so i get this message in my e-mail today:

Subject: Nokia Offer
Sent: October 12, 2004 4:17:49 AM
Dear all,

> > Please pass on to all your friends & relatives the
> > following e-mail
> > from Nokia. Nokia is giving away phones for free.
> > Nokia is trying
> > word-of-mouth advertising to introduce its product
> > and the reward you
> > receive for advertising for them is a free phone
> > free of cost. To
> > receive your free phone all you have to do is to
> > send this email out
> > to 8 people (for a free Nokia 6210) or 20 people
> > (for a free Nokia
> > WAP). Within 2 weeks you will receive a free phone.
> > (They will contact
> > you through your e- mail address). Please mark a
> > copy to: –
> > anna.swelam@nokia.com

here are some other things that will happen if you send that e-mail out to eight or twenty people:
– john kerry will become president
– canada will invade america, and win
– you will get bitten by a radioactive spider and get its proportionate strength, speed and abilities
– the little drummer boy in an under-developed nation who’s missing an arm and a leg will get twenty cents per forward which will accumulate and contribute to treatment for his colon cancer
– you’ll get eternal salvation, because now, and only now, does jesus truly love you
– you’ll finally pass a course that actually requires you to think

i hate it when (non-brown) girls, many friends of mine, say to me, “you’re good-looking for a brown guy” or say that about other brown guys

what the hell is that statement saying?
essentially that brown guys aren’t worth shit and the only ones that look good do so relative to the ones that aren’t worth shit (except, of course, for the rare one who’s so hot that he burns out your worthless retinas)

no one ever says “he’s good-looking for a white guy,” or “he’s good-looking for a chinese guy” — though i can point out several of them who look like they just stepped out of an ugly competition

and therefore i am pissed off

so, to the next non-brown chick who says “so-and-so is good-looking for a brown guy”:

FUCK YOU!

Beaucoup de mes amis sont venus des nuages
Avec soleil et pluie comme simples bagages
Ils ont fait la saison des amitiés sincères
La plus belle saison des quatre de la terre

Ils ont cette douceur des plus beaux paysages
Et la fidélité des oiseaux de passage
Dans leurs coeurs est gravée une infinie tendresse
Mais parfois dans leurs yeux se glisse la tristesse
Alors, ils viennent se chauffer chez moi
Et toi aussi tu viendras

Tu pourras repartir au fin fond des nuages
Et de nouveau sourire à bien d’autres visages
Donner autour de toi un peu de ta tendresse
Lorsqu’un autre voudra te cacher sa tristesse

Comme l’on ne sait pas ce que la vie nous donne
Il se peut qu’à mon tour je ne sois plus personne
S’il me reste un ami qui vraiment me comprenne
J’oublierai à la fois mes larmes et mes peines

Alors, peut-être je viendrai chez toi
Chauffer mon coeur à ton bois

РJ.M. Rivi̬re & G. Bourgeois, performed by Fran̤oise Hardy

the following is an excerpt from a conversation that took place between sanjeyan and me concerning our friend who is currently in china …

nomes: china’s communism and moral depravity is corrupting shawn
ksnite: <high five>
nomes: <high five>
ksnite: THREE CHEERS FOR SHAWN!!!
nomes: i could use more communist friends with no morals
nomes: just like stalin
ksnite: damn, stalin may not haven’t known a lot … but he could maintain a moustache like there was no tomorrow
nomes: in my books, that is a lot
nomes: that moustache is what every man aspires to
nomes: george bush
nomes: saddam hussein (who came close)
nomes: tony blair
nomes: everyone
nomes: elton john
nomes: john mayer
nomes: jesus
ksnite: i bet on good moustache days, he executed less men
ksnite: he had a heart of gold
nomes: just like jesus
nomes: yet so much more
ksnite: some consider that jesus was a little stubborn with the cross
ksnite: complaining about how heavy it was like every 10 minutes
nomes: did stalin ever complain about managing the largest country on earth? about world war two? about america’s nuclear capability? about rebellions and the immense material cost of perpetrating genocide?
nomes: no my friend, he carried that cross
nomes: and did not shed a tear nor ask for any sympathy
nomes: which is more than what we can say about jesus there, some reports allege someone else carried his cross — can you believe this guy? he’s GOD and still someone ELSE carries his cross
ksnite: i heard he was walking in all directions…couldn’t walk a straight path
ksnite: broke some vases, broke windows, snapped a few power lines
nomes: were there ever power outages under stalin?
nomes: NO! never! nein!
ksnite: he made sure to electrocute men on days when energy use was low
ksnite: he cared for his people
nomes: i think the world’s been worshipping the wrong guy for the past fifty years
ksnite: i propose we start STALINISM!!!

i saw the train approach on the other set of tracks, on the other side of the platform, going the other way

i was disappointed that the train i was waiting for wasn’t there

but i wasn’t quite sure if my disappointment was that of an artist’s — the train’s absence upset the fragile symmetry of the station, or that of a student’s — i was running late

so there i was, some forty thousand feet above the ground, looking out the half inch of glass (followed by an inch or so of nothing) followed by a quarter inch of plastic that separated me from the beautiful oblivion

i noticed the frost that had formed on the edges of the plastic portion of the window (the plastic being what you can touch, the glass is actually on the outside of the aeroplane)

the little map program on the little television screen in front of me said that the temperature outside was -63 degrees celsius — almost as bad as toronto on a good winter day

then i thought to myself, when superman (in the movie, of course) took lois lane for a joyride through the sky, didn’t she freeze her ass off?

there they were, whooshing through the clouds god knows how high up with the spectacular john williams music playing in the background, and she was dressed just in this nightgown (why was she going to interview superman dressed in just a nightgo– oh… nevermind) and she didn’t just freeze to death?

i can understand superman not freezing to death, because he’s superman — but lois lane is not superman, she should’ve frozen to death

it’s not like lois lane was particularly hot or anything … hahaha, get it? hot? ha… okay…

speaking of superheroes, you know one thing they never do is become junkies
when was the last time a well known superhero was on drugs? you don’t see spider-man crashing under the pressure and doing crack with a white streak between the massive eyes, you don’t see batman and robin sitting back passing a dutchie on the left hand side, drugs don’t even have an effect on superman (who, as we discussed earlier, is nevertheless a crackhead for taking a normal human woman thousands of feet into the sky where she would, in the real world anyway, freeze to death within minutes)

there was that one time the green arrow’s sidekick, what was his name? speedo? he was on crack
but with a name like that i don’t blame him

besides, why didn’t the green lantern do anything about it, with his green lantern ring

speaking of the green lantern, i’ve seen some t-shirts with the green lantern logo on them
i want to get one of those t-shirts

hey, at least it’s not like those blue t-shirts with the superman logo on them

EDIT: the green arrow’s sidekick’s name was speedy — just as … uh … bad

it was barely half an hour before the afternoon prayers, asr, and the unforgiving arabian sun beat down on the sprawling complex of the masjid-un-nabi, the mosque of the prophet, in medina

the elderly couple seemed iranian, they were both easily over seventy years old — the man held his wife’s arm and guided her to the ladies’ entrance to the actual masjid itself

unbeknownst to him, he violated the sacrosanct border of properness and, sitting in the shadow of a little outpost (wherein was drinking water from the holy well of zamzam and seating for several — access limited the employees of the “custodian” of the two holy mosques), the arab guard barked out at him: “hajji! ya hajji!”

in his aggressive arabic, he went on to explain at the old man that beyond this point no male may pass — there were still fifty or so metres to the actual entrance of the building, an oppressive fifty metres over which women dressed in their black, synthetic abayas had to tread under the glaring heat and beat of the sun

the man tried to argue back, in his broken arabic and farsi, that he simply wanted to guide his wife to the building and give her guidance on how to perform the ziarat, paying respects to the prophet mohammed

of course, he would not be able to pass despite all his feeble protests, and so he told his wife he would wait for her, outside

many laypersons were standing in the shade of the outpost, the real estate was choice, but there was none for the old man, and so he leaned against the outpost with the sun beating down on him

one young man, seeing this, discreetly stepped out of the shade and into the sun, and the weak old man took his place — the unspoken thanks met an unspoken welcoming

then a young policeman with a pious scrabble of a beard, having just taken a sip of the cool refreshing and spiritually rewarding zamzam, emerged from the outpost with a folding chair which he placed directly in front of the old man

forgive him for thinking it was meant for him — it wasn’t

the policeman forced the man out of the shade and took up his place, reclining on the plastic, green cushion of the chair, exchanging platitudes and anecdotes with the religious guard whose duty it was to condemn young and old alike to stay outside of the ladies’ section and to stand in the blistering heat without any respite from the oppression of the sun

the young man who had just, moments ago, given up his place in the shade to the old man looked on and shook his head

here, in the city of the prophet, madinat-un-nabi, madinat-ul-munawwarah, the enlightened city, a simple, elementary and well-known hadith of the prophet flashed in his mind:

you should not be sitting down while an elder is standing up

clearly, he thought to himself as the rage built up inside, inhabiting the enlightened city is not a guarantee of your own state of manners

as is most often the case, the would-be guardians of islamic behaviour are principally the ones who detract from it

on the subway ride home last night from school some of us decided that it would be fun to bring some entertainment to the crowd

we got in and sang some songs

then we did a stand-up type of comedy routine

in the last leg of the journey, from warden to kennedy, i rapped — once again, house of pain’s jump around (because it’s essentially the only rap song i know in its entirety)

props to josh for doing the singing and the comedy, and thanks to kevin for filming it (i didn’t know until later that he was filming it)

(you need quicktime, the videos are about ten megs each so it’ll take some time to load — right click and saving is probably the best way to go about it)
video 1
video 2

no, i wasn’t drunk

i don’t drink (but i did drink a lot of canada dry ginger ale that day, maybe there’s something in it)