KAFFIR! DEVIL! PANIC! and Persepolis

We all must've heard of Nessma TV's blunder of airing Persepolis.  I am appalled at the reaction which could have been more civil.

I have watched Persepolis, my dad works in media content monitoring, and I tell you this movie was not offensive to the point you have to break into the building and harass the staff about it!

And for the most part the scenes where "God" appears, are 3, all of which are crucial to the plot development and especially to the girl in some important stages of her life, and naturally blend into the story, especially when the first depiction appeared in the protagonist's dream as a child. I believe we all as kids imagined what God would have looked like one way or another!

And I can see the relation that Nessma Tv probably saw fit at the time to link the Iranian revolution and the Tunisian one that lead way to bigger things in the middle east. And it probably saw fit also that  it was in french and with Muslim issues.

It could have been avoided if Nessma simply bothered to freeze the screen at those scenes right before "God's" appearance, and just leave the voice. Leaving the task of finding the deleted scenes to the smart Tunisian public who CAN accept and interpret it artistically.

I believe most of the rage was due to the fact many people failed to understand that Persepolis is NOT (like many other animation) for kids. But I think it's a valuable addition to animations that you must see!

Then again, we are the same people who claimed Pokemon is Zionist (embarrassing era I tell you...) and accused everything coming from America to be a plot to kill our precious precious fertility.

 

Why can't we get over these thing and start looking where it REALLY matters?
Like rationally answering religion-related questions without condemning the inquisitive one to hell... Kids grow up with double standards out there (I admit I am guilty of some of that too), they pay attention to stupidest of things and pretend to not acknowledge the big misconceptions created for society's convenience.

Or teaching our kids it's OKAY to be of different genders, and that eventually you'll have to live with the opposite gender and have offspring with them, therefore you have to start right and learn to accept and respect them. (I'm looking at you, male-kind!) And not segregate them like some kind of contagious disease.

Conveniently numb

This is probably one of my less cheerful posts, but I feel we all relate to this idea.(of course heavily inspired by one of my favorite songs "comfortably numb".

We read miles and miles of papers about how some people just let go of their dreams to regret and reminiscence about them in the later years, but deep down inside, didn't they just do it willingly because they were somehow afraid of success and the devotion it would require? Not to mention try and take pride in the current achievements (that are mostly natural results for the lifestyle took up?). The bitterness will linger, because they will see the life that they ended up taking is the reason why they gave up on what they could have become.

Others managed to block the negative thoughts out completely, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing... They block emotions and passions that were once the reason they got up in the morning, they turn into zombies, living the same day over and over, talk about the same topics, complain of the same things, heavens forbid you don't want to stand out! No matter how human will that make you!


It sickens me how we're all enslaved to convenience. It's not even that comfortable!


I don't even know how this even came to my mind... you can move along now!

Hallo Ich bin ein Grammar Nazi!

 Looking randomly for something to mindlessly read while I have my coffee, I came across "spelling" contests. It makes me wonder, how come we never had this in school? I mean surely enough I always loathed dictation, in Arabic, English AND French. But now I think we hardly spelled enough, call me a sadist but I will make sure my kids will get plenty of dictation contests....

I mean did anybody else notice how the only reason the proper usage (not necessarily proper spelling) of English is on the rise solely because of mbc4, mbc2 and the likes? They are re-learning English from movies...

Our new source for "Anglish", double negation, and other linguistic impediments.

 And let's be honest, are they only watching movies that promote proper English? I guess Oprah (which long over back in the US but we're still re-running it...) is the closest they ever are getting to proper spoken English.
This mess of a learning process is quite a bad idea when combined with literal translation from Arabic.
 Allow me to demonstrate:
"Open the light", "Are you angry from me?". Well maybe this was the old problem  non-english English speakers had (not necessarily aware of having them...), now it's been replace with "I kno im gud thx y r u nt cumming over no more? I dowanna u t b angry on me" or something equally frustrating that sets my Grammar Nazi radar through the roof. I am not and-never-was perfect at spelling but I was sure as heck very attentive to the mistakes I make.

You know what else gets to me? when you type in txt lingo while using a normal keyboard through a website that perfectly allows you to send messages that are "infinity characters"* long! Am I the only young adult who still uses coherent sentences in mobile messages?! Or is it just my tolerance to bad spelling is rapidly decreasing?... "Hi H R U?" is enough to drive me up the wall, I don't care how nice this person is, how much trouble he went through his life, how much he had to strive through his\her "Edjukayshun". Spelling, like hygiene, is not exclusive to a certain class or financial situation. 

We don't pay enough attention to our kids, and now they are becoming what kids in the west probably were 10 years ago. While the west is combating their decades-old mistake we are rushing to pick up their trash and filter through it for some recyclable stuff that we can poison our kids and young adults with.

Talking in broken multilingual fragments to your kids is definitely gonna teach them the language...NOT!  NO! IT WON'T WORK! Teach them PHRASES...Grammatically CORRECT phrases! Kids will pick up the right usage, even if they don't get how the grammar works, they will still be able to distinguish the flaws phonetically! And eventually (provided you've shown enough devotion and didn't rely solely on school) They will THINK in that language.

And maybe years later, they will be able to write actual correspondences, resumes, motivation letters without relying on spell check! And most importantly they might ..just might  integrate proper spelling and grammar into their daily lives! 

Now that I put my two cents...or two fils.. or balsa.. or any other copper-plated coined currency of your choice...Back to our regular schedule.

Happy spelling!


*by "infinity characters" I mean Enough to write one long fully-spelled coherent sentence. 

Skype: It's like you're with me..for our wedding?

So as I was having my morning coffee and doing my work (which consists of skimming through online articles related to the UAE), some irrelevant news manage to interest me.
like this particular article on  The Huffington Post.

The first couple is quite understandable, they were together and couldn't fly back home for their wedding, the second couple however, left me skeptical. So the guy is in the hospital with lung infection, and his bride to be miss Oh (maybe short for"Oh what have I done?") but yeah maybe its just me, but I guess lots of people in the US will do it for media coverage.

Naturally a Skype wedding with the bride and groom apart is bound to be more celebrated than if bride simply flew to his hospital in California (assuming she absolutely couldn't wait for him to recover), I mean, how fatal is lung infection compared to a dying cancer patient, in terms of attracting media attention?

When I skype I barely care about my upper half. I could be wearing a potato sack for pants for all I care.. Maybe the bride opted for financial efficiency and skipped the bag and shoes.
Did the all the bridesmaids fit into the camera frame? Did the priest Skype from the local Church as well?

I don't know about you guys but if I show this to my gran in Algeria she'll say something like "pfft..May God block that cave you crawled out from!" الله يسد الغار إللي جيتي منه. Pearls of wisdom indeed. I love my grandma, too bad she's in the advanced stage of Alzheimer's now.

What was I getting at is, life gives us precious moments, let's stop ruining them for convenience's sake!

Religious Hoaxes:They still make (and believe) those?

So as I was peacefully doing my work I somehow ended up surfing one of those many many many arab Forums...

You know..The ones with one HUGE font post and loads of  pictures that are a repost of a repost of a reposted repost? The ones with a single starter post and the rest of the replies are merely variations of "مشـــــــــكــــــــووووووووووووووووووووووووووور على المساهمة!" followed by an even bigger signature usually containing some passive-aggressive statement of how everybody is gonna die for not loving the post writer, and loads of glitter graphic that puts myspace profiles to shame....

In case you didn't notice,I never liked these forums, don't get me wrong, I do go on some of them and I find some good useful info (*cough*still a repost..*cough*). This is all fine and dandy! BUT! What I hate the most is religious hoaxes, whether it's by anti-muslims, Arab athiests or the followers of great jumping god schmockarumba....It remains a darned hoax! Stop reposting it..stop being amazed at it and most importantly stop bashing those who revoke it!  

The one with the Quoran bashing girl-turned-ape-, or the one with the Djinn in a cave, or the friggin' apple with "Allah" on it...well...took them long enough to realize it was a hoax...
Now the post I came accross this morning went something like this ..

قطة تموت وهي محتضنة القرآن

أنهت السيدة أم طارق قراءة القرآن ثم ذهبت إلي المطبخ‏,‏ وحين عادت لتستكمل ما بدأته وجدت قطتها من النوع الشيرازي نائمة محتضنة المصحف الشريف‏,‏ فأبت السيدة أن توقظها وتركتها لتستيقظ وقتما تشاء‏,ثم أخذت تشغل وقتها بترتيب المنزل وعادت بعد أكثر من ساعة لتوقظ قطتها من سباتها العميق‏,‏ وكانت المفاجأة أن القطة ماتت علي شكلها المبين بالصورة‏,‏ فتعجب أفراد الأسرة مما حدث وزاد تعجبهم أكثر حينما أخذوا بالقطة إلي أحد الأطباء البيطريين الذي قام بدوره بالكشف عليها‏,‏مؤكدا أن الوفاة حدثت بشكل طبيعي‏ ..!!

The story in short is, "This cat died embracing the Quoran!" And it states how the cat died of natural cause...etc etc. Does this look like a picture you'd take of a dead cat? Unless you have some sick fetish, you wouldn't grab a camera and take this picture at such a photogenic angle!

This certainly made me feel sick, and embarrassed. most likely this is a picture taken by an artist on Deviantart of his\her own pet.

يا أخي لا تفولوا بالشر على القطة المعترة! 

Now that I have gotten this off my chest... feel free to move on. 

If you're still sipping your coffee, care to share your experiences with similar stories?