Hi5 left a bitter taste in my mouth but Facebook miraculously outdid it in less than five days. The simple truth is, I just do not trust “social networking” sites. Don’t get me wrong; I am all for cyber friendships, just not this type. Read on to learn why.

A few years back, I had a cyber stalker who played cheap mind games that were not frightening per se. Yet this person obtained access to some of my private documents (things nobody will buy, don’t reach out for your wallets) and this disturbed me profoundly. I even lost some sleep over it.

Ever since then, I became somewhat big time paranoid when it came to my online privacy and security, and I never again used p2p programs to get songs and the like. I also developed an obsessive compulsive disorder that had me “clean my traces” — or whatever I could clean — after every session online. On top of all that, I never saved anything of value on my laptop or any computer I used. Up to this day, I live those habits and many more — me officially paranoid.

When the Facebook buzz hit town, almost everyone I know urged me to join. I did not comply, up until five days ago. My thoughts were along the lines of “what could possibly happen?,” and I discovered exactly what. Two of my friends, one in Canada and the other in Egypt, complained to me about a Jordanian person who has tagged them both and asked to add them to his network. These two friends do not know each other, and they both asked me if I know this stranger since I am Jordanian.

When I realized that this person has tagged both my friends, and that I was the person they had in common, I flipped out. What are the odds of having a total stranger tag both your friends who have nothing in common but you? Seriously? Add to that, he previously harassed them both on Hi5! I don’t know about you but to me the whole affair sounds fishy and it smells too much like fear.

This already weighing heavily on my mind, I came across a presentation that basically strips Facebook of its alleged “security supreme.” Here is a link to the presentation called “Does what happen in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?” Now the content of the presentation may sound a little outlandish, especially towards the end, but to my ears it was a warning I could not shrug away.

I deactivated my Facebook tonight, and now I feel slightly better. I can never feel “at ease” with Facebook until they completely wipe out all the information I foolishly gave them about myself. The site now says that I can “reactivate” my account simply by entering my registered email address and password — and that is very alarming to me. I want my account to be entirely deleted.

Ironically, when I consulted Facebook’s help issues to know how to deactivate my account, the site said something like: “Oh, you really want to deactivate your Facebook account? Well, what are you going to do with your time?” To that I mentally said: “I would live normally in my secure-illusion-paranoia-paradise, thank you.”

The effect of this information on me is probably very different from its effect on you. The difference between me and you, in this case, is that I know what happens when you get stalked (and it is not pretty). So my advice to you is to check if “social networking” is worth the potential risk, and do not imagine it only happens to other people. You are always better safe than sorry.

I may be paranoid, but only the paranoid survive.

I must admit this story is a bit embarrassing to relate to strangers and family alike. Relate it I must, however, to make the argument of this post. Today I managed to park my car on top of a massive brick, somehow, thanks to my stubbornness. Sometimes I am very very stubborn, and today I paid dearly for this bad composition of character.

I really wanted to park in that place and so I ignored the noise coming from under the car and just settled on top of the humungous brick. When I got back to the car after running some errands, I discovered that the brick had settled precisely in the middle of the car’s lower body, and that the car would not budge.

What to do, what to do…

I resolved to try to move the car a bit with all its might, so the brick would sort of move out of the way. Then the noise returned, obviously, and a man came running to me, yelling at me to stop moving the car. I stopped, and got out of the car, and looked at him. He scanned the situation under the car and judged it very, very grave. He then reproached me (a total stranger, remember) and confessed he “cannot understand how I did not see the brick when I parked.”

I couldn’t help but notice a big, old, green heart-shaped tattoo on his left arm. There was an arrow piercing through the heart, too. I paced around Havana Brown, expecting some miracle to deliver her and/or an announcement from the stranger that he can do nothing to help.

But fear not. My anonymous tattooed chevalier asked for a jack and I exclaimed that I “think I have one somewhere in the trunk,” to which he responded by asking me to open the trunk. Then my savoir fetched the jack and lifted Havana up, up, up — so much up that I thought she would fall on him and kill him once the brick is removed.

I was silent the whole time. There was nothing for me to say, really. The anonymous helper called for his friend from time to time and they referred to me in the third person, never talking to me in my face. Of course, this was no time to pull any feminist stunts, so I remained silent.

This good person stayed with me for fifteen minutes and saved Havana Brown. I was, and still am, amazed at the goodness of his spirit. I know I could not have done much about the situation, since I tried moving another brick (which was not stuck under anything) and I couldn’t. Sometimes you just have to have muscles, and not a brain, to do things.

In conclusion, this is one instant where I am indebted to my patriarchal society. I did not even have to ask for help, help came running to me, and stayed with me until I was OK.

I am in love with the Joe Cartoon character Super Fly and so I decided to dedicate this post to celebrate THE fly.

Viva Super Fly.

If I ever do, I shall not settle with someone who does not travel at least five times a year. The simple reason for this resolution is that during my life I have wasted numerous (literally) chances to travel abroad. They were all fully paid-for, too!

But it wasn’t “me” personally who wasted two chances to go to Italia, a chance to go to Egypt, one to go to Morocco, one to Lebanon, one to Bosnia, another to the United States. It was culture that cost me these trips and it was also religion.

You see, some people believe that it is against their religion to let a young lady (that’s me) travel alone. My family’s culture and religious beliefs pretty much goes along these lines. Personally though, I do not subscribe to this point of view. And at this particular moment, I am at the peak of my anger/resentment/irritation at this compulsory code of conduct.

I’ll write more about this later. Stay tuned for another episode of Fuming Tololy.

Ciao a tutti! Ecco una nuova invitazione per un concerto organizzato dall’Ambasciata Italiana. Il concerto sarà il 31 Marzo 2007 alle 8:30 in Zara Expo Auditorium. Parlando della mia esperienza di concerti organizzati dall’Ambasciata, ci sarà vino rosso gratis.

Ciao everyone! This is a new invitation to a concert organized by the Italian Embassy in Amman. The concert will take place at the Zara Expo Auditorium on March 31st at 08.30 p.m. I hope you can make it because, if for nothing else, there’s always free red wine.

Ci vediamo! See you there!

This is an irrelevant post to anyone but me, really, so don’t read on if irrelevance disturbs you. I just found out that some people actually voted for The Box over at toot! Wow! This is significant for two reasons; A- Because for some time I saw no votes for Tololy’s Box over at toot, and B- Because it is thoughtful of the people who voted. Thank you!

The other day I watched Children of Men, a movie starring Michael Caine and Julianne Moore, released in the U.S earlier this year. The plot of the movie, and I quote a plot summary posted on IMDb is this:

In 2027, as humankind faces the likelihood of its own extinction, a disillusioned government agent agrees to help transport and protect a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea where her child’s birth may help scientists to save the future of mankind.

I could not find the script of the movie online (probably because I am not in the mood for a cyber hunt), but there was one line in the beginning of the movie that made me uneasy throughout the one hundred minutes that followed. After an explosion takes place in London, in the year 2027 — remember this bit, one of the main characters of the film asks another main character about who he thinks was behind the explosion, to which the latter says:

Islamic, or the Fishes.

The movie was, what’s the word?, “stitched together.” The first 60 minutes or so were considerably challenging to fathom thanks to events and jargon the director and the cast know but devilishly conceal from us the viewers. I did not feel bored, except towards the end, and I did not feel unsatisfied, also except in the end. The ending of the movie was a total failure in my opinion, because it was beaming with hopefulness and other nonsense.

Back to the line that irritated me. Islamic, or the Fishes.It turns out it was the Fishes, if you’re curious, pretty much the same way it turned out McVeigh & Co. were behind the Oklahoma city bombing in 1995. In attempts to “analyse” my discomfort at the remark, I discovered it was because the movie was feeding the viewers with the idea that in 2027, the Islamic would be killing people.

Now I am not even going to start on the word Islamic and the word Islamicist, because the script is either notoriously oblivious to the differences between the two words or deliberately mischievous. But I am interested in knowing why the word Islamic was injected in the script, when the movie had nothing to do with anything related to Islam? As a matter of fact, never again does the word appear in the movie!

The question is, then, why project a futuristic image of 2027 that caters to the same Islamophobia that is plaguing the world today? Why make your viewers believe that the Islamic will be a threat to them in the future? Aren’t we fighting this battle of prejudice and injustice every day, now?

It would have been ridiculously easy to invent a name for some movement and insert it in the dialogue instead of the Islamic. I will show you just how easy that would have been:

A: Who do you think was behind it?
B: The Cats, or the Fishes.
B: The LSD, or the Fishes.
B: The Amoeba Brothers, or the Fishes.
B: The LNR, or the Fishes.
B: The Coalition of Self-Destructive Maniacs, or the Fishes.

You get my drift.

Interestingly, I came upon a BBC review of Children of Men, and the introduction of the review read:

Paranoia about illegal immigration and references to Islamic terrorism sit uncomfortably with the plot’s central crisis of infertility. The real power is in the simple contrast of despair and hope, the latter embodied in a pregnant woman who seeks protection from a typically world-weary Clive Owen.

I found this cartoon on some forum today, it made me smile to myself and think “Oh yeah?” Here: