walkways

بحثت كثيراً على الانترنت فلم أجد أية تصوير للسنفور السعودي. لذلك قررت أن أُهدي بابا سنفور السعودي لهذا الشعب الجميل، الذي ألهمني وأستقبلني خلال الاعوام الخمسة الماضية.

المغزى من هذا السنفور هو التسلية، وليس المسخرة على تراث أو ثقافة السعودية. لذلك أنا أهديه لكم لكي تستعملوه. أرجو منكم تنزيل الصورة وتعبئة الفقاعة بما يناسبكم، ومن ثمة تحميل الصور إلى تويتر أو فيسبوك، مع إستعمال الهشتاق BabaSanfour# لمتابعة التطورات. و شكراً.

وفي الختام، أريد أن اشكر دانية البصراوي على المساعدة في “تلبيس” بابا سنفور. تابعوها على تويتر.

وبما أن السنافر هي فكرة وتصميم وتنفيذ الفنان الراحل Peyo فلا يحق لنا تسجيل حقوق النشر.

Dear Wikipedia,

Could you please let me browse Wikipedia in peace, without the freaky, creepy people looking at me and begging me to read their appeals for money?

Thanks,

Rami

Now that the iPhone 4S has arrived in this part of the world, here are some of the issues we might expect to see arising in the Arab world:

• Men spending more time listening and talking to Siri than they do with their own wives. Women getting jealous of all the attention Siri gets from their husbands, and possibly resorting to black magic to hurt Siri’s software.

• Men eventually learning that it’s ok to ask a woman for directions, and to listen to her suggestions. Maybe, in the long run, doing the same with real women. Women feeling the need to compete with Siri in terms of knowledge, and eventually becoming walking-talking encyclopedias and road maps.

• Men bossing Siri around because she’s a woman. Women retaliating by ganging up to defend Siri’s right to self-expression.

• Men growing accustomed to shutting a woman up with the press of button, which doesn’t work on real women. As a result, more women resorting to suffocating their husbands in their sleep using pillows. Jails will be full of happy widows.

• Men realizing that Siri doesn’t cook or sleep with them, and so becoming extra nice with their wives around meal times and late nights. Women refusing to function as replacements for Siri. Men growing extremely hungry and sexually frustrating. Women having the upper hand at home again.

• Men calling their wives ‘Siri’ by mistake. Women despising the name ‘Siri’ and turning it into a curse (example: “Aseel is such a Siri sometimes.”)

In summary, and to counterbalance the above issues, Apple should consider a male prototype in the upcoming iPhone models. More problems might ensue.

Once in a while, you get invited to a party even though you’re not in the mood to go. But you end up going anyway, saying to yourself that you won’t do much, just mingle a little and “change scenery”.

You end up at the party, sitting alone, in the corner, watching the people dancing all around you. No one impresses you and you don’t feel like blending in.

But then this one particular song starts playing. You don’t know the song, but you just know you have to get up and dance to it. You don’t understand what it is about this tune that got you: Is it the beat, or the melody, or the rhythm, or the bass line, or the lyrics, or the singer’s voice?

The reason doesn’t matter. You just need to get up and dance. So you do.

You know that feeling?

That’s exactly what happens when you fall in love. Against your will.

I love popcorn. It’s more than just a snack. It’s part and parcel with the history of the alphabet. I can prove it through the following links:

Did you know that the highest registered distance that a popcorn kernel has jumped in the air (when popping) is 3 feet? Three feet is not yet a meter, but it is exactly one yard.

The most famous ‘yard’ in the world is Scotland Yard, which was inaugurated in London in 1829.

That same year, 1829, William Burt (in the USA) obtained the first patent for the typewriter while Cyrill Demian (in Vienna) obtained the first patent for the musical instrument the accordion.

In a sense, an accordion is a typewriter that types musical notation instead of alphabet letters.

The earliest form of musical notation can be found in a cuneiform tablet that was created in Iraq in about 2,000 B.C. Cuneiform, the first form of human written expression, did not begin as the nail-shaped format. If we look at the image below, showing the evolution of cuneiform, we notice (using some imagination) that it initially started out resembling drawings of, yes, popcorn!

evolution of cuneiform

Coincidentally, cuneiform (the first alphabet) was born in Iraq thousands of years ago, at around the same exact time that Native Americans first discovered… you guessed it… popcorn.

So it’s not just popcorn; it’s history. Next time you’re having popcorn, remember that.

Why not ‘unwind’ with this slow-motion video of the magical popcorn, popping like a ballet dancer?

There was once a young girl from Beirut

Who ate nothing but water and fruit

She grew so thin

You’d see bone through her skin

Yet everyone thought she was cute.

She tilts the cup

and spills a single drop,

watches it rise up

towards the ceiling

and swell into a grape.

On her lip a smile

serves in revealing

her hope that rarely

had a shape.

Her hand touches his face,

just barely,

to leave some space

for her escape.