tagged

Tagged by Surya and Karan

I am thinking about...
maternal relationships (Almodovar has that effect)

I said...
but I never promised

I want to...
believe that how I live is not totally pointless

I wish...
I didn't feel trapped

I miss...
the smell of the air during winter in Texas

I hear...
Radiohead's 'High and Dry' on Dimitra's radio

I wonder...
where I will settle, if I will settle

I regret...
not being more honest with the people I've loved

I am...
many things to many people

I sing...
cheesy pop songs when no one is around

I cry...
much more now than I ever did when I was a child

I am not always...
as kind as I could be

I write...
because sometimes there is no other way

I need...
tenderness, not soppiness

I should try...
trusting more people

I finish...
and never look back

I tag...
Neel and Andean

another classic

George Washington Carver made the first computer! Out of a peanut! A PEA-NUT!

Undercover Brother. Like a black Austin Powers but soooo much better. I put it in when I've just begun to forget the jokes.

hee hee

'Which one of you is doing this?' I don't know what was more amusing - the posting or that my boss was enthralled by the gallery of photos.

no one is listening

So a friend of my current flatmate came over last night. He happens to be Israeli. He and the flatmate started talking about the current conflict in Israel and Lebanon. I tried to not say anything but at some point, I couldn't hold it in anymore and said 'sorry, but that's just bullshit'. Granted, this wasn't the best way to enter the conversation but he was in my home giving a highly biased view to someone who isn't following the conflict and is absolutely clueless when it comes to the skepticism and media. What really irked me was that his entire argument rested on his (incorrect) assumptions about how I viewed the conflict and how uneducated I was about the entire thing. He said I should 'read more' about what 'we are dealing with'. So, because I don't agree with the actions of the Israeli government, I am uneducated? Wow. Brilliant. And what 'we' the 'Israelis'? Isn't that the problem, this 'we' against 'them' attitude? It scared me to think that more and more ascribe to the Bush administration dogma that emerged from the war on terrorism: if you're not for us, you're against us.

I knew going into the convo we would have different, biased, strong views but the hilarious thing was that after about 2 minutes, I was mentally laughing at how far we were from the same wavelength, so quickly. While I tried to gain consensus that neither of us really knows jack because we are both simply products of inherently biased media (any documentation/hearsay of the conflict, not simply the 'official' media) he could only bang on about how I didn't know anything about Hezbollah, that Israel was the victim, that Israel had lost the media war. We kept talking but it went absolutely nowhere. Really, where can any dialogue go if one party cannot even fathom that another viewpoint has an iota of merit?

Heathrow shut down

I wonder if the air quality over London was measurably better today.

Madonna at Wembley

6 shows in London. The cheapest 'available' are GBP 80. Less than 5% of seats are 'cheap'. 25% are GBP 110 and the remaining 70% (and realistically available) are GBP 160. Madge, go fuck yourself. You've obviously chosen your audience.

killing is not killing if there is no killer or victim

I read this article and shuddered. Over and over and over again until I remembered I was at my desk in my air-conditioned office. I know such things are to be expected during a war/conflict/occupation, whatever you choose to call it, and to be shocked at such behaviour is conscious ignorance, if such a thing can exist. That I know it is to be expected does not make it any less outrageous. What worries me is that this behaviour shocks western audiences so much, they who think western soldiers are above such vile acts. I was horrified at the level of shock with which Abu Ghraib was received. They we I forget that these men are not men but machines. A soldier is a machine. The ability to kill requires the absence of empathy, an unconscious dehumanisation of the 'enemy' that is drummed inside. Soldiers do not kill/rape people, they destroy things. Perhaps the men behind these soldiers are criminals in their own right, individuals that would behave the same in a non-combat situation. But I think many of them, in fact most of them, would not commit such acts in 'normal' life.

I don't really know what I'm saying. I don't justify what these men did. I think if such a thing were to happen to my child, I would want the most painful vengeance I could possibly inflict. Yet we, we who speak watch witness comment are not there, we cannot begin to fathom what happens in barracks and what follows in battle. We do not have to pull the trigger. I have no desire to see that part of (wo)man that interested parties seek to channel for their own purposes, effectively turning (wo)men into beasts. No, machines. Even beasts are imbued with something animate and are capable of compassion.The very knowledge that the essence of one's own humanity can be 'switched off' (or perhaps, bludgeoned senseless) is to be acknowledged and respected, not manipulated. For look at the world around us now. What have we become? And for we who say we were not part of it, what have we let ourselves become?

pulling the strings

5 days in Portugal last weekend followed by a 3-day work week. The next holiday isn't until December but that's okay (for now). I came back with a smile on my face and a refreshed attitude towards life in London. So this week was all about being at peace with the constant flux of everyday life. And it reminded me of Lovegren telling me to 'roll with the punches'. The last 48 hours have been a voyage of measured avoidance after an allergic reaction to a large group of people - Saturday I did nothing but stay in bed and read for hours, leaving my phone buried somewhere in silent mode. Today I managed to make it down to Brixton, chatting with Raquel about topics with a levity that betrayed their gravity. It's nice, this feeling of watching oneself being moved by greater forces like a puppet, at the foot of roads careening off into different vectors, and yet grinning upon it all as if it were all just a convoluted joke intended to pass the time.