You Can't Make Mistakes.

The 8th Annual

Likely, you already know about the Fruity Rum-Drink Party. If not, check out the site that went live this week: fruityrum.com

Back in the Saddle

Sorry for the recent hiatus in posting. I have been a bit lazy and let-lagged this week. 10 in the evening in Kalamazoo feels like what I have been calling 5 in the morning for the past year. It has been as rough transition, but getting better every day. The best part about this, as I sit and write at 7:50am on a Saturday, is that my increasingly late wake up time in Cairo is nice and early here. I have reclaimed the best part of the day, and I usually have it all to myself.

It’s good to be back… at least for a while.

I suppose that this is why I left in the first place, after all. I could have stayed here in the States and written my thesis. I would have had access to a great many more resources—the university library, easy access to the internet, face time with professors, and much more—but I would have likely been bored stiff, trudged on, written, worked some shitty part-time job: you get the picture.

Had I stayed here for the last year, I would not be writing now about how much I enjoy the air, the trees, the cool 10°C mornings, Taco Bell, Miller Lite, American Chinese food, walking barefoot in the grass: so many things. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate these things before, it is just that I didn’t appreciate them that much. I won’t gush or wax poetic about the joy of mundane things, but I will say that living in a place where everything is difficult makes me appreciate living in a place where everything is easy.

It also makes cake out of those things which before seemed difficult: as in “piece of.”

Regardless of all of that, I am having a blast. It is also stunning to take note of the things that I have learned in the past year. For instance: I went to seen Iron Man last weekend. It was great. I love comic-book movies, I love movie theaters. I didn’t go to the cinema nearly enough while in Cairo. Something to think about for the future. The best part of the film, though, was not the popcorn and bucket of soda that I was endowed with upon stepping into the joint, but that the film had loads of Arabic in it: and I understood every word. Obviously, it wasn’t very sophisticated dialog—certainly no more than the dialog in the primary language of the film—but I got it. I didn’t even notice at first: then I realized that I wasn’t looking at the subtitles when I laughed at some little quip or joke. Suffice it to say that I was very pleased with myself.

Same thing when I noticed what an easy time I was having understanding Ayad—dear friend and former roommate—when he showed up late one night before leaving for Saudi Arabia for the summer. We could always talk before, but it is certainly easier now.

I continue to reflect thus as I sit here and wait for the installer to finish on my new low-energy, headless Linux server. A year ago, I didn’t know what a headless server was. In the past year in learning how to use Linux on my laptop for data analysis, I accidentally learned loads about how it works and how to use it. So, now, rather than just having a slab running Windows crap factory, I have a laptop running a scalable set of software which is tailored to my needs. I was particularly pleased when Jeff asked me to put Ubuntu on his laptop to replace the Windows Vista that it shipped with. It went from being a relatively slow, unresponsive, one-year-old system to being a blindingly fast, extensible, little mobile monster. He was/is very pleased by the improvement. He is still gushing about it, in fact.

But, to think, a year ago I attempted an install of Ubuntu on my old laptop—I have since upgraded in a very serious way—and ended up with a command-line laptop for a month. That was cool and all, but it must be noted that it is very difficult to browse the internet using the command-line terminal. Kind of fun though.

Incidentally, I just converted that laptop back into a command-line laptop, just for kicks.

All in all, though, this year was a complete success: I learned a great deal. Had I stayed home, I might not have. Or, I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself nearly as much while doing it.

Anyone else learn anything this year?

If you haven’t been paying attention up until now, you had better start.

So this is not the post that I promised. The Friday feature is still in development phase and since I am putting the finishing touches on a paper right now, it wasn’t going to happen this weekend.

However, I am pleased to report, that my dear friend Scott Masson and the band Office are now on MTV.

That, ladies and gents, is a big leap forward for these guys. They were bound to make it, and now they are doing so.

You can see their progress by clicking on this link.

If you haven’t purchased their record, A Night at the Ritz, you can do so by clicking here.

And, if you are really up for some fun: watch the “Oh My” video on YouTube, or right here:

You can also learn more about OFFICE at their website: www.reachoffice.net.

Thanks for enjoying this along with me. I couldn’t be more proud of these folks. Raise your glass to them. Cheers.

Jeff told me last night that when he met Diane Rehm last week at a talk that she gave in Kalamazoo he told her that I, his partner, was currently in Alexandria, Egypt studying. She was apparently excited, partially because her mother is Egyptian, and told him to wish me all the best and tell me that she thought that it was wonderful that I was studying here and doing what I do.

I actually got a bit teary-eyed when Jeff related her words. I am terribly sad that I didn’t get to see her speak and meet her in K-zoo, but that was almost as good. It was nice to be wished well by someone who I might even call one of my heroes.

Anyway that just made my day.

Now, a little tidbit for your enjoyment:

Cockroaches are not just a reality living in a city like Alexandria, they get up in the morning and put the coffee on and wait for you to get up and read the news with them. They are everywhere. Thankfully, we don’t have many very regularly in my apartment. This is not to say that we have none: I killed two yesterday. They are, however, manageable. On top of the very occasional cockroach, we have had a terrible ant problem. These are not the big carpenter ants that I am used to, they are little, what my grandfather would refer to as “piss-ants.”

So, we have bought everything from ant traps, to spray, to various poisons and nothing has seemed to work. Until now.

Last week I purchased a packages of these rather large pill-shaped things that are meant to kill crawling bugs like ants and cockroaches. You are just supposed to place them around in cabinets and drawers, in corners and near the places where you see these things coming from.

What follows is the instructions on the back of the package, from which I learned what these magical pills do. I would not call this technical writing so much as poetry. keep in mind that the spelling and punctuation is verbatim.

Enjoy.

Deer Lady

deer lady, put this pills inside kitchen cupboard with out any fear of damages on your kitchen equipment or your food.

deer lady, the result of this pills will show after (24-72 hour) and will be continue for months.

deer lady, after getting rid completelyof the crawling insects, leave this pills at it is still working for months.

deer lady, if you have gaze pipe at your kitchen, you should put this pills under the gaze pipe, because it is the most preferableplace to the insects

I hope that you got a kick out of that as I did. I just would really like to know who the “deer lady” is. Also, I am a little upset at having lived my entire life without a “gaze pipe” in my kitchen. I imagine that this is some sort of device for spying on your neighbors. What a cool idea.

I love that the translator of this passage was word literal to the original. I also that the writer took the liberty of composing a poem to all of the housewives in the world who might use this product, rather than simply writing out instructions in the normal dry, prose of technical terminology. It is the little things that I find beautiful, I guess.

I hope that you all can be graced with poetry on your cleaning products and insecticides today.

Again, as I attempt to get back into my own groove after months and months of being a one-track monkey, I will be writing relatively frequently. So, that said, please bear with me as I bore even myself with the minutiae and details of my daily wheelings and dealings.

Things are coming together for this fall’s adventure to Alexandria. Each day I get a little more anxious and a little more prepared for the trip. It is going to be possibly the most academically beneficial experience of my career so far. Not to mention fun. I really look forward to being there again. I feel at home there, even though it might not always be the easiest place to live for an American student—or anyone for that matter. Plus, this site will afford me an opportunity to broadcast what I am doing and to share my experiences with everyone on this side of the ocean. I will also possibly be launching a podcast on this site to further augment that sharing, so stay tuned.

In other news, I—along with Kalamazoo author W. Donta Andrews and the Rev. Ericka Parkinson, Associate Pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Richland—will be appearing on Just Friendly Advice with Shalini on Kalamazoo TalkRadio 1360AM this Sunday at 3:00pm. They are doing a series on modern spirituality and I get to go talk about what I actually know something about for a change. Very exciting. It is the first step to my ultimate goal to be a public radio expert on religion someday. I have always wanted to be one of the folks that the Diane Rehm Show or Talk of the Nation staff calls up to have appear on the show to talk about religion, Islam, or whatever. I can’t wait.

For now, however, there are errands to run and there is work to be done on other fronts.

Wow, a month gone and I haven’t written here. I hadn’t realized that it was that long. What have I been doing all this time? Oh yah, I was—along with many others—putting together a huge community-wide event, working for myself, attempting to do some planning for my thesis, write a couple of overdue papers, et cetera. I’ve been busy.

I meant to write last week, but after Kalamazoo Pride there was still a ton of work to be done. I also took a bit of a vacation with some friends in Colorado. It was nice to get away, but it is nice to be home now, and be able to get back to work.

I am, as always, still taking on more than I probably should. We are working with Kalamazoo Pride right now to appoint a board, begin the planning and fundraising for next year’s event, and really get this organization off the ground. We threw one hell of a successful event. It was amazing. People came from all over the area. The bands were great. The food, wine, and beer were all wonderful. We had about 800 people show up at best estimate. I kept getting weepy about whenever anyone would thank me at the event, thinking of how thankful I am for all of the people who have helped us over the course of this project. It really was incredible. I can’t wait to see what they do next year. I hope that it all goes well.

As of this afternoon, I am still tired. The vacation was wonderful. Jeff, Erich, and I went to Mesa Verde National Park. It was beautiful. The cave dwellings were really amazing. We went, by accident, on a three-mile hike up the side of a mesa looking for petroglyphs which we totally missed somehow. It was still a really good time. Durango was wonderful as well. It is a beautiful area, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Driving in the mountains is one of my least favorite things to do. The kind of stress that I feel when doing that is the kind that puts people in the ground at a young age. No thank you.

My most recent project to get back into is a new online media company. John Tobey and I decided that we have some skills that we could possibly make money off of, and we are going to try. John Media is what we are calling this venture. To start off, at least, I will do web and graphic design and Tobey will do graphic design and sound engineering. We will need a video guy eventually, but that should be no problem. It is nice to work for myself again. Things are less complicated when you always agree with your boss.

Last, but most important, things are looking up for the thesis project. I am getting more research and background reading done and preparing myself to start writing more draft chapters. I still have yet to actually propose the thing, but that is a formality which will be taken care of in no time. Then it is off to Egypt in the fall.

I still believe that boredom is the first step to depression for many people. I feel that I will have no trouble with depression this year.

There has recently been a spate of attacks in Kalamazoo. These attacks seem to be unprovoked, carried out by small groups of individuals who are walking through the city, often in broad daylight. This is disconcerting for two reasons: 1) These attacks have gone relatively unreported until a recent feature in the local newspaper. 2) These attacks are unlikely to let up when the college community leaves town for the summer in the next few months.

This is clearly an indicator of economic downturn, which doesn’t really make it better. When things get rough, people turn to crime. Everyone’s morals shift when there is change for the worst.

Regardless of the cause, Kalamazoans need to stay on their toes and keep an eye out. If you are being attacked, attempt to get away, and move to a place where there is a large group of people. If you see a police officer, attempt to get closer to him/her. If you are running away from someone who has a gun, or who you expect may have a gun, run in a zig-zag pattern to make you a less-easy target.

We live in scary times–not just in the world in general, but in our own backyards as well.  This is why it is ever more important that we take care of each other, watch out for our neighbors, and know how to defend ourselves. The effects of terrible situations nation and world-wide are going to be felt by each and every one of us. It would do us good to keep that in mind.