A Man Named . . .

Finishing up the semester, I had to run over to the university printing office to get some certificates ordered.  The UAE being a third-world country, a simple task like this requires more than a simple phone call or email.

You have to

(1) travel across town

(2) meet some guy you've never met before and will likely never seen again

and

(3) pretend like he's a good friend.

In most cases, he isn't around.  And most of the time--since folks here rarely answer their office phones--you can only find out if he's there or not by traveling across town to his office.  The efficiency here is a model for the rest of the world.

Today I'm lucky.  I travel across town.  The guy is in his office!  I introduce myself.  He introduces himself.

"I am Jihad," he says.

I keep my face blank.  Part of my brain wonders if he's joking.  But then I remind myself that no one jokes in this country.  Still, it's hard not to laugh, or at least smile.  I know not to repeat his name, for fear of losing my composure.

I sense that a man named Jihad would not respond kindly to me laughing at him.

So, long story short, I have a new friend named.  His name is Jihad.  He's going to make 32 certificates for me by 3 p.m. Tuesday.

Brief Update

A fantasy one.  It's fun to think of the various races.  In any case, this is why I haven't blogged in the last day or so.  Too much daydreaming and note taking.  I like what I've come up with so far, which basically boils down to a skeletal sketch of three different races and a single plot line for one of the races.  The only character that I see so far is a king who suspects that he is gradually losing his mind.

Folks keep coming back to check out the Nicolas Jaar page and, apparently, play the youtube video.  That's cool.  I played his album again tonight.  Keeps getting better every time.

My fantasy baseball team went 10-0 two weeks ago.  This week I'm sitting at 1-9.  And so it goes.

I keep looking around to see news about PokerStars returning to the U.S.  Nothing.  I got an email from Stars yesterday informing me that they were returning to Spain.  I never knew that they left.

If I wanted to write a novel, I wonder what a good strategy for success would be.  I imagine it would take me a long, long time.  So I guess I would want to keep my monthly costs low.  And I would also want to avoid distractions.  Like TV shows.  And the Internet.

So maybe the best plan would be to move to a country with ridiculously cheap housing, good food, and patchy wireless.  India, anyone?

People Who Want Money for Charity

Every so often, my world gets briefly interrupted by an acquaintance on facebook or by some other social means--but mostly facebook--who announces that he's going on a 10-mile walk or 3-day bike ride for charity.  And he wants my help.

Except I don't hear a (mild) plea for help.  Instead I hear an offer.  An invitation to bet.

I hear my acquaintance saying, "Do you think I can ride a bicycle 60 miles over 3 days?  I bet I can.  Do you bet I can too?" when really all he wants to be is altruistic.

In his mind, my reward for accepting his offer is that I can piggyback on his goodwill and throw some dough to the unfortunate masses.  In my mind, however, I'm trying to calculate his odds of success.

Usually his odds are pretty good.  But I should have the option--shouldn't I?--to answer, "No, I don't think you can.  I'm putting my money on the Don't Pass."

Craps--the game from which Don't Pass originated--is frankly beautiful, in my opinion.  I used to deal craps.  It's a complicated game, fun to deal, also fun to play.  The best part of craps is that at any given time, you can bet that the roller will win or lose.  So satisfying.  You can bet against someone.  You're allowed to be grouchy--or realistic--which tends to be another word for grouchy these days.  In almost all cases, a Don't Pass bet is a better bet than a Pass bet.

Craps is why I try to avoid casinos.

Now all of this might sound odd or pessimistic, but I argue that my attitude is actually good for charity.  And I'll tell you why.

Imagine a 65-year-old who wants you to commit $5 per mile for a 10-mile walk he plans to do this Saturday.  The forecast is for 95-degree heat.

In this case, I want to say, "Okay, I'm in.  Put me down for $5 per mile on the Don't."

"The Don't?" he'll inevitably ask.  "What does the Don't mean?"

At this point, you'll have to inform him that you are betting for charity that he will fail.

Naturally, he'll be offended.  But what is more important here--staying in the good graces of a middle-class acquaintance or doing your absolute best to funnel your cash to the poor?

A 65-year-old looks me in the eye and tells me he can walk ten miles in that kind of heat?  I'm calling bullshit.

Think of the alternative, which happens to be the current state of affairs: You can't bet on the Don't.  Society frowns upon it, everybody frowns upon it.  You are not allowed to wager that someone will fail.  It seems morally wrong.  So society takes the high road and the charity gets zippo when the oldster craps out on the fourth mile and walks into the nearest Taco Bell for a Number 5 with cinnamon twists and an extra large Coke with 4 cups of water on the side.

With my Don't bet, the charity gets $50.  A $5-per-mile bet that this delusional do-gooder can't walk ten miles in 95 degree heat.

If I'm allowed to bet the Don't, I win.  Charity wins.  I suggest that we introduce the concept of Don't Pass to charity events.  The only obstacle seems to be the ego of the participants.

* * *

As I was writing this, I thought of a potential Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.

An acquaintance approaches Larry David and asks for money for a charity walkathon.  Larry agrees to pay the guy $20 per mile if he can finish.  For whatever reason, the guy can't--or won't--finish.  Afterward, he comes to Larry asking for $200 bucks.

Larry thinks for a bit.  He says, "No."

"No?  What do you mean no?" asks the walkathon non-finisher.  "Are you saying you won't donate to charity?"

"Pretty much."

"I can't believe this.  Why?"

"I signed up for $20 bucks a mile."

"So?"

"$20 bucks a mile for ten miles."

"Where are you going with this, Larry?"

"$20 bucks a mile for ten miles . . . if you can walk ten miles."

"Larry, are you craz--"

"How many miles did you walk?"

"It was 92 degrees."

"The heat is my fault?"

"The heat is the charity's fault?"

"How many miles did you walk?"

"Three miles, Larry."

"And now you come to me asking for $200 bucks."

"It's for charity, Larry--"

"But you didn't hold up your end of the bargain!  I paid for ten miles!  You gave me three!  And you want 200 bucks."

"Are you telling me that you're going to deny $200 stinking dollars to a charity because I couldn't walk ten miles in 92-degree heat?"

"Tell me this. What do you do?"

"What do I do?  Larry, you know I'm an attorney."

"Okay, good.  I hire you to represent me in court.  You tell me it'll take ten hours of your time, and you say that your rate is 250 bucks an hour.  'Fine,' I say.  I give you 2500 bucks.  But you finish the job in 3 hours. Are you going to keep all 2500 bucks?"

"This is different!"

Larry, conciliatory, "Tell you what.  I agreed to pay you 20 bucks a mile.  You walked three miles.  I'll give you 60 bucks."

"Larry!"

etc.

* * *

Finished the last episode of season 2 of Game of Thrones this evening.  Awesome.  I won't give anything away, but I found it very satisfying.  Too bad we'll have to wait until April of 2013 for a fresh episode.

Because everybody keeps dying in this show, I thought it'd be fun to give odds that various characters will survive.  Even money bets seem dangerous.  Here are a few of my guesses:

Tyrion -- Even money to survive (this dude is the smartest of the bunch)

Dragonslayer Lannister -- 5-1 odds that he survives

Robb Stark -- 4-1 (he's King of the North, but he's got a target on his back)

Tywin Lannister -- 20-1 (he's old and likes to fight; seems likely to be a dead guy quite soon)

Cersei -- 12-1 (everybody hates her)

King Joffrey -- 50-1 (most likely to get killed by somebody soon)

John Snow -- 3-1 (he's a prisoner in dangerous territory but seems like a survivor)

Targeryen dragon woman -- 8-5 (she seems like she'll be in the mix till the end of the series)

Arya Stark --Even money (crafty and good with a sword already at her young age)

Tannis -- 16-1 (just failed in a takeover attempt, but he'll survive a bit longer)

Sansa Stark -- 4-1 (also crafty, but might be overplaying her hand by pretending she wants to stay with King Joffrey)

Thoughts?

Crackhead Manager

I have an idea for a new video game.  I call it Crackhead Manager.  I want it to be available on Wii, PS3, XBox, PC, and any handheld apparatus you might tool around town with.

The premise of the game is simple: The government has granted you a non-government organization (NGO) and provides you with funding for the purpose of finding, corralling, and rehabilitating crackheads.

The game will be a meritocracy.  The more crackheads you find, corral, and rehabilitate, the more money the government will give you. 

To start, you'll be equipped with night-vision goggles, a taser, and a two-bedroom apartment with barred windows and a deadbolt on each bedroom door.  (Alternatively, you can upgrade your equipment to include a tranquilizer gun as long as you are willing to downgrade your apartment to a treehouse.)  As you find, capture, and cage the town's crackheads, the government will send you dough, which you can use for assorted upgrades.

Some of those upgrades include:

Barbed wire
Toadies (to fetch you tacos)
Shotguns
Police vans (mobile prison)
Pistols
Armor-piercing bullets (for killing cops who are trying to arrest your crackheads)
Italian suit
Mazarati
Cocaine (which you might need on long stakeouts)
Crack (bait)

As with most games, the objective is to build your empire.  However, you can choose a variety of paths to domination.

1.  Business Model.  Perfect your crackhead-catching skills, dominate and kill the other crackhead-catching NGOs, and form a monopoly.  Expand to other towns, states, countries, and eventually the world.  Run crack out of business.  Develop a coke habit in the process.

2. Reality Mode. Or you can do what other NGOs do: nothing. Sit back and watch the crackheads overrun the planet. Stockpile popcorn, Jameson, and Hot Pockets, and watch the apocalypse from your window.

3.  Aggro Mode.  Turn the game into a first-person shooter by targeting the drug dealers and the suppliers.  No drugs = no crack = no crackheads.  Turn the entire world into a rehabilitation center.  Get ripped to shreds by a sober and pissed off populace as a result.

4.  Attack the world of the crackheads, who have a surprisingly cohesive world, with their own government (anarchy), currency (back alley handjobs), and leaders.  To invade and ultimately destroy this world, you'll have to challenge a series of crackhead bosses, progressing in difficulty from Lindsay Lohan to Nick Nolte to the zombie corpse of Amy Winehouse to the unchallenged King of Crack, Robert Downey Jr. (dressed as Iron Man).

How did you know I'm still on drugs?

GoT

I picked up the DVD set to Game of Thrones Season 1.  Fun show!  Such a huge cast of characters running around stabbing each other.  It's a fantasy show, which tend not to do so well in television, so maybe this is opening some doors.

My favorite is a midget named Tyrion.  Or maybe he's a dwarf.  Am I insulting him already?  Maybe he prefers little person.  Sorry, Tyrion.

Anyhoo, he seems to be the smartest of the bunch, but that isn't saying a whole lot.  He's with the Lannister family, which are the richest in the realm, and they're competing with the Starks, the family that gets the most air time and therefore the most viewer sympathy, as well as five or so other families for the Iron Throne.

All want to be king, but a prior king got stabbed in the back--literally--by his second-in-command.  His replacement ended up being gutted by a boar.  So I don't know why they're racing so madly for the position.  In fact, all of the characters appear to be hurtling themselves, at varying speeds, towards death.

Which is another interesting facet of the show.  Main characters die.  One got beheaded.  Another dude vying for the throne got stabbed by a black, wispy spirit demon that sprouted from the vagina of a sorceress.  Freaky ass shit.

Anyway, after season 1, I had to get going onto season 2, so I ended up downloading it online.  Because the "hero" of season 1 now has a stump where his head used to be, the average viewer might have difficulty knowing whom to root for.  After all, you might pick a dude to cheer on and see his throat slashed in the following episode.

No true heroes, but many villains.  Really cool concept.  The final installment of season 2 airs tonight.  I hope it ends as well as season 1 did.

Hold!

I just have to get through one . . . more . . . week of classes.  After that, I can take ten days to prepare the final exam for these goofs.  My God this place tilts the shit out of me sometimes.  After my last class, I'll hole up in my bunker and pray for June 26th, the day I fly out of this shithole.  Hollllllllllllllllllllllld.

Fucktards in the Cinema

There is little to do in the UAE, unless you really fucking love malls so much that you're willing to fly 5,000 miles to shop in an Arabic one, so going to movies becomes one of the only options when you're crawling up the walls from cabin fever, or else you just want some time out of the apartment.

So today I went out to see Snow White and the Huntsman.  Now in the U.S. I would never even think about paying $10 to see this movie.  I doubt I'd pay a buck to Redbox it.  Because in the U.S., there are options.  In the UAE, Snow White and the Huntsman is the premiere experience that my town has to offer--that or standing out in the heat and praying for sunstroke.  So I ponied up and took my seat.

Then the real strategy begins.  Sitting in the theater, I mean.  Because you don't want to sit next to an Emirati, one of the nationals.  These people can be nice face to face occasionally, but in general they have the social skills of plasterboard.

For example, they'll come up to you and say, "Hello sir, how was your weekend?" and then immediately follow it up with, "You look sick," when you're feeling fine, or "You look tired," when you slept 8 hours.  A friend of mine who lost 20-plus pounds had a former student come up to him and say, "What happened?  You used to be so fat!"  Only an Emirati can make an insult out of losing weight.

So, the theater.  You sit and you wait.  And you really have to wait, because these nitwits roll into the film after it has already started, take the seat right behind you, and then launch into conversation like they're sitting in a fucking coffee shop.  Or else they text each other, or they just outright answer phone calls.  Mental fucking midgets.

The movie starts, and I don't even need to look around.  I know I'm moving, because the fucktards behind me are already yammering away.  So I move up a row or two, but before I know it, I hear a phone ringing.

Obviously, in a first-world country, a ringing phone in a movie theater would be the subject of embarrassment and someone hurrying to shut the fucking thing up.  Not the UAE.  A gentleman that I'll refer to as IQ 80 answers and talks for a good five minutes . . . and everyone around him is acting like he's acting normal.

Another phone rings.  I look back and--shocker--find out it's IQ 80 again.  Probably talking to his cousin/third wife.

Now one thing that these morons seem to hate is to be embarrassed, especially by an outsider.  So I had half-convinced myself that I was going to confront the guy after the movie and just say, "Do you know how rude you were?"  That's the line I had settled on, because I mean the guy's just totally clueless, and if I come up to him and start berating him, he's just going to think I'm the Ugly American.  Which I might be.

But the best part is what I had forgotten.  Because as the movie ends, I turn around and most of the fuckers have already left the building.  Late to arrive, early to leave.  Most of them don't understand a movie in English anyway, and the Arabic subtitles is about a week's reading for them, so I shouldn't be surprised.

Aside from the need to go to work, I have no clue why a foreigner would ever leave his apartment in this shithole country.