Of Horses And Sunglasses ; Of Illiterate Fakers

Part I - Of Horses And Sunglasses. Quoth PR,

Jul 26 01:20:43 MPOE-PR https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=261235.160 i guess that has meanwhile turned into an MP fascination thread.

Basically someone fished out some old interview I gave for some Romanian blogger years ago, which interview was illustrated with an old picture of me in Egypt. As is the manner and façon on the Internetⁱ, the poor unfortunate shot was put on the wringer and closely examined in every nook and cranny. And so it came to light (har har) that in spite of the Sun being visibly very strong and glaring me the fuck out, nevertheless I'm not wearing sunglasses.

Yes, this is what we've been reduced to, as a culture, as a race. This is what we do. We notice, we care, we're nuts already.

The girl asked me something about it, I don't remember what, because I was at the time busy doing shit. She didn't think it wise to push the point, perhaps because I can do a pretty ferocious impersonation of a rattled Bengal tiger if you pester me with inane crap while I'm trying to do shit (note the hierarchy in fecalia), and so on the strength of her general impression made some comment on the thread about how of course he's not wearing glasses while riding *rolleyes*.

To not leave the naive public that has never ridden that "glassy eyed dinosaur"ⁱⁱ in the lurch I find it's my responsibility, as one that does actually comfortably ride horses (and mares), to specify and clarify : it's no fucking big deal. It is perhaps not a bright idea to ride while wearing glasses on the theory they may break badly in a fall. However, if you ride a horse you know you should not surprisingly fucking fall off it, and if you do you have bigger problems than eyewear : you should wear a head! Furthermore, if the alternative is "ride with glasses or ride blind" there's certainly something to be said for glasses. Nevertheless, riding with glasses was occasionally illegal in various parts of the world, much in the same way going over 20 miles an hour was insanity at some point in history. The reason is simply that history is written by people, and as such fucking weird.

Furthermore, as one true Interneteer I find myself compelled to dwell even further on detail. So, that picture was taken sometime around the Christmas of 2004. That particular day I was in the company of an older, white American woman. This would seem irrelevant detail, which simply shows you aren't Egyptian. You see my dear chitlins, Egypt is a very hardcore matriarchy.ⁱⁱⁱ The strength of families revolves around the matriarch they possess, much like hyena families work. Consequently, the absolute ideal for any young uppity upstart is to acquire enough wealth to be able to lure into his house (or tent) an older, preferably fat, absolutely white (British, American, whatever) woman. There is actually a market for this, there's probably a club dedicated to the particular activity by now, "move to Egypt to be the matriarch". As it has been the case for the past few centuries, the refuse of Western society is the fortune of Eastern.

I have personally seen the model at work, and not once. Young boy, late teens, early twenties marries blossoming local beauty and love of his life (mid or late teens the earliest). You know, just like you'd marry your highschool sweetheart, except they don't go to highschool together. In fact, the way girls get married in Egypt is their family arranges for them to be shopkeeper assistants. The reasoning is no doubt "people are in the shop to buy stuff, who's to say they won't also buy a girl ?!" And so every shoe store, cloth store, pharmacy and whatnot in all of Cairo has at least half a dozen girlies that are... just there. Maybe some rich patron picks one up, you never know the girl's luck. Basically the exact thing we do with "journalists" and "pr chicks". I guess they don't read as much. Anyway, here's a cotton store :

To continue the story of our typical elite Egyptian : if he's any good his business then expands with the support of his mother (very rarely aunt), and by the time he's thirty the house arrested twentysomething mostly illiterate Arab girl gets the shock of her life : she's introduced to this other woman. This other woman that not only does not speak her language nor care for her culture, but much more importantly is going to be her husband's wife. Her husband's FIRST wife.^iv

After which he takes another one or two cute little does, sixteen or thereabouts as he approaches fifty. All this just in case you wanted to understand why exactly is it they're having revolutions all over the Middle East : young girls are sick and tired of this Muslim worldview that makes them basically iPads, and young boys are sick and tired of being one of the 500 that didn't get an older white woman and so therefore suck, are socially marginal 4ever and have to stand up and defer whenever some guy walks in the room.^v

All this lengthy introduction was necessary for you to understand the "global context" of my little trip on horseback fleetingly captured in that shot. Now picture this : a horseranch within riding distance of the pyramids, where half a dozen local men service tourists, mostly Americans. This means they walk the horse over and back.

This has been going on forever, and you think you've seen everything, when suddenly in comes this spiffy young fellow with his proof of social superiority walking and talking right next to him one step behind. He doesn't speak Misr, isn't interested in what you think on any topic and wants two horses. Not three, and no guide. And quickly boy! Chop-chop.

Well if you would be one of the guys working there, or even if you were two, or three, or all of them : wouldn't you spit in his motherfucking drink ? Wouldn't you get him that one horse ? Yes, you would, wouldn't you. You would, because fundamentally you're exactly the same scum, it's just you got lucky to be born where people exploit poor African fuckers rather than where people get exploited by the European elite. Or something like that. Anyway. So they got me that one horse.

You see, it's not like he was a bad guy or anything, it's just he was nearing the end of his adolescence, still a virgin and utterly bored. Sort of like most kids in Egypt, actually. And so he wanted to play a little. No less than eleven times did I have to make it run the circle.^vi It tried to throw me countless times.

One such instance and no doubt the crowning moment of the entire day was when the horse, leisurely walking down a path, suddenly went on its knees. Yes, just like that. I still don't know if it did it on purpose of its own volition or if it was trained for it and someone gave it a signal I didn't pick up on, but it certainly didn't stumble and fall. It just went on its knees, both, suddenly, with no warning and no success whatsoever, because I didn't fall. I wasn't even bothered. But if you're curious, try the shit sometime and see how well your reflexes serve you.

None of this has anything to do with my wearing sunglasses, however. I wasn't wearing any because I had sat on my last pair the day before, which was my spare, having lost the main I don't recall how. And hadn't bought more yet. That's all.

Part II - Of Illiterate Fakers. Consider this :

There's exactly one problem with that picture, which is simply this : girl's name ain't Mara.

Girl's name ain't Mara, and if you've ever fucking read that book in the sense of having overheard it being discussed among whatever intellectual circle you frequent such as for instance by watching TV for as much as five minutes you'd absolutely have to know it's Mona.^vii

At this point I would like to introduce Mihai Mocean, a kid with Down syndrome from Cluj, which happens to be the Romanian town where I was born. This kid managed a 7/10 at the Romanian Bacalaureat^viii, which makes him academically better than about two thirds of his generation. That's right, a guy with severe to moderate actual mental retardation is better than two thirds of whatever came out of woman in 1995's Romania.

So now, time for

III. Conclusion. On one hand, there's people who can ride a horse even if that's not what they do for a living. On the other hand, there's people who can post on forums, even if they do nothing for a living.

On one hand there's people scribbling nonsense atop classical books. On the other hand there's kids with mental retardation passing exams. On one hand there's "Harper Perennials" farts and pretense, on the other there's the utter void.

We live in a scavenger world, my dear friends. We live surrounded by crabs, necrofages, barbarians using the greatness of a past civilisation to house their snot sculptures. May Jesus take you in his care.

1. In fairness Bitcointalk is probably at the forefront of the good fight for squeezing details for all they've got. The peanut gallery has had a lot of practice with ASIC miner photos and whatnot. [↩]
2. “The Muffin Tops”/“The Summer Of George”, Seinfeld. [↩]
3. Not the only place, either. Most of the Middle East works on this formula, which is why Jews are so fucking obnoxious. To better illustrate the point, consider the observation of some Cypriot male during their serious banking crisis earlier this year. When asked by a reporter what are they all waiting for, he candidly answered that they're waiting for the elder women to pick a course of action. Fact. [↩]
4. Isn't this cute tho ? Kentucky woman aged 40ish discovers her husband of however many years is actually doing it on the side with this other woman, a decade or two her junior. Cairo woman aged 20ish discovers her husband of many years has another wife, a decade or two her senior. How can you believe in carbon footprints and all that nonsense when clearly the human species is so completely and utterly self-balancing ? [↩]
5. Since we're doing this : I took a woman to one of their bars, in Cairo. Bar is perhaps a confusing term : a hall with sparse furniture and hay on the floor where people sit around and mostly smoke and drink coffee. We had fun, we played backgammon, it was absolutely the first time a woman went in that particular place since at least the Crusades. And yes it was no doubt standing since then, I could tell by the walls. Totally Roman make. [↩]
6. One of the best, most effective ways to bring to heel a young horse that tends to disregard your control and run is forcing it to run in a circle by pulling on its bridle close (this means you grab on to the bridle close to the horse's head). You progressively narrow the circle and the horse eventually stops. [↩]
7. Really it's June, but let's not get into so much detail as to where Bucovina is lest we confuse people. [↩]
8. Ie, standardised national testing, the thing Americans don't want to do because Down syndrome, they have it. [↩]