King Wenceslas

My mood is:

Normally our neighbor across the street annoys us w/ constant hawking and spitting (if I can hear you clear your throat and spit from 5 floors up, that is some loud business) and blasting habibi jams and arguing with the Sukleen guys, but today he was playing some nice Christmas music. I was into it.

It occurred to me the other day that habibi jams have actually succeeded in eroding my appreciation of traditional arabic music. The hab-jams universally appropriate the same syncopated hand-drum beat and now whenever I hear strains of that rhythm, whatever the context, I associate it with terrible arabic pop. Thanks Haifa, Nancy, Pamela, et al. Other sounds that drive me crazy…there are two tourism commericials, one for New Zealand and one for India, that drive me absolutely bananas. It’s the music. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen the commericials, but I hear them often enough when Amy is watching tv in the next room. Also, all BBC personalities pronounce Al Qaeda as “Al-qaed-er”.

I was going to write something about the guitar guy (not to be confused with this guitar guy) next door who used to terribly play along to Pink Floyd or something or the sax guy down the street who would atonally toot off from time to time, but I haven’t heard either in a while, so it no longer seems relevant.

So, I worked all day…Amy was in and out and went to bed early. Bjorn came over for a while and we talked about this and that and mostly movies on the front balcony, drinking the browns. I extolled the near-movie-saving performance of Gary Busey in The Hulk and supported his non-interchangeability with Nick Nolte. I later realized that it was in fact Nick Nolte that played Bruce Banner’s father in The Hulk. I hang my head. But it was a fun time.

Two more days of work and then Oman for 10 days and then 23 days in Beirut and then we’re gone. It hardly seems believable.