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hookahs and torture
Monday, December 10 2007
This morning the entire outdoors was trapped beneath an eighth-inch thick layer of ice. The ice even glazed the ground itself, to the woodshed I must do each day.
As always when struggling under the tyranny of a deadline, I found myself making goofy little side-forays into that most human of activities: tool making. (I know, you were thinking either masturbation or oral sex.) I ended up building a comprehensive SQL export tool allowing me to specify in great detail exactly how I want my SQL to be.
At some point this week on YouTube I saw a performance of the new anti-war song by Billy Joel called "Christmas in Fallujah." It's not a great song, and it sounds so much like early-90s grunge that it's likely future historians will think it dates to the first Gulf War. There is one interesting thing about the song, other than that is an anti-war song by a famous musician. It's the Middle Eastern keyboard licks layered over the guitars during the chorus. This reminded me that even smoking craters come equipped with silver linings. While the invasion and occupation of Iraq has ruined American foreign policy and permanently damaged our national brand, perhaps while we're mired in that quagmire we'll absorb some of the better aspects of Iraqi culture. By this I don't mean Islam, hookahs, oppressing women, or widespread acceptance of torture (although hookahs and torture are two of the most obvious influences). There are definitely things in Iraqi culture that America would benefit from absorbing, such as aspects of both their cuisine and their music. If American musicians were to begin incorporating more Arabic licks in their pop songs, it would make me feel a little better about the two trillion dollars it took to get them in there.
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