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Made me smile.

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Look, there’s even a whole Wikipedia page about the show.

(Thanks Rozeen)

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She enjoyed the feeling of muffled senses; no sight, no sound, no conversations happening anywhere outside her head.

The book on her screen was not difficult reading material. She preferred to stay away from books that made her think too much of their content. It was more intellectually rewarding to fatten up her own thoughts as she read the simple words of someone else. That’s why she enjoyed science fiction and fantasy: they were a celebration of unreality written by intellectual bad-asses. They provided just enough inspiration to get her own mind to wander.

Today, her mind was thinking of returning points.

She liked points, all kinds of them. She liked points that served as fullstops. She liked points made. She liked points in a bulleted list. She liked points as decoration. She loved checkpoints in video games. There was something so brave about points, and she liked bravery.

Points were, essentially, an end to something. They put to rest a thought, a phase, a life.

She liked endings a lot, because she lived for beginnings. Without an end, you are stuck in an aimless, numbing middle. Unlike the artificial state of numbness that she had currently placed on herself, you can’t usually control life’s numbing middles. They are the natural state between the beginning and the end, and she tried her best to keep middles short.

Today though, it wasn’t endings that interested her. Points, yes, but returning points. Ends that you could come back to. Ends that you could revisit. Ends that you could change. Ends that were not really ends at all.

She had somehow recently made the realization that life was in fact not about ending points. Humanity was in constant fear of reaching points that cannot be changed. Humanity was in a constant stage of avoiding points of no return. She hated to admit it, but she was like that too, in some ways.

But she wasn’t as smart as most people, because her love for beginnings often pushed her to forget to create returning points. She dove right in, falling headfirst into the shocking, cold hardness of the end. It was violently revitalizing; an endless cycle of dusting off and getting up, head high.

Yet from today on, she thought, it was going to be different, because she could suddenly see returning points. She was not even aware of their existence a couple of days ago! She observed people building them, playing a careful balancing game of push and pull. Oh, too much here, remove a little there, break it before it forms! She didn’t know if people were aware of the game they were playing, or if it was just instinct and self-protection kicking in.

For a second, she felt rage and hate towards the cowardly world. It isn’t about sticking to decisions, she thought, oh, no. It is about following things through to their end. It is about finishing the damn book. It is about finalizing the project to perfection. It is about completion.

Life is not about returning points, she decided, smiling. There will be no middles for her. There will be beginnings. There will be endings.

So she sat in that coffee shop, with muffled senses, trying to understand returning points.

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For those of us who remember the early 90′s, the WTF goodness comes from nostalgia. For those of you who don’t, well, just enjoy the video. I’m actually totally inspired by the Bedouin-meets-80′s-Disco style. It’s different, to say the least. And it’s actually a good song.

I wonder what happened to all these people (were they the ones involved in a porn film scandal?). Amman was such a cool place in the early 90′s.

Even better, a much more recent song by the band:

Check out the Asian chicks singing Arabic and the whole Wiccan theme. SO FREAKIN’ COOL.

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I live by this code of “no hope”. No inshallah’s. No maybe’s. I was taught by my parents that hope is futile, and that you control your own happiness. I owe them very deeply for teaching me that. Our culture in the Arab world is a culture of hope and tomorrows (We’ll free Palestine… One day!), and my parents taught me to control what I can control, because we only live one life, eh?

Anyway. Here is the beautiful text (so beautiful that I spent an hour typing it up on my iPad). I strongly urge you to read it.

Cheerful Despair by Andre Comte-Sponville

“Nature is blind; our desires insatiable; only death is immortal. [...]

I wished to escape from it [despair] and to show that happiness is not something to be hoped for but something to be experienced here and now. [...]

Tragic wisdom is the wisdom of happiness and finitude, happiness and impermanence, happiness and despair. This is not as paradoxical as it might sound. You can hope only for what you do not have. Thus, to hope for happiness is to lack it. When you have it, on the other hand, what remains to be hoped for? For it to last? That would mean fearing its cessation, and as soon as you do that, you start feeling it dissolve into anxiety. Such is the trap of hope, with or without God — the hope for tomorrow’s happiness prevents you from experiencing today’s.

“Would I ever be happy, if only I were happy!” sighs Woody Allen. But how can he be happy, when he is hoping to become so? We all tend to reason this way. Forever grasping after things to come. Forever filled with hope and fear. [...] We are cut off from happiness by the very hope that impels us to pursue it; cut off from the present (which is all) by the future (which is nothing).

Pascal summed it up brilliantly: “So it is that instead of living, we hope to live.”
[...]

As for foolish people, [...] how can they be happy? How can they stop fearing?
“There is no hope without fear,” wrote Spinoza, “and no fear without hope.”
We usually think of serenity as the absence of fear, but it is also the absence of hope; thus, it frees the present moment for action, knowledge, and joy! [...]

The path is clear enough. The wise act; the foolish hope and tremble. The wise live in the present, wishing only for what is (acceptance, love) or what they can bring about (will). [...] Such is the spirit of all wisdom, no matter what the doctrine. It is not hope that spurs us to action (how many people hope for justice, but do nothing in its favor?); it is will. It is not hope that sets us free; it is truth. It is not hope that helps us live; it is love.”
[...]

People who hope for nothing cannot be disappointed. People who desire only what is or what depends on them, who are content to love and to will, cannot be weary or embittered.”

Hope for nothing. Work hard. Be happy.

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Hattip: Y

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The question I often get after I rant about that, even by my most intelligent friends, is: “But if women want to dress like that, why is it your business?”

Let me tell you why it is my business. Let me tell you why it is YOUR business.

I don’t post YouTube videos, so when I do post one, you know that you must watch it, right? Here’s one that’s very much worth the next eight minutes of your life:

I know that the video is America-centric, but if you want, you can ignore those parts and just concentrate on the importance of imagery and media.

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Today, I came upon this link that shares the really awesome letterheads of some celebrities, and my heart ached at how boring corporate design is.

Check these beauties out:
 

Andy Warhol

Bob Kane (Batman creator)

Einstein

Frank Lloyd Wright

Leonard Cohen

Ray Charles

For the rest, visit the Web Urbanist.

Hattip: DesignHubME

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It isn’t often that you run into the words of a person who manages to deeply affect you, simply through her words. It isn’t often that you start caring about a person you never met, and who has no idea you exist. It isn’t often that you shed a tear over the death of a person you didn’t know.

But yesterday Ola Muath died, and the tightness I felt in my chest upon reading the news was suffocating.

Ola, with her beautiful spirit. Ola the fighter. Ola the strong. Ola the honest. Ola the unique. Ola is gone, and we will never read new words on her blog again.

An excerpt from a post in January 2011:
“if you were wondering how do I look these days? I would say I’m no
different from “Buddhism – Buddha’s followers -” that we know … pretty
casual, and COOL :).”

I urge you to honor Ola by going through her blog, Moles, which is courageous and heart-wrenching documentation of her battle with cancer. Its unabashed bravery is a unique case in Jordan.

The death of a woman who fought for something we all take for granted is also a great reminder of how short our lives are. In the words of Steve Jobs: “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

 Of course, different people are humbled by death in different ways. I personally am the worldly kind, and I love the Holstee Manifesto:

In honor of Ola and people who still have to fight with cancer on a daily basis, I urge you to make a donation the wonderful King Hussein Cancer Center. 

My 2 years niece saw me counting my drugs last night adding a new one to them,& she said:” Kol Hadooool ya 7abebee:)”oh how much I love Joj!

— Sha100 (@shammless) November 17, 2011

My thoughts are with Ola’s family.

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