Chinchilla in the Heat: its gon CONstantly happen!

2005-04-27T06:39:00.000-05:00

HAPPY PIRSDAY (arabic style)*

First I have to thank my mom, for working so hard that day 27 years ago to bring me into this world. I have to admit my past birthdays have been pretty uneventful and I expected to end up at my apartment watching Purple Rain or Cooley High for the bazillionth time on my laptop, but yesterday was the best bday i've had in a minute! Woke up at 3:30AM to Zhaleh on the line from Guatemala. This was the first in a long slew of calls and emails from people I love which was enough to have me geeking alone. Went to the post office to pick up a package I had received to find a whole slew of mix CD's from a friend in DC (GOOD LOOKS E!) so I was happy whistling white man off of that. Took off work a little early to go skiing/knee boarding at the beach which I have been meaning to do since I moved here. I made some really great jumps over the wake and landed maybe 10% of them. lol...this is my new new though. I've decided I'm doing this every weekend now.
The highlight (or LOWlight) of my day came when I was at a bar with a few people and got a call from two friends to "come out side, we have a suprise birthday present". Suprise is, your boy got to be the laughing stock spectacle for everyone else! They hired one of the extremley touristy cant-get-any-more-gringo-than-this camels for me to ride on, everyone was outside, they put me on and it was a 20 minute ride. for those that don't usually roll out to the clubs on camels, 20 minutes is a long ass time! it is a...as they say here..."Jordanian massage". (duty free massage since we are in the Aqaba Special Economic Zone)... you get off walking around like john wayne. so lots of picture taking, finger pointing, and laughing was going on as i made my rounds through the streets past mcdonalds. ironically fireworks were going off for a wedding in a neighboring area so it seemed i became some type of pied piper of aqaba, with a make shift rag-tag hand-me-down cavalry of tons of kids following my on top of this camel whipping its backside making to go faster (and hence...shall we say...ENHANCING my "massage").
after that i waddled over to baracuda beach where i had invited basically everyone in my cell phone to celebrate the great day i was born. it was good times, about 30 people came out from work, the govt authority, people that run clubs/bars...ended up getting driven home cause i didn't want to risk it. (why do you always feel like you CAN drive, even though you know damn good and well after like 2 drinks you can't and shouldn't?) got to the house and passed out.

like ice cube said in dre's "let me ride video" walking out of the girls bathroom....

hell yeah, it was a good day.

*there is no "P" in the arabic language so usually a native arabic sbeaker will bronounce any "P"s as a "B". (im not even blaying with you) And the "TH" sound often gets bronounced as "SS".....Sanks for reading ssis bost.

2005-04-10T06:04:00.000-05:00

reason why living in an 'emerging market' is better than where you live #3,232

every month i pay close to $50 for 30 tablets of a medicine the good people at Merck produce and sell, prescription needed. just came back from the pharmacy. same drug, produced here, no prescription needed, $12 for 30 tablets. how about, i am coming back with a suitcase full? i'm officially pushing weight overseas. and no, i'm not saying what drug, cause you don't know me like that....but if anyone else is a monthly patron of the US's booming medical industry machine and would like to know comparable prices, holler at your boy!

2005-04-07T05:37:00.000-05:00

Night Diving (not that kind)

so yeah, night diving. it kind of blew me open. i saw everything from eels feeding, swimming out in the open (usually they duck safe in the reefs and coral) as well as an octopus that was pregnant. herskin near the bottom was a little transluscent and it looked like she was full of rocks. i only realized she was pregnant later when asharaf (my diving coach) explained as we got out. night diving is strange, though. it feels like being on another planet entirely. diving in general feels that way, but with no light (or only a water-proof flashlight that lights in a direct 20 ft beam of light) it is hard to tell whether you are floating up or down, and marine life appears right next to you out of the darkenss. like your subconciousness just popping out of nothingness breifly then receding back. the only other time i've felt that way was when i got my Steve Prefontaine on a few months ago during the 7km leg i ran around 3AM in the desert. it was just myself, the desert, and the darkness. diving in the dark is definitley more intense. i'd imagine you have to be the right type of person to enjoy it, ie, if being surrounded in darkness or being alone with your thoughts in an unknowable circumstance without the control you are accustomed to DOESN'T threaten you, then night diving can probably get addicting.

the most interesting aspect of being alone, weightless, in the dark,and having creatures your not used to swimming through your vision is that the divers reception to the experience is correlated to what he/she projects onto these creatures and the environment. on some "american beauty"-a-trash-bag-floating-on-the-street-is-actually-a-moment-of-beauty-and-pain type of thing. if i was a nervous person, and uneasy with myself, then night diving might be a living nightmare. but letting new circumstances define themselves is more my steez (or at least i STRIVE to live life that way). so last night left me pretty much fascinated in awe.

2005-03-13T09:58:00.000-05:00

i miss you

its funny how when in DC, and you are as close as NY, or ATL, or Tally, and you tell me 'i miss you' and i usually take it for granted. i feel lately the script has been flipped, with me being over here. is it only nostalgia? (doubt it) or is the distance making me appreciate you in the same way my distance from you from state to state had you appreciating me. in any case, i love being here, but i'll be glad to get back to you too. inshAllah.

2005-03-12T14:18:00.000-05:00

Can't keep, running away (c) The Pharcyde

a few weeks ago a girl from work asks me to take part in a 10K race from aqaba, jordan, through eilat, israel, and into taba, egypt. i was told there would be people from all three countries running in the race. details after that were sketchy, aside from that it would take place this past saturday. so on friday, we pack our bags, meet the rest in our group at the border and go across. apparently, we are to stay the night in a hotel they have arranged in eilat. at this point i'm confused as to why we are going there for a night if it starts in jordan, but i decide to do the wrong thing and trust everyone else's instinct. okey doke.

we cross the border after some hassle, and they take us to the hotel where we find out that we are the whole jordan running team. all 7 of us. and that they denied the egyptians at the border. i can see where this situation is leading, and i'm ready to bounce back to jordan, but the border is closed, so i'm stuck for the night.

the race was called a 'Three Border Race for Peace". the inherent lie in this title is that the race was solely in eilat. israel only has two borders in the south, the egyptian and the jordanian (unless they are counting the occupied territories but you know damn good and well aint no one from gaza was let out to run in no gatdamn peace race). weather 500 israelis, 2 americans, 1 brit, and 4 jordanians constitute a race for peace could be another lie, but i digress...

i'm real cool on playing the token and being used to make people feel better about themselves. so i looked to the advice of the greatest emcee of all time:

"cool, see i don't get upset, i kick a whole in the speaker, pull the plug, then i jet" (c) rakim

i decided to pull out of the 10K and join the 3K which was all children, youth, and elderly israelis....and i beat them all. with a colgate smile on my face. passing little kids. watching old ladies hobble out of the way. remember the Dave Chappelle skit where he visits the boy in cancer remission in the hospital, only to beat him at street basketball on the game cube?

i reached the finish line and was told there would be a ceremony where i would get a first place award and the jordanians would be put on display as tokens *AHEM*...i mean...honored. but i walked straight to my hotel, grabbed my bag, cabbed to the border, and alhamdulilah, i was back in Jordan.

2005-03-07T08:15:00.000-05:00

Why I call myself a 'n****' you ask me? (c) Eazy E

So a number of newspapers are pulling The Boondocks comic strip this week because of the use of the n word. In case you aren't familiar, the strip is a cross between Doonesbury and Calvin and Hobbes, with a young black kid (Huey - named after Huey P. Newton) as its protagonist.

I'll leave my sentiment at the strip being pulled in the hands of Paul Mooney who sums it up pretty succinctly:

"white folks made up nigger and now they don't want us to say it---aint that a bitch?!?.....you made it up! you shouldn't have made it up!!!!.....AND!! you made a song to go with it---please dont make me sing it....'enni meanie miney mo'....---dont make me sing it...you know the gotdamn song im singing.....and then they change the words when they see black people 'uh...catch a TIGER--have they gone?'.....yall fucked up....i say nigga 100 times in the morning... it makes my teeth white! 'nigganigganigganigganigganigganigganigganigganigganigga...'

hey i say it....you think it....what a small white world"

2005-03-06T10:05:00.000-05:00

HAPPY BIRFDAY ZHALEH!!! (and some other stuff)

happy birthday to my ace who has left for the left coast and central america. nuff respect goes out to mrs boyd for having zhaleh and brightening all our worlds. i tried to upload the indelible classic, the Geto Boys, "Damn, It Feels Good To Be A Gangster" in tribute but i don't have it on my laptop any more and i don't think they sell copies of the 'Uncut Dope' here in Aqaba. (do they even sell them in the US anymore?)

in other news, in my arabic lesson last week i was aksing my teacher to get me the Jordan public school system's Arabic grammar books from K - 12th for a friend back home (whats up Rabia!) and it sparked an interesting conversation. apparently the public school system here, as most other Arab speaking countries are doing, are pushing a new form of Modern Arabic, based less on fusHa, (the Modern Classical Arabic). the Quran is the seminal definitive reference for the Arabic language and grammar in a similiar, yet more intense and...spiritual?, way as Dante's the Inferno is for Italian. the Inferno set the standard for all of the many dialects and variant versions of Italian in Italy at the time Dante put it out, and his writing became the reference from which modern Italian grammar was born. In any case, because of the current political, social, economic, global, ______ (insert overused term here) context, the Arab states are trying to secularize their language and diminish the Quranic reference. you know...taking those pesky 'masalaama's (go with peace) and turning them into much safer 'il lah li q'ah's (until we meet). phew! don't we all feel so much safer?! now back to your regularly scheduled glass of starbucks, episodes of 'Friends', and latest Dave Mattews CDs.....

2005-02-21T09:45:00.000-05:00

so your probably wondering how your boy ended up with Fred Durst, Anna Kournikova, Pharrell, Lindsey Lohan, Jay Z, Vin Diesel, cell numbers and emails. someone hacked into TMobiles online cell phone account manager and posted Paris Hilton's cell phone pics and contact list
*.

lol i'm sitting here wondering about lebanon's possible power vaccum and fragile democracy, and how it relates to security in the region i live in, and back in the states, we're building people up to tear them down. the world keeps spinning.....

*hell to the yeah i copied it down! and for the low low price of $9.99 i'll send it to you! holler at your boy!

2005-02-17T04:46:00.000-05:00

The Crossing

well first i should say, i'm safe and slow in breezy aqaba, to all of you who knew i was in beirut. beirut was too many stories; a post that will come in sections if i'm on my blogging game over the next few days. but before i get into beirut and libnan (way you pronounce lebanon in arabic), i have to relate my story of crossing the border to eilat, israel two days ago.

i should begin by saying that historically, the area at the north of the red sea was one trading village until 1918 when lawrence came through, ran game on the arabs, and the brits split it in two (mandates of palestine and jordan). flash forward to now, and you have aqaba with a 2 km border, then eilat, in israel. when you drive into either from the desert, it looks like one big city. another example of the amazing connect-the-dots, fisher price 'my first border drawing' that britain has done all over the world.

this week the office is empty and the only two in the office are me and brian, a consultant from louisiana. brian typifies what alot of people here regard americans to be. good heart with best intentions, but completely out of touch with reality on the ground, basically ignorant, and self righteous. he loves george bush, guns, God, and america. i like him, regardless of the different lenses we view live through, cause he's from the south. so naturally he's charming, good sense of humor, and straight forward. which is refreshing among these awkward drones called development consultants.

so brian, in his naivete, gets the bright idea to go to eilat to 'get some lunch' and come back.

..............

'get some lunch'? clearly brian is working with a remedial understanding of israeli border policy and tactics. after continuous pleas to go to the other side, i concede after stating that i will spend NO money. i'll go, get my voyeur on, but i'm cool on supporting the occupation anymore than my taxes already do. we clear the Jordan border in about 2 minutes. then we clear the Israeli border in about..................4 HOURS.

'get some lunch'.

i had been in lebanon the day before, and that set things off. why were you in lebanon? who did you go with? how do you know them? what did you do there? what hotel did you stay in? why are you in jordan? what does your company do? where did you stay in lebanon? did you wipe your ass this morning? what did you use to wipe your ass? can i check?

after sitting for about a half hour, they run our passport numbers and realize i've been to the other side before. at this point they bring out a 3 page quiz sheet about my previous journey, which they fax to tel aviv so they can pull the file of my original trip and compare to see if the facts match up. this process took up the next 3 hours. now, i expected no less than this treatment so although i was annoyed and thought it absurd, i wasn't blown. poor brian.....the skies were parting for him. you could see the innocence and naivete falling from his face. he was trying to reconcile what he thought in his head (israel is our friend) with the step-child treatment he was receiving. this all culminated in a moment where he decides to get his cracker on, and start yelling about how ridiculous it is that we were sitting there this long when our taxpayer dollars have paid for the building we were sitting at! at this point, the 19 year old female israeli guard steps up to brian and asks him how much does the US give? brian musters up all the confidence he has and says....

*points to christian* "christian knows."

.............

well i didn't ask for the mic and the spotlight, but since i have it, "we give you 6 billion dollars a year not including military assistance which is around another 3 billion every year".
girl: what money is this? how is it given to israel?
me: (without missing a beat) it comes in the form of Economic Security Funds which charge no interest, are not loaned, but granted with no expectation of reimbursement
girl: and what does the US get in return?

now, i think she was trying to make the point that the US gets 'security' or something of the sort, until brian chimes in with

WE GET TO WAIT AT THE BORDER FOR 4 HOURS!!!!

thing about these border guards and police is that they are forcefully conscripted and alot are young. a sassy, rude, young snot nosed kid with an automatic (from brooklyn, no less) doesn't make for a welcoming scenario. all the guards happened to be women at this border crossing, and even though i was the american they loved to hate, they couldn't resist chinchilla. they made us tea and cookies, which brian was glad to drink and eat while i left it sitting on the counter. i thought maybe the millions of palestinians in the ghetto called gaza living on less than a dollar a day might need it more than i do.

so we got to spend all of an hour in eilat, which is a non-descript resort town (big hotels, casino, bars, malls, restaurants, shops, etc.). enjoyed the view of Aqaba from across the way, then came back to the border crossing, where they charged us 20 dollars departure tax. this is where brian went off. talking about, he's going to call his congressman, and jordan is a much nicer and easier place to visit, and he can get a three month visa for free and no wait in jordan, and that the peace agreement is completely unbalanced and unfair for jordanians! i was largely quiet through the tirade, enjoying seeing someone learning and destroying old conceptions that are easy to cling to. a phoenix rising from the ashes.

afterwards, as we walked across the 300 foot no mans land on the border, we got to the mid point where brian got the spirit, passed gas, and left that as a departing gesture before crossing back into Jordan. awaiting us in jordan were two sleepy guards with nothing but smiles and 'ahlan wa sahlan's, moving us through quicker than before.

2005-02-07T13:02:00.000-05:00

i have a waterbed....its brass!!! (c) Morris Day - Purple Rain

last night i was getting some food in a restaurant with a friend, Hatham, who was showing me his business plan for a kite surfing business he is registering with the Zone Authority here. i was giving pointers and eating when this guy walks in with his girl. now, this guy has maybe 2 quarts of gel slicked in his hurr, only the bottom two and a half buttons buttoned on his shirt, and some shiny fator skin (thats fake gator skin for all yall slow people out there) shoes......so naturally my admiration and interest is piqued (lol). his girl stares at nothing but him for the next 25 minutes while he talks real gangster on the phone with someone. and yeah, i was paying alot of attention, cause there are maybe 3 people in aqaba that go out on weeknights and you get to know people real fast. so here's a newjack. in anycase....this guy starts ignorning his girl, looking at the muhejiba walking by, texting messages.....and then the moment culminated in the pinnacle of masculinity. his phone rings.....and the ringtone is.............

mariah carey "i'd give my all".....

maaaaaan......i know everyone of y'all reading this knows the look that was on my face. my eyebrows were up on top my head, eyes wide open, and jaw dropped. i almost fell out of my seat.

but then i started thinking, here is a guy who is does not give a good Cot Damn! he just looked around the spot like "hell to the yes, i got mariah carey on my ringtone! and what are you going to do about it! nothing! so sit there all shocked looking!".....on some morris day/kanye/farnsworth bentley.........

2005-02-06T09:36:00.000-05:00

RIP Ossie Davis. :(

I love that man. I put him up there with Paul Robeson, Michaelangelo...people that I can't believe what they accomplished with their time on earth. from civil rights, to paving the way as a black actor and ...whatever...an ACTOR...and most personally, what a classy man and husband is. inshAllah one day i will be lucky enough to have what him and ruby dee have. nuff respect do to Mr. Davis, who will DEFINITLEY be missed.

2005-02-06T09:12:00.000-05:00

Well your boy ended up running 25 of the 240kms from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea. I ran with a team of 4 jordanians, 3 germans, and 2 italians. Highlight: running 7 kms around 3:30AM in the desert: just me, the desert, the sky and the moon. Its hard not to feel that any problem I have in my day to day is completely forgettable when I am such a small physical part of a vast expansive landscape. Lowlight: Mossimo, one of the Italians, and I cyphoning gas out of another car when one of the support vehicles ran out. If you’ve never done it, don’t. I don’t know if there’s any way to describe the gag reflex when the gas comes running out. And the fumes felt like they were stuck in my capillaries for the next 10 kms…... and after all that, we had to leave the car on the side of the road to get later. i only got hit by a semi around 7 times which is pretty good considering.

After returning to Aqaba (it took us from 3:30PM Thursday to 1:30PM Friday) coming in dead last, and looking like Fred Sanford running across the finish line while doing it, the next Saturday i ended up staring down the barrel and eventually underneath a Russian tank.......the beginning of scuba diving certification. My friends Oraib and Mais from Amman sunbathed on the boat while Ossama and I went diving. I didn’t look as crazy in a wetsuit as I thought I would. it actually was quite slimming *PAUSE* lol After calming down and learning to breathe easy, the whole thing was very peaceful and soothing. Its as if everything was in slow motion and so completely unfamiliar that I was dumb awe the whole time. We saw a seahorse, and at one point a massive school of yellow fish enveloped us. I have 3 more classes (5 dives) to go before I get my license and then this is about all I’ll be doing until I leave.

It was nice to have the girls and ossama down for 3 nights. The apartment gets empty sometimes and its always easier to create a party with the cool people rather than expect a little jump to jump off on its own. The comedy of their trip was when the girls (who were staying in my bedroom) heard the couple upstairs who must be at least 55 – 60 years old (the infamous playboy-channel-during-dinner couple) doing ........ the things that married couples do……*shudders at thought*. that provided enough comedy for the rest of the weekend. since they've left i've heard noises again, and i just start laughing (at which point the creaking immediatley stops) and turn up music in my bedroom. haram, i must be an annoying little s*** to live above, but i'm really not trying to know my neighbors like that.

I’ve definitely unleashed the flood as far as guests go, because most people in Jordan last visited Aqaba at least 10 years ago when there was a tiny stretch of dirty sand and 2 or 3 old hotels on the coast. Aqaba has a stigma within the country of being old and barren, and the Aqabawe people get a bad rep for being kind of like Jordan’s version of some backwoods Alabama rednecks. Think Panama City. lol…….but as I bring some Ammanis down and they see the development that’s happened, and get out of the cold condensed city, it gets good to them. Oraib's coming back with 2 or her friends next week, but i can't front....it really isn't Aqaba.....its ME! lol.....i mean who would want to be in Amman when they could be hanging out with your boy? really........just playing. but for real......

2005-02-01T13:29:00.000-05:00

Aqaba just became about 500% more interesting. more on that tommorrow. just wanted to say that, although i thought'd i'd be wearing the late crown all year when it came to music, i must say, yousendit.com has been holding it down lovely. and i'm still months ahead of ya'll on the music. in the desert! WHAT?! the new common is definitley nice, kanye laced him with some really nice beats this time.
and i might be "dj'ing" at the barracuda beach in the next months. thats what they call it, i call it playing my ipod on a dope soundsystem. Aqaba is about to be the only spot on the red sea you can jump on a trampoline on the water watching the sun go down over the sinai peninsula in egypt with "who got the props" as the soundtrack. Aqaba, in the place to be!

Hope all ya'll in DC and NY snow are staying breezy while i'm lamping in the sun!

2005-01-27T03:02:00.000-05:00

C runs the Seas

somehow i have been convinced within the past 24 hours to become the 10th person in a team running the 290 kms from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea in a relay race starting at 3 this afternoon. everyone runs one kilometer, then sits while the other 9 runners run theirs. this goes on i'm guessing for 18/19 hours. last year's winner did it in 17.5. i haven't run steady in a month or so, so i'm about to look like cliff huxtable when he ran the track race, face hanging, leaning into the other runners.....but i couldn't pass up a chance to do something this unique. run down wadi araba between palestine and jordan, its a beautiful stretch of desert, but it will be night time (the freaks come out! (C) whodini) the whole run. i think if i make it that far without getting nudged by the super fast tomatoe trucks (they roll at about the same speed i can run), i'll be doing allright.....

2005-01-25T03:02:00.000-05:00

They came, they saw, they conquered
From khuffeyeh sales to Um Kalthoum concerts

Just put the fam on a plane back to the states. We were running non stop from the time they touched down until now. Amman, Mt. Nebo, Madaba, Dead Sea, Baptism Site, Aqaba, Wadi Rum, Petra, Amman. Here's a snapshot from one of the more hilarious moments:

(6AM first day)
mom: do you hear that?
chin: yeah thats the call to prayer
m: yeah but i heard one already an hour ago, this is a second one going on for awhile
c: well, today is eid, so he is saying eid prayers for the day
m:.....oh okay........so its not....an uprising or anything?
c:..........................*buries head in pillow and dies laughing*
*mom starts laughing*

and as we went around the country, and really saw everything there is to see and do, i was thinking, each and every one of you reading this needs to come visit your boy if you A) haven't been to jordan and B) its anywhere near within your means to do so.

and a late Eid Mubarak to all of you I didn't have a chance to wish well.

2005-01-19T04:37:00.000-05:00

For Reference

I referenced this song a couple updates ago and thought I'd put it up for you guys to check out. There is about a 3 second section of the song that makes the sample up. See if you can catch it. Get the song here:

http://s17.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2IT367F7RH21L0GCQGEEI6STKV

2005-01-17T10:44:00.000-05:00

Martin Luther the Kang Day 2005: Free Sami Al Arian

Last night as I was coming back from my friend Shukri's house, my favorite verse by Chuck D was playing in the car...rhymes about being targeted for speaking out. and it hit me. I almost forgot.....that tommorrow was Martin Luther the King day. No, I didn't have it off, which is too bad because its one of the easier holidays to justify commemorating, in light of our 'Independence' days and our 'Memorial' days. Not saying I don't like independence or honor a fallen soldier's life. Just saying one white man's freedom is another black woman's....you get the point...

Thinking about race and the way its dealt with here in Jordan is something that is hard to wrap my mind around. Its confusing enough to try to recognize how we deal with it in the states, much less here where generally race isn't seen in such a Black/White view of the world, but racism is definitley alive and kicking here. All you need to do is drive through this one town south of the Dead Sea where all the dark dark skin Jordanians live, which also happens to be one of the poorest and stigmatized.

In any case it got me reflecting on MLtheK, what his life was dedicated to, and who these days are the freedom fighters and soul survivors for Civil Rights in our beloved Great Satan*, the USA. among the many, one stands out in my mind and I wanted to dedicate the post today to him. Sami Al Arian has been locked up for two years away from his family and unable to live his life to bring the fight to the forefront. To bring the erosion of our civil rights to light as probably the most critical issue we all face today. So I'm leaving this post with the lyrics to my favorite Public Enemy song, "Louder than a Bomb" off It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back.

--------------------

This style seems wild
Wait before you treat me like a stepchild
Let me tell you why they got me on file
'Cause I give you what you lack
Come right and exact
Our status is the saddest
So I care where you at, black
And at home I got a call from Tony Rome
The FBI was tappin' my telephone
I never live alone
I never walk alone
My posses always ready, and they're waitin' in my zone
Although I live the life that of a resident
But I be knowin' the scheme that of the president
Tappin' my phone whose crews abused
I stand accused of doing harm
'Cause I'm louder than a bomb

I am the rock hard trooper to the bone, the bone, the bone
Full grown - consider me - stone
Once again and I say it for you to know
The troop is always ready, I yell `geronimo'
Your CIA, you see I ain't kiddin'
Both King and X they got ridda' both
A story untold, true, but unknown
Professor Griff knows "Yo I ain't milktoast!"
And not the braggin' or boastin' and plus
It ain't no secret why they're tappin' my phone, although
I can't keep it a secret
So I decided to kick it, yo
And yes it weighs a ton
I say it once again
I'm called the enemy - I'll never be a friend
Of those with closed minds, don't know I'm rapid
The way that I rap it
Is makin' 'em tap it,
Never servin 'em well, 'cause I'm an un-Tom
It's no secret at all.....cause I'm louder than a bomb

Cold holdin' the load
And burn breakin' the mold
I ain't lyin' denyin', 'cause they're checkin' my code
Am I buggin' 'cause they're buggin' my phone - for information
No tellin' who's sellin' out - power buildin' the nation so
Joinin' the set, the point blank target
Every brothers inside - so least not, you forget, no
Takin' the blame is not a waste, here taste
A bit of the song so you can never be wrong
Just a bit of advice, 'cause we be payin' the price
'Cause every brother mans life
Is like swingin' the dice, right?
Here it is, once again this is
The brother to brother
The Terminator, the cutter
Goin' on an' on - leave alone the grown
Get it straight in '88, an' I'll troop it to demonstrate
The posse always ready - 98 at 98
My posse come quick, because my posse got velocity
Tappin' my phone, they never leave me alone
I'm even lethal when I'm unarmed....'Cause I'm louder than a bomb

'Cause the D is for dangerous
You can come and get some of this
I teach and speak
So when its spoke, it's no joke
The voice of choice
The place shakes with bass
Called one for the treble
The rhythm is the rebel
Here's a funky rhyme that they're tappin' on
Just thinkin' I'm breakin' the beats I'm rappin' on
CIA FBI, all they tell us is lies
And when I say it they get alarmed.......'Cause I'm louder than a bomb

*Ossama said it

2005-01-16T10:59:00.000-05:00

TODAY

Well Today is a good day, partially cause I heard the song "Today" by Tom Scott and had to grab my chest Fred Samford style when I realized what classic classic song this would become the base sample for in the mid 90's. Always geeked to connect history. Speaking of connecting to historical spaces, my fam is coming here in 4 days, which I'm geeked about. It will be during Eid, which is cool because that means alot of Syrians and Jordanians will be vacationing through AlUrdun (Jordan in arabic) during the holiday. It is the second muslim holiday after the first Eid holiday where everyone prays to the moon and does not eat for 40 days and 40 nights. Psyche. the scary news is our US education system and sources of info in stateside are so poor that alot of us would read that last sentence and believe it. I can't remember right now what the first and second Eid commemorate for muslims, but i'll get back to you and post it.

So my fam is going to do a marathon tour of Urdun, rented the A6 Audi to cruise from Amman to the Dead Sea, stay there a night, see Mt. Nebo where Moses found out that the Jews and no one else have the right to philistine, as well as the spot where St. John the Baptist baptized Jesus. After that swang through Aqaba where a few days will be spent checking out Wadi Rum, chilling on the beach, going to Petra, living that life. Finish of driving back through the desert to Amman to see the roman ruins at Jerash and hang out in Amman one more night before flying out. I'm really looking forward to them being around and seeing Jordan through fresh eyes after acclimating somewhat.

Oh, and that new new for me has to be Um Kalthoum. What a gorgeous voice....she didn't make songs, she made experiences. I'm calling all my arab friends out, shoot...any of my friends who know her, for never putting me on to her! BOO on all of you! Laila, Abdullah, Lamese, Adel, Neveen, Jehan, Idyl, the list goes on! you all get the gasface all the way over from the Red Sea! between her and Fela I don't think any other musicians have meant more in the way they do to their people. Not even Michael...i mean Michael has effect in sheer numbers, but Fela and Um can't quit. little snot nose west african and arab kids, respectivley, are still screaming on Fela and Um.....

i'll spare us all the thought of little kids screaming on Michael....wait no i won't.....LOL. HA HA (c) nelson on the simpsons

2005-01-11T09:07:00.000-05:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR

so it begins. had a great end of 2004. lots of changes, some roses really smelled like boo boo and some boo boo became fertilizer for roses i didn't see as roses in the first place. but its 2005 in the place to be. back in jordan and my first resolution is to post on here at least 2, hopefully 3 times a week. after that, get on my grind with volunteering at UNRWA, steady arabic lessons twice a week, and to know how to kite surf by the time i leave. thats right. me, a surfboard, and a giant kite. don't laugh....it aint funny! (c) smokey

and in the 2005, may i encourage all readers to actually USE that comment section? PARTICULARLY if something i say sparks a thought or reaction. boo me cheer me love me fear me...whatever. holler at me!

as far as being back in Jordan, i couldn't be happier. driving through the desert back to Aqaba, passing snow capped mountains then dropping hundreds of feet in the span of a mile down into the desert basin was really beautiful. what was really eerie though was the song selection my iPod played as i drove through the desert. i had it set on shuffle, supposedly random, i didn't know if it was trying to tell me something but i'll leave this first post of 2005 with the song list......and may today be the worst day of 2005 and the rest of our lives! (this way everything can only get better).....

You Are My Sunshine - Beach Boys
Another Lonely Day - Ben Harper
When I Find Time - Cody Chesnutt
Hold On - Dwele ft. Kanye West
Fool of Me - MeShelle Ndegleocello
The Beautiful Ones - Prince
Man on the Side - John Mayer
Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
Bring It On Home To Me - Sam Cooke
Lately - Stevie Wonder (i think i almost broke down at this point)
Ball and Biscuit - White Stripes (i think the kid came back at this point...lol)

2004-12-03T08:32:00.000-05:00

long post so print it out for later if you have to.....

Its been a long time.....
Before I go to Dubai and the list of things to write about gets longer, I’m going to put a few things out there. Wrote a song about it, like to hear it, hear it go.

Day to day life is going pretty well. Typically, I like to involve myself in a number of activities that are different from each other just to keep myself feeling engaged and fill my time. This is something I have to work on while I’m here. Lately business has been handling me instead of the other way around. Since I returned from Istanbul, (more on that later) preparing for ADC’s participation in the Sea Trade conference in Dubai and the projects I’ll be working on when I return have been consuming all my time. I have only visited the UNRWA facility once and not started teaching there yet, and Arabic lessons have fallen to the wayside.

Three top Arab Teachers, who is this hot?
My first Arabic teacher was a really nice woman and a pretty good teacher, but she had a tendency to diverge from the subject matter to share her thoughts on Islam, philistine, ask me about how I see the Trinity, etc. This was actually extremely enjoyable, but not with her brothers who are grown ass men walking around the house in their tightey whiteys like Brotherman from Martin. There was also a lot of loud yelling going on between the sons and her mother, which I guess I should chalk up to “cultural differences” but it sounded pretty violent and loud at some points. I guess they were fighting about whether they should put pants on with guests in the house.

So my second Arabic teacher, Wafa’, could meet me wherever, whenever, and wasn’t charging. I should’ve had a little more foresight into what that meant. A few night text messages when teachers shouldn’t be texting later, I realized I fell for the okeydoke. So I am currently on the look out for teacher #3.

How you going to get fired.......on your day off? (c) Friday
Upon returning from Istanbul something went down at the office that is very telling of the business environment here in Jordan. Every office has one if not many “office boys” who clean and serve tea, coffee, and water. Ours was named Abdel RaHman or Abed for short. Abed means “slave” (his full name means slave of God, in certain terms). It would be a coincidence that the guy who serves everyone in the office is named slave, but half the men in Aqaba are named “Abed_______” (insert one of the 99 names of God here). In any case he was fired for not coming in after the Eid break and bad work during Ramadan. I’m the first to defend someone, but come on Abed, how are you going to get fired during Ramadan and your job is to serve drinks while people are fasting!

Following Abed’s dismissal, a gentleman that is the driver for the Chairman of our org is related to Abed and tries to get Abd’s job back. His argument: because our org has a lot of proprietary info that is important not to disclose, we should hire Abed because we can trust him not to tell anyone. …………. Man, can I have THAT job?! Pay me because I won’t talk! What a skill set.

This was indicative of so many things going on in the business environment. The office guys that are sitting around getting paid “not to talk”, the family pulling social connections to get jobs, the “inshAllah” logic of Abed not caring he was fired. InshAllah means “God willing”, if you don’t know now you know. So Abed, like a lot of people, takes solace knowing “if God wants me to have a job, I will have a job, and if he doesn’t, then it is Gods will.” On one hand I appreciate how much God and faith is ingrained deep into the fabric of day to day living. But from my own shoes and my own path, that breeds a responsibility to at least TRY to hustle in the name of what you believe.
But what’s real is that if I were in his shoes, I would’ve quit after the first day of serving coffee to an office full of gringos who didn’t care to know my name but refer to me as “office boy”.

It ain't easy being worldwide (c) Lil Zane
So Eid in Istanbul was too beautiful. The city is a gorgeous place and is a crossroads in literal and figurative terms. On one side of the Bosphorus river is the end of Asia, and the other bank is the beginning of Europe. Additionally, Islam clearly influenced the development of the city and the people, though Attaturk who developed Turkey as the nation-state we know today, forced secularism down on the country with an extremely heavy hand (public ban on women being modest and covering up, no fez hats for the men, changed the letters of the alphabet from Arab script to the letters your reading now, basically an islamo/arab-phobe). So when you visit every aspect of life reflects the mix of these traditions and cultures. People break their Ramadan fast with wine. Young women covering up, but styling their hair in a way that accentuates their hair underneath.
Architecturally, you had the extremely excessive sultans who were living large (thousands of African slaves, women taken from all over the world to fill their harem, etc.). But all of their Palace and Mosque constructions were done in Islamic architecture, so you see the most extravagant gorgeous mosques in the world. It is said that the most beautiful mosques are in Tunisia and Istanbul.

Big up, big up, it's a stick up, stick up!
But if you’re going to visit a mosque, hold on to your shoes! Visiting the New Mosque, I took off my Adidas, as is customary, going in the door. Put them in the bag provided, and placed them on the shelf with my friend’s and everyone else’s. took my time enjoying the mosaics and beautiful tile work inside, and come back to find my shoes GONE! My first thought was, is this for real? Leila’s playing a joke on me. But as I realized my kicks were gone, I knew that if someone had to steal some shoes out of a house of God, then they clearly needed them more than I did, and the rest is between them and God.
But the comedy of the situation was what ensued. As I tried my best to communicate to someone from the mosque what happened, he led me over to an area where they collected shoes people had left. He pulled back the curtain, Vanna White-style, smiling, offering a variety of Istanbul’s finest to choose from. At this point, Leila in the midst of her laughter, pulls out the camera to take pics. Laughing myself (I mean really, how else could you react?) I selected the ones that matched my blazer the best, and rocked them the rest of the day. Later on we donated them to a confused tip-collector at the Blue Mosque.
There was so much to see, Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia, maybe the most beautiful part of the city, the Grand Bazaar one of the largest outdoor markets in the world, the Turkish Baths (no beauties there! Just big hairy Turkish men in nothing but a little towel pounding your body – PAUSE), an Underground Cistern. One of the most amazing things to see was Mohammed’s sword, taken/stolen from Egypt to Istanbul and stored in the Topkapi (popcopy) Palace. I felt the same sense of reverence and connected-ness that Lamese articulated as a Muslim with me in Palestine in the birthplace of Jesus. It hits you how close you are to these people who inspire so much in people, and its overwhelming.
Leila and I hit up this one little club, Riddim, that played Gregory Isaacs “night nurse” (shout to Adel!) and found out that there were THREE club Riddims in a 4 block vicinity, and we were at the wrong one. The 2nd club Riddim was too funny. There was a crew of cats moving in over pronounced mugging gestures and doing the fake beat-down/onyx “SLAM!” dancing to the songs, jumping on tables, getting everything they had off their chest. I asked them if they were from the states and you would’ve thought I validated this cat’s identity. Turns out….Moldova was in the building! From this point on, my man couldn’t stop toasting me with his glass, and we posed for a few pics Run DMC style. Being that he is the only thing I know about Moldova, he represented his people lovely.

In mansions and benzes giving ends to my friends and it feels stupendous
The last two nights in Istanbul, were spent in the Four Seasons. Cause I’m living that life. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Midnight Express” the prison in that film is this building. Kind of creepy to think about. It’s the smallest Four Seasons in the world, and the view from the terrace included the Bosphorous and the Blue Mosque two blocks away, lit up beautifully at night. Best part about the room though had to be the bath slippers, which I still rock here in Aqaba around the crib.

All in all it was a really wonderful trip. Turks aren’t the friendliest, but there were a few that bought our meals and shoved Raki down our throats (Turkish drink like sambuca). And it was great to be with a good friend that knows me, my sense of humor, enjoy her company, and share the trip with her. Being with Leila who doesn’t hear the call to prayer 5 times a day refreshed my appreciation for it once I arrived back to Jordan. I know the last post I was clowning my man down the block, but as I type this listening to his call after hearing the call through fresh ears, I have to smile. More about Dubai when I get back! Peace!

2004-11-23T08:19:00.000-05:00

GAELLE - TRANSIENT

RUN, don't walk, to tower records, itunes music store, or wherever it is you cop your music....and get my girl gaelle's new album. i can't stress how hot it is and i'm proud of you g!!!

2004-11-10T06:30:00.000-05:00

and can we pass a collection plate around for the mosque next to my crib to hire someone with a decent voice and hook up the dolby surround sound on top of the building? i mean, this cat sounds cow mooing through clock radio speakers. haram, i know my man is praying, but i think even God is holding his ears. i wouldn't complain if i hadn't heard people with really great voices singing through banging systems in different mosques. but what was at first a nice, quaint, cultural opportunity to think about praying at 4:30/5AM is quickly souring into a cacophony of boo boo.

so arafat's life is at its near end. i'm astounded by the collective reverence the arab world holds for its leaders. or at least how quick everyone is to quit working. lol. cats are like, "car broke down? no work for 3 days! you know how WE do." sheik zaid of the emirates died last week and the rest of the week no one went in to work. and rumor now is that tommorrow there will be no work for mourning arafat.

we didn't have any type of holiday in the states when gerald ford or nixon died (not saying i felt the need, just saying). i can't even remember if we did for reagan. much less, if the prime minister of canada died. sheeeit, i doubt most of us could NAME the canadian prime minister.

2004-11-04T06:16:00.000-05:00

Today is a good day.

I went by the UNRWA office in Shalalah (thats the way that we rock when we're doing our thing), the shantytown tenament area of Aqaba where alot of refugees from Gaza have fled over the years and built up a community. from the outside it looks like sao palo in brazil, or almost any urban area in the carribean. houses made of about anything you can grab, and piled on top of each other.
UNRWA, for those who don't know, is the UN group who were originally mandated to provide services for the refugees in 48 after the Israeli's got their Deebo on. thing is, UNRWA was originally intended to be a shorter term project, but its nothing short term about Zionism, and UNRWA has had its mandate extended over and over through the years.
in aqaba, they have a women's program where they do social services like crafts and sewing, administering food and supplies, and there is a little school full of snot-nose kids ages 5-7 from the poorest area of Shalalah. when i say poor, i don't mean like the dude who sits outside of Black Cat saying "can you spare some change? black cat black cat!".....see the entry below on philistine, last paragraph, for the type of poor i'm talking about.
i went there to meet, introduce myself, tell them about my studies and background, about my trip to philistine, and that i wanted to know how i could help. the office is basically 4 women, and none could speak english or understand my broken fusHa (think robin williams in "mrs. doubtfire" when he calls his wife acting like strange babysitters, and he says "i....am.....job").
eventually, Samira, the lady who runs the office, called her 17 yr old daughter to come from the house and translate for us. so her daughter gets there and she's more interested in finding out about Colorado where her Uncle's been accepted to Masters program but is scared that the states are too violent and he is in danger of being shot and mugged. you know how they roll out there in CA.
so after much discussion, it seems that i'm going to be teaching english to about 20 5 year olds, and 35/40 6-7 year olds. twice a week for an hour each before i go to my job at ADC at 9AM. i'm pretty amped up about it. as far as lessons go, they are at a real remedial level so i figure i'm just going to have fun with them, buy them fruit and teach them the names, or candy and teach them colors.....keep it simple.
it was worlds colliding in the class room today though. the kids were bugging out "or staring into space when you're feeling berserk" (c) tribe called quest with their mouths open when i came in, especially when i started speaking to them in arabic. i'm sure their loss for words will be pretty shortlived. i'm starting after Eid, the holiday at the end of Rammadan in about a week and a half, for which i'm going to istanbul. when i get back, its on and popping. ustaz christian is in the building.

2004-11-04T05:13:00.000-05:00

What's next?

"Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire. Yet this time of trouble will bring seeds of social rebirth. Americans will share a regret about recent mistakes -- and a resolute new consensus about what to do." – from The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, by William Strauss and Neil Howe

In 1997, William Strauss and Neil Howe put forth an interesting thesis -- that every 80 years or so, the U.S. faces a cataclysmic turning point that changes the course of the nation. The first occurred during the Revolutionary War and the framing of our Constitution, the second, during the Civil War, and the third, during the Great Depression and WWII. And the "fourth turning"? Welcome to the Terrordome.

Before yesterday, eight in ten historians had already deemed G. W. Bush's presidency a failure; jobs had gone AWOL; environmental protections had been rolled back; and this administration consistently showed disdain for civil liberties, human rights and government transparency. And despite claims of making America safer, Team Bush ignored prewar warnings from everyone from General Shinseki to the International Atomic Energy Agency and we now have a much higher chance of "being nuked in [our] jammies."

And though 9/11 is often used to explain away Bush's stained presidency, if Al Gore had been president and he, like Mr. Bush, saw a string of reports entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US"'; "Bin Laden planning multiple operations"; "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real"; and later admitted, as Bush did, that he didn't "feel a sense of urgency," he would have wound up on the Impeachment Express.

The choice we faced yesterday was clear: A vote for John Kerry was a vote for the kind of humanistic progress made under FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. And a vote for George Bush was a vote to regress to a darker time. As one blogger put it: "George W. Bush wants almost entirely to undo the work of the twentieth century, vastly reducing public services, effectively ending environmental regulation, reducing or eliminating progressive taxation, privatizing social security, and essentially substituting faith for reason as our guide." And, of course, we can expect a contiuned dismantling of the international framework of cooperation and rule of law America was largely responsible for building following World War II.

No matter what, America will remain more divided than ever and questions of a return to the draft will haunt. And the neoconservatives who pushed for the war in Iraq will continue to "pull the strings."

-taken from www.okayplayer.com

2004-10-30T07:27:00.000-05:00

how are you going to all of a sudden have this elevated standard of decency and your rocking your pajamas in the grocery store? i know i'm rocking my gym clothes in the market and my calves and forearms are too attractive for you, but why are you pulling my card when you haven't washed your dasdasha in about a month and i can see your wearing whiteys tighteys that are looking more like brownie looseies? AND your feet are looking like the girl from Boomerang. can i live?

2004-10-28T01:23:00.000-05:00

The meek shall inherit the earth, but don't forget
its the poor that will inherit the debt (c) posdnuos - de la soul

the good homie lamese's (la la's) family lives in east jerusalem and ramallah. so when she emailed she'd be in beirut and maybe we could meet and go to palestine, i was amped and also a little shook. the idea of travelling to palestine is kind of like when you and the crew are on the playground and you talk all types of trash about how if that cute girl would let you take her out on a date how you would have her hemmed up, and then she tells you she's ready to go out with you and your nervous as hell. but there was no way i was going to miss this opportunity.

the trip reaffirmed alot of what i knew, but more than anything made me realize how much of a development and human rights issue this is. my understanding of the many peace processes or how i'd read about the negotiations was all mute once i landed in tel aviv. 'fairness' and 'justice' are all relative where you are in golden eagle, smyrna, fairfax, or whatever suburbs you can relate to, and then you go a mile to another side of a wall where there are trash piles the size of buildings on fire because no public health infastructure is allowed to exist.

at first i was kind of joking with it, knowing it was ill but keeping my usual make-the-best-of-it-try-to-laugh perspective. at one point i was on a bus with lamese and this gentleman with the googliest of googly eyes got on. i mean, my man's eye was wandering around like it was lost from home. and being someone who likes to play the dozens, naturally i started to chuckle, but then i realized that damn near everyone had some type of physical deficiency. i couldn't count the number of kids with muscular dystrophy or amputated limbs for lack of adequate health care, or simply being on the wrong side of a wall.

what was most inspiring and resilient that among all this pain and depravity, the community is still strong and people are still smiling and welcoming. not to idealize palestinians as a people because just like everywhere, there are a$$holes and there are great people. and alot of people under occupation are understandibly edgy. we were riding in a service from one checkpoint into ramallah, and our cab driver got cut off. he proceeded to drive like Adel to run the other driver down and threaten him at the stoplight, even with a car full of customers. the saddest part about this was that i could tell that there was something else going on in this moment. getting cut off is annoying, but its hard to separate the larger context of occupation from the micro aspects of life when i'm parked between two buildings reduced to dust and rock, open wires dangling everwhere, and a 15 foot concrete wall with barbed wire on one side of us. things become a little clearer.

lamese's grandparents live in the 'NICE' neighborhood, but it hasn't gone unscathed. underneath a crochet of "welcome to our home" hanging in a frame above the door, is a bullet hole in the wall from where settlers across a field were shooting randomly into the houses in the west bank.

i didn't want this to be a laundry list of all of the pain and misery that happens in philistine because there are enough of those already, and its actually an extremley beautiful place. the food i had there was unbelievable. they were the best meals i've had since i've been here. and jerusalem and bethlehem are powerful places. whether you believe Jesus was a prophet or the son of God, it is incredible to walk the same street the cross was carried, or see the stone His body was laid on after taken down off of the cross, or see the exact place that He was born. it really grounded some abstract aspects about my faith and the stories i heard over and over as a young snotnose in Catholic school, into a real and tangible articles of life. i've never felt my faith as strong as i did when i was in these places. it was really unexpected. i imagined it would be amazing, but museum type amazing. not, i-feel-compelled-to-genuflect-immediatley amazing, something i've never really felt before.

but even at the church of the nativity, the occupation's effects are evident. i don't know if you looked at my photo diary yet, but you can see a picture titled "firearms too short to box with God"....apparently the Israeli's didn't think their firearms were too short.... this is a line of shattered windows and bullet holes in the church where hollow points (they explode when they hit) were fired trying to snipe those seeking refuge from a military inscursion inside the building. the Israeli 'defense force' burned the second floor off of the Catholic monastery and priest's quarters off of the Armenian Orthodox monastery so that snipers on three cranes surrounding the churches could get their lee harvey oswald on. tapestries from the Crusades inside are full of bulletholes. its suprising the Christian world is relativley apathetic. if there is one thing this community would galvanize around, why wouldn't it be the degrading and desecration of the site mary gave birth to the son of God? its strange there is so much ideological solidarity among the Christian right in america and the Zionist cause, while the facts on the ground say the Israeli government could give two sh**s less.

before going to philistine, i was pretty used to seeing people's journals and diaries from living there. i would read the same thing over and over, and it is easy to get desensitized to it. easy to get tired of hearing how bad it is. but when confronted with the intensity and concentrated opppression, i feel compelled to put it down and share it, while equally frustrated realizing that words can only convey so much knowing that this will be another "injustice exists in the world" weblog.

as far as i've been educated and socialized, there is a notion we all share that every perspective should be weighed to arrive at one 'fair and balance' objective perspective. and anyone living in caprini green or southeast DC or blueberry street may think i'm naive for having to restate it, but this notion of balance is completley inappropriate in places where it doesn't exist. its like weighing the struggle of the Native Americans and the European colonialists, and trying to say they are equal negotiation partners who are suffering equally.

but when Inga and Avi go home from their brother's funeral from the suicide bomb, they drive past Starbucks and 3 Malls, tucked safely behind 3 trenches, an electric fence, a 30 foot wall, and more trenches, to a newly constructed subsidized home that is on a powergrid with steady electricity and endless supply of water.

and when Mohammed and Ghadeer come back from their sister's funeral, they pass by walls of murals of missing fathers and brothers who have been martyred. they stop for an hour at a checkpoint where they have to squeeze through cages pressed up against 50 other people. they continue past burning piles of tires emitting benzine and dioxide chemicals that slowly erode Ghadeer's repoductive ability and the scent of toxins reminds her that one day her children might have crippled limbs like her cousin Ahmed. and Mohammed breathes in exacerbating his cranial nerve paralysis that has left his eyes maladjusted, clouding his literal and figurative vision. how can he be expected to SEE his neighbors as human beings? through the trip they've had 8 guns aimed directly at their face by 18 yr old israelis, some of whom would rather be anywhere else in the world and are taking their resentment of their forced conscription out on Mohammed and Ghadeer, while others whom love nothing more than to be on the right side of the barrel, and are taking their insecurity out on Mohammed and Ghadeer. they walk a mile one way around a wall and a mile back to return to a point 5 ft away from where they were 40 minutes ago on the other side of the wall. and when they get home the power goes out for the 4th time this week, and the lights from the settlement on the hill that Inga and Avi are living in shine bright as a reminder.

we just know the name, we don't know the pain......

2004-05-19T13:58:00.000-05:00

who wan fi test dis blog?! bommaclot shoot di bonfiyahman!