An artists with a good PR team will gain more fame and acquire more money then an amazing artsist working on his own. All of this is portrait such brilliantly in ‘Exit through the gift shop’ . Thierry Guetta is well nothing at all, he doesn’t even make his own work, the one that he does make is a blend of already done street art with big paint splatters that he put in. The ‘art’ does not necessarily convey a message, unlike Banskey or fairy. It all just might be a social experiment by Bansky but well it worked. With a huge PR campaign, endorsements from Bansky, the LA weekly and Fairy. Shit sold out, to say the least. The exhibition went on for two months, selling most of the ‘pieces’ and earning Thierry Guetta over a million dollars.

The whole phenomenon is well brilliantly put by Steve Lazarides,  ”I think the joke is on… I don’t know who the joke’s on – really. I don’t even know if there is a joke.”  

Thierry Guetta set out to make some money by selling overpriced modern street art and well he succeeded, of course everyone in the street art business is not going to be pleased by it. A random guy just came out of the blue and made more money in two months then they could ever imagine and that too by selling work that has been there for ages.

Well, one should never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups, if you are in the business to make money well there is nothing wrong with making a quick buck earned on by other peoples stupidity. If you’re in it for the works well you need to stop thinking about who buys your work and for how much, the process of creating art should be full filling for you. If it isn’t well you really should find a side job or well go Thierry Guetta on the public and stop thinking about if it’s ‘art’ you’re creating and feed that stomach.

Overall it’s such an amazing thing to watch, personally I do hope it’s all a hoax created by bansky. It would just take it to a whole new level.

Although it’s not very hard for me to find things to hate, somehow it comes quite naturally. Not the best of traits I must say, but one I can live with. So if I take a look at this list, amongst consumerism, shopaholic and Stephenie Mayer (for sins that will never be forgiven) I find myself staring at this big bold word “competition”. Oh how I loath the whole concept, man vs man trying to choose which one is better. Why?

You can’t compete with a an animal or some other creature, it’s always a man vs a man isn’t it and then there is the loser and in the right corner we have the proud winner, with his head held high because clearly he is the better “man”. Why do we need to be better than anyone? Why do we have the constant need to know we are better than someone else. Why can’t we just be equal and be happy about it.  But that would mean actually loving the whole humanity and accepting you’re just another guy/girl. That would be heart wrenching now, wouldn’t it.

I’m not saying abolish everything sports and all. I’m just saying, why can’t you just go to school to learn instead of getting a grade A? Why can’t you just enjoy a sport instead of trying to be number one? During all this fatigue of competition and trying to destroy the other we somehow lose our humanity in between and more importantly we forget the reason why we were doing the thing in the first place. Of course if you’re a bookie you’re going to declare me a witch and burn me alive.

But think about it, would the world be a horrible place, if there were no grades, there were no number one’s, you did not backbite someone just to get ahead of them , you did not cram just to get good grades.  Would it be so horrible to enjoy everything because you actually want to enjoy it. Isn’t the only competition just with your own self in the end?

I can’t even imagine going back to my dialup days, when we used to wait for a “picture” to load. Now, it’s all videos and interactive applications and a whole lot more.  All this speed, these high data rates, all this information has had two negatives impacts on us.

For one, there is so much information around us that it’s easy to forget what is important and what was the important thing that happened. One day we are focused on Tunisia, the next it’s Libya; once the earthquake comes we completely forget there was a dispute going on in Africa. We don’t cry anymore when listening about a bomb blast that killed 150 people. We’re getting desensitized because of the amount of information that we go through each day. The bad doesn’t look so grim anymore because there is always something worse waiting to be heard in the next 24 hours.

The second negative impact isn’t that severe but has a long-term effect on us, and by us I mean the modern man as a collective. We are losing the ability to be fascinated easily and that for me is a big thing. At the same time we are losing the ability to enjoy anything fully, because there is always so much of it available and with so much ease.

We own 100Gb of songs, that would take 3 months to play on itunes. We no longer enjoy the concept of a single, we no longer enjoy putting the cassette in a player or a record on a gramophone and sit back, relax and enjoy it. We always have our one hand on shuffle and it’s always used more than it should be.

We have 10,000 images “somewhere” in the computer. Most of  which we won’t ever see again. We don’t sit down any longer as a family and enjoy the 20 photos from our childhood, where we were all a little chubby and were still trying to make sense of these big people making faces, whenever they saw us.

We have 500 channels and our favorite button is the next button. I don’t personally remember watching a full feature on tv without switching. It’s like second instinct now, trying to look for what else is on.

We have 300 facebook friends on average, not even 50 of which we meet or even make an effort to meet in real life. Birthdays even aren’t the same, someone wishing you used to mean something, they took the time out to actually remember your birthdate and those little surprises were amazing. Now, it’s a big list of people I really couldn’t be bothered about spamming my wall and hidden amongst them are the two guys who actually remembered your birth date.

So, what I’m trying to say is the abundance of information, trying to help us learn more, watch more, listen more and be  informed more has somehow taken the fun out of it somewhere in between. We have seen all kinds of explosions Hollywood had to offer. We have taken 3D tours of cities we will never visit and listened to bands that we never knew existed.  It’s getting harder and harder to fascinate us day by day and with that, it’s getting harder to smile and enjoy those little things in life.

Let’s just not download the whole discography, just that one album and put it on repeat. Let’s buy that film and sit down with the family and only watch it on a weekend. Let’s just read the newspaper once in the morning and absorb more stuff than skimming through a million different pages.

Let’s not lose the ability to be fascinated and more importantly let’s not lose the ability to feel.

Note to self : Watch this film again one every other year.

So, I thought to turn insomnia into an opportunity to catch up on the films, I’ve been wanting to watch for a while now. To be honest most of turned out disappointing, but then I found my Irish film stash.

I always love watching non american or the modern-day term foreign films. It’s always amazing to see how different the direction and story lines get when you step out of  the Hollywood(ised) drama or the wanting to be too artsy indie films. Intermission is definitely one of them. The best thing about the film is how you lose track of the story line and you just laugh or enjoy the particular moment in the film. I think a whole hollywood film can be based on just the last quarter of the film well most hollywood films are based on the last quarter of this film to be honest.

But what truly makes this amazing is the build up to that bit, how you are introduced to characters and how slowly you understand them (or not) and how fun the whole journey is. It’s like Guy Ritchie in slow motion.

At the start the characters are introduced slowly and you go deep in the life of one (or two characters at the same time) and you forget what the last bit was , then after every quarter of the film all of them are connected with the same emotions and things start to make sense. It’s really something to be seen.

Such handy camera work, interesting yet simple plot but most importantly amazing acting and the special magic glue that kept it all together.

So thought to put some of the quotations from the show here :

Spongebob: “Squidward this is great. Just you, me, and this brick wall you built between us.”

Spongebob: “You know, if I were to die right now, in some sort of fiery explosion due to the carelessness of a friend…well, that would just be ok.”

Sandy: “Stupidity isn’t a virus… but it sure is spreadin’ like one!”

Spongebob: “You wont believe what I found in my sock last night! Go ahead, guess!”

Squidward : “Friends are like potatoes, you eat them, they die”

Squidward: “This city needs to be destroyed!!! Or at least painted another color.”

Mr. Krabs: “The boy cries you a sweater of tears…and you kill him.”

Patrick: “Dumb people are just blissfully unaware of how very dumb they are (as he drools).”

Patrick: “You mean they’re taking the thoughts we think we thought and making them thoughts we think we thought… I think.”

“Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and calls forth its appropriate response. It was the abstraction I  stabbed. But Now, for the first time, I see you a man like me. I thought if your hand-grenade, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always  see it too late. Why do they never tell us that’s you are poor devils like us, that’s your mothers are just as anxious as yours,  and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony? — forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and his uniform you could bey brother just like Kat and Albert. Take twenty years of my life , comrade and stand up — take me , for I do lot know what I can even attempt to do with it now”

Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

Paul Bowles-The Sheltering Sky

The hate for America is something that is now a part of the daily routine for a Pakistani. We hate them so much. Let’s burn their flag. Let’s get out on our streets and burn some tyres. Burn a couple of cars owned by Pakistani’s. Let’s throw in a couple of shops while we are at it.

Well. I’m not even gonna go  into how wrong and stupid all these protests are but I will say two things though, if any one of you protesters got a chance to run from this country – you would. Secondly, they have every god damned right to do what they are doing, whether you like it or not. They will continue to do what they want and there is absolutely nothing that you can do to change that.

The point here is not America, it is any super power in the history of this world. What exactly did the Muslims do in their golden age? They conquered by sword, by treaties in the name of religion or how so ever. They used every ounce of their power to make a grand Muslim empire. Similarly, the British also had their time of glory. It wasn’t as messy as the American reign but it was there.

We are not living in a neighbourhood where everyone is everyone else friend. This isn’t Cheers where everyone knows your name. This is pure animal instinct to make my estate/territory as fortified as I can; it is no different from the instinct of producing offspring. It’s something built into us. If Pakistan was as powerful as the States right now, you would have acted differently? Would you let Israel be what it is today? I don’t think so. It would have still been a blood bath just in a different direction.

The solution is not to argue about what is right, what is wrong and who is right. Right/wrong always have been relative to who is in power and who has the final authority. There is no absolute when it comes to politics and territory.

As far as Dr. Afia and the related matters are concerned, well they gave a decision and nothing can be done about it. The jury is made of American citizens, you can’t barge in and say you don’t accept the court or the nation for that matter. Well, my friend, if you try that, an average Texan is going to take his rifle out and shoot you on sight. So the whole argument is pretty stupid. It’s their country , it’s their law and they will do whatever they can not because they can but because you are too weak economically, socially and in power.

It’s about time we stop this whole nonsense and start working on things that really matter. Growing intellectually, starting businesses working our asses off to be a unified nation. Get over the ‘oh, they are evil’ syndrome and come to a level where we can actually have a say in the matters of our or others’ state. Every nation needs a generation to sacrifice – let it be this generation. Learn, learn and learn more. The only way to do anything is by intellect not by brute force. The force comes after the intellect.

A rock in the hands of a cave man would never be as powerful as a rock in the hands of a modern man.

(Edited by : Nuzhat Saadia Siddiqi , cause she would bit my head off. If there is a grammatical mistake)

(Edited by : Nuzhat Saadia Siddique , not because she is awesome because I suck at writing )

Those two have been fighting for the last atleast 50 years. My grandad had a stroke couple of years ago, his movement is quite restricted. He’s always loved his room ans his bed.one of the best times I remember from my childhood have been sitting with him in his bed, eating some random fruit while he tells me tales from his childhood and his fathers childhood. Sometimes we would just sit there and watch cricket for hours while my grand mother kept telling him things he had to do. Whenever she would enter the room she would stop cursing or telling him what to do and start it with the players.

” who selects them, they can’t even hold a bat properly” , ” will it kill him to hit the ball properly” , ” it’s a ball not a hen that you jump on it instead of catching it”, she would say. Then she would remember a joke related to a hen she used to have when she was young. Some random sound will distract her and she will remember she had to pray then curse me, herself or the crickets to make her forget what time it was.

They still sit there arguing well more like she being loud and him being his quite yet stubborn self. The topics have changed over the years though. Why do you always have to bring mud inside has changed to why do you pee at night when I know your capable of holding it. Why do you not like seeing me at ease she would say. He used to smile on the boots comment or say to me “your grandma’s just”, the smile muscles don’t work anymore nor does the witty side of his brain.

It was a windy day I had a small pull a string helicopter toy, it got stuck in a big tree in the park; he tried whatever he could it was still up there taunting me. ” no I don’t want a new one and no I’m not going home till I get it back” not even once he got mad at me oh well not atleast for another hour. I’m still the stubborn child and he’s still the patient grandad but now I try to keep my toy away from the tree.

Every night I get almost the same lesson always with a teary eye. Take care of my daughter your her only son, the only one she relies on. Everynight I sleep saying I will take care of things better and every morning I wake up screaming, I don’t want to wake up.

Their still arguing this time I think it’s about him not wanting his pills properly and his too much sugar intake. He would still remain quite and wait for her to go then quitely tell me to ask my mother if she can get him something sweet.

Here is the funny bit take them apart for an hour and they would be checking for each other. She’s certainly the second most precious thing for him after his bed and he is her most precious thing after cleaning up the house.

Can you clean that up for me she would ask and you have to, always. When your away she will always hover it again cause it was not done properly. She would not stop asking or cleaning. If you something about it you will end up listening to how he raised you and your parents and well it’s just adorable. I still mess with her sometimes just to hear that lecture. Never gets old and everytime it’s genuin ans straight from the heart and every time she does with a hope that you’d be a better person. Just like she’s bieng telling my mother every week “don’t worry he’s going to turn out ok” for the last 24 years.

Those two are the most cute most genuin people I have ever met. It hurts me every time I see him not being able to move around and get food himself something he loved and her cleaning up like she always has loved. But at the same time I haven’t seen them this close and this cute still arguing about little things and having all their worries around their kids. Every prayer a half hour long and just for the kids.

Well don’t have a final note or moral, cause I want this tale to go on as long as it can, happily.