If there's smoke, there's a liar

(not even crickets chirping, 05something)

It's one of those days where I feel like I went on heroin the night before because the day after feels chemically wrong. You see something funny and it's funny but it's just not funny. You talk to people hoping they won't figure you're on the fritz but all you can manage is a sentence out of context here and maybe there.You gnaw your teeth and your hand often reaches for the lighter. But you say no. Nicotine isn't bad but things aren't working between us anymore. It's time to part. A hug? One last time. A goodbye kiss? Couldn't hurt. A sordid five minutes later, you realize you're having your post-smoke smoke.
But not today. No cigarettes until I do my paper. No dinner even. Stomach grumbles. Maybe dinner. I'm tired. Mosquitoes love the legs. Half is done. Fuck half. Slave some more. Complete it. Grin widely and head towards the roof. But what of the cigarettes? Where are my cigarettes?
Then like a Meatloaf song, it all started coming back to me now.
Class was over and I'd gone to sit on the bench. I did pull out one deathstick. I did smoke one. And then I did leave the packet and my favourite lighter. and Forgot. Couldn't be worse. Wait, what the fuck is Celine Dion doing in my mind?
Come back down from the roof! Late? Very. Frustrated too. Very. Temper running low. Tempted to knock and ask the progenitor? Bad idea. Still tempting.
6 now. Bright idea. Car. Pack of 10. Sanity. Off I go. I shouldn't publish. I should. Smoking kills.

Ten Ten Ten

Almost There by Opus Orange playing, 0201 hours:

I've just returned from my rendezvous with the world's largest fort and it's completely wrung out the adventurous spirit from my exhausted body and then, to insult me, the incident robbed me of my will to go to class that starts less than six hours from now. I pretend to be upset now.
We were supposed to come back at 8 p.m. but somehow that didn't translate well with the shit fate had planned. The day starts out searingly hot (you do NOT want to sit in a car that's parked in the Clifton heat until you've airconditioned the car for five minutes prior) but it was going to get better. We were going to Ranikot.

Now Ranikot itself is very interesting. Wiki confirms that it IS indeed the largest "unexplored" fort, whatever that's supposed to mean. Students took to that description defiantly and couples insisted on exploring the nether regions of the fort. So they could explore nether regions elsewhere. But what's really a mystery is why the fort was built where it was built in the interior of Sindh. Nobody can answer who exactly built it and when and most importantly, what was it defending. It's desert on both sides! I'm sure it wasn't for the making out. That secret is now buried in these literal sands of time along with other such great secrets as "What is the Interior?", "Hyderabad: I'm not in the Interior!" and "Why is the Interior always so fucking hot?".

All this was great but..

One bus broke down. Then another. The AC broke in then another (mine, unfortunately). Half the food turned from the heat. No spoons or forks for the other half. Drivers refusing to drive. And last but definitely not the least: stupid kids. But that happens so often it's more of an accepted evil now.

Of the 17 hours I was away from home, 2 were spent at Ranikot. The rest were in hell. A hell without a bathroom. As imagined, the leak right after couldn't have been more cathartic.

It's late and I'm sleepy. A goodnight to you all and a fuck you, hit the road now please to 10/10/10.

Old School and the Devil's Tool

0126 hours, (Supa Scoopa and the Mighty Scoop from Desert Sessions playing):
I was watching the new Dexter episode and it got me thinking that I skip the opening credits to every show (except for the few that have a new gag every time) but I always end up going through the Dexter one, episode after episode. The accompanying eery score fits in to contextual perfection and everything about the sequence, from the shaving to the frying of eggs to the slices of orange to the tying the laces, whispers a dark intent to the audience. Dexter makes psychosis look easy. I love the show. I have it paused just so I could "blog" about loving the show. In fact I love it so much I'm going to go back to it.

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

(useless dashes I made to signify the passing of time)

Speaking of blogging, a friend of mine just recently chanced upon phkd and decided that I was insane. Not for the flattering reasons of content but because, indignantly saying, of the fact that I just blog. Let's get some facts straight. I don't blog. I bog. And that too not often. Mentioned friend added I'm likely to kill myself because of this "bogging". He was convinced I'll find some tangible evidence of this correlation between suicide and blogging if I google hard enough. And I'm going to blog my suicide note. Apparently every literate person is suicidal because they are able to write a suicide note. And I'm crazy?

I've been bogging before blogging even came into play. The earliest entry on my now mutilated site is dated July 16th, 2002. Geek pride was on a high those days. I had a site with its very own cool address, no blogger blogspot wordpress bullshit. Gunsareblazing.com lasted for about a year before a man in Florida realized he did not pay $100 for internet registration and bandwidth. Going on it right now just sent me down a nostalgic hole, full of emo writings and high school. It's funny how the old site's called stimuli for insanity, which is exactly what my friend accused this blog of being. The site did have cryptic text all over and it was made in my A level days at Pats, a very defining time that set the tone for my actions and behaviour to this day. It felt like somebody tried to turn a very rusty switch on (or off, from a perspective) for a excruciating period of a year and then...then there was light. I learnt that sex and drugs and rock (not so much roll) are the Devil's tools. And should be used wisely. It was an adjustment that I dealt with with different hands and writing was found to be an effective way to rid teenage angsty shit. Writing words just seem to even out the flow. It introduces a little coherency to the wild. Talking is chaos and writing is order. But hardly in order. It's frustrating when the words don't come but so calming when they do. I'm never more comfortable than when in self-expression. Much contrary to allegations of insanity and suicide. Maybe crazy's comfortable too.

(a quick wiki told me I was wrong, the concept of blogging beat my "bogging" by three years)

All work and no sleep makes Jack not bother with a title

Jack hadn't slept, hoping class would be canceled. This fruitless optimism begot the beginnings of a very surreal day.

---

I noticed that driving when deprived of sleep makes everything brighter. Like nuclear summer bright. It causes one to hear mention of one's mother and sister a lot from people otherwise fasting. Driving insanely, first to get to an already late class and then again to the comfort of a bed, casually dodging crossing pedestrians. Frankly, it's a lot like playing GTA. Minus the hookers.

The Flash in always on time

I get to class late, wearing a shirt with The Flash on it. The irony is missed and I'm grateful. It was Ethics and we were talking about the differences between the Classical and Socioeconomic view to management. The Classical view seemed fascist and myopic in its inability to comprehend social welfare. However, one can operate on a Classical level and still be socially charitable keeping in mind the concept of long-term profit. A man who completely embraces the socioeconomic view will do good for the sake of good. A Classical man, however, will do good too but with the expectations of the consequences somehow reimbursing him. But this brings even the staunchest socialists to the Classical floor because let's face it: nobody does good for the rainbows. Everyone wants something. Whether it's something tangible or even in, such as goodwill (from the said person or the public at large). In this life or the after or even the next.

To conclude, I would like to update everyone with the new poverty barometer: calories. 1200 to be exact. This means that people who can't manage 1200 calories a day are officially poor. This also mean that most of the female population went beneath the poverty line. The males and the whales now rule the world.

Writer's Blah

Dear Reader. "Readers" is too funny for even me.

I haven't written for a long time. I would call it writers' block but I'm not really a writer, I was more like a phone off the hook.
I was lying in bed a moment ago when I swear I could hear a jinn whispering, "pathaann ... pathaaaaan ... open your dukaaan" and I decided to listen to my delusions and write about how I can't write.
I remember how I was telling a friend in the 8th grade that there are these moments when you're talking to a girl on the phone when you're blank and have nothing to say and he told me to talk about exactly that, that awkward moment. The idea seemed brilliant until the girl started thinking I'm semi-retarded and started taking these romantic walks in the narrow corridors of the school with the talk-about-the-awkwardness friend. Awkward.

I was lying, I just made up the jinn. I couldn't sleep. I might have class tomorrow and might not and I'm an optimist.

saturday was a good day

University finals have dawned like a killer July sun and procrastinators stand united in worry. It was an exhausting week and just describing it in a half written post exhausted me. So I left it to rot with the other drafts. But last saturday something happened to completely capture my attention.
It was the Manchester derby and I was expecting the worse. A little history in my interest:
United had been coming first for some time before they got bumped off the spot by Chelsea. And then the Champions League was lost. The holes from Arsenal were gaining ground with each match. And then, we drew to Blackburn. It was realistically over. And then out of nowhere, the Spurs come out of the underdog shadow and defeats Arsenal. A little pressure is eased. Then they defeat Chelsea! And the competition is back on! And then, the match that was to cement United's standing firmly on to the road to victory: the match with Man City.
There are two clubs in Manchester. One is the shit and other's plain shitty. manchester city is a club that that's so shitty it doesn't even deserve the title case, forget the title. city came to United and they lost. We met them in the Carling Cup and they were decimated. And now they were promising revenge on the reverse fixture. I was a little scared, but Scholes came to me in my dreams and started "O ye of little faith..." I had class the time the match was on so I knew I was going to miss it. So the match begins and I'm checking livescore every minute and biting my nails. Actually the skin beneath the nails. Biting nails is nasty and unhygienic. And so is Adebayor. It's still nil nil right down to the 70th minute, just when my class gets off. I rush to my car and get inside and go to my friend's house to watch the match and I'm checking the watch to see if I'm too late and I think I am and she opens the door and suddenly I hear her dog go crazy and the TV inside screaming of cheer. I can hear Jenny bark out "SCHOLES!" cos thats all I'm hearing, ringing in my head. Wow, what a rush. Not only do we win the derby but also destroy Arsenal's chance of being second and narrow the gap with Chelsea at first. If it makes anyone feel any better, Arsenal will always be number 2 in my mind.

Exploration

 Searching for truth is easy. Accepting it is hard. - old Jedi saying

I’ve been told by a huge amount of people that I can’t drive. Sure, I’m rough but these claims are slanderous! I just remind them how according to unscrupulous research, the way I drive is in direct correlation to my performance in bed. I agree though, my driving is terrible. I once hit a motorcyclist trying to change his lanes into mine. I didn’t slow down because I was replying to a text I got from a friend. While driving in Karachi, it is essential for the driver to never admit his mistake lest he be eaten alive by the mob. Once he or she (but let’s get real: no woman has ever survived Saddar) truly masters the art of the Jedi mind trick, only then can he drive on the broken, dangerous roads of Karachi feeling safe. Driving in Karachi also requires infinite patience, so my trick is to become super aloof to the middle fingers and dirty looks. Or maybe the detached, fatalistic driving is what causes the finger to be raised in the first place. Oh well. *goes back to being aloof*

But it can’t be helped, thoughts of all kind collide in the insides of my skull till I become numb to thought. One thing that helps me calm and arrange my thoughts in a coherent manner is the subtle influence of good music and good music is only music that raises at least the hair on my forearms. That’s when duality of nature comes together in melodic cohesion and I’m at peace, transient and illusory as it is.

I believe in God, because if I didn’t my mind would tear around the seams. There are so many questions and there are so many things that cause that itch in my mind that if I didn’t believe, all those things would hurl in my brain and I’d be a vegetable with no hope and no motivation…with no Grand Plan. God to me is not really a historic notion but a rather rational one: a string tying up all the loose ends in the universe. It’s math, really. Without a Constant, the equation just falls apart. Everybody has their own constants. The heart, the story goes, is made to love. When it doesn’t find divinity, it finds other things in naivety.  A tribal dude might adhere to a constant culture perpetuated by his environment, Gordon Gecko had money, Don Juan had women (as an idea, not individuals) and even the atheist, his Seinfeld-ish belief in nothing. I’m guessing Aristotle had the right idea when he said that humans are only different from animals on account of inclusion of the rational soul, capable of reflection. But unlike animals, this part of the soul was placed in the heart rather than the mind. And anybody who’s ever fallen in love knows that nothing hurts quite like heartache. Music mends my abused mind while the idea of Allah Subhanta’allah tends to the black depths of my heart.

The balance we strike in leading our lives is illusory, changing to whims and frailty of society. But balance by definition is a compromise and compromise does not exist in perfection. Somebody’s wrong is some other body’s right, no pun intended. But we aren’t perfect creatures and we make do, our animal instincts and base desires on one side and our ideals of civility and purpose on the other. There is a line that divides the dark from the light where aspects of both sides come together to form a comfortable gray. The shade might vary from morality to morality, with our own perfect barcode as a benchmark to judge all other grays, “knowing the hand of God to be the promise of our own”.

When the history of DC Comics characters became so convoluted and ambiguous, DC ran an in-comic campaign to clean up house, killing off variations of known superheroes that were deemed too outdated and merging the characters of the ones that would seem about right. Histories were finally settled so a character could be traced to a linear source. The merging of the parallel multiverses into the comic universe we’re used to today was called Crisis on Infinite Earths. This is the event that established Clark Kent as Superman, vulnerable to kryptonite and way way faster than a speeding train. Apparently “faster than a train” had more of an impact in the 50’s than it did on me. The Crisis was used to end that aspect of Superman history by making it the history of another superman from another universe. In similar fashion, the balance that humans strike in their respective lives is a product of deliberate ideology. The mix of black and white that we reach to attend life, the focal point of our duality, is what I call the crisis line. This is the line where we decide what to keep and what to throw. This is the place where all our moral ambiguities come together and form character. Too human as it is.

Because we’re ours, we walk the crisis line. - Johnny Cash (almost)

I have an exam in the morning. Goodnight.

 

R.I.P.

Tales from the Kaava Place

Come have times when the quintessential Pathan and I have sat down in conversation where the gentleman from the ancestral north has broadened my horizons.

I was having kaava at a place near jheel park (which by the way has the best kaava ever) and playing with google maps on my stolen phone when the random man sitting opposite me engaged me with his sad countenance, almost pitying me.

Sidenote: the guilt is tearing me apart and I have to confess. I msWorded "facial expression" to get countenance. In my defense, countenance was right there at the tip and it was drilling a hole in my brain and I had to.

Anyway, the dude tells me that I should throw away my cellphone and landline and television and I'm sure he would have mentioned this very computer too had he known it existed, reason being that the airwaves disturbs "jo hawa mei hai". I, captivated with doe eyes, ask "khuda?" "Nahi...chirriya" he replies. Now I'm smiling but listening intently when he tells me how they get back at us by sitting on the wires that carry these signals and somehow disturbing us through these inventions. Now I'm torn in focusing between the conversation and the debate churning in my mind of what substance this man abuses. He was pretty thorough with the technical details and Pashtu jargon and the fact that a man of such complex thought be so confident in this bizarre a thought really liberated me. And in a very non-sarcastic way. That feeling of not caring about how the other person will think you're insane and saying what you really feel inside. I finished the cup soon after and went home a little wiser.

Neverland

There are things that we talk about but we never talk of them. We make a joke or two and during the laughter, hint at something and test the other person's waters. If the expression is stormy, we wait it out and sometimes, like George Clooney in a movie about storms, "it" dies. Sometimes a calm expression is expected and received with a furthering of conversation that gradually ends in something coming up and that something is talked about. It's essentially called beating around the bush. I would call it that too if it wasn't for the other person knowing exactly where the conversation is heading, so technically it's not really beating but more like "prologuing" the bush. It's a diplomatic verbal build up before a bomb of any size is dropped. One should not expect the bomb after small talk (for the sake of being civil and polite) but the truth is that the bomb almost always comes. The idea of the prologuer/bomber is to warm up the conversation before the payload is dropped on the now more vulnerable other. This should not be confused with the build up of a story that is hardly a bomb. And if I didn't mention before, prologuing a woman of your dream is understandable. Totally. A base example would be when a person you often dream about is standing in front of you and you can't help smiling. You don't want to be too forward, so you talk about the excellent time in the toilet you just had and how it makes you smile ever so. To contrast, it would be unwise to freak her out by mentioning how you keep seeing her in a surreal symbolic fashion and how you always wake up smiling when you do. Besides you have nothing to form a plausible picture to give weight to the vivid imagery floating in your head. Or even words that won't make a total ass out of you.
Now I understand the mechanism but it doesn't make it any less strange, even though I'm no stranger to prologuing. I think my brain development stagnated when I hit 18 so I don't, read: can't, appreciate these tools, among many others, that give us that refined mature sheen...that veneer of tact. When there's a favour needed, that two minutes of small talk just seem kinda fake and lifeless especially when at that moment you couldn't give a rat's ass about how the family and pet dog are doing. And when the person you're talking to is smart enough to recognize the prologue, then it's fake times two. I guess the other is then also smart enough to realize that prologuing's a standard protocol. But then again, I take the shotgun rule way too seriously.
My friends think I'm stuck in the '90s. Not that the shotgun rule was invented in the '90s, maybe because we used to adhere to such rules then. Then I happen to love bands from the '90s. Not all of them! It's not my fault Tool was formed in 1990. And according to wiki, Third Eye Blind in the early 1990s. Nirvana, I find out from the same source, was formed in 1987. Maybe they're right about the music. Apparently I dress '90s too, if there is such a thing. Did it really change so much for men? And then there are the stories and girls which and who only sometimes manage to date back to the '90s. But the whole idea gives weight to my original theory of being stuck at 18. That's supposed to either make me enjoy life like there is no tomorrow and full of youth and its follies or present me as a rather sad individual, stuck in the past, who shuns responsibility, to family I guess. Wow, the latter really brings out the duality of my Neverland. Who knows, even Peter Pan sometimes might have wished he would just grow up.


There are those times in my life when headlights are peering into and piercing right through me and the deer in me doesn't have a clue as what to do or say next. That's the Moment of Truth. And I go back to the mitti I came of.

A Modest Plan

"Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears – the glasses, the business suit – that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak, he's unsure of himself, he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race."

This is the part of Kill Bill just before Bill gets killed. I was thinking about this, staring at the big red "S" on the wall, instead of sleeping. Plant mechanics disallow me from shutting the big white light in my room until it's 6. And now that it's 6, I feel more like writing than sleeping.

Superman stands for truth, justice and the American way. What better way to market a lifestyle than God's human vessel dressed in red and blue. I think "they" got to me too. I happen to love Superman. He has heat vision and flies. Nothing penetrates his skin and nothing messes his hair. And faster than a speeding bullet, he becomes SuperVoyeur with the nifty X-ray vision. And unlike gods of today, it's not the powers that make him or the absence of a tragedy that define him. It's the utter disinterest in his passion for saving the world. He doesn't growl to himself about how it's his duty or his responsibility, he merely acknowledges his superior disposition and does his job. And then, he has the balls to go into human costume and deal with women and deadlines. I respect that.
Now if I had those cojonies, I'd march up to the northernmost room in the house and tell my dad that I wanted to keep Monty and that was it. What actually was "it" was that some time ago, a certain individual had an evil dream about me parading my snake on a leash and getting eaten by a cat. Much parallel, i borrowed from my cousin her weird glass art project and fitted in an energy saver, made it nice and sandy and put Monty in his new quarters, proud of my presentable snake. And then my dad, the analogous alpha billa, sees him and denies my pleas of letting me keep Monty. And for these reasons, juvenile later turning postal, I want my own place. Where I can garden and read, smoke and be free. And sleep comma dream.

For everything else

Exams have ended among other things and the dearth of things to do is frustrating. Monty needs to be fed but the idiot refused a piece of rare prime steak. Imagine the rich feces that follows. Very unlike my pockets at the moment.

It's the end of the month and I am broke. The reasons I tried to feed Monty a bite of my steak was because, a) borrowing money to buy snake food kinda reveals I have a snake and b) it's embarrassing asking her for money at this unemployed age. This tells me to get a job and be productive. But the kind of jobs that you get at my level of education are internships or volunteer work. Ironically, the kind that needs other motivation than monetary. I don't particularly love money but like a righteous hypocrite, I enjoy what temporary tricks it can pull off. Keeping that in mind, we can devise a theory that divides happiness in two: Consumer Happiness and Capital Happiness. The former will only take you high enough and suddenly you're hit with a vertical line on the graph relating price and utility where the price keeps increasing but you don't get any happier. Capital Happiness take a heavy one-time investment and probably a few repair jobs in the year but the peace of mind lasts for a loooong time. You can buy the latest levis from the store or finding your dad's old classic straight fit levis with your waist from 1985 during moving. Priceless. And it just occurred, from muttering that word, that Mastercard developed and pushed this theory way before me.

.Internet connection? Rs. 1500

.Consuming a cigarette while writing this? Rs. 6 and much of my health.

.Finding out that your very original idea is known to all and sundry and used as a slogan by a commercial giant? Priceless

the early bird gets the weed

Earlier in the month, my resolution was to take up more healthy habits. I did, and I turned to gardening. So there I am sweating in winter, my back's killing me, my thighs feel like I've done 200 squats and I'm wondering if this is still healthy. But I forgot all that as I laid eyes on the seedlings trying to push up from the ground. It was beautiful: life taking place in front of me. I was already high.

And then Alfred Hitchcock's birds came. The other morning I found my babies, dead, their stalks jutting out like bones in a field of war. It was unsightly. I cursed at those stupid sparrows and I vowed that I'm going to feed their young to my snake while I do the opposite of work on the very very few crops that I'm left with. Not very healthy, I suppose.

Sleep is the girl who captured my interest with her doey eyes and returned the note describing her beauty with a look of a bitch. I like sleep but I'll pretend I don't need it, and she wants nothing to do with me.

Girls my age are getting married. Not only does marriage take away viable candidates from the dating pool, the very idea of it raises the expectations of the few other contestants remaining, who then want to look for "more" in a relationship, ruining the chances for many a men and scaring others shitless.

My 2 cents for the day.

Dumb and Braver

It has come to my attention that smart people are cowards. And keeping that in mind, the dumber you are, the physically braver. It was merely an observation before but I started thinking about it and it made sense. Smarter people have faster reflexes and I'm guessing, a higher order of intelligence that allows them to assess the antagonistic situation and their brain, in its own brave way, screams at their emotions to die down before the shit truly hits the fan. The mind offers reflex alternatives. Regardless of the fact that he or (I hope) she follows one alternative and decides to run for it, he'll or (I hope again) she'll be distracted for a full split second: the nerd gets taken down. I hope it's not my hypothetical she. But seriously, smart people develop options and often opt for those alternative routes. And a dumber crowd correlates inversely by literally refusing to think and enters the fight hard. It works and gets the job done. So ends the tale of the smart ants who worked hard in the summer and stored grain in the winter and were self-righteously wining and dining merrily in december when the stupid bear who forgot to hibernate came and trashed the place and ate the ants. The bastards deserved it after they let the grasshopper die.
 

woke up sucking a lemon

On my way to class today I happened to glance at the rather bright screen they've erected near Regent Plaza which keeps showing the news in mute. They have one on Tariq Road and I swear it lights the place up like a ghetto Times Square.
It's funny they're showing these silent adverts with women and doctors giving those informative speeches. While you're not disgusted by aunties with saccharine voices insisting they love their families and showing it by lovingly feeding them chunks of fried garbage, you can notice the has-been starlet and the frustration she packs for having an idiot of a husband and having to resort to do this cooking oil stint to pay the bills and pretending to love a kid who's a little bitch offscreen by making him ingest fatal amounts of cholesterol.
The kid should know that the future of child stars is not bright in Pakistan. At most he'll end up on the back page of Young World wearing red hotpants, sweets in his hands and a hole where self-respect used to reside. The Aunty knows about this hole all too well.
And the name of the channel on the screen? GOOD NEWS TV. Bits and pieces of other news thrown together without the voice track. It's brilliant! And I'm going to tell you how to get GOOD NEWS at home.

Step 1. Open your television to Geo
Step 2. Hit mute

It works every time.

x

But news isn't all that bad. There's some construction happening on this side of the bridge that is soon to smooth out the traffic to Defense and Clifton. Somebody built an awesome looking structure on the chowrangi between the two Habib banks on Tipu Sultan. Big TV screens are springing up on the road. Sharfabad got one of those cool signals with timers! Modrenity ki inteha!
Speaking of, the normal Pakistani man loves to be modren. But the very mention of a woman being modern, one in question usually starts sputtering out denials. The males here on the other hand will have no qualms about rising unabashedly to the occasion and some will even fake it. I love it when some poor fool loses it in a dispute and in that moment of confused anger, starts swearing in English out of spite. Fuckyou you! He had the last say but definitely not the last laugh.
For a woman in Pakistan, being called modern or advanced or tez is like being equated to a slut apparently. You just can't call a woman that. But they don't love it any less than every man. Men will have their boys' night out talking in lewd detail about her tits and ass, and women will have their kitty parties talking in lewd detail about her "figure" and her nonexistent sleeves. Throw in an argument and a resultant pillow fight and we have the opening scene of an all-girl porno.

And what the fuck is up with everyone about going sleeveless? Why is it an issue on another level? Though for men, I can understand. It looks...unsightly. It doesn't make sense, however, when mothers start giving shit to their daughters about their clothes having no sleeves. They aren't okay with sleeveless shoulders but they're cool with inch of cloth carefully labelled sleeves. It makes it look less like morals and more like appearances. God have mercy, I'm not learned in Islamic injunctions and arguments of modesty to say anything in ethereal terms but in humble rationale, I can't think how a flap of cloth makes any difference to a woman or society in general. Like Bob never used to say ironically, times...they are a changin'.

An Open Letter to James Cameron

Dear James,
I'm a big fan. I loved Alien and even more, Aliens. I love the fact you used the villain from one movie as the hero in the sequel and made that Austrian face so Hollywood that later, they elected him Governor. Sir, you are an icon in film making and a god among genre affictionados. So then, why oh why would you get a sex change and make that shit peice Titanic. And have that break the roof of the box office? Only if the boys knew that Katy would start signing documents that made sure she gets to take her clothes off for every film she made in the future. But hell, it made money and made girls remember your name, so grudging kudos to your success with that. Titanic's heart would go on and on but after the 653rd remix of Celine Dion's number, the scene began to sink. Slowly Sting's Desert Rose and it's billion remixes started hitting Mohammad Ali and maybe in the confusion of figuring what the fuck Sting was trying to mumble in that song, people started to forget their Tittanic phase. Boys, who did not play sports often, started to dream about the next movie you were going to blow their minds with. I, on a personal note, began hoping humbly that this new secret project you were working on would make people forget you ever made Titanic. But you fucked it up again.

With your gender reassignment, I see you've been taking high doses of your hormonal therapy. You took the ultra cool Uhura from Star Trek and turned her into a naked pixie in the forest. That would not be such a bad thing if she didn't cry so funny. "Maaahh ahhhh". What the fuck. I don't want to hear Chewbacca give birth. I don't want Michelle Rodriguez to be a nice self-sacrificing martyr. I don't want to see expansive and never ending shots of Pandora that you spent millions on and are dying to show off. It's boring. And was it just me or did no scene during those avatar/navi bonding session raise a hair? It was bland. Especially when the dumb aliens just take in a random dude into the intimacy of their tribe. And everything just fell in to place, eh? I'm loving these cheesy messiah storylines taking place these days in movies that just just drop out of the sky with plugs to fill in the plot holes. And the obligatory deus ex machina at the end. It was only cool back when Neo gets shot and wakes up seeing the world in green. Just thinking about that is making me regret going to avatar when i could have been watching the Matrix on high def. All in all, it was a mediocre affair and I kept wishing I hadn't seen and loved Dances with Wolves before.
And blue aliens with tails riding scary black alien horses and attacking mankind is eery. It's paranoid of me to say but there had to be something subliminal about the movie. Why else would you spend so much money on a movie with that recycled a story? Fine. Even I was dying to see it, knowing the general story and probable plot twists. I bought the hype. But how could anyone watch this again and why on earth would you ever want to even recommend it to anybody? So why is it breaking every record! I'm bitter it did well. Sorta like when we got Asif Ali Zardari as the president. Now I'm convinced more than ever that Satan was somehow involved in all this.

A feeling of Discontent

The following song would be the perfect soundtrack to this dream I once had:

Crack The Shutters by Snow Patrol

You cool your bedwarm hands down
On the broken radiator

When you lay them freezing on me
I mumble can you wake me later

But I don't really want you to stop
And you know it so it doesn't stop you

You run your hands from my neck
To my chest

Crack the shutters open wide
I want to bathe you in the light of day

And just watch you as the rays
Tangle up around your face and body

I could sit here for hours
Finding new ways to be awed each minute

'Cause the daylight seems to want you
Just as much as I want you

Its been minutes Its been days,
I remember all I will remember

Happy lost in your hair
And the cold side of the pillow

Your hills and valleys
Are mapped by my intrepid fingers

And in a naked slumber
I dream all this again

I went to school in my father's car today because mine wouldn't start. I try not to drive that car because I get really conscious doing so, like my dad himself is sitting with me whilst I drive. It's awkward but the radio works. It was a shitty morning but the song made it nice.
Now my whole day would have went well had I heard the song without a shitty day to return to. So now you end up pissed tired and feeling like you should feel miserable but actually feel nice and fuzzy inside. Which makes you question your sanity in the short term.
What happens during that is that something in your mind seems out of place and you have no idea what that deficiency feeling is all about. Like you're lacking something or missing it. You can't identify it but you wish you could fix your serotonin levels with a slap to the head. It doesn't work so you tend to enthusiastically take up vague projects that you know you'll never complete. But anything to pass the time. It gets worse and you start getting shifty and your heart beat gets louder and more irregular. Your span of attention has now turned to a crab which scurries away as soon as it spots anything and you beg to God for peace of mind.

Sometimes, all you ever wish for is the Snow Patrol song to go forever. Irony goes well with the metallic taste in your mouth.

6th Jan - Monty Ate Today

Today is the 7th but yesterday it was the 6th and the day my snake ate his first meal at home. Poor guy was called an earthworm by anonymous some. But the way he bit into the chicken liver and coiled around it and slowly started eating it up was awesome. I only wish it were live food so Monts could practice some of that real life instinct shit you see in formulaic movies where a wild animal's kept as a pet and is later rehabilitated into the wild and there are always happy tears in the end. Monty looks like he's always smiling. His jaw's just curved like that. Kinda like how Heath Ledger's Joker had it but nothing that sinister. He's a good boy. And now he's looking all round, moving with awkward jerks around the bulge in his stomach. I didn't have my regular phone on me because that one was stolen by a certain individual or I would have made a movie and uploaded it right then.
Syed Jibran Ahmed is a thief.

"definitely something" in the time of cholera

Chapter 1.
I'm falling asleep and I can feel everything around me turning hazy. My bed starts to melt away and the colours of the walls are bleeding on to the floor and everything is merging into a ball of white space. And I'm nowhere. And it's perfect.

-
People don't normally remember this because by this time, they black out. I would have too, if it wasn't for the jedi mosquito trying to bombard an opening in the deathstar. The little fucker kept buzzing inside my ear until I started hearing machine gun fire invade my white sanctum. I snapped out (or in) and started slapping around wildly to get him to stop so I could return. But it looked like Luke Bloodsucker was on a mission and that mission had something to do with the inside of my ear. I did fall asleep eventually.
-

Chapter 2.
I'm walking with my old house behind me when this small car stops and I get in. There's Girl, a mother and a sister. And a driver too. Apparently they've come to drop some haleem off and I'm guiding them to my house which now is apparently not that near. I'm sitting between the mother and the girl in the back and after familiar pleasantries are exchanged between me and Girl, her mother's asking me where my house is. I don't remember the dialogue now, but I remember it moderate in tone. The lane to my house comes and I purposely have it avoided because I need more time with this Girl. And the scene changes.

-
It's morning by the way and I'm up early and I needed to write this before I forgot everything. The forgotten dialogue between me and the mother was articulate. She knew even if Girl didn't. Her emotions were controlled and she wasn't being harsh. She was stern though. She scared me but there was nothing not to like.
-

Chapter 3.
We're on Tariq Road when I see the broken windows, a few cars running scared, people breaking down and laughing. It's like hartaal in Wonderland. We pick up our speed and we're on Shahrah-e-Quaideen, going towards Faisal. It was weird because the people outside were happy. Like they were going to a picnic at breakneck speed. The car to our right had a girl sticking out and professing her love for ... diggi? Her windshield was broken, so either she was in shock or she was just reaching out at desperate times. We move further and I see Salman and "Usf" under the flyover, standing like they're at Liaquat's. Thank God there was no Liaquat or he would have insisted I pay him back an imaginary Rs. 350.

Chapter 4.
I'm swimming as a child in my Nana's house and it doesn't feel right. I remember feeling vulnerable, conscious of my surroundings and uncomfortable. Scene fades.

-
I need a smoke. I'm going to the roof.
-

Chapter 5.
The car is there again and Girl is at the back, as am I. Sister is nowhere and the mother is in the passenger seat. There's a primordial and emotional air and my hands are freezing and Girl takes them in hers. I feel warm inside.

Chapter 6.
We reach my house and the mother leaves her and the sister at my house. No haleem though, that seems to have vanished.
I take them inside to the safety of my house and we're climbing the stairs to the terrace. I believe it's my old house. I can hear my entire family there and the sister's talking to me about something I can't remember now. She was smiling and she walks over and sits with the khandaan, seemingly comfortable. But Girl stays with me. She walks in my old room and she's talking to me about everything but i can't hear a word. I'm just looking into her. Now I know why they call it dreamy.
The last thing she talks about is some football match between Arsenel and Astonvilla and I swear it couldn't get better than that.

Epilogue
I wake up with a smile at 7:30. It's one of those dreams where you don't want to wake up from. You linger in bed, dazed and happy. You wish you could or would stop because it is, after all, just a dream.

x---x

I killed the annoying mosquito in the end.

.

the Top Three

Nothing beats the cold wind rushing by your face and your hair flying when you take a trip down to the airport. No wait, nothing beats the cold wind rushing by and rustling through your hair when you're returning from the airport. It's usually that you drive slowly when going there because you have other people in the car with you, more likely older relatives and you would prefer to be tameezdar. But when you're returning, it's a different and more reckless story. That's where you turn the volume dial over and over and make the wind slap your face. I have a cold (damn you crab masala allergies!) and I could feel the viscosity of my sinus grow tenfold but it didn't matter. All I was thinking about were the three women I really really like to see in movies. They're all very stunning and accomplished and each has their own style to acting. I find all of them superhot (even if people don't agree with me on this) but it's just not the way they look that makes them appealing. I've seen plenty of smoking hot women fade away much like the cigarette smell in the very humble abode I call my room. Each of them has their own thing to them that somehow grabs me. This reminds me of a girl who I think looks rather like a clown but strangely, hot too. Not beautiful, because as I mentioned she looks like a clown. And don't get me wrong, I hate clowns and the way they look and the way they act and I definitely do not have clown-o-philia. But there was something about her I couldn't put my finger on that made her appealing and I could understand what was behind all those men falling for her. So anyway, all three have this individual thing about them that I can't identify and although I'd love a chance to meet any of them, I think I'd probably end up stammering and going red and not being able to talk at all if I did ever get the chance. They are (in no particular order):


Jennifer Connelly


I remember her from way back as the girl from this obscure movie about goblins and an orangutan (which I later learnt was called Labyrinth). I saw her again much later in one of my favourite movies, Dark City and she soon established herself as one of my favourite actresses. Jennifer Connelly, as her name suggests, is Irish by descent and Jewish on her mother's side. And sultry from all sides. I didn't see Requiem for a Dream and A Beautiful Mind wasn't too great but I found Ang Lee's Hulk remarkable and she was amazing as Betty Ross. And then came House of Sand and Fog in which I was blown away by her character. And when she tries to seduce Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Blood Diamond for information and finds herself a part of his fight, there was an appealing layer of subtlety to her. I can't say but there's something definitely about her that makes me want to grow a flower or something in her name.


Rachel McAdams


Wow. In this case, one can probably tell I posted the picture before I said anything. Rachel McAdams looks ordinary to me one second and breathtaking the other. I didn't mean ordinary like plain, just conventional. People tend to ignore the ordinary but there's so much beauty to be experienced and touched in this world in the most ordinary of people and things. Rachel McAdams is an embodiment of and testament to just that.
To be honest, I never really noticed her in her blonde teen roles but she was enough to make an honest man out of anyone in The Wedding Crashers. I saw The Notebook only about a year ago but I stopped watching that in the final last minutes because I knew where it was going and just didn't want to see it/couldn't bear it. But wow. And just to catch her in action, i went to see Red Eye on the big screen. Red Eye!


Amy Adams


Amy Adams is a red. I'm beginning to think I have a thing for redheads. That green-eyed girl from Lost (spoiler) who dies from those nasty nosebleeds is a red so is Isla Fisher (who was also in The Wedding Crashers with Rachel McAdams as her psychotic sister or something) who is brilliant in her comedic roles as well being a total stunner.
Amy Adams is the girl who lives next door to you and you've been in love with her all your life. You get girlfriends, she gets boyfriends and you pass her off as a friend who's also your neighbour. You don't even know you're in love with love with her. I think I saw her the first time in Talladega Nights with Will Ferrel and I definitely thought she was way better looking than the wife. I saw her again in Enchanted which made me remember her name. I have a confession: I loved Enchanted. But in my defense, I like these Disney movies. Even The Little Mermaid. Amy Adams is beautiful in her serious roles and really cute in others. There's something about her that makes me want to get to know her and introduce her to my parents or something. And...I can't wait for Leap Year.

Only in the Movies

I like to indulge myself in the movies. I don't know about the other kids but I've been fed movies since the age of 5. A good weekend with my Nana always had a movie premiere in there somewhere. Whether it was rooting for Beastman or getting goosebumps when the iconic "thump" of the T. Rex left ripples in the water in Jurassic Park or even sneaking into these stupid new cinemas where you can't enter without your "family" without a girl to watch promising but turns-out-its-shit movies like Jumper, the experience was always the same. The lights dim, the reel spins, stupid ads for things I didn't know existed come, the national anthem plays and we're off. And if you missed this and God forbid, the trailers you should just go home because it's just not the same. The beginning credits set the mood for the film and I'm there hungrily eating at whatever the director throws at me. It's surreal.
My favourite genre of movie would be just that: genre films. Genre films have this old school thing about it which I can't place. Maybe it's the B movie buried under the high budget or the way the men are men in film noir but I love them (speaking of B movies, the third canonical Universal Soldier is out and I loved it. Dolph Lundgren and Van Damme are there! Washed out/cokehead's written all over their faces but that just adds to the atmosphere).

But the thing I love most is when something actually happens and it feels like it just jumped out of a movie. It's ironic that it's so real.
So there are different situations, or genres if you will, when it starts to feel like that. There's that romantic/comedy moment or just plain comedy. There's a thriller when there are bombs exploding and snipers are posted on the roof of your school and your friend starts pointing them out using clock hands. Walking straight, without looking up: "Guard, 12 o'clock! Sniper, 5 o'clock! Hot girl, 9 o'clock!" And then there's complete and utter horror which makes you literally piss your pants. There was a letter I mentioned before briefly that came from a state prison in California a while ago, addressed to me. I was excited and I wanted to write back. But then we googled him. And I pissed my pants.


My guy Maldonado here killed his dad and made a stew out of him. He fucking ate his dad! And that is why he's serving his life sentence for it. And he has my address! *this is the point the music from Psycho starts playing in my head*
And I imagined this person to be in for being a drug mule and regretting it and rehabilitating himself for when he gets out, starting life in the US of A. This shit made me want to pop a few benzos and hope to dear God he never gets out. I've had my rough patch with my dad so I tried to understand but this...this is literally insane. it goes beyond the traditional realms of horror and treads on the subject which scares me the most: the human mind gone wrong.
Ever the optimist, I can now safely say that at the least one person finds me delectable.