Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

I would strongly recommend you take the time to read the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. If you lack the time you could let me summarize:

Ali Baba is in the woods crouching behind a juniper bush watching exactly forty thieves who are gathered around the entrance of a cave that is opened by a secret password. Ali Baba watches the thieves, notes the password and returns later to kife some goods. When a friend of Ali Baba's finds out about the cave, he acquiesces and spills the password. Problem is, the friend gets trapped inside and the thieves find him and chop him to pieces.

Burying chunks is awkward so Ali Baba brings the bro-chunks to his slave girl, Morgiana. She suggests they pay a local tailor Baba Mustafa to stitch the body back up. Not sure why. They make sure to blindfold Baba Mustafa to protect their identity and get him to do the job.

Thieves find out that their body is gone, but luckily they run into Baba Mustafa who can't shut up about all the recent bodies he has stitched together. Even with the blindfold, Baba is deece at retracing his steps. The thieves find the house he worked at and mark it with an X so they can return later to ice the family that lives there. Our girl Morgiana catches wind of this plan and marks every house in the 'hood with an X. Thieves are baffled. They try again the next day by chipping the front step of each house but Morgiana retaliates similarly. The day after that thieves say "fuck it, let's start paying attention to relevant details about the household" they want to destroy. The thieves' bossman shows up with forty large jars filled with —you guessed it — forty vengeful thieves. As mentioned before, Morgiana is too smart for this and pours hot oil on all the thieves ending their lives. Bossman flees.

Years pass.

The boss thief establishes himself as a merchant, befriends Ali Baba's son (who is now in charge of his late chopped-up friend's business), and is invited to dinner at Ali Baba's house. The thief is recognized by Morgiana, who knifes him almost immediately. First Ali Baba is angry but then he gives Morgiana her freedom and marries her to his son.

The end.

I left out seventy-two pages of detail but let is suffice to say that this is one convoluted and ridiculous story. Hot oil? Is forty jars of thieves any way to kill a family? In the name of Ibrahim, these people are Muslim. They couldn't figure out who to kill a boy and his slave? Why did they have to stitch up his friend? I hate this story.

It's not me, it's you

It's hard to be objective about music.

Sometimes, to obtain a more personal perspective on an album, I like to pretend that I dated the artist in high school and that it ended really, really badly. Like you-continue-to-fuck-her-on-the-sly-for-five-months-after-and-her-parents-catch-you-mid-throes-and-then-her-sobbing-bitterly-and-you-trudge-to-your-car-the-cold-cold-night-and-ask-yourself-aloud-what-the-fuck badly. Then she e-mails you three times a day for a year, trying to get back together.  She calls you in the middle of the night and all you hear is her breathing and sometimes her soft crying.  And you swear that it's her driving by the coffee shop where you work, trying catch a glimpse of your face through the storefront glass.

And then one night, you've had it.  Fueled by vexation, you scribble down every hateful thing you can think of saying to her, and, fueled by white Russians, you seal it with a stamp and plop it in the mailbox at four in the morning.

The next day, your throbbing head considers that four double-sided pages might have been overkill.  But it is done.  The e-mails stop.  The phone calls do too.  She is finally gone.

And the next time you see her is years later, smiling on television.  She has a record deal, a music video, an entourage, fame, money, and most striking of all, a life without you.  The girl that once made your phone buzz all night with text messages, now glares at you smugly from the cover of Rolling Stone.

Armed with this backstory, I popped in Lily Allen's It's Not Me, It's You.  ('Cause really, I wouldn't be able to digest it otherwise.)

Like her debut album, this one is equal helpings of upbeat pop and West London snark.  Everyone's at It is a cynical dance-anthem about drug use that gets the album off to a good start.  The Fear is a standout track; self-aware lyrics and crisp production. The thickly-produced album stays true to Lily's style of hep blog-quality slander. I might consider being offended by Fuck You, but I'm familiar with Lily's sense of hyperbole.

But Who'd Have Known takes me back.  I remember that driveway on a Winter's night, watching my breath float over the dashboard, waiting for the car to warm up.  You stood at the bedroom window and you were crying.  When you put your hand on the window, my eyes darted down  to the empty passenger seat.  The engine was cold; I couldn't wait any more.  My gloveless hands gripped the steering wheel and the car crunched soberly away in the thick snow.

Fag Hag is an embarrassing track.  What the fuck, Lily.

As a whole it's not as impressive as her previous outing, but what sophomore effort ever is?  The songs are a bit more self-conscious and introspective, but I would have hoped that three years later, they would have matured accordingly.  I mean, you still haven't found someone who can fuck you properly?  Who gives a shit?

On my "As if you were my ex-girlfriend music ranking system" I'd give this a Wistful, i.e., decent without pushing me into full-blown regret.  I'll can listen to this voluntarily, but I won't be jerking off despondently to the liner notes.

Scale:

• Shitty (just like our relationship)
• Not bad (but we're not getting back together)
• Three stars (meh)
• Wistful (we had some good times)
• Dammit (I made a terrible mistake)

I found this scrawled...

I found something scrawled on a piece of lined paper on my desk one morning. It was a note, almost certainly in my writing, but not typical of my prose. Actually, it's fucked up.

Keeping with my recent deluge of shit from the archives (as though I was on vacation (which I really should be) brackety bracket)), here is the aforementioned opus in full:

He’s a real killer
I wouldn’t necessarily
Agree with Amen a
Man (his son)
I every decision
and I’ve never seemed
The natural
Li(v)es we’ve led
And will have lead

Get some therapy

Does he count?

Someone asked.

I must say that I refuse to claim responsibility for this since 1) I don't know what this means or how it got on my desk, and 2) it's obviously horrendous. It's like-what-the-fuck terrible. Nevertheless, I shall attempt to interpret it here, for you, my gentle reader.

From the outset, you can see that the Author -- which is how I insist on referring to the cause or causes that led to this creation, whatever it or they may be -- is making reference to the invisible hand of capitalism and its stifling crush on society's collective throat. "Real" no doubt refers to "real interest rates" (as opposed to nominal), and it's clear (so clear) that the Author longs for a georgic age of bucolic simplicity.

Next comes the screed against dogma. It's interesting that the Author is almost diplomatic in his condemnation of religion, saying that he wouldn't "necessarily agree with" the Holy word, God himself and his manifestation on Earth, Christ. Clearly his use of restraint here is ironic; and it is no coincidence that "I every decision" appear on one line. Think about it.

"The natural/li(v)es we've led/and will have lead" bespeaks a preoccupation with the truth (and the Truth) from our Author. Are our lies and lives so natural? And how is the Author certain we "will have lead" these? This unusual tense places the Author beyond the readers grasp; sitting in a hot air balloon of sorts, firing spitballs at the world below.

The rest of this thing makes no sense. Obviously.

Christ, how high was I when I wrote this?

Book reviews

Jerry: How's that new book you're reading?

Harvey: Ugh. Have you ever known a girl that started as just-a-friend but then you found yourself starting to become attracted to her, and then before you knew it you were taking her out all the time and buying her things and listening to her all the time -- hanging on her every word -- and she unfolds her life stories... but then, as time went on and things remained platonic you found yourself unsure of where you stood and what exactly was going on? So then you you try to feel things out, scan for clues, drop hints, listen, wonder and wait; and it's strange because you are so comfortable around her and she you, and she doesn't seem to be interested in any other guys and finally when you screw up the nerve to confront her about it: it turns out that you're just dating platonically and that she has no -- and never had any -- interest in you whatsoever.

And then, precisely at that point of realization: your tolerance for listening to her prattle on about her overbearing mom, and her job, and her trouble understanding boys, has evaporated -- and it takes everything you have to keep from beating the shit out of her as you leave her standing in parking lot of the Kelsey's at Erin Mills Town Centre, never to speak to her again?

Jerry: Uh, not really, no.

Harvey: Oh. Well, that's Memoirs of a Geisha for you. It's a tad prolonged, kinda interesting, though basically unfulfilling.

He even put it in a juicer to see if that would work

I am not one for television, but I do pass operating units from time to time. Yesterday, I happened upon the cold open of According to Jim.

It was as though I was watching a black hole from which nothing, not even comedy, could escape. The show's laugh track only emphasized its unfunny shittiness, much in the same way the echo of hard footsteps construes the noiselessness of a lonely chamber. I was nevertheless drawn in by its sickening density; time seemed to slow to a menacing crawl.

As I watched --with equal parts dread and a malarial sense of nausea-- I cringed until I felt I was shrinking. To use a simple analogy: watching Jim Belushi try to wring laughs from the terrible script was like watching a lonely desert traveler, delirious and dying of thirst, try to squeeze water out of an old tree branch, or from some errant dead leaves to save his life; but instead, he chokes on his on own shriveled tongue; and rotting, the slow but firm fingers of time crumble his body like a dry cigar, until he is but the skeletal and sand-burned remains of a faded has-been-younger-brother-of-an-SNL-alum.

That is how I felt as I watched Jim Belushi struggle to open a juice box on TV last night. When the opening credits rolled, I took a deep breath and tore myself from the pull of the dark whirlpool, and floated gently and freely into the safe and empty void beyond TV.