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Thursday, April 28, 2005
One more reason to graduate ASAP!
........................................................................................A team of French and American researchers has successfully cloned a horse, Texas A&M University officials announced Wednesday. The foal was named Paris Texas. The university believes it's the first successful cloned horse in North America; horses have previously been cloned in Italy. Source In December 2003, the school announced it had cloned a white-tailed deer — a fawn named "Dewey." Dewey is believed to be the first successfully cloned deer, said officials at A&M, which has also cloned cattle, goats, pigs and a cat. Source A few more years in A&M and I'm afraid they'll run out of animals and start cloning us. at 8:56 PM by negar Wednesday, April 27, 2005 While I'm pondering the purpose of my detestable existence, you can check out this blog. I've read it for a few months now and it has never failed to amuse me. at 6:27 PM by negar Sunday, April 24, 2005
The Civilization of Negar
........................................................................................So here I am. Not in Houston. At home. We, the stranger and I, came back this afternoon because she had a paper to write. So did I but being the slacker I am, I wouldn't mind staying for the whole week. Actually I could have stayed except that I had no car and no one to share the lodging expenses with. Good news is that we're going back at the end of the week for the last few days of the festival. Now when I say festival what comes to my own mind is Fajr Film Festival at Tehran. Overcrowded lobbies, smell of coffee and cigarettes, celebrities, and a big line of people who'd kill to get in. Yesterday when my friend stopped in front of a very small looking theater, I said "You've got to be kidding me!" "No," she said, "this is it!" No banners, no crowd, and worse than all no one jealous of our VIP passes. But perhaps that's a good thing. At least it made the whole process of claiming the passes and finding the right film to watch super easy. Yesterday I watched films for 10 hours. Non-stop. No commercial breaks. For 5 times I listened to the director of the festival welcome the guests. Since he used the same jokes everytime, I was tempted to throw something at him. I had to act civil though. Not everyone was there to watch as many films as they could take. Some people have a lower threshold. For the first two hours we watched short comedies, and horror comedies for the next two hours. Then we watched three long features. One of which I simply didn't get so I spent two hours wondering when will it be over. Ironically it was called Euphoria. It was a documentary-like film about happiness. Everyone else loved it. Now my favorite was the Civilization of Maxwell Bright. Max Bright is this fairly successful business man in California whose relationships with women are "invariable explosive and cruel." He's uncivil and very nasty to women. He decides he's had with the American women. What he needs is a "demure, submissive, and obedient woman" who will never say no to him. Especially in bed. So he goes and buys a Chinese mail-order bride. I was so reminded of Asad! I was expecting the film to take a comic turn but it didn't. It was an absolutely serious film. I loved it. And I loved the actor, Patrick Warburton. I got an autograph from the director, David Beaird. Just in case, you know. According to the festival director, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, David Lynch, Oliver Stone and a few others won their very first awards at the WorldFest. The director spelled my name NegR. I like that! I meant to write about other things as well but this is already too long of a post. I'll save it for later. at 7:52 PM by negar Saturday, April 23, 2005
Off to Houston
........................................................................................I'm going to Houston for the WorldFest. I don't know how long I will be gone. 2 days at least. 8 days at most. Unless the stranger who's giving me a ride tomorrow morning turns out to be a really bad driver. In which case, there is no way to tell if I'm coming back at all. Wasn't it for the tempting VIP gold pass, I wouldn't consider going out of town on the last week of classes. That film festival better be damn good. Keep your fingers crossed. at 2:11 AM by negar Friday, April 22, 2005
3 minutes and 51 seconds
........................................................................................I scare myself when I sit here and watch this in a frantic repetition. 3 minutes and 51 seconds. Play again. 3 minutes and 51 seconds. Play again. 3 minutes and 51 seconds. Play again. And I feel nothing. The music reminds me of something in the distant past but I don't remember what. 3 minutes and 51 seconds. Nothing. No feelings. No thoughts. No nothing. Play again. I watch over and over again. Until my eyes fill with tears. But even then I feel nothing. No melancholy. No joy. No regert. No nostalgia. No nothing. 3 minutes and 51 seconds. Play again. at 1:26 AM by negar Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Murdoch here, Murdoch there, Murdoch ****ing EVERYWHERE!
........................................................................................If for a whole night you dream that Rupert Murdoch is harassing you, it's your cue to stop studying the telecom and media industry for a while. at 5:16 PM by negar Tuesday, April 19, 2005
The New Pope
........................................................................................ Doesn't the new pope look a bit evil? I think he's up to something really really naughty. I'm guessing it involves, among other things, setting Vatican on fire. at 2:56 PM by negar Thursday, April 14, 2005 My friend takes out her calendar and draws a big X over Thursday April 14th. "Negar, look at this! We have only 3 more weeks of school," she says with so much excitement that I get myself ready to grab her chair before she knocks herself over. "How does that make you feel?" she asks with a big grin. I give her a long empty look. "Horrified," I say. "Come on girl," she says desparately, "it's almost over." I don't say that it's the almost part that worries me. "Oh yeah, you're totally right. YAY!" I fake. Now I'm sitting here with my calendar in my lap, wondering what would happen if April was 40 days instead. I don't need too much time. Just enough for me to pull myself together, find my books from wherever they are, and get myself ready for lots and lots of writing. Could we stop the time. Doesn't the world have a little pause button? What is time anyways? Is it a property of the nature or did we create time? Of course in the nature there is that cycle thing and there is the matter of aging and ultimately dying. But seems to me that the rest of it is all artifact. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. We name them, we count them, and then we force ourselves to race against them. Right now on the computer next to mine there is a screensaver ad for some library service and in big bold letters it says SAVE TIME. We all want to save time, but then who knows what happens to all that time we "saved." So when death comes we say to our angel of death, "well, actually back in the college days I deposited some time to my saving account. I'm going to use it now. Come back later"? Or is it that we want to get more done in the time that we've got so when we die we can brag to the other dead people that we've done more? How much did you earn when you were alive? How many people did you meet? How many did you sleep with? How many degrees did you receive? How many children did you raise? How many books did you read? How many sports did you learn? How many languages did you speak? How many movies did you watch? How many tv shows did you follow back when you were not dead sir? I don't think any of the other dead people give a damn. At least I hope they don't. I hope that once I'm dead no one asks me "how much did you weigh before decomposition? Is it true that you weighed as much as 143 lbs. back in summer 2004?" Good God! Look where I started off and where I ended up! I write for a few more minutes and I might even tell you how old I am. Not that there's anyone who doesn't know. Anyways, finally going home. Staying on campus has made me insane. I'll edit and "dub a title" later. at 6:51 PM by negar Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Tragedy of My Life
........................................................................................"What you have to know is that Marla is still alive. Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't." Fight Club at 8:33 PM by negar Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Beautiful weather...
........................................................................................Ok, so I heard flickr.com is the big thing now. I felt like I HAD to try it out so here we go... Let's see how it looks on my page. at 4:13 PM by negar Monday, April 11, 2005
IKEA Catalogue Anyone?
........................................................................................" And I wasn't the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pronography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue." (Fight Club, p. 33) This sounded so familiar that I had to go and check. And yes, I was right. IKEA did have a TV commercial based on these two lines. Smart Swedes. at 9:53 PM by negar Sunday, April 10, 2005
The Edge of Reason
........................................................................................Spoiler Warning Enabled! I just watched Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. I'm no sucker for romantic comedies. Some people are and that's perfectly alright. I just have a hard time getting really interested in a movie with an obvious ending. However, that doesn't stop me from watching them, especially when a hot actor or actress is involved. Among the ones I've seen (and trust me I've seen a lot) the Bridget Jones movies have been the best. At least you can't be sure about the ending by watching the first 15 minutes and that's a very good thing. But then I might be under influence of the awesome British accent and of course my sweetheart, Colin Firth! Isn't it fabulous that he, not Hugh Grant, got the girl eventually? Can I put an online order for a Mark Darcy of my own? Minus the lesbian girl friend please. Not that anything's wrong with the lesbian girl friend. In fact it's great that she has legs up to here (pointing to my chest) but I think if I ever wanted to go out with a girl I could manage to find one by myself. I mean there's always that blonde personal trainer who used to message me (and flirt) for a while. Now that I think of it her name was Linda and she was from California. Could it have been our own Linda by any chance? So yeah, what was I saying? Oh, Mark Darcy. I know he's a "stuck-up snob" but it turns out that I have a thing for snobs! No, not really. Besides Mark Darcy, the only stuck-up snob I like is me. And that's because I don't act snobbish around me. Hey, I didn't even know I was a snob until someone told me so. Alright, back to the movie. The happy everafter sequence at the end was rather cheesy. Something else that I found irritating was that somehow the makers of the movie had decided that every female prisoner in Thailand knows English and gets excited to know that she's receiving a copy of Men Are From Mars / Women Are From Venus as a gift. Or perhaps the female inmates in Thailand's prisons are far more fortunate than we think they are. This was not meant to be a long post. Earlier tonight I bought Fight Club, the novel, and I can't wait to read it. Of course I don't think I'll manage to read more than a few pages. After all a long naproxen-induced sleep awaits me. Sweet way to finish off with a calm Saturday. at 12:48 AM by negar Thursday, April 07, 2005
Appreciative of Literature
If Thomas Hardy was still alive, I'd help him hang himself tonight. Couldn't he write a shorter Tess of the D'Urbervilles? at 2:05 AM by negar
I'm the Reason to Hate!
........................................................................................ I don't know why my blog is a reason for him/her to hate Texas. I mean there are plenty of reasons one can have for hating Texas but my blog?! Oh come on! I'm not THAT bad, am I? at 1:45 AM by negar Tuesday, April 05, 2005
The Dream Gone Bad
........................................................................................It's windy, cloudy, humid and warm today. The air is heavy and hard to breath in. It could give me a headache even if my mailbox wasn't flooded by the talk of some half-stranger's death. Murder, that is. In 1990 his family packed up whatever they had in Iran and moved to the U.S. in pursuit of the American Dream. The boy turned out to be a genius, getting his bachelors in three years with a 4.0 GPA, receiving all sorts of scholarships and what not. In 2003 after spending a year in England studying at Oxford, he went back to his hometown in Texas to get ready to start medical school. One night, only three days after his arrival, he went to the local Barnes & Nobels and ran into his former friend/classmate who happened to have a loaded weapon in his hand. The rest was all forensic work. Later the local newspaper ran a story about the homicide and informed the community that the dispute between the 23-year-old Iranian-American victim and the 23-year-old Iraqi-American suspect was most probably related to drugs and sexual misconduct. So much for the American Dream. It could make a great depressing movie. Like the House of Sand and Fog, only much much better. Better and darker. at 5:34 PM by negar Sunday, April 03, 2005
Pick me Jacob, pick me!
........................................................................................I sit here, trying hard to write but I can't. The word document is open in front of me with the cursor blinking tirelessly. I'm numb and ditached as if an iron curtain separates me from her. I make an attempt to pull back the curtain but she shuts me out. I know what I've done to her but I can't tell how much damage was done. Damn it though, I had no other choice. I only wanted to protect her. I helped her build her defenses sky high and now I can't climb back in. I'm left out and without her I feel numb and ditached. Nonetheless the word document stays blank. It's supposed to be an application letter to Jacob, my TA of two semesters, for a scholarship. If I'm accepted I'll spend the last ten days of April in Houston, watching independent films in WorldFest Film Festival. Sounds good, doesn't it? The best part is that I will be away from here for a few days. And I'm pretty sure I'd be accepted if I applied, yet I can't write. When I write about my qualifications, she laughs mockingly. "What qualifications? You assume everyone to be a fool? The best you can do is to beg!" she says. I know what she's referring to. I hang my head in shame and wish I could undo things I've done to her. I wish I could take away her pain. The pain I know I caused. Yet she leaves me out, thinking I'm no good. And perhaps she's right. Perhaps I'm no good and the best I can do is to beg. So here I go: Pick me Jacob, pick me! at 8:47 PM by negar
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