I also thought that I caused tectonic motion with my Nintendo.

I was a kid who grew up on video games, before video games started having complicated controllers with a hundred buttons and graphics so clear and realistic you can see the birthmark on the heroine’s protuberant cleavage.

I was an owner of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, NES, and the Super Mario Brothers games were my favorite.

It was fairly common to spend what could be considered the length of a work day to most adults taking turns with friends at two-player games, with Super Mario Brothers and no other game.

One day in the summer, I sat on the floor of my family’s living room with two neighborhood friends, playing the first Super Mario Brothers game to be released on NES.

It was my turn. I controlled Mario. People whose house it is don’t have to be Luigi. I was playing in the first world, second level. The dark level that takes place in a cave and has dark music and grayish blue bricks and an echo.

A pro, I passed the level the secret way—a secret everyone knew—by breaking the overhead bricks that bordered the top of the screen and making Mario walk across them to the end.

I reached the secret Warp Zone.

Given the choice of skipping the remainder of World 1 to warp to World 2, 3, or 4, I was greedy and ambitious enough to choose World 4. The most difficult of the three worlds, and the one that would help me reach the end of the game the fastest. The one where in the first level, that asshole bad guy sits up in a cloud hovering above Mario, following him around and dropping spiky creatures on him that can only be killed with a Fire Flower.

I moved Mario toward the green pipe with the ‘4’ above it. I made him jump. He stood above the pipe. I eagerly took the plunge; I pushed the down button to make Mario enter the pipe to World 4.

At that instant, the floor jerked, and then there was a rattle throughout the house. The floor shook slightly, and then the shaking increased. The cupboards in the kitchen fell open and then slammed themselves repeatedly. The dishes and cups clattered together.

My friends and I jumped to our feet from the floor and ran to hide underneath the dining table. Rocking, I held tightly onto one of the table legs to keep my tiny frame from flying out from where I was kneeling on the unstable floor.

Eventually, the shaking stopped. A few last jolts from the aftershocks, and then the ground went quiet. We gingerly emerged again.

I was plagued with fear and guilt. I had made a grave, Icarian mistake. My pride had been tested, and I had failed. I had flown too close to the sun, and with the melting of the wax affixing my wings, I had fallen. I should have known that if I wanted to reach World 4, I had to work for it. I had to earn it by playing all the levels from the beginning of World 1. No taking shortcuts with warping.

My reaction to these events was avoidance. I wasn’t sure whether it was okay to play Nintendo again right away. In due course I went back, trying other games. And then for a while, I played Super Mario Brothers, but I just didn’t want to play World 4. After several months, I came around to test warping to World 2, and to World 3, but never to World 4. Warping to World 4 caused earthquakes.

I’m not sure when I finally gathered the courage to try warping to World 4 again, but it was only when I held my breath and warped and an earthquake didn’t subsequently happen that I was able to remove this causality from my brain.

*Images from Video Games New York, Chris Cross Media, Games Radar, and NES Maps.

Getting my student visa alone cost several liters of my sanity, or whatever sanity is measured in. It must be some sort of liquid measurement though, right?

God, I can’t even tell this story because it’s so fucking boring. No one wants to hear or read about someone’s visa application issues. Even though when you’re in it, it feels like an eventful, heart-pounding debacle, but recounting what happened is mind-numbing.

I couldn’t get some very specific code from a very specific institution that only exists for providing this very specific code, which only exists for getting this very specific type of visa, and I am writing about it? How perfectly fascinating. Allow me to hang myself from my fingernails.

I will just say that a complication caused a delay in the processing of my visa, and that getting all the shit together for the visa to successfully be processed in time for the start of my PhD program was hellish in a really boring sort of way. I had to postpone my flight, which was like, “AAAAAHHHHH FUCK YOU SHOWER OF CUNTS” on the day it happened, but “yawn” when I write about it in a fucking blog.

I’m finding that most adulthood problems are like this; they bring you near death, but the way it happens is so mundane.

I have to reapply for the funding of my PhD once a year and it’s always a confusing meltdown. “WHAT DO THESE NUMBERS MEAN? WHY DIDN’T I RECEIVE ALL OF MY THIRD INSTALLMENT? I HAVEN’T EATEN A PROPER MEAL ALL WEEK. I CAN’T PAY MY RENT OR TUITION AND I’M GOING TO BE EVICTED AND HOMELESS AND IT’S SNOWING OUTSIDE.”

…Quietly fill out a form.

An excess of events like this in recent months this has broken me. Now whenever I need to apply for anything that involves trying to figure out my tax information, or providing references, or some other information that is not as immediately obvious as my birthday and address, I stop and think of all the things I’d rather be doing than this.

I would rather vacation in Rapeville, Democratic Republic of the Congo. I would rather watch all the seasons of Heroes in one sitting. I would rather snort a line of wasabi. I would rather hold a dollop of horseradish mustard on my tongue for several hours. I would rather fight on the front lines of an illegitimate war that unilaterally flouts international humanitarian law than have to fill out another such form.

I’m currently visiting California, and I write to you from there now.

Yesterday I was stuck in horrible, unexplained traffic in Beverly Hills, nowhere near the freeway. I was driving in the right lane and found that well ahead of me, there was a car completely stopped and seemingly parked in more than half of my lane. I signaled in advance to move left and change lanes.

You were in a dark grayish green minivan and when you saw me signaling you inexplicably sped up to try to block me from changing lanes.

I know your type. You’re stuck in traffic, yet you have to “win” and “get there” first even though you’re just going to wind up slamming on the brakes at the last moment, and you won’t actually get anywhere any faster because you’re STUCK IN TRAFFIC. In other words, a fucking idiot.

I’m a polite person, I stop to let old men cross the street. But I used to drive in Cairo and this is LA, where rude drivers are still relatively courteous. You can’t block me from changing lanes. I stuck my nose into your lane and forced my way in anyway. It’s not cutting you off if I signaled well ahead of time and you just decided to be a cunt. Signaling isn’t asking for permission. It’s being predictable enough to let you know my next move. You’re lucky someone in LA did that for you.

You got your panties in a twist and angrily honked at me when I started moving into your lane. I continued slowly moving in until I was fully in the lane and safely away from driving into the parked car. You furiously honked and tailgated me.

I think we can both agree that driving into a parked car that you saw a long time ago is a pretty stupid thing to do, right? The owner of the vehicle would have been pretty damn upset if I’d just smashed into it because someone I’ve never met has some unfathomable association with allowing people to change lanes ahead of her and superiority. Objectively speaking, it is worse to deliberately drive into a parked car than it is to change lanes. Perhaps if I had dangerously swerved into your lane without warning, you would have a reason to be upset, but we both know that’s not what happened.

That is why as the light changed to yellow, I deliberately braked and very slowly crossed the intersection. I didn’t speed up until I made sure I was out of the intersection and you ran the red light.

You moved left and changed lanes, intent on cutting me off as “revenge.” I followed the car ahead of me closely, inches from its bumper because I knew you didn’t actually have a practical need to be directly in front of me in that particular lane. You couldn’t cut me off, and as your lane moved faster than mine, you had to move along and then change lanes several cars ahead before finally turning right. I passed you and said goodbye with my middle finger, but I never even caught your name.

There was a camera at the intersection that surely captured you running the red light, so if you ever see this I would love it if you could just follow up in the comments section and tell me more about yourself, where you went to school, where you like to eat, how much your ticket cost and whether it came with any traffic school. I hear you can do traffic school online now, so hopefully you’ll be able to follow me on Twitter and have something fun to do while you learn about defensive driving or whatever.

*Photo from Personal Injury Attorney.

Sitting in a room without windows with other people increases the room temperature and results in inhaling pieces of them. I don’t care how much you vacuum the fuck out of a carpet, if there are no windows in a room then you’re just moving people’s skin cells around with the dust.

When I’ve been in a room without windows for too long, my throat gets sore. And I start sneezing and coughing up the other people in the room. Because dead skin cells have been fucking detonated into the air with a vacuum cleaner like a physical form of the foul historical annals of everyone who has ever been in the room, and they have traveled through my respiratory system.

My suburban elementary school was in a building with classrooms that had no windows. I got sick pretty much every week. Chicken pox fucking tore through our school like the motherfucking black plague. So did lice. That’s worse than a prison with poor human rights standards; that’s like a prison with poor human rights standards from the motherfucking medieval times.

Why the fuck would anyone ever do this? Windows aren’t hard. They’re negative space. They’re just a lack of wall. How hard is it to make a fucking hole?

Every crowded room without a window has at least one person who doesn’t shower enough or has smelly feet or farts a lot or whatever, and there’s really nothing like a fucking hot fart in a hot fucking poorly ventilated room to make you want to jump out the window except there FUCKING ISN’T ONE.

—

I wrote this post while sweating in a muggy windowless room full of people after I gave up hope in trying to follow whatever the meeting was about because I could barely see in front of me anymore. A bit of in medias res participatory blogging for you.

*Photo from Stuff.

“Everyone poops,” blah blah blah, yeah right. No one is that mature and nonchalant about twosies. Why must we humans complicate something that all animals do? Now, I will be the first to say that I really cannot talk about Number Two with anyone, not even doctors. But my mind does boggle at why it has to be that way. I am not saying that I would prefer the state of things to be that anyone can pop a squat wherever they like in public and just let it go, like other animals, because that is just not sanitary. I like sanitary. But we can’t even talk about it. It’s traumatizing.

Three years ago when I was still living in Egypt, I took a trip to the US and Canada. The night before I left Egypt, I had a salad at The Bakery, a restaurant I would come to boycott after this salad. I came down with some sort of stomach virus that basically caused me to have what I cannot refer to any more politely than “frequent explosive diarrhea” for almost the entirety of the three weeks I was gone. In its first days I was going pretty much every 10 to 20 minutes.

Besides the stomach virus itself, writing about this is not the most traumatizing aspect of this. It’s the fact that while I was in Canada, my parents had me talk to a doctor whom they know personally over the phone about my frequent explosive diarrhea.

I now think that four degrees of separation are minimal when discussing medical conditions involving poo.

I described my symptoms and was recommended some medications. We discussed the precise details of the condition of my explosive diarrhea. We talked about the frequency, the consistency, the appearance, and we compared and contrasted this with normal bowel movements. The doctor laughed at me for avoiding coffee which is a diuretic, which sounds like diarrhea, but diuretics make you pee. Still, I defy anyone not to poo after drinking lots of coffee.

This was less humiliating than it would have been in person since we were talking over the phone. I took comfort in this, as with most embarrassing medical discussions, and that I would never see or talk to the doctor again.

What I didn’t know was that the next day, I would meet this person face-to-face at a gathering my family had with some relatives and friends. A personal, social non-clinical setting. I was then asked the paradoxical question “how is your diarrhea?” by dozens of people, many of whom I had never met in my life.

How are you supposed to answer that? “It’s good.” Good at being diarrhea? Bad because it’s good at being diarrhea? Good because it’s no longer explosive diarrhea, so it’s not actually diarrhea anymore and it’s just regular poo? “My diarrhea is poo, thanks for asking.”

More recently, during my trip to Egypt last month, I also became deathly ill and bedridden with some sort of stomach flu. I thought it was food poisoning because I had both diarrhea and nausea that I thought would turn into vomiting, but then I had a mysterious fever as well.

Again, my mom asked a doctor–who is my aunt–about my symptoms. Then she relayed a question to me, which she said was “purely scientific,” about the way it smelled, as if some particularly illuminating description of that would explain what was wrong with me. It just smells like, you know, regular diarrhea. Not really spicy or teriyaki diarrhea, just original diarrhea. If you smell closely, it might vaguely resemble the enchilada I had for dinner, but mostly it smells like shit because I shat it.

I may not be able to face many of you after posting this, but that is exactly what I am talking about here. The fact that now that after forcing myself into this traumatic public discussion, I am embarrassed about it, much unlike a discussion about pee would be.

Lots of people talk about pee explicitly all the time. I live-tweeted a pee emergency not long ago, but maybe I’m no longer the best example of someone who has shame.

Many ladies say “I have to pee,” specifying what they’re going to do in the bathroom in a way that they never would if they had to poo. In fact, any lady who says “I have to pee again” any less than 15 minutes after using a bathroom actually pooed the first time she went, but she’ll never admit it.

Unless that lady is me, of course. Because ladies don’t poo.

*Image from Once Upon a Potty by Papa K.

In Egypt, a now 26 year-old called Maikel Nabil criticized the military in his blog and was consequently detained for libel. He is on his 42nd day of hunger strike in protest of his three-year sentence and lack of fair trial. Although he’s dying, the authorities won’t let his family take him to the hospital for medical attention.

Maikel Nabil

Egyptians have been striking against a lot of causes and “causes” since the former President stepped down. There have been several thousand arrests and military trials of civilians since January of this year. Usually if someone hot and attractive and Twitter-famous is arrested and detained for a few hours, people protest and tweet really hard. Not sure about the efficacy of the tweeting, but the military government has succumbed to a few of these protests by releasing those sexy people.

Maikel Nabil has not had as much support because he is an atheist and pro-Israel–two unpopular stances in a mainly religious, pro-Palestine society. He has been known to express controversial views in his blog, and apparently this seems to be enough for some people to ignore his unfair detention and critical condition.

Fuck those bitches and hoes.

A couple of months ago for shits and giggles, I sent the Egyptian Ministry of Justice an email about Article 2 of the Constitution. It’s not directly related to Maikel’s case, but I suppose the content of it should also be flung at those Egyptians who cherry-pick their so-called advocacy of human rights based on their bullshit personal prejudices. I’ll let you know if the MOJ ever responds:

Click to enlarge

It isn’t the job of protestors to get Maikel out of detention. That’s the military government’s responsibility. Since the military isn’t doing that, the people who stand up nearly every weekend, sometimes in the middle of the night, occasionally risking their lives telling the military that what they do is not okay should also be behind the dying kid who wrote a dumb blog like this one and got three years for it. Some of them already do that, but not enough. If inane religious biases, or political ones, impede that support, then those people should receive a sticky salty dickslap across their stupid face.

Let this post be that dickslap: the law doesn’t give a fuck about your feelings.

You can now find me on Twitter with the handle @the_blacklisted. Same feed as my former handle @blacklisted140, but just changed the name. If you’re already following me on Twitter, you don’t have to do anything.

Hopefully it won’t be ages until I am back to posting again but my offline world has caught up with me and I have quite a lot of travel and work ahead of me. I assure you I will be blacklisting left and right as soon as the PhD eases off raping me a bit.

In the meanwhile, you can find me procrastinating on Twitter so I’m not too far off and I’m very interactive.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a child, my father used to tape things that I liked off television for me with our VCR.

My parents still have a few videos labeled in my dad’s handwriting with my name and an assigned number, each containing various bits and pieces of late ‘80s and early ‘90s television and commercials like the episode of Small Wonder I had to miss when I went to the eye doctor, Sesame Street, Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Belvedere, Family Ties, Mickey’s Christmas Carol and more.

We had also taped the telefilm The Muppets at Disney World.

That was when I realized that Kermit the Frog was on both The Muppets and Sesame Street, and I thought he was some sort of multi-talented guy who was hired to do a lot of varied work because of his high demand.

But aside from that, whenever that happened to show on television, at the end it cut to a piece of the Seinfeld series. It was one of the bits of live stand-up that bookends each episode, and for some reason the speed on either the tape or the television had been messed up there.

"010111 011010 1001 01010 10100 11010!"

Jerry Seinfeld looked like a regular guy in a sport coat holding a microphone on a stage, but suddenly when he spoke, he was monstrous. His voice was low-pitched and robotic and horrifying and it scared me shitless.

I thought that was how he actually talked.

And I couldn’t understand what he was saying because it was so slowed down, but I thought that surely he was wailing about what happened to his voice.

Whenever I went back to watch that video tape, I always made sure to avoid the part where Jerry Seinfeld appeared, either by stopping the tape or fast forwarding him away, so I wouldn’t have to hear his slow, tinny lament about his plight.

I never gave Jerry Seinfeld another chance because I was just too fragile to ever want to know what happened to his vocal chords. And besides, if he was once normal and now talked like that, he must also have been evil and wanted to destroy.

It was not until later in life that I came across Jerry Seinfeld on a rerun of Seinfeld and realized that he talks like a regular guy. He was just a comedian with a New York apartment who had friends whom he didn’t want to kill with metallic transformer body parts for revenge or anything.

And really, the earlier I could have known that Jerry Seinfeld wasn’t an evil machine, the better.

*Photo from Design Originale.

Unfortunately for me now, I have a vivid recollection of the majority of my childhood, and so I often remember these misconceptions as something that I have only recently shed. So, my initial childhood misconception might arise in my mind as a reflex, but then I must remind myself that we don’t think that anymore because we learned otherwise.

So, I bring you this special series on childhood misconceptions that distorted my worldview.

__________

This installment of the series is on a piece of incorrect knowledge where for some reason, for a good amount of my childhood, I thought that if someone was ever in danger and ran into any place of worship, no one could chase them in, and they were immune to any form of harm. I thought that this was a universally respected form of sanctuary, and even the evilest of the evil in the world understood that they simply would not be allowed to follow someone into a place of worship if their intention was to harm them. And even if they tried, they would be forcibly prevented.

I think this was before I found out that authorities still chase people into places of worship or can fail to prevent others from destroying places of worship altogether because someone they are targeting might be inside.

I don’t remember what debunked this misconception for me, but I remembered it at an odd time this year.

When I was in Egypt last month, some of those participating in the sit-in that started in Tahrir Square, Cairo from 8 July until 1 August were involved in a march on 23 July that went from Tahrir Square to the military headquarters at the Ministry of Defense. I went there, and the military and the people protesting were set up to occupy an area near a large mosque.

If you read any of my tweets from that day on my Twitter timeline, you will see that they are mostly about how badly I had to pee.

It was unbelievably hot that day, as was every day I was in Egypt during that trip, and I am really obsessive about keeping hydrated. Even in the coldest of weather, I consistently consume a few liters of water every day. I just have to or else I get really desperately crazy.

I had been through a lot of water before leaving home and another bottle of water on the way there, and so I pretty much had to pee well before I even arrived.

I stopped caring about the protest and started caring about the fact that all the businesses, shops, restaurants and pharmacies on the way to the military headquarters closed early because of the march/protest, which meant no public bathrooms.

You know when there's a revolution and it's hot outside and the military's blocked you off and you have to pee? #jul23—
Blacklisted (@blacklisted140) July 23, 2011

I was on the verge of going door to door at the residences to ask to use someone’s toilet, but none of the locals seemed particularly pleased that there was a protest happening in their area. They didn’t seem like they would be particularly open to letting a stranger piss in a room inside their home.

General sentiment among locals in Abbaseya probably summed up by "What do 26,27,28 year olds know about politics?" #jul23—
Blacklisted (@blacklisted140) July 23, 2011

If I got stuck in the area where the protest was happening, I was almost certain that someone would see me wet myself in public that day.

The protest escalated into a riot fairly quickly, and people began throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at each other. Masses of people started running, and whenever I’m in a situation where a shit ton of people are running in one direction, I find it best to run in the same direction to avoid getting trampled. I hadn’t even realized it, but people were running because the military fired some shots in the air to intimidate and disperse people. I didn’t hear it because I was thinking about all the worst possible scenarios for me and my bladder in this situation.

In case anyone is on the edge of their seat I still have to pee #jul23—
Blacklisted (@blacklisted140) July 23, 2011

My mind had wandered off to wondering whether I would be excused to go to the toilet if I was arrested. I wondered whether I would be put in a cell with a toilet, and if there would be other people with me in the cell who could see me pee. Or perhaps I would be taken to an office and there would be a bathroom next to the office that they would let me use. I wondered if I could get solitary confinement for the privacy privileges.

Rock-throwing started, no idea where it was coming from, but had to run because everyone else was running #jul23—
Blacklisted (@blacklisted140) July 23, 2011

Luckily, running with the stampeding people helped me get out just before the riot police came in and closed the exits, tear gassed protestors and started making arrests. If I had been knocked down by tear gas I would have surely done it in my pants.

As I was running, I was very quickly out of breath. We went back past the huge mosque, and I wondered if anyone would notice if I just slipped into the mosque and claimed sanctuary the way I might in my childhood imagination. I figured the mosque must have a toilet, and hopefully a fairly clean one. If the rules of the world really were the way I used to believe they were, I would be safe. And best of all, I wouldn’t have to run. Running while burning to pee and being tremendously out of shape made me care much less about my own well-being (but admittedly, so did not hearing the gun shots).

But the world was not that way, and so I had to hold it until leaving the area, being ignored by the local bus driver we tried to wave down, and finally finding a taxi under a bridge which took us to a supermarket in a different district of Cairo where we met a friend who took us to a coffee shop and I found a bathroom.

Still haven't peed, waiting for some whore who's locked herself in to finish #jul23—
Blacklisted (@blacklisted140) July 23, 2011

And waited a very long time outside the door.

I have done it. We can now return to our regularly scheduled program of…Oh. Live-tweeting bathroom stories. #jul23—
Blacklisted (@blacklisted140) July 23, 2011

I hate racism because it’s lazy.

"Fuckin' brown bears...stealing all our fishes."

Why should I give a despicable person an excuse for being despicable by callously shoving him or her into a category that is nothing but a meaningless man-made construction, or is as superficial as a skin color?

I would much rather direct my hatred toward people who deserve it for specific, concrete reasons.

If someone says, “Sally isn’t hygienic, Arabs are just like that,” then Sally is being excused for being unhygienic–something she can help–because of her inherent Arabness–something she can’t help. Well, I’m of Arab descent, too, and I’m obsessively hygienic! You should hate me because I’m judgmental and poor, not because I’m Arab or stereotypically unhygienic.

I would prefer, “I hate Sally because she’s a plagiarizing whore who strategically sleeps with half the guys in the office so she can get promotions even though she doesn’t do any actual work.”

Racist fucks should hate properly, or stick to something a little more sophomoric that they can actual handle. Like liking.

*Photo from Shaw University Mosque.