal has since vanished and I had to make other arrangements. The conversation is below. Enjoy.

A representative will be with you shortly. You have been connected to CVW Arnold . CVW Arnold : My name is Arnold, Thank you for contacting Charter Communication. May I have your full name so I may assist you today?

Me: I receieved a letter a few weeks ago explaining how to program my DVR settings (select shows I want to record) from a computer as long as I had DVR and Internet from Charter. I can't find the letter anymore. Can you direct me to a web address where I can get those instructions please?

CVW Arnold : I do apologize You been mistakenly routed, You currently reached the National Sales and Order Department, you will need to Contact Customer service video support group for further assistance at 1-888-438-2427 or I can also Transfer you.

CVW Arnold : I can transfer you

Me: please transfer me

Me: thanks

CVW Arnold has left the session. Please wait while we find an agent from the CHAT - DUMA - Video Support department to assist you.

You have been connected to TTD Francine Jay .

Me: I received a letter a few weeks ago explaining how to program my DVR settings (select shows I want to record) from a computer as long as I had DVR and Internet from Charter. I can't find the letter anymore. Can you direct me to a web address where I can get those instructions please?

TTD Francine Jay : As much as I wanted to help you, it would appear that you have been mistakenly routed to our Billing Department. Our Internet Department would certainly be able to help you out with your concern. Would you like me to transfer you to the right department?

Me: yes, please transfer me

TTD Francine Jay : One moment please while I transfer you to our Internet Department.

TTD Francine Jay has left the session. Please wait while we find an agent from the CHAT - DUMA - HSD Support department to assist you.

You have been connected to TTD Sybil .

TTD Sybil : My name is Sybil. Thank you for contacting Charter's High Speed Internet Support. How may I assist you today?

Me: I received a letter a few weeks ago explaining how to program my DVR settings (select shows I want to record) from a computer as long as I had DVR and Internet from Charter. I can't find the letter anymore. Can you direct me to a web address where I can get those instructions please?

TTD Sybil : It would appear that you are mistakenly routed to the Internet Support. TTD Sybil : I apologize for the inconvenience however, to be able to resolve your concern, please call 1-888-438-2427.

TTD Sybil : Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Me: what is wrong with you people? This is going to be the FOURTH time I have been "mistakenly routed". Is this some sort of joke?

Me: please re-route me to an online agent who can assist me

TTD Sybil : I am very sorry but you need to call.

Me: why is there no agent who can answer a simple questions such as what I am asking?>

Me: it is not that technical

Me: just give me a web address; that is all I am asking. I am not even asking for instructions on how to do it.

Me: this is ridiculous

TTD Sybil : I apologize for the inconvenience.

I quit here

Prelim Decisions are the New Sexuality

So it turns out that my committee won't "use labels" to define what exactly happened to me last Thursday. I didn't fail; that would be harsh. Especially after preparing a 14 page document with about 30 citations and giving a 30 minute presentation that lasted two hours full of slides that they expressly liked. So that's good. What is weird though is that I also did not pass. Nor did I get what is the only other option: a "conditional pass". No, these labels are useless. I cannot be defined. Instead, I am "yet to pass". That is what P. Hanson said to me at the end of my 3 hour ordeal last week; and that sentiment was reiterated in the committee's report where there is no mention of having failed or passed but rather of having a grant that did not go far enough thus placing me "below the passing grade", which incidentally is what most normal people call failing.

This all reminds me of those stupid girls in college who get drunk and go muff diving, only to surface again and say that they are not gay, bi, straight or lesbocious. They refuse to be labelled. They are just American college girls. American college girls who go muff diving once in a while.

Semantics will not distract me. I am "yet to pass" my prelim so life must be put on hold. But I had committed to joining the crew of a new healthy living magazine a woman named Elaine D. is starting here in St. Louis back when I thought I'd have passed my prelim outright, so I am going to that meeting this evening. We're supposed to all gather at the Maplewood Library at 8:00pm today. It should be interesting. Maybe I will be able to write for this magazine and express myself in a healthier way. I am excited to meet the other people because meet and greets are always awkward and I love awkward situations. They make for great blogging. So stay tuned.

In other news, apparently blogging can be therapeutic. In a Newsweek article entitled, "My Shrink says... Blog!", blogging is presented as a way of airing ones problems in a medium with a built-in audience, which can be interpreted by the blogger as achieving some sort of sympathetic response to his problems. "Diaries are a form of that communication, but removed. Blogging gets you closer to that sympathetic audience, and that's what makes it therapeutic."

Sweet. I feel better already.

Check out the rest here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/142630

I hate the world

Or more specifically, I hate the people on my committee. Those bastards gave me a "conditional pass" with the recommendation that I add a third aim to my proposal and come back and present said third aim to them. All of this after my 2 and a half hour grilling this morning, and two weeks after I handed in my written grant. So basically, I was screwed the moment I walked into that room because no matter what I did or how well I did it, the proposal would still be only 2/3 of what they think is good enough to constitute a grant. And they waited until 1:00pm this afternoon to tell me this. This is the way the molecular cell biology program at Wash U functions. Or does not function. However you wish to look at it. I hate them so much. So very, very much.

Game Time!

Comrades, the hour is upon us. I am to be taken from my quarters at sunrise (okay, fine, 9:30 or so). I will be carrying upon my back the enormous crucifix of 10 weeks of mind-wrenching research about the nature, form and structure of liposomes and their ability to either hemi- or fully-fuse with each other under specific conditions. The people of Bethlehem or Euclid, whichever way you choose to pronounce it, will react to me in a mixed manner. Some may spit at me. Some may offer me water. Some may even attempt to carry my crucifix for me. Alas, I shall arrive at the 10th hour before the Council of Elders who will proceed to flagellate me and pierce me with their nails. I will also be wearing a crown of thorns because it just seems appropriate.

I have prepared myself for the worst case scenario tomorrow. I am prepared to walk into the room and have P. Hanson spit at me and punch me in the face. Next, I am thinking P. Schlesinger will throw a chair at me, while S. Dutcher holds me in a headlock and knees me in the balls. Finally, D. Ory will light fire to my ass. Now that I am prepared for this epic battle, I am quite sure that nothing any of these eminent scholars say to me tomorrow will be so bad. And so, hopefully, I will be able to sleep tonight. And tomorrow, I shall not cry when faced with them.

I have chosen a black shirt, a pair of khaki pants, a brown belt, a brown tie and a pair of brown shoes for tomorrow's presentation. Picture it; it's a glorious sight. I have already tried them on and I'd dare say they look pretty damn good. So, in case I should have a serious meltdown, at the very least I will look good melting down. I wouldn't fail a kid who wore a tie to his prelim; would you? (Don't answer that, Cailz).

Pray for me.

I am scurred

The last time I had to do a qualifying exam, I passed it. That was because it was the second time I was taking the exam, having failed it the first time. I remember sitting in intro MCB with John Cooper who welcomed us to grad school and announced quite emphatically that in grad school, grades don't matter. I remember sitting in that class the next year and again hearing him say the same thing and thinking what a big piece of bullshit that was. Anwyay, that is behind me. But now I have to worry about my very terrifying next half of the qualifiers coming up on Thursday. That's an oral exam and to be honest, I am scurred. Very scurred. The rules are basically that you prepare and write a 10 page grant on a research topic unrelated to your lab work, in the format of an NIH post doctoral fellowship application. It consists of a brief abstract, a hypothesis and two or three specific aims to test the hypothesis, and then the methods by which you will carry out the specific aims. Two weeks before you defend it, you hand in the written part and then you present a 20-25 minute talk outlining what you wrote before a committee of 4 professors. I am shitting bricks. But I have some good news.

Last night I dreamnt I failed it. Why is that good news? Because every dream I have been having so far has been turning out to be true... in the opposite. A few nights ago, I dreamt I got the cancer bio fellowship I was forced to apply for on very short notice and which I was sure I wasn't going to get. Turned out I did not get it. Then I dreamt I drowned on the float trip. Turns out I almost drowned, but not quite. So now, since I dreamt I failed my prelim, I am actually quite relieved. Had I passed in that dream, I would be very worried right now. But I am still scurred. I should go finish working on the presentation now. Regardless of the outcome, I shall keep you informed.

Access Checks My Ass

Do not EVER use those ripoff "access checks" Bank of America or any other bank may send you in the mail. I thought I was so financially savvy when I discovered I could use an "access check" to pay a merchant that does not take Visa, such as my mofo leasing office. I thought, "great, I'll get 750 world points every month and after 10 years of this, I can get 10 dollars cold hard cash!" Just to be safe, I called the bank and they confirmed that yes, indeed, this is true. Furthermore, I clarified that if I paid my future transaction ahead of time, I would not be charged any transaction fees. So I went ahead and wrote my rent check of $750, only after putting $800 on the card ahead of time. I figured I could use the other 50 to pay a bill or something.

Anyway, so today I check my account and lo and behold those bitches have charged my poor brown ass a 3% transaction fee. That is $22.50! As I dialed the number at the back of the card, all I could hear in my head was OH HELL NO! Over, and over, and over. I was FUMING!

I spoke with a Mr. Eldrige Holloway who was very polite but firm in telling me that the fee is written in the agreement and that I chose to use the checks and therefore that was too bad. But being a Trini, I knew that good old Eldrige, being the man who first answered the phone after the annoying prompts, could not possibly be the head honcho, so I politely told Mr. H to stick it, and to hand me over to someone more powerful. He obliged and after 15 minutes of classical music, I was speaking with Warren Smith, a manager. I threatened to close my account when I was speaking to Ellie, but adopted a more conciliatory tone with Mr. Manager. I instead told him that as a customer for 2 years who has never paid a single payment late, I think that it would be a good faith move for the bank to credit me back my $22.50. I didn't consider that the bank, being the Satanic Abyss of Financial Doom that it is, actually WANTS me to pay my bills late so I can pay them interest, so this was probably not something to try to sell myself on, but it seemed like a good pitch at the time.

And guess what... it worked! The manager agreed to credit my account back $22.50! Great success! So by midnight tonight I am supposed to be $22.50 richer, which would have been nice had I not been $22.50 poorer because of the whole incident to begin with. Regardless, those 22 dollars and 50 cents are MINE and I am not going to let some nasty bank try to take them away from me. And neither should you!

I told you so

I am one of those people who loves to be able to say, after the fact, "I told you so." It really makes me happy. So, just in case, I would like to propose my choice for Barack Obama's VP. If it is not Hillary Clinton, I am proposing that it should be Senator Chuck Hagel. Go do some research on who Chuck Hagel is. For starters, he's a Republican and he's one of the few who started off as pro-war and is now very much against the war. He would be a good pick because of the abovementioned reasons, but also he is a white man. Barack needs a white man as his running mate. I don't like Hillary and hope he does not choose her.

I have a problem

A few days ago I almost walked into a blind woman. Clearly, she was not looking where she was going. That may seem like a horrible place to slide in some humor, but... okay... no buts. I am sorry. Anyway, I almost walked into her because she was, at the moment, holding her cane upright, for whatever reason I am unsure. So as I walked, she sort of swayed over into my path, NOT tapping her cane, and I stopped short of walking into her. I was annoyed at this woman who was so carelessly swaying into my path that I turned up to glare at her with my evil eye so as to say, without words, "watch where you're going, bitch." It was at that moment that I noticed she was wearing very dark sunglasses - inside the mall - and holding a cane. I then proceeded to move out of her way, and to feel like a piece of shit for almost being vindictive in my own passive-aggressive way, to a blind woman. Why am I telling you this? Have patience, the point will become clearer.

I have a problem with hate. Not being the object of hate, although there is a lot about me people can hate, but being the hater. I am a big hater. A girl at Williams asked me why I was "drinking all of that hatorade" once. I hated her. This is because I am wont to hate people before I begin to like them. If we've interacted for a very short period of time, chances are I hate you. I most likely also hate your mother for having you, and your father for knocking up your mother and adding you to this population. I also hate your sister because she's a bitch, and your brother because he's ugly. I also probably never met them or saw pictures of them, but since I hate you so much, I know deep down inside that I hate them. See? I am a real hater. But chances are, after a while of forced interaction with you, I will begin to like you. I will begin to see all those little things about you that are unique; that only I have been able to unravel and to enjoy, and soon enough, I may begin to even love you. I may decide that your sister isn't actually that ugly after all. As a matter of fact, now that I love you, I may love her, because she is of course related to you by blood. And then I begin to feel badly about myself for hating you to begin with.

This cycle seems to repeat itself over and over. I never learn. What does this have to do with that blind woman? Well, that experience of almost-walking-into-the-blind-woman was in a way, a microcosmic (?) example of my larger problem. I judged that situation by my fixed-scale ruler of situation-judging: woman walks into my path because woman is not paying attention to where woman is going, therefore, glare at woman. As if, in some way, I were better than she. As if, even in the case that she could see, I had some RIGHT to walk along that specific path and she should dare not come between me and my God-given right. But my fixed scale hasn't any accomodation for the possibility that the woman is blind and that she does not have the luxury, as I do and as I take for granted every single day, of seeing that she is walking into my path. This is the same problem I have when I meet people and immediately hate them. I judge the situation immediately, based on parameters I have developed from other situations that probably have no bearing in that specific instance. And so then I hate. And I have never been able to quite get out of this.

So the good news is I have admitted I have a problem. The bad news is I don't know exactly how to solve it. Regardless, I am going to keep track of my anti-hating initiatives here for your education and if not, at least for your entertainment. Wish me luck...

A Walk in the Clouds

Okay, not really. It was a walk, yes. But in the clouds? No. The scene was Euclid Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri. The day, yesterday, June 17th. The time, 9:30am. The cross-streets, Laclede and Forest Park. There was a crazy man walking down the street calling out to people, "hello! Good morning, excuse me, excuse me. Please, when you are about to go to sleep tonight, raise your hands in prayer for me. Ask the Lord to protect me and save me. God bless." It is a fact that no city becomes great without first having a lot of crazy people asking you to pray for them (and for yourself). So New York City, watch out... the gateway city is moving up!

Anyway, so I ignored him, because if I had time to waste asking Allah to protect random lunatics on the street, I'd probably also have been able to write this entry yesterday rather than today. So anyway, the mad man has moved on asking other people to pray for him and what not, and then this guy who was sitting outside a cafe having his breakfast, and who I thought I had left way behind, shows up next to me and starts talking. It was one of those, I-know-you-just-ran-to-catch-up-to-me moments, combined with an I-know-you're-trying-to-make-random-conversation-based-on-a-silly-occurrence-we-both-witnessed-thinking-we-have-somehow-bonded-when-in-reality-I-am-somewhat-afraid-of-you-but-would-have-been-flattered-had-you-only-been-cute ones. For what reason he did this, I am not sure. But when you're as gorgeous as I am, these things happen. I know, it's not easy being perfect, but don't cry for me. I have gotten used to it. So anyway, random guy starts talking and I have no idea what he's saying so I'm like, "what?" and he says something incoherent, and I answer, "yeah, I guess so." I was guessing that he was saying something about the crazy guy being crazy. Usually, "yeah, I guess so" works in most awkward contexts. We can explore that theory in another post. So where were we? Yes, random guy is talking incoherently. Next thing he starts adding, "yeah, he must be Christian." So I'm giving the awkward grin where you're trying to be completely neutral but not too rude. "All Christians are crazy", he continues. My grin remains. Difficult to keep up, but still there. Then he adds, "Christians and Muslims... all crazy." Except he pronounced "Muslims" as "MOZ-LEMZ" which I HATE. I mean, you might as well call me a ragheaded camel jockey if you're gonna call me a mozlem. Okay, maybe not, but I hate to hear the word so brutally and savagely destroyed, okay? By this time, I think my awkward grin vanished. I reply, "well not all of them," to which he says, "well, I think all. But not Hindus. Hindus are okay." Clearly this idiot had hedged his bets on the fact that I'm Hindu. Maybe in his little pea-sized mind, he thought we would bond further over the fact that I was able to run into a stranger who not only shared my hatred of Christians and Muslims, but loved my Hindu people. How awkward. And to make matters worse, he kept walking along beside me. I was wondering whether this was when I was supposed to say, "sorry, not interested. I am married." Then I began to wonder if this was a story that would later appear on the front page of the newspapers, "Wash U grad student attacked by Islamophobic assailant with knife." It made sense; maybe he was trying to determine that I'm Muslim so he could stab me. I was getting ready to scratch his eyes out, when he said, "okay, I am turning here. Bye." It was so awkward, but I was relieved. I hope I never see him again.

Multi-tasking

I am having a hard time at work. This is not a new development. However, I am currently experiencing an unusually difficult time because I have my qualifying exam approaching on July 10 and at the same time, I am somehow expected to train a new student who has had no prior experience in a lab. Summer Student (SS) is however the best case scenario for this, well, scenario. SS learns everything the first time he is taught. Sometimes SS needs reminders about small details, but in general, I trust SS. And given that I have major trust issues, well this is as good as it gets. But I do feel guilty telling SS, "SS, today I will be writing my grant, so we'll do work between around 2ish to about 3ish". I feel even worse knowing that this is basically going to happen over and over until July 10th. But whatever. SS doesn't seem to mind. SS also doesn't mind the fact that I routinely call him "Summer Student".

Apart from having trouble falling asleep because my mind is constantly thinking some sort of rubbish, I also have a hard time concentrating during the day because my mind is thinking some sort of rubbish. Now don't get me wrong; I love Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown as much as you do, but when they keep asking me to tell them how they're supposed to breathe with no air, over and over and over, when I am trying to figure out how many microliters of DNA I should be using for a transfection, it becomes a bit of a problem. And when it's not them, it's ABBA. I get it, I am a Supertrooper. No one else would put up with this day in and day out, so clearly, if anyone were to be a Supertrooper, it would me me. But do you REALLY have to keep telling me?

So the overall idea is that my brain is sort of like a radio stuck between a few stations, playing all at the same time, but none well enough to really discern what is going on on one station from what is happening on the other. I described this once to a doctor who said that she was so impressed by my ability to put such an abstract feeling into practical terms that she had to take a note of it. Unfortunately she hasn't returned the favor and impressed me by tuning my damn radio. So, I still have issues. But at least I'm still sleeping. Last night I actually fell asleep about 15 minutes after going to bed. And I slept all the way until my real alarm clock (not my internal one, or my bladder) went off! So maybe I am not becoming resistant to the latest sleeping drug after all! But the pharmaceutical industry has not been known to satisfy anyone forever, so we'll see how long this lasts.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what Massa meant by "1 savior + 3 nails = 4given" in the last post, that was the caption on a t-shirt worn by a teenage girl at Six Flags yesterday. This was of course overshadowed by the girl who had a swastika made of bones tattooed onto her NECK. Welcome to Missouri.

Six Flags

Today we went to Six Flags. Me, Massa, Cailz, Juliegreen, Chris and Megan. Note to self: I need to come up with me-names for Chris and Megan. Anyway, so all of us together makes 3 girls and 3 boys. However, Massa has accused me of acting "worse than a four year old girl" for not wanting to get on a ride that he later deemed "a terrible experience". Now, in his defense, he did not pull that accusation out of his white imperial ass, but rather literally meant it after a woman in line turned around upon hearing of my refusal to join the ride and said, "my daughter is going on this ride and she's six. She went on it two years ago, when she was four!" She then snorted two lines of low-grade cocaine off her six year old daughter's ass. Okay, so she didn't, but still, what was the point of telling me that useless information? I should have responded, "my Muzza spat three children out of her womb and 25 years later she is still not as fat as half your ass." Unfortuately, Six Flags does not allow profanity. So I had to suppress my creativity and smile.

Can I speak for a moment about the tattoo situation in Missouri? Believe me when I tell you it is out. of. control. About 40% of the population at Six Flags today was tattooed (?) And I'm not just talking about a little crucifix with Jesus being tortured to death plastered on a bikini line. I am talking mega whopping life size crucifixes with Jesus being tortured to death from the back of the neck down to the promised land itself! About 3% of the tattoos I saw today had any artistic value whatsoever. Please people, stop it.

As a faithful reader of this blog since, well, since yesterday, you probably would like to be updated about my sleeping situation. Well, to make a long story short, the vicious cycle of - take drug that makes you sleep until you stop responding to drug then switch to new drug that makes you sleep until you stop responding and then switch to new... - continues. The first time I took my current sleeping pill, it made me sleepy for 24 hours. I would fall asleep anywhere, anytime. You are unaware of this because my job requires moving around minute amounts of materials from one vessel to another. If I were a construction worker operating a crane, well, you'd know of my sleeping med problems for sure. Anyway, I've reached the stage where the drug no longer allows me to fall asleep easily. I have to REALLY want to. Much to my annoyance, the built-in alarm clock seems to have begun working also. I wake at 7:30. This is becoming a problem. I think I need to go back to my doc...

Now for my final advice for today, re: Six Flags St. Louis: Don't go on any rollercoasters. I went on the Batman so you would not have to. It was horrifying and all I gained from this was a feeling of closeness to the Almighty for about 60 seconds. I think this is why all those Christian groups have so many Six Flags days. Also, the rest of my group went on that old wooden piece of shit with the fat lady and her six year old and came off looking like they'd walked in on Dick and Lynne Cheney sharing an intimate moment.

Sorry, I just vomited.

Okay, cleaned.

But now my sleeping med is taking over, so sorry to make this so awkward, but, uhm, bye!

I'm Back!/Sleeping Woes

Hello World! I am back. I decided to start fresh with my bloggie, so I deleted all my old posts, which dealt a great deal with political topics. However, I found one that I had not completed. It must have been at least 5 months old, sitting there, incomplete. So, as my first "new" post, I am putting it in below. I will then update you all about my progress since then, since I am sure everyone will take time out of their very busy lives to read about me. Here it is:

For the life of me, I cannot fall asleep. Well, to be fair, I can fall asleep, just not at the right times. I can fall asleep during lab meetings, where other lab members have been hedging bets as to whether I will be able to stay awake or not. I can fall sleep during any science talk where data is discussed. I can fall asleep on the train, during a 13 minute ride to the mall. I can fall asleep after lunch, when I should be working. But when most normal people pack up their lives and say goodnight to the moon, I am awake. I lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, the bedpost, the wall, the door. All sorts of thoughts come to me. "Perhaps, if I learned to sew, I could be a fashion designer." "Perhaps, if I learned to walk, I could be a supermodel." "It would be nice to fly first class on British Airways to Cairo." "Gosh, I want honeycomb, with the beeswax."

Many things come to me as I lay in my bed, but sleep comes last. And then I dream. I dream terrible, terrible things. Muzza dying. Being mugged. Things about me, like looking in the mirror and seeing saggy flipfloppy man boobies staring back at me, love handles, a happy trail gone seriously sad... the list goes on. I feel like the character in the Edgar Allan Poe story, The Tell-Tale Heart. But it isn't a heart I hear beating; it's my own brain screaming.

My frustration can hardly be put into words. But my thoughts will not stop flowing at these hours. About a dozen simultaneously cloud my poor head each and every time I lay to rest. So when I wake in the morning, I have slept a maximum of 5 hours each night. And so my body grabs back every minute of sleep it can: in lab meeting, at lectures, at journal presentations, on the train...

I cannot focus on anything. What you can do in 1 hour, I can only dream of doing in two. I am so completely out of it that even to carry on a conversation with some people is difficult. If I am not interested in what you're saying, then I more or less zone out. And every now and then, I come back, feel bad about my ignoring you, and pretend to be interested.

This has made for some awkward situations, of course. Someone might be talking about their brother, perhaps.

Person: "So my brother broke his leg... (I begin zoning out).... and he had to go to the hospital... they put a cast on 6 weeks ago... luckily he's gotten it taken off just before soccer practice starts back up... so now he can run again (I zone back in and feel bad)..."

Me: "Well, I'm glad nothing is broken"


Okay, this is where it ended. More later.