Frayed Connections

Late November, after all the turkeys have been put to rest and the fingerless gloves start to come out of hiding, the Christmas fun train leaves the station. Lights go up, Michael Buble and Mariah Carey tracks are dug up, salt-stained Uggs are pulled out of the closet.

Twice a year, Eid comes around. It's a day of prayer, gratitude, family, food, and Eid moolah (definitely a song title on my never-to-be-released mixtape). Every Eid follows the same format, at least in my household. We roll out of the house in our finest (read: cleanest) clothes for prayer. we come back home to enjoy fabulous meals with family members and close friends (I especially love this part because the leftover food is essentially my lunch/dinner for the next week - #lowprephighreward).

The day usually ends with the ladies upstairs, laughing and gossiping with a biscuit in one hand and coffee in the other. Downstairs, you'll find all the men, lounging around, their voices booming; drowning out the BBC commentator on television.

However, in between the prayer and glorious lunch, there's always a lull. My mother will walk over to her tattered phonebook, filled with numbers, slightly faded,  from all across the globe. From Geneva to Mogadishu, from London to San Jose. An aunt here. An uncle there. A cousin or two over here. Hey, here's that friend of your cousin that gave you a hug when you were 5! You gotta give her a call as well. So we do. Hours and hours pass. My parents are both smiling, laughing, and speaking rapid-fire Somali in their booming outdoor voices while sprawled out on our couch. Eventually, the phone makes its way to me.

I love my grandmothers, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends. I love trying to maintain these connections while establishing my own.

I dread this moment every single time.

This time, it's my grandmother living with my rebelling/troubled cousin in Stockholm. As I take the phone from my mother, this overwhelming sense of self-disgust consumes me. I can't stand myself.

"Hello, ayayo (grandmother)?"

I proceed to have a 30 second conversation with her. The same 30 second conversation I've had with her on the phone every time for the past decade or so.

Same words.
Same responses.
Same phrases.

This now-20-year-old boy/man-child/grown-ass dude can barely speak Somali at a kindergarten level. I try to add depth. I try to at least perfect the accent, hoping that I can sound semi-respectable. No luck.

"Hi. How are you? How is everyone? I wish you all the best. Bye."

Done. Just like that. I can hear the resignation in her voice as she wishes me the best in school. It's as if she still holds out hope that I will eventually grasp the language and connect with her on a deeper level.

It kills me.

It destroys me that I avoid contact with my family members abroad solely out of embarrassment. I hate it. The only connections I have with my Somali culture and heritage is my name and my face. That's it. None. I'm a Canadian who just happens to be of Somali descent.

---------

And that's cool with me.

I could do without the tribalism and incessant backbiting that cripples my community.

However, we could use more inter-connectivity
We could use more sense of community; more looking out for each other.

Fortunately, for me, these are the values I remember and recall when I think of "Somali culture". These are the values and ideals I'll pass down to my future children.

Of course, I'd also value a little more of that Eid moolah.

Pioneers and Post-Humanism

 

Technology is improving, and every day it improves faster.

The complexity of technology as a function of time has been studied, and it's been recognized to be growing exponentially. The moment that the speed at which technology improves beyond our ability to keep up with it has been dubbed The Singularity. It's been proposed (by high-profile, technologically influential people like Ray Kurzweil) that in order for humankind to keep developing and stay connected with technology, we will have to integrate with it. We will have to augment ourselves with technology in order to keep evolving, because the speed at which technology advances has far surpassed our biological evolution.

When this day comes, we'll gain a new reference level, and will look at the past in a way we are currently unable to do. Gaining a more in-depth understanding of a concept causes the limitations of the idea to become broader. When we project into the future, and imagine the manifestation of a certain idea that isn't real yet, we're usually only capable of producing a caricature.

It's a weird example but, consider when women's rights were less of a concern, rape was thought of as penetration from some strange dude in a dark alleyway. With further understanding and education, the definition has broadened, and now any undesired sexual act from anybody can be understood to be rape. With time we developed a broader idea, beyond the caricature it used to be. 

So once the singularity has arrived, and being a cyborg becomes a common idea, I feel we'll look in the past and try to see what kinds of things led up to it. Just as we look in the past and analyze the conditions that precipitated World War II, I feel we'll look back to see what the first steps of the singularity were. Our concept of cyborg will broaden and become more realistic, beyond the action-comic concept we once had. We'll look back and hold Steven Hawking as the first cyborg, our post-human pioneer. A celebrity genius who was an example of our future before any of us were able to see it.

Pornoetry

I guess you could look at porn like improv, there's direction but no script.

Some of the best scenes from major (non-pornographic) films were improvised, and many actors will attest to the idea that improv is exactly what made the scene so great. Improv creates an environment that is natural and inspired, and can make some great moments.

                     

I watched this porno once, and amongst all the cliche adlibs and moaning, there was a great moment.

It went like this:

[I'm writing this shit in public and it's getting awkward now]

Woman: [Breathing loudly] Oh... OH... it was hurting, but now... [moans] it feels so good!

Man: Such is life. 

[It would be funny if I made a regular thing of writing about pornoetry. Kinda difficult cause I quit 

watching porn, GUESS I'LL JUST HAVE TO GET BACK INTO IT FOR Y'ALL!]

WHEN WILL I LEARN

Ayo forreals when will i learn. It's 6AM I have a presentation in 3 hours and a midterm worth 30% in 8 hours but only 3 more hours of studying available.

 AND I DONT UNDERSTAND SHIT.

 Like I have never been more clueless about something in my life none of this shit makes any sense to me. I am confident that I will be getting a zero...or at least the lowest mark in class. I will be that dude pulling the average down. And I have no idea how this happened...okay I have some idea. Didnt really go to class, never read the notes, no textbook, i'm really tired, etc.

I can no longer go on blaming my infantile disregard for my own future as a symptom of senioritis. That shit has passed. This is something else. Something...more sinister

I have no drive to learn. No passion. I can't seem to think past my undergraduate career. It feels like it doesn't matter, that everything will fall into place. Maybe cus that's what's happened throughout my life so far. Didn't really do much, things kinda fell into place..

But the thing is, even if I haven't found my "passion" just yet, I still have to figure out how to work. Something I've avoided for the past 7 years. And I know I've probably repeated this sentiment to all of my friends and to my parents every semester and I've told myself I'd do better and I know I've never followed through...but I'm inching closer and closer to the bottom and I gotta stop. I know this post might be as futile as every other time I've said I'd change, but maybe one more public testament to my failures will motivate me...or at least give me something to read and cry over when i'm 34, living with my parents.

So today Sharkface resigns from KTT and HB. I know, I know:

Can't leave forums alone, the game neeed me 

It's gonna be hard, but I can do it. Imma get 70% in this course. Don belee me juh watch.
Now I'm gonna go wash myself in a public washroom with wet paper towels on that homeless swag. Peace out. Express your disappointment/motivation/apathy in the comments below.

PSA: Know Your Ricks, Rosses, and Bosses

This is Freeway.




This is Freeway Rick Ross.




This is Ross.




This is Rick Ross.



This is William Leonard Roberts II.



This is RICK RO$$. Ricky Rozay. The Bawse. Mr. MMG.




Until next time...

A night on the Kensingtown

I walked through K-mart on the way home
Thought about how unusual it is compared to the rest of downtown

 

Other commercial areas are typically focused linearly along a major street, but Kensington is structured like a residential area. There are short stretches of shops that go around corners as if they were houses (some of the stores are just converted houses), and the roads are small and without paint. 

Everything closes here around 7 pm, and then there's no people or traffic going through. The stores are dark, and aren't lit up like typical commercial areas. The neighbourhood is strangely empty.

This kind of emptiness is normal for a residential area, where no life can be seen on the street because it's all within the houses, but here you don't see homes, you see storefronts. 

Residential areas are quiet but still living. You see porch lights, lit windows, and flickering TVs behind curtains. These stores are totally dead when nobody's working. Music lingers in the air from some bar out of sight, and the whole place feels like an empty set.

This neighbourhood has made it's way into the common consciousness as a hipster area. 

What a cliche that I picked these up off the sidewalk on the way through.