World’s Worst Pick-Up Lines

• I don’t have a library card, but do you mind if I check you out?


• I wish I was cross-eyed so I could see you twice.


• Girl, you smell like Doritos. That’s why I’m giving you this hungry stare.


• I bet you’re magically delicious like a bowl of Lucky Charms.


• Do you believe in love at first sight or should I walk by again?


• Baby, you should stop, drop and roll because you’re on fire.


• Perhaps you’ve seen my picture? It’s in the dictionary under ‘stud’.


• My lips are registered weapons and I’d hate to hurt you.


• How’d you get through security ‘cause baby, you’re the bomb.

And last but certainly not least…

• Girl, you must be Jamaican, because Jamaican me crazy!

Firefox Rocketh

I don't care what anyone says, Firefox is the hands down best web browser on the planet. The newest version of Firefox, version 2.0, has a load of new features and goodies that should make your web surfing more enjoyable.

The new feature I most look forward to is the integrated spell check. Perhaps now people will stop posting misspelled comments to this blog. Now all Firefox needs is a built-in grammar checker.

I Feel the Need…the Need for Eid

I’m still trying to figure out why you have to actually see the moon in order to determine whether the Eid is upon us. Can anyone explain this to me?

Science can correctly predict the moon cycles down to the minute! This year’s new moon occurred on October 22nd at exactly 12:14 AM. In case of any doubt, scientific calculations can predict the precise beginning and end of Ramadan in the year 2007, 2010, or any other year you want.

But I find out from my dukaan guy that the Eid hasn’t officially started because Chief Islamic Justice Ahmad Hilayel hasn’t witnessed the new moon of the lunar month of Shawwal, thus the holiday won’t be starting until the 24th, two full days after the new moon! What happens if it is cloudy tonight? Will Ramadan continue indefinitely until the moon is witnessed? Perhaps I’m overcomplicating things by relying too much on logic and science.

Either way, eid mubaarak.

Game Boy Around the World

For Christmas this past year, my son received a couple new video games for his Nintendo Game Boy. Shortly thereafter, my parents came for a visit and we took them around to see all the famous touristy sites in Jordan. A couple months later I realized that every picture of my son taken during that time period and in various locations was of him playing his Game Boy.

This sparked an idea…a quest, so to speak. As my family travels throughout the world, how many famous locations could I capture my son playing his Game Boy? We began to take pictures in various countries so that I could put them online for family members to see.

Yesterday I uploaded the pictures to my Flikr gallery. When I woke up this morning, a friend of mine had e-mailed me with congratulations on being both "Dugg" and "You Tubed". I was absolutely amazing. In a matter of 12 hours, someone had discovered the pictures, added them to the famous news aggregator site, Digg, and the story had amassed nearly 1000 digs. Not only that, somebody had taken the photos and created slideshow to music (the original Super Mario Bros. theme, no less) and placed the video on You Tube. When I checked my Flickr gallery this morning, most of the Game Boy photos had over 8,000 and one photo had over 11,000 views all overnight!

This is probably a fluke, but perhaps this may spark a phenomenon. One comment by a Digg user was that Nintendo should capitalize on this and send us the new Nintendo DS Lite game system and a series of plane tickets. (I have to say that the same idea was not lost upon me when the idea first occurred.) So will you do me a favor? Will you help send this story to the top? Digg it!

White Black Lines

The Wadi Saqra intersection at King Abdullah Park was recently painted with fresh white lines. The lanes were marked to define the lanes designed for turning and those intended for straight-on traffic. (The lane status still is blatantly ignored, but that’s a different story.) Within a week, I could hardly see the lines due to the compiling of dirt and grime. This tells me that we need a good, hard rain to wipe this city clean.

Istanbul the Beautiful

I just returned from 5 days in Istanbul. This marks my third visit to the city, and I can safely claim that it is one of the most unique cities on the planet.

Istanbul, in all of its massive complexity, is rife with problems and growth issues (not the least is an identity crisis), yet it maintains a charm and intrigue that is unmatched. My previous visits have been largely confined to the European side, so I decided to focus on Asian Istanbul during this trip. Upon concluding my visit, I have come to realize that Istanbul contains two of the most beautiful subjects on the planet: mosques and women.

There’s no question about it: the Ottoman-period mosques are the most grand and elaborate mosques in the world. Most Islamic countries generally feature one or two grand, beautiful mosques, but pale in comparison with the scale, detail and number of the mosques that grace the Istanbul skyline. Absolutely stunning.

Turkish women, for the most part, are extremely beautiful. I can’t quite put my finger on it; perhaps it is the unique mixture between the Arab, Persian and European races that results in such an attraction. I would go so far to say that 60% of the women traversing the city’s streets would be classified as intensely gorgeous. That’s a pretty high percentage, on average.

After an overcast and rainy spell in Istanbul, it was nice to return to the bright and sunny skies of Amman. I’ll take a dry, arid heat over a humid-laden climate any day. And my return flight was made even more bright after reading about the removal of the ridiculous telecommunications ban on Skype.

Colorful Friends

There are times when political correctness really chaps my craw. Whenever I mention certain races of people, others are always correcting my vernacular. Specifically I am talking about Orientals and black people.

First of all, when I talk about people from the Far East (a.k.a. the Orient) in general, I generally refer to them as Orientals. My politically correct friends continually correct my usage of terms, stating that the correct term is “Asians”, and that Oriental is a food. My problem with the term “Asian” is this: I live in Asia! Yes folks, Asia is a pretty big place, and not everyone who lives there looks the same. By classifying someone from the Far East as simply Asian, you would by technically correct, but you would be making an broad assumption about an entire continent.

Even worse is the completely idiotic classification of “African American”. You won’t hear much about this here in Asia, but in the United States it’s a big deal. In America, if a white person labels a black person as anything other than “African American”, there could be some real trouble. The problem is that every time you label a black person as African American, you’re making at least two assumptions about that person:

1. That the person is American. What kind of idiot doesn’t realize that black people live all over the planet, even in non-African countries such as France and Great Britain.
2. That the person is from Africa. It would be inconceivable to think that black people could come from any other location, such as India, Haiti, Australia, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago or Dominican Republic. Not to mention that a quarter of African countries are populated by Arabs, and at least one African country is full of white people.

From now on, I’m just going to label my friends based on color: my brown friends, black friends, yellow friends, white friends, etc. It’s just easier.

Intifada: 6 Years Later

Six years after the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada, the casualties have mounted to exceed more than 5,000 people, including more than 800 children. The statistics from B’Tselem as of September 2006 indicate that 4,039 Palestinians and 1,011 Israelis have been killed.

Both sides, when addressing the International Community, claim to want peace. After six years of violence and bloodshed, however, I wonder what actually has been accomplished?