It’s Sunday. It’s a beautiful day outside. It’s Labor Day.
Bypassing various invitations to go to Aqaba, trekking in Wadi Mujib and bbq-ing in Jerash.
It’s 12:32pm and I just got home from the office.
It’s labor day and I’ve just finished a 26-hour shift.
In the past day I’ve seen the Sun set, the moon rise […]

Food for thought: why are long weekends always short?
And why does it seem like everyone went to Aqaba?
What am I doing this weekend?
I’m at work until an average of 2 in the morning.
Happy Labor Day Everyone!
(or at least to the 70% of us that are actually employed…kinda)

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Mona Hussein Abu-Bakr, the first Jordanian women to lead a political party, attends the first general conference of the Jordanian National Party in Amman. Amman April 14, 2007. REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed.
p.s. this is absolutely not a joke in any way.

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Wednesday April 24th. 8th honor crime victim. Amman-Zarqa highway. Brother kills 30-year-old sister because she had been missing from the family home for 1 week. 5 bullets.
Truck driver on his way to Aqaba sees a relative of his; a 14 year old boy. Stops and tells him he’ll drive him home. Takes him to a […]

Kuwaiti investors are seeking government approval to launch a medical city near Amman at a cost of $3-5 billion, according to a statement by the official news agency, Petra.
The project will include hospitals with the latest medical technology, hotels, entertainment centres, swimming pools and gardens, said the statement
…If the project goes ahead according to plan, […]

The Village Sessions is John Mayer’s EP where he takes some great songs off of his latest studio release Continuum, retools them and records their acoustic versions. The energy of the songs can go from being very emotionally raw such as “In Repair”, very smooth and laid back like “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” […]

For me, this…

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A reader of the Black Iris shifted my attention towards an article in yesterday’s Al-Ghad about a Palestinian in east Gaza whose Internet cafe was targeted recently by an extremist group calling itself the “swords of justice” or “swords of righteousness”, or whatever latest creative names these goons have come up with. The cafe is […]

Will Farrell and Adam McKay are just geniuses. This video is becoming really popular and I’m jumping on board the bandwagon of laughter. Sure this may mean I have a twisted and dark sense of humor, but come on, it’s Will Farrell and a swearing, beer-drinking 2 year old! (Viewer Discretion is advised: this video […]

Yeltsin was vacationing at the Dead Sea for the past few weeks prior to his death today and I just thought I would do some preemptive tabloid rumor control. No. He did not die because of the Dead Sea. That’s not why it’s called the Dead Sea. He came, he had a nice mud bath, […]

The Soviets built the Berlin wall to try and keep East Berliners from leaving.
Then the Israeli’s built the Seperation wall, to keep suicide bombers out while making a land grab.
Then the American’s started building walls to surround Sunni communities in Baghdad.
What’s with the world and walls? I thought the metaphor was “building bridges” not walls? […]

I’m always interested in knowing how criminal courts calculate time based sentences, especially when there’s usually a year and month involved. Remember the man a few days back who molested his 2 daughters 1,085 times? The same man who received the 9 years and 8 months jail sentence? Well recently another man was sentenced for […]

Everyone in Amman seems to look exactly the same these days. The same spiky hair, the same clothes. Everything is bland, everyone is monotone. And if I don’t do something about it then pretty soon I won’t be able to distinguish myself from the masses. I have to incorporate some type of accessory into my […]

come to us
come to us in the cover of darkness
in cloaks and daggers
wrap your arms around us
sink the silver into our spines
so mesmerizing
so civilizing
render on to us
your bliss

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Yes, I am a fan and I’m not ashamed to admit that. Avril Lavigne’s latest, The Best Damn Thing, may not be the best damn thing she’s ever created musically but it hits on the same notes that make her pop-rock songs so incredibly mainstream and radio-friendly. The lead single “Girlfriend” and “The Best Damn […]

It goes by many names. It serves various purposes. A less than discreet place for alcoholic consumption or perhaps a hot spot where police patrol for young lovers in cars with only Jordanian plates. But after 11:30pm or so, well past the curfew of many; for us it’s basically a roadside hill to park a […]