Archive for August 16th, 2009
posted from august 12 to 15, 2009
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 16, 2009
note: i suggest you select my category “finance/politics Today” for the most recent posts in all categories
435. The common denominator Prophet: Unifying the Books (August 12, 2009)
436. Feel good nonsense quotations; (Part 1; August 12, 2009)
437. Feel good nonsense quotations; (Part 2; August 12, 2009)
438. The sixth epic war; (August 13, 2009)
439. The Last Day of an epic war; (August 14, 2009)
440. Cease Fire Day of the epic war; (August 15, 2009)
441. The day I registered my blog on WordPress.com; (August 15, 2009)
442. Slightly Atypical Day
Slightly Atypical Day
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 16, 2009
Slightly Atypical Day
Note: I am mining my diary. I am glad to retrieve a huge file in my backup section. I started writing my diary on a daily basis since July 15, 2006. A year before that date I wrote the most atypical events of the month.
June 10, 2005 is the birthday of my niece Joanna. The framework of the unfortunate event is as follow: one of the boyfriends of Joanna, Michael, (still on the Platonic stage), was working on a private luxury cruise yacht belonging to a wealthy business man of the Hariri’s associates for a month and a half. Michael used to send Joanna messages on her cellular; once she received a postcard depicting a typical narrow street on one of the Aegean islands.
It happened that I was reading a French version of a novel by Umberto Eco “The Island of the day before” in which I stumbled on a love letter that a knight was dictating to a love struck gentleman novice. I then decided to translate part of the letter. Then one idea generated another and I purchased a birthday postcard and transcribed the part to Joanna addressing it from Corfu, Greece and ending with the sentence: “Oh lady, you have to agree with me once: isn’t it sad that romancing is dead?”
For a week since, Joanna has been avoiding me and it appears that her ire has no time limit. I thought that she was a funny girl until then but her streak of seriousness is not forgiving or that she was waiting for an excuse to tell me that she no longer wants me around. By and by, I do believe that Joanna has no sense of humor, especially with young lady at this age of emotional turbulence. Anyway, having sense of humor is not similar at all with being funny; having sense of humor needs a mature phase in life when we assimilate that the sun does not revolve around us.
I can now categorize people into four groups: people who have a sense of humor, those who are funny, those who are neither, and those who are still neither but appreciate being among funny people. I created a fourth group to include myself; although I think that I do have a sense of humor; though who will know or notice anyway?
My nephew William organized a surprise birthday to Joanna: he invited three of her current “best girl friends”, (still at the Platonic stages); to wake Joanna’s up at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning with all the chants, cakes, and candles. The whole troop spent the day on a beach in the Batrun region and I was not invited, for obvious reasons.
This turn of event helped me with a decision that I have been contemplating for some time; from now on I will stop meddling with the grown ups kids or trying to be part of their activities. I hope my mom will stop bugging me with questions about the kids’ activities or their plans: I am definitely out of the loop and I refuse to ask them questions of any kinds and would like to learn to respect their so called independence. Obviously, there are consequences to their wishes: I am no longer giving ride to any of them even for fun emergencies or lending money.
“Dry bones”, Dark Age, saving tasteless abridged book versions (for high school students)…
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 16, 2009
Dry bones of abridged book versions; (August 16, 2009)
Fifty years ago, Ray Bradbury had this outlandish notion:
1. that the visual memories of what we had read are stored intact;
2. that a technique will be developed to retrieve the contents of books that we have read.
Thus, the intellectuals who fled from the cities to the countryside, wandering like hobos along the old railroad track that is no longer used, have each of them memorized special book or sections of books waiting for the current Dark Age to be over: the one party rule burned the original manuscripts and saved the tasteless abridged versions.
This new version has a coda by the author, which focus on the new realities in book publishing where the publishers are taking liberty to self-censuring sections and paragraphs that are deemed hurtful to the powerful minorities so that they might sell better and avoid group harassments.
For example, the supporters of dwarf, orangutan, dolphin, nuclear non-proliferation, environmentalist, Neo-Luddite, Unitarian, Irish, Italian, octogenarian, Buddhist, Zionist, Women’s Lib, and so forth want to impose and interfere with aesthetics. Consequently, books that focus mainly on a single gender or race or a nationality or use detailed descriptions on the diversity in culture and life style are vigourously classified as non-publishable.
Most of books are revisited and abridged for high school readers, a tampering that render the style of the books alike; thus, you discover that Mark Twain reads like Poe who reads like Shakespeare who reads like Dostoevsky.
Digressions which are the sunshine, the life, and the soul of reading are scraped in these abridged versions.
Consequently, if we take out the philosophic digressions of Dantes and Milton, then what stays are dry bones.
It is no wonder why every organized minority has as a priority to own its publishing business; it is no wonder that I feel the US novels are all the same in style and composition and thus are no longer exciting if we are seeking variety, innovation, and contradiction.
Cease Fire Day of the epic war
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 16, 2009
Cease Fire Day of the epic war; (August 15, 2009)
This is Tuesday August 15, 2006 of my diary. Israel withdrew from all the eastern part of south Lebanon and withdrew today from Ghandourieh where they lost 35 Merkava tanks three days ago. Only 3% of the Israelis believe that they won a clear cut victory and 85% of the Americans handed victory to Hezbollah. Ramsfield is scared shit of when the Shiaa in Iraq get organized and armed. Blair is withdrawing from Basra (Iraq) by the end of the month; I may conjecture that Blair is trying to leave Iraq before the crazy Bush antagonizes Iran militarily. This time around Britain will have nothing to do with that lunatic of GW Bush.
Nasr Allah offered us a fresh and cool analysis of the aftermath. His speech was mainly targeted to those Lebanese politicians who jumped on the occasion to ask Hezbollah to disarm before Israel withdraw from Lebanon, before the Lebanese prisoners are returned, and before the Lebanese army is ready to take positions along the Litany River, and before the UN compose the multinational forces. He blamed these politicians close to the US and against Syria, and who indeed have no substantial popular support, to go far beyond the demands of the UN resolution or even the attempts of urging Israel to fulfill their objectives in this war.
Nasr Allah promised that reconstruction and compensations to the refugees will commence immediately and that Hezbollah is not about to wait for the Lebanese government to start what it is supposed to do. Saudi Arabia is scrambling to form an association for reconstructing Lebanon to challenge the financial help coming from Iran.
Around noon, President Bashar Assad of Syria went on air and rambled for almost an hour. He congratulated Hezbollah on its victory, lambasted the “half men” of the Arab leaders who provided political cover to Israel to extend its objectives and who never believed in any kind of resistance to the plans of the US and Israel in the Middle East. Assad asserted that the Arab regimes have in fact submitted al their cards to the US in order to engineer a peace process, a decision that not only failed the process but encouraged more blood shed among the Palestinians and worked very hard to restrain any Palestinian independence and self autonomy from Israel. Assad never mentioned the prerequisite of liberating the Golan Highs or how he will subdue the political fractions in Lebanon staunchly opposing the Baath regime.
Assad’s pronouncements generated severe and numerous backlash from the media and the local and foreign politicians. The German foreign minister canceled his trip to Damascus. The reactions to Assad’s speech range from outright opposition to everything that he said to cynical and hidden hatred for this regime that is being further isolated and has no support but from Iran. The main objective of Assad is plainly to calm down the internal unrest of his people who realized that Syria was unable to help the resistance forces in Lebanon or was not willing to get involved, as was the positions of most Arab States.
Hezbollah did not respond to Assad’s speech, and most probably will not, but I suspect Hezbollah is not that thrilled and would gladly be content that Assad did not get himself involved at this junction. Assad’s speech smacks of plainly usurping the victory of the Lebanese resistance forces and implicitly claiming the victory to Syria who was viewed by the Western Nations as the main ally to Iran in the region. What we need is to keep internally united and iron out our differences by ourselves.
The contributions of Syria in this conflict was to supplying electricity to the northern part of Lebanon, some gas, and most importantly permitting thousands of Lebanese refugees to enter Syria, fly from Syria and allowing humanitarian aids to be transferred by land from Damascus. These contributions are important and should convince our antagonistic politicians to learn not to wage vicious political wars with our immediate and strongest neighbor.
I went to the gym around 3:15 p.m. and had a good afternoon; I enjoyed some sun tanning, swam in the outdoor cold pool, used the gym machines, and had a sauna and a hot shower. I met gorgeous girls at the gym doing static bicycles and jogging machine but did not attempt to link any conversation with them. I realized that they were following my footsteps when I was done with the exercise machines. I returned about 8 p.m. for the evening news. Mother was at my aunt Marie to congratulate her on the Virgin Marie Day, her name sake.
Victor and Raymonde visited and dined at Naoum’s, one of Victor’s brother; they took Adrea and Chelsea with them. Joanna has a day off and is not cheerful; she is spending her time doing or creating matrices of numbers and playing with her newly adoptive kitten which she finally called Snowy. William is constantly on the phone, or that’s how it appears every time I see him.
Adonis Diaries 