Since the beginning I made my writing a tedious effort, more so than it ever really needed to be. My nights were consumed by writing and my days by responding to commentors and dreaming up new topics to write about. It was an exhausting task and it was compounded by my own scrutiny, deleting and re-writing whole paragraphs, never being satisfied, always wanting more and never feeling truly accomplished.

By someones standards I’ve accomplished so much, writing for several sites, making many friends and gathering the respect of many of my peers. Now that I’m writing for the first time in over three months, things feel so hollow and empty. To come back home, to write my thoughts, not knowing if anyone remembers I exist anymore…its sad.

I’m now reaping whats been sown by my own hands. Somewhere along the way I lost my passion for this and I want it back so desperately. I let down too many people, people who really relied on me, to write articles, perform tasks and simply do my job, people who have done so much for me, Esra’a, Amira and so many others.

What caused my loss of steam? An association of things, changes in my personal life, a change in my outlook, exhaustion but mostly one thing, a lack of honesty. I’ve never been able to be myself with my audience, most of the time I’ve felt like a ghost writer for myself. I’ve always been burdened with a need to shield myself from my readers for reasons so eerily related to the topics I write about.

Believe me, the faults and flaws of the Middle East are staunchly reflected in our blogging community, often times by the same people who speak out against them. The politics, the backstabbing, gossiping, bigotry, jealousy, extremism, cynicism, and even the tribal mentality are all well represented across the Middle East blogging community.

When I made the decision to start this site and begin writing I made a clear decision that my personal details would be as ambiguous as possible so I could write as freely and honestly as I wanted without the constraints of stereotypes and negative perceptions.

What I found was that these freedoms I tried to preserve for myself became confining and more binding than any constraints I had ever imagined. I have become a prisoner in my own identity or lack thereof. I never lied, embellished or exaggerated, I never claimed to be something I’m not or encouraged any false perceptions of myself. Instead I wrote based on how things were and let people assume whatever they wanted. In return I became a writer who is just short of being comfortable in my own skin.

I want my passion back, I want to let my audience in but I don’t know if that will give me what I want. What to do, what to do?

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I always find this cycle tiring because friends, family and readers try to slap some sort of label on me and they almost always fail miserably. Generally the political identity they paint me with tells me a lot about how they identify themselves.

I realized this today when I was checking my Email. I received an obnoxious forward from an Egyptian friend, born and raised in the U.S. and who talks as if he has a live feed from George Bush wired right into his ear.

He’s a republican but not for any governmental policy reasons, he’s a republican because he hates gays, immigrants and “terrorists”. He’s the, “they attack us because they are jealous of our freedom” type. Sometimes talking to him about politics is like talking to an Alabama baptist preacher who goes hunting on Saturdays and to Ku Klux Klan rallies on Fridays. Essentially, he’s like most Social Republicans, paranoid and terrified of the world around him.

His email today had the header, “This is more for my Liberal wack job friends!”. Unbelievable, we’ve had our fair share of conversations about politics which usually consist of him repeating something he heard in a George Bush Speech or on Hannity & Colmes and me telling him how irritating I think it is. Somehow that makes me some liberal “wack job”.

Ironically I was having a conversation with a young idealist Egyptian friend the night before. He’s your stereotypical college liberal who believes the world can be a utopia, poverty can be eradicated, plants have feelings, and we should all ride bicycles to work because cars are bad for the environment. He’s the “free tibet and the Dali Lama” type. Conversations with him are beyond frustrating, its a lot like talking to someone on LSD, and for all I know that might be the reason for his radically illogical liberal views. For some reason I enjoy talking politics with him because part of me believes I can bring him back to the real world.

On this occasion he asked for my views on U.S. foreign policy and in the course of the conversation he discovered that my views were critical of U.S. foreign policy and his response was, “wow I thought you were a conservative nut job”. What the hell is going on here?

Well its not that complicated to understand the issue with both of these assholes. I’m a moderate, I’m in the middle of the spectrum, some conservative principles makes sense to me and some liberal principles makes sense to me, thats hard for people to understand though. People’s minds enjoy labels, they like to see black and white, gray is much harder to process.

To a conservative I’m liberal, to a liberal I’m conservative. You can test this phenomenon yourself. Ask a liberal if the media is conservative or liberal and ask a conservative the same. The liberal will almost always say its conservative and the conservative will almost always say its liberal. To them it is, anything to the center of their position is the opposite to them. For my readers, especially new ones, my position can be hard to understand, they come looking for one definitive side of the spectrum. Sorry you wont find that here, you probably never will.

A long time ago when this blog was in its infantile stages I was talking to Sandmonkey and he gave me some advice, he said “you need to pick one definitive side and go with it”, explains a lot doesnt it ;). I dont deny that readers respond more to the demagoguing of political affiliations but thats not the answer, progress requires balance, it requires deep thought and passionate heart felt opinions, if those opinions are spread along the spectrum than so be it. To be honest, I dont really care if everyone who reads it gets it.

In my life I’ve learned the most from those with balanced views and most people do they just do it differently, maybe they listen to balanced opinions, maybe they have the discipline to listen to unbalanced individuals of both sides separately.

My advice, if I’m worthy of giving it, is to stay away from extreme conservativism or liberalism, extremes of anything are destructive, the answer is in the middle.

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Egypt is not alone in rising food costs, its an epidemic affecting millions of people across the third world and the cause of the increase will amaze you. Though rising gas prices and the corresponding increase in transporting food is part of the problem it only accounts for 15% of the increase. Ironically the increase in the cost of beans, grains and oil’s have come from developed nations and their response to increased oil costs. Governmental policies within the U.S. and E.U. have caused an increased demand on beans and grains to be used for bio-fuel, a supplement of petroleum. The programs designed to fulfill specific quotas are operating with an inefficiency not seen since the peak of the Soviet Union. Farmers, corporations and scientists are milking the government for extremely high and wasteful subsidies, robbing taxpayers and wasting enough grain to make Stalin proud, resulting in the worldwide cost of farmed goods to sky rocket.

Do I blame the U.S. like every Osama bin Laden loving Arab will once this news reaches the mainstream? No, no, no, quite the contrary. I blame Arabs! You heard me. As always Arabs manage to shoot themselves in the foot out of their own greed and their inability to see past their own nose. Do you happen to notice something here?

Since 2004 the barrel of oil has gone from $32 to $115 because Arab oil producers want to squeeze the U.S. for every last penny being that they consume 35% of the worlds oil and as a result of the price gouging, the U.S. (seeing no end in sight) has begun to pursue other forms of fuel such as Bio-fuel causing food to dramatically rise in price starving the very nations who have profited off the oil in the first place. (Egypt hasnt made crap off of oil but we’ve been caught in the crossfire like many other poor nations). You see the world and all its misfortune are a chain reaction of events. So when the Arabs want to blame someone for this problem, please look at your neighbors.

Wall Street article about Bio-Fuel and Poverty

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A protest has been planned on Sunday May 4th, 2008, 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM at the Egyptian Consulate in downtown Chicago at 500 N. Michigan Ave.

Demonstrators are assembling to protest Egypt’s State run repression of workers and opposition groups. Here’s the description on the facebook event.

Egyptian security forces arrested over 400 opposition activists across the country, seriously injured another eighty protesting residents and workers in the city of Al-Mahalla, and killed two of these locals while putting down a peaceful protest – all this on April 6 – the day on which a general strike and popular protests were planned against the sky-rocketing prices of commodities and services, and against the daily intimidation and inhumane treatment of citizens by Mubarak’s 26 year-old thug regime.

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…and by “I” I mean someone else, whose Photoshop skills far eclipse my own.

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So maybe I shouldn’t be angry about the mess I came home to? What did I expect, right? Well, I hear you, trust me I do but the thing is I cleaned up the place pretty well before I left, cant we get a little preservation around here?

Anyways, let me get to the main point here. When I came home, I was tired and had to take a massive doo doo, so I laid my bags down, took off my shoes and headed for my bathroom, the one I share with Dr. D (Special K has his own cause he’s kind of a princess, I figured I’d let him have it instead of listening to his girly crying). So I walk into the bathroom and what do I see…number 1 on my list of things I hate….

1. Pubes and pee on the toilet seat - OK, let this soak in for a second, pubic hairs and urine on the toilet seat.

Dr. D is the only other person who uses that bathroom, thats number one. 2, I know I didnt leave pubes and urine behind when I left and 3, why are there at least 12 different pubic hairs of varying length on the very front of the seat, exactly where one’s “special area” would rest?

There’s only two possible scenarios for this many pubic hairs to be on the seat. Either he sat down and was playing with himself and/or pubic hairs and in one sitting left behind enough fibers to knit a very thick sweater. Or the collection of hairs is the accumulation of several visits to the bathroom in which only one or two hairs were dropped at a time, which means the good Doctor was witness to his little gifts on the toilet seat and sat back down on it, resting his junk on his own filth multiple times. Also being that he’s a man (as far as I can tell) he would have had moments in between sitting on the seat in which he was standing in front of the toilet to pee (as evidenced by the numerous piss stains) where he had to have seen all the hairs laying on the seat but did nothing to remove them. (Seriously I should be a crime scene investigator.)

As far as the piss goes, also extremely nasty. How do you piss all over the seat and then sit down on the seat before cleaning it up, aren’t you afraid of bacteria, rashes, something!? Ladies and gentlemen, Dr.D isn’t just his nick name, this man actually is a medical doctor, he knows things about bacteria and urine that would terrify you into never leaving home again and still he’s comfortable with this level of dirtiness!

Honestly I lost my desire to poop after that sight which is hard to do because once my body is compelled to defecate thats a firm decision and its nearly impossible to derail those plans. Instead I grabbed some bleach, Lysol, steel wool and some other cleaning supplies and started the sterilization process, my only regret is not owning a sand blaster. You know what the irony is? This morning I woke up to find 4 brand new, curly black pubes sitting on my toilet seat and a fresh coat of piss. I’m gonna start walking around the house in this…

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Before the hype could completely boil over I found a sneaky little site for persistent individuals like my self and downloaded the controversial “film” Fitna. From what I understand religious police in Saudi Arabia have been alerted to my treachery, my IP address and identity have been sent out and will be forwarded to the first available blood thirsty jihadist response team…they should be at my front door to perform the “jee-had” in 7-10 business days.

The reason why I had to resort to sneaky means to get my hands on this 15 min film is because it was posted on Live Leak a couple days ago and literally over night and less than 24 hours later it was already gone thanks to the influx of death threats from impulsive freedom hating psychopaths all around the world. Now no one dares to host it and LiveLeak had to post this message in its absence…

Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.
This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else. We would like to thank the thousands of people, from all backgrounds and religions, who gave us their support. They realised LiveLeak.com is a vehicle for many opinions and not just for the support of one.
Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one anothers culture.
We stood for what we believe in, the ability to be heard, but in the end the price was too high.

For a moment I thought, “why dont I host the file somewhere and post it here on my site?” Then I remembered I have “friends” who’d probably perform the “jee-had” on me themselves…bastards.

Finally I came to another realization, I asked myself, “what is it specifically that has made people so angry that they want to kill over it?” Is it….

-The original Mohamed cartoon showing Mohamed and a bomb on his head depicted at the beginning and end of the film?

-The listing of verses from the Quran that are seen as shocking from the perspective of non-Muslims?

-Clip’s of Sheikh’s, Imam’s and Jihadist’s dedicating themselves to the murder of Christians, Jew’s and all types of Westerners?

-The implied illusion of a page being torn out of the Quran in the end?

-The comparison of Islamization of Europe to Nazism and communism?

-The request that Islamic ideology be “defeated”?

-Or is it simply that a non-muslim has made a movie critical of Islam?

I’ll assure you that for the wild and ignorant zombie monkey’s that burn embassies, murder clergy and send death threats to anyone within 100 degrees of separation from the movie itself, its the latter. These people are animals, too simple minded to see that their violent response gives credibility to the criticism posed by the movie in the first place. I’ve browsed fellow bloggers who call themselves moderate or even non-practicing Muslims and found much angrier responses to the movie than I would have expected.

Instead of following with a knee jerk reaction or just shouting “islamophob” take the movie for what it is, a fair reflection of how violent, angry and hate filled people have interpreted the Quran and how their perverted interpretations have changed the face of Islam all around the world. How many times have I heard, “these terrorists do not reflect Islam”, “this is not the Islam I know”. By simply condemning the movie because you view it as an attack on Muslims and not an attack on a specific ideological interpretation of Islam, then you have let a great opportunity pass you by. The West fears Islam because there aren’t enough Muslims who are willing to publicly condemn the actions of other Muslims. This has been a pivotal problem in the West’s confrontation with Islam. By staying quiet and being angered by criticism aimed at barbaric animals like those featured in Fitna you allow those animals to represent you and Islam.

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Last night I had a romantic encounter with a mango, 2 of them actually.

I came home late, tired, exhausted and in no mood to read the news or write anything. I sat on the couch watching a late re-run of The Colbert Report and stared at my computer as it sat sprawled out on my lap. As I flipped through news pages I felt my eyes getting heavy, the days events and subsequent exhaustion had begun to catch up to me. The hurdle of blogging duties crashed down upon my shoulders and I quickly grew complacent and content with not writing for the following day. My eyes flickered with what would surely be my last conscious moments of the day. I slumped over on the couch and caught a glimpse of the kitchen through one eye fighting frivolously to stay awake when my lone eye intercepted the sight of two reddish and gold orbs laying on the kitchen counter, two mangos laying in a modestly assembled fruit basket. They were glowing bright and shining in the glare of the kitchens florescent light. Suddenly my right eye opened wide as if the other eye had said, “wake up, you’ve got to see this!” Now my eyes were intently focused on these two beautiful and succulent mangos, they laid there basked in unique beauty like they were sent down to me by the fruit gods. They called out to me, “take me…take me now!!” I jumped up with curiosity inspired energy and lurched over to the kitchen counter with my last bit of energy just in time to clutch the two mangos in my arms like a lost love. I squeezed and caressed them, investigating their firmness and rejoiced when I discovered they were at the very peak of ripeness. I looked down at them with disbelief on my face and felt my heart pour out, could these bastions of tropical flavor really be mine!?

Finally my amour and me were alone and ready to embrace in the heats of passion, all I had to do was set the mood. Waisting no time I quickly dimmed the lights, put on the best of Barry White and closed the drapes in order to keep out preying eyes. I sat down with a plate and knife and began to strip my lover of her cumbersome skin. My undressing was meticulous, I started at the naval and inserted the very tip of my knife being careful not to pierce the tender meat which lay beneath. Each stroke was surgical and delicate, dividing the skin into quadrants. After incising the skin of one mango I moved on to its twin being careful not to disturb their symmetry. Finally when I had two perfectly lanced mangos I was ready to strip the skin, slowly and cautiously being careful not to separate any portions of meat from the whole body. My operation was flawless and I now had two bright, yellow and naked mangos laid out in front of me, teasing me, ready for me to take advantage.

Not willing to wait another second, I grabbed both mangos, one in each hand and pressed them up to my lips. My teeth sunk into the sweet juicy flesh and released a burst of juice so delicious that it would have served as pleasure enough. I felt my heart race and my skin heat up as I slurped and molested every square inch of luscious produce. When I had devoured all the meat I sat hunched over my plate examining the seeds for any unclaimed tissue and drinking the juice off my fingers and plate. I laid back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling trying to catch my breath, drunk with mango.

The next morning I awoke in a haze, my fingers still sticky with the fruit of the gods, I was still high on vitamin C. My lover was gone and the only evidence left of our passionate exchange…two bare seeds on my plate and the stained splash of mango juice on the white couch.

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Pictures from Ebaums World

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