I shit you not, my fair friends, someone has actually posted the line above.

I had a sarcastic response lined up, and then I thought, why bother? Why bother with someone who’s invested in the idea that Star Trek belongs to a noble subculture of dudely doodz whose responses to it are so much more profound than anything the silly ladies might think or feel? Why bother with someone who is outraged by the fact that the new film featured male babes as well as female ones, struck down by the possibility that “holy shit, they didn’t just have heterosexual males in mind when they made this”?

Although I encounter this thinking with some regularity, I can never be bothered to address it properly. This type of territoriality is amusing in bullfrogs and gorillas. In the human species, it just seems so… sad. Sad in a way that a kid crying over an overturned ice cream cone is sad.

You just want to go – “awww. Here’s a dollar. Buy yourself more ice cream, sweetie.” And tousle their hair a lil bit.

‘Only ideas are perfect. People never are,’ Joel would tell her. ‘When you’ve lived a bit longer, you’ll be more forgiving.’ But Rosa had scorned these attempts to modify her wrath. For a person as deeply offended by injustice and inequity as she was – as committed to changing the world – a degree of ruthlessness was imperative, she felt. Her usual response to her father had been to quote Lenin’s defence of Bolshevik tactics: ‘Is regard for humanity possible in such an unheard-of ferocious struggle? By what measure do you measure the quantity of necessary and unnecessary blows in a fight?’

Oh dear. Now, I must first explain that I have a knee-jerk reaction to Americans like Rosa’ character – for a while, I’ve even pretended as if they don’t exist at all, which is, of course, completely untrue. It’s as if some well-intentioned American decided to quote a passage from the Q’uran to Apostate at a party – there’s a sense of “hey moron, this is MY lived experience, not YOUR lived experience. Piss off, why don’t you.” (Without putting words in Apostate’s mouth, I somehow imagine her reaction to the aforementioned scenario would be similar to my reaction upon encountering  people like Rosa)

In my family, the harshest words of criticism were always reserved for Lenin, not Stalin. There are several reasons for this. First of all, the symbolism of the gruesome murder of the royal family. Then there is the belief that without a Lenin, we would never have had a Stalin in the first place, that Lenin was the foundation for everything. Finally, and this is the part that I think few people know about (I could be wrong), those Bolshevik tactics that Lenin defended? He enjoyed them. Something that Western radicals rarely quote is Lenin’s famous attempt at humour – “We’re not shooting enough of those little professors!” Haw haw. The diminutive Lenin uses for professors, meaning, of course, the academic establishment, is insulting in a uniquely Russian way, and hard to translate, but I’m sure you can imagine what it sounds like. Lenin was gleeful, absolutely gleeful, at the violence he presided over.

Having now finished the excellent Believers, I also believe in something.

I believe that Lenin would have taken one look at earnest young Rosa and her lawyer father, one glance with those beady little eyes of his, and sent them before a firing squad without a second thought. They lived in Greenwich Village, for one thing. I don’t know if a power-tripping murderous psychopath really needs any other evidence. I’m not entirely sure, but a part of me thinks that Zoë Heller’s narrator might agree with me.

Of course, I don’t believe that anyone owns Lenin or his words. Many different people have believed in him over the decades. Babushkas and dedushkas with trembling hands and heads have stood for hours to pay their respects at his tomb. Even now, an atmosphere of solemnity prevails inside. You’re not allowed to talk or giggle or take pictures. Like it or not, Lenin is a legacy onto himself.

I’ve always thought about the fact that he never wanted to be embalmed or to be placed on public display like that. I think there’s something very sad about the way his wishes were disrespected. Lenin re-wrote the rules and that came back to bite him on the ass. Well, the ass attached to his dead body, anyway.  Haw freaking haw. Though I am glad they haven’t put his body in the ground yet. Such a gesture would break the heart of many aging, infirm people, and I think their hearts have already been broken enough.

I think if people can take away something meaningful and good from Lenin, then that’s great. However, it seems to me that Rosa’s character takes the worst that Lenin ever had to offer – the idea that a horror film-worthy struggle ostensibly done for the sake of worker’s rights, a struggle that put the New Boss, same as the Old Boss, into power, was great and good. As the book unfolds, Rosa abandons this path and begins gravitating toward Orthodox Judaism, and to Heller’s credit, Rosa’s experience with religion cannot be described in singular terms. On one hand, it’s bloody awful and you have to wonder if Rosa is simply replacing one rigid dogma with another. But you can also allow for the possibility that she has found something both complex and profound, a faith that doesn’t just challenge her but also feeds her.

Upon examining my own bout of wrath when encountering the passage quoted above, I was once again confronted with just how different things can look from various angles. There is a certain strange beauty in the inability to compromise all vantage points. It’s like a kaleidoscope image that refuses to properly arrange itself, the little bits of glass cracking under the pressure with an oddly satisfying crunch.

And what could be crunchier than a deliciously good novel? Zoë Heller has messed with my mind, and I rather love her for it.

Here’s Michael Jackson in Mexico, past his prime and yet still able to bring the house down while wearing what appears to be a ladies’ one-piece bathing suit over a pair of short black pants, no less.

It has been a crappy few days in pop culture, don’t you think?

Now, because Drew tagged me in the Eclectic Music Selection meme on Facebook, I will be playing by its rules today. It means including 15 more songs. A closer look at the scary annals of my music library, which is still getting re-built, no less. Ready?:

1. Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ – Michael Jackson
2. The Scientist – Coldplay
3. Use Somebody – Kings of Leon
4. Bleeders – the Wallflowers
5. 4th of July, Asbury Park – Bruce Springsteen
6. Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin
7. She Really Wants You – Aimee Mann
8. Why – Annie Lennox
9. King Without a Crown – Matisyahu
10. In God’s Country – U2
11. Torn – Natalie Imbruglia
12. Gong – Sigur Ros
13. Born Slippy – Underworld
14. Sun King – the Beatles
15. Logical Song – Supertramp
16. Djatel – Ivan Kupala
17. Sometimes You Gotta Make It Alone – Money Mark
18. Nochnaya Kobyla – Melnitsa
19. Upward Over the Mountain – Iron & Wine
20. More Than This – the Cure
21. Buckets of Rain – Bob Dylan
22. Guess How Much I Love You – the Lucksmiths
23. A Cloak of Elvenkind – Marcy Playground
24. The Queen is Dead – the Smiths
25. Sugarcube – Yo La Tengo

This might make for a decent funeral playlist, I think. Especially after a couple of drinks, when all of the regular mourners have departed, and the hardcore crazies are paying homage to memories that are all together unspoken.

“Oh it’s such a shame for us to part.”

“Like a king without his crown, I keep falling down.”

“A cloaking robe of elvenkind
Hangs in my wardrobe behind
All the things that mother said
Were proper for a boy…”

You know what wasn’t proper for a boy? Pretty much the whole of Michael Jackson’s childhood. What we have preserved in clips generously available on YouTube are the luminous moments, flashes in the dark and all that.

Yesterday, someone left a charming comment calling me a “Stockholm syndrome-infected pedophile-lover” because I’m not, like, ecstatic that my childhood hero and pop star legend Michael Jackson has died.

I would like to invite this person, and anyone else who may hold similar views, to kindly kiss my ass.

As I mentioned in my column on Michael’s death, the allegations against him have always left me confused. The one thing I’m sure of is that he never grew up, and hence developed inappropriate relationship patterns, particularly with kids. Could that stuff have been hurtful and damaging? Sure. In my previous post I talk about just that. HOWEVER, we simply DO NOT KNOW whether or not Michael Jackson was a bona fide molester and abuser. The facts are not all clear, and I, for one, hate the self-righteous desire to collectively sharpen our pitchforks and go after the monster on the outskirts of the village.

I don’t think we will ever know for certain, unless new facts come out. I think we need to accept the fact that this issue will remain ambiguous.

People say that Michael’s money and fame bought him protection as if they are 100% sure of this fact. You know what else money and fame can buy you? False friends. Leftists in particular can act as if money alone can erect some sort of impenetrable forcefield around a person, forgetting that it can also paint a giant target sign on your back.

Was Michael a dupe? I don’t think so. By all accounts of people who knew him (this, oddly enough, includes someone close to me as well), he was a clever individual. And he wasn’t socially incapacitated either. But he did have glaring vulnerabilities and eccentricities, and his desire to reclaim his childhood may have left him open to attack.

So don’t call me a bloody “pedophile-lover” if I refuse to unquestioningly accept the narrative of “Wacko Jacko” and his harem of five-year-olds. In my experience, some of the most evil, calculating abusers and rapists were best at feigning normalcy above all. Considering that Michael happened to be one of the least obviously “normal” people on this entire earth, I have to wonder. Would I want my kid brother sharing a bedroom with Michael Jackson? Um, no. But neither can I pretend that this issue is as clear-cut as I would, perhaps, like it to be.

I think we may never know who Michael Jackson really was. Maybe Michael Jackson himself wasn’t sure.

I love how the legendary Dead Sea mud glitters on my shoulder here. I love the way my bathing suit carries its fresh, mineral smell now [ETA: I wrote it was "herbal" before. I must have been more tired than I originally thought].

I spent a little too much time at the hotel watching Michael Jackson coverage on TV, but I think I can be forgiven. Michael Jackson was my childhood. He was long, cold winters with skies of uniform chrome that seemed to go on forever back then. He was the smell of shampoo in the beanie my mother wore occasionally. He was the glow of the magical new stereo in our crappy car – the stereo you took out and stowed in the glove compartment when you left the vehicle, because it alone would be cause for someone smashing a window and getting in. He was my pretentious sneer as I explained to my younger cousin that no, his hair wasn’t “messy,” it was STYLISH. He was music wafting out over my aunt’s crumbling balcony and into the night, joining the sounds of passing cars, birds settling down to sleep, even the occasional gunshot. He was everything I had imagined America to be – beauty and passion, glamour and grandeur. And, above everything else, I saw in him someone as vulnerable and odd as me – it was in his eyes – only he could pull it off and I couldn’t. And then, one day, those roles were reversed.

I don’t have much else to say about Michael that hasn’t already been said. He was a hero, pariah, scaly monster, ugly punchline and fiery, pulsating star all rolled into one. I’ve always hoped that Michael and all of the people he had touched – both in gruesome and beautiful ways – could find a measure of peace. In my later years, as a teenager, I spend a good deal of time letting go of some of the anger at various events in my childhood by thinking about Michael and how the abuse in his own household contributed to his own behaviour down the road. There were many lessons for me there, and many explanations. While a lot of the stories about his contact with children have, over the years, confused me, I have little doubt that Michael’s damaged personality ended up spilling over onto others. It’s what I had always feared for myself, to be honest.

Yesterday, bobbing on the surface of the Dead Sea like a cork, with a thick layer of mud slowly being licked off me by the oily water, I was thinking about how far away my childhood is. I’ve been running away from it for a long time, while Michael kept trying to re-live his. The path of greater wisdom is not the one that seems most attractive – it’s the one that you are able to handle. Michael didn’t handle things. You could see as much carved into his face as the years wore on. Some people said he deserved to be miserable. I personally have no idea what any of us actually deserve. I know that it isn’t anyone’s place to “forgive” Michael for anything, save for the people he is guilty toward.

But you never forget the music. It is written somewhere deeper than skin.

I can’t reply to Yusra & Safiya, because Fatemeh’s stepped in and closed the comments on this post. I’d like to reply to them in my space, however, because both of their comments are interesting and well-argued, and, naturally, deserve a reply.

Safiya takes offense to my suggestion that religion is arbitrary. I firmly believe that it is just that. In fact, it’s a strong component of my very faith. I take a look at Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, etc., and say, ARBITRARY. Now, everyone, myself included, would like to point their figure at all those other religions and say – “but my religion isn’t like that. I believe! It’s a beautiful thing! There’s nothing arbitrary about that!”

But what we are talking about when we say that is not religion – it is faith. Religion is the shell and faith is the substance. There’s nothing more arbitrary than being born to a certain set of parents, being taught views (which may or may not differ from each other, yet bear the same outward shell), and being named in a way that might even reflect your particular religious affiliation which you then wear proudly, for example. There’s nothing more arbitrary than a religious authority figure excommunicating someone or declaring someone an apostate – usually based on something political (if all of us were punished each time we broke the rules, houses of worship would long stand empty). There’s nothing more arbitrary to the way in which some people are cast aside and others remain in the fold.

There’s nothing intimate about religion. It’s a way of branding people as if they are cattle. It’s a paradox, because it’s religion that usually gives birth to faith, but then again, I accept the fact that the universe we live in is paradoxical to begin with.

Yusra argues that we can’t compare Muslims to, say, secular and religious Jews. By contrast, some of the closest people to me are secular Muslims. They might believe in a God or even THE God (depending on what angle you’re looking from), but the majority have long been either chased out of the religion or else simply decided they don’t want to bother.

The lives of secular Muslims are still impacted by religious law and authority. You actively have to humour tradition, or else you might find yourself in trouble.

It is women in particular who bear the brunt of other people’s anxieties over a religion’s possible demise. This is why you’ll rarely find anyone shouting “APOSTATE!” at a Muslim man who just nipped in to the liquor store for a bottle of whiskey, but women are rigorously policed as to who they may or may not marry. Most religious figures accept that “boys will be boys,” and feed the errant women to the wolves. Men have room to stumble and search. Women do not. In a previous post I argued that the definition of religion is elastic, however, in most cases, this elasticity stops with women.

I don’t mean to imply that Yusra is feeding anyone to the wolves when she states that Islam forbids Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men. I do disagree with her claim that there is no legitimate debate on the subject, however.

Likewise, I think the statement that there can never be any confusion as to who is or isn’t Muslim is a bromide. After a couple of years of living in Muslim countries, it’s glaringly obvious to me that Muslims aren’t any different when it comes to the blurring of identity. The similarity tends to be erased in the name of politics, due to long-standing conflict in Palestine, for example, due to the trouble in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, due to the rampant Islamophobia abroad. It’s important for many people to unite under a common banner and proclaim that “we are Muslims, this is our way of life, stop fucking with us, please.”

Tariq Ramadan (image found via book-fair.com)

Why do I insist on making such a strong distinction between faith and religion? Tariq Ramadan is to blame. I don’t know if he still believes this, and I certainly can’t say that I’m not at all misreading him here – but one of the things that really heartened me back in the day was when he said that you can’t really have a purely religious state. I was going through a crisis of faith at the time, looking at the cruel, crass and, yes, completely arbitrary way that most religious people treat one another, and it was as if Tariq Ramadan laid a warm, protective hand on my shoulder and told me that things were going to be Ok.

The dreadful hypocrisy of a supposedly religious state and the way that it grinds all faith into dust over time was something I could never face. Looking back on it, it was an actual corrupting force in my life – this idea that a religious state was necessary or even possible.

I began to make the distinction between my faith and my religion. The former was important to me, the latter was like having to attend barbecues at Asshole Country Club and smile at everyone as I munched on their stale scraps. I began to actively withdraw from religious life, and never felt better. It was, probably, one of the most important moments of my youth.

I bet Tariq Ramadan would be horrified, if he knew what he did to me. Or maybe not.

As a Christian woman, I also have no business marrying a non-Christian dude. Because I plan on having a civil marriage, however, the point is largely moot. I would never want the man I’m with to have some sort of meaningless “on paper” conversion. I would never want him to have to humour anyone, to pretend, to put up with the nagging relatives, or with some dreadful bureaucratic entity that assumes the duty of God’s voice on earth and bleats out platitudes about faith. I have that freedom, of course. It’s a combination of things – I was born in the USSR, I am financially independent, I disdain religious community (while others need it), I cherry-pick what’s meaningful to me and what is not.

Everyone cherry-picks what they believe, because following text that were written centuries ago for a certain audience is largely impossible. Some people are just better at glossing over this fact than others.

The inspiration for this post can be traced back to Jad. Thanks, Jad!

Dear Orange Jordan, I have had it with you. You’re like some bad boyfriend who takes my money but refuses to deliver on the important things in life, such as rubbing my feet, or, in your case, LETTING ME USE MY GODDAMN INTERNET.

Let me tell you something, Orange Jordan, the cheap-ass internet connection I utilize whenever I’m in Kiev, Ukraine? The one that costs LESS THAN HALF of what I pay in Amman? Amazingly enough, it only breaks down, oh, maybe once every couple of months. At most. You, meanwhile, flash that little red light on my router nearly every day. Sometimes, you flash that little red light for hours. It is monstrous, that little red light – it’s an eye of a dragon, it’s a drop of unrighteous blood, it’s like a ZOMBIE staring at me through the keyhole.

Do you know how heartbreaking it is to see that little world icon on my internet status widget disappear? Do you know what it feels like to wait for it to come back? It’s like trying to chase after a freaking unicorn – do you even dare hope? Most of the time, I don’t.

Your JOKE of a support service, Orange Jordan, reminds me of interacting with half-drunk relatives at Christmas. If anything you say does, for a moment, make sense, it merely plunges me into despair. I don’t want to hear about your numerous issues, Orange Jordan, and I certainly don’t want these issues to become my issues.

I just want my GODDAMN CONNECTION BACK, so that I can edit other people’s articles and stalk famous people on Twitter in peace.

As you may know, I am the owner of two kitties – Fanty & Mingo. You can find out more about them here. Fanty and Mingo are having a bit of a tiff. They need relationship counseling.

Here’s what happened:

Fanty was having diarrhea issues for a while. He was getting better, but since we went off to Petra and Aqaba for the weekend, and left the kitties in charge of the super, he must have grown despondent. When we got home, Fanty looked a fright. He had obviously soiled himself, and then just hung out in the litterbox for a while, letting the stray kitty litter pebbles cling to his fluffy backside. Then the entire thing dried into an unholy crust.

He was making no attempt to clean himself, and although the diarrhea was no longer an issue and he looked like the picture of health, he was filthy.

We took him outside and we hosed him and soaped him and hosed him some more.

Then the weirdness started.

I expected the bath to alter Fanty’s scent, and for Mingo to get all hysterical about it (she gets hysterical about most things), but I didn’t expect it to last this long. Fanty can’t get within a couple of feet of Mingo without the latter having a hissing fit. It’s particularly sad, because you see him sitting there, lonely, regarding her from a distance, wondering why she will no longer play or clean his ears and stuff.

And she is not refusing to get over it! It has been two days!

Any suggestions, Cat Community?

I had a ton of work today, and was stuck trying to catch an errant signal outside (while the wind blew my fringe into my hair, making my eyelids red and itchy) and trying to figure out the continously failing signal at Starbucks. It is official, I HATE Orange Jordan (I’ll have a post coming up about that soon, as part of a little thing that Jad is doing). The word “annoying” doesn’t quite do the situation justice.

I’m also going to Ukraine next week, probably for a while, and I am starting to feel an entire host of emotions – fear, sadness, anxiety, and doubt about for how long I am willing to put up with the garbage and the swearing outside my window. I don’t want to be apart from Habib either. There is a melancholy cloud of yellow dust hanging over me, so I have to turn up the Verve and go from there.

Lucky Man – the Verve
Run Baby Run – Garbage
A Sunday Smile – Beirut
Everything Old is New Again – Barenaked Ladies
John Saw That Number – Neko Case
Let the Drummer Kick – Citizen Cope
Satellite – Dave Matthews Band
Mr. Brightside – the Killers
Contramundo – Manu Chao
Every Ghetto, Every City – Lauryn Hill

“It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this” indeed. I love Jordan, but I can’t say that it’s easy on a relatively young couple. It’s good to be a writer in Jordan, it’s not so good to be a lover. I hate essentialist arguments surrounding gender, but considering the way we are socialized, it’s fairly obvious that it’s hard on a guy when his girlfriend complains about getting sexually harassed, and he can do nothing short of accompanying her everywhere she goes. It’s hard on the girlfriend too, of course, and it creates a little rift. The little rift is joined by other little rifts. Before you know it, you are shouting across a Grand Canyon at each other.

I have faith, though. Not religion, because religion in this day and age is largely a crass, claustrophobic insitution. Faith is the fire in my heart and the star over my shoulder. So here is “Visions of Johanna”:

“But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles.”

I love you, Habib.

This post on Muslimah Media Watch caught my eye, because it reminded me of one of my favourite topics – converting on paper. I think the subject is pertinent. I disagree with Yusra’s assertion that for Muslim women, marrying non-Muslims is not an issue, because, as she puts it, “Muslim women believe that their freedom lies within the teachings of Islam.” I rather view this as a minority issue – no more irrelevant than the issues the GLBT community faces when trying to carve out its own space within a particular religion. I also think that this issue will continue to grow in importance, because, crisis or no crisis, the world is progressively getting smaller. More and more people are leaving their communities, or stretching the concept of what “community” means in the first place. As their numbers continue to grow, so will the issue of “mixed” marriage.

What do I mean by the phrase “conversion on paper”? Let’s put it this way – We all know people who had to convert to a particular religion because of their prospective spouse. Whether due to religious law, family pressure, inheritance issues, etc., people convert in order to get hitched all the time. While some are sincere in their conversions, others view it purely as an issue of convenience. With Islam in particular, it’s not as if a Muslim woman (someone who isn’t very religious, for example) can simply say, “oh, I can’t marry this dude ’cause he’s a non-Muslim? Well, I guess I’ll stop being Muslim then,” because many communities actively police those who would like to officially leave the religion.

The word official is important here, because we all know that the issue of religion is actually quite elastic to begin with. I’m not just talking about Islam here either. Many people are religious only nominally, or culturally (I often see the argument that Asra Nomani is pushing for a cultural interpretation of Islam, which makes me scratch my head, because who isn’t influenced by a particular culture in one way or another?).

Conversion is often framed as something that’s “best for the children,” as in “dear God! Won’t somebody please think of the children?” but we all know that you can’t make your kids believe. You can make them culturally adherent – little Soraya put on a hijab upon puberty, how wonderful, little Boris goes to Sunday prayer every week, how special – but faith is a different subject altogether. You can lead a horse to water, et cetera.

Conversion, instead, is important because it addresses the “warm bodies” issue. It gives the impression that the religion is striving and strong, that it won’t be taken over by infidels of whatever stripe. It’s addresses a security concern.

Modernity takes its toll, but religion isn’t going out without a fight. I believe that there will be more and more “paper converts” in the future. This may be the part where you say, “of course, it’s terrible what’s happening in these modern times, but when we get society fixed up, inshallah, we will…” What? Send a weekly committee to the house of every convert to make sure they’re following whatever interpretation of Islam (or any other religion that’s an issue) you have decided is the most authentic?

We all know that you can choose who you marry (well, assuming your family doesn’t shove a prospective spouse down your throat). You don’t choose, however, whom you fall in love with. So people make whatever arrangements that are necessary. Remember that scene in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” when the prospective groom converts to Orthodox Christianity? It’s shown as a positive moment, but it also made me wonder just what the character was supposed to believe, in the end. Probably nothing. The ceremony is what’s important. Not the faith.

In my impossible post-religious utopia, the only issue will be that of faith.