Beirut in the month of october

It's been so long since my last post. don't worry people, am not dead. it's just the corporate real life taking its toll again.
so much has happened.

———
My bro and sis are back! woohooooo! for a visit of course... God is not as generous as some monotheistic religions try to convince us poor souls.

———
Nina and Khello will be tying the knot this december in ghana! woohoo! africa here i come!!!!!
khatib w khatibeh will become jawz w jawzeh; but for practical reasons they shall remain referred to as khatib w khatibeh.

preuve à l'appui


———
ola chica got hitched too. so funny. all the girlies are tying the knot. hahhhayz!

———
matthü is on the billboards in beirut!



———
brilliant marketing strategy. talks straight to the consumer in his/her own language. tawash

abou rakhoussa.


———


———
ghayro.
work sucks.
in case noone noticed previously.
work sucks.
clients suck.
jobs suck.
and design sucks.

design is slavery.
slavery was abolished in 1926 (Slavery Convention, initiated by the League of Nations).
design should be abolished any moment now.
we'll hear about in the news.
i heard the UN created UNICADP, the united nations' international committee for the abolishment of design practices. the committee appointed in every country an investigator to inquire about design sweat shops that have opened fully legally and that undertake the suction of ideas by the means of massive nuclear brainstorming sessions. it turns out everybody knows about it, but it's very hush hush. the big corporation firms have brainwashed their employees into thinking staying for unpaid overtime is cool. stress and frustration is cool too, apparently. these decisions have been vastly welcomed by the tobacco industry and more importantly the alcohol industry. ever since the creation of these sweat shops their sales have increased, and they are definitely back in business.
wishful thinking

did i mention work sucks?
yeah...

tebb enough blabbering. am going back to the sweat shop.
i hate design.
i hate graphic design. it's time and brain consuming and completely useless.
not to mention, often unpaid.

clients suck.
clients should die. not in the litteral sense, of course. "clientness" should die—the state of being a client. that, should die.

i hate.
been hating for a while now.
but i really really hate.
hate.
h.a.t.e.
hate.

Beirut on September 30, 2006

Today rudz left for bahrain.
i'm gonna miss that obnoxious loveable brother of mine. but he'll visit soon, and i will try to visit him too. but i still hate it. who's gonna feed me his toes every now and then? who? maybe i can pay someone... haha...
yalla, mitl ma wade3it le2eh ya rabb.
w la3allahoo khayrann.
w allah ywaf2o.
w hoowwa el adar.
shoo fina na3mil.
ba7oobbak radroud. bit7ibbini aah?

———
the screening went very well. our animation was well received. i'll youtube it soon and post the link. it felt good, instant gratification. it made this horrendous week more bearable. i've been swimming or should i say drowning in a badly remunerated and super rushed job. story of my life. i sometimes wonder if i'm made for design services; i should go ifta7 a dekkaneh and live more peacefully. clients are unbearable, no matter how sweet, funny and understanding; a designer cannot but end up hating his client. or maybe that's just me. i think it's a psychological block i have; i cannot be told what to do. ever since i was a kid. maybe that's why it's a bad career choice; i'm not psychologically predisposed to slave for other people. but that leaves me with very few career options... plus to add to the refusal of slaving i have an unconscious need to be liked; or at least to please people around me. i don't mind being hated, but when i do my job i keep worrying how the work reflects on me, not personnally, but the designer.
i have very deep issues that need professional help.

———
akh ya rud...
ntebih 3a 7alak khayyo. show them what u r made of.
missage and loveage.

"Lawein" in Namleh At3a

it brings me tremendous pleasure to announce that our long awaited yeah, right... animation will be screened during the 1st Namleh At3a event entitled "Shoot the War".

The event will take place this wednesday in Masra7 Al Madina, Hamra at 8.15 pm

Beirut on September 21, 2006

corporate money-making life has taken its toll. i have no time for myself, for special interests and no time for pondering. i have been bombarded by things to do and matters to finish. i am tired. my mind is numb and i cannot create. i cannot think. i cannot cook. cook rice, zoozoo! alfie would say. but zoozoo no can cook, i would reply. and now i am deafened by some cheap aouny song. every 2 days one of those bastard parties of ours has to bore us with their speeches, deafen us with their cheap music and overly nationalistic songs. ideology should die.

———
am back to my studio. hurray. no longer a mhajjara. i like it. is calmer than it used to be, except for the odd aouny song (aounism has chosen an orange house next to sussssussudio). i discovered that rami, our beloved dekanjeh, has not left the building! he chose to rent the dekkaneh next to his previous one, coz it's more comfortable. so rami did not leave. that's a plus.

today i came to the studio, and found meemee sick in the bed. poor meemee she's been sick for some time. i offered to nurse her, but she refused like the independent girl she is.

i have a new fan. it looks akwardly new and hip for our old mostly-inherited and fourth-hand furniture. but it does its job beautifully. i should come up with a name for it. i welcome suggestions with open arms.

———
i have been going to ayyam beirut al sinama'iyah. some cool shit i've seen. i love these events. eeeevents. tghyeer jaww...
i worry about the screening of our animation. i'm increasingly getting convinced that it needed more work... damn... only thinking about it makes my head wanna blow... don't blow, head, i need u! i need u! i need uuuu! aargh!

Beirut on September 12, 2006

6 days since my last post, and i c that gardenia and god attracted a lot of fervent comments.

———
i would like to announce the adoption of Jurdenia. Chica, being the awesome friend that she is, decided to buy me a gardenia plant to make up for Gardenia. she bought it from the jurd, hence the name jurdenia. i felt bad for gardenia, i did not want it to think i was replacing her by new and preppy jurdenia; in that sense too, gardenia has an edge on jurdenia— gardenia is from the bourgeoisie and jurdenia, as her name connotes, is from the jurd al 3aleh and hence is a common peasant. see even in botanics, high society and bourgeois attitudes have their ways.

and so i adopted jurdenia on saturday 9th in sofar. left it on sunday, coz i had lunch in fallougha and sent it to beirut with chica as guardian, who failed miserably at guardianship as she left jurdenia at abou naji's. yes abou naji's; don't ask why, i didn't. if it wasn't for hannad, i don't think poor jurdenia would've left abou naji's. and now poor jurdenia awaits my pick up at the sinnos. i guess this little marathon is gonna make gardenia even more jealous, since it hasn't left the sussussudio's balcony since i put it there i dunno when; i need to find a way to make it up to her...

———
Chica and a3war left today.
fe came in on sunday.
we are finalizing our animation. we finished the music yesterday. and today we gonna wrap it up.

———
yesterday had my first steak sandwich from celtic since the end of the war. yumyum.

———
Chica's gifts did not stop at jurdenia, as she delivered me the long-awaited Thom Yorke. i love it. it's awesome. anyone who says any different is lying or he/she loves it and doesn't know it.
and fe... fe got me a radiohead tshirt, and sin city playing cards (although i never play cards), and a history of violence comic book... and he delivered me the stuff i bought from amazon and sent to his place a zillion year ago.

all and all i guess i received plenty of gifts these few days. i might even go out on a limb and say that it felt like my long-lost bday...

———
throbbing headache these last two days. god knows why.

———
today the US embassy in syria got ‘attacked’. what's happening?
what's happening in the south? what's happening in da7yeh? we don't hear anything anymore. as if nothing had happened... i extort some news and khabryett from a friend of mine who's working on the ground in 3ayta el sha3eb. it seems to be a bit messy when it comes to the help and compensations that we hear about...
the beaches are still a mess...

goddamn all of them. and blair even had the nerve to come to beirut to claim he supports beirut's reconstruction. fuck you and ur support, we still did not forget when it was that u felt ‘it was time for a ceasefire’. fuck you.

Death of Gardenia

Gardenia is dying.

see the proof for urselves.


who would believe this is how Gardenia looked not so long ago.


am so sad. is so dead. that first pic was taken after i shedded all its leaves. they were all brown and dead.
gardenia is dying.
i cut all the little branches, and they were all dry. no green stuff inside. i kept cutting shorter and shorter until i saw green. it was a little. not much.
israelis killed gardenia.

today was also sad. i spent some time in the studio. after the desolating gardenia incident, i decided to go to the fridge, see what's inside. i was hoping for some cold beverage. no beer, but one crush. i took the crush and decided to go out on my big balcony and let myself swing on our hammock we all love that hammock, bello put it up for us. he's a sweetheart bello. ‘u're a doll, bello!’ it is then that i noticed the most horrendous heartbreaking truth of the day: Rami, the dekkanjeh, had left. his dekkane was empty. there was nothing in it, not a teeny tiny thing, not a left over chips bag, not a piece of paper laying around, not an empty bottle of water. nothing. clean as clean can be. well there was a bit of dust on the glass, but clean. it made me sad. rami was gone. of course i wondered who'll pay our bills when we're not home, but that aint it. he's gone. the situation was so bad for him that he had to close down his shop. he seemed as a darwish 2edameh guy, we all loved him. what was he doing now. i hope he's doing fine.
goddamn that war.

to the last shitty news of the day. my lil' cousin's back in the hospital. again. he's got some weird rash on his face and his face is all swollen up because of his tooth's infection.
poor burreem, goddamn u god. yes u damn urself, god. u do that.

u know what if god really exists, i think god is a hater. he just hates. there's no love. there's only hate.

Beirut on September 4, 2006

Beirut sunday 3rd of september 2006.


———
It has been sometime since i wrote. i've been so busy. there's the work, the animation and most importantly, the visiting friends. Hos was here and so is a3war. been going out every night. am tired of it. this last week's outings showed to be more crowded than the former week. there was more people and the balance monot/gemmayze/downtown has been restored. saturday night was jammed again in monot and in downtown, while it was ‘busy’ in gemmayze, there was no crazy traffic there, like the past week.
can't help but wonder if beirut is sliding back comfortably to its past self?

———
i've been seeing again the planes landing and taking off from my room. the now-not-so-comforting hum of their engines and my own favorite little twinkling lights fill the skies over beirut. planes... they used to represent to me freedom, discovery and excitement... and now they seem a bit deceiving, they're scared animals running away from the hunter. i heard qatar airways is going to force its landing in Beirut and challenge the embargo. it seems dangerous. although i highly encourage the idea theoratically, i can't help worrying about the most probably unknowing travellers sitting comfortably in their seats. man, would they be surprised if they saw, from their little portholes, the israeli air force forcing them out. force forcing seems awfully appropriate

———
i think people who have not seen the parliament's sit-in have missed a lot. it was like an uptight version of camp. the members of parliament went in with their bags wearing their suits, and u could see them sitting casually on the mattresses before preparing to their rightfully entitled nap.
i wonder whether they scared each other at night by telling scary stories of the israelis invading us and destroying our cities and 90% of our south over a nice bonfire while grilling their marshmallows.

Beirut on August 30, 2006

it is the end of august. it is the beginning of the end of this summer. so long summer! so long sunshine! what a shitty year 2006 has been. ma ma32ool, not one holiday/vacation mitl el 3alam.

———
My sis sent me stamps today.

and a letter.
she lives abroad and relishes the dramatic.
so she sends letters :D

i like my new stamps. they'r cool.
am gonna use them everywhere.
beware beirut, ZOoz and her stamps are gonna ink you away!

———
had my nick cave session followed by nick drake. then listened to Nine Horses (alphabetical order oblige). david sylvian is a god. what a voice.
and now am listening to my newly-purchased album. schoenberg. brilliant.
i think my music sessions today are satisfactory. i should work a bit on my reading.

better go work now.

Mooghamarat ZOozoO al zaghtOora fi brownbag.ae

is ola chica's birthday today.
ZOozoO al zaghtOora came up with the artful idea of sending her buddy ola chica a gift to work. ZOozoO being in beirut, and chica in dubai; the best option was finding an online delivery service. And so started ZOozoO al zaghtOora's adventure on the net surfing for a service.
While googling and searching, ZOozoO al zaghtOora fell on brownbag.ae. brownbag had dvds for sale and for rent and food and smokes and books and batteries and stuff. ZOozoO al zaghtOora noticed the choices were pretty slim, but it sure was better than no gift at all.
ZOozoO al zaghtOora came up with yet another brilliant genial idea of creating a dvd goody bag. so ZOozoO al zaghtOora chose the movie and the junk that righfully should accompany any worthy dvd night.
ZOozoO al zaghtOora was happy. she checked out, reviewed the cart and order, placed her email address alongside to the address of delivery that took 1hr and a half to fully complete and here i take a moment to thank all those who helped in filling the information: the ever resourceful T and rania (i think), the freshly dropped in town almighty Hos and of course the opportunist Coocs who tried to hijack my gift and tried squeezing herself into it, as usual (can u hear me coocoo??)... chose the time slot within which the order should be delivered and proudly clicked on ‘confirm order’.

Thank you for using brownbag. Your order shall be delivered shortly.

It is then that ZOozoO al zaghtOora realized she hadn't got a chance to enter her credit card information, and hence had not paid for the order.
And so ashamed ZOozoO al zaghtOora called ola chica to inform her that a surprise package would be delivered to her today, but that she would have to pay for it herself.

and now chica waits impatiently for the delivery.

? says: (3:33:14 PM)
i'm witin for da dilivery impatiently- mitl l wled l zghar 

She impatiently waits to pay for her birthday gift.

—the end—

Beirut on August 27, 2006

Basement yesterday night



i went to basement yesterday night to have a bit of fun. it did not make me happy. i could barely move. i felt awkward. anyway, there were a lot of people, it was packed. but i had feeling no one was really super hyped. i might be projecting, and most probably mistaken, but it felt more as fasshett khele2 then anything else. there was no genuine fun. but it was cool, i love it when there some trance tune and it starts building up and people all start jerking their hands forward in unison, and then when the music bursts the whole crowd explodes and goes back to a regular but energetic throbbing... awesome... made me smile... i guess coz it was the first time i saw people doing something together. hehe.

———
i am so tired today. happy tired. tired coz yesterday i spent all day with youmz and t photoshooting our new stop motion animation. woohooo!!! finally, self initiated physical labor that strains my muscles and culminates in a creative produce that reminds me of why i chose this and ‘this’ is hard to define profession/vocation and makes me proud of myself. sth to add to the portfolio. sth to remind me that to a certain extent i have it better than others, that i should stop grovelling in self-pity when am down, coz i can do things, produce and work in a field that i love.
la positive attitude! haha

and today we're working on editing, on the music and the visual style. i like it! animation baby!
we'll be entering it in namleh at3a, and will be screened within the 2 weeks.

———
am looking for a song i had for the smiths. i can't find it. am going crazy.
so the smiths today! goddamn that haunting voice. is so nice.

Beirut on August 25, 2006

da7yeh from the balcony


i guess some people wish for their balcony in these dark days. these few days have been darker to me. i do not feel better. the fear still exists, it has changed a bit. but it is still there.

———
yesterday a japanese guy killed himself. he threw himself from the window of his hospital room. he had been admitted in jabal 3amel in tyre on wednesday after suffering a nervous breakdown. he had been an aid worker in bint jbeil.

two nights ago, i met a guy who confessed to me he had been drinking every night for the past week to forget what he had seen. trying to drown what he had seen for 10 days in marjeyoun during the aggressions. he told me he had never seen anything like that. he could not rid himself of the images. another guy was also drunk shitless trying to forget his visit to the south.

what have they seen? what's in the south?

i have friends trying to stir things down there, to re-construct, to help out... they tell me in 3aita al cha3eb the old city has been bulldozered. literally bulldozered. the bulldozer sits on what looks now as a terrain vague.

———
and i wait...
i dunno for what. but it's not over. and the only feeling i have inside is one of suspension. suspended. like the dirt left by thousands of air raids in our sky.

fuck'em all.
they have ripped all of us of our lives.
and now we die.

Beirut on August 21, 2006

i woke up at 4 in the morning; i could hear the planes over my head. they were humming so high i couldn't take them off my mind. except no planes were above beirut tonight. there was no humming. but i could not convince myself otherwise, i could not convince myself it was a fabrication of my tired mind or at least that it was the sound of the AC. i had to drag myself to the balcony half asleep to prove to myself there were no planes. am going nuts; probably symptoms of a post-traumatic stress disorder. i hear it everywhere. but yesterday felt real. i could hear them, expecting to hear the deadly brooaaaggghhhhmmm afterwards. but, thank god, it never came.
how long will i/we live like that?
how long will we live waiting and expecting?

i've been really tired for two days. am starting to feel myself slipping into oblivion, or to be less dramatic, my depressive state.

my mother's story today of hearing the planes while shopping for groceries in our neighborhood does not help; i won't be able to drown that feeling soon...

am tired.

———
yesterday, i went back to one of the lighter routines of living in beirut—the Social's ciné club.
it wasn't bad. i was a bit disappointed, i had been waiting to c that movie for so long...
but it was good. i liked the atmosphere it created.

———
there was a guy i barely know talking yesterday to meemee, he was telling her how hard it was for him to live the experience, fully and humbly admitting he coud not watch tv, see images, or even take photos (he is a photographer), he couldn't. he just had to shun it away. he couldn't handle it. it was too much.

and he reminded me of a conversation i had with nineyeh during the hostilities, i was feeling bad to say it, but i was being honest with myself at least. i couldn't go help other people. it was not from a lack of empathy, believe me. but i just couldn't. i did not have the strength in me to go see these people, and attend to their needs. i have never been a friend to charity, i don't really like it. i find it condescending. a lot would disagree, and would name me —and it's probably true—selfish and scared. but i couldn't. and i still can't. it just is not in me. not evb is build the same way. not evb deals with the same events in the same way.
i would go clean, and i would go build, i would go help in the fields. make me work and make me sweat. it would not be charity, it would be action and survival. it would be fighting the aggression. it would be standing against the oppression.

Beirut on August 19, 2006

i woke up today to the news of an israeli commando mission to baalbeck. the news say 3 hezbollah fighters died in the mission. the israelis say the mission was to avoid new weapons arriving to hezbollah. Manar tv has no information in its little running strip of information at the bottom of the screen concerning the issue.

i was well thru half my drink yesterday in sociales when jade told me that he heard news of israelis raiding baalbeck. i sent smses checkin for news, they came conflicting, some saying was a lie no such thing was happening, some others told me that the channels on tv had conflicting stories themselves.

i came back home later, pretty loaded. was not feeling at my best. slept. woke up at 2.30 , tried barfing, couldnt do it, started walking and pacing on the balcony, decided to drink some tea. made the tea, sat on tv... it was 4am i could hear the planes pacing over my head. the israelies were pacing on their balconies too, apparently. apparemment ils avaient eu une nuit bien arrosée aussi. i can hear them now too while writing this...
so much for ceasefires and as T would say, cessation of hostilities... yesterday night nothing was showed on tv, not on the little rotating strips at the bottom of the screen, no big blue boxes at the lower third, no tattattata tata tata tatat tatat taaratata mooojaz lil akhbar.
and today manar didn't say anything...
what's happening...

evb is covering the 50 french UN guys who r getting to naqoura.
roll out the red carpet evb!
in ramallah, the palestinian gvt is demanding the release of the ministers and the members of parliament that were kidnapped by the israelis.
guess israel was pretty busy yesterday night, while i was trying to reignite my night life...

ceasefire mode...

———
Gemmayze on august 17, 00.30am


people are eager to go out to drink. yesterday night, just like the night of august 16 to 17, witnessed a lot of people in the streets. don't go thinking it was packed as if we were july 10 or sth, but pretty packed considering the situation.
was talking to hassib while watching the people in sociales... are they really back?
i saw all of them trying to drown their worries and stress, hassib felt they had forgotten and are back to their habits and 2-dimensional mascarade.
le philanthrope et le misanthrope, l'optimiste et le pessimiste, le crédule et le cynique.

i haven't been able to free up time to blog. to think of what to blog about.
it's crazy. back to my old habits.
back to work...
i've been working on my new website. finally!

———
am posted home these days. no more sussusudio, bcoz of the issue of power and electricity. it's costing a lot to subscribe to a ‘moteur’. which also means that we might lose ‘press here’ studio... which is very sad.
i don't wanna leave it... it's our place... our special place in this awfully cruel world *sob*
we gonna try evth to keep it. if we do keep it, we shall make a party! and if we don't, will make a party too!
so we party anyway!
woohoo

———
johnny cash today... what a great man...

i also am workin on sustaining my newly recovered reading-as-much-as-i-can habit. am reading Speaking with the angel... it's fine until now, it's a collection of short novels by contemporary british writers.

and am also workin on my dvd watchin habit; always learn, key to never getting bored. yesterday i watched alain renais' night and fog. amazing, beautiful, scary, horrifying, goosebumps-maker. loved it.

———
cheers
peace out

Beirut on August 16, 2006

Beirut on august 16, 2006



this is my first morning in Beirut. am back to my ashrafieh.
got here yesterday afternoon. unpacked til this morning. set up my computer.

———
watching tv. people discussing the dangerous nasrallah speech.
i don't think they'll be a war. i don't think they'll be a hezbollah mutiny.
they r talking of a possibility of recreating a government, and that is bcoz nasrallah talked of a lack of representation in the current government and attacked by saying that the government was weak and incompetent when it comes to spreading in the south and facing israel. he basically blackmailed and cornered the gvt with the victory of the war.
of course, the tayyar ran to the occasion of backing this up.

now what?
reorganize the country? change the constitution? to what?
or opt for a new version of the old lebanon? the muzzled oppressed syria-directed lebanon?


goddamn. i hate this.
i hate it.

Beirut on August 15, 2006

Beirut as seen fron Ain saade on this august 15


today, in lebanon is 3eed el saydeh (Virgin Mary's day).
people ar happy becoz their employers will not count this day as part of the paid leave; as it has been happening during the war. a lot of people "ruined" their vacation days on the war.

———
am listening to Is This Love by Bob Marley. dunno but it seems far, untouchable. i cant relate to it much, especially after yesterday's Nasrallah tv speech.
he bummed the hell out of me.
war will always haunt us, fear will always threat us. we shall never sleep worry-free, our kids will never see the light of peace.
he wrote for us a lifetime of war and martyrdom and sacrifice.

when will this violence end? how does war and martyrdom achieve anything? when did it ever achieve anything?
and moreover what are our ultimate goals again? coz after all of this, i can't remember why we wage war evertime against israel, the eternal enemy. i don't remember what we aim to achieve after each war. we know very well why we stand against them and all their practices; and we proudly and fiercely stand opposed to their fascist politics and zionist xenophobia. but what is the point of each military action? what does it aim to achieve exactly, specifically?

———
on ira tous au paradis, les enfoirés.
... même moi...
today, august 15, 2006, i'm going back to beirut.
... même moi...

Beirut on August 14, 2006

beirut yesterday night. the heavy raids lasted until around 23.00


Beirut as seen this morning


people started heading back home, although the raids in the south did not stop until this morning. i wish them all the luck in the world.
it's 2 hours and a half into ceasfire mode.
let's cross our fingers.
i hope this ceasefire will last.
go ceasefire go. u can do it.

Beirut on August 13, 2006

the bombings did not stop today

on da7yeh, borj brajneh and galerie semaan at lunch time



on borj brajneh, shiyya7 and hay el sellom this evening, at around 19.00


beirut, the sea and the sunset after the 19.00 bombing


attempt at photographing the ship from which we're getting bombed
it's somewhere in these waters


The second bombing at 19.30






and they probably won't stop tonight either.
they won't let anybody in the country sleep.

———
if i'm wrong, i'll be glad to give u a full account tomorrow morning.
if i'm not, i'll do that in the afternoon.

wish all of you a good night.
to more peaceful days.

oblique strategies

i hadn't checked my oblique strategies widget, since that whole mess started.
i did so last night before heading to bed. they had always surprised me on how accurate and relevant they seemed each time i'd pick one. it's funny how they seemed to know exactly what i would be going thru.
so yesterday i got "when is it for?".
haha
i had just been watchin tv and nothing major or decisive had come up, so i didn't think i had the answer.
til this morning... apparently kofi anan expects the ceasefire on monday starting 5.00GMT.

3 days ago, i had answered a friend's poll on when a ceasfire would be reached by saying end of the week, but openly admitted i was delusional.
crazy how things work out...

ceasefire. new beginning of a new era. what happens during a ceasefire? how does it work? join us next week starting monday for a complete update.

israeli phone call again and again

we got called again tonight. this time on dad's mobile phone. i failed miserably at recording it. but i will get it next time. i've figured out the best way to do it.

but most importantly, after concerting with coocs, we came to the conclusion that these phone calls are not made electronically or by some computer program. there are actually people physically calling and starting the transmission of the message.
and so, we came up with the brilliant tactic—or should i say plan—of taking those phone clerks off guard.
when they call on the mobile, the ID comes out as 0000; which never happens anymore for calls from abroad. and in the case of a land line caller id, the ID either comes out as 0 or some equivalent to ‘call from abroad’; and that also never happens when we get calls from abroad.
So basically we can guess it's the israelis calling.
hence when we pick up the phone, we can squeeze a "hoona dawlet loobnan" (or any other moronic prank) before they start their transmission. we'll puzzle them. and they will be bewildered. and we will laugh. and they will cry. and we'd be pointing and laughing "ha ha".

mouahahahaHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA