n e w d i s a s t e r.

it's that time again

nobody@vox.com(Harith) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:24:05 -0400

If you can believe it, it's time once again for Karsa. You may have no idea what that means, which is why I'm writing here today.

Below is the entry I wrote explaining Karsa two years ago. Rather than just link to it, I decided to repost an edited version, removing references to specific days of the week that were only applicable that year to avoid confusion. I hope this helps.

The rumors are true: today is Karsa. What's that you say? Well I'll tell you!

For those of you who haven't heard Fernando's Mormon jokes, my family belongs to a tiny tiny ancient Eastern religion known as Mandaeanism. There's a pretty decent article on Wikipedia, but the basic idea is that it isn't an offshoot of anything, despite the importance of John the Baptist; it's the only Gnostic faith still being practiced in the world; it may in fact pre-date Judaism (there are experts looking into it); and there are like, I don't know, 40 of us in the world. You haven't heard of it, and it's not surprising.

Karsa comes but once a year. The setup is actually pretty cool. Earth is guarded by untold numbers of angels. Millions of years ago or whenever these things happen, you know, all the angels left Earth and ascended to heaven to ask god (Haai Zaaken) how the world works. This exchange is printed in one of the Mandaeans' holy texts aptly titled The 1,012 Questions, and it's pretty awesome to read. There are things like Why is the grass green or Why is the sun so small and the answers are all correct, in modern scientific terms. I personally don't think there's anything mystical to it; ancient Babylon was after all home to the world's first scientists. It's just really great to think about my heritage in that way.

Anyway, back to Karsa: humans, being as we are slightly clueless and extremely accident-prone, find ourselves completely open to attack from the evil beings who also inhabit Earth and who sadly do not have a convention of their own to attend that day. As a result, we do not leave our homes for 36 hours, just to be on the safe side. No one is allowed in from outside (exception can be made if you are a Mandaean and have not crossed a body of water), and you're not allowed to touch plant life or use running water. In our house we still use water, but not excessively -- no showers, but if you think about it, who are you try to impress? You're not going anywhere.

Most people get confused on this point: the belief is not that this happens each year. Rather, it's something that's done as a tribute to the time it happened. I compare it to the lighting of the candles at Hanukkah.

My mom really digs on this holiday because it means Bessam and I are mandated to hang out with them for a whole day.

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best music of 2008

nobody@vox.com(Harith) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:19:57 -0500

Vampire Weekend

Welcome again to my most consistent blog feature: my favorite music of 2008. As ever, I offer the following disclaimer: this list has absolutely nothing to do with "quality" -- whatever that is -- and reflects only the records that I enjoyed most this year. A musician that I admire a great deal told me, last year around this time, "There is nothing more subjective than a person's taste." I couldn't agree more.

I decided to go up to 15 albums, because I made an effort to listen to a lot more of this year's releases. Subsequently, I fell in a love with more of them.

15. Q-Tip - The Renaissance

14. Girl Talk - Feed The Animals

13. Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

12. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

11. Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - Cardinology

10. Monkey - Journey To The West

9. Counting Crows - Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

8. Matthew Loiacono - Kentucky

7. Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue

6. Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst

5. Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends

4. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

3. She & Him - Volume 1

2. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

1. We are Jeneric - In The Parlor With The Moon

Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings

Counting Crows

Due to the Internet rendering the "single" sort of useless, the top songs are just that. In several cases, I couldn't pick one song that I like most on one of my favorite albums, and thus not all are represented on the top tracks list. I chose 30 songs which I put in alphabetical order because ranking them would be impossible/irrelevant. Play me any one of them right now and I would start rocking out.

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - "Born Into A Light"

Beyonce - "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)"
Erykah Badu - "The Healer (Hip Hop)"
Blu - "Departing Flights"
Bon Iver - "Lump Sum"
Basia Bulat - "In The Night"
Coldplay - "Lost!"
Counting Crows - "Cowboys"
Death Cab for Cutie - "Cath..."
Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal"
Kevin Hume - "The Night of the Velociped"
Kid Sister ft. David Banner - "Family Reunion"
Jenny Lewis - "Acid Tongue"
Leona Lewis - "Bleeding Love"
Lykke Li - "Breaking It Up"
Matthew Loiacono - "Vaults & Crowns"
M83 - "Kim & Jessie"
MGMT - "Electric Feel"
My Brightest Diamond - "Inside A Boy"
Leona Naess - "Swing Swing Gently"
Kate Nash - "Foundations"
Conor Oberst - "Lenders in the Temple"
Princess Mabel - "Dishwasher Boy"
Sigur Ros - "Gobbledigook"
She & Him - "Sentimental Heart"
Vampire Weekend - "The Kids Don't Stand A Chance"
We are Jeneric - "The Leavings"
Saul Williams - "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
Yael Naim - "New Soul"

Special citation goes to Britney Spears's "Womanizer," which is hands-down my most egregiously bad song of the year. It just barely edged out ahead of Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl." Also: the only form in which I find "Love In This Club" tenable is the following, but it's something:

Usher - Love In This Club (Performed by Showbiz Pizza Band)

Happy End-Of-Another-Year. Have a safe holiday season.

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ahoy there

nobody@vox.com(Harith) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:13:12 -0500

I know I've been absent, and to those six of you who ever read this, please know that I do feel embarrassed. Sometime in the next week or so, I'm going to be posting my annual top albums list, and I didn't want that to be the first post in however long. So, this nonsense is. To make it semi-worthwhile, please enjoy the following video of a dog freaking out:

Dog Malfunction

See you soon.

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self-congratulatory roundup, 29 june 2008

nobody@vox.com(Harith) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:46:27 -0400

from a weekend in New York City:

"It's empty, like my heart."
-Katie, on her locket

"WALL-E was so good! It reminded me of... a good movie."
-Schubin

"Lou and I have ingested a truly formidible amount of food at two different restaurants in the last four hours."
"I'm very proud of you"
"Hopefully you will agree to be my pallbearer as well."
"Not if you keep eating like this I'm not."
-Fernando and me, via text message

"The building is heated and cooled on a complex system run by both self-satisfaction and poverty."
-Mountain Tall, on the gentrification of Harlem

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i'm a huge dork

nobody@vox.com(Harith) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:57:17 -0400

...who's five minutes away from the release of Firefox 3.0.

Don't forget to download the new release TODAY; they deserve to get the World Record so much!

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humongous

nobody@vox.com(Harith) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:06:11 -0400

For any Albany resident that has ever been irritated by a commercial for Huck Finn's Warehouse (all of us), good news: so is Conan O'Brien.

Seriously, I already live in Albany. Why do I want to enter this contest?

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the international phone purchase crisis: update

nobody@vox.com(Harith) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:34:34 -0400

For those of you who cared (apparently, a fair few of you did -- thank you to everyone for their advice), I wanted to let you know that, while I was on the road to making the same decision myself, Steve Jobs went ahead and pulled the trigger for me this afternoon. I had played with Beep's iPhone a ton and had grown to love it, and Wendy and I went to visit the AT&T store yesterday and were completely charmed by the friendliness and (so novel!) helpfulness of the staff. I watched the announcement of all the new features in real time (thanks MacRumors, I thought I had hit the geek glass ceiling), and then the last nail in the coffin landed: $199 for the 8GB iPhone. I have between now and July 11 to get out of my contract with Sprint. I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am.

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self-congratulatory roundup, 9 june 2008

nobody@vox.com(Harith) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:40:27 -0400

"We should see Indiana Jones! Indiana Jones! Doot doo doot doo, doot doo doo, doot doo doot doo, doot doo doo doo doo, doot doo doot doo, doot doo doo, dananana da na da da na da da na da na na! That's the theme song."
-Schubin, on the phone with his sister, on what movie they should see

"So do you have, like, jazz insurance?"
-Schubin, clearly concerned about Brian's health and well-being

"You have two apartments. We have zero."
"Sure, but I also have an imaginary drug problem. These are the consequences of my excessive lifestyle."
-Me and Andria

"K-E? What is that?"
"I'm gonna say some kind of sea creature."
-Andria and Mountain Tall, on a dubious play in Scrabble

"Fetal position, here I come."
-Cindy B

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series of tubes roundup, 5 june 2008

nobody@vox.com(Harith) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:37:45 -0400

Jesus fucking christ you are the goddamn PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES GET A GRIP ON YOURSELF. Or hire better handlers! CHRIST!

I hate myself so much for thinking this sounds awesome.

I do not think this sounds awesome. I think it sounds like death.

And, to end on the exact opposite of a light note: the number of Americans who filed for bankruptcy last year increased 38 percent from 2006. And hey, by the way, home prices dropped 14% in the first three months of this year, oil prices continue breaking records, and the building you're in right now is literally on fire.

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i also rarely notice when i rhyme

nobody@vox.com(Harith) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:49:41 -0400

I swear to god, I was going to write that I had a "new development," until it struck me that that was a pun.

Anyway, I set up a new blog for my photography. I'm not sure what it is yet, what I'm going to do with it, or why I set it up. Suffice it to say it's another item that you can put in your Google Reader and you've never really needed much more convincing than that. As ever, but slightly more in this case, comments will be greatly appreciated.

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