Michael Jackson in Robe and Veil

Inside every veiled Arab women there is a Michael Jackson trying to get out. Just like "inside every gook there is an American." It's a hardball world, son!

Freedom of Travelling!

"German authorities have prohibited foreign travel by a far-right-wing lawyer, Horst Mahler, amid fears that he may attend a Holocaust denial conference in Iran." Expatica's German
It's interesting to see how one stupid act leads to another. The German authority said that they want to prevent "gravely damage [to] Germany's honour." And of course "German passport laws allowed the withdrawal of travel papers in case of danger to German interests." However the Iran situation seem to be very serious that Germany is even willing to take a risk on such action as confiscating its own citizens passport. Is Iran gonna be kicked in the ass soon?

ANAGRAMS (57)

The acronical symptom of your eyelid
Did in fact read
Every sunrise
I ever missed.

ANAGRAMS (56)

Start low and go slow
You have only one day left.

ANAGRAMS (55)

What would we dream of
If nightmares were zoonosis?

Small Surroundings

I never really related to Anton Chekhov nor got to really understand his ”greatness.” The fact that I have never seen a Chekhov production on stage may have contributed to this lack of understanding or ignorance of mine. I think the first thing I read by Chekhov (rather tried to, but didn’t survive it) was a novel, translated in Persian. After that I gave it a couple of goes, but it didn’t go that well anyways. Recently, I guess ten years after the last attempt, I read Three Sisters-in English this time. I did not relate to it either. I could not discover the chain of action in the play.
However, I realized that Chekhov has a great skill in creating mood. One of the most interesting aspects of this mood-creating is the sense of displacement and hating ones surrounding, that is, one that occupies my mind most often. There is a passage where Andrey Serghyeevich Prozorov is complaining in despair:

• ANDREY: …Our town has been here for at least two hundred years, it has a hundred thousand inhabitants, and there is not one of them in all that number who is not like all the others, not a single saintly fanatic either in the past or in the present, not a single scholar, not a single artist, not even a remotely noteworthy man who might awaken some envy, or the desire to imitate him… All they do is eat, and drink, and sleep, and then die… others are then born and they also eat, and drink and sleep, and so as not to become completely numb from boredom, they embroider their lives with disgusting gossip, with vodka, with cards, and deceptions, and the wives deceive their husbands, while the husbands lie to themselves, they give the appearance that they see nothing and hear nothing, and the oppressing, inescapable and degenerate influence crushes their children, and the spark of divinity is extinguished in them, and they become just the same pitiful and mean corpses without life, all the same as one another, just as their parents were before them…
  Anton Chekhov, Three Sisters, Act 4

Sounds just like Denmark; Yeah, but Chekhov was Russian. I think this has to do with all of us who hate their surroundings. I can see this feeling in Henrik Ibsen as well with his detestation for Norway. He wrote to Magdalene Thorsen:

• “I have got far enough from home to see the hollowness of all the lies that parade themselves in our so-called public life and the despicability of that canting spirit that is glibly eloquent in talk about “a great cause,” but has neither will nor ability nor feeling of duty when a great deed is called for. [3rd Dec. 1865] Life there [Norway], as it presents itself to me now, has something indescribably wearisome about it; it wearies the soul out of one, wearies the strength out of one’s will. That is the accursed thing about the small surroundings—they make the soul small. [15th Oct. 1867] It is often evident to me that there is nothing left in our country for any one gifted with mind and heart to do […] Try to get away! Go abroad! Do it whether it is possible or impossible. But nothing is impossible that one desires with an indomitable will. [31st Mar. 1868]
  Henrik Ibsen, Letters

Amiro

There comes Amir Naderi again with a new film: Sound Barrier.
I can't wait to see this film.

Electro-Pig

"Pigs of the future will have a microchip implanted in them that gives consumers vital information about the animals." The Copenhagen Post
Danish people get a CPR number upon their birth; Danish pigs are also going to get a microchip. I wonder when they are going to introduce barcode for immigrants!

Selling panic

What you call this? Buying franzy?
"Tokyo's stock exchange closes early for the first time in its history, after being overloaded by heavy selling." BBC

ANAGRAMS (54)

If lies had keys
I would lock them up
And throw the keys into river
I would then look through the keyholes
Forever.

Kierkegaard & the Triumphant Failure

“In his failure the believer finds his triumph.”

– Søren Kierkegaard

It’s funny to be the master of failure and at the same live in the country where Kierkegaard wrote those words many years ago. It seems that the only thing, which has a chance to nourish in Denmark is failure.
It’s not so difficult for me to imagine in what conditions he wrote those words; I feel them through my very flesh every day, every hour, every second. Maybe Albert Camus has described this dilemma most sufficiently when he writes about Kierkegaard:

“Between the irrational of the world and the insurgent nostalgia of the absurd, he does not maintain the equilibrium. He does not respect the relationship that constitutes properly speaking the feeling of absurdity. Sure of being unable to escape the irrational, he wants at least to save himself from that desperate nostalgia that seems to him sterile and devoid of implication. But if he may be right on this point in his judgment, he could not be in his negation. If he substitutes for his cry of revolt a frantic adherence, at once he is led to blind himself to the absurd which hitherto enlightened him and to deify the only certainty he henceforth possesses, the irrational.” [A. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus]

It damn sure sounds like where I am.

ANAGRAMS (53)

As liable as cheating
I do not support anything
I’m just against you.

Here is Ethiopia; where I need to go to do my research for Hamlet production I am going to do this year. The country sounds scary, doesn't it?

P.S. This post has pissed off many as you can see below here in the comments. I wouldn't give a hoot about people who get offended on drop of a hate and then try to offend you by calling you an Arab; just fuck'em. But I think the source of misunderstanding is that it seemed they related the phrase "scary country" to the picture above. That was not what I had in mind. Ethiopia is a "scary" place to travel to because of the war and atrocities brought to the people of that country. That's what i meant. Hope it's clear now. And I still wanna go there, anyway.

Can you believe that the picture to the left is also a poster of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: White? Below there is the poster which I think everyone knows. It's just funny!

Another Day; Another Dollar

In the first day of 2006 I got up at 4 p.m. I had locked myself in from Xmas and did not go out till last night. And now I’m crashed!
Another year passed and I still live in uncertainty and frustration. None of my plans worked in the 2005 and all I achieved was failure. Let alone that now I have passed the scary age of thirty and that is depressing where contrary to my actual age I feel like a child, not knowing how to handle life. I’m certainly unsure. It frightens me when I see people who sound so confident on everything; they do not question or they pretend so or they hide it or whatever. But when one pretends confidence one can also wear the mask of happiness, can’t they?
I hate everything and that is promising: that way I might do something interesting and positive in this year out of anger, hatred, frustration, disappointment, pessimism, doubt, cynicism, distrust, skepticism, scorn, annoyance, irritation, disgust, detestation, distress, gloom and resentment …
Happy New Year!