But fasting isn’t really about fasting!

Yes, indeed. Ramadan isn’t about just not eating. Well, it is, and also not drinking, and having sex, and fun, and a social life, and cloverleaf interchanges.

But it’s not only because God is a sadist, no. She’s not sadistic at all, it’s more about learning to control your natural urges and innate instincts, in case you ever end up stranded in the desert with no one there to give you water or food. Of course, that just can’t happen in real life. This country is very densely populated – by exageratedly hospitable people, so even though you end up being in Médéa because the latest Tassili Airlines (yeah, right) flight crashed, you’ll find an old sherpherdess more than ready to offer you Kaltes Klares Wasser and to kill he favorite ewe’s newborn, just because she’s awesome like that.

Now, one could claim that it is so very artificial to control their natural urges, for they are, erm, urges, and there for a reason. However, it’s so very cool to say that you can go without food for extended periods of times, it helps during these shitty weekends where absolutely no bus will come pick you up from the suburbs, or to have an excuse to be anorexic or masochistic outside of the bedroom. You could be – for whatever reason – the master of your own body and resist the closeted hedonist in you, and, it’s pretty cool, no?

Of course Ramadan doesn’t really count if you’re the kind of person who just sleeps all day long and stays awake all night and who stops physical activities and travels and all that jazz, because looking for loopholes doesn’t really make you strong. On the other side, fasting doesn’t make you strong, either, you’ll end up all skinny like Buddha.

Hmm… I wonder why he’s always portrayed as a fat man in gold, then.

Abolished.

Yesterday, while in the bus returning from the bus station, there was no place to sit. Even after crossing the Faubourg de la Gare, and some old man went out, I still had no place to sit, but I made myself a place to sit. There was this woman with her daughter, and I sat next to them. I never really knew three people could fit in that northwesternmost seat, but well, it’s the case. She (the woman) wasn’t clearly distinguishable behind her gliterry headscarf and the many layers of make-up, but I could see an expression of shock in her face. Now, it’s not a too common sight here for members of different sexes to sit next to eachother in public transport vehicles, except if you’re a prole, or in the crowdedness of suburban Algiers. But I am repeating myself. She was even more shocked after the bus merrily passed three quarters of perfectly-paved driveway on Main St., and then took a sharp right turn at Les HLMs.

Even though she obviously had an accent that is from the valley, she shouted questioning the bus cashier why the bus didn’t stop on Main St. in shock, to which he responded that Main St. had been abolished. Of course it has been, but he makes it sound so spooky, like a dystopian vision of a free-market capitalism run amok with a supermall down the river drowning all money from the inner-city shops and murdering the middle class. But it’s not. It’s getting decentralized, and well, I prefer buying my jeans from my borough than ten times more expensive in Main St. just for the rent. I explained to her that the Province decided to move the Main St. bus top two streets south of Main St., to ease congestion. That’s a good one. Shouldn’t there be bus lanes instead of bus-free boulevards for the comfort of the customer? Apparently not. She then came out, with the kilograms of paint on her face, and the glitter on her headscarf, and the headscarf on her glitter.

And then I thought: has beauty been abolished too? Did women lose the self-confidence in the Goddess in them, and decide it to be necessary to play Picasso with their own pores, and then also hide their hair because it is so horrible and unfixable its perception by the outside world has to be prevented so that major catastrophes do not occur? What the fuck is wrong with you, world? First, we bastardize the Black is Beautiful movement and want to become Fair & Lovely. So not very handsome. Then, we forgot how beautiful nature is and want to become superficial ghosts that can only appeal to people with a Transcendentalist fetish.

But after a while, I stopped thinking, for I’ve been thinking and thinking, and there’s been nothing I’ve thunk, and then I noticed that the bus missed my stop, and then, an intersection later, the cashier checked if anyone was to be expulsed here, and I yeaed, to which he yelled “Champ de Manouevres – Est”. Phew, I had fears my neighborhood has been “abolished“ too!

Top ten potential birthday or Christmas presents – for everyone!

I never really understood why a family composed of an atheist with Muslim parents even celebrates Christmas… But well, we do, kinda, so Christmas should indeed have its place in the title of this blog entry.

10-Something comestible: everyone likes food. Really everyone. You might’ve forgotten to bring your friend an actual present, but if you pick up some chop suey, add tacos, and fine chocolate. They can’t possibly be pissed at you!

9-A stripper: nothing you can say about the très Hollywoodesque stripper-jumping-out-of-the-b’day cake moment. It is a crucial in the development of young lady and gentleman. Not-so-socially liberal folks might not necessarily find this too rad, though.

8-Shopping coupons: let’s be honest: it’s not only the thought that matters. It only does when your loved ones are on the verge of dying, not when you are during a gift-e-ory phase. But then, just giving money is the other extreme: you wouldn’t really know that “friend” of yours if you’d simply give them money. However, when you give them a shopping coupon at a place that sells stuff related to their hobby (i.e. a swimming retailer, an obscure electroclash online shop, a Germanophone bookshop), then it’d be very thoughtful as you know that person very good if you knew exactly what to give them. A tip: Amazon Wishlists, you

7-Hispanophones: it’s always useful to have one of these by your side, especially in Hispanophone countries like the US or France. They’re like chapstick or cell phones. You never know when you need them!

6-Slaves: slaves can be used for a variety of purposes: to do your homework, cook, clean the dishes and house and clothes; while those of the gender the gift-receiver is attracted to can serve as sexual slaves. But for those that aren’t too much into psychological games, a visit to the local whorehouse might do it too. Hence, #6 very obviously intersects with #8 and 9#.

5-A visit to the local shrink: everyone can use a shrink. A visit to the shrink will make your friend not only less annoying, but it’ll be benefitful to everyone else that will interact with them later in life, and to the friend in question too as they’ll be less often burned at the stake rejected, and Karma will give it back to you, or something.

4-A secret: everyone has a secret that even their very best friends don’t know. If you tell your friend one of your very deepest secreets, they’ll be rejoice-y. It doesn’t have to be truth, just seemingly true – and it shouldn’t involve a third party (it’s not like anyone votes for these, anyway) or be the secret of someone else. Abuse of trust is so 1984.

3-Wanderlustzufriedenstellung: a German word meaning “satisfication of wanderlust” (you don’t need that translated too, now do you?) – as in a gifting them a trip abroad (for Christmas), or having the birthday party per se abroad (obviously for birthdays). However, you’ll probably need to be economically well-endowned to get all of your friends to that place too. Or just spread lies so that they all leave your friend and only you and them’ll go – or simply murder the others if you’re both poor and socially-leotarded. That’d be evil, though.

2-A random book: infallibe. Even if your friend is illiterate.

1-Something you made yourself: it doesn’t necessarily have to be, it just should look as if it is something handmade, with  love put into its making, and as if it needed a lengthy amount of time and a lot of effort to make it.

I can’t help you if you don’t help yourself.

Humans are social animals by nature, so it’s totally normal that we occasionally need one another’s help from time to time, no?

But what really bothers me is the kind of person that expects your advice to be something like a map to attain Nirvana, a plan explaining to them how to get to Valhalla, and that it is something they have to accept blindly like a religious text and reach Salvation. Why can’t people actually use their brains and mold your suggestions to match their current situation and exploit it for their benefit instead of using it as a strict, rigid, recipe for success?

You also have to do something for your own happiness and not be emotional baggage your friends have to carry, because, constantly lamenting about your life won’t make it better – you’ll just lose time, and saliva, which are among the most important things ever in life as we all know.

You know, spoilt milk, and stuff, right?

As Algerian as a fennec.

Now why do some think that they’re the ones to set “rules” defining one’s appartenance to a national, ethnic, or (sub)cultural group – as if they were the one to invent it and who limit its borders and draw the line where you go from being so or so to being this and that. Or that you can’t be this AND that, because this contradicts with that too much. Lavender bollocks, I say.

For example, I pretty much identify as an Algerian – that’s what I’m supposed to do at MUWCI, right? To represent Algeria in this intellectualist multiethnic hodgepod and melting pot of cultures. But well, a bunch of folks might totally disagree with my being Algerian. I might be too inverted for some people’s taste. You know, I just imported homosexuality – no historical figure in this figure was a member of the Pansy Division or the Order of the Amazons.

I might as well be a way too heathenous, hypocritical, unbelieving – in the eyes of others, for the Jews that moved here during 50 BCE or after the Reconquista, the earlier Pagans, and the Christians all don’t matter. Neither do the Ibadites of the Mozabite Valley that were chased away from Tiaret during Mediaeval times, or the Shites that actually made this country rock for a while. Let’s not get started with the irreligious great writers and politicians that contributed to making the literary and diplomatic landscape more fertile. All Your Base Is Belong To The Sunna.

I could also be too westernized for others – like, how DARE I watch Grey’s Anatomy and not the live transmission of the parliamentary session that Saturday? And then, there’s the few that despise my liberal political leanings, because it’s totally unalgerian to think that women should have civil rights too and that non-natives will enrich us both economically and culturally, and not threaten the Lebensraum of the glorious imaginary Algerian race. Or is it the fact that I still identify with my Berber roots as much as with my Arabized culture? Isn’t the fucking diversity that makes being Algerian so awesome?

Apparently, not. But, I don’t give a care – I am as multifaceted as it gets, and I actually reconciliate and do not drop parts of me that apparently seem to be contradictory, because I can’t deny what made me, me – I will grow up, change, and go through many phases and stages. I have a personality so varied it is already approaching schizophrenia or bipolarism. So get used to it: I am a lefty heathenous nonheteronormative lefthanded Algerian World Citizen, and wannabe Third Culture Kid, and if you’re not comfortable with it, well, you can suck my left one.

Nature “versus” nurture?

When it comes to sexual orientation, people always seem to ask whether it is something “acquired”. or something “innate”. People that follow the former doctrine are mostly among those of the super-conservative, usually homophobic camp, and those of the latter are liberals that sometimes tend to cling to recent scientific discoveries too early and propage them at a pace faster than of a Victorian brushfire or of herpes in a downtown high school.

Here’s my oh-so-valuable input:

Primo: why does it have to be only one of these? To you liberals, I say: as a social animal, the human is surrounded by other members of their (wow… being gender-neutral can be so unaesthetic), humans are surrounded by other members of their species, so we can’t deny that our interpersonal interactions with others did not have absolutely any impact on our personality, and hence on one if its most important aspects: our sexuality. But it’s probably not very crucial. Seducing a heterosexual of your own gender doesn’t work. Trust me. And to you super-duber-conservatives: go fuck yourself. It felt good, now didn’t it? You should try doing that more often – and you won’t grow any hair near your palms or turn blind. Trust me.

Now, I have to tell you that even though science isn’t always right (at least it’s evolving – until certain other books certain people base their legislation on), there is always a grain of truth in what it says. Okay. You might not necessarily accept dinosaurs, racial minorities as full citizens, or giving women the right to vote, work, or wear pants – BUT COME ON! Do you really think that we homosexuals are only homosexuals because we have absolutely nothing better to do? There’s more than three billion of each sex, that’s plenty – not a penury! We ain’t doing it because of the… um… social benefits or just to annoy you either, or to avoid pregnancy. There’s actually something called condoms, or abortion (wait… there isn’t) – you should try doing these too. Try doing something else, like getting rap-fans to like indie-punks – you have a higher chance of realizing that than of making a breeder outta me. (Hmm… people should study musical tastes from a nature vs. nurture perspective).

Secundo: Even if it were a choice, why does it matter who I fuck? As long as two (or one, or three, or more) consenting adults (and not animals or children – yes, Michael Jackson, children don’t count as consenting adults) feel good doing something, or many things, or absolutely no things at all, who are you – for God’s Sake – to tell them to stop? I also don’t care about the rumble in your jungle, either (Now, I’m not an adult, but at least I’m above the age of consent). But no, this is something totally different and shocking and requires actual people to know why it is like that. Remember what last happened when we tried doing that? Yes, kiddos, racism. Now it’s pretty obvious that I have this hair texture and this skin tone because it comes from my ancestors – thanks, I already knew that, Science – but people stopped doing that because it started being used to justifiy the superiority of races to others, to legitimize slavery and institutionalized racism, among others. Eugenics, anyone? So don’t forget that either – the biological theory isn’t faultless,either.

TEABAGGING!

One, two, three, four,

We want peace and not war.

Five, six, seven, eight,

Words for peace and not for hate.

Nine, ten, eleven, twelve,

them bigots are getting on my nerve.

thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,

they live in a world of fantasy and dream.

seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty,

in their mouth they need a bag of tea.

That’s not quite smarth growth.

Smart growth is a pretty sweet idea, and definitely something one should opt for to revitilize cities, but… It has to be planned. And it’s not something you should do everywhere. It’s quite useful for larger cities, where mixed-use developements help reduce both distances and land use (two very obviously correlated things), but who would voluntarily do it in a smaller metropolitan area?

I’m writing this because that wonderful authority that is my municipality is slowly but effectively finishing the development of a nearby… thing. I’m not sure what it is. But, the thing is, they shouldn’t have started working on this at all. First, that park isn’t public property, it’s technically owned by the owners of the two blocks surrounding it, as even though this is a social housing estate, no one actually rents anymore – most people own their flats now.

And, as aforementioned: this is a rather small metropolitan area, we have enough room to built it elsewhere in more commercial areas and leave this intact as a purely residential neighborhood. But, it’s not the first time municipal administration failed over here. Even the organization of streets is lamentable. STREETS! That’s one of the basic things you have to master in order to form a succesful, independent local government. Here’s the problem:

There is a rather large intersection at the northern end of this neighborhood:

1. the street coming out (…) north is the former route of Province Highway One. It still carries trucks going to the suburbs, and several bus lines that don’t even stop here, and despite many humps, is still a rather quick highway, even though schoolchildren and mosque-goers have to cross it to get from their homes to the neighborhood school/mosque (via the bypass, which is surrounded by a dump). There’s also the parking lot of an opposite neighborhood which forms a third exit, and another one for the new… thing.
2. turning left, there is a street paralleling the former Byzantine City Walls. No one lives there, besides a few trees and a coffeeshop. Buses stop there, and trucks are forbidden from entering it at any times. No parking whatsoever, and with a very low maximum speed. All of this is so that the trees ain’t disturbed during their sleep.
3. turning right, there is a sucky street where most people park, and even more buses stop. It’s quite populated, but not as much as ours, and it’s a small street, so the parking is a problem for buses or ambulances going to our only hospital through that street, or stopping at the neighborhood pharmacy. Right. And the few villas that are nested down there.
4. the southern part is going to Main St., with not-very-problematic-traffic. The exits for this part of the highway are for the city hall’s parking lot and even more villas.

Does anyone see that 1 has to be swapped with 2 and 3 with 4? Yes. Lots of people. Just not my mayor. Well, he really ain’t “my” mayor, actually.

Note to self: become an urban designer.

I’m proud of you, Google

Yay. They did it again (not exactly in the same way as last year, though) and well, that was very considerate of Gayglers (no, that’s not gay googlers, that would be too simple – it’s rather LGBT Google employees) this Pride Week. It might as well have been a coincidence. Nay. That would be too simple. It’s probably because of the LGBT Pride month, which Obama “inaugurated”, even though Clinton did the same (without the B and T) nine years ago. But hey, at least he did that.

So, to recapitulate for these of you who stil didn’t notice: if you enter queer-related terms into that fancy search engine we all use on a daily basis, like “queer”, “gay”, “bisexual”, “homosexual”, “lesbian”, “transsexual”, “transgender”, “civil unions”, “domestic partnerships”, or “marriage equality” as in our example, you’ll get a rainbow in pride colors (see screenshot). Purdy, ain’t it?

Happiness.

Happiness is subjective, but even the objective is subjective. I think we already did that.

But, it’s really subjective. Really. For some people, partying until early in the morning is a way to be happy. For some people, it’s sex. For some people, it’s anything that involves their loved ones in any way. For some people. it’s money. Well, whatever it is that keeps you going, you should do it, as long as it makes you happy, and doesn’t really inflict too much pain on others – that’s my life philosophy, the rule I live my life according to.

Now you might wanna know what makes me happy? I don’t know. But I’m sure it’s something specific that I do, but the many little things that actually happen to you. It might be the noticing that you’ve got all sweaty after getting “crunk” in the dorkiest way ever with friends of yours in a public place letting your inhibitions let go and not give a fuck that people are staring. It might be vegetating around as the most sober schmunks ever at home, and babble about everything and nothing at the same time. Or it might be remembering that poem you read last night and liked very much, or the young stranger that gave you a Duplo in the Paris Metro. It might as well have been the lady you don’t know that is smiling at you for no appearant reason from the opposite-direction-going train at the right, but, well, for now, I don’t think it’s something material for me.

I am happy.