Cheb Douzi has a new song out called “Kolli Laki” (I Am All Yours) which I personally find to be a revolution of sorts. Part of the lyrics goes as follows:

My heart belongs to you
My life and soul belong to you
Habibati

Take me, and imprison me
And bind me
And untie me
And hold me tight
Habibati

My eyes belong to you
My lashes belong to you
My sanity
My insanity
I am all yours

Very interesting, no? One would think taboo subjects like religion and sex and whatnot are not normally treated in Arabic songs, but here we are with a song that I personally find to be pleasant, and it’s about Cheb Douzi’s masochistic fantasies. How avant-garde!

You can listen to the song here.

I was at a familial ladies’ get-together last night, hosted at my sister’s place.

Episode I

Tololy walks around in her high-heeled black patent leather shoes, when a married cousin gasps and stops her dead in her tracks.

Cousin: WHAT are these things in your ears?
Tololy: Earrings.
Cousin: WHY DO YOU HAVE SO MANY?
Tololy: Because I like them.
Cousin: Are they real?
Tololy: Yes.
Cousin: Why, why, why did you mutilate your ears so?
Tololy: Because I like piercings.
Cousin: But, but, your ears have so many holes in them now!
Tololy: So?
Cousin: So…they’re mutilated. I bet getting them pierced was painful too.
Tololy: Yes it was, but that was OK.
Cousin: Why would you do that to yourself?
Tololy (wanting to end the conversation): These are not new by the way. You’ve seen them before.

Episode II

Tololy sits on a chair and listens to a conversation between two women, now nodding, now smiling. One of her cousins starts a conversation with her.

Cousin: Short hair suits you very well!
Tololy: Thanks!
Cousin: When did you cut your hair? I remember you had really long hair…
Tololy: Oh, it’s been this short for over two years.
Cousin: I haven’t seen you for that long?

Episode III

Tololy’s cousin’s wife is very religious. She stands up at the end of the gathering and distributes religious brochures. Tololy is handed one about Ramadan and fear of god, which she quickly turns into a fan, then a cigarette.

Episode IV

Lady: What is that in your nose?
Tololy: A nose ring.
Lady: Oh. I see.

Episode V

It is food time. All the ladies gather around the table and start to fill their plates.
Lady: Ooh…who made the cheesecake?
Mom: My daughter x made this and that, and my daughter y made this, this, and these.
Lady: And what did Tololy make?
Mom: Umm…
Tololy: I provided emotional support.
Mom: She acted as our chauffeur, you know, took us places, got the kids home from school…
Lady: Ah.

Naturally, with every kiss I planted on each of the ladies’ cheeks, I heard a wish that I would get married. They wished that the next time they gather, it would be in my house, or that the next “happy event” will be my wedding.

The older ones seemed to be particularly interested in my getting hitched soon, and it’s funny because as far as I know they’re not entirely happy in their marriages or lives in general. For that reason alone, I believe that enthusiastically wishing someone marriage is actually a facade for a malevolent desire to spread one’s misery. In the very best cases, it is a ready-made expression which renders people into annoying parrots.

I have a reputation for being eloquent. Allow me to quote a bit of an exchange which took place yesterday between myself and a friend:

Friend: I’m a nice guy.
Tololy: That’s good. I like nice guys. I mean, mean guys are not nice, therefore, I don’t like them.
Friend: Well said.
Tololy: You get the idea.

From this day on, I shall limit all communication with other humans to the written form.

What follows is a transcript of what went through my mind as I labored through the novel Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. Think of this as a review of the book and be forewarned as it will ruin your experience of the story if you have not read it yet:

Yes, so he loves her.
She loves him.
She rejects him.
Meaningless events in his life.
Meaningless events in her life.
Some more events.
His sexual escapades.
Her mundane life embellished with travels.
Blah Blah Blah.
More events.
When will this story ever end?
A ton of GRE words here, good practice. Love Barron’s list.
They both age.
He still loves her.
He consoles her after husband’s death.
They’re old but still “active.”
They hook up on a boat.
The end.

Suffice to say that I did not enjoy the novel. I found the style to be tedious and onerous, and the plot to be an inflated repetition of an overrated romantic notion. What compelled me to read Márquez in the first place was the recent popular fascination with him, which I bluntly found to be uncalled for.

One of my favorite people gave me the movie Quills to watch, simply saying “I know you will love it.” He was right, I loved it to the marrow of my bones.

The movie revolves around the Marquis de Sade, an aristocratic French writer whose name and philosophy gave birth to the term sadism:

Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, Marquis de Sade (June 2, 1740 – December 2, 1814) was a French aristocrat, revolutionary and writer of philosophy-laden and often violent pornography. He was a philosopher of extreme freedom (or at least licentiousness), unrestrained by morality, religion or law, with the pursuit of personal pleasure being the highest principle. Sade was incarcerated in various prisons and in an insane asylum for about 32 years of his life; eleven years in Paris (10 of which were spent in the Bastille) a month in Conciergerie, 2 years in a fortress, a year in Madelonnettes, 3 years in Bicêtre, a year in Sainte-Pélagie, and 13 years in the Charenton insane asylum. Much of his writing was done during his imprisonment. The term “sadism” is derived from his name.

Joaquin Phoenix, Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, and Michael Caine star in the movie with such stellar performances which are matched only by the carefully-crafted plot and the intoxicating screenplay, to make for a sublimely engaging story.

Quills is now easily one of my favorite movies of all time. Watch it, I dare you.

And in other news, my vehement opposition to Facebook has finally dwindled to quasi-nothingness. This happened for practical reasons involving cultural events and a peculiar desire to see if my Facebook profile, created on March 2007, was still around. In a fit of paranoia, I had emailed Facebook asking them to delete every single shred of information they had about me, and they said they did. But apparently, they lied.

I also have issues with the name Facebook. A face book? What is that? A book where you keep faces as mementos? Do you skin people out of habit? You like faces? Chubby? Long? What?

That, right there, makes my skin crawl. For this reason, I will test this phenomena for a while and then decide if I like it enough to keep using it. We’ll see.

Mirroring my sentiments:

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.

- Rebecca West

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

- Voltaire

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his [sic] creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious ourselves.

- Albert Einstein

A man can’t make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree.

- Helen Keller