OxalicOxalicam a recently uprooted New Yorker living in the southwest of America--or Amreeka, as my unassimilated Pakistani mother shrieks. I miss living in a minority-majority neighorhood and seek to subvert the ways of the white majority. Like most Muslims, my Articles
Life's A Beech
2008-04-25 14:05:00 Every day, my fifteen-year-old sister acidly rails against her 99.9% white school. I normally ask her to shut up, her griping is interrupting my TV viewing. If she intends to be successful in life, she better be able to tolerate whites. Or, she may enter the hip-hop industry and whip them into slaves.My sister also derides the "preps" and "scene kids" at her school, as if the distinction is clear (last year's preps, this year's scene kids). While I concede being around MyScene kids robed in skinny jeans requires great intestinal fortitude, I oppose her survival method: disavowing her heritage and selling into Anglo-conformity. Besides, my siblings and I say, pointing and laughing, "Look at your skin pigmentation. If you're not Pakistani, white people will just think you're Mexican."Woefully, her classmates do not understand she is a sand nigger, not a vineyard worker.My sister scorns her Arabic name, so she CHANGED it on her Official School Records without consulting her parents...
Ups and Downs
2008-04-20 02:24:00 I classify today as "miserable." First of all, I squandered the day OUTSIDE with my family. My family is sufficiently intolerable indoors, but outside my mother and father rove around in search of Indian/Pakistani gas stations stocking calling cards. Afterwards, we purchase samosas that taste like dirt-caked grass sprinkled with termite droppings. Yaar, there is no decent Pakistani food in Amreeka. Succumb to high-fructose corn syrup.My father trifled away a hundred years of my life in Hobby Lobby. When he finally emerged empty-handed, I demanded:What were you doing in Hobby Lobby? Looking for a hobby?I'm uncertain what the fuck he did in there, but I was castigated for littering the ground with styrofoam cups during my wait. I do not give a damn about the environment.Second, I would celebrate Basant, but I reside in a predominantly white(washed) area. Instead, I flirted with heat stroke at the park and monitored these fools: In the words of this precocious kid, "I'm ups and downs...
Edward R. Murder You Unless You Respond
2008-04-14 03:45:00 I normally begrudge scriptwriters or journalists who grouse about writing garbage for a living, but that's essentially what I do now—except I earn minimum wage. I toil at a journalism gig wherein I flout the MLA style and alchemize the dull into the interesting. Truthfully, I harbor little desire to be a writer or journalist (too dirty and immoral), but I find myself in these situations because I'm a greedy whore. Also, my work gratifies my voyeuristic impulses. What other job gives you the liberty to shadow strangers and reconnoiter their workspace for "research?" I am finally a professional stalker. Watch me watch you!It's an ideal job for a student who dislikes interacting with other humans (since it pays me to).Occasionally, it results in awkward encounters, like when a counselor I interviewed decided I would make a great patient. O' hey, are you fucked up? Here's my card.After an interview with a gold medalist javelin-thrower and pole-vaulter (who enjoys Jesus as much as... More About: Murder , Edward
Bollywood
2008-04-05 19:24:00 For my cultural edification, my mother recommends that I view Bollywood films to reconnect with my heritage. This would be tolerable if: (1) We were Indian, (2) Bollywood wasn't so dumb and stupid.Although Bollywood occasionally churns out a few original, watchable films (though I cannot recall the specific titles), for the most part it creates formulaic and derivative imitations of Western films. What's so special about these ersatz plots punctuated with lip-synced music numbers? Well, haven't you dumb hipsters heard? They're "exotic" and "foreign!" Don't you feel so "cultured" and "urbane" watching something that promotes the superficiality and frivolity of the upper echelons of Indian society?My problem with Bollywood is not its egregiously awful writing and over-acting (maybe it is? why else would I mention it?), but the fact that it fails to bring the real heart of Indian society under the camera. Bollywood is NOT real Indian society. Furthermore, it's not entertaining FA...
I Can't Even Make This Up
2008-03-28 14:57:00 On the subject of my anthropology class, a male classmate incautiously remarked women are more "motherly" (sure, insofar as men are more "fatherly"), sparking a savage outcry from my feminazi teacher. She charged at him like a bull, growling menacingly and roaring "AAOOOGGGGHHH!" like a certified madwoman. She then gestured crudely like an untamed animal. The classmate SMACKED the teacher with a notebook.Feminism is always license for battery.Anywhistles, because half my (cla)SS-mates think of nothing but Hitler, someone brought up the hypothetical trial of living in Nazi Germany as a Jew and smothering a baby to protect a few lives. Yes, I know, this has nothing to do with anthropology. I told you—my class is full of Nazis.At least they are familiar with Nazism though. There's a middle-aged woman in my class who arrives late, with disheveled hair and soiled lumberjack attire. My teacher had to explain Nazis feel a moral imperative to exterminate Jews. The old people in my class ... More About: Make
White Man's Buffoon
2008-03-27 02:33:00 In my anthropology class, the teacher habitually mispronounces words like quasi and Eid. She holds a degree from Harvard.A discussion about the Yoruba began "I know this will go over everyone's head." It rouses my ire when she patronizes us because I think Africa is intensely fascinating. I even defended it in the past from an impudent Bengali who characterized it as a "shithole." Funnily, "shithole" is English for Bangladesh.My favorite moment was when she blithely told a Scotch-Italian that his heritage was nothing more than a "quaint artifact" with no relevance to his contemporary American identity. It's heart-rending no one's cultural background captivates a room like my teacher's, with her half-white slave roots in South Carolina—except, of course, the Mexican girl in the sixth row who's joining the convent. The Vatican is paying for her life! Jealousies! I want a lifetime caretaker! Wait, is that a nursing home? Commune? Cult? Good to know I can enjoy the same services... More About: White
Brie
2008-03-24 05:06:00 The only thing worse than being rich or famous is being rich and famous. I would fret incessantly about the grime-splattered public trying to steal my money, crack my Swiss bank account, infiltrate my personal circle with clever machinations, and eat my tub of Brie cheese. Worse, being a celebrity means that the paparazzi will learn my place of residence and publicize it to the filthy rabble. This is why the rich buy islands. Burglars cannot afford a sea voyage. I must protect the cheese!I should worry about things that actually concern me, like this report on the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China (who would impale me with kebab skewers for not typing East Turkistan).
We Go to Great Lengths to Appear UnPakistani
2008-03-20 22:06:00 In this state of barren farmlands, untethered ruminants, and disgusting twangs, most people own a "game room." Contrary to common belief, this is not where they store all the wild boars killed on weekend excursions into their hundred-acre backyards. This is a place to relax with arcade games, sunlight, and testosterone technology. Ours is equipped with a ping-pong, foosball, and pool table. Now, I think these things are a grand waste of money we don't have, but every time I kvetch, I get called a whiner. Maybe my father believes a trio of table games will distract the Americans from the more 'Islamic' activities we host.To prevent it from falling into desuetude, I've converted the pool table into a makeshift desk for the laptop that never works. As for the ping-pong table, my Chinese neighbors play it more often than I do. My only interaction with it is when I stub my toe on and then glare at it. My favorite of the three is the foosball table, which I do actually use conventiona... More About: Great
My Retarded Kin
2008-03-17 22:44:00 My brother has never played with other children. There is no one his age to associate with or strike with blocks. He lives vicariously through a cartoon sponge. His involvement in the world is limited to brief chats with a sneeringly morose clan of immigrants. He seems like a prime candidate for social awkwardness or a learning deficiency, although I'm not terribly concerned since I have low expectations for him. As long as he avoids a jail cell or drug den, he will have bettered the family's social standing.He practically feasts on markers--not the most salubrious item on a grocery list. Toxic chemicals have yet to outsell broccoli at my local produce aisle.I once read that TV viewing prior to age one will ultimately diminish a child's intelligence and foster crippled social skills. If I abduct someone and violently compel them to procreate with me, my kids will not be introduced to television until they reach second grade. By second grade, it will help foster ties with the idio... More About: Retarded
P'u'n'c't'u'a't'i'o'n Police
2008-03-14 02:09:00 I have no respect for individuals who feel good writing is a product of austere orthodoxy to the rules of the English language. They pepper their sentences with bitter punctuation and rigidly uphold arbitrary rules that bridle their words and choke it of flavor. They're so afraid of. stepping. outsID.e of the establi s h ed N O rm that they never stop to consider that such acts of crude solecism might symbolize creativity or originality. Isn't mastery of a language best demonstrated by the way you reconstruct and rape it? Not that people should IGNORE or subvert rules that are intended to help the reader, but they should not become acolytes in the Church of Grammar, Syntax, and Diction, waving flags with inflammatory rhetoric such as "Slang will burn in hell!," or "When You Don't Punctuate, You Ride With Illiterate Hitler." I guess my main gripe is with people whose writing is PERFECT structurally but otherwise BORING. Stop picking on defenseless people without commas, insecure c... More About: Police
America, You Know Where To Shove That Hamburger
2008-03-02 18:04:00 When I criticize the United States, it is out of love and affection. My boy America is afflicted with a few behavioral problems, but I care enough to fix him. Or throw a rock at him and entreat white men to fix him.My relatives in London criticize the United States out of sheer malice. Thanks to European propaganda, the Brits view America as a pimpled fat kid who trips on his own pants when he unbuttons them during his seventh serving of chocolate cake. They're sitting in the audience, roaring with laughter. America is the best comedy on Earth, and every nation is seated in the theater-going assembly. Everyone wants to strike America with a rod and set his skull on the scaffold to make it a perfect evening. Truthfully, I doubt Europe wants America to reform its foreign policy or tone down its brass--it enjoys BASHING America so much for sport (debuting during the Beijing Olympics). The unifying force of the EU confederacy is contempt for America. Now worth more than the euro.It's ...
Except The Travel Channel, Maybe
2008-03-01 17:41:00 This past Eid (not "Muslim Christmas"), my lilliputian cousins drove half a day from the hick capital of the Cherokee nation to regale us with their biting wit, painful jabs, and three-day-old McDonald's leftovers. Being dark-toned Pakistanis in the Native American prairies has made the brats even more bizarre. I'm confident visiting relatives would say the same about us, as transplants in the Bible Belt, but this is distinctly worse. As former residents of Ronkonkoma, Long Island, they feel an affinity to Native American culture that progressed to a point that screamed KIDS, WE MUST RELOCATE TO THE CAPITAL. You simply cannot move over 1,000 miles to a random location and surprise your wife: "Honey! Look, mo' Injuns!" One of my bite-sized cousins is addicted to meteorological phenomena and monitors them with religious zeal. In the era of Disney Channel and the rouge-cheeked Zac Efron, something even I am helpless prey to (I deserve to be flogged), his favorite channels ... More About: Travel , Travel Channel
The Grey Lady's Maladies
2008-02-27 13:48:00 Why are readers of the New York Times synonymous with "cultured, sophisticated intellectuals"? Why do so many college students brag about the fact that they read the New York Times? It's hardly an onerous activity, unless you have a brain.It's excusable to read the NY Times if you misplace your television remote, but why do people make resolutions to read it? It's not as if you are bringing Christianity to heathens. You have performed nothing of high moral value!To characterize the average NY Times article:SubjectInconsequential crap that relates to prosperous whites, favorites are weight loss fads and yearly recounts about the woeful state of college admissions.StyleHyphenated, avant-garde prose dressed in diacritics.Span8 pages of logorrhea -- this new trend blossoming among Manhattan's literati is of the UTMOST IMPORTANCE.The exception to the rule is foreign events that do not concern the affluent intelligentsia, in which case the length is truncated to a single page. Sorry, ... More About: Grey
The Democratic Primaries
2008-02-27 02:18:00 I awoke in a chipper mood yesterday, so walked outside and voted for the anti-Christ. I may not be Latino, so all those Spanish television ads may not be targeting me, but I am a confirmed human being, ergo my vote counts. In your face, Florida and Michigan--you're not a member of our species.In the Democratic camp, I selected between two alluring candidates: one is a conniving socialist who wants to rule America under her painted fingernail (Clinton). The other candidate is a "black" man who wants to invade my homeland to demonstrate he has no compunctions about bombing a Muslim country. Ruminate on a cost-effective alternative, Obama: change your name.I also voted for a railroad commissioner and a cluster of other offices I had no idea the public citizenry democratically elected. I simply cast my ballot for the least objectionable name. It was irksome, since I identified with the immigrant, but then I vacillated--no, the Latino will garner a bundle of sympathy votes, let me vote ... More About: Primaries , Democratic primaries
I'll Probably End Up At A Liberal Arts College
2008-02-25 15:15:00 Occasionally, I mail colleges for materials for my collages. I'm a miser, adamantly refusing to buy anything for my artistic endeavors. I'm the only person in the universe who asks for junk mail. Amassing garbage is my forté.. my sole reason for living (I was tempted to put the French joie de vivre in there, but I execrate Americans who abuse French phrases. Choke on a stale baguette, wannabes).Anyway, I'm favorably inclined toward the liberal arts colleges. It's something about the elitist don't worry, squander $50k/yr majoring in Classics, but tell your parents this will lead to a lucrative career in law tones emanating from the glossy prospectuses that makes for ideal cut-outs. If anything, you're saving money on your Peace Corps application! Plus, they're pretty! Recyclable! I usually insert "Collage" as my first name and jumble up the letters of my last name. Once, I received a handwritten response. How often are prospective students named "Collage?" Shouldn't it aro... More About: College , Arts , Liberal
How Many Teenagers Did You Assault Today
2008-02-16 15:19:00 Preface: I wear shalwar kameez everywhere but school, where I'm enough of an eccentric-pariah without immigrant clothing.Instead of welcoming me inside the store, a doddering Wal*Mart greeter said, "WELCOME TO AMERICA! ARE YOU A CITIZEN?"I made the mistake of wearing my brighter clothes that day. As my mother says, I traditionally dress like I'm Shia. In her eyes, color palettes successfully differentiate Sunni clothing (happy-go-lucky preps) from Shia (mournful goths).Additionally note that the only morons who employ "Shi'ite" instead of "Shia" are non-Muslims who still spell Muslim "Moslem." -Ite is a Latin suffix. Why would an Arabic word recruit a Latin ending? Only the Americans and the British nosedive into that nadir of linguistic stupidity and thereby perpetuate the error."WHICH PART OF INDIA ARE YOU FROM?" he continued to hackle, as I sidestepped him in search of discounted toothpaste.The part that wanted to exterminate India's population like cockroaches, old fogie.... More About: Assault , Today , Teenagers
Solitude and Remorse Cannot Coexist
2008-02-14 01:47:00 I will stop at nothing to enjoy solitude in an elevator. This morning, I was standing blissfully alone in an elevator, when l I noticed two panicked students in a mad dash to accompany me. With their extremities within clear dismemberment possibility, I punched CLOSE DOOR. Unfortunately, my classmates slithered into the elevator in the nick of time. Don't you hate it when you unexpectedly find yourself with two people whose hands you just tried to hack off? Happens to me all the time, so I played nonchalant. Anywhistles, now that I have a nebulous thesis roasting in my brain, I should type it out and let it turn into charcoal. Let's go, Olaudah Equiano. More About: Solitude , Remorse
Welcome to Nowhere, America
2008-02-11 13:34:00 Realization: I've never set foot on the other side of the street. My rationalization is twofold:My neighbor is a portly woman who only leaves her house to chain-smoke. I've deduced this from countless neighborhood surveillance sessions (civic vigilance helps stave off local crime).My neighbors worship the devil (i.e., dogs).Where would this housing subdivision in the rural prairies be without its community and satellite television? More About: America
15 Weeks Later
2008-02-10 19:15:00 Somewhere between October 2007 and today, I opened my illegally cracked edition of Photoshop to stage a comeback, but I swiftly thereafter grew uninterested? Hungry? Malarious?The question persisted--why am I sharing the mundane trivialities of my life with strangers? I could more fruitfully apply that time to learning how to paint.. or multiply.. or divide..I do not like blogs, bloggers, or the blog world. I feel unnecessarily obliged to catalog the events of my day to "entertain" the faceless multitudes. Unfortunately, I must conform to the medium or risk ostracism. The most embarrassing thing in the world is a herd-less lemming. Or is that headless?After flirting with a Neopets addiction, though, I learned there are more pathetic things to be in life than a blogger. Try "anyone above 13 who needs to nourish a hunger-stricken Usul."This is a temporary ugly layout. A better ugly layout is forthcoming. More About: Weeks
Markus
2007-10-24 22:50:00 Despite the fact that I have an androgynous e-mail address (coined by a poet who humanizes Satan), I never expected to be the unwitting recipient of mail from a newly transplanted Bangokian in pursuit of his long-lost schoolmate. A long-lost schoolmate who is male. Spam me with letters for male enlargement and induce fear that my nonexistent PayPal or Back of America account has been hacked into, but refrain from sending mail if you're a real live human being. Sweet shish kebabs, it's as if no one honors my neatly defined laws of decorum these days. I sincerely believe that any profound breach of pattern should be deemed criminal. After all, I'm conditioned to anticipate mail solely from addresses with irregular characters, often tied to a transparent ruse to plunder passwords. I'm one of those unhinged, change-averse freaks that will run screaming at the approach of anything new (was I the only one who squirreled underneath her mattress following the iPhone release?). However, ...
Home & Hearth
2007-10-23 16:25:00 My father's benevolent company is flying the evacuees of the California wildfires a distance of a thousand-odd miles so they may resume their work at a less flammable branch.What enervated employee doesn't desire an all-expenses paid vacation away from work.. to more work.. at a branch divorced from civilization? Nothing quite spells "relief" like:More uninterrupted soul-crushing work,Worsened by impromptu flight and hotel arrangements,Coupled with the potential news of a burned down house,Tripled by the inconvenience of confirming the loss of a comfortable abode over a swath of barren land spanning 1,300 miles, away from relatives that name you in their wills and spouses that cook dinner over the charred remnants of the front door. There are undeniable perks, though. At the relocated branch (centrally located in the Middle of Nowhere), the Californian employees are invited to spend their breaks ogling lamebrained bovines outside their cubicle windows.I believe employees received ... More About: Home , Hearth
Wastecrime
2007-10-15 16:58:00 Why are people so averse to writing about nothing? One of my modest goals in life is to ascribe meaning to minutiae. For example, my blogs from high school (these were private and never public, so this is like reading a shiny new entry unburdened by the constraint of relevance):Math: I was the first person in the room! I said 'Good morning!' to the teacher and sat in comfortable silence for the entire period. I didn't ask the kid who sits behind me for the pen he borrowed yesterday because it seemed belated and inappropriate, and I hadn't given him a very nice pen to begin with. But I continued to squander the bulk of the period imagining how he would respond, unable to do anything but mourn the loss of an inanimate object once in my possession. I imagined our hypothetical conversation thus: "Do you have the pen from yesterday?" His eyes would flash with a remembrance, and the kid next to me would snicker at my return request for a pen I have little need for when I'm already cr...
Plotted, But Not Parallel
2007-10-08 00:27:00 I guess I could tell you about my life, but I've cultivated a moderate distaste for an immoderate degree of self-analysis. By most accounts, my life is replete with luxury and excess. I reside in one of the richest, most agonizingly patriotic countries in the world, delight in novelties like plumbing and stable/transparent governance, and plus, thanks to America's post-WWII corn surplus, I can now enjoy a steady intake of high-fructose corn syrup while reading about the unbridled evil of, well, the Axis of Evil. Also, unlike Alexander the Great, I will probably live past the age of thirty-three. It's not as if I am an ordinary teenager in Afghanistan, a low-profile nation notorious for housing a few hirsute extremists in the early 90s supported (insofar as their existential struggle against the Soviets ran) materially and morally by the Americans and Pakistanis. As anyone with even a meager knowledge of foreign affairs understands, Afghanistan has a drug problem. Well, ...
Tehrangeles
2007-09-26 18:01:00 American pollsters are more dangerous than terrorists. First of all, they have credibility. Terrorists are comical. However, pollsters circulate the ignorance of the American population and provide a cogent argument for their genocide better than any angry Arab I've met. Plus, they create adorable tables, charts, and graphs intellectualizing the argument. Muslims just blow shit up. Instead of a nice PowerPoint presentation, we'll supply a live-action demonstration. We're not ones for subtlety or pie charts.It is a grave misstep to associate countries with their respective heads of state. Ahmadinejad is not Iran, nor is Bush the United States. There are some exceptions to this rule, notably in societies overrun by a cult of personality. Kim Jung-Il is North Korea. Turkmenistan was the deceased Niyazov, the orphan who cobbled up a gilt statue of himself revolving around the sun because, well, that's what loveless, obscure dictators do when the Soviet Union crumbles outside their ...
Signing Off
2007-09-23 00:17:00 I dislike the unavoidably social nature of the Internet in 2007. In fact, if I could prevent one important development from ever gaining ground, I might select the Internet.I always attack the vehicle by which I communicate my ideas. I'm either subversive or stupid.One of the most portentous signs of this and all successive generation's impending ills is the fact that The Next Food Network Star has a MySpace account. To me, this signals that we are so handicapped by the advent of social networking that we cannot enjoy anything without broadcasting and cataloging it on the Internet. Indeed, this impulse to share would make Barney and Mr. Rogers proud (characters that allegedly bred our uniquely special "specialness"), but it simultaneously highlights that the Internet is now so pervasive that it is inescapable.Aside from actively destroying and upending the music, film, and porno industry, the Internet feeds a disposable culture of onanism; intensifies anxieties; spurs illusory i... More About: Signing |
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