January 2018

Day of Doom

I’m surprised that humanity didn’t reach its doom, by January 2018. Many prophecies in my lifetime predicted the end of the world. Also, I’m amazed that my vocabulary evolves to include phrases as such as: “in my lifetime”, or “in the last 20 years.” I kept revisiting the concept of being old whenever I create a music playlist. It’s funny when I play 90’s or early 00’s song to the young generation and tell them: “this song is older than you.” Definitely, I have some songs which are older than me too. My Spotify account is: “sweetmare” I welcome followers.

As I’ve grown into my early thirties, which could be my recent writing theme, I have too few new things to try for the first time. I remembered writing like 8 or 9 years ago about the list of things I want to do before reaching 40. Anyway, I strive to inspire joy from little things I do. The fun of making a music playlist is immeasurable. All I can say that it brings back nice memories of the last 2 decades of my life. It’s funny how difficult it was to obtain a CD of good music. It was only available in wma format, mp3 wasn’t created yet. So, you can squeeze only 60 or 70 minutes into a CD. I remember going far and beyond in Damascus roads and old neighborhoods to have Backstreet Boys or N’sync last albums. How I could wait for hours to download a single audio file. Everybody is enlisting the new year resolution and my resolution is a music playlist and resume blogging.

My father generation’s witness the “jump” in basic life needs. You know, here in Saudi Arabia 60 years ago, there were no cars, stable electricity grid, or sanitary infrastructure.   Yet, we survived and still living the information revolution. I really wonder if all the humankind knowledge and everything we create or produce is available online. It’s far beyond music, books, or porn for all that matters. If interested, the "pornscope" episode on the Big Mouth show did a nice illustration. The big data where everything can be told or monitored. So, the basic idea; is all the produced and preserved porn through our civilization, which extends for more than 100 thousand years, uploaded on the internet? That could be the ignition of an endeavor to spend a “lifetime” only on the net. Then, after a person expires, we all fancy that he/she could save everything stored in their mind somewhere on the cloud. Imagine if we can do that for Shakespeare’s or Einstein’s or even for Stephen Hawking’s brains.

I’m sure all of you are aware of Einstein’s brain story. How Thomas Harvey, a pathologist at Princeton hospital, stole Einstein’s brain after his death and underwent a tremendous amount of troubles in order to save it. Afterward, the brain was studied extensively, and some slices were sent to scientist around the globe. Last study to my knowledge was published in 2014 restating that Einstein’s brain structure and cells proportion is different than other humans. So, what makes an individual smart, criminal, or poet? Anyway, what’s brilliant about Einstein that he didn’t want to be idolized. He wanted his remains to be cremated and scattered secretly. You can refer to this article.

I decided to start writing again, on monthly bases. I’ll publish on the last day of every month. That could be the only way to keep a piece of me alive long after I pass away or my super inflated ego thinking “Einstein” of itself. Indeed, Arabic communities being too passive relying on producing a hire as a guarantee of eternity. Nah, I’m kidding, this is just a water drop which will be lost and long forgotten in the ocean of the scary internet. Until next month, I thank my beautiful wife for trying her best to spare me a time to write.