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Pictures removed, I’ll be putting them up one at day at my fotolog instead, because people were having probs. Well, the probs were with villagephotos, but you know what I’m saying. 🙂 Yep. Right, so a pic a day at the fotolog. Peace!

Back from fishing! Today is our last day in Khandaanville since we’re flying back to ISB tomorrow afternoon. It is also the 35th consecutive computer game free day. I swore off computer games for Ramadan (see Oct 28th post) and I think I’ll stay off of them for as long as I can. I still play Playstation, but only when I’m working out, and I find it almost impossible for me to zone out. In fact, it’s almost impossible to even play properly let alone become engrossed, because you’re trying to jog, stay balanced, maintain a speed of at least 3 miles an hour with level 2 resistance, and yet not trip over the controller cable and die.

However, with computer games, you’re sitting in the comfy chair, your speed is zero miles an hour and there is nothing to distract you from playing, so after five minutes it feels like my brain has been replaced with cream filling, and the minutes turn into hours sometimes. Actually I should be using the past tense here, the minutes USED to turn into hours, because I don’t plan on letting that happen anymore. Having not gone into cream-filling mode for a while, I find that my brain feels more up to thinking creatively. It’s easier for me to concentrate, and I keep having these brilliant ideas. Like how to build my own catapult.

One of my uncles has a cannon, actually. It may surprise you to know that he’s one of my American uncles, not one of the Pathan ones here. (Hi Uncles Les!) He built it himself, and he uses it to launch rolls of toilet paper across the riverbank that his cabin stands on. The trees on the other side of the river take on a kind of ghostly appearance when the toilet paper trailing from their branches catches the moonlight, but still, it’s good clean fun. And impressive, too.

Another one of my uncles built an electricity generator from an old 1960’s Datsun engine. (It may surprise you to know that he’s not one of the American uncles, he’s a Pathan. Amir Hassan Chacha Zindabaad!) Initially it ran on diesel, but then he converted it to natural gas, and since the 1970’s, he’s been constantly upgrading it. It still works, it lives on the roof of the house we’re staying in, and when the electricity goes they crank it up (the key still says Datsun) and we’re the only house on the block with power.

The way I see it, if Uncle Les can build a cannon, and Amir Hassan Chacha can build an electricity generator, then I can build a catapult.

Ok, so a catapult is a little hard. I could at least build a small trebuchet. You know, to fire things off the roof. I figure that all I need is some bamboo poles, something heavy for a counter-weight, some rope, and a scabby horse to launch at my foes, just like in the old days of castles and siege warfare. That whole thing with people launching rocks is all just sugar-coated revisionist history. The truth is they saved all their animal carcasses, old horses and sick cattle, to throw at enemies. As my G-ma would say, I kid you not.

Anyway, I’ve discussed my plan at length with Aniraz (proud inventor of the oat-meal bolo), whose brain is not cream, but peanut-filled, which may explain why she hasn’t tried to discourage me yet. I figure I’ll just carry all of the stuff to the roof and start tying the rods together and go from there. Or I could tie the horse to the counter-weight first and then build the frame around it. Or, maybe I should tie the counterweight to the frame instead, and position the horse only when it’s ready to fire?

I don’t know. If all else fails, I’ll just throw the counter-weight at Aniraz (for not trying to discourage me) and then eat the scabby horse between two mattresses to keep my strength up for the long journey back to the drawing board.*

* “I’m so hungry I could eat a scabby horse between two mattresses!” –Crayon

Gone fishing. Sensei will be back after Dec 3rd. Till then, love, peace and chikken grease!

Ma’Assalam 🙂

****

By The Steeds

By the steeds and the sparks of their hooves

I am, to my Lord, an ungrateful horse

Here I stand tethered without any rope

Without any harness except that of hope

Free and unbridled I’m told I may roam

With nothing to stop me from running from home

And nothing to stop me from seeing the others

Far horses afield, my long astray brothers

And though there are times that my ungrateful gaze

May lead me to wish I could wander and graze

My heart, it remembers deceptive fair weather

And darkness and fear I found far from my tether

And the poisonous fruit that made me so ill

And the pained journey home on nothing but will

By the steeds.

And their thundering hooves.

To my Lord, I will be, a most patient horse.

For love of him I need no rope

For fear of him I have my hope

Foolish are those who would yet choose to roam

When light and plenty are here and at home

Though still nothing stops me from seeing the others

I’ve no intent to join my lost brothers

From the earth to the heavens I now turn my gaze

And look to this grass only to graze

No matter how lonely, how cold the weather,

By the steeds, I wander no more from my tether.

Ate…tooo….much…haleem….

Can’t…move…

*gasp*

Eid Mubarak!

*passes out*

Once upon a time, thirteen years ago, itty-bitty Sensei was dropped head-first into Pakistan, and therefore, into Urdu. Having previously had an Urdu vocabulary of ZERO, she learned Urdu through what some people would call the ‘immersion method.’ I would call it ‘sink or swim,’ and I would also say that years later, I’m barely keeping my head above the waters of total illiteracy. I’m reminded of my Urdu handicap every time I come and visit the Khandaan and am verbally one-upped by nine-year olds. Take this conversation, for example, which originally occurred in Urdu.

Niece: Do you speak Urdu?

Sensei: (I’m answering in Urdu here folks.) What do you think?

Niece: (grins) Can you READ Urdu?

Sensei: A little.

Niece: (handing me a children’s story book) Here, read me this.

Sensei: (squinting at page one) Umm…

Niece: I thought you could read?

Sensei: I thought I could too, what’s this funny looking letter here?

Niece: That’s a ‘seen’ (letter “s”), they’ve just stretched it out to make it look pretty. You’re a grown-up and you can’t read my book?

Sensei: Well, you know Urdu isn’t my first language.

Niece: (calling other children) Hey you guys! Phupoo can’t read Nonehal! (name of children’s magazine)

Sensei: Well, errr…

Nephew: (in disbelief) You can’t even read Nonehal?

Niece: And she’s a grown-up too! Ha ha! Even Saad can read Nonehal, and he’s six!

(the crowd of children grows. I sigh and pull out a copy of The Professor, by Bronte, which I had been reading)

Sensei: (opening page of book) Here kiddo, can you read?

Niece: Yes!

Sensei: Read this.

Niece: (taking book and sounding out letters) Madame, jay vooz preee, hey I can’t read this, it’s nonsense! What is this?

Sensei: You mean you can’t read French? Even Aniraz Phupoo can read French! Ha ha! Hey Aniraz Phupoo, she can’t even read French!

(the children are duly shamed, so we call it a truce and go play badminton in the back yard)

The fact that my nieces and nephews can’t read French doesn’t excuse me from not being able to read Urdu at a literate level, but it sure it useful. If harassed about my lack of language skills, I can always break out in my preschool French, or into the lyrics of the Russian song ‘Katusha.’ But this only works on children, and thankfully the adults are very gracious about my lame Urdu. So gracious in fact, that they didn’t want to hurt my feelings by correcting me, so for three years, they let me say that I had hide (khaal) instead of skin (jild). They also let me reverse the words for ‘invent’ and ‘prevent.’ I’m still not sure which one is ijaad and which one is ‘nijaad’ so I’m just going to keep my mouth shut here.

I also mixed up the words 1.‘marham’ and 2.‘marammat,’ which meant that I spoke of cars receiving ointment (1.) and certain wounds being repaired (2.). I reduced a shopkeeper to tears once when I tried to ask him for a dozen white beads (motian), and by a twist of the tongue, asked him for a dozen white fat women instead (moTian). I corrected myself right away, but it was too late. The damage was already done. The tears were already running down his face. And I never did get my fat women…errr…beads.

I’ve been reading the Urdu newspaper lately in an attempt to bring my vocabulary up, but I don’t know if it’s appropriate reading material. New words and phrases I have learned this week have been to condemn (muzammat karma), reaction/consequence (radde-amal), to express heartfelt sympathy (dilli afsos ka Izhar karma), extremism (intiha pasandi), and United Nations (Aqwami Mutahidda). So now my brain is full of political jargon that I don’t know how to use. I can just imagine:

Cousin: Oh no, the pakoras have burnt!

Sensei: Main is garam tail ki sakht muzammat karti houn aur aap ki pakoray ki jalnay ki dilli afsos ka Izhar karti houn. Aqwami Mutahidda ko is baat ki itila honai chaihiyay! (I strongly condemn this hot oil and express my heartfelt concern over the burning of your pakoras. The United Nations should be notified of this!)

:::teeth::::

Before I begin I must make a disclaimer. Sensei believes strongly in intellectual property rights, and does not purchase pirated software. However, when Sensei is bored out of her brain, she will occasionally play other peoples.’ Remember kids, always buy original CD’s. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Adventures in Blogistan Presents: Sensei’s Bootleg PS2 Game Review

Dear readers, if you’ve never dealt with pirated CD’s before, then you probably don’t know that they’re reviewed on a scale that’s totally different from their original counterparts. Where original games are judged only on a few factors, like graphics, gameplay, sound, storyline, etc, bootlegs games are based on a few extra ones, like case content, and the ‘one-death distance.’

Case content is a self-explanatory phrase, whereas the ‘one-death distance,’ or ODD, may take some explaining. ODD represents how far I can get in a game without dying or saving, because I don’t have a memory card. So, in no order at all, here are the games we’ve reviewed this week.

Rygar: The Legendary Adventure

A no-brainer platform game, Rygar is surprisingly attractive (I mean the scenery, not the hero). The backgrounds are nicely rendered, the ancient Greek architecture in which the game has been set comes to life in a way that’s so nice looking that it makes you sad to be knocking it down and breaking it to little pieces. Of course, destroying every Corinthian column you find isn’t part of the plot, but when they give me a game where you’re actually allowed to interact (read: fight) with the scenery, I take advantage of it. I make it a point to destroy every vase and knock over every statue and column, not simply for the fun, but also because they’re hiding secret items in there. Not that I’ve figured out what any of those items do yet. Maybe I’m just destructive. I’m one of those people who spent all of my time in Zelda: Ocarina of Time harassing the little animated chickens in the village, just because they ran from me. Imagine my surprise when they fought back and killed me. Aah, memories.

Unfortunately, as good as Rygar looks (the hero. And the scenery) the game is boring. Dull. 100% plot-free. Rygar serves the princess. The princess is kidnapped, Rygar will save her. Rygar smash. Rygar battles foes from ancient Greek mythology, such as the Cyclops, the Titan…the armored caterpillar? The fire-flinging tulip-face? Anyway, Rygar destroys them all because Rygar is our hero. Yay.

Now the important aspects of the game, ODD (one-death distance) and cover content. Without dying or saving once, I played Rygar only up to the second chapter. I could’ve played longer, but frankly I was bored. I tried to get Rygar killed, but I had already pulverized all my enemies and didn’t have it in me to go forward to find some new ones. So I tried to throw Rygar off one of the beautiful, scenic coliseums, but he wouldn’t jump. I tried run him out of a window, and discovered that golden the sunset hanging outside the window was just a 2-D façade. So I ran Rygar into a wall and then hit the power button. ODD: 45 minutes.

Rygar’s cover content receives a rating of 6 for amusement. Apparently it was copied from a review of Rygar, which the printers failed to read before putting on the back of the game. Here it is, unedited, and in its entirety.

“The legendary adventure shares name if its predecessors, which appeared in arcades and on the Nintendo Entertainment System. But other than a few references and the main character’s yo-yo like weapon, the latest incarnation of Rygar shares very little in common with those to games. Similarly, Rygar: The Legendary Adventure’s thoroughly mediocre storyline & relatively short length are almost antithetical to the epic Greek mythology that the game is loosely based on. But the allure of action platformer that plays reasonably and looks and sounds excellent-“ (end cover. There’ nothing more written after this point.) Should you buy this game? No.

Onimusha: Warlords

Onimusha has the look of an absolutely beautiful game. The animation is simply lovely, and the backgrounds are extremely detailed. The fighting is simple enough to be easily mastered (attack, block, magic, and absorb) but varied enough to provide a challenge and room for expertise skill development (whack whack, absorb, whack, magic thunder thrust, pow!). The fighting is one of the best parts of the game. Character movement is nicely choreographed, and realistic enough to make the whole game look like a one long movie scene. Well, when I say realistic, I mean realistic as far as Japanese warrior zombies can be.

The atmosphere of the game is dark, the blood flies fast and free (who knew skeleton warriors HAD blood?) and the violence is enough to make even me cringe. I wouldn’t recommend this game for little kids. It might give them nightmares. Shoo, it’ll probably give me nightmares, but that won’t stop me from playing anyway.

The plot is intelligently presented enough to overcome the classic clichés, (lone warrior out to save kidnapped princess from zombie hordes with the help of mysterious imbued magical powers) and seriously written without being melodramatic. The ODD on this game was only half an hour, because it really was a challenge, and I was genuinely sad when my warrior-dude bit the dust while running from the first main boss. (run away!)

The game receives a cover content rating of 8 for grammatical correctness, if not originality. “In a world of darkness and magic, power-hungry warlords battle each other for control of feudal Japan. At the height of the chaos, a young princess is kidnapped…” Should you buy this game? Immediately, and buy me one too.

Ghost Vibration:

They say that presentation if everything. Whoever they are, they were right. This game never made it out of the box. It failed the reviewing criterion for cover content so badly that I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to take the CD out of the case. When I was done laughing, I passed it on to Aniraz, who also laughed until she could barely move. You’ll excuse me for not giving this game a proper review as soon as you read this excerpt…

“Shoot the ghost, aim and inhale! The new axis fear action which trembles the prayer. It depends on the elite chestnut thornback tar group Artoon, the work of topic this summer. While inside the Western-style building where many evil spirit wriggles, catching evil spirit the action game which it clears! The fear production with movie camera work, and the ghost capture by the unique weapon “Spear cancer/gun’ is a special feature.”

Should you buy this game? I’m not sure. I’ll let you know when I’m done giggling.

Blood Omen 2:

Having never played Blood Omen 1, I can’t tell you whether this game is better than or worse than the original. I can tell you that the backgrounds are average, and the bad guys are ok. Not great, but ok.

You are the anti-hero, Kain, vampire warrior extraordinaire, who is out to reclaim his dark empire from some mysterious rival vampire who’s taken over things while you spent the last 400 years snoozing.

Right, so you, Kain, wake up, grouchy and unhappy, and deign to follow around some saucy vampire tart (with a cape but no pants on) as part of a tutorial that lasts about 45 minutes, supposedly to help you remember the skills you may have forgotten during your 400 year nap. It would be nice if you could skip the tutorial and just read the command buttons from the menu, but there is no escape. So we follow around miss sassy-pants, who reminds us how to bludgeon people on the street to death and drink their blood. (Sensei the school teacher sez: Kain should get a time-out for bad behavior. It isn’t nice to exsanguinate pedestrians)

Once we finish the laborious and torturously long tutorial, we get to run amok somewhere in England, biting people and fighting things. Oh yes, and we get to take the weapons from defeated foes, which is something I appreciate very much. I always wondered why they never let you do that in other games. Cheapskates.

The cover content for this game gets an 8, it too is normal and grammatically correct. The ODD on this game? How long it took me to die the first time? Two seconds. Miss Sassy-pants told me water was deadly to vampires, that falling in would be the death of me, but did I take her advice? No. I ran off the end of a pier and died a horrible and rather effervescent death. Fortunately, this game gives you checkpoints at regular intervals from where you can be reincarnated (sans weapon) and try again. I may have died two or three times, but I did play for about two hours before putting my sleepy thumbs to bed.

As lukewarm as this review sounds, the game isn’t actually bad. Aside from the fighting and biting, you can also jump, climb, and employ a bit of strategy. Kain is a bit like an undead Lara Croft, but pastier. Should you buy this game? I wouldn’t recommend it. I don’t like any games that involve killing innocent people. Once you pull a weapon the people run of screaming too, and when you corner them, they beg for mercy. It’s one thing to slay a whole army of demons and bad guys, but a game that rewards you for killing people, even women walking down the street, is just warped.

The End.

Well, we’re here. We’ve made it to Karachi, and by way of a lawn chair, parked by a CPU on the floor and sitting in front of a monitor that’s perched on someone’s dresser, we’ve also made it back into Blogistan.

Right, so back to blogging.

The flight from Islamabad to Karachi was short, and like all turbulent flights, it was great for restoring the digital clarity on your fear of Allah that you sometimes lose over time. If you’re ever feeling a little disconnected from your Deen, or that you’ve gotten some static interference with you direct link to Allah, just board a plane, take it zillions of feet into the air in cloudy weather, and then let it drop a few times, and maybe do a little pitching. Not only will that put the fear of God, death, Qiyamat, and accountability back into you (Astaghfirullah, I’m not ready to die!) but it will also cure hiccups.

There’s nothing like a little perceived brush with death to remind you of your own mortality. I highly recommend it to everyone. But you know, if you can’t afford to board a plane on a windy day, and if you happen to also live in Karachi, I would recommend this great new chauffer service that not only:

1. Gets you from point A to point B, but also-

2. Dashes any delusions of immortality and-

3. Reacquaints you with the possibility of your own demise.

I call it, “Qasim’s Qiyamat Prequel Tour,” or, “Corolla of Death.”

Here’s how it works. You hop into the car fifteen minutes before Iftar with half an hour of road between you and your destination, and then watch as the driver (Qasim) breaks ever traffic rule known to man, and then makes up some new violations as he goes along. It really is most exciting, and the brushes with death or dismemberment that result from running red-lights and tailgating petrol tankers do wonders for your Taqwa. And for the hundreds of near-misses, we really only hit two cars on the way home from the airport.

Just two.

One smash into a van in the airport parking lot, you know, to raise the adrenaline right at the start of the tour, and then one with another car half-way through the journey to keep that adrenaline rushing. Damage done to other vehicles was ignored (this is Karachi) while the damage done to ours (knocked a head-light out, the whole thing, complete with casing) was easily mended with the supply of spare head-lights kept in the house. Apparently these head-lights fall out easily, and often.

Contrary to common belief, this tour is actually exhilarating and even….fun. Of all the near-death experiences I’ve ever had, these last 57 in the car yesterday were the only ones where I’ve been laughing and seeing my life flash before my eyes at the same time.

Driver: :::Swerving to avoid pedestrian while being squeezed between cement median and truck loaded with sides of beef::: “Who am I to blame if these pedestrians keep trying to jump out at me? I swear, every time I drive all the crazies come out and try to hit me…Hey! Stop clutching at that handle, you want the door to fall off? Ow! Stop hitting me Ma, you want me to crash into something? :::swerve, screeeeeeeech, more swerving::::

This may have been the only time in my life where I was unable to recite Ayatul-Kursi properly due to the fact that I was cracking up. For the heart-attack my cousin’s driving gave me, it also gave me a belly-ache from laughing.

Driver: :::upon hitting another car and watching the head-light fly off into space::: What was that noise? That other guy must have lost a bit of his car then. Just a bit of plastic off of his cheap car. It was falling off anyway, I saw.

His mother, Aunt: Our car made a noise too then. It was our car, we lost something!

Driver: Oh that? Just the engine. You want me to go back and get it?

Unfortunately, even with my cousin’s new and improved driving skills, we didn’t make it home in time for Iftar. We did make it half-way across Karachi in ten minutes, only to be blocked in pre-Iftari traffic five minutes from home. There was then some debate about whether or not the azhan had been called yet, which we tried to resolve based on whether the pedestrians still looked hungry.

Aunt: Look at how far the sun has set already, why don’t you eat one of the samosas I brought?

Driver: No no, it’s not time yet. See that fat guy? If it was Iftar he’d be running. Not walking to wherever he’s going.

Aunt: But he could already have broken his fast and would now be walking to the Masjid for Maghrib.

Driver: That guy would still be eating. No way it’s Iftar time.

Aunt: Those men on the corner were eating dates….

Driver: Shame on them, eating during Roza. Couldn’t they have waited five more minutes until the azhan was called? I swear, people these days… Look, there’s the house! See? I told you guys I would get you home before Iftar.

It’s been an interesting afternoon. Not only have I dropped an entire kilo of chickpeas on the floor and then chased after them, I recovered most of them too. Except the ones that have rolled under the fridge. They can stay there until Qiyamat comes for all I care. It serves them right for trying to escape the inexorable fate of being turned into Iftar. If they had just stayed in the bowl, they would’ve gotten turned into cholay (chick-pea salad) but since they decided to cling to the earth, some of them got turned into hummus instead.

:::squish:::

The Italians make wine with their toes. I don’t see why I can’t make hummus with my sandals. All you do is step on some of the chickpeas that escaped your notice, smashing them into the treads of your sandals. Then go step on some garlic, walk through a pile of salt and add a little Tahini for taste. Voila.

Based on the other things I’ve dropped today (you think fasting breath is bad? Try having fasting BRAIN) I could make a few more dishes. From the wet, boiled potato that slipped out of my grip and ricocheted off the dish rack, I could make hashed browns. Or smashed browns. After rolling around in the sink that potato certainly looked brown.

If I could just have directed the river of milk I poured on the counter towards the pile of coffee-crystals that missed my cup at Iftar time, I could have hosted a tea-party for the ants. They would have loved me for it too. Heck, I would have loved me for it. Except that the sugar was six inches upstream and I don’t like my coffee unsweetened.

I’m not the only one who cooks like this, so stop laughing at me, Aniraz.

Just two days ago she dropped a container of red lentils (dry, uncooked) on the floor, and it exploded all over the kitchen like so much disc-shaped confetti. She cleaned it up. But if she had taken my advice, she would’ve dropped some hot water, red pepper, and browned onions, stomped until soft, added a teaspoon of cumin…

3 am, Village Time.

The night watchman (chawkidaar) is walking up and down the same ½ kilometer strip. He has a whistle, which he blows intermittently, without any regularity. He fweets when he pleases. Just now he poked his head into the small shop where four tailors work and sleep, and he fweeted away till they woke up and started cursing him, though not good naturedly. After that he walks down the street, all the way until the main double road, and then walks back up it again. As he goes, stray dogs prance out from behind cars and people’s lawns to follow him at a distance, wagging their tails and nipping at each other playfully. His entourage.

The chawkidaar reaches the end of his beat, the other main street, and turns around to head back the other way. On his way to the end of the block, he makes a detour at the ‘chappar hotel,’ a village eatery composed of an open air stove, a frying pan perched on a barrel and an above-ground tandoor that doubles as a stove. Since it’s almost time for Sahoor, the cook is setting things up, dragging out lawn chairs and the one charpai that at least ten customers can fit on. While he’s setting up he’s also trying to fry parathas, so once he throws one on the tava, he rushes off and does something else, stirs whatever is in the fyring pan, opens a few more chairs, or throws another piece of wood into the barrel before the tava starts to smoke dangerously.

The chawkidaar stands near the tava as the parathas are frying, he talks to the cook as the cook dashes about madly, trying to line his chairs up straight as well as not burn his bread. A few stray dogs get bold enough to come prancing up to the warmth of the barrel, and both the chawkidaar and the cook make sudden throwing motions towards the dogs. This, my dear non-Pakistanis, is called ‘Air Rock.’ It’s what you throw at a stray dog when they’ve come too close or gotten too bold. It doesn’t actually take a rock, because the dogs know well enough what a person looks like when something is about to be thrown, and they take the hint and scamper away.

There is a flash of lightening so bright that it’s blinding, followed by a roll of thunder. There is a brief conversation between the cook and the chawkidaar, in which the cook says something about “Baarish” (rain) and the chawkidaar shakes his head and says “Barsaat” (storm).

In the distance, the dogs suddenly begin barking, all eleven of them who’ve congregated beneath a street light, and both men throw air rocks again. The dogs are too far away to care though, so they go on howling and yipping. The cook gets frustrated and howls back at the dogs. The chawkidaar laughs.

Suddenly the clouds flare and crash again, and it begins to rain. Not light rain, but big, cold drops of cruel winter rain, and panic breaks out in the chapar hotel. The cook yells something, and suddenly, five men rush out of the darkened shop behind him and start moving lawn chairs. Three of them pick the barrel full of fire (and topped with frying parathas) and move it underneath of the cloth awning that counts as the restaurant’s only shelter. There is a bit of swearing and howling on behalf of the men, which the dogs answer.

After one last communal howl, the dogs slink off in a pack towards the group of taxis parked on the roadside and begin fighting for spaces underneath. Only the strongest dogs will stay dry tonight, because there are more dogs than taxis and no two dogs will stand to share the same taxi.

The smallest of them, the scrawny, unhappy dogs with drooping ears and dripping coats, jog dejectedly down the street in search of shelter.

Where do I fit in in all this? I’m the lone figure on the rooftop, laughing in the rain and flannel pajamas.

Narrated by Abu Hurairah: The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessing of Allah be upon him, has said: “The food for two persons is sufficient for three, and the food for three persons is sufficient for four persons.” -Sahih Al-Bukhari

As I type this, I am nodding and groaning at the same time. Why, oh why, did I eat so very much at Iftar today? I think it’s because there was so much food that we ran out of space on the table, and that it’s mandatory to take a little bit of everything. You know, just to taste.

We don’t have Iftar like this every day, today was a party-sharty. It was also a lesson in self-control, as in, “Why it is important to exercise some.” I’m not going to type of the shamefully long list of all the things I ‘tasted,’ (pitch-in parties…groooaaan…) I’m just going to say it was too much at the time. It wouldn’t have been too much at any other time during the year, but after a week of fasting I think my stomach capacity may be reduced to about…eight ounces. Yep. How else to explain that I can fill up on a cup of coffee and two dates and be set until dinner two hours later?

Right, well my stomach has shrunk, but my eyes are still the same size. They’re still way too big for my current stomach capacity. If I had been smarter, I would’ve implemented all the neato tips I have learned to discipline one’s stomach during Ramadan. Which are:

Number One: The less food you put before yourself, whether in your plate or on the table, the less food you’ll eat. Never mind how empty the dining table looks, or how deprived you THINK you’ll be, the fact is, we don’t need half of the food we cram into our faces as soon as the Azhan is called. One good idea is to prepare a plate of Iftari using your brain and not your hungry eyes. Set this plate in front of you and eat from it once the Azhan is called. Don’t fill it again, because chances are, your logical estimation of the food you needed was correct the first time, and anything that would be added afterwards may be due to an overly-enthusiastic tongue. Besides, stuffing yourself silly as soon as the sun sets kinda defeats the purpose of fasting, in that fasting is supposed to help us tame our bodily cravings, not just put them off for a few hours and then indulge them to excess. :::whacks self on head with empty plate:::

:::brushes crumbs out of hair:::

Number Two: Eat and Run. To the prayer rug, that is. Don’t make Iftar a long, leisurely affair, because the longer you’re at the table, the more you’ll eat. Eat and go pray, then come back and have a big drink of water because chances are you were dehydrated anyway.

Number Three: Clean up right away. Brothers too. Help your mother out. She’s probably tired. Plus, if you put the food away immediately it can’t sit there and demand that you eat it.

Number Four: After Iftar and Maghrib, leave the dining area. Go read a book, preferably the Qur’an, or work out, or contemplate the sky, or something, but don’t hang around and pick on things non-stop until dinner is served. Yes you, I’m talking to YOU, Abez.

:::eeek!:::

(Blog version 2.0. Edited for clarity at 10:37 pm, +6 GMT)

It’s 3:39 am and here I am, downstairs, on the computer, in the dark, by myself. And it’s cold too.

So now you sez, Abez, go to bed!

And I sez, I just came from bed. I lay there for exactly 2 hours and 14 minutes before making my escape.

Then you sez, Why were you not asleep?

And I sez, Cuz I’m a big loser who’s ruined my sleep schedule by waking up at 1 in the afternoon today, that’s why. And now I’ll probably be up until Suhoor, and then sleep in again, totally ruining another fast.

Then you sez: What’s going on here sensei?

And I sez: It’s this sleeping thing. So far, I had been waking up in the morning, even though I’m off from work for the entire month of Ramadan, precisely because I did not want to waste my fasting hours in la-la land. For what it’s worth, I have only about 7 or 8 hours of daylight before the sun sets and it’s time to eat again, and I don’t want to be snoozing through it. It’d be a shameful thing to be asleep the whole time, because then it’s not like I’d even know I was fasting to begin with, and how can I derive any benefit, spiritual or otherwise, from being hungry in my sleep? Aside from dreaming about donuts?

Then someone else sez: But what’s the point of being awake while your stomach is growling? In fact, what’s the point of feeling hungry anyway?

And I scratches my head and sez: Hunger, like anger and passion, is one of the strongest forces that man can experience. And also like anger and passion, it has its place within a certain halal limit. But as humans, and as sinners, we tend to take things beyond the limits that are good for us. We eat to excess and damage our bodies, we act of out anger where mercy would be called for instead, and we turn our passions and desires to haram, allowing them to consume and preoccupy us.

One of the ideas of fasting is to control these base urges, not just hunger, but the other things as well, and to bring them back into the limits which Allah recommended, to basically show them what’s what.

By doing so you are retraining your body and mind to not only match, but exceed the necessary standard. You can eat during the day for the rest of the year, but you know you don’t have to over-eat. You know that you have it in you to discipline yourself and not pig-out, because you did it for a whole month in Ramadan. You may get angry at some point in the months that follow, but you know you don’t have to swear or fight, and you know you can avoid it this one day because you did it for a whole month in Ramadan. You may feel passion or desire, but you know you won’t allow it to consume you, you won’t become unhealthily obsessed by something you know you have the power to deny for an entire month.

Like I said, it’s spiritual boot-camp. And who could get any benefit from sleeping though boot camp? The idea is to be making a conscious effort to subdue your most primal and base urges, and in order to do so, it would really help to be…uh…conscious.

Then you sez: You’re still not asleep yet, loser.

And I sez: I know, but InshaAllah I’ll wake up tomorrow and stay up. And I can go without coffee in the morning too, because I did it for a whole month last Ramadan.

Sensei Feels Soggy.

By soggy she means deflated.

By deflated she means defunct.

By defunct she means out of order.

You know what she means.

It is sometimes said that things have to get worse before they get better. This pithy maxim is dedicated to Ahmad, who mentioned on my tag board that my posts have been getting substandard lately, possibly due to Ramadan. Well, in an attempt to fulfill this wise prediction (worse before better) I’m going to type another really lame blog and then work on a better one tomorrow, but today, I’m just going to bewail the state of things at large. *wail*

My MSN messenger won’t work. I’m posting this because of the many, many people that have been trying to have one-sided conversations with me in the last week. No, I am most definitely not ignoring you, or being pensively silent, I’m just not sending or receiving any messages, even though I appear to be online. And sometimes, one line out of a dozen will actually get through to a person, but that’s all. It’s frustrating enough to want to take a chapal to the CPU.

:::whack.whack.whack.whack.whack.whack.whack:::

So yeah, any advice, Oh My Tech-Savvy Blogistanis? Other than get DSL and a new computer?

-sigh- Well, at least Ramadan has been going well. Of course, the daylight hours seem to last inordinately long, but at least after sunset things begin to speed up. Alhamdulillah, I’ve managed to not play one single video game (Nethack or otherwise) since the beginning of Ramadan, and have filled my free time with working out and reading instead. And my trusty sidekick Aniraz (who actually kicked me the other day, which may explain why they call them sidekicks) has been invaluable as a Qur’an reader/reminder. Reading Qur’an out loud is great, because then two people can benefit from it at the same time, and because you can discuss things.

Hmmm. I definitely feel defunct. And maybe it’s more than the fact that the laundry is calling my name. Allah knows best. Seeing as how it’s only noon and Iftar preparations are hours away, my other entertainment options include:

Dirty laundry? But it’s so…dirty…

Working out? Actually, can’t do that while I’m fasting. I’d croak.

Blog surfing? I’d love to but the internet connection is bogus.

Sewing? It is a wise man who learns from his mistakes. After putting one pant leg on all wonky yesterday, I’m not about to do THAT again, at least not without the benefit of coffee.

This is such a lame blog. Which is ok, because things have to get worse before they get better.

Is this better now?

Alright folks, without further ado, here’s is Brother Sven’s version of what’s going on here…:p

whoa, ok, hold your horses for a sec here… Abez, is that my bio?? (off the record: remember guys, girls always exaggerate qualities to make Prince Charming look just a little better). I’m compelled to do some tafseering here…

Alias: I’ve had a lot of weird names, and ‘Brother Terminator’ is by FAR the nicest one yet. When I was a kid, they called me baba (no clue why), then they got creative and started calling me Mr. Bubbles (still no clue why either). Then they got bored of me and sent me to school so I could cause chaos there. In kindergarten I was that kid always stealing the little plastic cows from our class animal farm, so they came up with a few names for me there. By grade 3, I was the smelly Paki.. oops I mean… Nordic (sniff sniff, you smell like curry! errr… whale blubber). In grade 5 I made a few allies, and I was just me! (diplomacy WORKS!). Then in grade 6, I was promoted and became the infamous Fatso. c’mon, there’s always a fatso. Oye!!! motaaaayy! motaaay alooo! (translation= Hey fatty, fat potaaaaato!) What’sa class without a fatty?

Soon enuff, I took care of that. One summer of B-ball, roller blading and training, and I was back slick and chillin. (‘Whoa, whhoooose THAT new guy??’) From there on, I guess there wasn’t much development on the names front. Except one maybe, during high school, I was a little quiet, maybe even considered shy by some, so a few people noticed that and dubbed me ‘The mute’. Of course, then we all grew up and realized Santa Clause wasn’t for real and neither was the tooth fairy, so it was all kool in the end.

ok, moving along here..

Real name: Sven? Abez, you cudda given me a Muslim name at least, but Sven?? Now they’re never gonna believe this stuff. That name needs a Muslim-ish sound to it.. maybe Sevvaanul Abdullah, or how about Sev’Nur Rahmaan? We can even drop that name altogether and say it was a typo or something, but I like something like … Meer Bahadur Jaan Wala Khan?? You think it suits me? I know it doesn’t have an Icelandic touch to it.. but hey, don’t kid your’self, Pakis are *everywhere* and there ain’t nuttin wrong with a Paki Viking.

Status: Stop lying Abez. I conned you into marrying me, let’um know the truth. I started it, and you know it! But yes, I have 3 wives 28 children… oops , I meant, I’m engaged and I can’t wait till I get married to my one and only 🙂

Place of birth: umm… minor typo. Subzi mundi, Iceland.

Hair Color: Blond, greasy, occasionally dyed green and blue when I’m possessed by the Metallica heavy metal demon. I just can’t help it, I wake up and find tattoos and piercings all over… And sometimes when we have guests over, I’ll be sitting there all quiet, calm, very nicely conducting myself, and all of a sudden…it takes over! I leap into the air and do the guitar move, head banging, “born to be wild!” yeah! You think I’m bad, you should see my sister. She’s known as the ‘heavy metal hijabi’. Scary sight dude! Yeah man, there’s a breed of those still around.

Eye Color.. Lol! I was gonna say flaring red, but then you might think some psycho jinn has taken over me… either that or I’ve been smoking some weird stuff…well, ok ice blue. But there’s lots of surma (kohl, my momma just made a whole bunch) in there. (btw, my momma is the daughter of a Hakeem, A Nordic Hakeem of course!, so she makes those traditional remedies passed down from generations.)

Height and Weight: This is actually the truth. I know it seems a bit far fetched, but yeah, caveman Sven has big dimensions. When I was in my mommas tummy, they fed her turkeys day and night. After I popped out, she kept feeding me Nihari. Yeah, I was practically born with teeth, and I bit. One day they let me loose in the chicken pen in our yard, and man, it was Qiyamat for them chickens. Oh, and you don’t even wanna know what happened to my pet goat. Then on my 1st birthday, I was given a Danish cow as a gift. So you can see why I’m a giant. Giant training starts from an early age, and many animals are sacrificed in the noble cause. Yo man, who doesn’t want their very own giant?? Just admit it, you all want one.

Languages spoken: I don’t speak Pushto or Farsi. But you know what, I speak fluent Fay ki boli! Anyone who knows this language belongs to an elite group, who have gone beyond the need to converse in humanoid dialects. Mufuj’jafai fa’fai kifi bofol’lifi afa’tifi ha’fai!!! Beat that! (translation?= Abez hasn’t a clue!)

Hobbies: C’mon, that’s a bit too much flexing. You’re making it look like I’m flexing all the time, like some baysharam beech wala nanga bum! (translation= shameless naked beach bum) Nonetheless, it’s no secret that every guy flexes in the mirror, regularly, and sometimes even a few times a day. It’s a guy thing, we all do it. Each time we think our arms look a little bigger, or we’re just a little closer to that 6-pack. Maintaining an amazing physique it not easy you know. The secret to a healthy lifestyle lies in Nihari and Lahori parathas.

Education: Apart from my Doctorate in Veterinary Physics, my laser printer prints out quality diplomas, degrees, and certificates from a variety renowned Universities and colleges of the western world. My extensive knowledge and experience in the science of Pseudo Engineering has earned me Honorary degrees from institutions such as Yale, Harvard, and MIT.

Occupation: great, she tells them all the manly jobs and then end with a hand model? You know, Lifeguard, Fireman, Chief, Hunter, Muezzin… real brotherly stuff. Abez, my bulging hairy knuckles don’t make a pretty sight. And then people wonder why guys become sissies after marriage, well… you got sisters making hand models out of us…what do u expect?

Ok, so that’s me in a nutshell. Well, who am I? In case you haven’t seen my blog, it is the one with ….yikes, Iftar time! Gotta go.

Ok ok, enough about my engagement. And brother Sven will send a guest-post when he can, but at the moment he’s busy writing a thesis titled: Ethical Ramifications and Grounds for the Cross-Ambulation of Certain Poultry Across Certain Roads in the 21st Century: A Paradigm. What did you think they studied in Theology of Veterinary Physics anyway?

So, back to nonsense as usual. Ramadan has been going well so far, Alhamdulillah. Fasting is quite useful actually, in that it makes it easier to concentrate on prayer, and it feels kinda good to be running on an empty stomach. I do ok without the food, though the lack of caffeine kind of slows me down. Still, I enjoy fasting, and find it a good thing for spiritual renewal. One thing fasting is NOT good thing for though, is sewing projects.

Now folks, my sartorial skills are dodgy, even on good days, and I have about a 70% success rate with making my own clothes. Today, regardless of the fact that I’m fasting, I thought I’d make a pair of winter-weight pants. This is where the alarms should’ve gone off, but some of my mental faculties are on break for Ramadan. Oh well.

I brought the cloth out, pinned it in place, drew my pattern and started cutting. So far, so good. I threaded the machine, filled the bobbin and got it ready and oiled for action. No problem. Then I put two pieces together and sewed them, and people, let me tell you that nothing ruins a pair of pants so well as putting one of the legs on inside-out and upside down. (doh!)

Similarly, nothing ruins a big pot of Nihari so well as burning it down to one inch of black sludge. This method for concentrating Nihari isn’t normally in my cooking repertoire, but I started a pot of Nihari while I was fasting, and found the food-smells to be tempting, so I left the kitchen. I might have been ok if I went to wait in the dining room, but I found my way to the living room sofa, and woke up an hour later to a smell reminiscent of burning rubber. But spicier.

Which wasn’t entirely unappetizing…whoops, time to go burn something for Iftar!

Dear Blogistanis, if you go back two days and read my engagement post, you will notice that the first sentence is: Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. Well, since you guys asked the questions, you can’t blame me if most of what I’m about to type is all lies. –ahem-

Alias: Brother Terminator

Real Name: Sven

Status: Officially conned into marrying Abez.

Place of Birth: Iceland

Hair color: Platinum blonde

Eye color: Ice blue

Height: 10 feet, 5 inches.

Weight: 190. Stone.

Languages spoken: Finnish, Swedish, English, Arabic, Hindko, Urdu, Punjabi, and a smattering of Indonesian Bahasa.

Hobbies: Flexing, horseback riding, battling barbarian hordes in B-class seventies movies, running for governor of California, more flexing, studying Islam, flexing…

Education: Doctor of Theology from the University of Veterinary Physics, Ottawa.

Occupation: Lifeguard, Fireman, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief, Muezzin, Neurosurgeon, Rocket Scientist, Big Game Hunter and Hand Model.

Brother Sven aka Terminator is a non-smoker and an avid reader modern history, strategy, fiction, and cereal boxes. He enjoys long walks on short piers, candle-lit fast-food dinners and wearing his pants too high. Though of Scandinavian descent, Brother Sven is a distant relation of Abez, in that they both claim to be descendants of Hazrat Adam, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.

Further inquiries about Brother Sven/Terminator may be directed towards him….errr…directly, as he is regularly present in this blog.

Thank you. Good night.

Was chilling and watching channel 4 yesterday. Channel 4 is Iqra TV, by the way, I’m not sure whether it’s from Saudi or Cairo, but they always broadcast all five Jamaats from either Mekkah or Medinah, and these days they’re broadcasting Tarawih as well.

I love watching the jamaat prayers, I love seeing everyone lined up, Arabs, Africans, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Caucasians, and tons of people I can’t label, all of them touching shoulders and facing the same direction. It doesn’t matter that they don’t all speak the same language (though we should, really) but everyone’s worshipping the same God and they’re standing together as brothers. I love seeing the worshippers break their fast too, there are over a million guys sitting together eating dates, olives, bread, and passing things to each other though you know most of them can’t even understand each other. Though there are times when the discord in the Muslim Ummah depresses me, there are also times when the harmony and discipline makes me all warm and fuzzy on the inside. Iftar is one of those times. A million hungry people sharing dates and bread, then they all help clean up, pray together, and then go home. Awwww…

I digress. Anyway, I was watching the Tarawih prayer and I was surprised to see that they had finally put subtitles on the bottom of the screen, so I could read in English which surahs the Imam was reciting in prayer. I was reading the translation and saw one particularly brilliant line of the Qur’an (they’re all brilliant actually, but that one struck me as being particularly beautiful) and I nodded, and I was like Yeah, SubhanAllah. And I was shocked to see one of the guys nod and smile during his prayer at the same time!

It was so freaky, until I realized (duh) the guy could understand the Qur’an and what the Imam was reciting. He didn’t NEED subtitles, he understood the beauty of that particular passage in its original form, and he nodded and smiled too. I was jealous, almost insanely jealous, and so sad. I still am sad. I can’t believe that I would need someone else to tell me what the Qur’an says, because my Arabic is so bad that I wouldn’t be able to tell myself. It’s a handicap, actually, a really big one. And there’s potential for confusion there. Someone could give me a bogus translation or interpretation and I would have to take their word for it, because I would have no way of verifying it for myself. I can’t understand my own Holy Book, the pages of beauty and wisdom I’m supposed to be using to guide my life. Shame on me.

This was the second big reminder just this week of how illiterate I am. The first was when I went to Sadaat’s blog on Ramadan and found it to be in Urdu. Everyone’s been telling me it’s an absolutely beautiful post, but you know what? I can’t read it. My Urdu is only slightly better than my Arabic. I’ve never studied Urdu before, everything I know has been picked up from being thrown into the language head-first.

I lament my lack of language skills, and I get to feeling like it’s terminal or something. But you know what? It isn’t. There’s no reason why I can’t learn Arabic, especially when I want to so badly. And if I did this ok with just hearing Urdu, maybe I’ll do better if it’s written down somewhere for me to study. I think I’m going to add that to my list of things to do: Learn to understand my own Holy Book! Stop being such a lazy illiterate!

InshaAllah. 🙂

Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.

Abez is engaged.

Everybody dance.

In case anyone’s looking for proof that Shaitan has, in fact, been locked up for Ramadan, I just put a perfect pie into the oven. 😀

Following in the brilliant footsteps of Choco and Sana I’ve decided to put together a list of things I will try to accomplish this Ramadan. And so, in no order of importance whatsoever, here is My List!

No computer games. (eeek!) Computer games are my enemy, and I know it. Any time I get on to the computer with the intention of doing something productive, I find myself clicking on the wrong icon and opening up Nethack instead of one of the many Islamic articles I’ve started but not finished. Then, an hour later, I’m done playing and I get up and leave the computer, totally forgetting why I got on it in the first place!

More Playstation games. I’m serious. Let me explain. I only play Playstation when I’m working out. I turn it on, hop on to the elliptical trainer and manage to forget that I’m exercising for about 50 minutes. Once I’m done, I turn it off. You wonder how much skill I’ve got to be able to jog and push the little buttons on the controller at the same time. Well, I don’t play fast-paced shoot-em-ups. I play RPG’s, like Final Fantasy (I have VIII and IX). It doesn’t matter how quickly I push the buttons. Though I admit, sometimes I make mistakes and there’s been more than one time where I’ve made Squall take a whack at Quistis instead of the bad guy, he he. Oops. So, back to the beginning, more Playstation means more exercise, and I should have more time to exercise since I’m not going to be playing Nethack for the next month, InshaAllah. (I mean after Iftar, by the way.)

Read more Qur’an! This is a really important one. I’ve gotten out of the habit of reading the Qur’an every night. I enjoy reading it when I pick it up, but the problem is, I can’t remember to pick it up. I’ve got to re-incorporate it into the nightly bed-time ritual (wash face, brush teeth, pray Isha, arrange pillows elaborately and crash). I just need to move my desk so that it’s in front of where I pray, and then put the Qur’an on top of that. Then mebbe when I see it I’ll remember, InshaAllah.

Begin everything with Bismillah: I used to be much better about doing that, but I’ve been forgetting to lately. (which is probably because I haven’t reminded myself until now!) It’s a good habit to begin everything in the name of Allah, in the hopes that Allah blesses your effort and purifies your intention. It’s an excellent way to re-instill Taqwa and awareness of Allah into your daily actions.

Concentrate more on my prayers: It’s so shameful that sometimes I can pray and then not remember having prayed later. This is because I wasn’t paying enough attention the first time to even know that I was performing an act of worship! It’s shocking to me, how stupid I can be about it. I joke about the Muslim Macarena, but it’s fairly serious. I can’t just be going through the motions without meaning anything I’m saying or feeling anything I’m doing. Gotta concentrate more.

I’ll probably add more things to the list as I go. At the moment, I’ve got to make Iftar. Oh wait, that’s another thing I have to do:

Plan better Iftars!: Pakoras have officially been banned from the house this year. And, we’ve all resolved to be smarter about eating, not to gorge ourselves at Iftar time, but to have dates and tea and maybe a few crackers. Then pray, relax, and have dinner a short while later. This means I can’t be lazy and just do pakoras. Hmmm…

I’m going to go and rummage around the refrigerator now…

Ok, I repent of that substandard blog. Having had a nap now, I can try to make amends for the aforesaid lameness in blogitude.

People sometimes ask me how our inter-faith household has dealt with holidays. Between having a Christian mom and a Muslim dad, our house has both Iftar parties and Easter Dinner, and last year, Christmas was in Ramadan.

Now, I am in no way advocating the idea that Muslims should celebrate Christian holidays. But, in my house, it wouldn’t be right for anyone to forbid my mother from celebrating her holidays and us helping her. So how does it work out? Strangely.

After years of assorted inter-faith holiday seasons, things start getting mixed around. Christmas dinner is served after Iftar, and no Ramadan would be complete without gingerbread men and fruitcake. Actually, I’ve already made the gingerbread men, and since my momma isn’t here to whack me when I start taking artistic license, the gingerbread men now come in two themes, _-Pirates and Punjabis-_. (click for the tasty photo!)

We may skip the fruitcakes, but we have already starting singing the carols. Yep. Ramadan carols. Family favorites like,

(to the tune of Deck the Halls)

Fill the glasses with Roohafaza

Ta-na-na-na-na, Dheem-ta-na-na!

(to the tune of Frosty the Snowman)

Greasy Pakoras!

In a jolly, happy bowl

With the besan mix

And the deep-fry ghee

And some ketchup and chut-NEY!

Additionally, we get this nagging feeling that some guy with a beard is supposed to come down the chimney on Eid to put peppermint miswaks into the leather socks hanging from the mantle. I can’t remember his name, but I know he’s the same guy who chases reindeer around with a knife on Eidul-Azha.

Rudolph the Eid Qurbani…

It’s the weekend.

::jogs around chair in slow-mo:::

wheee.

I think I need a nap. In the mean time, read this _-Eid story-_

zzzzzzz

(pss pss, visit the Muslim Writers Society page for one of Hijabified poems and vote for it!)

I had intended to write a blog about preparing for Ramadan, but instead I’m writing about pie crust. Now, about the pie. There are only four ingredients in a pie crust- cold water, butter, flour and salt. It is almost impossible to go wrong. You add the flour and salt, toss in the butter till it’s all crumbly and them pour in a few tablespoons of water. Then you roll the dough out into a lovely round shape, and in my case, you wholly destroy it while trying to lift it off of the counter and into the pan.

You gather up the broken bits, mash them back into a ball and roll it out again. You carefully edge your fingers beneath it so as to not damage while lifting it, and then watch as it comes to pieces again. Five of them to be exact.

You fume. You rage. You add more flour. You roll it out one more time and threaten the pie crust as you try delicately to lift it from the counter. When the middle of it drops out, leaving you clutching at the edges of an uncooperative pie-crust twenty minutes before dinner is supposed to be served, you leave the recalcitrant pastry right where it is and go sit on the sofa and count to ten.

You call in reinforcements. You wake your sister up from off the sofa and explain your pitiful story. She stumbles groggily over to your piecrust and looks at it. She adds more butter, a little more flour, and she hands you the ball of dough so you can see what piecrust is supposed to feel like. You nod and give the ball back.

She rolls out the piecrust, nicely, roundly, and then lifts the edges. She picks it up and…it disintegrates in mid-air, landing halfway in the pan and halfway all over the counter.

You look at her.

She looks at you.

You both pick up the stray pastry bits and mash them into the bottom of the pan like play-doh.

You convene a council of bakermeisters to discuss the possible causes of the disintegration of the piecrust. After rejecting theories of:

Not enough flour? (you can’t mis-measure one cup.)

Water not icy enough? (It had ice-cubes floating in it.)

Wrong butter? (Same kind we use every time)

You are left with only one possible reason: the evil inherent in some pastries.

It’s a well-known fact that some pastries (specifically Napoleon and puff) are in league with the devil. They will do their level best to thwart you at every turn. They will crack, collapse, melt, implode or explode, sometimes all in the same baking session, just to test your skill as a baker and your Sabr as a Muslim.

Think about it, Shaitan isn’t really here to mislead us in big things, he’s never going to get Muslims to start worshiping stone idols or anything really major like that, so he just leads us astray in small ways. Like with diabolical pie crust. You think the piecrust is on your side, but actually, it’s not. It’s whole purpose is to make you lose your temper and become frustrated enough to direct your anger onto other things and people. This is also true of:



Non-functioning staplers.

Flat tires on days when you’re already late.

Destructively-hot irons that burns holes in new clothing.

Etc.

Though this doesn’t seem immediately connected to our Iman, we realize that these small things put you in a bad mood, which in turn, causes us to wrong our brothers. We snap at people. “Don’t bug me!,” we say, “I’m in a bad mood!” We allow our stress-levels to accumulate and then burst on people who had nothing to do with it. As parents, sometimes we take a bad day at work out on our kids. As kids, we take a crappy day and allow it to reflect in a lack of patience with our parents. As brothers and sisters, we talk to each other with rudeness and exasperation apparent in our voices.

The little things are a test of our patience and our ability to keep our tempers in check. The solution is to push the reset button on your emotions (it’s in the middle of your forehead. It can also be activated by going into Sajdah) and not allow the piecrust to win by making you lose the love, patience, and honor you’re supposed to treat all Muslims with.

Hmm. Looks like I’m writing about Ramadan after all.

I had a picture taken the other day. For posterity I suppose, which is a nice way of saying that thirty years from now, at least I’ll have proof that I wasn’t always old and ugly. Right.

I went into the studio and sat down, and the photographer came in and started arranging the lights with the aluminum foil umbrellas attached to them. I waited patiently for him to adjust everything, to put up the right background (grey), to give me confusing directions about which way to face (forward. No, not that forward, left and forward. Yes, no, more to the right. But forward.) When everything was finally ready, and the muscles in my neck had atrophied from holding my head still for so long, the photographer ducked behind the camera and said, Ready?

I took this as my cue and I smiled. And he stood up again. “Mun band karo!” he said, “Shut your mouth!”

“Shut my mouth?” I said as I ruined the pose I had been holding. “Why do I have to shut my mouth?”

“No teeth!” he said gruffly, and he re-ordered my head into position and then ducked behind the camera.

“Ready?” he asked. “One, two, three…”

::teeth!:::

I tried to spring my teeth on him at the last minute, but he stood up again angrily and said, “No teeth!”

“Why?” I pleaded, “What’s wrong with my teeth?”

“No teeth!”

Great. Of all the photographers in Islamabad I get to find the photo-Nazi. I finally acquiesced, and started wondering whether this was his way of telling me there was something intrinsically unphotogenic about my teeth. The pictures were taken, I left the studio. End of round one.

Fast-forward to a few days later when I go to pick the photos up. The man at the counter (who is not the photographer) very happily hands me the photos and smiles expectantly at me as I open the envelope.

“I hope you like your pictures, Baji!” he says. “We did a lot of hard work on them!”

“Hard work?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, leaning over the counter and whispering sympathetically, “To remove all of your spots.”

My spots?

????

My freckles.

Oh boy. They erased all of my freckles. All six million of them that are scattered over the bridge of my nose and cheeks. I haven’t a clue as to how they managed that. He was right, it must have been very hard work indeed!

I go to get a haircut at the beauty parlor and the woman cutting my hair touches my face and says gently, so as not to embarrass me, “You know, you need a deep-cleaning facial. You have very bad skin.”

“Bad skin?”

“Yes, for 300 rupees we could get rid of all those spots…”

There we go again. People talking about my spots. I get relatives asking me whether I’ve ever tried to have my skin “cured,” acquaintances asking me whether or not I’ve thought about micro-derm abrasion or some other crazy plastic surgery where they scrub the first layer of your skin off and you wear a mask for four weeks while it grows back.

Actually I have thought about it, but mostly in horror and aversion. And plus, where I come from, freckles are cute, dammit! Freckle-faced kids have been a mainstay of cultural American adorability since the beginning of time. I’m trying to instill this idea (read: brainwash with propaganda) into the new crop of Pakistanis that my cousins are breeding. Whenever one of the nieces or nephews gathers the courage to come and point at my nose and ask me why it’s covered in all those spots, I tell them that freckles are absolutely the best looking thing a kid can have. That in America, when they want to make a kid look cute, the paint him with freckles. That women go to plastic surgeons to have them permanently tattooed into their skin, and that at least four wars in the world have broken out on account of the fact that some people had less freckles than other people. And they tried to take the other people’s freckles. I tell them that freckles sell for over a thousand rupees a kilo and when I’m done, I’m going to sell mine and get rich.

Then we both nod solemnly.

:::teeth:::

Five minutes (and two cups of coffee) ago I was sleepy and didn’t feel up to typing a new blog. But now, five minutes (and two cups of coffee) later, I suddenly realize that it’s too late to be napping and there’s little else to do at the moment.

Whoops, but I’ve just realized that I’m still very, very sleepy. Was up late last night with dinner guests and didn’t get to bed until 5 am. Yes, 5 am, that crazy time when Fajr has already started and work is just four hours away. I caught a few zzzz’s (not many, just two or three) and then dragged myself off to work, where I nearly fell asleep in one of my student’s offices several times. What do you expect when I’m sitting on a sofa? You start off sitting, but the sleepier you are, the more you slouch until it looks like you’re reclining with your eyes half-open and talking grammar in your sleep.

(mumble mumble…the present-perfect tense…mumble mumble…infinitives easily confused with gerunds…mumble mumble…no czar, I didn’t put ketchup in your shoes…*snore*)

After coming home from work I prayed Zuhr and crashed in the waterbed, which I think may have forgiven me, or is at least tolerating me. After all, it didn’t burst and drown me. Woke up for Asr, have since prayed Maghrib and am now trying to stay awake by *doing* things. Like blogging nonsense and wandering aimlessly around the house.

I don’t know how much longer I can keep the pretense of *awakeness* up….If awakeness is a word at all…no czar, I didn’t put ketchup in your shoes…zzzzzzzzzz

I am a giant mutant kitten. Not strange at all.

Which cute or possibly strange kitten are you?
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I almost killed myself last night. Really. It was a near-death experience, I almost died of….guilt. You wonder: what could I possibly have done that could nearly kill with me guilt and yet NOT leave me incarcerated? Or do they allow blogging from prison? Ok, I’ll get to the point, though my mom will kill me after she reads this.

Last night, I started filling up my parents’ waterbed. See, it had been drained for maintenance a few uh…weeks ago, and my dad had been sleeping on the sofa since then. If it were up to my father, the waterbed would STILL be empty, because he prefers the sofa anyway.

Alors. I decided to fill the waterbed last night. I grabbed the garden house and hooked it up to the sink with a few nylons. (family tradition, don’t ask) I put the other end into the waterbed and turned on both taps. I waited.

I stood around.

I poked the bed.

It was taking too long.

I got bored.

I went to watch TV.

(slaps forehead)

Doh!

An hour later I heard a piercing shriek from Aniraz. I rushed downstairs and saw…this. (click link at your own risk) And then I died.

I can honestly say I have never felt so guilty in my entire life. I feel as though I have done an unspeakable wrong to an old friend. What did the waterbed ever do to deserve such heinous treatment? I think the only thing I could do worse than this would be to run over the family dog. Like the dog, this waterbed has been a true and loyal member of the family since time immemorial, and now, well…it’s still around, but I know it hates me now.

The taps were turned off immediately and we started draining the bed, and then cleaning up the flood of water that had gotten as far as the computer table in the next room. I couldn’t look at the waterbed, I felt as if it was going to burst any second, and the creaking and groaning of the waterbed frame didn’t do much to allay my fears. I turned off the lights, left the room and closed the door behind me.

I went to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea to calm my frazzled nerves. Your nerves would be frazzled too if you had overfilled a family friend to dangerous limits, flooded the house and had no way to rectify the situation in the half hour before your father was scheduled to come home. I sat down on the sofa and tried to figure out how I would break the news to my father.



Abez: (wringing hands nervously) “Dad, there’s been a terrible accident…”

Dad: (standing up suddenly) “What is it! Is everyone ok? What’s going on?”

Abez: (turns dramatically toward the camera) “Please sit down, it’s nothing fatal but there may be permanent damage…”

Dad: (taking a few uncertain steps towards the audience) “What’s going on! Tell me!”

Abez: (turning around suddenly) “The waterbed, it’s…”

Dad: (turning to face camera with both hands on face) Nahiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!

(translation: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!)

I felt as though I had failed the waterbed somehow, that I wasn’t helping the situation by closing the poor thing in the room by itself. I had abandoned it a second time…how could I? After all that I had done to it, did I not have the decency to show my face, to offer what little comfort I could?

I picked up my cup of tea and pulled a chair into the bedroom. It was the least I could do. The waterbed greeted me with silence. I could tell it was wrestling with its emotions, trying to forgive me despite the pain I had caused it, the neglect I was so pathetically trying to make up for even after the damage had been done. I didn’t know what to say, so I sat there in embarrassed quiet, periodically mopping the waterbed’s forehead…err…surface to catch the rivulets of water that were escaping from the hose.

When my father came home, I left the room and brought him in. He stood before the unhappy and distended bed with a look of polite shock on his face. You never want to overreact around the patient, it might upset them. He said a few sympathetic words, it was a surprisingly subdued reaction on his part, and then we left the room together to give the waterbed some peace. He shook his head sadly when we were no longer with earshot, and he didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was disappointed in me.

It took a full hour and a half to return the waterbed to its normal dimensions, but its skin has been permanently stretched out. Our relationship is strained as well. The events of last night are too fresh in both of our memories.

The waterbed hasn’t spoken to me since.

Is it Friday yet?

Almost?

Good. An Islamically themed blog is in order then. :::rolls up sleeves, cracks knuckles:::

I like praying early. I’ve discovered this for myself only recently, though I’ve been hearing about how great it is my whole life from my father, who likes to pray two minutes after the azhan has been called. And so, having now discovered that praying early does, in fact, rock, it is now my duty to follow in my father’s barefootsteps (with prayer marks on the ankles) and talk about how great it is to pray early. (yes, I am talking in circles again. Yes.)

So, Praying early rox because…

1.You have enough time to perform your prayer deliberately, and you’re not hurried into doing what looks like a Muslim Macarena instead of an act of worship. When you have the time, you can stand on the prayer rug before saying Takbeer for as long as it takes you to get into a worshipful state of mind, to clear your congested brain from stress and the problems that insidiously surface when you’re trying to concentrate on prayer instead.

2.Having prayed early, you are free from the nagging thought of, “Gee, I haven’t prayed yet.” This same thought is what keeps you from being able to nap when you’re tired (I can’t lay down, I haven’t prayed yet) or doing anything that involves a commitment of a few hours. I’m not saying that praying is a nagging or annoying thing, I’m saying that putting prayer off till the last minute is mentally taxing.

3.Prayer early is a practical way of making your worship a higher priority. Though you may feel like you’d rather play a game of basketball first and then pray on the court afterwards, you logically know that your spiritual fitness is more important than your physical fitness, so you work on the more important one first.

4. Praying at the earliest time ensures that you never miss a prayer unless you’re dead or unconscious. Once the azhan is called (it isn’t in the US, but you know what I mean) you just drop whatever you’re doing and pray because actually, you have no guarantee whatsoever that your life won’t end within the day. Of course, you’re young so you may laugh there for a moment, but think about it. What, did you get a special promise from Allah that you would see old age? That you would never be included in the statistic of people who die suddenly, such as physically fit footballers who collapse and die in the middle of a game? Or pedestrians killed instantly by hit and run drivers? Lots of people die young. You’re not any more or less special than they are. Your life doesn’t come with a guarantee, so pray while you have the chance.

“…Race one with another for forgiveness from your Lord and Paradise…” 57:20-21

I’m under quarantine. We all are, actually. My poor daddy has gotten bronchitis and he’s a coughing mess, and the rest of us are starting to feel substandard. Now whether this is because we’re actually getting sick or whether we’re just having sympathy symptoms, we don’t know yet. Either way, I’m drinking out of a yogurt container.

Yep. This is my hi-sci (that’s high-science, not fidelity) way of trying not to get sick. It’s very un-Pakistani of me, but I’m not letting anyone use my glass…errr…yogurt container and I’m not going to use anyone else’s. They better keep their microbially-charged fingers off my pickle-jar of tea, too.

If there’s on thing I remember from Microbiology back in skool, it’s Chapter 1: the Ubiquity of Microbes. The filthy little fiends are everywhere, lurking, squirming, planning, scheming to jump inside of you and wreck havoc, knocking things over and chewing on your important bits. That’s EXACTLY what it said in my textbook, yep.

It is a bit of a family tradition for us to all get sick at the same time, but I’m hoping to avoid it. There are only so many days you can take off from work before your employers start looking for a replacement. I’ve already taken one off today to keep an eye on my daddy-dearest (I’ve only got one, so he’s the dearest by default :p ) and I may have to take off tomorrow too.

My poor daddy, when he gets sick, he really overdoes it. He’s got a fever and he’s disoriented and he’s coughing himself into fits. On top of that, he’s such a workoholic that he wakes up every few hours and starts phoning the restaurant (Chez Daddy: Good food, terrible service) to see if everything is running smoothly without him. Which it isn’t. So now he’s run off again.

Hmmm.

Have any of you guys ever read Strega Nona? It’s an old folk tale about a woman who has a pot that magically cooks as much food as you tell it to. All you have to do is say the magic words and it starts filling up with pasta. When you want it to finish, you say the magic words and then blow it three kisses, and the pasta stops.

Well, in the story, Strega Nonaa goes out shopping one day and a mischievous neighbor sneaks into her house thinking he’s going to make himself some dinner. He has, after all, heard her say the magic words many times and thinks he knows how to work the pot. So he comes in and starts to pot. As fast as it fills he scoops out a plate and eats it, and when he’s finished he says the magic words, but the pot keeps filling. He says them again and nothing happens, and soon the pot is overflowing with pasta, and it’s spilling out onto the floor, up the his knees, out the door and finally it deluges the entire village. In the end, Strega Non rescues the village by blowing the pot the three kisses that the neighbor hadn’t known about.

There isn’t much of a moral to this story, except that maybe now you’ll understand what I mean if I say I made a pot of Strega Nona’s chili today. That’s where you add about six times too much pasta (because it didn’t look like much at the time, ok?) and then watch in horror as the pasta expands and starts to out-grow the confines of the pot. Then you switch it to a bigger pot, add more beef, more sauce, and watch as it continues to grow.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The pasta does stop growing eventually, but by then you’ve got Hamburger Helper instead of a small pot of chili, and you also have three times more than you intended to make. Incidentally, it will also have only 1/3 of the taste if you don’t do some creative last-minute correction.

The real trick though, is to blow the pot three kisses.

Wow man, I just had a blast from the past. I downloaded a freeware mystery pack and found…Doom. The original. (Knee Deep in the Dead)

:::shakes head:::

If you never played Doom (back in the old days) then you have no idea what I’m talking about. Well, Doom is a low-plot, high-gore single player shoot-em-up. Your view is basically of a hand holding a weapon and your job is to point the weapon at things and kill them before they kill you. What’s the story? It has something to do with demons in outer space. Right. It’s not intellectual gaming fare, but I used to play it way back in ancient times… (counts on fingers…count on toes…) when I was a freshman in high school. Yeah, that was when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Anyway. What a weird culture we live in. Kids kill imaginary people and things for fun, but we still wonder (as a society) why they’re so violent. I remember visiting my cousins last year, and as we were all sitting around watching some of them play Playstation, I heard my six-year old nephew yell out, “Shoot him in the head, shoot him in the head!”

Frankly, I was horrified. That’s probably because when I think of someone being shot in the head, I don’t think of the video-game version where they drop to the floor and then disappear. (bad-guys mysteriously evaporate after they die, have you noticed that?) I think of the real-life version, where being shot in the head means an explosion of blood and flesh and brain-matter. And if the person who’s shot doesn’t die right away, that means lying on the floor in pain, in a pool of your own gore, waiting for either help of death. No, they don’t really evaporate. They probably had a wife, or kids, or at least siblings or parents who would wonder what happened to them and die of worrying. Even if they were the bad-guy in your own real-life adventure, they would still have family members who would probably work themselves to the bone trying to pay the medical bills of their loved one (now a vegetable in the hospital) all because some gun-happy idiot had to come along and shoot their father/brother/husband in the head.

So yeah, I have problems with a six year old yelling for someone to be shot in the head.

Kids these days. I can’t blame them though, because they aren’t actually in charge. It’s the adults who are at fault here, the parents who allow their little kids to watch and emulate violent behavior and practice killing imaginary people. You don’t get a true-to-life idea of death or violence from TV or video games. In cartoons, Tom (from Tom & Jerry) will often get shot in the face with both barrels of a shotgun. He then shakes it off and goes back to chasing Jerry. In video games, you shoot the bad guy and he flashes and disappears. People in cop shows kick each other’s heads and punch each other in the face five, ten, fifteen times and then everyone gets up again, a little bloodier but mostly ok. In reality, if you got punched in the face once you’d be in real trouble. Even just two or three kicks to the head causes permanent damage.

During this same trip, I also saw some of these same kids trying WWF (that’s the World-wide Wrestling Federation, is has nothing to do with wildlife) moves out on each other. One of them nearly busted his head open on the floor trying to do a flying crotch-attack. I don’t know what else to call it, I’m sorry, but those moron wrestlers fly crotch-first at each other and try to wrap their legs around each other’s heads. There’s no other way to explain it. So please pardon my French.

There’s a huge difference between real violence and imaginary violence, in that imaginary violence has no consequences and looks kind of fun, actually. Older children may understand the difference between imaginary violence and real-life violence, but the little kids aren’t smart enough. That’s why their parents have to make the choice for them.

Forget Doom. You should play this instead.

ClassicGaming.com – Game of the Week: The Lost Vikings

_____

Did you know…

The attorney for a 13-year-old boy accused of killing a six-year-old playmate by slamming her into a table has subpoenaed Hulk Hogan and another wrestler to testify at his client’s upcoming murder trial. The boy was mimicking wrestling moves he had seen on TV.

– Associated Press, Miami 3/21/00

A year-long 98/99 study of World Wrestling Federation’s “Raw is War” by Indiana University revealed:

Grabbing one’s crotch – 1,658 incidents

Giving the “finger” – 157 incidents

Simulated sex – 128 incidents

Simulated drug use – 42 incidents

Urination/talking about/simulation – 21 incidents

Prostitution as a character role – 20 incidents

Indiana University, Department of Telecommunications, 1999

The Experimental Chef

Abez (smiling cheesily and wielding wire-whisk): Hello everyone, and welcome to my cooking show, The Experimental Chef! Today we’re going to try a new recipe for cream-based frosting. We’ve heard rumor that in other places you can whip cream and add a little sugar, and it makes a lovely topping. My side-kick Kitchen-Aid has more to tell us about it.

K-A: grinning): Thanks Abez.

Abez: You’re welcome Kitchen Aid!

K-A: Our previous experiments have shown that Pakistani cream doesn’t have a high enough fat content to whip properly.

Abez: (with mock incredulity) Is that so?

K-A: Yes! In fact, any attempt to whip it usually results in…nothing. Nothing happens. You can whip it for half an hour and then put it back in its container in the same form.

Abez: Imagine that!

K-A: So we decided to increase the fat content. Let’s see how this works out today.

Abez: (whispering) that was my line…Err, yes! (brightly) So we have our ingredients lined up, two boxes of thick cream, and a packet of butter. We’ll just throw some butter in here, and pour the cream on top….

K-A: And start the mixer….

(mixers starts)

Abez: Ummm…

K-A: It’s still not whipping.

Abez: Maybe it needs more time.

K-A: It looks flatter than pancake batter.

Abez: Maybe it needs more fat. (throws in lump of butter) Does it look fluffier now?

K-A: No, it’s starting to look like cottage cheese.

Abez: Stand back, maybe you’re giving off bad vibes or something.

K-A: (throws in a handful of white powder) Maybe this will help.

Abez: What was that?

K-A: The label said corn starch.

Abez: Does corn starch whip?

K-A: (morosely) Apparently not.

(machine continues to whir loudly)

Abez: Looks kind of like haleem.

K-A: Is that good?

Abez: Not unless it tastes like haleem. Hey, let’s throw it in the blender!

K-A: Right! Lemme just clean the hummus out…

Abez: (turning to face camera) Remember kids, we are trained professionals, don’t try any of the things you see us do at ….hey!…stop licking the blender blade! You want to cut your tongue in half?

K-A: It had hummus on it…

Abez: (hastily pours non-fluffy cream into blender) Alright, turn it on Kitchen Aid, let’s see what happens.

K-A: Hmm, smells kind of…hummussy.

Abez: I thought you cleaned the blender?

K-A: (wipes hummus from chin) You made me stop.

Abez: Quick, add some baking soda!

K-A: (grabs can of soda frantically) Why?

Abez: To neutralize the smell!

K-A: Right! (dumps it in)

Abez: And some blue food coloring!

K-A: (upends tin of food coloring into blender) Right! Blue frosting tastes the best!

Abez: And an egg white!

K-A: Right, egg whites whip wonderfully!

(both stand expectantly over blender.)

Abez: It looks…bigger….

K-A: Is it whipped?

Abez: I don’t know. Maybe we should taste it. (extends finger towards blender)

K-A: Wait! You can’t eat that, it has raw egg in it!

Abez: Oh yeah.

K-A: Wait a sec… (rushes off camera, returns with a small bottle and begins pouring its contents into blender.)

Abez: What’s that?

K-A: Hydrogen peroxide. To kill the egg germs. Now you won’t get salmonella.

Abez: Right, here we go! Time to taste the frosting!

K-A: Wait! It will turn your mouth and fingers blue!

Abez: Right, throw in some bleach then. We wanted white frosting anyway.

K-A: Ok, NOW it’s time to taste the frosting.

Abez: Right.

K-A: Right.

(both stare expectantly at each other)

K-A: I thought YOU were going to taste the frosting.

Abez: Me? You’re the assistant, you eat it!

K-A: But it’s YOUR show!

Abez: And I say, YOU eat it!

K-A: No, you!

Abez: You!

(lights on set begin to fade)

Abez: Well folks, I’m sorry our time for today is up! Join us next week when we’ll be showing you how to-

K-A: How to remove blue frosting stains! FIRE!!!!!

-exeunt-

Oh wow, my blog is back to normal. I’m going to make a flying leap of assumption and thank the *mysterious* Mr.Passerby on my tagboard. Yay!

This keyboard is dangerous by the way. I’m using one at Aniraz’s office, and it has a sticky backspace key. I try to delete one letter and it gets stuck and gobbles up an entire paragraph before I can unstick it. So I’m trying to type accurately, which of course means slowly.

One of my morning students cancelled so now I’m wasting time in Aniraz’s office until it’s time for my nest class to start. So far I’ve:

messed up my blog template and gone back to the original.

checked my email four times

Deleted all the porn that someone has downloaded onto this compuyter. :::haha:::

And read through various blogs.

And there’s just an hour to go. I know that some people can spend hours and hours on the internet and be perfectly entertained, but I don’t know how they do it. I have sent Aniraz cryptic and useless IM messages (she’s in the next office) but so far it’s a one-sided conversation. Now I’m just complaining. Shame alaina. Have a laff instead. I’ll try to blog properly when I get home this evening.

Literary Taunts

“A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults.”

–Louis Nizer

“I feel so miserable without you, it’s almost like having you here.”

–Stephen Bishop

“He is a self-made man & worships his creator.”

–John Bright

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”

–Winston Churchill

“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.”

–Winston Churchill

“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”

–Irvin S. Cobb

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”

–Clarence Darrow

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”

–William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”

–Ernest Hemingway about (William Faulkner)

“He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul.”

–David Lloyd George

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.”

–Moses Hadas

“His ears made him look like a taxicab with both doors open.”

–Howard Hughes (about Clark Gable)

“He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.”

–Samuel Johnson

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.”

–Paul Keating

“He had delusions of adequacy.”

–Walter Kerr

“There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.”

–Jack E. Leonard

“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.”

–Abraham Lincoln

“You’ve got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it.”

–Groucho Marx

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”

–Groucho Marx

“He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.”

–Robert Redford

“They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.”

–Thomas Brackett Reed

“He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.”

–James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.”

–Charles, Count Talleyrand

“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.”

–Forrest Tucker

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”

–Mark Twain

“A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.”

–Mark Twain

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”

–Mark Twain

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”

–Mae West

“She is a peacock in everything but beauty.”

–Oscar Wilde

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”

–Oscar Wilde

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”

–Oscar Wilde

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”

–Billy Wilder

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.”

–Andrew Lang