My google ads suck, so...

...this is a shameless attempt to get better ones.

Britney Spears. In the video for "Slave 4 U" she was ridiculously hot.

Christina Aguilera is often naked. I enjoy her singing voice, but I wish that she would never speak. Whenever she speaks, she reminds me of the intellectual sink-hole that is Western, PA.

Dior bags are fabulous. Dior, Gucci and Vuitton are my favorite.

Prince is getting a divorce. I'm a little sad, but I'd like to know where I can put in an application to be one of his ethnically ambiguous sidekicks.

Hezbollah. Israel. Palestine. Lebanon. Fox News makes me ill with their blatant agenda. Then again, so does MSNBC. CNN is the only organization that approaches "fair and balanced."

Beyonce. Beyonce. Beyonce. Beyonce. Beyonce. Beyonce. B'Day is being released on our birthday. I still want to be her when I grow up.

Anne Coulter is a useless human being. Around the release of her last book, she actually claimed that she wasn't a racist because she was dating a man of Middle Eastern extraction. If this was true, what would be the Arabic version of an"Uncle Tom"?

Wentworth Miller and Prison Break are coming back next month. Wentworth Miller is the hottest thing on the face of the planet, next to Beyonce. In fact, Wentworth Miller and Beyonce should mate. He's certainly an upgrade from Joe Camel or, uh, Jay-Z.

Janet Jackson's new video sucks, so does the song. I'll still buy Janet's album - purely out of loyalty - but I'm very disappointed. You know that if Michael Jackson put that out as a first single, he'd be crucified...and rightfully so.

Let's have a discussion.

Can you be anti-Israel, without being (or being labeled) anti-Semitic?

Are Jewish people and Israel one in the same? Is disagreeing with the way the Israeli government and military operate the same thing as hating the Jews?

Discuss and try to refrain from spewing invectives.

It was only a matter of time.

Cairo's first "urban club" opened in Giza this month. Its name?

"Bling Bling"

Ah, Egyptian ingenuity at its finest.

Idiotic name aside, I think it's pretty cool. It irks me to no end when I see and hear about young Egyptian women increasingly making the "choice" to be all muhajabah'd up (note: if that is genuinely their choice, then that's beautiful and I respect that. But for the most part, I think the strengthening of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the idiotic edicts of paranoid men are to blame. Remember I'm biased, even my deeply religious grandmother - who was very Muslim and old school - didn't believe in veiling herself), so something like this provides some semblance of a "modern" life.

More about "Bling Bling":

To those of us who grew up closer to 2Pac's jail cell than the neighborhoods of Om Kolthoum or Amr Diab, it is heartening, near tear-inducing, to be able to hear the well-mixed and pulsating sounds of Usher's "Yeah" from a quality sound system in Cairo....Though a few could benefit from a good dancing lesson, by around 2am the majority of the patrons found their way into a decent groove of "leaning back" and "shaking their thing"....Best of all, small, classy flat-screen TVs are situated in each nook and cranny, providing favorite rap and Michael Jackson music videos for anyone who grows tired of scanning the dance floor.

From Egypt Today.

Justin Timberlake Must Die

Ignore my rudimentary paintshop skills.



On the heels of Justin Timberlake letting the world know that he's a loser druggie (chronicled by The Cynical One), JT has once again reminded us that he's a useless piece of shit. I won't post his exact comments, but on a recent RadioOne interview, the biter made some less than flattering insinuations about the very person he's notoriously imitated/stolen from.

Hey, asshole - if you're going to steal (or "swagger jack" as the kids are saying these days) a person's entire schtick, at least be gracious about it.

Everything that you are, professionally, is because of the person you're now disrespecting. Those new jack restraint-style vocals you were using on Celebrity were not reminiscent of Donny Hathaway OR Prince. When you were moonwalking, grabbing your crotch, beat-boxing and wearing a fedora all at once while promoting Justified, you were not inspired by Frank Sinatra or Chris Martin of Coldplay. As far as I'm concerned, you're a glorified version of Cory Feldman.

Oh, wait - that's right. You're not an EmJay impersonator anymore. You fancy yourself the new David Bowie now. You think you and your Screech from Saved By the Bell lookin' ass are bringing the Sexyback.

Whatever. My stereo speakers contracted VD the first time they played that mess. I hope your album tanks so badly that you're forced to sing backup for Kevin Federline.

Randomness

Random things you may or may not know about me:

As a child, I referred to ginger ale as champagne and sometimes, if I don't catch myself, I'll still make the slip of the tongue.

I tend to hold people at arm's length. While I have a lot of people with whom I'm friendly, I don't consider many people friends. If I've ever considered you such, it's because I genuinely love(d) and care(d) about you. If that status changes, it's because I've been hurt and once people hurt me, I can't really trust them anymore. However, I will never wish ill upon someone I once considered a friend.

I couldn't tie my shoes until I was eight. My small motor skills still leave much to be desired.

I can't be around bleach. If anybody uses it to clean a bathroom and I go in to take a shower afterwards, I feel like I can't breathe and that I'm going blind.

After 9/11, I developed a fear of dying before age 40. At various times, I've decided cause of my demise would be (1) related to the fumes and particles in the air after the towers fell, (2) the result of an assassination attempt or (3) the result of a degenerative autoimmune disease.

Lebanese pop stars all look the same to me.

I'm still waiting for new jack swing to make its big comeback. Any day now, I tell ya.

If I suddenly won $10million dollars, I'd put aside $3mil for my mother and father, buy a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, give $1mil to help the street children in Cairo and Khartoum and invest the rest.

I hate Mexican food.

I've recently developed a bit of a crush on Keanu Reeves...about ten years after everybody else got over him.

I think Rod Temperton is a pretty dreadful songwriter and without the right singer, his songs sound like variations on The Love Boat theme (remember Brandy's cover of "Rock With You" or Mya's cover of "Lady (Man) in my Life"?). Give me Steve Porcaro/John Bettis!


Random music I'm interested in at the moment:

Nelson (Ryan Leslie's latest protégé). Check out his myspace here.

Shoshyn. And not only because I'm paid to be.


Outlandish. Not new, but certainly timely. The first song is "Look Into My Eyes." You might know the second song "Aicha" from Khaled.

Nelly Furtado. I can't get enough of "Do It," "Undercover," or "Wait For You" off of her latest offering, Loose.

No, listen, I really am African.

Today, whilst speaking to a coworker who shall remain nameless, I mentioned my activities over the past weekend. Primarily, I spoke of the "Arab American and North African Cultural Festival" that I attended on Saturday, although I unintentionally called it the "North African Cultural Festival." Before I could correct myself, she blurted out "What were you doing at an African festival?"

"Beg your pardon?" I said, taken aback.

"I mean, you're Egyptian. That's not African, that's Arab. I mean, like, Jews and Israelis wouldn't think they belong there, why do you?"

This is a woman who, on paper, is supposed to be educated.

Oh, where to begin...

First, I reminded her that Egypt is in Africa (right on top of Sudan, can't miss it), specifically North Africa. Secondly, I reminded her that there are other ethnic groups in Africa besides those that she deems black. Then, I had to inform her that there are indeed Jewish North Africans, mostly concentrated in Morocco (and some in Egypt, although the Jewish population certainly waned after Nasser took control). And, of course, Israel isn't in Africa whereas Egypt is, so that should be self explanatory.

This wasn't the first time that I've encountered similar ignorance. Americans (and others) have no actual knowledge of the African continent.

For example, I once mentioned flippantly to a friend that I was going to enter this African in America beauty pageant simply because I felt that West Africans had a monopoly on it and I wanted to represent (*throws up pyramid sign*). Of course, I wasn't serious (bathing suit competition? I don't think so!) and I don't think that West Africans conspire to keep other Africans out - religious and/or cultural constraints of other Africans often would prevent them from participating in such a thing. Anyway, her reaction was disheartening, to say the least. "You can't enter that pageant, you're white." (wrong. on. so. many. levels.) But then added "Well, I guess you could, technically, since Egypt is in Africa." Just when I thought she may have partially redeemed herself, she said "You know, this reminds me of this White British kid whose parents were born in Zimbabwe who went to my school. He would call himself African-American so he could get affirmative action. It's the same thing."

No, it's not. I'm descendant of multiple ethnic groups indigenous to the African continent. Even if I had turned out blonde haired and blue eyed (like many Tunisians, ethnically Berber and also North African), that wouldn't take away from the fact that I'm still African. In fact, inspired by the PBS documentary that aired earlier this year, African American Lives, I decided to take a DNA test to see exactly what my breakdown would be. Although politically Arab, I didn't come back as being an actual one (i.e. descended from peninsula Arabs, one could still argue that I fall under the category of "Arabized"). It turns out that I'm Italian (but much less than I thought, strange considering how I look), a little Greek, a little Turkish, a touch of Iranian, a pinch of East Indian (interesting, especially since it came from my mother's side) and with the largest percentages being found as Sub-Saharan and North African (i.e. Berber, Nubian, etc.). My Italian-Sicilian mother came back as 6% Sub-Saharan or "black African" (from Ethiopia and Eritrea), although that's not surprising since Sicily is but a vigorous swim away from Africa and seriously, you need to see her sister's hair. The big shocker was that my North African-born father is less ethnically North African than my mother. Her 36% beat out his 34% (with the rest of him being comprised of Sub-Saharan African, specifically Sudanese, and Turkish). Suffice to say, I'm plenty African while my friend's classmate does not have a legitimate claim to being ethnically African. Being a white European person who just happened to be born in Africa, or whose ancestors immigrated there and didn't intermingle, isn't the same as having ethnic lineage tied directly to the continent.

The problem is that so many people have been conditioned to think that there is one set way for Africans to look. They lump everybody into one category, not considering that Africa's ethnic groups are just as numerous (if not moreso) than Europe's. Would you expect a Scot to resemble a Greek or Albanian? No, but they're all still European. So why would you expect an Algerian or an Eritrean to look like someone from Sierra Leone in order for them to be"authentically" African?

My God, thinking back to college, I was once in a Human Rights class where a girl professed that she didn't know how the past horrors in Rwanda were genocide or ethnic cleansing since "they're all just black, right?" Um, hello? The Armenian genocide was perpetrated by the Turkish and they're both (for the time being considered) "white," why is it so hard to fathom that Africans can have ethnic differences that lend themselves to conflict, without dismissing consequent genocides as merely "tribal" feuds?

There's something very wrong when you can make it through college (or even high school, really) and not know the reality of Africa. Clearly it's not a priority for educators to teach this and that sucks. The plight of Africa isn't going to change until people understand the continent itself, with all of its complexities. Although I may think that in order to empower itself, Africa needs to unify and become politically "one," we must always remember that it's made of many.