Dear Readers,

Today I am breaking one of my usually hard and fast rules and I'm going to discuss, This Blog. The reason I don't believe in that sort of thing is mainly because of a piece I wrote several years ago (Pre Blog, PB) about the nonsense involved in blogging. That was one fantastic piece if only I knew where it was I'd share it with you. I blogged about my day, a normal day in the life of an American expatriate living in Beirut Lebanon. I recorded everything over the course of a few hours (a day in Beirut is like a year somewhere else you know). I recorded what I was eating and drinking, the sounds outside and within the text I began a story about an event during one of Israel's campaigns against the Shia muslims of South Lebanon. It happened in the summer of 1993 and I was there on vacation. The bombing started while we were at the beach and as we returned to our village up in the hills there, we saw an amazing number of things including the flight of families from horror, persecution and the error of Israeli Zionist policies against muslims. We stayed on for about four days. Katushyas were launched from inside of our own home which was unfinished at the time. Missiles sailed over our heads and bombs splayed open the ground from east to west. During that foolish Israeli mission it was the case that I was suffering from Expatriatitis (diarrhea/food poisoning). I was sick as a dog. Everytime a Katushya was launched, it would shake the entire building and I'd have to go to the bathroom. The girl children that were with me in what we used to call "the bunker" were wimpering and tossing on mats on the floor. All I could think of was the fact that if an Israeli missile (Made in the USA) hit our home, I'd be sitting on the crapper with my pants around my ankles in the rubble.

To get to the punch line of that Anti Blog rant however, one had to sift through my day as I wrote about it. I made cookies and listened to sirens, bicycle bells and prayer calls. It was worth it to just imagine this poor sod (me) sitting at the end of the horror on a crapper in an acute stage of intestinal distress. Life goes on you know regardless of where the bombs fall. We are all human you know and there was poetic justice in the notion that my last interaction with the state of Israel was so profound and the moral of the story was found in a plastic bag in our washing machine in Haris Lebanon. They literally shit in it while they hid in our home in a state of terror against an enemy that was never seen on any television screen or photograph, nor seen in a massive buildup of technological power as the IDF was seen amassing at the Israeli/Lebanese border. Yes, the IDF was terrorized when it was the case that they were supposed to have been all powerful and victorious. They holed themselves up in my humble abode and probably filled the toilet so full that it could hold no more and had to start crapping in places people don't usually crap like beds and Maytags. They barricaded themselves in and feared for their lives.

An Israeli soldier SHAT in a bag and left it for us to find. It was objective and real. It betrayed the humanity of the Jews as much as it betrayed my own. I got over it though. I moved on. Sort of. I still pray for the end of that Zionist experiment in ethnic purity, cleansing and arrogance.

Anyway, I'd like to know a little more about my readers because it is interesting to me. Not because I need to know that I have them...I already know that much. This blog receives anywhere from 10 to 50 visitors a day depending on how hard I've marketed it elsewhere.

The poll at the right top hand of the page is for the readers. Feel free to opine in the comments section and know that I publish almost everything I receive. The only censorship I utilize is censorship of the redundant. Some posters never give up, never give their name and bore me. Those don't get published. If it is the case you have something awful to say then say it. Doesn't bother me but don't be surprised if I slap you around a little in my response. Eye for an eye you know and the best remedy for ignorance is knowledge and I always try to give a little of that away for the asking.

I would like to point out a few features on this blog which are found in the Links to Uncommon Things on the right. I use those things all the time but two of them I use more often than anything else. One of them is a fantastic Quranic Boolean search engine. No other book lends itself so wisely to a Boolean search. Like all Boolean search engines however, it requires a person knows a little bit about what it is they are looking for. The second most oft used feature is the link to the Peak of Eloquence which is basically the presidential (Khalifate) papers of a person known to the Shia as "The Commander of the Faithful" whose kunya (name) was Mutallib or rather, Ali ibn Abi Taleb, May Allah be pleased with his Ahl Bayt.

I also invite poets and artists (who don't mind being associated with such a renegade) to submit their work and if it is deemed appropriate, I will publish it for them here. No charge and no payment hahaha. Guest writers as well are invited to editorialize and are welcome to submit their opinion on any topic they choose so long as it isn't anything that goes against my policy of no indecency i.e. nothing a person wouldn't want to be remembered by. And that is what truly counts in the end....what a person wants to be remembered by. If only poets understood that simple premise I imagine the poetry industry would do what it was meant to do and that is to introduce people to ideas they ought to reconsider, consider and even adopt for their very own.
It is a noble cause and suits my ongoing love of the Pindaric Odes in which poems were written for the Gods enjoyment only in my case, there is only one Allah and his last messenger was Mohamed.

Peace in any case, on those that deserve it, want it or believe in it.