Relax A Bit

Chapter 10.

Wanting To Own

I went to the Basement Cafe again last Thursday. Something about the people there makes me edgy. They always want to TALK. An hour and a half into the night I had consumed enough alcohol to kill a German shepherd. I spent the remainder of the night trying to fit myself on a stone slab, which is not good times for a slightly overweight man. Not Amjad Khan in his last 3 films kind of overweight, just like a "I don't like walking against the wind cuz it makes my fat peoples shirt cling to my form which is not, well, very FORMLY" kinda way. I was talking to some dude once. A fat dude. He told me I should join a gym. Imagine how hard it is for a man to keep a straight face when a 200 pound man tells YOU to join a gym. Of course I didn't let that last because he WAS in some gym. I asked him which one:

FAT DUDE: Yaar it's a kickass gym. So many hot chicks come there too. It's like ALLLL CO ED LIKE! It's a famous one man, perhaps you've heard of it. It's called 'SHAPES'.

Lodhi: Shapes eh, lardo? How long before they actually GIVE you one?

He wasn't amused.

I often become very strange around a lot of beautiful crazy people. I feel so much at home that I act out the psychological equivalent of kicking back and taking off your shoes in a formal surrounding, which usually means I start talking to myself. It comes quite naturally, something about the wordplay since I always know whats coming...in my own mind I have such witty replies to everything.

Soon it was as I had feared. Even though the drinking had, to some extent, made me bolder, I now found myself surrounded by a strange sense of paranoia. I wondered if I was being too damn loud. I started thinking people are watching me, just staring. Which is a bad place to be in when you just want to be alone. Not to mention what it does for your self esteem when a woman wearing a pink hijaab is singing Savage Garden songs on stage and more people are watching YOU instead of HER. She was nice though, and despite my terrible memory, I do feel I gave her some nice advice on singing. Something along the lines of not giving a damn and just letting it loose so she can find her comfort zone. We all need to relax a bit.

Why is it that there are so many bankers every week at the Basement?

I just find it amusing how they're always jumping to give people their cards is all. Like I don't believe he works in a bank. If there was only some NICE way of letting them know that I'm not making that face because I don't believe them, it's just a reflex action to hearing the word BANKER that my face goes all strange like that. I'm not fond of money, or any material posessions for that matter. If you've ever seen the clothes I wear, you will understand. Guess that's why I never had the kind of drive other people had to say, get into college for instance. You'd be surprised how many people plan their entire lives and what they want to do IN them by setting a goal as shallow as wanting to own a Lexus some day. But hey, atleast that's A goal.

It's not like I don't like ANYTHING material though. I did get myself a cap and 4 shirts from my trip to India recently. Other than that just a whole bunch of memories and lessons that I'd better write down before I forget. I remember the people are generally nicer there, because they're not so busy trying to join or promote or defend of OFFEND some sect or the other in their OWN religion like it was a fan club full of retards. They just go about their business all day and all night, and in return they get peace. They rarely look in over the borderline into Pakistan and stop their shit to collect gossip on what WE'RE doing with our nuclear programs...which is the complete opposite of the way we spend 78 percent of our taxes on sending spies, collecting data and information, recon and God knows what else on the Indians and their activities. Which isn't saying much because after the corrupt government officials nab most of THAT, we realise that only about 20 percent of Pakistani's even BOTHER paying taxes.

Did you know that there are ROAD taxes? These are taxes that were supposedly enforced on us by the government before we even HAD roads.

I don't like money.

I don't like material things.

It corrupts people.

Drama With A Megaphone

Chapter 9.

The Subconscious Pressures

I was reading through my previous posts. My apologies for some of the crap I've written. I realised I had mentioned missing a girlfriend too forceably over the past 4 or 5 entries. I don't do that, really. In fact some of the people I've most despised in my life have been couples who are always loud and obvious about their stupid relationships.

I was in Lecole once. Long ago. Don't think I went to a very many number of classes. There was a couple there, much like the AFOREMENTIONED! Can't remember their names, but that's partly because I'm bad with names, and partly because I didn't really care, and just perhaps partly again because when either one wasn't with the other, nobody knew who they were.

The sad thing is that I think they WANTED it that way.

I remember looking behind me in the cafeteria once, because, as usual, they were being obnoxious and their level of volume was spilling onto the table I was sitting on with my friends. Problem here is that these were the two loudest people in the Lecole cafe, and they were the ONLY ones who knew what the hell they were talking about. It was'nt even like, "So, 9-11 huh? How about THAT fucker?", no. She'd go on about why he didn't call or some trivial shit...an ANT tackles harder issues in a day. He'd reply with anything as long as it included some sort of compliment because neither of them were too smart to hold a decent arguement. Of course I looked at them calmly and said,"Guys? No one cares. I mean REALLY dude, they don't." The AUDACITY of the couple when they told me to mind my own business, asking why people have to interfere with their incredibly loud and in your face relationship. In that moment, I was the most confused I have been in a while. I imagined the guy standing with a dick coming out of his forehead, going "What? Why are you all looking at me? Mind your own business!" I mean hey buddy, YOU'RE the one with a dick coming out of his forehead. If you don't want people to look at you, stay indoors.

If you don't want people to talk back, speak a little softly, you attention loving, hopeful would be movie stars.

Ahh I don't hate 'em. I don't care if people lie those around em'. Most of the time I'm such an asshole that it's probably not going to affect my life in any significant way if they do, so, I kinda roll with it. I just hate it when they lie to themselves is all. It bothers me to see people struggling and taking so much pressure from these idiotic social beliefs revolving around relationships.
But, sad as it is, I succumbed to it for a while. I broke to the subconscious pressures of young adulthood and reacted in a way that immature and uneducated people do. I really should start reading some more. I AM of course making it a point to educate myself, even if it is a little slowly. But I feel really dumb sometimes. Honestly, I was on this last line for the last twenty minutes. And yet nothing to follow with. They say THIS is when you break out into an impression of any sort, to direct the panic away from your mind...

Leprechaun: We beatcha we dud sur! We shorely did beatcha in thaht lettil craycket gamm didn't we?

We lost to Ireland. Bob Woolmer died. If I can arrange for us to lose against Japan, can Inzamam -ul - Haq atleast retire? Is it that we HAVE no more PEOPLE? Is THIS what is happening? Is no one PLAYING the fucking thing on a professional level in this country? Where is the new blood? Where is the new soul, free of the advertising corruption that stole our players passion and pride, their love for the game, the temptation that bathed and shaved Yunis Khan and put him in a suit? The one that made Kamran Akmal give his teammates a very homosexual look while drinking a bottle of Pepsi. The kind that has become Shoiab Akhtar's primary source of income since he's blown all his DESERVED earnings on booze and whores. Sometimes I feel only ONE man walked out of all this with a win.

Recorded call: Woolmer, it's the agency. The funds from your contract with Pakistan have been deposited in that shady little bank in midtown Prague. Your body double is ready, and your plane leaves at exactly 0400 hours. The mission is a success, Pakistan has actually become so bad, even the clover chewin Irish beat them. Pardon the language. Your family will be informed of your condition a week after the funeral, just for laughs. They will, at this time, be allowed to speak with you over a secure line, before we move them to your new decided home. We will contact you at the agreed time later this month. And before you ask about your girlfriend, relax, it's taken care of. We AAAALLLLLLL know you're a couple alright? No need to be a drama with a megaphone like those kids in Lecole, who's his name and what's her tits. Good luck, and enjoy Prague, Bob. ------------End Transript----------

Children.

And it's the WORST when it's strangers too! You ever gone to a beach gathering...some 3 people you've decided to call friends, and the rest a nut bunch of loons that hate each others guts but smile and do each other favours as long as it doesn't involve having to TALK to one another? I met two people like that once. Clearly the dude had this girl's love when he kicked back into his chair, held his arms open and demanded, "Come here." to his woman.

Alas, the chick didn't even hear him as she walked out the door silently. A girl who, ironically, referred to her boyfriend not by his first name, but as 'HER BOYFRIEND', in those cute little stories where they both think their match was made in heaven since ALL THE SIGNS were pointing to their true love. And they'll always give you all sorts of open ended GENERALISED fucking examples of UNCANNILY coincidental signs from karma.

X: It's wierd guys, but one day, I broke my leg...and a chair in her room broke it's leg as well.

Y: HE'S RIGHT! AHAAA HA HA! AHA! AHA HA HA! I'M CUTE AND TAKEN!

It's like they find anything they can, really.

Lodhi: So, how about that other coincidence where you have a brain small enough to flush down a toilet and he's a shithead? Like, WEIRD huh?

Nobody remembers the good lines. But that's a kind of people I guess. People who are unaware of the real purpose of love or loving. The little things perhaps they say COUNT. People who are insecure about who and what they are, and so they find, or TRY to find the answer in the arms of someone else. And when they do, before you realise it, you're sitting in a friends room trying to roll a joint while he keeps throwing empty birth control and condom packets at you going, "A picture speaks a THOUSAND WORDS...COME ON!!"

I find things like that strange, the way I see people act sometimes. I'm guessing everyone does it. I'm not very crafty in all the wrong places though.

And that's convenient too, yea? A picture speaks a 1000 words. According to this theory, all I have to do is get a packet of condoms and some surgical gloves, and throw them around the floor after dipping them in some sort of foul smelling liquid, and I've had sex minutes before my friends come over. The surgical gloves would of course be for added effect. My friends know that sometimes, I just like it FREAKAAY.

"What's that?...What?...Where IS she? Oh, she JUST left dude...No really BUS ABHI ABHI! Didn't you see her on your way up? I'm NOT LYING MAN!!! I JUST HAD SEX WITH JENNY MCCARTHY! I HAVE PROOF!!"

This is when you reveal the oil stained printout of a Jenny McCarthy nude, with some terribly drunk handwriting saying, "Thanks for last night...it was amazing". Also on the photograph, a bright red lipstick mark which looks embarrassingly like a man's.

Good night.

You crazy people.

A Few More Swipes

Chapter 8.

For Blood

I just got up from a deep sleep. A strange dream. During the course of this writing, I might feel
like getting into the events in the dream, and I might not. All I care to say for now is the
dream ended with me rudely awakened by a disturbingly CLOSE Jack Black holding onto my balls with
one hand and squeezing VERY hard. The pain was real. My reaction was far from that.
I was ok. I didn't complain. I had nothing to say about it to Ol' Jack except "OHhhh! You got me
man you really got me."

I was inspired when I woke up. I felt like writing. It was such a deep sleep that I felt like
writing till I pass out again. I doubt it'll happen anytime soon in this night. I still have the
regular things to get to eventually. Drugs to smoke, stories to type, people to imagine, the many
ME's to speak with. The many ponderings of a man who never got into college. I don't even know if 'pondering' as an ACTION can even HAVE a plural. Yea, sure, why not? I started this page to be honest didn't I? If I appear not to be afraid for what this means in my future, I might as well start throwing it out there too.

I missed my girlfriend like hell, too. It was the quickest thing to wipe that weird smile off my face
after I felt so rested and at ease. She wasn't around. Girlfriend form, wife form, in the form of
a child who just smiles and let's you know everything is OK. I don't even know the last time
anyone grown up did that and made it all ok. Not except HER anyway.

I've picked up a cigarette from my Dad's pack outside in the hall. The lights were very bright,
so I went straight back to my room. I love how there's an age where we all think it's normal to
be in love with the dark, to act like vampires among a slew of mortal men, disgusting in their
habits, and so in love with the day. I thought it was normal to dislike the reason so many people
do everything in the daytime instead of the night.

It's not.

Even if YOU spend most of your time in the dark like I do, you will soon grow out of
it. It's not always cool being all that different from the masses. Because when you think about
it, if enough people enjoyed the dark, that would take the fun out if it for YOU again wouldn't
it? You just want to be alone, INDIFFERENT they say. I think I finally know the meaning of that
word. Funny how a Dilbert comic made me realise the meaning of the sociopath, leading to the
consideration that I might actually have BECOME one after all these years. There's no point in
not being honest.

I need to stand up on a stage and make people laugh. I need to do some comedy. Soon. It's the
only thing I remember to have kept me awake all these years.

There's no point in being dishonest.

Not unless you're a mechanic. Another joint part of society that I had the pleasure of brain picking earlier in this day. It's funny how we flock together when we find similarities among each other. It's so harmless when a group of mechanics are doing it to fool someone into paying 150 for something that costs 130.
And so harmful when people of ANOTHER kind flock together. Marching. For blood. Land. For want of
their belief replacing another. Money. Women.


God, the women.


God.


God?

And strangely enough, wouldn't you know it, all it takes is the honest approach of saying, "This
spark plug costs 130, but I'm a lowly knuckle scraping primate who wishes you to give 150 for it
so that the extra 20 bucks can mean either another packet of this weird green stuff I keep
shoving into the corner of my mouth, or a few more swipes of Samad Bond to put into these cuts
under my armpit." Disease ridden INGRATES? No.

No.

They have no choice. I mean they DO, but they don't even know what those choices ARE. They were
never given the options. I think about this as the mechanic waits for my nod on adding the brand
new shiny white spark plugs. The vile, problematic and in most parts, BURNT old spark plugs
sitting, weeping in the corner of my car's open insides, awaiting their end fate. To be chucked
onto the main road like they never served a purpose. Like no funeral would ever be held for them.
Like they'd never be remembered.


Why should they, anyway? They're 3 God damn spark plugs.


I smile, and I nod. He gets to work and I keep smiling, because a purpose has been served.
Everything seems to make sense again, the mechanic is putting in the spark plug. I wondered if he
CHOSE to be a mechanic. I thought about how many people have either the good fortune, or the hard
willingness to CHOOSE something for themselves in life and going ALL THE WAY with it. I took
another look at the mechanic, and he was enjoying his work. The guy's eyes lit up like a child's
do when he peeks outside the window on his birthday and sees a surprise being planned. You
remember how you acted all surprised too when that happened? Like all, "Wha...WHAT? OH MY GOD!
COOOOOOLLL!!!"

It was in a moment where even your selfishness was making others happy. You were seven years old.
You didn't know how much it would mean to anyone to see you TRULY surprised. You didn't even do
it for them. You did it for yourself. You were too excited, and woke up TOO early in the day. You
saw the celebrations TOO soon. And it was over before it even began. So you forgot everything -
something which if, at seven years of age, you were anything like me, was something you had
trained yourself incredibly well to be able to do at any time.

Mum: Didn't I tell you not to go picking unripened watermelons and slamming them on the walls?Faraz: Did you say something? I'm hungry. What is your ROLE in this household again?

You lied to yourself. FOR yourself. So you could live the moment they all surprise you. You
didn't do it for them, but they took the most joy out of it. More than you did. This became the
purpose that created, and nearly ruined, the rest of my natural life.


"Do things that you love doing for yourself, all the while assuring that people around you will
actually manage to appreciate the outcome MORE than you do."


It's a tough gig to follow, as you can see. Because I doubt anyone was reading this after the
first paragraph. But whoever made it this far, I hope this has made you happy in SOME way or the
other at least. I always start out doing something for myself. My ability to get bored with things
hell fast changes that, though. Eventually it becomes only about you, whoever you are.
So I write, for everyone and everything. It's not ALL I do, no. Perhaps comics. Perhaps movies,
some day. I can only hope. And dream. It's all I have been doing since I came on this earth to
fight for God, but realised that no one remembers Him anymore. Not the way He would WANT anyway.
But there's no stereotyping in Lodhism. So I fight along the men and women who have the core
beliefs down TOTALLY right. I fight by their side, without ever having met them, or seen their
faces.

You ever miss your girlfriend so much you want to hit an animal in the face? Any animal. It
doesn't really matter which one, since none of them can utter curse words that you'd understand
anyway.

I guess this is where I immortalize our love, m'lady. This is the new age tree to carve your
names in a heart on. I DID IT, LOVE! Now the whole world will remember, the day one person out of
a soul total of two, decided what he needs to do here. I love you, friend. I love all of you.


Blogs.


They're nothing but a bunch of people trying to be remembered on this planet we will be FORCED to
call home one day. To me, it's just a space to put ideas I may not want to forget. For MYSELF,
more than anyone.


What if you ARE different, guys? What if, you REALLY are. Not better, not worse. Just, different.

Without a Mattress

Chapter 7.

True Genius Contained

Nothing gets my goat like a nice leather collar. My goat can't do SHIT once that's around him. But something that BOTHERS me is having to stay home when anyone comes around to fix something in the apartment. It's bad enough that I can't leave the house with a sstranger inside, now I have to keep focus off doing things on my drawing board because I have to get up and CHECK on the bastard every few minutes to make sure he's not STEALING anything. Which is something that, over time, they manage to become better at than fixing air conditioners, which is why he's here in the first place.

And it's not like he can go around just quietly doing his job is it? The guy asks me for SURF, which I didn't even know HOW to react to. Of course I asked him why, and that threw me into a 15 minute conversation about the magical world of bubbles and how they can be used to find leaks in car tires and AC's. After the sixth minute of course, I was nodding my head and looking for SURF, while simultaneously thinking about how much I miss my girlfriend. And how this man must have no idea what it feels like to HAVE one. So I asked him if he was married, and he replied "No thanks, the SURF will do."

What an incredibly witty guy.

They'll always leave the AC on for ages and shit too. Come back the next day, "COOLING kar raha hai?" Well it's been ON for 3 and a half DAYS now you pig lover, if it isn't cooling then we're obviously not doing what our employers are asking of us are we? They comment on the sound your split air conditioner makes before coming on. 13 beeps like a damn truck is backing up, before it kicks in and the entire area you live in fluctuates for a second, and unnoticed by you, when the fluctuation goes away, the lights are a LEEEEETLE bit duller than they should be, someone at WAPDA gets fired due to cut backs...

And your mom full HUMOURS the guy and shit too, thinking it'll make him do a better job. I hate this theory. Most people in Pakistan do what they do for a living because it's just what they kinda fell into, and no one advised or taught or trianed them otherwise. This dude sucks at repairing AC's...talking to him nicely won't banish some devil spirit thats keeping his true genius contained or something. Like all of a sudden this halo will appear over his head and he'll start snapping his fingers like Mary Poppins and the AC will fix itself. He sucks at the work. Talking to him like he doesn't only makes him a slightly less irritated man who STILL sucks at his work.

I opened the fridge because I was hungry, and I needed an excuse to be alone. I can't eat in front of people, it's a real age old fear of mine. It's one of the reasons why I MAY have gone to a couple of weddings dressed in a full body burqa. So much so that whenever I go out to eat with friends, and they ask me why I'm not ordering much, I'd rather tell them I'm poor than show them a man who can make an ass out of himself on a stage, but refuses to eat a chicken wing if a single soul is watching. Of course, you'll know why I feel this way if you ever see me eat a chicken wing. It's not nice putting people off their food, but the more you care the less they understand. So I checked the fridge and I found a quarter broast. It was imitation KFC. You know, the kind you're mom TRIED to make but couldn't quite pull it off? Then she gets frustrated and tells you to name atleast 3 ways in which it DOES taste like KFC but you can't so she steals the mattress from your bed? And it's wierd with moms because the ones that cook well don't take any shit from anyone. If you say anything nice about KFC the first time you order it, they take out the lab equipment, get their tasters ready, put on their glasses, the sanitary gloves and they get to work on one leg piece and all its crumbs, and start listing all the things they taste each time like, "Mmm...ginger." And then jot it down. Once, despite my best efforts to explain to my mom that the crispyness in the chicken batter comes from knotting up the cornflour with harder pieces of aata like substance, my mom crushed a box of Fauji cornflakes and dumped it all over the chicken.

I slept in my room that night, without a mattress. I suppose there are lessons here, if we look for them.

At the Sight of a Phone

Chapter 6.

The Rat Bastard Thief

My cell phone got stolen yesterday. And not the "Give up your cell phone or we'll shoot you being the two shady looking guys on a bike that we are" kinda stolen either. My car window was open. I wasn't around. I came back, no cell phone.

I was at the Basement Cafe in Zamzama. No negative advertising here for The Basement, which is more than I can say for that rat hole of a place called Zamzama Boulevard. I know, I lived there once. I think my first apartment in Zamzama was the reason my memory has taken such a beating over the past few years. Your mind kinda rejects having to live in a place that crappy and eventually ends up denying it. There was a time when my family thought it was strange that I forgot an entire apartment we used to live in, but the strange thing to me was that they cared to remember it. I think I'm the only one I know to have gone through the LITERAL 'no electricity for 3 days' experience, and not the kind where a man living in a big house complains about the electricity going for 4 hours which FELT like three days.

And what's the first thing they tell you when you lose a phone? It's YOUR fault. Of course, it's my fault that people have weak souls and bend their morals at the drop of a hat, or since we dont have HATS in Pakistan, at the sight of a phone let's say. I wonder if anyone is around in the life of a thief to tell him that he's doing something wrong. I wonder if when asked why he STOLE a phone, he replies "Well, it was HIS fault, he just left a cell phone unattended, what was I supposed to do? Believe in God being the fake ass Muslim that I am and control my urges to just pick up something that doesn't belong to me and walk off with it? Come on buddy, those days are long gone. We haven't had a prophet in too long. It's not my fault I'm a spineless man without a soul. Now it's God's fault."

The strange thing is one of the first feelings I had about this was a slight bit of anger, which, being a pacifist by nature, is not really something I'm used to. But then, I started wondering if I should have left a piece of temptation out there for weak willed human beings to put a black mark on their souls with. I don't know. I think shit like that sometimes. If nothing else, atleast the incident took me off my writer's block. Isn't that something? I was asking to get sent some sort of incident which would make me want to say something about the world again. Sure enough, my phone gets stolen.

I've been on a writer's block for a few days now. Wierd because I just announced myself as a writer of sorts maybe less than a week ago. Less than a week and already I'm so fucking bored and uninspired that I get blocked. Right smack in the middle of a tv script I'm writing, the story has BARELY evolved leaving me room for God knows how much to play around with, and I'm sitting producing tiny little pieces of my best work on Orkut. I hate myself. It's a crucial part of my writing.

So now I'm driving home. From the Basement. Yes, we're back there. Nothing is seeming funny to me. Much like this blog entry is to you. For that I apologise. This may very well be my first step into becoming those sap ass characters who actually use their blogs as a means of conveying their FEELINGS and EMOTIONS instead of providing a good laugh to anyone visiting. But that stops now. So again, nothing is seeming funny to me. My brother is sitting right next to me, his friend at the back going on about how to get my SIM closed off in the morning, which of course was sounding all muffled and blurred out to me since the man had three drum kits up to his jaw in the back seat of a Mehran VX, inarguably one of the smallest cars ever to have been mass produced by any company in the history of mankind. As if the drums weren't bad enough, the DRUMMER that comes with them was ALSO in the back seat. I was driving.

It's wierd how you don't really feel like a man until this timeless Pakistani custom of being robbed of some material posession actually happens to you. I finally feel like I belong in this place now. Now, on my own terms of intensity of course, I have been in fights, I have been mad drunk on the beach, sworn at bad drivers, gotten high from the pollution in the Saddar district, been bothered by crooked cops (both blue shirts and farmies), and now, I have also been robbed. I don't think they should make your I.D card for this place unless atleast all these things have happened to you over a certain period of time. Infact, the way to get a DRIVER'S license should be testing if you're any good at hitting a parked vehicle and then disappearing without a trace. They could have that one person play the unsuspecting guy, sitting in that car in the license office lot, which has no engine, because some corrupt bastard in the office realised they never SWITCH ON the car anyway, so it's seven days before anyone even figures out that there's nothing under the hood anymore.

I love how we become Batman in your mind for the few hours after a cell has been stolen from you. For a while my friend, you are out for VENGEANCE. You want a mask, you want skills, you want the names and addresses of the suspects who got your phone, and soon in your mind, you're a one man army kicking seven guys in the head and making them cry for their moms. What's really wierd is the number of people keeps growing in your mind doesn't it? You walk into a room and face a SINGLE solitary person. All the kickass lines you wanna spit out before wailing on the fucker, you spit. Interesting play of words takes place, and then, the final word. Which usually ends up being "Then let's do this" for some reason. If you're really unimaginitive, you go with "You're gonna need that cell you stole from me....to call 15 after I'm done with you." And then you kick his ass, blindfolded, hands behind your head, legs tied to the fan and what not. Then, when you think about it, you're a little happy aren't you? You're happy that you beat the crap out of an imaginary criminal and righted a wrong in this world. But it's not enough. You close your eyes and you're smiling because you see yourself standing over the rat bastard thief. But wait, a door opens in the back. Now this is where it gets wierd, because you've GOT your phone back...but now your mind has kicked in the fact that it's not REAL bliss. After all, it IS your imagination that you got him. Through the open door, what happens? A hundred and fifty fucking guys storm into the room, charging RIGHT at you and your phone, which is something that would NEVER justify ANY mafia kingpin using THAT kind of man power, and now it's up to you to kill every single one of them, because you HAVE to protect your phone. And of course later the same night, a similiar imaginary scene takes place in the Mobilink offices, where sit do a bunch of knuckle scraping degernerates called helpline operators who can't even operate lines let alone help, never ceasing to prove to you that it's perfectly normal to call it a 24 HOUR CALL CENTRE, even if it shuts down by 1 in the morning, and putting a smile on your face when you wonder if this is where all your money is going, to give jobless night hawks a place to sit and a way to buy lunch the next day. I wonder if anyone works for a living anymore. I wonder if anyone is watching them. I could, you know. But that seems a shallow reason to want to don a cape and tights, although when I really think about it, no reason is good enough to wear tights. Not in this country. In Iran it's a death sentence to do that. In Saudi Arabia, they detain all tights at the airport, along with magazines containing pictures of women, sheep or men with long hair (all of which are regarded as sexually explicit items in that part of the world).

I guess in the end, everythings relative. I get writer's block, I lose a phone. Some guy leaves a phone unattended, some guy picks it up and walks off with it, earning another mark on his character. Somebody always wins and somebody always loses. But it's just how you care to see it, right? Maybe I'm not the one who lost. Sure I lost a phone, but what did I get in return? I got reminded of how nice it once was to not have that device ringing in your ass all the time. I still never figured out how the phone used to end up in my ass in the first place, but that's another blog entry, for another time. The thief? Did he win? Maybe, but all he won was a little cell phone isn't it? Compared to what he lost.

Perhaps the best example of a Pakistani mentality's idea of complete success in this night would go only to the the security guard at the place, who I really do believe was in on it. He walks away with a percentage of the earnings, without having to do the crime, AND the heist involved him NOT having to be a security guard, which is what he is paid to do. And so, in the age old tradition of feeling that awfully great feeling of being paid to do absolutely nothing, I guess the only guy who won last night was the guard. Maybe he deserves it, or thinks he did, like the love of my life suggested. I walked away with incredible affection from my girlfriend, and the thief got a phone. World hasn't ended today, and won't tomorrow either.

Except for the thief, who's mother is a stinking whore who should have been busy raising her kids with a sense of morality instead of leaving home at 6 in the evening every day to give blowjobs for a living.

Good Night.