Archives from the Book Of Lodhism

Shoulder To Shoulder

2011-05-02T18:27:00.000-07:00

Chapter 28.

Announce Our Intelligence

You know what's worse than your politicians pissing in your backyard? Some other country's politicians pissing in your backyard. No body, no proof, buried in the ocean before anyone even confirmed what had happened, you heard it everywhere first. Osama Bin Laden is dead. And so close to the Royal wedding too. I knew something was up when Pakistani news channels suddenly found the balls to show a couple kiss on national TV. I imagine it's ok when royalty does it but Meera can suck it because she's just a whore trying to further her career. I knew a big ass white wedding (and I do mean WHITE) and the world's most notorious public enemy being caught and killed over the same fucking weekend is too much of a feel good overdose for everyone in the West for it to be able to end well for anyone in the East.

Abbottabad? Seriously? Did we really need this kind of attention? For all we know the guy's walking around with a big ol' smile on his shaven unrecognizable face in the middle of New York, laughing at the headlines, standing shoulder to shoulder with idiots holding candles at ground zero using their one free hand to tweet their feelings.

So your ministers have finally started treating this country like the failing business it's always been credited as. They immediately announce our intelligence had no involvement in the operation that killed him and the 5 or 6 members of his posse, forgetting what a basketful of douches they looked like that 25 Navy Seals can fly into someone's private residence on 4 helicopters in the middle of Abbottabad and they don't have a clue it's even happening. Not to mention the house was less than half a fucking mile from our most revered military training academy, which probably cost the men in black robes a little bit extra.

Does anyone even really think this is real? C'mon...give me ONE photograph. And not now that you have all the time in the world to doctor one to your liking and send it out, one of which is already out there. Yes, it's fake. They're usually all about the autopsies...this time the man considered to be the most horrible thing since Hitler (before FOX news compared him to Obama) is killed and tossed underwater before news of his death even hits the press, and why? Now we're following Islamic burial laws.

You gotta give it to them. They've done it again. In the face of the impossible scenario that a black man would have trouble being elected for a second tenure as president (sarcasm check), and a man who runs a reality show called The Celebrity Apprentice, wearing something on his head that can only be described as roadkill being the predicted frontrunner in next year's U.S elections, it only seems right that the one move that could serve as a saving grace for Mr. Yes We Can is to be remembered as the guy under whose term the beard was killed. Not caught. Killed. What a hero. He sat through the entire operation in a small room, watching intently at a screen as a man with a camera for some reason was allowed to click away in a room where discretion is ordinarily the number one concern.

You'd think they'd make a bigger noise about this. I thought it'd go on for a few days atleast but Osama's death is already sharing airtime with a whole bunch of other issues like some orphanage in Zambia and more locally, something about our political parties signing some paper joining hands in an effort to be useless as a TEAM from now on instead of individually. I don't mind of course, world keeps on turning...I'm just surprised is all. Almost like they wanna wrap this thing up real quick and make a huge thing that'll draw on for months and months. Something like why the fuck he was chilling in a fucking HOUSE in your God damn country.

Apart from all the twisted propaganda and lies that will surely follow in the coming months...I would like to clear one thing up...there's no way I'm believing that glorified SHACK they found him in was a million dollar piece of property. I doubt load shedding even spared the poor bastard and his last moments on Earth probably went by fanning his hot sweaty face with this month's copy of The Jihadi Times. But since the Yanks probably paid for it they'd know better.

So the aftermath? More bombs? More deaths? Politicians stuffing their pockets with proverbial peanuts and securing mansions in European countries while U.S forces use this incident as an excuse to increase their presence here? I don't know. But like I said. This country is more like a company going bankrupt now. A merger or takeover ensures its survival for atleast a short while. And like any merger, its only smart to leave the employees to their jobs since they know the work better. Always use locals whenever you can. Masses tend to trust faces they recognise more than a stranger.

But thank you, Osama Bin Laden, for dying and giving the global press ample footage of something we've all wanted to see for a very long time. Finally, those holier than thou Yankee Doodles with their skin deep falsified sense of political correctness can be seen jumping up and down celebrating someone's death like the uneducated, backward brown people they fear so much who burn flags and party their asses off every time a white guy gets so much as run over by a car. We now have footage of mass ignorant behaviour by these guys holding signs saying rude things to a deceased man. The East and the West are now truly one, thanks to Osama Bin Laden.

By the way...for those of you who don't know...as a result of this incident the most wanted man in the world is now Robert Pattinson.

Keep up the drama.

2010-11-11T19:08:00.000-08:00

Chapter 27.

To Remind You All

Religion. It's the oldest trick in the book. Ever since man was able to write anything down he started with a lie. A truth is something people understand without the need for any indoctrination. It's only lies that ever needed actual explaining. Now...thousands of years after the inception of faith in something beyond the mortal world...the acts justified in the name of flying balls of light with infinite power have taken a sharp, very HUMAN turn. Last night, in an attempt to raise the amount of aid given to us by foreign pockets claiming it necessary for the fight against terror, the Pakistani government coordinated and sanctioned an attack on one of it's own buildings in Karachi City, with the help of the very people they're supposed to be at war with. I truly believe this to be true. I'm writing it though...so it could be a lie.

You know you're in a bad place when a 1000 kg of explosives are used to raze a building to the ground and the first thing you think is thank God only 17 people died. It's getting so bad in this country we're almost forgetting all the hell breaking loose outside of it.

I'm not political. I'm not religious. I don't even think I'm smart anymore. I used to think I'm above the rest in some way. Hoped to God I was infact. That I was special, more brave, more grounded, more sure of how everything works no matter how ugly it may seem than everyone else. But last night I feared for a lot more people than I can even remember caring about till now. It's annoying feeling that weak. So weak that you could take a gun and just put a bullet in the rat bastard that orchestrated this attack. But you know the truth...gift wrapped, beaten, tied, ready to be killed, nailed to a God damn chair in an empty isolated warehouse sitting three feet from you...you still wouldn't be able to pull the trigger to end the life of the man who was responsible for the deaths of 17 people.

The truth is the buildings in Karachi aren't the only thing that were shaken by this blast last night. It was our faith in good. But I hear we only lose things that those things may have a
chance to find US instead. It's not normal to forget about this in a couple of days, but thats exactly what's going to happen. Though I don't feel sad about it anymore. Everyone's out to set their facebook status to say what happened. Some even try to plug something noble or constructive they were up to at the time they felt the shake. Nabeel was helping a dog with three legs find a home when the earth shook. Nazish was helping an old man put on diapers when the bomb went off so he shit himself before she even could. Basit was building a fucking orphanage with nothing but a spoon and some God damn steel rulers. Then there's always that one fat fuck who was just at McDonalds scarfing down a mac when he spilt ketchup on his shirt which exposes that chubby well he calls a damn stomach through the little spaces between the buttons because the vibrations in the ground were so strong. Atleast a couple of them have the decency to say hope everyone's safe...forgetting that anyone who isn't wouldn't exactly be logged onto Zuckerbergs social fucking network at the time.

We've got problems...this isn't the first time anyone's saying it, but how much longer can we keep up the drama of reacting to these incidents like they're phasing us in any way? Yet if we go on pretending like nothing's happened, how in hell is it ever going to change?

You're not the president of a country. You don't have a civic duty to comdemn bomb attacks then continue to do absolutely dick all about them. When the time comes to pick a side, and I mean REALLY comes...who will you stand with? Humans? Or humanity? Since the beginning of time, wars end only when one side has lost...and you'll know which side did when you see the trail of dead leading you it. Both sides warring in the world today have equal strength...and its the people in the middle with none of it that end up paying the highest price. In this war, there are only two sides. But the side we're supposed to be fighting for, survives on faith alone. You can't see it because your judgment has been clouded by powers pretending to be rivals. Everyone fails to notice one side essentially says God is obsolete, and the other is saying God is violent and backwards. These are your options. And they're one and the same.

This world peace we all hope for...its the absence of war. It's an illusion. A blanket over our eyes woven by lesbians and vegetarians whose idea of a battlefield is a rally holding picket signs saving cows from slaughter and the right to get married. We're skipping ahead of the REAL problems. But you're far too many explosions away from realizing that. That's why this continues.

Even now I'm typing this shit in the same word file I've been collecting jokes for a stand up set in the near future. THAT'S how much I care. The headline in the morning paper reads "Bomb and gun battle rocks Karachi". Like it's a Sunday Images review of a two band concert. An intense opening with an explosive finish. A review by some social whore who wouldn't know art if it raped him and threw him down six flights of stairs then came up to him and said "Hi. I'm art." Some superstar reporter making the big bucks by just telling us what someone with a REAL job or agenda did last night. Critics and reporters are so very alike. But I swear this isn't going on the list of possible jokes. Not only because it's not show worthy...but because I think it's crude to make light of bomb blasts that kill people. I'd rather stick to simple sarcasm.

The blast last night, was to remind you all what your lives are. And that you must continue to live, as humans, if you remember what that even means anymore, even in the face of madness. But the time will come sooner than you think, to pick a side. Your choice is going to be the death of someone, and at this point, all you can hope for is that you don't know them personally.

Now go and pray for the dead. And try not to whore out to brownie points from your friends by TELLING them you are. Prayers are a lot like wishes that way. They only work if you're fucking humble. Push it all into that big box labelled "the PAST" in your little head, and look towards the future. There's going to be a lot of work to do soon, let's see if we're up to it.

Dark and hopeless.

2010-08-21T20:19:00.000-07:00

Chapter 26.

The Good Times

It’s finally happened. The one thing I could do in this world without feeling guilty about it. Laugh. Not so sure I can anymore. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem right. I’m forcing it like crazy everywhere I go. I smile and laugh when people expect me to. It’s all a front. Can’t let them feel anything is wrong.

I wonder if it’s ok to write about this. If I’m even ready.

March 7th, 2010. That’s the day my brother died.

When you first find out it’s happened…it gets a little hard to breathe. But you compose yourself. You try to remember one really fun moment you had with him and take control over your emotions. There’s a couple who gave birth to him and raised him with all their love and support, and they’re sitting in the next room, clueless about what’s happened.

I’m glad. Better their son tell them than some over emotional friend 4000 miles away on a phone line with a delay that’ll only get worse with the bubbling and spitting brought on by incessant tears. Try to think about the good times, a friend says to me the next day. I’ve heard this line before. It’s usually spoken by people who seem much better at moving on with their lives than I am. Someone I knew a million years ago called a few days after it happened. Offered their condolences. Very nice of them. Very correct. Very proper. Not about me or my family. Just about convincing themselves they still care about some 3 people they were once tied to emotionally. Women are LIKE that I notice. Asked me if I’m still hating the world. Horrible thing to say at a time like this. I wonder if I should say, "I don't know, you still a lying slut who dates four men at the same time and lies about it? Maybe I'll wait for your brother to die. Good reason to call you someday. I'll ask you that horrid question then. I hope he dies. Honestly. I never liked the fucker."

I’m not moving on. My brother threw himself off the roof of a building in downtown Montreal. A twelve story hotel. And I’m going to find out why. Unfortunately…I kinda already know.

When I was 13 years old, my brother told me he didn’t expect to live past 30. I took it as a Cobain moment and thought nothing of it. He’d already been playing that annoying instrument for 4 or 5 years now. It was having a less than desirable effect on him. At least in MY eyes.

I don’t wish to skip out on any names of people that came and showed their support. But this is an opportunity for me to remind myself and everyone reading this who I truly believe were and still are my brother’s closest friends and MINE, in terms of their help and support on the days following his death.

Salman Madani
Shohaib Ahmed
Ali Reza
Fateeha Beg
Mariam Shah
Khawer Khan
Faraz Masood Shah
Umayr Tariq Jamil
Mohammed Sibtain Fazli
Hassaan Azhar
Omar Bilal Akhtar, for holding a beautiful tribute in his name which reminded us to celebrate his life and music more than mourning his death.
Samay Shams

And VERY importantly, Aqueeb Qadri. Who was a great friend of his and was unfortunately placed in the position of being the bearer of bad news from Montreal, and went out of his way to be incredibly helpful with handling all matters concerning the family from his end. Again, if I’m leaving out any names it’s just because I’m not and haven’t been completely in my senses these past few weeks. But just so you know…I don’t intend to start anytime soon.

For those of you who didn’t know my brother, turns out you can’t tell much about him from his many photographs surrounded by his many friends. He seems to always be smiling in them…which is confusing to me now…seeing as this is a man who chose to leave this world behind him. He’s SO much further away from worldly requirements now…given there’s a heaven and what not. I’m sure they’d make one especially for him. But from the pictures…you’d never be able to tell something was troubling him. Clearly though…something was. They picked up pieces of my brother from a sidewalk in front of a hotel. He was 29 years old, a free spirit, a beautiful man, a brilliant artist, a super talented guitarist and a highly gifted musician. He came back home as a wooden box with a serial number on it. People were struggling to get the straps cut just so they could take a good look for themselves. He always knew how to be the main event on any given night.

For those of you…that DID know my brother…thank you. Most of you were there pretty much throughout that hellish ordeal no decent human beings should ever have to go through alone. You made it as easy as it could be to face the fact that after 26 years of having my ass kicked by solid skin and bones, I suddenly find myself an only child.

I see him everywhere I go now. He walks right beside me, begging me to change my way of thinking.

"So...you still hating the world?"

At the time, my answer was that it comes and goes. But now I’m much more sure. Now, more than ever before, I believe I hate this world and everything in it. See my brother didn’t have it in him to see the world the way I see it. The way it really is. Dark and hopeless. There are things happening out there you just CAN’T write songs about. It wouldn’t make sense putting something as inspiring as music to something so corrupt. He’s standing next to me right now. He’s asking me to see the brighter side of this dark hole. And I can’t. I tell myself I’m arrogant enough to say I WON’T, but the truth is…I really just can’t.

This world is an evil place. It pushed him over the edge. He didn’t understand it. All he wanted to do was fly…and it didn’t let him. Just kept attacking him with formalities and deadlines and other plain worldly crap that makes numb, senseless beings of once spirited men. They won against you, but they didn’t win against him. They couldn’t break him. He knew his lot in life. He knew his choices and his priorities. And he’s in a better place because he just isn’t here anymore. And we have the nerve to feel sad about his passing, just because we’re convinced that living like what we consider a normal human being is actually a better way to go than death itself.

He had no evil in him. He was incapable of hate. No matter how hard I tried…I couldn’t ever get him to dislike ANYTHING. It annoyed and frustrated me but only till about two weeks ago. Now I understand it all. He was better than anyone I ever met in my life. He had so much more to teach me…now I feel I would’ve listened so much more carefully. I could’ve spoken to him more often. I could’ve saved him. But he made his choice. And now I’ve made mine.

There’s no saving any of you. He loved the world so much he had to die just to rid himself of the pain of seeing everything that happens here on a daily basis. But I won’t die so soon. And that’s unfortunate for you. Because that’s what I finally realized. All the hatred and evil that should’ve been in him…has always been somewhere else. And it’s been growing. Now twenty fold. It’s me. And even though a piece of good from my brother now lives in me, it only serves as a motivating factor to burn this shithole to the fucking ground. I now have enough good in my heart to know who to save. And finally enough evil to know where to find more.

And I WILL find it. I’m going to find all the evil in this world. And I’m going to destroy it. Everywhere I go. Not because I care for you, and not because it’s what a GOOD man would do. But because I’ll like it. I’ll burn in hell for eternity just as long as I get to see someone else do it here first.

They tempted him. They called him just like they called you. They dangled ideals revolving around peace and liberty and love like a big juicy steak in front of a starving dog. And they led him to the killing grounds. He got halfway and realized what a fucking farce your idea of a progressive society is, and before he could back out, they killed him. It’s because you’re weak and pathetic…and the same steak flavoured with corporate greed and financial success he got scared of? You treat it like it’s the fucking Holy Grail. No need for a soul if the bills are paid for. It’s the oldest trick in the book…and mankind’s been falling for it since one person had even a single day to his advantage above the rest.

I was supposed to be an uncle before I became a father. I was gonna spoil some kid rotten and try to show myself up in front of his dad. We were supposed to be old and still fighting about stupid shit like children because we could. Now we can’t. My brother was all I had. If I can’t have him back, you’re going to lose what’s dearest to you as well. I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal.

They killed my brother. And they kill countless others every single passing second by getting us obsessed with visions of things that don’t exist, and wouldn’t matter if they did. A billion false dreams that need the dreamer to be asleep forever. A thousand have died while I’ve been writing this. A couple thousand more by the time you finish reading. They feed off the death of your loved ones…and maybe you’re not ok with it the next day…or the day after that…but someday, you surely are.

I’m not. I won’t remember the good times. I won’t share them. They’re mine, and mine alone. Thinking about the good times and appreciating the fact that there won’t BE any more is too small and human and pathetic a trait for me to be able to get any pleasure from. But make no mistake. This isn’t about me. It’s still about my brother. And that’s why I refuse to move on. All these years, I thought the best thing to do with a world that’s broken is to fix it. When all the while, I should’ve been asking one simple question.

What do you do with a clock that refuses to tell time?

If you’re too scared to speak the answer out loud…congratulations. You got it right.
Soaring, burnished buildings make no measure of the people that occupy the spaces within them. I cry today, days, weeks, months after his death. I cry because it took maybe five and seventeen days for people to forget about him. Cute of some people to speak on his facebook account. Like that’s one of his primary worries in the afterlife. How many people messaged his page. Yes. I know. You loved him. Keep it to yourself. You’re not winning any point by pressing enter on a page he’s not even watching.

Months after I’ve written this bit, and found the strength to include this into my horribly real and unsympathetic list of memorandums, I find some flood has hit this country and maybe I should do my bit to help the people affected. It makes me happy.
I’ll tell you why. Me, bhayya, and a few friends (you know who you you are and I will love you forever. I will give my life for you, Each of you. Whoever asks for it first, frankly. Only got one to give) went to help these earthquake AFFECTEES back in old 2004. Seeing them one night, ignoring my constant plea to let it go when I was saying “please don’t start the Muhammad and God talk with them, they’re idiots…they know not better…” bhayya only said one thing…about all those people who were now stranded in tents and broken mud huts…waiting for resources to be handed to them by a government that was MEANWHILE feedinf off their misery.

He said, “I’ll tell you something Faraz. This quake? Best thing that ever happened to these people.”

Tell you what he meant.

It made us come together. As a nation? As a people. For the first time in their lives, these people were FORCED to live among each other like their lives depended on it. They got out of their houses, and knew how big the world was because symbols from flags of countries they never heard of were joined to millions of dollars worth of relief equipment to help their cold, starving asses.

We had helped loading the rice, flour, used clothes and shoes to be shipped to Balakot a month prior. We saw the same material being burned in the street when we got there.

This…TALIBAN person. He’s gonna win. Like they ask…so many pledges for SO many dollars made to SO many relief efforts for the tsunami and Haiti quake victims. Barely any for this 20 million flood scene. Taliban sponsors the rehabilitation of badly affected areas, creating schools and whatnot of new super horrible ignorant fanatics. Just realized that according to the new Microsoft Word, TALIBAN is not a word they red underline. It exists in the dictionary.

I’m an artist. So was my brother. He lived to help and serve others. I’m gonna try to raise some money for these victims of SUPPOSEDLY natural disasters. Something he mighta prolly coulda SORTA wannit me ta do.

You’re safe for now.

Soon though? Horribly dangerous to live here for you. Keep talking about your revolutions and murdered politicians till it serves your cause in a social setting you can’t quite afford to avoid. Whatever it takes to get into that chick's pants cuz' she's only here for a few weeks and wants atleast ONE dick in her life that wasn't a COMPLETE idiotic waste of space. Keep telling yourselves that despite the fact you haven’t visited you own home town in four years, you’re a real Pakistani just because you run down a New York street corner carrying a green and white flag, which you know you won’t because it’s only convenient to join a facebook group supporting our problems, but actually doing it means actually…fucking…DOING it.

Quit it. You're not here. You have no idea what's going on here. Don't even fucking try.

Poor flood relatives.

Here we come.

Welcome home, Bhayya. See you soon (Following the whole 'an eternity on Earth is the same as a mere few seconds in the afterlife' theory).

Mad Men And Savages

2009-12-30T09:45:00.000-08:00

Chapter 25.

The Answer Is Secret

Oh my god! Karachi is burning!! Karachi is burning!!

No it isn't. It's just a rough ass Monday. What's wrong? Why all the shock? Had we thought we were OUT of this mess? Was sitting and letting your country get overrun by land lords merging with multinational capatalists supposed to make Karachi a safe haven for us all? Didn't that one discussion you had with two friends while getting drunk on a Friday night mean you did your part?

Muslims bombings Muslims eh?

It’s a fucking farce. It's not even what's happening. What would be the point? The whole damn WORLD mourns for Ashura. Are we immediately supposed to believe that if a bombing takes place during one of the recessions it HAS to be blamed on an opposing SECT of the same religion?

Open your fucking eyes. The people who bomb houses of worship and religious gatherings are not members OF that religion. It makes no fucking sense. Not that I'm giving them ideas...but seems to me that bombing anti Al Qaeda-esque military bases...or a new clothing store selling skimpy looking outfits...or a new restaurant which secretly sells booze...or private parties where people can get together and have orgies or even a concert held by Atif Aslam all seem to be more up an outraged fanatical muslim organisation's alley. Ok fine bombing Atif Aslam is more up MY alley than theirs but whatever.

Here's a question. Why the manipulation? Why, when you say Islamic agendas and loyal followers do you cut straight to a video of mad lunatic looking people waving rocket launchers in the air...chanting things that probably make some amount of sense but are never translated. Why is it when I watch a man on CNN interview this old dude sitting in front of the Bhutto death square selling flags and posters of a dead chick's even more dead political party...being an urdu speaker, I find he said a LOT more than the lame stuff the translator chose to pick out and broadcast...shoving the level of the actual old guys volume down so low it's totally inaudible.

There was a dude who totally went insane and shot up some place in the US called Fort Hood. Killed 13 soldiers. Now, no one should ever have to die at all...but if they do...don't you atleast wanna know WHY? I do. I did. Now I don't...why? I'm more into their latest blockbuster…”The Syrian who stole Christmas”. Don't you want to know WHY he did the underwear explosive thing? You DO? You won't soon. It won't matter. A Palestinian dude is gonna attack an Israeli settlement...he'll use a bomb instead of a smart missle...and in war, much like most socialite circles around the globe...a man who doesn't use the EXPENSIVE state of the art weaponry to create genocide is worse than a terrorist...he's POOR. He's DESPERATE. More than that…he’s the new guy we decide to be the face of terrorism for a few days till the story does its job.

The US soldier...who shot up Fort Hood...was a fully sane 'able to speak for himself and make an announcement to the world press' kinda guy. He was ONE of THEIR SOLDIERS!! Why didn’t they let him speak his mind and explain himself? Where is he? Don't know? I just looked it up. The last anyone reported on him was...GOOGLE NEWS! In the article? A YEMENI IMAM (Islamic cleric)...that’s right…a YEMENI…IMAM…tells...GOOGLE...that the soldier once came to him, and I quote "sought advice from him about killing US soldiers"...

Just went to the imam and said, "Hey man of the cloth to a religion that justifies murder...I wish to kill lots of US soldiers...how do I do it?"

It's surprising to see how quickly the whole conspiracy theory of BlackWater and other secretly driven multinational private organisations creating pockets of power in this country spread to the point of becoming overdiscussed and now abandoned like yesterday's news. That's actually where the powers at be put even their OWN faith in these theories. They fuel them to the point where not enough proof supporting these ideas turns them into little more than senseless rants from a man whose life was destroyed by a simple machine. It's called a paper shredder, and it destroys the very evidence he spends his life trying to find. In poorer countries, this machine is replaced by something called...a FURNACE. All information you wish never to keep any record of, goes into this device...as do the people who have this information and refuse to cooperate. But I’m sure to a man mowing down a steak somewhere with his banker friends right now, the idea of multimillion dollar deals involving weapons and warheads being made in SECRET is just pure science fiction till Michael Moore can find a document and make a 3 hour snoozefest about it.

I'm all for conspiracy theories when it seems fairly obvious that there IS one going on. The word Taliban and BOMB seem synonymous with each other now. How did THAT happen? I’m not totally on the side of a global group that doesn’t want pornographic films made, but people don't seem to use their eyes anymore. Atleast not for anything more than looking around hoping to catch a reflection of themselves in another person. Someone who agrees with your twisted logic and makes the world a slightly better place to live in for a while. Just waiting for another blast somewhere because it gives you the notion that talking about dangerous current affairs makes you look more concerned or maybe even a little smarter while shoving your face with truffles from some exclusive chocolate shop in zamzama. Yea. I know the reviews from your lame facebook status. They're to fucking die for.

But so is a decent cause.

Instead, we waste so much time getting our views from channels like DAWN and GEO which are little more than telemarketers for fear and DEATH these days, I wouldn't be surprised if that clueless Ranger unit leader heard details about his own subordinate’s death from some shmuck paid to put the idea in his head that JAHANZEB found someone suspicious and when he approached him about it the guy pulled the cord. Of course top that off with regular articles or video specials on political parties making new bills, or NGO's that actually DO some real grassroots work in this country for education, sanitation, employment, healthcare whatever, and you have yourselves a news industry that truly CARES about the people instead of say, attempting to push for the idea of news channel heads as president of this country.

FREE PRESS!!! (craftily faded to change to) REPRESS!!! DAWN NEWS! UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE!

Yes...they're two different words entirely. What's your fucking point? Where do you get YOUR news from? Excuse me while I go off and position a camera on my rooftop right NOW for a bomb that'll go off tomorrow afternoon. Some people will do anything to get that exclusive.

We seem to forget that the entire purpose of these bombings happens to be making us afraid of 4 things:

1. Stepping out of the house. (The government has it under control)

2. Going anywhere NEAR a mosque. (God is obsolete)

3. Attending religious seminars or gatherings. (People who believe in God are bakward goons asking for a targeted attack)

4. Having an original thought. (When the media wants your opinion...they'll give it to you)

So...unless you're a complete DOLT...you will realise that yes, the people responsible for these attacks ARE far from Muslims...but not in that weakly ironic and hopelessly needling way you like to post on your facebook wall hoping that some bearded dude in a position of power will read it and go GRRRRRR alright SHAMYLA! YOU WIN! I WASNT GONNA DO THIS TILL WEDNESDAY, BUT NOW YOU'VE GONE TOO FAR! I CAN'T TAKE YOUR MOCKING WORDS ANYMORE! PACK IT UP GANG! ITS OVER! THE JEWS WIN!

The people responsible, my fellow cunts...are members of your local and foreign governments that have indeed worked together tirelessly for decades to bring their own warped version of liberty and freedom to this country in the wonderful form of late night with Mathira and MTV. Ah, Mathira. She holds a LIVE show every night from 2 to 3 in the morning...subjected to nothing but ridicule from women in burkhas who have the nerve to tell her to dress properly from now on despite the fact that THEY'RE the ones making late night phone calls to a TV show called "Love Talk"...and drunk men who, on a good day, can muster enough strength to speak in entire sentences which mostly revolve around telling her they think she looks pretty and they'd like to BEFRIEND her. Yet if she stops doing her show, these assholes are the first ones to bitch about the Islamisation of the country. They don't want to see women in sleeveless outfits at 3 in the morning, but they don't want Vibe to suddenly UP it's standards from the piece of crap channel it IS either.

And why is that? I'll tell you why. Yes I will. The west has ALWAYS led the way in what they’d have you believe is the shining example of modern civilised living. Imitation works. But we always somehow manage to secure our place as the least developed in ANY of these things.

You DO realise that capatilsm, once the saviour of the planet as we knew it, is conveniently being shown as the enemy now, yet at the same time companies like FORD MOTORS get on the public healthSCARE bandwagon by joining with large hospital organisations which cover a whole lot more items on the list of natural ailments if you purchase their cars and become loyal customers. Seriously. Buy a Ford...live longer.

And now, companies are creating machines that run on something called HHO. A broken down re-engineered form of water that can create enough energy to burn through a metal plate in seconds yet leaves human skin unaffected. The beauty of the system (not counting how it totally opens up new possibilities for so called miracles thousands of years ago when men were seen walking through fire and created entire religions BASED on these illusions)? Only companies that have been creating engines for the regular cars that ran on fuel harvested from the blood of innocent people have any ACCESS to this damn technology. They STILL hold the resources, the skill, the information and scale of work it requires to eventually put these engines into mass production. The same companies, led by the same people, exploiting the same resources, controlling the same money and power to create the next step in healthy cooperative human living. Which by the way, they can do tomorrow. But they won't. For ANOTHER two reasons.

The fuel hasn't run out yet.

The global warming scare hasn't taken its hold on your pathetic little brain.

Then why bring that freedom and liberty to this part of the world? Because by the time we start indulging in the fattening perks of a so called MODERN society...we'll also start being considered the world’s number one polluters and industrial giants. A way of living, which, by the time we achieve it and even BEGIN to reap the benefits of, will be obsolete because THEY SAY SO. This time...a country will be invaded because enough people will believe it's not only threatening another nation, but slowly choking the entire planet to death with its wicked backward ways. You and I, UNfortunately...will not be around to see this happen. History will rewrite itself...and the countries that currently practice major industrial production and even a little thing called weather modification (shooting deadly chemicals into the air to control things like humidity level for comfort and rainfall for dams), will write a big fat sorry to the UN or whatever it changes its name to and just walk away with the masses thinking "Awww...atleast they apologised."

Big Fat Capatalist wearing a monocle: Look...I'm uhh...sorry I killed everything and everyone you ever loved. Soooo...we cool?

Native American: No.

Big Fat Capatalist wearing a monocle: What choice do you really have? I own everything.

Native American: You're right. I'm going to create a God that will make this all better AFTER we die.

Big Fat Capatalist Wearing a monocle: Sure....sure...soooo…we cool right?

We can single out any one person with a different opinion and call him insane...and the world will follow...and you know why? Because as soon as he starts making sense to more than three people, BOOM! A bomb goes off on 10th Moharram and you're back to square one, flipping curiously through news channels telling you your wonderful government caught a suspect and so far only has the knowledge that this many people have died, and it was caused by a single man wearing some sort of bomb vest. Where’s the suspect? What’s he got to say? And can I for once…just once…hear HIM speak directly INTO a fucking camera as his statement to the people?

Have you ever SEEN a bomb blast?

Have you seen one go off in the middle of a packed crowd?

Let me explain what happens.

When a bomb goes off...particularly one of the kind where roughly 4 maybe 5 kilos of explosive have been strapped to a vest? For a radius of 35 to 40 feet? You're lucky if you can still keep all five senses, sight, hearing, SANITY etc. If you're truly blessed...all your limbs are still intact.

Fifteen to twenty feet? NOTHING survives. The shock and shrapnel will kill anything beathing.

Ten to five feet from the point of the explosion...little more than intestines are or a bloody sandal is found.

1 foot or less?

Nothing. A big black hole in the ground, and a LOT of bad memories.

NOTHING survives the epicenter of a blast using 5 kilos of explosive. Nothing. Yet instead of believing that a SMART person casually walked around in the crowd, quietly dropped a bag with a timed explosive and walked off to about as far as he could in a frame of 4 minutes...we immediately jump to the image of a training camp somewhere in the mountains with a whole LINE of men chanting mad slogans, being treated just a LIIIITTTLE more special than the rest of the crew. These are the men everyone in the camps wishes they were. These are the suicide bombers. The ones willing to go anywhere at any time and with complete disregard for everything around them, quit the world in a blaze of glory and close their eyes so tight they see heaven. MAD men and SAVAGES. So many in number now they're crawling out from under the very rocks they hide behind. We can't seem to find most of them though...but that's ok...our military's on the case. Sure a couple hundred people from nearby villages die in the raids and missile fire. Just collateral damage. Beat the shit out of someone they DO manage to kidnap till he confesses to crimes he never committed from less fear for his own life and more of it for the families the secret army promises they’ll rape and murder if he doesn’t cooperate.

I'll tell you why you avoid talking about it. Why if anyone brings up this topic in the middle of a dinner party you'll think it’s a drag. The reason is that talking about these issues in a country where less than 2 percent of the population controls ALL the money and power, can rarely lead to anything but a drastic measure on the part of its people. Stop going to work for 3 months. Don’t use electricity anymore. Go fucking insane. And see what happens. Watch how the controllers break down to their knees finally admitting how much more they need YOU than YOU need THEM.

Or?

Stop bitching and moaning about being exploited and taken for a ride if you refuse to DO shit about it. But you still won’t and here’s why. Simply because...it's literally all you have.

As Pakistanis...you don't dominate the world stage in ANYTHING...political strength...money...fashion...film...industries of ANY sort...this is all you have...the bombs. You feel like heroes just for surviving one day out here and being able to say yes I saw it all when it was happening. Funny how big a lie that really is. You ignored it and now it wants attention. The longer you put it off the longer it'll stick around. But did you ever even really want it gone? Or is sitting in your homes all nice and snug talking to people over the internet about how it affects you psychologically and emotionally to live through this shit literally the only thing that makes you unique in this world? Wear Hush Puppies on your feet to get noticed here…wear the image of a person from a torn country to get noticed there. It’s highly systematic…I’d be surprised if any one of you were aware you were even doing it. I doubt I’ll ever give you credit for such a long term philosophy.

I saw something the other day. One of the higher ups in national air travel security in the U.S was giving an interview on CNN. He was casually speaking about how, in order to INCREASE the effectiveness of anti terrorism on flights to and from the U.S, we must change our global strategy from this:

Everybody gets treated the exact same way and is run through a simple series of checks like having your luggage scanned, then walking through a full body scanner designed to send x rays through your clothes to check for any concealed weapons.

To THIS:

Past the luggage scan everyone is free to go off except a few specifically profiled people. Who will be taken to a side, and embarrassed by being the only ones subjected to those checks.

The interviewer seemed to agree with him when he said in THIS way...we can actually make our security standards seem LESS predictable and therefore this will be an EPIC win against terrorists. And similar idiots like the interviewer sit and watch this guy talk absolute nonsense and scratch their chins and say 'he's got a point'.

So what happens when a guard trained to spot a nervous man through his behaviour looks at a totally hot chick in the line a little longer than he's supposed to...missing an obvious hint dropped by someone who he should've been watching? What happens when a so called terrorist showing no signs of anxiety walks right onto a plane with chemicals sewn into his underwear that he could've mixed and used sitting in the airplane toilet? What happens when he succeeds and the whole plane goes down in the middle of an ocean never to be seen again...apart from a single passport floating unharmed on the surface of the crash area...which says Syrians are the new Iraqis? What happens? Do we blame the airport security head for his dickheaded move? Do we blame the guard for missing an obvious sign because he was watching some broad’s tits? Do we blame the terrorist? Do we blame the organisation he belonged to?

Nope. The answer is secret option 'moron'. We blame Syria. Yea. Not the country. The PERSON. Because they're backward and uneducated and instead of sharing power and wealth with these lesser fortunate souls...some people would believe its a better move to just invade and occupy. Y'know...like the British with the Indians years ago. Only today they can’t do that at all right? They have the whole problem of news channels around the world belonging to each country reporting constantly on the REAL truth about the matter and that’s becoming a REAL difficult issue to control.

Or is it?

Tumbling To The Ground

2009-11-09T10:55:00.000-08:00

Chapter 24.

For Something Thicker

Iqbal day. Seems unfair I can't get beer on a holiday commemorating a man whose poetry leads you to believe he was probably one of the biggest drinkers this nation has ever seen. Advantage though...the electricity didn't go today. Disadvantage? I wasn't prepared for this random act of kindness from those thieving bastards that run the electric supply company. I still switched off my PC and took my nap (yes, like the one your grandfather takes because his love problems are bigger than mine, i.e: he actually GOT to marry the woman of HIS dreams) and wasted those precious hours of the day when I could be sitting here typing away at some useless theory or the other, helping no one and fuelling my insanity simultaneously.

Yes. I claim I'm insane. And yes, it makes me think I'm cooler than you. How'd you guess?

So many MOVEMENTS all of a sudden. And not just the high society hippie SHAMS going on in THIS country, but all around the world. The other day a gay comedian managed to get a crowd of 3000 people to focus on a much larger picture concerning the mannerisms and methods the catholic church used to enforce its teachings in the past and the diabolical yet primitive way in which it intends to choose and empower its clerics in the near future. His main objective, of course, apart from holding present priests responsible for atrocities committed 600 years ago, was to force the church to make it alright to be gay no matter how ICKY (religious terminology) devout Catholics might find that kind of behaviour to be.

Meanwhile...the most powerful woman in Pakistan...Atiqa Ohdo...continued to flood my facebook inbox with pro Pakistani tripe that concerns a very small percentage of the nation seeing as most of them are having a problem with those OTHER things, you know, FOOD, WATER and ELECTRICITY.

So you wanna fight bullets with words. You wanna fight bombs with blogs.

Some dude called Saad Khan drowned during a badly conceived game show. Like Fear Factor meets The Running Man. There are no losers. Only winners and dead people. I was genuinely surprised that wasn't the USP (Unique Selling Point. I have a friend. He went to college.) of the show to begin with, and that the death was actually an accident. Being a paranoid man though, I couldn't help thinking this was an elaborate way to give the masses of this shit hole the believable illusion that multinationals aren't completely taking over this country with each passing minute. Or maybe it was just a huge step taken to improve the quality and standards of game shows for television locally. A win win really. Except for the guinea pig who left behind a wife and three kids.

Then I thinks to myself I thinks...isn't it about time we brought the world together using the one trait human beings haven't managed to shake over the past 20 thousand years? Yes, that's right. Blood lust you cretins. Whens the last time you switched between channels showing the aftermath of a bomb blast in Peshawar and a peaceful artistic exhibition opening night at some lame gallery and actually spent more time watching the latter? You wouldn't pull the trigger to execute a murderer but you'd sure as hell watch it if someone else did, admit it.

Ahh all those women I could've impressed with my newly acquired ZIPPO TRICK skills at the protest we were gonna hold for Saad Khan at the Park Towers roundabout...about seven fucking months ago. Bring your own DIYAS children. You'll need the light. Movements in this country have darker agendas than the sad events surrounding them.

So! Bringing the world together using blood lust. I imagine...soon as Punylever or Prostate and Gamble or conglomerates like it get enough power to control these kinds of things...I dream of a world where we won't be fighting each other anymore because we'll be too busy watching carefully selected groups of individuals worldwide fighting each OTHER. In huge arenas.

Where the head of the loser gets lobbed off and sold to the highest bidder. And the women will swoon after him saying things like "Did you know? He's a COLLECTOR." It's gonna be pure ratings MAGIC.

Poor Peshawaris. They live in buildings so dilapidated, one explosion sends seven of them tumbling to the ground, and we have the nerve to focus on the actual BLAST as the main problem plaguing this country and it's people...not the illiterate thugs LEADING them...

Atleast make it HARD for the terrorists I say. Give them something to fuckin' WORRY about perhaps? I was stopped about half an hour ago by rangers on the road because my busted headlight seemed suspicious. I asked him if they'd gotten reports of a busted headlight car that needs to be checked. He said "Nah man...we just randomly wave down vehicles we feel like waving down in the mere hopes that we might find something in them." This is the plan of action provided to these Rangers by one of the most feared intelligence agencies in the world. But I'm starting to believe the ISI is more LOATHED than FEARED. Our guys probably just stop answering the phone when shit gets real like most Pakistanis do. I won't lie. I avoid the hell out of people when I'm too bothered with my own shit...but then I wouldn't put myself in charge of running a damn country either. But if that LAX kinda behaviour doesn't put the terror in the hearts of men driving a lorry carrying one hundred and fifty kilos of plastic explosives into the Marriot, I'm stumped as to what might.

Who even knows what the damn war is about anymore. We're too busy fighting it. On the front. In our own homes. Most of us just in our minds. There was a time when blood was worthless once it was spilt for something thicker. Now it seems that was just an excuse. Wasn't even the plan.

Who else demands we be told what the damn plan is?

Anyone?

No matter how horrific. It couldn't be worse than rationalising millions of deaths daily by applying whatever twisted logic was born in your mind off that limited amount of knowledge you possibly might have about the history of the world. Or you could stay busy watching how the tip of the iceberg IS getting just a little cleaner every year. Sure MORE women were raped this year than any preceding it...but isn't that just because there're more women ON Earth this year than the last?

Your popularised notions of right and wrong make me wish I had a stomach better at holding in all that vomit that comes out as a result of hearing them. Nothing is getting better. And your ability to turn around and look at the things you WANT to see is to blame. But I expect little else from a species that gets addicted to soft drinks and fancy shoes by the age of 6.

Death trickles down the ladder of power, kids. Watching a president make a call to kill soldiers while killing rebels while aggravating their surviving peers into killing innocents is like killing a matchstick to kill a cigarette to kill yourself.

Give yourself cancer if you have to...but then try not to get married and have children that gotta see your balding chemotherapied ass struggle to stay alive every damn day.

You'd think there was at least something CLOSE to a solution for removing cancerous bigots in the worlds highest positions of power in here. I'm afraid I'm still working on it. I promise it'll involve guns and explosives. I tried to use harsh words against a tank once...you can't hear them over the shells.

But as far as solutions go...if I thought celebrating life brought about anything but more inevitable death...I'd advise you to stop reading and YouTube that little Chinese girl that raises her hand and says "What...EVAAAA" in such an adorable way it makes you kinda forget how sad it is that a wonderful mind like hers is soon going to be ruined by the next Lindsay Lohan album.

Is That A Kaafir?

2009-08-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

Chapter 23.

The Entire Concept

Ahh Ramadan. The holy month of fasting. The one time of the year when an artist is probably struggling LESS than you are. Finally, a reason other than my horrible skills with women to blame for the lack of sex for some 30 odd days. Sure, sometimes we forget why we're told to fast in this month. It's become more of a tradition than a religious thing. I guess there has to be SOME time of the year when I should be able to buy pakodas off a stand somewhere in the middle of...well...anywhere. This is what life should be like forever. Hot oily foods prepared without following any sanitation code whatsoever...shorter work hours...people that're frustrated, hot and thirsty but too hungry and tired to fight you back when you kick them in the ass and run away. Even that one guy at every office who was never taught the beauty of the 'PERSONAL SPACE', and talks right up close to your face like he's inspecting your forehead for alien life forms keeps his distance because he knows his mouth probably smells like a cat shat in there...ate it's own shit...digested it...shat again...and then died...two days ago. Oh, fasting, is there any problem you can't solve?

Why do we wait for some MOON sighting to bring our society to this near utopia?

Oh right...because ordinarily we'd rather be greedy, slimey WANTITALLS...and 30 days of moderation is probably all human beings today can even bear. The month is supposed to teach us patience, apparently for everyone and everything except people who don't fast. Why make the fasting essential only this time of year? I say we rewrite the consitution. But then again so does everyone else, since your constitution is now primarily made up of stuff written by landlords who hired lawyers because they knew how to use a pen. But what about a year long Ramadan-esque struggle? Isn't one of the best examples of a happy society another wonderful event exclusive only to the days of this month? Yes...I mean housewives that DON'T complain every waking moment of the day because they finally get a break from their husbands jumping them each night after promises of doing chores the next day they intend to break.

"YES!! DROP THEM TO SCHOOL IN THE MORNING FOR ME BABY!! DROP THEM!!!"

Sometimes I wonder if I made a 24 hour channel airing various shots of good looking men walking into VERY messy houses and cleaning them with mops and sponges and soap while soft music plays...how long would it be EXACTLY before housewives realise they're watching what they consider porn.

So I saw a link recently. Apparently, people in Saudi Arabia are shifting to a new form of liberal marriage called MASYAT or something. It allows men and women to live in seperate households and managing to remain GHAIR (unrelated) mard or aurat to each other, yet they can reap the main benefit for which most Saudis consider marriage in the first place instead of continuing their homosexual hand holding exploits outside mosques. That's right. These men and women get to have sex with each other and outside of wedlock now...it's the law.

Ahan...so the place that STARTED God is abandoning Him too. We should all sing and dance while we can...because hell will be burning with not so human souls and the only thing our worldly instruments will be good for is kindling the fire.

What I love is how some people make a big deal about this, and some don't...but nearly everyone is quick to forget when little events like this take place. The world changed that day. For a liberal man like myself...I'm actually happy for the people of Saudi being given this freedom. But what I'm saddened for...is the religion so many people died to promote, preach, practice and spread throughout the centuries. I mean...if we were gonna dick around with the entire concept by getting some senior scholar to sell his belief when he was convinced the time is right...why even BOTHER maintaining the integrity of the Book? Sure the verses stayed the same for a thousand years...big fucking whoop. If I can change the meaning or the interpretation of the verse at the drop of a dime, or whenever I see it'll benefit my position of authority among a nation full of repressed and sun baked loons pretending to protect the heritage of something...how long before we DO have a new version of the book? Even if we don't...how can we keep telling other religions off for changing their scriptures when infact our adherence to our own is so damn shoddy? Damn it, now NO ONE'S gonna take Muslims seriously. Atleast when they thought we're all terrorists we instilled some serious FEAR in their hearts. Now what? We're finding LOOPHOLES around the 'no sex before marriage' clause?! Is there even a fucking POINT to sinning anymore?

We fast because people DIED of hunger in a hot dry desert trying to preserve a new way of life. Probably the SHITTIEST fucking way to go next to being set on fire (God bless victims of witch hunts). They survived on dates and half a glass of water a day. Today...we party the HELL out of iftari time don't we? We're literally tossing half eaten samosas out the window. We got so much food around. No sense of desperation or hopelessness. We're taking showers...sitting in air conditioned offices...

Here's how I see it. The same book they completely disregarded when they introduced this new Saudi law, kinda tells us this is going to happen. Everyone is gonna be Muslim, but very few will even know what that means, yada yada. Flipping through...your truth sayers will be considered evil and the people you consider pious and honest will be just the opposite...yada...no one will be following the true word yada yada....

SO! Seems logical to say we're all part of a prophecy. Doesn't that mean we kind of NEED people to keep getting more and more immoral? Say I strap a bomb to my chest and hold 18 people hostage and force them to find God. That's wrong. So I blow myself up in the name of religion to destroy a group of people my own God told me will be infecting the planet like INSECTS apparently (though I think that's quite a racist comment...bugs are just tryin' ta get by, yknow?)...in an attempt to force or scare these same people back to something they can never be because God's the one saying EVERYONE will eventually be LIKE them. But doesn't that mean I'm literally singlehandedly (I say literally because that single hand you use to press the button on a vest bomb is usually the only thing that survives the blast) going against prophecies written in the same book I'm trying to promote? Do I go to heaven? Do I go to hell? Call 'em whatever you want...heathens...infidels...non believers...kaafirs...liberals...hippies...drummers...MIMES...*shudder*...if they're a part of the book's prophecies...killing them is kind of challenging God's word on their existence in the first place isn't it? How do terrorists seem to miss this one MAJOR flaw in their plan?

Oh, right...because terrorists are the simplest and most effective way to destroy the notion of a religion which scared other authorities so much that in order to get it accepted again and to protect it's so called future...Saudis are now allowed to fuck anyone they want.

So...I guess the terrorists DID win...they're fighting for a people who are so shit scared of 'em THEMSELVES, they're changing the damn rules and the prophecy finds its way to coming true yet again. What a genius, this God guy. I'm like the HUGEST fan of His work. Believe it.

But our historical differences will always remain unfaltered...no matter how hard we try. Just when brown people wanna impress white people by passing liberal laws in the birthplace of their sometimes quite STRICT religion...a French prime minister almost passes a law making it illegal for women to wear a headscarf. That's right...a country that says we give our people all the liberties they might want, from making out in the streets to avoiding world wars to not shaving their legs...is taking away a woman's FREEDOM to wear a headscarf if she wants to. We're NOT going to get along...EVER...but at least I'm not delusional about it. Yes...I'm not a religious man...and yes...most European countries are considered forward and open minded...but I have no doubts that in actual fact it's ok to call them perverse godless mongrels since they wouldn't give a shit anyway. It's just a damn crusade. Live your life the best you can. And stop believing every source you're so dependant on will you?

I don't know...maybe it IS ok to believe in men more than one believes in God like most people today. We should all pick one type of human to worship instead.

If we get to do that I know who I'm picking. That guy I like to call, "The Thread Killer". We've all seen this person. He's the one who makes a comment on any on going discussion thread anywhere in the world, which is so LAME that no one ever speaks on that thread again. The reasons can range from being off topic, to making a selfish remark, to insulting or offending another person, to even just having a face that no one wants to respond to. No matter what the reason, one thing is for certain. It's almost ALWAYS a socially unacceptable one. And THAT'S why I believe in that guy. Anyone who takes a bullet to remind us how far too far really IS...is alright in my book. He just prepares us for a time when entire laws will be passed making it okay to say that shit to begin with. He's secular...focuses on the greater good in the world and perhaps it's future instead of the hereafter, which is why he states whatever is on his mind...and loves people above anything else which is why he's so quick to diss them on their immoral behaviour. He's a forward thinker.

Or is that a kaafir?

Which is like saying I'm a lesbian because I'm sexually attracted to women, not into sex with guys and have breasts.

Ramadan Mubarak everybody.

Things That Are Wrong

2009-08-04T04:42:00.000-07:00

Chapter 22.

Changes In Tune

Dreams.

Dreams are God's way of telling us to wake up.

I've realised way too many people make statements ending with the words "you know?", you know? And often enough, you really don't.

"So since my uncle grabbed my ass when I was twelve, I obviously understood how to stop relying on family for personal issues since they were where those issues were originating from in the first place, you know?"

Uhhh...no. I don't know. You see I...quite enjoyed my uncle grabbing my ass, you weirdo.

Some people will say anything to get noticed. Others are nice enough to restrict it to their blogs. People lie to make their lives sound more interesting than they really are, and somehow we've become ok with that over the years.

How do we seriously swallow (and not the GOOD kind of swallowing) some of the absolute tripe our own friends tell us when we weren't even there to see it happen? Trust? Like you trust the news?

We need to start looking at things that are wrong with ourselves. And I mean REALLY look. Just...borderline self LOATHING, but not quite. See in my opinion, it can actually be a very healthy thing to know full well what your flaws are. One advantage definitely being beating others to the punch when they're about to point one of them out. Don't give them the satisfaction I say. They get enough of that from going to expensive coffee shops with their laptops pretending to relax while struggling with the (Insert current favourite American TV series here) catch phrase of the day to remind themselves why they hang out with each other in the first place.

They belong to a group.

I'm the guy who really doesn't quote fictional characters from "How I Met Your Mother." I have few friends because of it.

Yes, we live in a world where even FICTION can be used badly in the wrong hands. For instance, love. Directly proportional in amount to the number of things you buy your loved one on dates that apparently matter, i.e: birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's Day etc. Love is a fictitious luxury that only the rich can afford but only the poor know the value of. And if you don't believe in all of it, you're an outcast (also known as an asshole). Maybe you'd be a visionary if it was 2000 years ago. But times change, and eventually, the machine wins.

Personally? I don't understand how you don't find it absolutely refreshing to run into someone who has a completely conflicting opinion on things to your own. Makes me one step closer to realising how small a chance there is of another ME hanging around somewhere in this world.

Which is only something I fear to encounter because running into another Faraz Lodhi - the two of us being totally full of ourselves - I wouldn't know:

A.) Who to agree with more than the other.
B.) If all those years of theatre really DID turn me into a flaming homosexual because my first instinct would be to make out with myself. You sexy beast, you.

Though I seriously doubt EITHER of us would call the next day. Because there are some things you just KNOW.

Like those few channel numbers you remember on your tv set because your cable operator keeps changing frequencies so often you don't bother setting them to preference. You just commit those few channels you know don't totally suck ass to memory and keep punching the numbers on the remote to move between them.I agree that TV is better than real life. Atleast you get to change the channel every now and again. But the closest real life gets to television is when you're on one of your favourite channels and some totally LAME movie is playing, so you think "Let my try 18 next, I'm sure there'll be something good on it". Only to realise you were already ON channel 18, you know...the one playing the piece of CRAP flick you have to sit through before things get any better or worse. Much like life.

Yes, friends, learn when it's ok to distant yourself from the shitty things around you to be able to breathe for a second and know how horrible a person you really are. How are you going to learn anything if the only people you talk to are your friends and lovers? They're just sorry souls who feel lucky to have YOU around. Everything's different when viewed or heard from a distance. The perception changes, just like when a car loudly blaring a Bombay Vikings song changes in tune when it gets far enough. The song remains the same, but somehow the note it's being played in goes lower or higher, does it not? I imagine it's because only SOME of the vibrations made by the stereo are actually reaching you now. Unfortunately, the car has to be WAY far before the song begins to sound at all bearable. And how is a story any different?

I'm sick of people. They're overrated. Here's why I say I'm ahead of my time. Because I live the way your descendants will. Alone. Indoors. Paranoid. They way God intended. Completely dependent on man made items so that soon we won't even need to leave the apartment anymore. There will be a few spots left on the globe they'll turn into tourist attractions where only the filthy rich can visit on weekends. The rest of it will we war torn, burnt, uninhabitable or too dangerous to hang around as they'll have you believe through the information getting pumped into your homes via devices that would make an iTouch look like a 3rd grader's attempt at a science project.

Because by then, a 3rd grader will most likely be able to create an iTouch anyway.

It's becoming so easy to control human life. What it believes to be truth. What it considers fun. What it considers entertainment. What's allowed, and what isn't.

What was the point again? Ah yes. Self hatred. Get on board. Whatever you're doing with your life...it's not good enough. It's affecting nothing but your own self interest. Listening to WE ARE THE WORLD is a hypocritical act if you don't take the time out to help a stranger in your day. You're told to fear your neighbour because if you start helping each other, there goes another security guard company led by some corrupt ex military asshole to loss of clientele.

And you don't really think they'll let it happen...or that you have any control over their decision in that matter, do you?

We can all be better people than we are. We just have to stand for something. I know it's damn tempting to come on tv and sit on a couch across from some chick whose main claim to fame is being married to the bassist from Junoon, and say you don't care what people think, if you don't like someone, you're totally vocal about it right in their face. But try to remember the last time you told someone you didn't want to be around them anymore when it WASN'T affecting your pathetic financial situation. It's easy to tell a guy who chews pan and speaks like a mela that you hate his guts when he isn't offering you a gig in a Telenor ad worth 3 lakhs.

What's difficult is what I do. Have a spine and stick to your morals despite the outcome.

We work for criminals. All of us. If not directly, I'm positive the guy YOU work for, TOTALLY works for one. But as long as they keep wearing their white shirts and black ties and secure their bad habits behind locked doors, its ok. I guess if you don't find out about it, it never really happened.

It takes one explosion, 13 killed and a confession beaten out of a man belonging to some so called terrorist group to warp your entire reality. I can't believe I live on the same planet as such a weak and ignorant species. Even animals know more than we do. We've never seen how they behave when we don't have a camera shoved in their face.

In fact the same goes for men.

I wish I was strong enough to keep things inside though. That takes serious strength. Pretending to be role models for people we THINK are living their daily lives based on the actions of their heroes. It does nothing but soften these already pudding headed bastards lining the streets of this city like maggots on a corpse.

Reality. It's the key to healthy living. And not the kind of reality that's followed by the word TV to make for some of the most watched programming in the world today. Let me tell you something (like that's not what I've been doing so far), true reality doesn't MAKE it to television. A human being's behaviour immediately changes when they know more than the 3 people in the room at the time are going to be seeing it. Everyone's a fucking star today. Was a time once when it required skill, artistry, a command over certain entertaining traits and something downright SPECIAL to be one.

Now it requires a lack of shame and morality...and the ability to do ANYTHING for a piece of printed paper with some dude's face on it whose name you can't even remember.

Your vices are the FIRST thing a stranger should know about you.

Your so called virtues, the last. If he or she should happen to be forgiving enough to still wanna find out more about you once they learn you're a man who prefers to be drunk by 12:30 in the afternoon because you like to get it out of the way.

You know?

Because Jackson Dies

2009-06-25T18:32:00.000-07:00

Chapter 21.

What The News Is

Michael Jackson's dying. Enough people gather outside that hospital they're showing on tv, he really will. I was watching when there were four people outside that hospital. News travels fast. Over 400 people now. Death is pop news.

Michael Jackson's leaving us. A huge pop star of the eighties and the nineties.

Something evil is happening in Iran.

I like to think he's just leaving us. Like Tupac.

Internet services in various spots on the globe crash, disabling interaction in key places around the world. Must be high bandwith causing an overload. That's what they're saying. Must be true.

Why shouldn't there be high bandwith? Michael Jackson's dying.

No pictures from the prime of the pop star. Just videos. Pictures, he's all white and weird. He looks like a mad man who has his own island. It was time to leave. Gave great music...but something evil is happening in Iran.

Confirmed now. He's dead.

Keep watching very very carefully. No bodies. You won't see him. Not clearly. Not like Benazir Bhutto.

Ahan...

THAT could've been a sniper bullet even if she really IS dead. No autopsy. No way knowing.

Where can I get some news on Iran? Yes, news channels, you CAN break away to something else now. WORLD FOCUS?!

God bless the poor bastard...but I'm surprised the sunlight didn't kill him a decade ago. Man was BEGGING to be a story. But this...

They were ready to lose him. Got back most the money he took from their hands too...just sued him. Using his image as a mop to wipe up the blood from his career after they shot him with accusations. Dirty stinking Muslim convert.

I'm sorry the world cares about this more than anything else on Earth right now. Says great things about the man...but then again, he's only dead cuz' they needed a distraction.

6 hours of uninterrupted world focus on someone they used to love. They'll extend the life expectancy of this story by digging up new dirt on him. They'll piss on him and destroy him. A piece of my childhood. I remember. First pair of shoes I ever owned had his name written under them. Thought I could dance like him.

Turns out...no one could.

One good thing. Next few days we're gonna start re living his work. Such great songs. We'll get back to the horrible things happening in the world on Tuesday.

Power outages in the city. Some airheaded lovernotfighters believe even God cries because Jackson dies. A smart man knows they control the weather. Just an easy way to excuse themselves for not providing the power to communicate with our own neighbour.

Wonder if they'll hit his new faith some how. Taliban radicals didn't want a convicted pedophile and crotch grabbing stage whore to ruin the image of their God. Killed him. Kill them.

Should've seen it coming. World issues raising tensions. Need a straight six hour blackout from everything going on in the world. Should be enough time to get in and execute deadly changes. Changes that prevent real change from taking place. World will be the same tomorrow...thanks to the window of ignorance created round the world.

Five hours after announcing his heart failure, they're still on trying to find Michael Jackson's cause of death. Doesn't make sense. That's the seventeenth time someone's told the one paragraph story of his rush to the hospital. Why don't they switch to something else till they learn some new fact? He passed out, reached the hospital, announced dead.

Bah. They tell us what the news is. You don't decide. THEY do. Now watch till it makes you sick with wonder what the hell else is going on. Watch HEADLINES!! A bunch of idiots go on about how good he was!! Family members. Friends. Fans. Like they'll ever know the bond I had with him as a child wearing nothing but shades and dancing to BAD.

Didn't need Michael Jackson anymore. That Barack Obama's dancing all their slave dances now. He's a real hit at those correspondence dinners for the press. Real, FUNNY guy. Wonder who Chappelle's writing for these days.

They don't need the services of one of the greatest voices in the history of entertainment. Now he's just a monkey fucker.

Remember him for his great music. He didn't fuck kids in the ass. But move on and focus now.

They killed the poor bastard and told you it wasn't them.

I'm praying for him.

And the blind sheep that follow his death and make it the biggest thing at the breakfast table in an hour.

Rest in peace, titan. Welcome home.

Bloody Flags and Fake Promises

2009-06-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

Chapter 20.

To Fulfill Prophecies

Wanna hear something funny? Tough. So do I, but it seems everytime I turn on the television or go online, someone's figured out something new before I had a chance to dream it up and predict it was going to happen anyway. Usually I just go into a mad paranoid state of mind and watch the news, especially the little scroller thingies most people tend to ignore at the bottom of the screen. That's where all the juice is.

So here's what's happening. The ruler of the most powerful nation on Earth (or atleast they kept telling you in their movies since the 40's till you actually ended up believing it) has changed the colour of his skin but his kin remains the same. You may call it the best way to shut their entire public up for atleast another four years, but I call making a black man president an even more backward step than most ignorant white people care to draw attention to. Isn't it a very crude form of reverse racism when you call it progress just because a BLACK man runs the country now instead of perhaps an ABLE one?

These next four years are going to see the worst off record wars being fought between nations we've ever had the chance to NOT know about. None of the hands ruling this planet are going to let the world forget another 50 years from now what happened the last time they let a Democrat win the US election. Either that, or they'll just change whatever it was that a democratic party stood for in terms of values over the past 30 years. I suppose people have to find some sort of solace in the fact that they chose their president through a systematic fair voting system, forgetting that the final two contenders were chosen BY corrupt hands in the first place.

I've never seen a campaign spent on the way this lavish Obama Drama was treated. Just another reason to get out of the house and hold hands, convincing yourself you're contributing to history. Did anyone really think he wasn't going to be sitting in that chair today? They grilled him for his first hundred days. Can't remember if they treated Bush the same way, but expecting the ROOKIE to make visible "YES WE CAN" changes to the disaster his predecessors left behind in a mere 3 and a half months is asking a bit much even for the Americans. Guess the best they want to remember from this so called change is the day thousands of them stood in the same spot to see history being made. Almost like you truly believe your entire history isn't being shaped even now in a small room by a man with a pen, a vivid imagination and a lot of ideas involving the deaths of millions of people he'll never have to run into personally.

If great people have always come along and evidently CHANGED history...why does it keep repeating itself?

Jay Leno cracked a joke on his show recently. Forgetting what it was now, I remember focusing on the crowd's reaction at the time. They stifled their laughter. The joke was on ex president Bush, and it turns out they don't feel like laughing at him anymore. Atrocities committed by the States globally under his reign are yesterday's news. Let's poke fun at the Afro. He's the one who has to take the blame for the blindness of his people for the next four years. Sometimes I think that's the only reason democratic nations even exist anymore. The public likes choosing one person to be the face of all their actions and opinions as a people. That way, even if the whole world hates you, you know it's because of the guy in the chair, and eventually he'll move off as well.

And now, Pakistan. Proud owner of a regular slot on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I guess the most intelligent way to let a Jewish man use the media to decide what global issues are truly important WOULD be to have that man be a self confessed agnostic. Too bad all the pundits disappear conveniently for Thanksgiving when Israel starts bombing Palestine. But THIS must be the big story. Out of control radicals may have access to nuclear missiles in PK. Suddenly nothing bad seems to be happening anywhere but here. I realise this as a woman dressed in a suit on CNN keeps a very lighthearted tone in her voice as she's taught to during pieces on hope and inspiration and things like a 6 year old girl showing signs of becoming the next Da Vinci with her watercolour set. Only this time she uses the same voice to tell us about two men in Greece (another European country where apparently bad things haven't happened since Caesar) who escaped a maximum security penetentiary for the second time like those bald dudes from PRISON BREAK. I guess it's heartwarming when a couple of Europeans challenge authority and break the system, even if they ARE convicted felons.

Guess it isn't ok when a terrorist-skinned group of Pakistanis deny accusations that they're in cahoots with Al Qaeda. It's a damn life sentence.

We're being asked, very steadily, to start putting all our faith in science now. Smarter countries do it subtly. A crop circle here, an unexplained broken wind turbine there. Again...AAJ TV in Pakistan tries to do the same thing and they instantly lose their credibility as a news channel forever in our eyes. They report a 4 inch tall alien life form that was pelted to death by 6 year old Punjabi hands. An autopsy WAS going to be performed on this marvel discovery, but conveniently, the bomb blast in Lahore seemed to take away every single surgeon's attention away from proof of alien life. Had AAJ not completely made that crap up, a single slice from a scalpel would tell us that the 4 inch item on the screen was a rubber doll someone had set on fire.

Sadly...when that UFO DOES appear, you'll all fall for it easier than I fall for gorgeous women who can sing.

It's the way of the future, people. Now we have the fossil of a monkey man with a huge tail finally proving that we did infact descend from simians. Guess we were ready for it. If only Darwin was alive to see the same fossil people he never believed existed actually placed in some shoddy place within Germany to begin with. Now it should start becoming a little easier to come to grips with the new belief system. Where man becomes the new God. Just far enough to reach the point where he's ABOUT to create matter from non matter, and then the Big Guy pulls the plug. It's probably smarter to have only one God around anyway. Less confusion that way. Fewer options to fight for power.

I once walked into a bank to cash a cheque. Yes, really, just once. Where standing in line, a backward thinking Maulvi type dude had the audacity to tell me it's buggered to be wearing shorts. I would immediately have gone into a conversation about how these are known as '3 quarters' to anyone not ignorant enough to have a bank account in a place that offers interest, but I realised his intention was not to set me straight, but to either pass the time till his turn came up the only way he knew how...OR...to use me as a vector to go off onto some little temporary recruitment run where the rules state that if you manage to gather enough people into a circle of useless apes just listening to you rant about what you believe is right or wrong, you win. I told him politely that he wasn't winning any wars in this life or gaining a nice spot in the next one by saying what he was saying. I told him perhaps it's an alien concept to some, but many people in this world prefer to be considered spiritually closer to whats inside their hearts and souls instead of the length of their beards and the strength of their over excessively used non alcoholic fragrances.

Fighting ignorance with ignorance, I rudely told him that one of the signs of the Day of Judgement as foretold by his own religious scriptures, is that men will openly lay with other men, and the dreaded first step is staring at a man's legs, so he should fucking quit it. Since really, there's so many better things to be doing in line at a bank.

Like finding a woman behind some desk and staring at HER legs.

It's not ok. It's not ok and it sure as hell isn't fair that a man who prays so religiously and damn near VIOLENTLY that his head has a spot of dead fuckin' skin in the center, gets to tell me I'm doing things wrong when I'm the one who bows my head down in respect of women and he keeps on staring at some chick in sleeveless clothes (which is an EVENT to some of these cretins) because he knows he can catch the Maghrib shuttle to God's bosom later that evening, and everything will be ok again.

It's not fair that these corrupt bastards have given themselves a convenient way out of all the mess they get themselves into by praying one damn holy night in the year and immediately starting the rape and pillaging of entire nations and communities and people the next day, as long as they make sure they speak God's name right before the bullet hits em'. They hide behind long beards and white clothes like a fat man wears a black shirt to make sure no one notices his armpit stains, only to have em' dry off hours later and leave that wierd white saltish looking shit behind. The kind you take a look at, and suddenly feel saliva gushing into your mouth like someone opened a damn faucet in your throat before you're about to vomit.

Funny how some of these people are so backward, they're closer to being naked than the ones wearing 3 quarters to beat the heat. Its where one of our oh so many problems lie. As Pakistanis, no one has a damn thing to do in this country anymore except pick at other people. Everyone in this country is out to save souls. None of them starting with their own. Well, these would be God lovers aren't going to take me down to hell WITH them. They're better off spending time BELIEVING in him instead of BECOMING him if you ask me.

Aah swine flu. Was there ever a more opportune time to create an epidemic that fully supports Muslim philosophy in order to get more mileage out of the fear created by it? It's like the biohazardous equivalent of rumours that Neil Armstrong heard the sound of Islamic prayers when he landed on the moon. Oh, fuck off. My God these people get so orgasmic thinking about the Creator, a few well placed words and it's easier than ANYTHING to control them.

Lying's become so easy now. We have more than a million displaced people from a made up war that's killed fewer soldiers on both sides than civilians caught in the middle. Problem is that more people outside the borders care about these refugees than you or I do. Sure we talk about how these fanatics are making this country a hell hole, sure we post out opinions about the lack of basic human rights in this country up on a useless blog that no one reads, but everytime we look at them and say this is what we're headed towards if we for instance move to Shariah law, we take a step backwards ourselves. Too scared of letting go of all our modern luxuries. Apparently, as the song would suggest...I want my fucking MTV.

A man who could've switched places with another one atleast 5 times by now, claims to be the leader of these Islamic radicals. Baitullah Mehsud. Sounds like something a talentless J R R Tolkien fan coughed up. Security demands that he never show his face on camera, which makes him even harder to find than that Bin Laden guy we're forgetting about since his reign of terror was harsher during another era. Current events worldwide are like a badly written tv series...the season changes...and they remove old characters to make room for new ones. The good guys change and so do the bad guys. But the viewers stay just as loyal as they ever have been, long as the special effects in the next season promise to go UP a notch.

Masses destroy this planet. Not the corrupt people leading them. It's sad but true. Masses have the ability to overthrow their leaders and change the face of the Earth in a fucking week. The unfortunate thing?

They need to come together as brothers and sisters. And that ain't happenin' because as soon as somebody up top sees their people being hospitable to another race, they'll start a psychological war by bombing an embassy somewhere using a terrorist of the same skin tone. Partially also because SISTER in most underdeveloped parts of this country is just a six letter word. The meaning of which is highly debated by men who live in villages and just aren't attracted to their pets anymore.

It's all around us. But instead of shrugging it off when we see a beautiful piece on some Mexican family's struggle, we actually get suckered into focusing on how Mexican people are really nice, instead of focusing on why they're suddenly being shown the kind of tolerance no one cared to show em' 2 decades ago. It's just not their time to be under the heel anymore. It's us for a while. And NO one seems to care.

Artists should probably lead the world. But they'll never fight for power, and people only come together under bloody flags and fake promises. Hence current ruling powers around the globe. They use people's own aggression against them. Agression caused by the same rulers that create financial crises, famine, war, disease, and crime with the push of a button or the signing of a paper. Everytime the world shows signs of coming together and working with or for one another, the guys on top smash everything to bits using techniques now probably over 20 thousand years old. Empires have always gained strength through the desperation of the people belonging to them, and there's no reason it should ever change. We're just smaller criminals led by bigger ones. Each time we take the crap we see on tv at face value without delving into it's meaning more seriously keeping past centuries or coming ones in mind, we pound one more nail into the coffin we're burying this planet in.

We're overdue on another world war too. They'll tell you made up facts for so long that by the time the first nuke is launched, you'll believe it was YOUR decision to have launched it. They don't need to justify their actions when their puppets will do it FOR them. In my opinion, it's easier to fulfill prophecies that HAVE been written down in holy books...that way the people who believe in these things (making up most of the world's population) will be MORE than ready to accept even the most horrible of things happening. Whereas in a progressive civilised society some things should never be allowed to happen, the one WE live in will resort to the age old "Allah Maalik Hai" theorem as a means to comfort themselves long enough to just ignore everything.

Faith. It kills man's only reason to think rationally about the problems in the world around him.

For the past 2 years...the National Geographic and the Animal Planet seem to keep hinting that many species of animals like elephants and apes which have always been known to behave rather peacefully, suddenly seem to be going a little berserk. Now I'm not sure...but it seems to me the beginnings of trying to make man come to grips with yet another evil we intend to indulge ourselves in over the next 40 years...taking over their land. I'm supposed to be scared of elephants now because it'll make it easier for me to justify killing most of em' when this vile creature known as the human being fucks its way into a population explosion the likes we've never seen. I'll take a shot. "The Wildlife Rehabilitation Act"?

If you're an animal rights activists today, be warned. You keep showing love for these fuckers much longer, you're treacherous terrorists tomorrow.

Better start asking yourself this question. When's the last time you saw a bit of news on the television which DIDN'T make you think, "Ah, I KNEW this was going to happen."

Wanna know why you knew? Because the men and women controlling the history of the world don't need to try so hard any more. Hollywood has made most things easy to believe now. So if you hear about a comet headed our way tomorrow, don't panic, it's just population control. I don't believe anything I see anymore. You'd best do the same.

As for me? I sit at home trying to make something of my own life, because I'm learning to be just as selfish as the rest of mankind. Baby steps. And even though OUTSIDE the home is probably the best place to start, I just don't think I'm mentally prepared to be the pacifist I've been all these years anymore. I find myself wanting to say things to that guy with the leg fetish at the bank that he's not ready to hear regarding his approach to his beliefs. I need some time to come to grips with the fact that before 2013, this world is going to see things that'll shock many, but surprise very few. Instead I guess I also find myself wishing I believed in statistics strongly enough to fill these writings with what people refer to as FACTS. I've always been an airheaded spiritual clown that way. You shouldn't even bother reading this...no one else is. Not apart from people in the research department at the headquarters of some super secret society whose job is to primarily read up on people's predictions and make sure global events unravel in a completely contrary way. I believe they exist. So strongly that I type whack shit most of the time in the mere hope they'll go the opposite route of what I say and accidentally create world peace.

Lodhi ONE. Illuminati ZERO.

Becoming Immortals

2009-02-08T06:50:00.000-08:00

Chapter 19.

The 29 People

What a ride it's been. You know, no matter how hard I try to be sad about things (depressed hungry artist - not a role that requires the LEAST dedication in the world), I keep gravitating towards creative COLLABORATIVE artistic endeavours involving so many wonderful people that it actually makes it hell easy to stop thinking about your own problems and start wondering about how good others have it.

They're not one and the same thoughts. They really aren't.

I think I'm the only person I know who's mastered the art of ignoring himself. It doesn't phase me as much as it does others seeing ME on tv. Just do something weird and wait for a camera to show up I say. And seeing as this here is a man who recently ingested cherry lip balm and once sprayed Hugo Boss into his throat to make his friends laugh while he secretly cried on the inside, I don't see why my friends are at all surprised that someone did a piece on me for local television.

Unless they're wondering how it's a report on something thats actually worth their while...and not something like eating a fingertip full of cocoa butter.

Which I ALSO did just recently.

And no, it doesn't actually TASTE of cocoa.

I was talking to a friend just a while ago. "We shoulda caught up some more man. It's a shame you're famous and have to travel around."

Famous? Yea man...it's a shame most of that travelling's done in a fucking TRAIN too.

Yes, Razzle Dazzle Em' folks...and they'll make you a star. But as soon as the lights go out and you hang up the pants, you find yourself, early the next evening, not being able to keep your balance in a loud rattling metal box on rails, bumping shoulders with a man called Altaf Hussain (and no not THAT Altaf Hussain. False prophets don't travel by train) while he harasses you to buy some dinner off him, claiming he's the absolute highest authority of the train's FOOD AND DINING DEPARTMENT.

Which, incidentally, two carts down, is just ANOTHER loud rattling metal box on rails. But this one has a stove. Gas operated. Smart.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Not that you'd know, but this was a bit from the train ride BACK from Lahore. Not TO Lahore (Yes, I travel in STYLE), and even THAT'S getting ahead of myself. Let's start here.

About a year ago, a production company led by a very headstrong woman decided to put up the broadway musical CHICAGO, for Karachi City. Using live mics and a kickass band, the show broke pretty much every production benchmark in this country's history, not only in terms of ticket sales and popular success, but in terms of the level of sound and lighting work that went into it's execution, a theatrical play had never been worked on to such an extent in Pakistan. This later resulted in wild acts of jealousy from traditional old men who wear diapers and touch themselves while reading urdu literature. I mean, I'm all FOR maintaining your national identity, but it's clear to me now that FANATICAL EXTREMISM is not an issue related solely to RELIGION.

I was a part of the production. Played one of the acting roles. A lawyer. A man who knows the legal system even better than he knows how to direct a jury's emotions to suit his case. Someone who makes 5 thousand dollars per client (which in the period shown, is a HELL of a lot), and guarantees a win for every case he takes on, as long as it's for a woman.

He's successful, doesn't doubt his skills in life and a real winner. This was going to be a tough role to play.

I went to my friend. A lawyer. Asked him if he could give me some insight on how to approach criminal law.

"First things first. Ya don't take a case you think you'll lose. Don't want that on your record. If there's even a chance you won't win...ya don't take it."

I can do this. I can be a complete dick. If only I can stop thinking about the fate of that hypothetical dude I just threw to the dogs to keep my own record clean. My friend catches me drifting into a very curious state about whether or not that fictitious character I just denied my services to is going to be ok.

He places his hand on my shoulder. "You have NO idea what I do for a living...do you?"

This was REALLY going to be something.

Every play I've ever done, I've tried to take something away from the character I play. Something good. Every play except this one I did in school where I played a TREE. Yes, not too many dimensions to explore there. I was a tree. That spoke, and for some reason everyone else in the play was totally ok with that. It wasn't the most REALISTIC of plays, I promise you. Atleast give me an awesome emotional DEATH scene at the hands of a lumberjack or something. I coulda SHONE that night, MAN! The point was that some school kids go back in time to the land of the dinosaurs, and the ones guiding them through their journey are these 4 talking trees who obviously started telling future generations of seedlings to start keeping their secrets to themselves since trees are just boring as shit nowadays. Seriously, try having a conversation with one of them today. They're always bitching and moaning about the time Farah and Amir carved a badly fashioned heart shape with their initials into their asses using a sharp knife despite the fact that the girl was sucking someone else's dick at the time. Nothing magical, yknow?

...

Anyway.

I feel I didn't do a good job as a lawyer. Sometimes, you just wanna be bland (otherwise known as classy) but then that fat kid with a comedian's disposition deep inside your heart pops out and all hell breaks loose. I was playing this character like a fuckin' schizo on acid. He was never relaxed, or very charming or debonair in any way. He was loud, obnoxious and weird. He would resort to slapstick comedy if it didn't mean falling on the floor in a 1200 dollar suit. I say HE because I really don't think it was me on that stage during the performances. But thanks to a seriously talented bunch of people around me, the show went on to be the biggest thing since talking trees.

Ah rehearsals. Someone recently called me a PROJECT WORKER. One that puts his full focus and attention on a single job and completes it before starting another. I feel I do this so as not to let any distractions taint my passion for the work at hand. But when I truly search my inner soul, I realise it's all for one much larger and more meaningful reason.

I'm lazy.

So obviously, rehearsals being the one thing I DO in a day became my complete routine. Wake up. Grab two beers. Become someone else for a few hours. Easy enough to do. I guess the pay doesn't suck either.

It's a funny thing though, this theatre business. I'm sure there was a time in the history of this country when people got into it just to entertain. But it's fast turning into a proper business. Thank God I'm not yet involved in that aspect of the work. It's hard work selling anything in this world anymore. Especially when it's not a lie. The original plan was to go straight to Lahore with the new run, but during a 4 day festival called The Rafi Peer Festival in the same city, someone with less than 5 friends on FaceBook looked back at his life and wanted to be remembered for a few hours, and decided to blow up a large firecracker in some parking lot, creating a slight scare within the city limits.

The last day of the festival went on regardless. And I hear the turnout was very good.

The man who blew up the firecracker now masturbates at home with other fanatics watching. These men are his four friends on FaceBook.

The show got delayed. And because of another KIND of political mess, the dates promised to my producer by our venue were taken away from us, since someone wanted to use the length of their career in theatre as a force to tip the scales in their favour and perform at the same venue instead of us.

Artistic politics. Error. Does not compute.

But true entertainers never back down from their responsibility to the people. So a plan was executed to create an open air performance stage with audiorium seating from scratch. While this happened...I sat on my seat...and scratched.

I wish this was all good news. But due to the open air venue, and a location partly used for wedding engagements of the worst kind (by which I mean mehndi's hosted by very very rich people), on two of the performance nights, there were mad distracting noises coming from the entire area. The only problem I really had was keeping in rhythm with the band for my songs while a KATAKAT maestro at the back showed exactly where the name of that most delicious dish comes from. Even THAT would've been okay if he would've taken a copy of the script and kept his cooking in time with the songs. But hearing that shit go on in the back made me an even worse and more confused dancer than I usually am, and that COULDN'T be good for future ticket sales. Incidentally, Lahoris call katakat, TAKA TAK, and everytime I asked anyone why, I lost another friend there.

Yes, sectarianism, folks. We beat down religious minorities for so many fucking years that when we became a depressingly predominant Muslim state, we finally ran out of things to bitch or have differences about within ourselves. Hence, TAKA TAK.

So, on that day with the barbecue wedding going on at the back, every single actor and actress went home smelling like Chicken Tikka (Now I feel thats how I like my women). I thought about how long it had been since I had one, as I picked up another cold hard french fry from a little red box with a huge yellow M on it, marinated in my tears, and chewed.

I wonder if they call it fast food for the speed at which they pay off health inspectors to shut them up about how shoddy the preparation of these food items must be. You know you're in trouble when you lift off the top bun of a McDonalds burger, and are now looking at something that looks pretty much the same going INTO you as it would coming out.

Mickey D's. God bless em' for being one of our main sponsors.

Now stop killing people with cholestorol.

Well we finished 9 days in Karachi. After a fun number of mishaps and broken voices, fevers, lost tempers due to other people's stupidity, etc. On the last night, much alcohol was consumed as a celebration. To most of the cast, it was actually MORE booze than they consumed on a daily basis.

Amateurs.

SO! A 3 day break, and then onto the road to take the show to Lahore. Here's where the FUN started. I was now BEYOND broke. Seven days of a city that I don't call home stared me in the face. I opened the dvd case of a film called Suspect Zero, now empty because after 20 minutes I tossed it out the window, realising it would be my new temporary hiding spot for all the cash I've made doing various questionable things on AND off stage over the past 5 years. Which sums up to less than a crooked cop makes in a single night.

One thousand rupees.

It's the last thing I do before leaving the house, grabbing that grand. Before that, packing. Which was shoving 4 shirts, a couple of pants, an insufficient number of clean undies (which I found out in Lahore), toiletries and a tiny Buddha statuette into a bag with a handle and wheels on it. With all due respect, I only buy those whenever I see em' cuz apart from Santa Clause and the Gautama, I've never really seen an overweight man who smiles about his obese condition. Encourages me, so it IS a spiritual thing...fuck off.

Getting to Lahore was more of a chore to the others. I spent most of it dreaming. Despite the advice of people who pretend to care about you, I downed 6 sleeping pills with a beer, because obviously, I'm not able to swallow the pills without a beverage. I woke up conveniently near the time we were supposed to stop at the station.

Rubbed my eyes, checked my breath. Yup...I'd been out a while. I hate those brief moments right after you wake up from a sleep so long Van Winkle would start taking notes, when you don't know if you're hungry or if you gotta go to the bathroom. Lahore was colder than my ex-girlfriend's reaction to ma calls, mates. We loaded ourselves into taxis and reached the Avari.

Ahh, Avari Hotels. God bless em' but could a place be more shady? A place that sells privacy to people from all round, wanting to stop over a few nights and enjoy themselves without having to face the issue of being near any people with decent morals. Long carpeted hallways with the smell of sin creeping out from under each dimly lit doorway you pass in the night. I often took a walk at 2 or 3. The carpet felt nice on my bare feet. It was the closest to any action I got on that trip.

Some people had the energy on the very first morning start exploring, whereas I was aware it's a lot like Karachi only with bigger, louder and slightly more hospitable people. I think day 2 I went to the zoo. It was the only place I'd actually been to a year earlier, during Ramzan, when for some reason even the ANIMALS looked like they were fasting. Especially that crocodile that hadn't moved since I'd seen him a year earlier. I could swear it'd travel a much greater distance in life if someone killed it and turned it into a fucking shoe.

I kept mostly to myself, like I always do. Few people care to join in a conversation I'm having with myself. Although everyone's welcome, and my imaginary friends usually make that very clear. I think people are just racist.

Ah, the Al Hamra. Hall 2. Where decades of classic theatre has thrived in this great city. You could literally smell 7 year old passion off the chairs in the back rows. Wouldn't be surprised if an aunty or two had slipped out a tit or four on this stage. I say tit or four because I've seen a naked Punjabi woman...and that ain't just two tits. I was standing on a damn landmark.

The shows went well. The cheers from the 29 people in the audience proved this. All honesty though, the news that we were in Lahore spread like a gay dude's butt cheeks and by the last 4 nights, the halls were near packed. Lahori audiences are awesome. They're so much louder. And it's so much more fun to make them laugh. One night, after the show during the part where everyone stands around waiting for everyone in the audience to tell them how fucking good they were, an old man stood up and apologised on behalf of his city for the crummy turnout the second day. He said if we had known more about it we woulda been here cuz' the show was so damn awesome. Said he'd IMMEDIATELY go home and tell everyone he knows about it for the coming nights to be more full.

Everyone was happy to hear this. Except for me, who was thinking about how dodgy the word IMMEDIATE even IS to a 70 year old. And how many friends could he possibly have who can even move their hips far enough to get to the theatre?

I'm being mean, but I'm making most of this up.

One of the nights, on our way back to the hotel, I was intercepted by a man who handed me a card and said he was interested in talking to our producers. The largest print on the card said "Famous Singer" then it had what looked like a totally fake ass name alongside it, and a number. I will keep that card forever, for a completely different reason than Famous Singer Imran Tasheel would've wanted me to.

A usual number of bumps and hiccups later, our Lahore run was finally over. In the middle somewhere I came down with a HORRIBLE fever and a cold. I advise anyone falling victim to that most time honoured ailment to not, repeat NOT try having a combination of Chicken McNuggets and horse tranquilizer in an attempt to get better. Although being on the tranq does numb your tongue enough to actually bear the taste of the nuggets. But overall, I give the experience a 12. Don't ask out of a total how many points, but I swear most of the bad things that happened there I probably drank away into a corner in my mind anyway. What do I PERSONALLY remember about the entire time I spent being a part of this thing? Let me tell you:

I met a girl so tiny you'd wonder how her body could contain a heart so big and a mind so developed. On finding out she's in charge of lighting cues, you'd wonder how she'd even reach the control panel in the lighting room that overlooks the stage. It'd become clear when you'd see the five chairs she stacked up together to make a seat high enough to atleast watch what she's doing.

I met a man so convincing as a woman that his real name started sounding like an alias. I almost considered asking him out, but then I remembered the obvious reason I never would. Too tall. *For the sake of the last joke, the writer has accepted any risk of sounding like a homosexual. However, he would like to clarify that he is not. But it IS true that he hasn't been in a fight in a very, VERY long time. Think what you will.*

I met a girl with the voice of a superstar. Laughter came as easy to her as insulting people does to me. Most of the time she wouldn't stop unless people joined her.

I met a man who sings and composes with such fervour, I remembered I had an ego because it stung for the first time in years.

Five musicians did the work of fifty. They;ve been playing their respective instruments so long it was easier for them to make valid points in conversation using a B sharp rather than actual sentences. Masters of their craft, and one of them had the whole idea behind alcohol down PAT.

Women with the voices of angels looked out over me each night of the show. They were dressed to kill, but their songs brought life to the stage.

Mad lights. Wild costumes. Hilarious dialogue. Captivating songs.

I met a woman so beautiful in every way, that a glow came from up top where your forehead's supposed to be. When she screamed, it'd feel like hell not being able to reach her...and dancing with her to me was what swimming in a warm batch of M&M McFlurries is to a fat dude.

I met another man very convincing as a woman. By then I had gotten better at pulling off a MAN's skirt than anyone ever should be. It was a disturbing ice breaker.

I met a man with a heart so broken he'd glue it back together with lies and denial if he could.

I met a girl so driven with passion, she could start thunderstorms with her voice, and her anger could burn holes in the wooden floors we practiced on. When she danced, the human body seemed to make sense again.

I met a girl like a tiny little planet, filled with stories and experiences. So talented she could be headlining in Vegas. Instead she'll just own THIS town.

I met a man so quiet and calm, he reminded me of a slight breeze. I think back now, and realise I've actually had more stirring conversations WITH a slight breeze than I did with this guy.

I met a man who became a very good friend, but I stayed the same. Distant and uncaring. Dodgy and depressed.

I met a man who gives himself even less credit than I give myself. Or HIM for that matter.

I met a girl who could play 3 different characters more easily than I played ONE.

I met a girl even I had to avoid looking at on stage from fear that I might smile and muck up the line right after she shoots me an angry look.

I met a smart man who isn't taken seriously because of his good looks. He complains about it to ME, a man who isn't taken seriously for the exact opposite reason.

I met a man so funny, even I remembered what it was to laugh big.

I met a girl whose eyes show suffering, hidden by a smile so strong the corners of your mouth would reach for your ears without even asking your brain first.

So many people, and I love them all. Though a wise man tells me I use that word way too loosely, and that I've forgotten how to show people affection through kind gestures and the LITTLE things like remembering birthdays and favourite foods anf personal issues they asked for advice on.

So it's nice I suppose, that good people never REALLY die. Maybe I'll get a chance in eternity to show them my gratitude for running into this old man's life.

Y'know most people with a terrible memory have a certain list of the kinds of things they tend to forget. Stuff that would otherwise be very important to NORMAL people, like work deadlines or your grandpa's name.

I have a list. But I know this. People who come together to make miracles come alive on stage, and tell stories of heroes and giants that inspired words and songs being written about them, will NEVER make that list. It's these people I feel honoured to have worked with. It's these people, that through their love, their talent, their dedication, their skill and their intelligence, manage to live many lifetimes in a single one. And in my opinion, that can only be considered as the CLOSEST we've ever gotten, to becoming immortals.

They made life worth living those many months. I advise you to find the ones in your lives too. And disappear in the thought of them, before you find yourself making the very HUMAN mistake of loving one more than the other.

Live forever. All of you. I know you will.

The Public's Face

2008-11-27T06:00:00.000-08:00

Chapter 18.

Suffering From An Open Mind

Delusion...its the only way into Glendall. A place where creatures like man have proven they can live in harmony within their different races and cultures. Everything you know around you, is just a little bit better in Glendall.

I went to places like that as a kid. You wouldn't need to actually walk. You can go there any time you like.

I think I used to go there because making up a fictional world of my own was better than living in one created by smart people.

Why aren’t the right things important to us?

Right now, a woman on the BBC is forcing correspondents in India to say that terrorists in different part of the city have taken PARTICULARLY British and American people hostage. She keeps asking each person she speaks with, to first and foremost, if they ever wanna be aired on the BBC, claim that the reason is particularly against what the western world represents. She just needs them to do it for a while…till the west gets bored of the story…taking away just what they heard in the beginning.

That terrorists against the white man are at it somewhere in this world again. Unstable regions.

Somehow, we don’t know who these people are, but hunches from the local police or admins are going for the ol’ Islamic fanatic of course. The footage they keep showing…is of a hundred people looking like they’re crowding the front doors of a hotel in a very disorganized way…but helping some people who’ve been shot in clearly visible spots on their bodies into ambulances.

America and Britain condone.

Now they’re hearing from the British governments. Official statement. We need to kill terrorists. It’s those terrorists again. Extremist stuff goin on there.

A gay looking Indian man is suggested by the reporter to say whatever he’s trying to suggest. It’s that they were looking particularly for whiteskins. He does.

A cop whose been shot is carried away. His arms remind me of a weaker version of mine. And I’m not a cop. Far from it. I’ve had no training either, clearly. He’s acting like he’s on K or something. Look at him.

Ordinarily…I wouldn’t be bothered by anything happening anywhere. But right next to this clearly troubled region that now requires much attention and intervention…is MY country. Our religious people aren’t harmful. They’re like the Amish. They really are.

If there was a camera recording just enough footage before, and its still and ongoing situation….why isn’t there any more footage? What on EARTH is going on?

I’ll tell you.

A bomb went off somewhere in Lahore some days ago. Because of it…my idea of entertaining people was delayed for a month. I’m not happy about this. Because these people…don’t…exist. And they’re STILL winning.

I was wondering what it was, y’know. Why I haven’t felt like I’ve had anything to say for so long. I’ve been thinking way too much. I suppose I felt this as a last resort to say something. The reason I didn’t sooner?

I don’t think it does anything. Speaking out. Writing things in blogs. Marches down a bunch of city blocks. Charity gatherings and functions. Public appeals.

There IS no public in Pakistan anymore. No one sees the kind of horrible FARCE we’re being turned into in the eyes of the world…no one cares. Why should they?

We’re just waiting.

Maybe it takes a hundred people to make us snap. Maybe it takes a thousand. Here’s the idea.

Don’t come into this region.

Behind me, the woman on BBC asks them to please PLEASE say they were particularly looking for people the US and Britain sent here as martyrs.

No. Not martyrs. Diplomats. Whatever.

They still don’t know who’s responsible. The damage has been done though. No one really asks about who the dead were.

No one asks why that police officer looked like the heroin addict he’s supposed to arrest.

No one counts the population in the slums of Mumbai city.

They do this all the time. And we don’t laugh. We never laugh.

They play a game. And the world watches and says, “Wow…I wonder what’s happening inside. I just heard a blast. These damn terrorists.”

No one responsible. No crazy dude sitting on an oil barrel with an uzi in his hand making a cell phone call…talking to someone about what they perhaps even WANT…since as it stands right now…they’re just a bunch of dudes who ran into a hotel, threw some grenades in random places…and shot some people. Now they’re holding them hostage…but as the guy just suggested…even thought they have no idea who it is…they’re probably willing to die.

If I click post on this blog right now…everyone in that hotel will die by the end of this.

But I won’t. I’ll instead hope that I didn’t pass that fine line between mildly amusing and downright BORING and you’re still reading this…long enough for me to ask you…

Someone comes into your house tomorrow morning…and tells you and your family how you’re going to start living all your lives from this moment on. You are to adopt his language…his clothes…his idea of good music…behaviour…food…and law.

He tells you it’s in the interest of letting you be you…only…more FREE.

He’s right.

But he doesn’t say please. Instead he walks right in and starts. So you ask him to leave. And he does. But he doesn’t look right in the eye.

So then he goes and stands outside your window and calls his friends. They make you watch them toss things into and wreck your apartment with various ideas and chemicals and bombs. You throw things back and tell em to piss off as much as you can…but they always come back and wreck your shit more.

Then they offer to clean it up for you. THEIR way.

Would you be weak about it? Or still say no?

I wonder if I’m seeing things that really aren’t happening or just suffering from an open mind. I wonder if we jumped from stereotyping people as terrorists to calling it racism SO quickly…it actually made us OK with what happened in the first place…long as it’s not ALL of us anymore.

2 hours. No idea why the cameras aren’t rolling. Isn’t WORLD news anymore. It’s all we needed. Now they’re reporting a good thing happening in some European country. And now, 25 kids in Nigeria are dead again.

Fine balance.

I don’t know how long it’ll take for the world to feel it’s ok to invade us and start fixing things now…but I just hope someone tells me the plan soon because…I’m not falling for it anymore. These bombs outside the Rafi Peer festival. Something very fishy going on. Truly religious people actually DON’T care if some colourful idiots are dancing somewhere in a stadium.

Apparently…all it takes to create a sense of security is a bunch of cops on a road and NO order this time for a suicide attack…likely plotted by the same people who put those cops there in the first place.

Ah, puppets.

03:51 now. People just wanna know what’s going on. They’ll believe anything they’re told. So it’s Muslim fanatics. Let’s wrap up the day. We don’t know what they want. They just randomly bomb things and kill people. They come from across the border. A little place called Pakistan.

And yet…no one wonders why some people just randomly walked into a situation they have no way of walking out of. Not one witness. Not one phone call. Nothing.

2 of them are dead. By tomorrow…you won’t be keeping up with this news further than the newspaper that gets printed and sent to your own home…tallying correctly with the news on t.v.

Even if these TERRORISTS speak out about what they want…you’ll never know. They’ll be dead by the morning. We’re still hot on the suicide idea.

04:30. Some terrorists have now been arrested and detained. They never want to talk to authority. Why don’t they say something to the public? Saying too much? Police wanna beat the right words out of them? Who ARE they?! Why don’t they want to talk right at the publics face?

I’m pissed enough to wake up and start caring again.

Tell whoever you can. Leave us alone.

Or come get your revolution.

I’m clicking post.

A Few Rehearsals

2008-04-05T05:17:00.000-07:00

Chapter 17.

Whoever You Are

I was in a theatrical play a good while ago. It was titled DON QUIXOTE...based on Dale Wasserman's "Man of Le Mancha". It went...well. It was a musical so about half a year ago when I auditioned, I asked if we would be using playback vocals. We weren't. And as far as memory served, I hadn't seen anything like that having been done here before...so...to anyone who knows me well...that was reason enough. You know, show people how it's DONE. We were to perform it at the Arts Council Karachi.

The people I met through the experience were a strange lot. Such good people and so confused as to how a man like me can actually be so loveable yet often behave the way I do. Everyone was wondering if I'll ever even keep in touch. Guess they've heard things about my loner lifestyle.

Anyhow, the show got subjected to reviews. Not PEOPLE reviews. CRITIC reviews. Which seems inevitable though it's never the reason anyone should actually DO something. But I suppose it IS something of a job to give opinions. There were good reviews and bad ones. Particularly from some dude who didn't quite understand why he was being made to cover a play for DAWN that day when he had so much ass out there to chase and never get his hands on. So many parties to attend that he never got invited to. Plus I think the AC went off for a while the night he reviewed. Plus he has a seventeen year old girl's job which perhaps doesn't meet up to all the levels of that wierd trianglular diagram showing different degrees of job satisfaction that they made you memorise in Business Management class for A levels.

Along with myself, one fellow performer, who played the nervous but happy go lucky sidekick Sancho Panza, had the honour of being tested like lab rats for the opening scene where a 30 foot ladder is brought down from the centre of the stage to have US climb down FROM it. I remember telling him, "Dude, if you slip, fall and break your neck, don't worry, I'll improvise.". And despite the whole BREAK A LEG culture, we actually made it down that ladder safe and sound each night. Now the only problem I saw left was that I was on stage in front of complete strangers, and I was wearing a shirt with frills, and lowers that only reached down to my calves, and the entire outfit was made of velvet.

BLUE velvet.

I understood a thing or two about make up as well. Apparently, no matter how talented you are, or no matter how much make up school might have attempted to give your life, often enough you WILL resort to Cherry Blossom's white shoe polish to make people look old. Our incredibly hard working and superbly gifted make up artists, however, didn't want to put that polish on MY hair for some reason...so, naturally, they started slandering huge amounts of the same beige coloured TV STICK make up they applied on my face just minutes before, straight onto my head. I say naturally, because it seemed like they knew exactly what effect they were going for. I tried not to laugh about this. Which was relatively easy when I reminded myself about the clothes I was wearing. It's always funnier on someone else.

There was a line in the play where my character speaks his full name with such pride and conviction, that the higher authority among the prison riff raff is indeed FORCED to reply, "OOOHHHHH...a GENTLEMAN!"

I wanted to say, "Well, more GENTLE than MAN as you can see from my pants.", and then move onto my ACTUAL line...but I didn't. I didn't want to confuse anyone on the very first night.

By the fourth night, my voice was gone. Which is deathly for a person who has to sing about 5 songs during the performance. And reach the back row CLEARLY over the sound of AMPED accoustic guitars and a friggin DHOLAK and some tambourines and clackers. Or clappers, I'm not sure, but if I spend any more time trying to remember what that little thing was called I might turn into a nerd and shoot myself. But it all worked out for the best. After every performance, though I hate the whole MEETING people afterward thing that everyone does, all I could ask any ONE of those many people who came and shook my hand, or patted my back afterward if they were reasonably older than I am, was whether or not the volume of my voice was high enough to reach clearly, whether or not the lyrics were fully understandable, and most of all - whether they were any sort of authority ON this or not - if my singing was any good.

All comments pointed to yes, which was exhilarating, but I can't help but think if it was just that no one really wants to get you down after a performance by raising their palm, tilting it from side to side and saying, "Eeeeeehhhh...there WAS this ONE part....". And if everyone was just in such a fun mood after the thing that they didn't really feel anything was missing. But I trusted them. I'm usually my own worst critic. I downright hate my work...from my writing to my drawing to my acting to my singing. So this time, I just trusted THEM.

The show eventually had a CLOSING night. Not having to go for it's rehearsals or the actual performance the few days after wasn't wierd tho. It was actually VERY relieving. Once that curtain went up each of those five nights...the only thing I had keeping me from passing out was looking into the eyes of people playing characters I had grown to love. Those eyes kept me from losing my balance. From mistrusting the good in this world. From turning into a man called Alonso Quijana. Now...a month I don't meet them...and that's EXACTLY what happens.

I don't do things for the same reasons someone else would do that very thing, you know? When I close my eyes...sometimes...I don't even see black. I don't make money off my art not because I think it corrupts the process, but moreover because I just don't know how. I don't know how to put a price on something you did, since I've only ever done I actually just felt like doing for no reason other than my own spiritual ones. And money never makes it to that VERY exclusive list.

But I'm trying to fix myself. Even if I have to keep coming back to this stupid senseless page to remind myself to CONTINUE fixing myself, I'll do it. But I'm losing too much too fast in my life. And my greatest fear is soon becoming that after a while, I won't really mind losing every single thing I ever had. Because THAT'S what I'll remember my life as BEING. I wonder if we really ever find what we look for in life, or just change what we're looking for so often that we eventually end up telling ourselves we have everything we might ever have wanted.

I'm in another play now. Don't want to jinx it by saying too much. But I will say this. I like acting. It's an escape that cannot be matched by any walk in a forest or even helping a stranger push his car when it stalls. And as of recent, because of something that I intend to explain and post soon, not for you, whoever you are, but so I can find words to describe this madness inside of me, I feel acting is something that just helps me forget who I am. Because the more years of my life that pass, the more I dislike what I'm becoming. I prefer being someone else. Even if it IS for a short while, a number of performances, a few rehearsals.

Five Days

2007-12-27T07:27:00.000-08:00

Chapter 16.

By Higher Authority

Something very strange just happened. The birth of a revolution perhaps. When people lose their minds completely and want answers to questions they can't even phrase anymore, they will take to the streets to find them. Shops are shut down all over Karachi and it's very likely that as I type this, many innocent people are becoming the victims of senseless violence and rage running throughout the city. Since no one outside of the political scenario even knows whose blood it is they even WANT to get on their hands anymore...they just want to get away with bloody murder.

The problem, I now feel, with Pakistanis in general...is that they don't know enough to be able to satisfy themselves through rational thinking. Sometimes I fear the problem is that they just don't appreciate people on tv getting away with killing a lot of innocent people, when deep down inside the heart of every true Pakistani, lies a closet killer...I write this because I think it's a sick truth about our people. We aren't uneducated...we aren't indecent...we aren't confused or misled by higher authority...

We're murderers. We LIKE the thought of killing. We're all a sick bunch of killers. And life goes on that way. Whether you're fighting from the provoked end or the end doing the provoking...we all just want in on the killing. People just need something to DO here. Someone fucking help us...get us a few new MALLS or something...more video games...anything. Anything.

When one person dies in this country, the first thought of anyone who knew them is to get blood. Someone's blood. Just anyone. They like the pain inside their hearts to show on the faces of others. Through the scars on old, aging skin and faces which laugh in the face of today's events, because, depressing as it may seem...they've actually seen so much worse.

Yet, life...will go on...the country is falling to pieces...but it's happened so often now it's almost routine. Everyone knows to get into their houses and stay there till the gas pumps around the city open up again...no questions whether it was all made up or not...whether people planned this and blamed it on a religious fanaticism group so that they get rid of a threatening candidate for control of power, ALONG with having just cause to start bombing guilty landlords in the south west. Two birds with one, single, shot from a bullet. So many more people will die...and its going to be treated as normal behaviour of course...just a result of just another famous face being shot to death. Yes, life will go on. Murderers just need a reason to get out of the house and get angry and something. That's all. We prayed for death and destruction, secretly...a guilty pleasure we dare not reveal...and it came in this form this time...but...someone or the other is always MORE affected by the death of someone else aren't they? But it's okay...we shall treat it as just another statistic caused by some made up belief that maniacal mythical bearded men with AK 47s in the north are organised and smart enough to plan and assassinate key political figures in the major cities of the south.

Not to mention that this probably puts a real DAMPER on many upcoming artistic endeavours around the country...because people are too stupid to see that things like music, paints, colours, theatre, and just a little bit of laughter are pretty much the only things that will save us in the eyes of God...if He's even watching over this place anymore of course.

The Pakistan People's Party's hopeful candidate for Prime Minister of Pakistan, Madam Benazir Bhutto, has been shot in the neck, and killed. Rest in peace, dear lady. I can't imagine anyone having done enough evil to deserve death at the hands of a MORTAL judge, but I hope for everyone's sake that your death had some divine role to play in the future of this country.

There's a lot of tension out there tonight, but nothing a few glasses of New Year's booze won't get rid of. This is Pakistan. I give it five days.

Lying Little Fuckers

2007-11-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

Chapter 15.

Bombing Our Poor

I was always interested in other cultures. Not particularly to the extent of actually going and VISITING them...because that would require too much time away from my room where I have the unaltered freedom to, at ANY time, lie on the bed completely naked with jello on my balls.

Raspberry...

So I always tried to pay attention whenever they told me about other cultures, yknow? THEY as in anyone, anything and everything. And everyone. Most of it obviously comes from television...so you kind of get used to TRUSTING that the most don't you. And not in the "I AM A MINDLESS MORON (as opposed to the OTHER type of MORON? What does that even MEAN?!?) WHO WILL BELIEVE EVERYTHING I SEE!" kinda way...but more like I will TRUST it to be what it's always promised to be. You know it's a lie when one of the little news scroller at the bottom of some BOOB of an American news channel says some shit like:

BO, MH: WE WILL NOT SUPPORT AMERICAN STRIKES ON TERRORIST CAMPS - Pakistan President Musharraf

Which actually meant Ol' Mushi didn't want em' to start BOMBING our POOR (despite the long term benefits)...yknow...on account that they haven't DONE nothin'. That's ALL he did, folks. He stood up for the poor. Instead they made it sound like as if a terrorist regime that THEY invented...is actually "threatening their country and it's people and their freedoms...and a little ASSHOLE of a country called Pakistan is not letting us bomb shit to get results. Maybe THEY'RE also terrorists." Luckily...our country's last line of defense, the average state ratio of seventeen horny jobless males to each rapidly corrupted female, makes us SUCH a bunch of losers that they don't even want anything to do with the natural gas. OR the marble!

Which...of course are probably the only two half unique things we can call our own NATURAL resources or products or whatever doo daa terms describe what you already know I'm talking about in a business and industry management college textbook written by a man who never had sex.

The point is...you have to read between the lines. This is not NEWS to anyone I understand it...but it IS something we tend to forget in remembering while we see the LITTLE things too...
No sir...it ain't NEWS to anyone...on the scroller...THIS is:

CIA Director Smidgits Cainus to replace Anus Cannibus as Chairperson of DEFENSE after Cannibus drug charges

Oh they're goooood...They're SO good you never watch them work. I'm not saying I saw these EXACT pieces of news...I'm just saying...you KNOW you've read into some outRAGEOUS shit...It never hurts to have an imagination when you're willing to JUDGE something as true or false. Cuz' if you're great enough to JUDGE a story based on what you know...you SHOULD be able to imagine anything is possible. But hell they tell me I've got an overactive imagination. But...when ya think about it...I never got a college education like you...or in the case of someone LIKE myself reading this, well done...I'm surprised you know how to use a computer.

So what was MY education? Cheap in taste but big in budget, commercial Hollywood movies. That's right. I saw enough bullshit to fill the Grand Canyon. I hate that I find a statement like that funny because I know the fact that the Grand Canyon in some fucking shit ass dry crummy desert state in the glorified Hollywood America is apparently the biggest fucking hole on the planet. I have never SEEN this...GRAND Canyon...but I know what I know...I know enough to question shit in my head...that's all I'm saying. It starts all EARLY in life and shit. You know what I mean...you go to some AUNTY's place (For international readers...the term AUNTY is ALSO used to describe beautiful middle aged women...you know...hot mama's...sexy ladies...mom's we'd like to HOLLYWOOD MACHINE!! But not in THIS particular case...this WAS in fact some fat ass...AUNTY) and their kid shows you a picture of him and a suspiciously GRIM looking Arnold Schwarzegger...striking a pose which looks like it's the last thing he did before a bolt of lightning hit him and froze him forever. But that skin...so...real...

Obnoxious Aunty Kid: Look you see?! Me! AND ARNOLD SHFOFFNEYGER...

Me: It's Arnold...SHWAURTZ...EN...EGGER...

Onoxious Aunty Kid: Yea! Him only...Look me him...

Me: Okay...dude....I know I'm meeting you for the first time and stuff...and this MAY be very rude of me...but dude...I don't think that's him, dude.

Onoxious Aunty Kid: VOT?!?! VAI??! VAI THIS THIS ITS THIS HIIIIMMMMM!!!!!

Me: Y'know...if English isn't your first language...I mean it IS cool, seriously...

Onoxious Aunty Kid: BUT VAAAI DON'T YOU THINK IT'S HIM?!?!?!?!?

He was wearing a Madame Tussaud's t shirt. You always gotta watch out for lying little fuckers like that y'know? Sure it BECOMES the story of the time they just fucking went to Madame Tussaud's and got a picture taken in front of a WAX FIGURINE and we all had a fucking LAUGH about it...but initially? They would rather have you believe they chilled with Arnold Schwarzenegger....it's only because you CHALLENGED it, you see?

Why...is the Terminator...wearing a blue shirt with a gay looking colourful woman's face on it?

You HAVE to challenge it.

ALL of it.

Proud to Call

2007-10-16T03:55:00.000-07:00

Chapter 14.

Of Our Bodies

What an eid..

Fact. First day of Eid starting from Chaand Raat (a night on which we're used to not seeing an actual CHAAND anymore) till the end of the first Eid night, more than a crore and a half worth of booze was sold in Karachi alone.

Fact. I didn't see any of this booze.

I don't know how reliable my source was though. You ever had one of those friends who exaggerates a story just so it's crazy enough to be possible? That's where I got this news from. I never used to ask people to double check their info...even as a kid. I only recently started treating the internet as a means to find things which contradict stuff my friends say...but I spend so much time alone in my room working out this endeavour, that I don't think I've talked to any of my friends in weeks. But day before yesterday....that all changed. And I'm glad...because I had fun.

We ROLLED! Apparently that esteemed title of an action no longer represents the art of actually, ROLLING a cigarette, filled with some form of herbal drug of course...unless you're fuck bored and have about half an hour to kill before your mom hands you a plate of goodies that you drool over only to find you have to deliver them to neighbours you despise because everytime THEY send a dish which traditionally has meat in it...they replace it with aloo?

Khair so yea rolling...apparently....as everyone now seems to be aware...this represents being on a little drug called ECSTACY. It really is a little fucker of a pill. A little round lie, that makes all your dreams come true...even if it IS only in your head. And I thought I had wild thoughts BEFORE...my God. And I stay away for months at a time between the new found ROLLING nights too. Not because I don't think I can take it or anything...but because frankly it get's in the way of my drinking...and that is something I won't stand for. You thought RETALIN kept you awake. This thing is like forgetting you ever slept, with all the mental harmony produced by seven orgasms with none of the physical effects of actually going THROUGH seven fucking orgasms which include dizziness, nausea, and a sudden urge to be very uninterested in what some chick is saying to you, especially if she's a lesbian you just met.

We went to the beach. THE BEACH YEA THE BEACH! LETS GO TO THE BEACH! I LOVE THE BEACH YAAAR LETS GO TO THE BEACH YES BEACH LETS BEACH!

Fuck the beach...I wanna watch TV...I wanna watch TV on the beach....wheres the microwave? How do I heat this popcorn? Fucking beach...I gotta start up a fuckin' MOTOR generate with DIESEL in it to make two lights and a fuckin' FAN work? This is what that marvellous drive a fuckin' hour and a half long was for? I don't even think this is our HUT! Where's the air conditioning?

So we go to the beach. The only group of friends I'm proud to call just that was there...the WHOLE group...and it was a fun filled night of very loud music and very cold sand. Very good booze and very shiny stars. Very much dancing but unfortunately very few women...but it was Eid...and we had serious catching up to do in the intoxicant department of our bodies, what with all that damage Ramadan had left behind.

What I seem to love about E is how nothing seems to matter anymore. Someone could come up and slap you in the face and you still wouldn't have anything against him. It's only days later that you would realise what a slam to your honour that probably was and become corrupted once again by these mortal, EARTHLY thoughts...leading you to plan twisted ways to make that dude cry.

No sir, not when you're ROLLING. Everyone you EVER had a problem with seems to be the most ridiculous thing in the world...and you wish everyone you knew was right there with you so you could tell them how much you love them. And when they laugh and tell you you're drunk or ROLLING, for the first time...you might actually agree and not feel bad about it.

The best part about it is how your friends become all SWEET and shit. Like everyones always asking if you want their seat, or some water, or some booze, if you want the doors closed, or the fan off, or ON...people become HELLA accomodating when they're ROLLING...I think it's because no one cares to remember the usual approach to life that most Karachiites have...every man for himself.

Everything seems like a great idea when you're trippin' too. I mean fuck sliced bread...fuck the light bulb...let's throw drops of red bull in the air and see how many each of us can catch with our armpits...that, is the GREATEST fucking idea anyone could EVER have had. Forget abolishing slavery...

They mix and match actions too! "Dude, DUDE! Check this out...hold your head to this wall...you doing it? you got it? okay now...with your head still pressed to the wall...QUICKLY! DRINK THIS RED BULL!"

Anyone listening in will immediately try it as well...its like that old show where that old storyteller tells people of a magic rock he pulls out of his balls he claims to be able to make any soup taste great. He keeps adding things to a pot of boiling water with a fuckin' ROCK inside it....only to suggest at the end when everyone agrees the soup was great, that it was all because of the rock.

Here's a fun thing to do...if you're ever ROLLING with your closest friends...somewhere near PEAK time...go up to one of them and say the following:

"Dude....dude...check this okay? Just fuckin' CHECK it dude...blow your mind it will. See my hands alright? KEEP LOOKING AT THEM MOTHERFUCKER! See the lights I'm holding? Alright....alright keep lookin' at em...you see how they're leaving trails? Keep FOLLOWIN' the lights boy...nothing but my hands....nothing but the lights....you see em? You staring right at em, right? This is so gonna trip you out....Keep watching....watching....now QUICK!

Suck my balls."

Eid Mubarak, world.

An Idiot, and a Tool

2007-07-21T15:15:00.001-07:00

Chapter 13.

I represent God

I've been away a while. Not that anyone's noticed. Been busy...yea! I have. Plus someone I talked to recently actually reminded me of this blog. If I remember correctly...I've mentioned my memory somewhere here before...it's not very good...they didn't call me HAATHI in school for my memory is what I'm trying to tell you.

I think I've mentioned I was fat.

Television, friends. The way of the future. The Americans...they understood this a LONG time ago. When they aren't numbing the minds of little babies to dumb down the future generation through BABY TV (Recommended viewing by the Ecstacy Taker's Asscociation of Pakistan, or E. T.A.A.P)....they're using uncannily interesting stories like Paris Hilton's jail sentence to mindfuck the old ones too.

The Pakistanis.

The Pakistani's have finally caught up. Between burqa clad mullah avengers, and cock eyed power hungry judges, we have finally arrived to the point in history which will be an unveiling of what all this was all planned to help us ignore in the first place.

Rebirth.

It is now. The religion...versus the modern culture. I can't really say WHO will win...but it's quite obvious what REALLY happened soon after ...

Religion: Well gentlemen...it's been nearly a century since this country's birth...well actually just about 60 years, but I round to the nearest 100 because my representatives aren't very sharp....and I have realised this. You two are conspiring against me. You think I'm slowing you down. You think I'm...

...bad for the people.

Science: It's not that. It's just that your boys aren't letting my boys play freely...what with the whole...

Religion: Listen...about that Khuda Ke Liye threat....which were technically Art's boys...

Art: And then...THUNDER! Thunder as the camera pans ri...

Religion: And it's not like it made much of a dent. Since your people are all educated enough to know their rights.

Science: Your people don't follow those rights.

Religion: Yes, but I represent God.

Art: WE AAWWWLLLLL do duuuuudddeeeee.....peace...loveee...prosperityyy mannnnn...

Science: (to Art) You are an idiot, and a tool....and after we destroy Religion and his backward ways since you're such a dumbass that I use you any way I please to get the people on my side...I will also have YOU killed off like Science Germany's boy Hitler did back in the day.

Religion: You pathetic souls...you don't really think you can destroy me.

Science: No...not forever. I mean let's face it there's a REASON you represent God. Damned if I know what it is though.

Art: Then...a gunshot.......BLAM! And we annoyingly use a dolly to get the dolly shot with that dolly yea dolly...

Science: So why not just get rid of you for a little while my boys get a little stronger here? Look...long run? You're not gonna disappear...and even when you DO get strong again...you're all forgiving...so you won't try to destroy me.

Religion: No, Science Pakistan. I will not try to destroy you. You will destroy yourself...

Art: VIOLINS!!! VIOLINS!!!

Science: Umm...one of your boys just planted a car bomb outside a theatre. It's the one showing Khuda Ke Liye...

Religion: It was probably some of yours working together to make it LOOK like mine...but I'm such a retard and a pacifist...I'll believe you anyway.

Science: You and everyone else bub...

Politics: Will you shoot the damn thing, already?

Science: You're makin' a lotta NOISE for someone who wants to be quiet about having PLANNED this whole thing, aren't you?

Politics: Don't forget, Science, that my cock eyed vudayra has beaten your military schmo...it's a turning point for my...

Art: Blam! Silence!...Death....

Though I rarely choose to directly refer to politics and religion...words like these will come by more often now. Smaller in strength, but greater in number. That is how I shall defeat you Science, Religion, Politics....I have no problems with your truthful champions...it's those buggers you have in higher numbers that bother me.

Good Night.

What A Good Company Does

2007-04-09T05:52:00.000-07:00

Chapter 12.

Convincing People

Damn electricity. I forget every year how often it goes in the summer months. And for how long. And also how UNEXPECTEDLY when you're down to the final part of AMERICA's NEXT TOP MODEL and JANE bites the bullet but you don't get to see her cry like a little bitch (which is pretty much the only reason I like watching the show) because KESC has stopped doing its job again. I've got something called a UPS at home. It's supposed to keep providing electricity for a few hours in the event of a power outage (something that's as strange an occurance to the Americans as a kind government employee is to Pakistani's) and it should be able to supply your ass with a fan and perhaps some lights and a little t.v for the duration of the blackout. The problem is, it doesn't. This device is a box about the size of a car battery, containing about the same amount of reserved power as well. It has wires coming out of it that would dupe a damn professional, and a big button saying ON for the dummies that will be using it considering any smart person would'nt invest in one of these to begin with.

So I'm trying for a radio job, right? I haven't even reached the office before this starts seeming like a BAAAADD idea. It was over 200 degrees that day. In the SHADE. I saw a man get out of the car and he screamed from the heat before exploding into millions of pieces. Not that I sat and counted. The interview went alright. I walked out with five little tasks. To be completed by 48 HOURS! I'm not even working there and already they've got me worried about deadlines. That's what a good company does, they tell me. It makes you want to go back to college and rethink your pointless existence.

But fuck that. I'm going into comics. See I've been drawing a daily comic strip concept for a while now. Nothing super, just something I do more for myself than anything else really. But atleast I enjoy it. I'm gonna look into how to contact the newspaper heads and see what the market is for something like that. All of this stuff makes me think about the past you know. The one none of us has seen. Not YET anyway. And how it must have been so easy to exist in a world where your entire community only had like 2000 people in it. Makes me wonder how the cartoonists back then would have had it so much easier convincing people they're special since there was probably next to zero competition around. Of course, that comes at the price of a next to nothing MARKET for cartoons....seeing as paper wasn't readily available and neither was the concept of money.

OR ink.

I'm going. I haven't saved this draft and I don't want to lose it all. Not to mention wanting to watch tv where that Melrose chick has just won YET another round of AMERICAS NEXT TOP MODEL and that chubby Anchal might get the boot, being told she's not showing how badly she wants it, whereas we all know its because she's part Indian and Tyra Banks thinks it's part of their custom to eat black people.

No Better Research

2007-04-06T04:27:00.000-07:00

Chapter 11.

At The Foot

I've been downloading a lot of stand up recently. You know, no better reasearch than entertainment. Not the healthiest attitude since by the age of 12 my dad saw no problems in letting us (my brother and I) see films like PREDATOR, which is where I first learnt the word MUNDER FUCKER. You do not want to know where I learnt that (a.) It's MOTHER not MUNDER and (b.) it's not a very nice word to say to your teacher. There, in that cold dank smelling principal's office infested with roaches in it's corners and a metal cupboard which goes clang in the night, when something hits against it obviously, I found myself in an uncomfortable mood when I realised I wasn't here to get happy face stamps or a golden star pasted into my workbook. I think one of the first times in life we ever start succumbing to the will of the system is the follow up to a teacher's "Good morning students" phrase that we are taught. Everyone stands up, and in a chorus line most professional, sings back the words "Good moooorrrnning aauuunnnttttyyyyyy." I'm still not aware of the actual TIME when they changed this word to TEACHER...OR of the conversation that took place among the staff which led to its changing, but I'm sure someone's age was a sensitive and important factor. We wore shorts back in grade school. Blue shorts. Dark blue, but that didn't make it any cooler. There was a time when a COOL kid's awesomely rebellious behaviour was justified when he came to school wearing grey pants. Which was of course the uniform we all had to wait to get to class 7 for. If you ever studied at Beaconhouse Public, you'd know this was pretty much the most motivating factor driving male kids to study harder and pass into the next grade. Grey pants. I was a fat and very unusual kid. It's not like I'm trying to sound unique, we're all wierd in our own little way, but it's just bothering sometimes when you step into a room with 5 people and two of them agree some new kid is wierd, and THREE of them agree some new girl just transferred is weird, but ALL of them agree that YOU'RE weird. I found most of my free time went in entertaining friends with hand shadow stories involving disturbingly horny dogs and their antics, since it was the easiest hand shadow to make, and eventually barking just isn't doing it for you. So there's always an easy way out isn't there? Some people learn how to make 300 different things in origami...some learn one hand shadow, but invent new ways to keep it interesting to the nearby 14 year olds. I remember cricket as a child. Watching it and feeling tired I mean. I never played much cricket. Got in the way of eating. Something about playing sports when you're not going to make a profession out of it seems like a whole lot work for pretty much nothing to me. I like results. And fast. I heard a performance on audio by comedian Dane Cook. He had this bit where he talked about how even when people rear end you in traffic, it's always YOUR fault somehow. I think I remember something like that being ripped off here. I despise unoriginality. It's the reason I'm so particular about anything I throw out there, which adds to the amount of time I take in doing anything in life. It creates a sense of identity when you work hard on your own thoughts. People should start doing that more often in this country. You know, NOT rip things off from lesser known Western entertainment in the hopes that someone won't RESEARCH their way into some of the deepest darkest secrets most Pakistani television shows today are founded on.

It's a reality. I saw a man the other day, at the foot of my apartment building while I was passing by to my place. He was looking at the way the entire area had been dug up to fix the drainage lines in the area. There were so many plastic bags. He seemed like someone who would greet the ban on polythen bags with open arms...only...he didn't have any. He was a beggar. And he only loved his country too much to be able to smile at the noise.

I'm going to go write. Nothing good coming out here.

Nothing funny.

Relax A Bit

2007-03-31T04:49:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-19T03:24:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-07T06:13:00.000-08:00

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

2007-03-02T02:18:00.000-08:00

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.

The Honest Review

2007-02-25T02:28:00.000-08:00

Chapter 5.

The Helper of Modern Folk

Times are moving fast. We're living in one of the fastest developing cities in one of the most anal countries in the world. People are dumb and impatient, and they either have very little, or too MUCH time to spend on recreation.

Sometimes, all we want to do to get away is watch a movie. We turn to Hollywood because it is a widely accepted belief that they do it the best. Over the years, however, that fact has more fiction in it than most of the senseless tripe that country produces these days. Although piracy is a finely tuned machine in Pakistan, it still burns when a man knows that he just spent a hundred rupees and two hours that he is never getting back, as he ejects the dvd from his player and breaks his copy of 'Johnny Mnemonic'.

So why should it ever be, that the one or two sittings to yourself you get in a week - IF you're a hard working individual - should go to a complete waste because that guy behind the counter in your video store is recommending films that he's never even seen in a language he doesn't speak, and handing the Chronicles Of Narnia to a young woman next to you who's asked for a nice little romance flick, when the only time anyone in that movie showed any romance was a BEAVER couple since the HUMAN stars were all minors and were looking at child pornography charges if any serious romance went down.

It made me wonder, if there was anyone who was finally going to be straight up and BRUTALLY honest about how they review their movies for the benefit of people who, today, have such an insanely large international catalogue of movies being released to choose from.

Ladies and gents, as the helper of modern folk, I feel it is my duty, to present to you:

The Lodhi Review

Sticking to the point for the people

1. The Guardian: Ashton Kutcher plays a tough young cadet, fresh out of the college swimming championships which he took the gold in. He plans to play out his lifelong dream to break every record ever set by any rescue diver in the U.S Coast Guard. Kevin Costner plays the teacher of the class, a veteran diver who's saved over 50 people in seperate diving incidents throughout his career, and YET couldn't save this film from drowning to near death at the box office. The next to nothing dvd sales take care of this. Kevin Costner, till today, remains the only man to ever have bought a copy. Ashton Kutcher denies having worked in the film.

2. Snakes On A Plane: Samuel L. Jackson is a black man with a gun on a plane full of snakes. People die, snakes die. 90 minutes later, you realise you wished a snake had actually bitten you 10 minutes into the film so you would'nt have to sit through this tripe.

3. Borat: A man with a terrible accent which sounds nothing like an Uzbek travels throughout America, recording his trip on a low budget camera, proving once more that after decades of progression in intelligent comedy, the best way to to reach the top of the charts in a country where the people don't even know their first president's name, is still just to show two naked men wrestling and cursing in any foreign language as long as it sounds relatively like those brown sand suckers they keep invading.

4. Chain Reaction: Keanu Reeves outruns a nuclear explosion on his motorcycle. An hour later, thats still the only interesting thing that has happened in the movie.

5. The Covenant: Due to something of a curse on a number of families and their following bloodlines, four young men in a small town develop super powers beyond the imagination of any mortal man in the world today. The four men use their powers to blow up womens skirts and get a look at their panties.

6. Rocky Balboa: Beloved retired boxing superstar Rocky Balboa steps into the ring one last time to redeem himself for the movie Rocky 5. He fails.

7. Kingdom Of Heaven: The holy city of Jerusalem becomes the birthplace of Jerry Springer culture when Orlando Bloom goes there as a knight to fight for God, but ends up sleeping with a woman who had sex with his father. Even two thousand years ago, no one feels like watching this on television.

8. Casino Royale: Renowned MI6 agent James Bond makes his appearance in his 45th motion picture, which leads to his SECRET identity not being very SECRET any more. He performs none of the established James Bond trademark actions, from keeping his calm to playing a good game of cards to even knowing what his favourite drink is. As a result of his hotheaded approach to the espionage world, he gets a knotted rope smacked onto his balls. Very hard. Repeatedly.

9. Hitch: Will Smith falls in love. He falls out of love. He helps men to get women to fall in love. He falls in love again. He helps a fat man learn how to dance. He falls out of love again. He learns some important lesson in life. He falls in love yet again. The end credits begin rolling.

10. Deja Vu: Denzel Washington and a cast of others realise that it is finally possible to travel back in time and they save the life of a beautiful woman, when clearly, the more intelligent move would have been to go back and advise the producers of the movie never to make this piece of crap.

11. I, Robot: Detective Spooner of the Chicago Police Department chases after a homosexual robot called Sonny for presumed murder. After an hour of technical garble and a war between man and machine, the point still remains that it was in fact, murder. Sonny the homosexual robot sees no jail time for his crime.

12. Jurassic Park 3: As the important life lessons to be learnt from the Jurassic Park adventures become ever increasingly shallow, this time, a whole lot of killing ensues to bring a boy and his divorced parents back together. Dr. Alan Grant hitches along for the ride, only to learn that the suprising evolution of the lizards has brought about the highlight of the film, a terrifying new species of dinosaur. Unknown to the writers, this new Spinosaur actually existed before the Jurassic Age. Dino nerds around the world laugh at this. Then cry because the movie still made more money than they make in a decade digging up bones for a living.

13. Clerks 2: A small group of semi actors, semi writers and semi directors with very little money make another movie. It does not help them get laid this time either.

14. The Lady in the Water: A woman escapes from a fairy tale land to enrich mankind with all the knowledge of the universe and its many realms. Instead of telling influential people in high places who could actually use this knowledge and take steps towards the benefit of the human race, she goes to a generic cast of characters that can barely afford to live in a shabby apartment complex. They keep it a secret forever.

15. Million Dollar Baby: After years of depression caused by a fear to believe in himself anymore, a veteran boxing trainer finally comes out of his hole to redeem himself, and trains a young woman to fight. She breaks her neck. Clint Eastwood gets an Oscar for surviving Hollywood till the age of seventy six.

16. Meet Joe Black: Brad Pitt is asked to be a little less BRAD PITT in his performances. He manages, but only after being hit by two seperate cars going at a hundred and twenty five miles per hour.

17. Erin Brokovich: Julia Roberts plays a woman destined to become a lawyer to help the poor people of a small town where the water has been poisoned due to imporperly followed safety regulations by a conglomerate. She is never taken seriously. She does not grip that maybe it's because of the giant breasts she keeps waving in peoples faces.

18. PayCheck: A man who replicates all forms of groundbreaking technology and has his memory erased, somehow creates a time machine that looks into the future. John Woo looks into the future, and relaxes when he sees no other director could make Ben Affleck act well either.

19. Troy: Brad Pitt plays Achilles. And despite the heavy history, that's the focus of pretty much the whole movie.

20. Dark Water: A bunch of japanese people make a movie with barely any budget. Years later, an American producer makes the same movie with LOTS of budget. Jenniffer Connelly fires her agent.

More when there's more.

In Search of the Plan

2007-02-22T05:57:00.000-08:00

Chapter 4.

The New Gods

I tapped into one of my many ME's yesterday. It was nearly 80 years ago, and I was somewhere in a newly developing American city. Chicago I think. A poet, on the underground scene. Fingers snapping, dark rooms and smoke filled cafes. Green lights and ashtrays. The ceiling fans set to a motion so slow that its only purpose was to bring un unending sense of movement in the room. And it made me wonder...

Is it that I was more patient with mankind because I was an incredibly FAT bastard once?

Seventy two, once I was, When children played in the sand
What year, what number
I can't quite remember
This member of earth held the world in his hand

I saw their mothers all wicked and learning
Of forth coming days of hell
The priests would yell
Their gods, they fell
When this member of earth held the world in his hand

The coming of ages they called it so well
The dying of ages of long since past
The forming of wages of work so fast
It would break the mould
Of days of old

And form would the buildings of houses of men
Who went higher and higher in search of the plan
It was then that he realised how needed it was
That this member of earth kept the world in his hand

The people they fought, for gold, for space
And cut off their heads for name and race
There were soldiers and leaders and a fear with no face
A fear in their hearts that sat in its place

They bled to please, to honour their gods,
The gods that live in the towers of steel
The gods that give you your every meal
And their godliness still, you pretend not to feel

For how can you feel that which you can not see
And how can you see what you will not believe
Are these the new gods? How could they be?
For calling them such, surely blasphemy

But they bend men at will, command all life and death
Their angels, the ones who will carry their brand
And take over lands, with the strain of a breath
To mix it all up, the blood, the sand

So watch for the people, their smiling faces
Ruining your faith, in a scheme so grand
It may take you decades to finally remember
You are the one with the world in your hand

School Without Breakfast

2007-02-22T04:44:00.000-08:00

Chapter 3.

The Lack of Self Care

I have started developing a real patience for FaceBook. An online socialising web site which, let's face it, everyone reading this knows more about than I do. There's a button you can click there, it's called "Play the FRIENDS game" or something along those lines. The point? You guessed it. Random questions based on your friends profiles and a multiple choice with faces to pick the correct friend for the correct bit of trivia from their profile.

After the first 3 minutes, it got VERY boring.

After the next 2, it got depressing. I had only 2 right. And that too because one of the questions repeated right after itself, but it gave me the points none the less.

I love my friends. But they will never know this. Sometimes I think I just have very little patience for socialising. I have maybe 4 friends I meet even NEAR to a regular basis, and the rest of my friends are people that Orkut tells me they are. I'm impressionable and I hate to argue. So I got with it.

I think I've always been like this. My primary education or "IBTIDAI TALEEM" (which is a word anyone failing Urdu Literature as badly as I always have will know very well) was at Beaconhouse Public. That was a nice school. Some of the closest people to my heart are people I know from there. Even if I don't meet them everyday, I pray for them every single night. That is when I'm not too busy doing some form of drug or alcohol. But I rarely pray for myself.

Maybe I should start.

The school, - after a point when we lose our innocence in life - like any other institution, was not without its fair share of politics. Something you will learn I have come to hate about mankind. I remember once when we were in the higher classes, we got our first dose of a real life SCANDAL.

A girl and a boy, were caught making out in the bathroom.

I don't think I've ever been more awakened to how different I always was from most minds than the moment this became news. You see, to most people, the scandal was that a boy and a girl were caught making out by a teacher.

To me, the scandal was that it was in the BATHROOM. And if you ever went to the Beaconhouse Public School, a place which was more public than school, you would know why that was a bit more disturbing to me than the earlier part of the news. You would think, that those peons were actually being paid to do something about the conditions of the bathrooms in that place. You would think it, but you'd be wrong. Then again, if you actually saw some of the students that went to the school, you wouldn't be too eager to clean up after them in the bathroom either. No matter what class of person you might be (CLASS being a word I hate with all my heart), there are certain things even a peon shouldnt have to do.

The strange thing is...the only people who would be willing to actually use the bathroom in that craphole, were the people who you wouldn't want to go near anyway.

I spent entire years of my life, going to school without breakfast, from the fear of having to suddenly go to the bathroom and having no options but the ones provided. So I never ate breakfast, and all it did was lead to my inevitable academic downfall, what with it being the most important meal of the day and all, but it was worth it. Infact I think the only time I ever went in there was to avoid an Islamiat class because as usual, I hadn't memorised parts of a language I didn't even speak, and the teacher, being an Islamiat teacher, rarely got laid for recreational purposes, and so took it all out on the poor unsuspecting students.

Another personal quirk of mine that developed thanks to my lack of self care and my deathly fear of those toilets, was the entire 5 hours in school I used to go through without a single reminder to what my hair was looking like. I often thought people were staring at me because I'm fat, which, sick as it sounds, I find to be a better reason to stare at someone than because their hair is all messed up.

The only time I ever cared about the hair on my head, as is the case even now, is when I accidentally walk in front of any reflective surface. That's always when I realised the horror of having looked like the many different people I've looked like throughout the years and because of what? Because I didn't care? Because I was never in the habit of constantly combing or setting my hair with my hands or fingers out of the loose complex that my hair might be looking off? For worrying about more important things like my imagination, and the people I can help with it?

For not caring about a gust of wind hitting my face because it felt so good at the time I didn't bother to think about what it was doing to my hair, and how the shallow people around me would react to it?

I like to think of it like this. If God throws wind in my face, I love it, I won't start worrying about my hair and make it everytime that happens because if God wants my hair to look like that, who am I to defy Him, right? Because anyone who defies God, is challenging God, and if that be the case then that person is trying to BE God. And that, is shirk, right dear friends? So anyone who ever does their hair EVER again is SHIRKING! Right? So doing your hair is shirk.

I could grow a beard, learn the positions for namaz correctly and travel to interior Punjab and polish my people screaming skills. I could make them think that killing people who do their hair is the only way into heaven, because let's face it, their prerequisites for calling a man a prophet are that the man must have a beard, a megaphone, he must not SAY he's a prophet and he must tell us where to vent out all this anger we have inside due to lack of sexual relations. Atleast with women.

I could train these poor dumb souls. And one night, in two very large port containers, I could drop them right in the middle of Nazimabad. A part of Karachi where, undoubtedly, the largest number of oil loving hair concious men reside.

I could do it.

But I won't.

A Crappy Rolling Chair

2007-02-22T00:22:00.000-08:00

Chapter 2.

The Birthday and the Video Game

I just had to wish a friend happy birthday 5 minutes ago. I told her I didn't get her a present because I'm broke and sweet and understanding as they usually are - friends that is - she said it was ok.

But it reminded me of something from back in the day. Remember how your parents would trick you into getting you a birthday gift, even if it's 3 months before your birthday, and calmly tell you "Now this is an early birthday present." That kinda sucked bricks for me, because now I have zero expectations of a day that usually becomes the only one I ever look forward to throughout the year, and I'm supposed to find solace in the fact that atleast I have a SEGA now, which kinda does nothing when the only game you have on it is Street Smart, a ruthless look into the lives of street fighters who ALSO have to be smart about the money they bet on each fight.

I think I'm the only guy who ever bet on the person I was fighting against. I made 6 billion dollars, but never finished the game, and even most of THAT money went to my character's hospital bill.

I've always loved video games.

Sometimes I sit and think about the maybe 2 years of my life where even I found something I cared about enough to become a real part of.

Just like everything else, it got tainted by corruption, desire and more want for some idea of payback for putting in all those years on a crappy rolling chair and a pc screen. People all around living out their fantasies of being called names that their juvenile minds thought would be a fun thing to be called in a fictional universe like MADDER or JACKOLANTERN or ETERNAL or NOT ETERNAL or NINJA or BLADE or BLOOD or SHOT or BLOODSHOT. It was really something to see.

"VULTURE!!! Behind you!!!"

A man with the nick 'Vulture' turns his mouse to see around his character in the pc.

I turn my ACTUAL head around to find a loser who would name himself Vulture. I laugh about it. Loudly.

My name? Lodhi. It was quite brilliant. Anytime someone called it out, I somehow immediately knew they meant me. What with it being my name and all.

If anything REALLY used to bother me about gaming arenas, was how a man sitting 3 feet away from me can actually be bothered to TYPE a comment to me instead of saying it. I get depressed when I see things like that, you know? Like how dependant we've become on technology that we think it works better than just telling someone something? Most conversations of mine went like this.

GoDsmACk: Lodhi, check the A area with ur sniper, i think we have something going on there.

Lodhi: You're sitting right next to me asshole. Stop stuffing chips in ur face and take a minute.

I do have a lot of patience, sometimes. But barely any for people who use CAPS in the most unreasonable places in their nicknames.

Then there's people on msn who do it with their actual typing. I have deleted them from my list. I'm not being a bitch or anything, I'm just particular about the company I keep. And my decisions in this matter may range from the CAPS thing to things like adding twenty Z's at the end of your good byes. AND your hello's. I mean, really, what the hell is that?

Ah but the politics of so called adults hell bent on corrupting even a tiny fun little thing like lan gaming. I knew I should have seen something coming when CS (That's counter strike, a game which you will not care about much after you realise that the prize money going to 5 people really goes 16 different ways...it's called FRIENDSHIP tax) teams from all around Karachi started bringing prinouts of maps and studying them with markers and pencils before any tournament.

I was in a team called DODT. I'm sure if I was to leak out even HALF the nerdish things the boobs in this team used to do, they'd come after me with a sword. But thats ok, because it would probably be in another VIDEO GAME anyway! Most of the guys in this team were either too weak to lift a sword, or too old to be talking back to a mother who would tell them they can't have any swords in the house, without having to suffer the humiliation of having their noses rubbed in the fact that they still lived with their mothers at 32.

I liked the people though. Can't say I didn't. Honestly. I was always there to entertain anyway, right? What do I care as long as they're laughing. That's all it is. Laughs. The world is such a big joke most of the time that it's refreshing to me to see people laughing sometimes. Because that makes me feel that atleast people get this incredibly unfunny universal joke.

In my later days as a hardcore gamer, or a CYBER ATHLETE as one friend - who I quickly grew to hate and eventually cut contact with completely - called it, I was in a team called LORDS. It started with four people and one whore. And we were the best of the best. We beat two tournaments hands down and retired undefeated for all time.

Atleast I did. There's always someone still willing to hold onto something so bad, that when the music stops, they keep tapping their feet just so they have something to dance to. I wished them the best, and ended my run in the gaming world.

In the end, it was funny to see how a group of guys turned into men throughout the years. Some people went onto bigger things, some didn't. But when you sit and think about it, what was the point of sticking around when the very purpose of the game, which was to have fun, was shot out of the sky like it never existed. When it became only about winning, and proving the other person weaker, or not as skilled, or not as talented as you were. So you could go from arena to arena, city to city, person to person, just telling the same old stories again and again about how you were the 'King of the Realm', the 'Master of Mankind' and the 'Decider of Destiny for the Weak'.

In a fucking video game...

Welcome?

2007-02-17T05:36:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1.

The SAB scriber

It's been 23 and a half years since my last birth. This time, it's 1983. What a time to be just a baby. Too old to be in the foetal position, and not old enough to join the hippie movement in America, smoke drugs, and end up dead in a bathroom....

...in the foetal position.

My folks tell me I've been bothering people ever since I could say the word Mother Fucker. It was the 4th word I learnt. Right after "Mother", "Food" and "Why Not?". They tell me I learnt Mother Fucker only seconds after Why Not. Something about the answer I got. The conversation went something like this:

Mother?

Yes beta?

Food.

No beta.

Why Not?

Because you just ate your kid sister.

Mother Fucker.

I'm not a comedian. Not professionally anyway. I don't like going to rehearsals. I don't exchange ideas, because I think I'm wasting people's time with them. I don't practice. I don't have the patience. And I hate blogs. But I now have one.

It takes real energy for me to do what I do. Which is nothing. I talk.

I talk about everything. From video games to movies to music to food to ideas to opinions and my opinions of those opinions. Often enough I talk to myself, because I feel I'm the only one who understands. I hope to no end, that I will be proven wrong.

This is the first time I've ever used a blog. More often than that I've visited other blogs and made rude comments at people who type comments under the name Anonymous. After that, I wait. And when someone agrees with me, I ruin them for trying to side with a complete stranger against a person they don't even know. I don't like it when people side together for a so called worthy cause. There's always somebody who jumps on the bandwagon to get laid by a liberal. And he succeeds. And the cause doesn't. It's the way of the world. My ideal tells me to be a good man, and should every single person on the planet do it the way I've seen you do 2000 years ago, we won't need clubs, or asscociations or companies or groups of any kind to make us feel better about ourselves through that over rated sense of self we love so much called, "The sense, of BELONGING".

Then I play a violin insrumental from Max Payne, and talk to myself about how impressionable minds can be tricked into following anything that's been decided as COOL to do or say by a larger number of people.

Like BLOGS.

Your comments are welcome. Your hostility will be punished. And the posting of too many opinions is not advised. I am your friend, your lover, your brother, your soul. Please, do not force me to also be, your daddy. We will try to figure out what the real problem in this world is. Good, bad, rich, poor. Why people die, why people hurt, and when it's okay to laugh about it.

This Book belongs to all of you, no less than it belongs to me.

We will talk about life, we will talk about love, if you're a hot chick we will even hold hands. And hopefully, I will learn as much as everyone, about what the point really is.

I talk about everything. I am, the SAB scriber.

*NOTE*

Posts and articles in the Archives will get funnier over time. This is the author's first attempt at blog writing, and he prefers to live life by the trial and error method set by his own standards over the years. Much like the first work of any writer, this space is the foothold of an ideal, no matter how crude or unrefined it may seem, all references in the Archives of the Book Of Lodhism from this end on will be continually improving records for everyone to learn from.

This blog is a first attempt, and just like the writers first theatrical play, he does not expect anyone to like it.

Or even turn up.