what's the purpose? it feels so worthless

a few days (weeks?) ago, i read a blog complaining about saudi arabia's tendancy to block certain websites, a lot of which have no block-worthy content. she was complaining that she couldnt check a blog that she reads, a blog that i, too, follow. of course, i went to the blog immediately to check, worried that i'd have to go the next two and a half months with no updates. i clicked on the link and let out a sigh of relief as the page loaded. i couldnt help but feel a little smug that the site wasnt blocked for me.

and then today happened. for some unfathomable reason something possessed me to delete the cache memory. so i did. and then i noticed that there was an update i hadnt seen that i would really like to read. so i clicked on the link and... nothing. at least not anything i wanted to see. instead of my website i got the dreaded screen telling me how i'm trying to go to a forbidden page that some of you may be familiar with. for those of you who arent, here it is:

and i'm telling you, people, there is nothing wrong with the site.

okay, i think to myself, so i go two months without reading it. i wont die. it's not like it's blocked from me forever (my condolences to those for who this isnt the case). so i check my email instead. i've been waiting for this link to download something important, and when i open my inbox, i have it! that's just what i needed to get over my annoyance. i open the email, completely forgetting that one of my blogs has been blocked, i click on the link, and... you guessed it. that stupid green and white screen. it's blocked. why?? once again, no idea.

this is getting way out of hand people. the link may very well be dead by the time i get back to america. do they not know that?? do they not know how important this link is to my mental health?? do they not care??

*More than Useless - Relient K

that's what it's all about

the other day, i did the hokie-pokie with my cousin's children. well, mostly his daughter (5). his son (2) does parts, but thinks when we put our foot in, we're kicking each other so he runs around kicking us. :/

anyways, she is obsessed. from the minute i see her we are putting our right hands in and our left feet out and doing the hokie-pokie cause really, that's what it's all about. only she calls it the hokie-bokie-bokie. and i am so hokie-pokied out it is not funny. but she's so cute when she does it that i can't help but do it again whenever she asks.

*The Hokie-Pokie

get it all down on paper

have any of you ever heard of flarf or spoetry?? we did a bunch of it in this class i took. you may have seen some of it and reactions about it in my HNRS 353 blog before i took it down. if you did, then i am extremely sorry that you live such a boring life that you feel the need to read my school work in what i'm sure was a failed attempt to amuse yourself. really, truly sorry for you. anyways, just to make sure we're all in the same book (we found it impossible to all get on the same page when it concerned flarf in class), flarf and spoetry are kind of the modern art of the poetry world. flarf is google based poetry. you google really random search terms and then take what comes up in the results and make a poem. some of them are funny, some stupid, and some really, really disturbing. youtube it. my teacher was like a professional flarfist or whatever they're called and would perform her poetry at big places where flarf is performed. spoetry, in case you're a tad slow this morning, is spam poetry and basically the same as flarf except instead of google results you use the subject line of spam emails. both are actually pretty fun to do, and i suggest everyone try them at least once. it's surprising what you come up with.

so enough of that, yesterday i was dead bored and joe was off. gasp, i know. joe is never off during the day. so anyways i was going through my ipod and made an iPoem (songs were on shuffle and for each song i skipped to a random part and wrote down the first lyric that i heard). it doesnt really make sense, and it's not really worth reading. so why am i posting it?? i need something to do. i am waiting for 10:30 and staring at the clock seemed to make it go slower. so, what i'm trying to say is, you can stop reading now and just leave this post a bit more knowledgable about modern poetry methods. that being said, you can always continue:

Late at night I'm still wide awake

Put up your hands, say 'I don't want to be in love.'

No one can possible listen to this,

my tongue still misbehaves, and it keeps digging my own grave.

Somehow, I know I'll be strong.

Come on now this is screaming

now I'm sick of thinking anything at all.

Driving slow on Sunday morning and I never want to leave.

I feel so cheap, so used, unfaithful

For how long?

There's a reason why no one knows her name.

My heart, my pain won't cover up. You left me

after school walking home

I will always love you,

and I know that you're a sucker

hanging above as the conyon comes between.

And from your lips she drew the broken halleluja.

I get the strangest feeling you belong

I know this hurts, it was meant to

before loneliness will cause my heart to break.

She's beautiful as usual

I just can't look, it's killing me.

A story of losing a lover

See what you've gone and done

Ringing bells, it's red alert

well, a 33 year old grandma...

and that's all I get to know.

And that's about the time she walked away from me.

Well, I never pray, but tonight I'm on my knees,

let me take you on the ride of your life.

No one like you.

It was easy, no one ever said it would be this hard

Our breath rose in the cold

Everyone you know, someday, will die.

If only I could get through this

tonight, I could be your hero, baby.

it seems longer typed :/

*Breathe - Anna Nalick

your presence still lingers here, and it won't leave me alone

gather round, people, for a spine-thrilling story of love and loss.

my neighbor (or the dude that owns the land next to ours) didnt live on his land. he hasnt built a house for himself there yet. i've never seen him. i had doubts that he even existed. so shocked i was when we came this year and saw that something had actually been built on the land. a house too small for a person to live in, a house that could mean only one thing: chickens. a handfull of chickens and a rooster had moved next door.

now, some people may have found the crowing of the rooster obnoxious, a nuisance in the quiet hours of the day and night. but to me, it was a comfort sound. some neighbor near my old house used to have a rooster, and i remember listening to it wile i was younger. so hearing this new rooster was like a blast from the past. we would go out and see the chickens parading down the street or resting under the shade of one of our trees. we would come home and see them sleeping in their coop. i was told someone was watching them, but they seemed free to do pretty much whatever they wanted. it was not hard to grow attached to these chicken neighbors, and attached we all grew.

then, on the fateful day of june 25, i heard the news. a mass murder. all of the chickens and the rooster were found hanging headless and bleeding on the empty lot, or so i heard. i couldnt go see for myself. it was too hard. it was not hard to find the culprit, there was only one person with the motivation. one person who knew the chickens but didnt really know them, couldnt have grown to love them as we did. our "neighbor", though murder is hardly a neighborly trait.

they were dead. the coop was empty. but were they really gone? i thought so until i started hearing the crowing of the rooster early in the morning. at first i thought, the neighbor got more chickens! but the coop remained empty. then i thought another neighbor may have gotten some, but that too was proved to be a wrong assumption. there was only one logical reason behind the crowing left. the ghost of the rooster was haunting the coop, crying out at the injustice of his death. either that or i'm going crazy.

i still hear it, that mournful wailing of a lost friend, though i have yet to see any ghost animals around. phantom rooster or signs of psychosis?? the world may never know...

*My Immortal - Evanescence

easy as 1 2 3

Another life in numbers...

10 - the number of rooms in our house.

9 - the number of palm trees in front of the house across the street.

8 - what time i usually wake up.

7 - the number of minutes i spent writing this post.

6 - number of oreos in a pack. i live off of oreos here.

5 - pairs of shoes lying on my floor which need to be put away.

4 - the number of movies sitting on my nightstand.

3 - what time i usually go to sleep.

2 - the number of months i have left in jeddah.

1 - number of bars shown in my internet signal strength.

*ABC - Jackson 5

try to stay awake and remember my name

i hate hate hate it when people spell my name without the h. yes, hate to the power of three. especially when said people should know better. if you are writing on my facebook wall, it says my name right there so dont get it wrong. if i have known you for years, then dont get it wrong. if we were just having a conversation about names that end with h, dont get it wrong. and dont tell me that it doesnt make a difference. because it does. would you like me to change your name for you?? because that is what you are doing when you eat my h, you are changing my name. and i would really rather you didnt. have you ever read/watched anne of green gables?? she always introduced herself as anne spelled with an e. why?? because it makes a difference. it really does. it doesnt matter if ann and anne or sara and sarah are pronounced the same way. they are spelled differently which makes them different. a sara is not a sarah in your mind's eye, and i would really prefer to be a sarah than a sara.

stop being cheap and give me my h.

-Sarah spelled with an h

*Everybody's Changing - Keane

everybody's changing, and i don't feel the same

i go months sitting on facebook 24/7 followed by months when i barely open the site. i am currently in one of my facebook lulls, but this morning i decided to go on and make sure i havent been missing out on anything major happening in anyone's lives. i wasnt. but looking at some of the things that popped up on my homepage about highschool friends - wall posts, notes, pictures - i realized how much i wouldnt fit in with them anymore. if i had met them for the first time right now, i doubt we'd make any lasting impression on each other. maybe one of us is growing up faster than the other. maybe being out of our tiny highschool has let us just be ourselves - a self that doesnt necessarily belong with the self we were back then. maybe we all just changed.

i know i've changed. a lot. but at the same time, i feel like i havent changed at all. i think one of the main changes was my switch from friends to family. i always liked my family... for the most part. but since i've graduated i've really come to appreciate them - from my immediate family to cousins, uncles, and aunts. lonerish as it might sound, they have become my closest friends (that doesnt mean i dont have moments when i wish i could go back to my younger self, scream 'i hate you' at the top of my lungs, stomp up the stairs, and slam my bedroom door to brood). i tend to blame one person for turning me off of the human race which led to my distancing myself from most people i know (mainly friends), but i'm sure it wouldve happened eventually. i'm coded for it. a friend and i used to make lists of people who would really truly miss us if we suddenly disappeared. if i made one of those lists now, it would contain mostly family, maybe a couple of friends. and i'm okay with that in a way i wouldnt have been before. my inability to complete a class presentation without turning into a flustered tomato has all but vanished. i no longer have the smallest shred of attention to spare on what people think of me. if i like me, that's all that matters. i refuse to try and be what people want me to be. i try to be a better everything: muslim, sister, daughter. i am more anxious about the future, less sure of where i will/want to end up. i don't like talking on the phone anymore. i have given up capital letters. but i still love to read, write, and let tv and movies rot my brains. i still prefer junk food to "good" food, baking to cooking. i still use sarcasm like it's going out of fashion. i'm still apathetic and lazy. my looks havent changed. i havent developed any major new hobbies, discovered any hidden talents. the basics have pretty much stayed the same.

on a different note, you know what word i find depressing?? almost. it mocks failures and belittles succeses. you almost made it. you almost didnt make it. we're almost there. when you succeed, when you fail... it's the almost that keeps you up at night thinking of the what if's. i'd rather miss by a landslide than almost get it right.

oh, and happy fourth of july!

*Everybody's Changing - Keane

i'm gonna make this short and sweet

slow down, you move too fast

the world has been put on fast forward and the button is stuck. theres no time to do anything. no time to see anyone. i never seem to get anything done. you try to make plans but it seems like you wake up just to go to sleep ten minutes later. birthdays count the years that pass by like flipping through pages of a calendar. days speed by and people speed by, but everything just needs to slow down.

see more 6WS over here.

*Short and Sweet - Matchbox Romance

stayin up till four in the morning

it's three thirty and i just got back from a wedding and i cant sleep. mind you, we left early and didnt even see the bride. not that i really cared because i knew neither her nor the groom (he's the sister of my cousin's wife), and my dad and uncle took us and the men's dinner finishes waaaay before the women's thing. anyways, though the wedding was fun, it was such a commotion. (i blame my cousin who was insistant that we shouldnt go).

the series of unfortunate events:

*i actually wasnt planning on going to this wedding so i had neither bag nor make up to match my dress. as i decided to go a couple of hours before we left, it was too late to bum some off a cousin. i finally made do with some of my sister's.

*i was doing my hair and suddenly (seriously out of nowhere even ask my cousin) a huuuge knot appears at the back of my head. i wasnt even doing anything at the moment. it took forever to painfully brush out.

*my sister's hair straightener would not work properly. this is her favorite thing in the world. it always works.

*while my sister was done getting ready, she spilled lotion all over the front of her dress. i have no idea how. and she couldnt cry because then her makeup would get ruined, but she was having difficulty keeping back the tears. my dad got it all off perfectly.

*just as i was walking across the hallway to get to the door to go to the car where my dad was waiting, my shoe broke. in three places. it was ridiculous, and the only black shoes i have here. i ended up using my sister's.

*when we were all in the car, we realized my sister had forgotten the invitation upstairs and so she had to run back up to get it so that we could have the cards that would let us in.

*we got lost on the way there (and the way coming) and since the wedding was in makkah we had already been in the car for over an hour. my hair was so flat when we finally got to the place, but it was fixable.

*my sister matched the wedding color scheme a little too much. her tulle shawl looked the exact same as the stuff tied around the back of each chair. and my chair conveniently didnt have one so it kinda looked like she had stolen it.

*my sister's necklace broke out of nowhere while we were sitting. the chain just snapped. she looked a little weird searching on the floor for the pendant, but it's okay cause she's an american.

*like i said, we had to leave early, and i made a commotion getting up. i tripped over a chair that some not so smart person had left behind me in the already crowded space between the tables. then, as i tried to catch my balance, i tripped on the front of my dress. i didnt fall, but i looked like an idiot.

oh, and they were walking around serving peaches, plums, and cherries from fish bowls along with te juice. :/ it was very random.

despite all this, though, we had fun. i just wish that some people wouldnt wear dresses with slits up to their throats and stomachs and sides bare if they really dont have the body for it. i do not want to see you oozing out of your dress thank you very much. you are embarassing yourself.

*4 in the Morning - Gwen Stefani

the butterflies in my stomach they could bring me to my knees

i opened my inbox this morning to deal with the whole slew of neglected emails that have been coming in over the past few weeks. you know, the ones that you cant just delete without opening because they might be important, but they dont seem interesting/important enough to open right away.

one of the emails was instructing me to go fill out my graduation intent form if i planned to graduate, as the deadline is july 10. and so i did.

and now i am suffering from an anxiety attack. a big one.

there was a reason i was putting this off. now, all the graduation jitters i have been suppressing are back with a vengeance. i am not ready to be a college graduate. i do not know what i want to do with the rest of my life. i don't even know what i want to do with tomorrow. i havent even really gotten my thoughts organized about grad school. aaaahh!

am i too old to sneak off to neverland??

*So Much - The Spill Canvas