Oh Yes

We're so silly, us humans, so silly. Laughable.

Cryable, too.

Shall I expound? Okay, I shall, but just a little.

Working as a 4th grade teacher I have the opportunity to witness first hand human drama every day, and while I can dismiss my students' outcries for broken friendships and declarations of dislike for fellow classmates as childish behavior, I've come to realize that I am much more like my students emotionally than I'd like to be. Maybe it's just me and I'm emotionally retarded, and didn't develop past the elementary school level, but I think it might be more than that. We humans, in general, enjoy drama in our lives. Or maybe it's that some of us are so reactionary to what goes around us in life. There is that minority of folks out there who have better things to do with themselves than be reactive to everything they experience, but they are few. Though I think responding to things around us is necessary, the majority of us don't react in any way that is constructive. Rather we usually just vent and wollop in our own stew of emotions and circumstances.

I thought I was getting somewhere, but I'll need some more time to think it through. Good night.

yoohoo

Well hello.

It's been a while since I've been here. Got through my last year of school, and yes, wow, graduated.

I've gotten over it. I mean, college is really really great, but you've gotta get up and move on, ya know?

So, maybe you noticed a change - a new hairstyle, a brighter color, or I don't know, the fact that I'm not "evil" anymore? Well, I felt that I just didn't want something like that attached to my name and my blog - it was all in fun, but I don't want anybody getting the wrong idea, because I don't like evil things, and I don't like axes of evil.

So, I'm an axis of good - axis carries the connotation that there are others who are good - which i'm sure there are, but really, this axis of good is just me myself and i trying to be better than who we were yesterday. And now I sound like an axis of crazy because I'm referring to myself as "we."
Ah, oh well, we'll be better tomorrow.

okay then, bye now :)
aqsis, aqsis and aqsis

This world is not for you

Karl Heinzen and I went to high school together. This kid was - there is no other way to put it - full of life. Everybody loved him - his peers, his teachers, everyone. Karl was a good person - he had a good spirit.
I cannot believe he is gone. I didn't know what people meant when they would say they could still hear someone, or see someone after they were gone - but I understand: I can still hear Karl's laugh. His face keeps swimming in front of me - as he pulls a prank on one of his buddies, forgets a line from our play. I hear his laugh, and I think - why? why did he have to die? why did this kid with so much spunk and life, and happiness leave us?
I can only think: Indeed we are for Allah - and to Allah do we all return.

Man Is Swept Into Ocean, as Father’s Rescue Try Fails
Daniel Barry for The New York Times

Karl Heinzen, who was swept away by a wave near Breezy Point, in a photograph held by his mother, Linda Arvay.

By EMILY VASQUEZ and ANN FARMER
Published: October 9, 2006

Karl Heinzen battled the first wave that swept him off the jetty as he was fishing yesterday morning near Breezy Point at the western tip of the Rockaways.

He swam back to the strip of jagged gray boulders, and pulled off his jacket and tried to get his waders off, too, knowing that they could fill with water and weigh him down like an anchor.

Then another wave crashed, six or eight feet tall, and again the swelling waters of the Atlantic drew him in.

This time, the jetty rocks were out of Mr. Heinzen’s reach, and his father, who had been fishing nearer to shore and saw his son go under, also had to battle the waves and was unable to rescue him.

Mr. Heinzen, 21, remained missing yesterday evening.

“He just loved to fish,” said his father, Jerome Heinzen, 59. Karl started fishing with his family in Prospect Park when he was just a toddler, he said, but as he grew older the location near Breezy Point, called Gateway Jetty, became the favorite spot for father and son.

“They went all year round, rain or shine, the fishing was good,” said Karl’s mother, Linda Arvay. “He always went out the farthest. He had no fear.”

When the waves began to strike the jetty’s slick rocks about 8 a.m., Karl Heinzen started walking the 20 or so feet toward his father.

When the first wave swept Karl off the jetty, his father ran to help him, but as the second wave carried Karl away, Mr. Heinzen was also carried into the water. Another fisherman pulled Jerome Heinzen back onto the rocks, and they looked up to see that there was another chance for Karl’s rescue.

A boat, the Dorothy B VIII, which charters fishing trips from Sheepshead Bay, had just passed the jetty, but circled back fast to throw Karl a lifeline with a buoy attached. But Karl — who had been a mate on the boat in high school — could not snatch it.

“He was a few feet from the buoy but didn’t have enough strength to grab it,” Mr. Heinzen said.

It was unclear yesterday if his son had been able to shed his waders, which was “exactly as he was taught to do,” Ms. Arvay said.

The United States Park Police, the New York Fire and Police Departments and the Coast Guard searched for Mr. Heinzen. Because of the tide, the search was called off after 5 p.m.

By then, Ms. Arvay had already gone back to the family car. Jerome Heinzen still stood with his daughter on the jetty, watching as the rescue boats drifted away.

Tears stream down your face

...ya Allah.

and I...

need your help.

Bush Untethered

Someone had to say it - an editorial from The New York Times:

Editorial
Bush Untethered

Published: September 17, 2006

Watching the president on Friday in the Rose Garden as he threatened to quit interrogating terrorists if Congress did not approve his detainee bill, we were struck by how often he acts as though there were not two sides to a debate. We have lost count of the number of times he has said Americans have to choose between protecting the nation precisely the way he wants, and not protecting it at all.

On Friday, President Bush posed a choice between ignoring the law on wiretaps, and simply not keeping tabs on terrorists. Then he said the United States could rewrite the Geneva Conventions, or just stop questioning terrorists. To some degree, he is following a script for the elections: terrify Americans into voting Republican. But behind that seems to be a deeply seated conviction that under his leadership, America is right and does not need the discipline of rules. He does not seem to understand that the rules are what makes this nation as good as it can be.

The debate over prisoners is not about whether some field agent can dunk Osama bin Laden’s head to learn the location of the ticking bomb, as one senator suggested last week. It is about whether the United States can confront terrorism without shredding our democratic heritage. This nation is built on the notion that the rules restrain our behavior, because we know we’re fallible. Just look at the hundreds of men in Guantánamo Bay, many guilty of nothing, facing unending detention because Mr. Bush did not want to follow the rules after 9/11.

Now Mr. Bush insists that in cleaning up his mess, Congress should exempt C.I.A. interrogators from the Geneva Conventions. “The bottom line is simple: If Congress passes a law that does not clarify the rules — if they do not do that — the program’s not going forward,” Mr. Bush said. But clarity is not the issue. The Geneva Conventions are clear and provide ample room for interrogating terrorists. Similarly, in the debate over eavesdropping on terrorists’ conversations, Mr. Bush says that if he has to get a warrant, he can’t do it at all. Actually, he has ample authority to eavesdrop on terrorists, under the very law he is breaking, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says that after being briefed on the wiretapping, she concluded that “this surveillance can be done, without sacrifice to our national security,” within the law. She has introduced a bill to affirm FISA’s control over all wiretapping. It would also give the authorities far more flexibility to listen first and get a warrant later when it’s really urgent. But the only bill Mr. Bush wants is a co-production of Vice President Dick Cheney and Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that gives the president more room to ignore FISA and chokes off any court challenges.

The best thing Congress could do for America right now is to drop this issue and let the courts decide the matter. Mr. Bush can’t claim urgency; it’s not as though he has stopped the wiretapping.

Legislation is needed on the prisoner issue, although not as urgently as Mr. Bush says. Three Republican senators, John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham, have a bill that is far better than the White House version but it, too, has some huge flaws that will take time to fix. It will be hard in an election year, but if the Republicans stand firm, and Democrats insist on the needed changes, they might just require Mr. Bush to recognize that he is subject to the same restraints that applied to every other president of this nation of laws.

Yaadein

It's 11:33pm right now. I have class tomorrow at 2pm, for which I have to read 250 pages tonight. I have been awake since 6am this morning. I have been marching non-stop since then. What am I doing now?
a)Sleeping a fitful sleep?
b)Catching up on 250 pages of reading on the Ottoman Empire?
c)Writing my response due for class tomorrow?
d)None of the above
This is not a trick question.

Tonight the Islamic Center @ NYU had its first event: Welcome Back Dinner/ Ice Cream Social. It was the first time I was up at bat - the first time I was in charge of something, and it made me realize all that's involved in planning a relatively simple dinner, and how time consuming it is! My appreciation for past IC executive board members grew immensely (heenie beans, that means you :) and though I was thoroughly exhausted afterwards, it felt good to be doing...something for one's community. I'm still in a bit of denial in regards to the fact that I'm a SENIOR in college, but having an event like this, where I got to see babies, and inviting them to participate in something that has meant so much to me these past few years, felt really good :)
I also felt sad..because....this would be my last welcome back dinner!! God! The most cliche statements become applicable to my life, which I know is terribly corny, but so true. Freshman year really does feel like yesterday - I vividly remember my first Ice Cream social, and meeting people who would become close friends and confidants.

Life goes too fast. I want it to slow down. I just want to savor this, but instead Monday becomes Wednesday and then Friday...and then it's Monday again. And I pause to think, and am overwhelmed when I realize I'm almost done with my formal education.
Yaadein yaadein yaadein...I don't want to be nostalgic...I don't want to grow up.

I'm angry.

At myself, at my friends, at myself, at my peers.

We're so disillusioned. Some of us more than others.

Sheesha, hookah, whatever you call it makes me want to smack someone really hard. I surprise myself sometimes by such strong feelings, but I really can't stand it when I find out someone engages in this extremely unattractive activity. It really bites when you find out your friends like doing it.
I don't give a crap how good of a friend you are, smoking sheesha is SMOKING. SMOKING IS FILTHY, DISGUSTING, AND EXTREMELY HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH. Also, to people who make the comparison that fat is bad for you, you are a....dingo. Fat is vital for life. People who consume it in behemoth proportions are also filthy and disgusting. There are no double standards. Cigarettes stink, cigars reek, and sheesha sucks. Go ahead and call me uptight, ms goody two shoes, or what have you. I hate sheesha.

This entry's purpose was for me to vent. Thank you for letting me vent. I will now find the guts to explain my feelings to my friends.