Lazy

Greetings weblings
I have to recognize that I haven't been updating my blog as regularly as I'd want to. This is due to the fact that my flat has been a construction site for the better part of two weeks, and I can't really find a place to sit and write. Well, the good news is it's almost done. So I promise some prolific blogging this weekend. Get ready for some very pointless entries.

Nas

The Quarterlife

(You can also read this entry on Musa's blog at www.tariq.me.uk; but I'd rather you read it on my wonderful wonderful blog. No offense Moose. Shamless self-promotion here.)

I’ve pondered some pretty useless questions in my time. For example, if mobile phones are so dangerous on a plane, why do they let 400 people board with one in their pockets? Or how can a washing detergent get your clothes whiter than white, surely white is as white as white gets.

But occasionally, by some unexplained force of nature, I focus my attention on an issue that’s important. To some at least. In this case, I’m focusing on something I know for a fact affects a whole lot of people around me. So, through the following ill-prepared, poorly-researched assemblage of words, I’ll try to bring solace to you all. I’ll be dealing with the quarterlife crisis. “What the hell is this?” I hear you grumble into your Saturday morning coffee. Let me explain.

Most of us are aware of the midlife crisis. This is the age when most people’s fathers, who have been balding for a few years and watching their midsection grow exponentially over their exasperated Dunhill belts, purchase a sports coupe and run after leggy blondes called Svetlana. The quarterlife crisis, on the other hand, is an altogether different affair. As the name indicates, it hits us in our mid to late 20s. And it mostly doesn’t involve balding or shiny red sports cars.

"What the hell do I do? Is there anyone else who can relate? What is my passion? Will I ever meet the One" are among the perturbed questions on www.quarterlifecrisis.com. With 10,000 registered users and 1 million hits per month, it's a place to meet, gripe and help each other out. Characteristics of the crisis include: confusion of identity, insecurity regarding the near future, insecurity regarding present accomplishments, re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships, disappointment with one's job, nostalgia for college life, tendency to hold stronger opinions, boredom with social interactions, financially-rooted stress and loneliness. I know, I know. Reading the list was a comfort to me too. It’s nice to know you’re not the only one out there. It’s also the first step to emerging from these feelings.

Entering the real world can be a daunting undertaking, and no one makes it easy for you. Life at university is a breeze. Social interaction is facilitated within the confines of the campus. Feedback on your work is regular. Once you are thrown out of this little utopian hippy-fest, you find a world full of backstabbing and office politics. You might have a job you like, but lack the security of knowing you’re going to keep it regardless of performance. You can buy any gadget you want, but you have to watch your overdraft. Life in the early 21st century is a bizarre and disorientating cocktail of extreme comfort and insecurity.

As with every human ailment, imaginary or otherwise, this one has spawned a series of self-help books. A quick browse through amazon.com and you’ll find “Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis: Advice from Twentysomethings Who Have Been There and Survived." Like all self-help books, this is a load of useless clichés. The only thing this books helps to do is prop up a wobbly table. The quarterlife crisis is a rite of passage. We’re all bound to go through it. The questions and regrets it fills us with can be constructive. Re-evaluation can be healthy. So can nostalgia for college life. The good times you had back then can be recreated till you physically cant get up to boogie anymore. It just takes a bit more willpower.


“When I found him in Mill City that morning he had fallen on the beat and evil days that come to young guys in their middle twenties” - Jack Kerouac.

“Well, 23 is old! It's almost 25 which is almost mid-twenties.” – Jessica “The Brain” Simpson

Divine Favor

Something struck me the other day, as I was watching archive footage of Slobodan Milosevic, some people are mind-bogglingly charismatic. I mean, this man was referred to as the Butcher of the Balkans, yet his presence on screen is magnetic. How scary.
Some research into charisma was called for. A few clicks later and I discover that to the early Greeks, charisma was said to be "a divine favor/gift" or "gift of grace," implying that this 'divine quality' was an inborn trait. The source of this is Wikipedia, so it is probably inaccurate. But nevertheless, this was all very interesting. The article was even illustrated by a picture of Bill Clinton and his dog. I'm supposing they were implying Bill was the charismatic one.

Even renowned sociologists have seen charisma as some sort of superhuman trait. Max Weber defined charismatic authority to be one of three forms of authority, the other two being traditional (feudal) authority and legal or rational authority. According to Weber, charisma is defined as "a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which s/he is 'set apart' from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader."

Conventional wisdom would have us break presidents and politicians down along party lines, but the real divide, in the public imagination and history books, is the gulf between charismatic maestros and bland statesmen.

One of the shadier sides of charm is the development of a cult of personality. Cult of personality is a term for what is perceived to be excessive adulation of a single living leader, especially a head of state. The term was coined by the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev in his 1956 "Secret Speech" denouncing Joseph Stalin to the 20th Party Congress. Personality cults are usually an ailment reserved for totalitarian, authoritarian, or highly traditional societies, especially those with a strong revolutionary consciousness. The reputation of a single leader, often characterized as the "liberator" or "savior" of the people, elevates that leader to a near-divine level. Lack of education amongst the populations is very conducive to this, since degree-holders are usually less entranced by megalomania.

A charismatic leader acts as a link, allowing you to give in to the giddy togetherness of a peace rally or a game of football. You forget yourself in his company and climb into the palm of his hand. Of course, for every breathtakingly charismatic individual, there is an antithesis. A charisma black hole, if you will. The most shining examples in my book are the grumbling, dishevelled British Chancellor Gordon Brown and presidential candidate John Kerry, the human lullaby. I would feel no giddiness climbing into their respective palms.

A Year On

It has been a year since the massive protests in Beirut. Cedar Revolution, Intifada of Independence, call it what you will. A lot of us have become very disillusioned over the past year though, as we've seen the country slide back into petty arguments and deal-making. This isn't a political blog, so that's all I'll say and I'll leave you with two sobering quotes .

"Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates." - Gore Vidal

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies" - Groucho Marx

Bukowski

Morning everyone. This entry is meant as an answer to people who like the title of my blog. I cannot, sadly, take credit for it. It is the title of a collection of short stories by Beat poet Charles Bukowski. Here's a little bio I took from the Academy of American Poets' website (www.poets.org).

Charles Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany on August 16, 1920, the only child of an American soldier and a German mother. At the age of three, he came with his family to the United States and grew up in Los Angeles. He attended Los Angeles City College from 1939 to 1941, then left school and moved to New York City to become a writer. His lack of publishing success at this time caused him to give up writing in 1946 and spurred a ten-year stint of heavy drinking. After he developed a bleeding ulcer, he decided to take up writing again. He worked a wide range of jobs to support his writing, including dishwasher, truck driver and loader, mail carrier, guard, gas station attendant, stock boy, warehouse worker, shipping clerk, post office clerk, parking lot attendant, Red Cross orderly, and elevator operator. He also worked in a dog biscuit factory, a slaughterhouse, a cake and cookie factory, and he hung posters in New York City subways.

Bukowski published his first story when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. His writing often featured a depraved metropolitan environment, downtrodden members of American society, direct language, violence, and sexual imagery, and many of his works center around a roughly autobiographical figure named Henry Chinaski. His first book of poetry was published in 1959; he went on to publish more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including Pulp (Black Sparrow, 1994), Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 (1993), and The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992). He died of leukemia in San Pedro on March 9, 1994.

The Globalization of Clubbing

The only explosions you’ll hear in Lebanon this weekend, are the booms and bangs accompanying the latest purchase of human-sized bottles of champagne at uber-club Crystal. The Lebanese capital has reclaimed its reputation as party capital of the Middle East since the end of the Civil War. Simultaneously, a couple of thousand miles away, revellers will be flocking to London’s West End nightclubs to dance away their mortgages.

Each city has its very unique clubbing dynamic. Beirut, for example, is a city where couples go out clubbing. Paris is the same. People in London will look at you like you’re some freak of nature if you go clubbing with a significant other. “What’s the point of it”, they’ll say.

On any day, Beirut is a city awash in the opulence of post-war excess. Conspicuous display of wealth is the norm. You don’t even have to be wealthy either. Actually, the less wealth you have the more you’re likely to want to prove you’re Lebanon’s answer to Onasis. In London, such decadent behaviour is frowned upon in society at large. But once you cross the velvet ropes and enter the one of its members clubs, of varying degrees of trashiness, the equation changes. Sparklers accompany champagne and so on.

The similarities don’t end there. The anthropological dynamic between attractive young women and wealthy old gentlemen is present everywhere. As my friend Lawrence says, “It's like watching the Discovery Channel but the experience is far more visceral”. However, certain differences remain. Spraying champagne is a big no-no in London. While this is happily done in St Tropez and Beirut, spraying the bubbly in London will get you kicked out of a club. As I witnessed last week in Pangaea, which is a place described by one reviewer as being on the “trashy side of exclusive”. That’s probably why I like it.

Crystal is Beirut’s answer of the Jermyn Street temple of glitz, glam and money: Tramp. Filled with beautiful women and men, the theme of this nightclub is champagne and the clients buy it by the magnum. Names are shouted out over the microphone, to acknowledge every hole burnt in every pocket. I’ve heard stories of people renting bottles, or getting store credit to purchase them. I think these people miss the point of clubbing. It’s about your friends, the music, feeling a vibe and sponging off the unique human energy these places contain. It’s not about one-upmanship.

It’s nothing surprising really. The Lebanese spend money they don’t have, to buy things they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like. Maybe it’s not a purely Lebanese characteristic. Maybe we are just the caricature-like extreme, and this is a more widespread ill.

Of course, no trawl of Beirut’s clubs is complete without a late visit to world famous crypt-like nightclub BO18. This is probably our equivalent of Fabric or Turnmills. It’s a debauched and decadent club, for the hardcore of Beirut’s clubbing fraternity the music is techno and tribal house. The roof is regularly opened up to reveal the stars. The fleeting glimpse of the dawning sunlight on the horizon is usually a pretty good indication that you should be heading home.

I don’t know if you noticed, but I feel a need to compare clubs. As if feeling that Tramp is similar to Crystal will mean a 3-hour trip to one will feel like I’ve crossed the Mediterranean magically to savour the delights of the city I miss.

I used to think Lebanon was an abhorrent example of superficiality gone crazy. Some sort of all-day, all-night orgy of amnesia designed to forget years of war and bloodshed. After three years back in London, however, I realize this place is just as vain and the people just as needy the redeeming solace of a plush club overflowing with beautiful people. Welcome to the globalization of sparklers and redemption.

(How ironic that I should be writing this an hour before I head off to the West End)

Ode to the Designer Plastic Bag

Ok. So today I'm cheating. I've been busy dealing with the construction site that my apartment has become over the past week. So I'm posting a poem I wrote for a Post-modern American Poetry class I took a few years ago when I was at AUB. Enjoy. Or not. :)

By the way: You can look forward to my review of London and Beirut clubbing tomorrow. Its quite the anthropological piece. It has Money, Sex and Power. Goodie. You'll be able to read it here or on my friend Musa's blog (www.tariq.me.uk)

Note: The weird structure of the poem is intentional. It isn't your web browser playing mind games with you. It's something about structure influencing the reading of it. Or something. It was a while ago. (This note was in response to Ghadi calling me a technologically incapable buffoon)

Ode to the Designer Plastic Bag

Prada intoxication

Alone,

all you can buy

handbags.

blend of

glossy

magazine scents,

aroma of

heavenly-priced coffee

freshly

upholstered interiors,

whiff of compassion.

luminous

metal,

blinds

beautifully

the

clap

pit

ty

clap

of heels ricochets against the

gleaming

window-fronts,

perfectly

groomed

devotees

trot the street

Intoxicated

Alone.

Counting Sheep

The record for the longest period without it is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes. A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours less of it for parents in the first year. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which deprivation from it played a role. What am I talking about? No, not that you perverts. Pff. It's sleep. Glorious, wonderful sleep.

Why do I bring up this most random of topics? Well, it was my intention to submit a blog entry last night. However, I awoke this morning to find myself on my living room couch. Exhaustion and the relentlessly miserable winter months have caused me to fall asleep like a baby at the ungodly hour of 8pm. Hence: no blog entry.

As it is my unwavering duty to provide you with a daily dose of my non-sensical babblings, I thought I should concoct a quick blog entry whilst on my Tube ride to work. What better subject than sleep, I thought to myself. Rather than bore you with details of various stages of sleep and dream interpretation, I'll tell you about a friend of mine.

This friend, who shall remain unnamed (anyone who knows him will recognize him instantly), has the most amazing ability to sleep in any environment. He is famous in London for having been kidnapped by Morpheus (Greek god of dreams and sleep - sorry for the condescending explanation) on the most improbable of occasions. He has fallen asleep on pretty much every single one of his friends' couches. I think he considers this some sort of rite of passage in his relationship with people. He has even caught a few z's in a number of London's top clubs.

On one particularly eventful night, said friend (some of you have figured out who it is by now) was dancing away on the chaved-out dance-floor/whore-house of happening London venue Mo*vida to the beats of the latest misogynistic Hip Hop offering. When I turn to say something to him, the most splendid of views was offered to me. He'd fallen asleep. Standing up. In the middle of a dance floor. Granted, he had some sort of structural/decorative column to rest on, but still. This man must have been the most sleep-deprived individual I know, or the laziest. I'll let him decide. Actually, I'll get him to comment on this piece.

If you're wondering, the facts at the beginning of the story are brought to you by the Australian National Sleep Research Project. What is the most troubling of their experts' findings? One of the most alluring sleep distractions is 24-hour accessibility to the internet. God save us all.

Cedar Envy

I have recently reached the ripe old age of 23. This means I have to deal with the usual quarterlife crisis issues. For those of you gleefully unacquainted with the symptoms, they include (but are in no way confined to): insecurity regarding the near future, insecurity regarding present accomplishments, re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships, nostalgia for college life, boredom with social interactions, financially-rooted stress and loneliness. Being Lebanese in London, I have the honour of adding an identity crisis to the list.

Lebanon has been a diasporic nation for the better part of a century. Wave after wave of people have left its sunny shores and snowy mountain tops (insert Ministry of Tourism cliché about swimming and skiing in same day here) to find better, safer or more lucrative lives abroad. Lebanese migration isn’t merely a product of the tragic civil war, it goes back much further. We are a nation of impatient, excitable little children. We like exploring and selling stuff to people too much to stay in our tiny little piece of land. As always, I will quote someone more eloquent than myself. In this particular case it is a great Lebanese exile, Amine Maalouf, who has made me so jealous by hitting the nail smack-bang on the head: “We all love Lebanon, but we cultivate the passion of exile”.

The Lebanese are in no way unique in their diaspora, although we love to think we are. Diasporas are the product of large-scale migration and nation-state formation in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Emigration has resulted in cross-generational dispersal of people and introduced them to new cultures and states. It is faced with this novelty that a sense of diasporic belonging evolves (I promise to keep the academic nonsense to a minimum). I only listen to Haifa, watch LBC or eat Fattoush when I’m London. This makes me Lebanese here. The second I’m back in Beirut, I can’t stand the sound of anything vaguely Lebanese. It’s what I call selective patriotism.

Now, I grew up in London. I’m British. But I’m also very Lebanese. I have always felt a sense of attachment to that country, even though I only lived there for 6 years (which roughly translates as 5 car accidents, there’s a conversion table somewhere). What I’ve noticed in most post-colonial societies, is that when you emigrate, you tend to go back to your old colonizer. Just look at Algerians in France, Indians and Pakistanis in the UK and so on. By that logic, I should have ended up in France. Many of my friends and family ended up there, but I got lost along the way. I can assure you it was not my penchant for drizzle which attracted me here.

So in London, I am Lebanese and I am a minority. My friends here are Palestinian, Kuwaiti, Jordanian, Saudi. The only vestige of my colonized ancestry is my French schooling. Followed by American and British universities, classic trajectory for your average Lebanese male. I feel out of place here sometimes. I feel the need to cross the Channel to get a taste of some Parisian rudeness and laziness. I need to feel part of the community of Lebanese there, which includes some of my closest friends. I also feel the need to spend all my holidays back in Lebanon. You can never dissociate yourself from the place. There’s always that nagging question at the back of your mind: ‘When should I go back? When can I? Do I want to?’ In a sense, I think Lebanon is like an ex-girlfriend. You had a great time together, but you grew apart. But sometimes, just sometimes, when its dark and raining and you feel depressed, you have the absurd idea that it might be a good idea to get back together. And it never works out. You get over each other, but you can still have coffee from time to time.

As Real As It Gets. Innit.

I have had an admittedly elitist approach to reality television.

In the past, I have looked down upon fans of the genre with a generous amount of disdain and a smidgen of pity. However, the continued (and mind-boggling) success of these shows has led me to revaluate my, now admittedly unreasonable, stance.

Reality TV has rapidly come to occupy a place at the forefront of contemporary culture on a global scale, just ask the winner of Pinoy Big Brother in the Philippines. Some say the genre was initiated by the now stale-looking Candid Camera. Oh, how things have changed. No reality show worth its salt would have less than 16 contestants battling out in a house equipped with 500 cameras and 14000 microphones nowadays.

There are academic as well as more general debates on the subject of reality TV. I’m not familiar with either in any great depth, as I spend most of my time watching reruns of Friends on E4, so please do not expect any life-changing history-making judgements from me. However some of these issues are pretty straightforward. Hell, even I got them.

A few decades ago, it was easy for a lot of people to gossip about their neighbours. (‘Ooh, did you hear about Maureen and the plumber. Oooh’)
However, in the 21st century, most of us would be hard-pressed giving a description of our neighbours to the police, contenting ourselves with ‘He was a very quiet guy, always polite’ if he turns out to be a mass murderer. So gossiping about what some camp hairdresser from Romford is doing to his fellow housemates on television seems like an appropriate substitute.

Of course, reality TV is also a representation of wider social phenomena. In the post-9/11 world we are all very conscious of the surveillance that now takes place in most Western societies. So wanting to do some surveillance of our own seems like a sort of new natural inclination. We are also in an age where the construction of celebrity and the importance of fandom are more prevalent than ever before. Couple this with new technologies (which aren’t so brand spanking new anymore, but still…) such as texting and the internet, and Big Brother was bound to take off.

I also never realized, in my old pompous ways, that the politics of representation are key in these programs. Minorities are often fairly represented in a very real way in the genre (hence the name, I guess). Contestants from immigrant communities are as present as any other. Women can assume any role they want; they don’t have a male-written script to adhere to. Gays and transsexuals have a forum to express themselves, with less fear of being judged or discriminated against. People from lower income categories can become heroes to people from their own communities, who are the ones voting for them. For proof, just take a look at the newest Princess of Chav, Chantelle.

The French writer Frederic Beigbeder says it best: “The viewing public has been humiliated. Will they get revenge? Yes: by applauding the latest Big Brother winner louder than they applaud Nicole Kidman”. They are applauding themselves, so its quite understandable.

You Are Not Your Blahniks

Over the past few years I have come to a resounding realization. Women care about two things: chocolate and ‘Sex and the City’.

The former I have no issue with, being quite partial to the occasional Twix bar myself. However, the latter makes my blood boil and here’s why.

The HBO show aired from 1998 to 2004, and followed the lives of three successful thrity-somethings and one forty-something (see, I have watched it, so my ire isn’t baseless). Carrie Bradshaw and her three best girlfriends trudge through the chaotic landscape of singledom and female sexual activity in the new millennium in New York. The show features every swanky bar you can think of in the Big Apple. How 17 year old girls in Beirut relate to this is still beyond me. I digress.

One of the shows main objectives was to break taboos about sex and single women. Which is to be applauded. The taboos it breaks though, only bring up clichéd perceptions of independent sexuality in the 21st century.


My problem with the show, much like my problem with Cosmo (which Musa seems to love for some reason), is that it not only perpetuates clichés but creates new ones for women to follow. Surely this whole business of women needing a closet full of shoes is, in part, a concoction of this evil show. Women can apparently find happiness in the perfect pair of Blahniks or Choos (Manolo and Jimmy, and their bankers, will undoubtedly not share my dislike for the show). Nonsense. This is materialism gone wild. Bradshaw summarizes it all: "I like my money right where I can see it - hanging in my closet." No comment.

Don’t get me wrong. It is often an entertaining half hour. The cast is very likeable. The women are very attractive, and I would have no quibbles being involved in any episode (although my lack of hunky good looks might be an issue).The settings are enjoyable. But it’s a soap opera, ladies. Not a divine message. This isn’t something to live by. This doesn’t define your womanhood. I think it says more about the show’s writers, who are statistically in majority gay, than it does about women. The plot is often superficial, and Carrie’s supposedly deep thoughts for her weekly column are trite and laughable at times.

When I hear friends say ‘Oh my God, I’m like so like Carrie’, I can’t help but audibly sigh. Just like when friends say ‘Like oh my God I’m like so like Chandler’ (please let me indulge in this caricature of my friends- and no, they’re not teenage Americans). They’re not like anyone. These are sitcoms and soap operas. You are not like Carrie. You are not like Chandler. You are yourselves. I, for example, am a tall somewhat geeky Lebanese man. I can’t relate to a New York socialite with matinee-idol looks and no credit limit. And I’m proud of it.

So don’t take relationship advice from a bunch of overpaid actors, take it from your friends and follow your intuition. Be your wonderful unique self. I’m sure you’re far more interesting than any of these one-dimensional characters.

To paraphrase Tyler Durden in Fight Club:

You are not your Blahniks. You are not your Cosmos.

(Oh, and you want a decent HBO series? Go watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. Now that’s genius.)

And so it begins...

Greetings,

I've been saying I want to write since I was, oh let's say, five. So, having posted a couple of blog entries on a friend's site and gotten positive feedback, I've decided my fears that I will be publicly judged and ridiculed were unfounded (fingers crossed).

The first two posts are the aforementioned posted-on-a-friends-blog pieces. Because I'm lazy that way. Expect more judgmental scribblings to come very soon.