Tomato, Tomato

In Jordan an "Afro" (the hairstyle) is called a "Negro."

Religion is Gay

I was just hit on by a catholic priest. I couldn't quite tell what the guy was saying during most of the conversation because he was so so drunk. But I did catch that he was a priest at the big church up the street from the restaurant.

Religion is an inevitable topic of discussion when you work with a bunch of Arabs. Multiple times, multiple different Arabs have asked me what religion I follow. To avoid getting into it, I just tell them I don't believe in anything. It happened again today. This guy today found it impossible to consider that when you're dead, you're dead, there's nothing after. He said that he KNEW there was something after. Fine, whatever you believe in.

Toward the end of my shift, he came up to me all excited, "Hey, we're talking about religion! Come join us!" Going against my better judgment, I followed him outside. I was introduced to the aforementioned priest. I knew the guy was gay because I see his fat ass walking his fat schnauzer up and down the street every day and it's pretty obvious that he is a homosexual, but to hear him speak with his lisp just verified my initial assumption. He also told me that I was handsome.

The same bullshit was exchanged, "No, I don't believe in an afterlife and I'm satisfied with that." So after some some drunken mumbling and stumbling, his gay friend came to take him to the bar. The priest patted me on the stomach (?!) and offered to buy me a drink. I told him I had to work.

Appetite for Destruction

While Manhattan is filling up with yuppie scum at an exponential rate and just getting boringer and expensiver, Brooklyn is getting awesomer. You know all those old movies about NYC that make it look like a place full of diversity, crazy people and violence [excitement]? Well Manhattan isn't like at AT ALL anymore, it's safe, bland, and too rich to afford any culture.

Brooklyn on the other hand is holding it down! If anything, it's getting more crazy and more violent.

http://gothamist.com/2008/07/12/stabbings.php

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6270812

Say what you want about Williamsburg, but it's essentially the only part of New York where anything happens any more. Quoted below is a friend of mine's account of something he saw in the neighborhood.

"i saw a dead body tonight

a guy fell off the roof of a building across the way from my house"

"i had just finished my run

so i was walking

and i didn't see

but i heard what sounded like maybe a tv falling and shattering on the ground

then i look up at the roof and i here a girl go "oh my god"

so i keep walking

i go around the block

so i come back around because i see a cop car there

a guy is lying on the sidewalk"

"i had never seen that kind of stillness

there was a puddle of blood under his head

and his eyes were open

i just kind of can't believe the sound i heard must've been his bones shattering or something

it sounded almost like glass

i didn't know how to feel

i feel like death is getting closer to my house"

Excuse You

So apparently burping and farting in front of Arabs is considered extremely rude.

Yeah, I know it's rude pretty much everywhere, but Jordanians will take extreme offense to it. Like, even when you're hanging out with your bros, having a beer, well, Muslims don't drink alcohol, so having a cola, or in my case a seltzer, the carbonation in which can make a person burp, is STILL considered rude.

I got a stern talking to after a belch that wasn't even that good. I was told that if you burp or fart at a table full of people in Jordan, they would all leave. Like, it's ok if a fart sneaks out and you couldn't stop it, but if you, like, lean over and really rip one, people won't be your friend any more. How ridiculous is that?

So, like every time I burp in front of these guys, drinking my seltzer, they go off muttering in Arabic.

That's right, I didn't stop burping OR farting. Just because they said it's considered rude in their country? Well you know what? You're in MY country, where dudes can burp and fart in the presence of other dudes. It's one of our many freedoms. We also don't stone people to death.

Non Sequitur

The other night I was at work and something was burning in the kitchen.

"Ooh, that stinks," I said.

"You think that smells bad?," the Mexican chef asked me. "When I was in the army, I had to search for the victims of a helicopter crash in the jungle. When we found them, they had their eyeballs all back here [motions to the back of his head] and had been dead for 5-6 days. Now THAT smells bad!"

Home is Where the Blood and Teeth is

Brooklyn, unlike Manhattan, is still real, at least for the time being. I was at a rooftop BBQ last night in The 'Burg, and one of the girls who lived there told me about a shooting that occurred the night before, right in front of the building. A 16 year old kid was shot in the face five times, blowing up his mouth all over the street, after saying some bullshit to some other kid. The paramedics left a big pile of blood and teeth and medical equipment like bloody rubber gloves on the street. It was left there ALL WEEKEND because of some stupid rule in NYC where the property owner is responsible for cleaning up such messes. Because the incident occurred in a parking lot belonging to the MTA, and they "had the weekend off" or some shit, nobody did anything about it.


And you know why else New York sucks? Because when a stranger runs up behind you as you go through the subway turnstile, doubling up, and you don't realize that he did that until you are all the way through, you BOTH get a $100 ticket.

My court date is in a month. I'm definitely going.

All I Ever Really Needed to Know About The Middle East, I Learned by Working at a Middle Eastern Restaurant, Chapter 2

I was standing out front of the restaurant yesterday with one of my coworkers when a jogger ran by. He was wearing tiny, little short shorts and nothing else. I joked that someone should tell that guy to put some clothes on. My Jordanian coworker replied that if that guy were running around in his country, everybody would come out and throw rocks at him, "Boom, boom, boom, there would be blood all over the place! HA HA HA!"