Tag: facebook

by jad

A Facebook Post About Love

In two days, I’ll be taking a bus to Redmond to cast my diasporic vote in the Lebanese elections. I won’t be doing this because I believe that there will be a direct correlation between casting my vote and seeing any change in my lifetime; I’ll be taking that bus to cast that vote because I love my friends and family and when you love, you do things like that. You show up, you participate, you chip in. I’m grateful to be able to ride that bus to Redmond; I’m grateful that I can ride a bus to pretty much … Continue reading “A Facebook Post About Love” →

by jad

Resurrecting The Matrix

I’ve seen some grumbling headlines about Matrix 4 and I really couldn’t care less what the fundamental subject/hyperobject of the film itself has to say, but here’s what I feel like sharing today: this is a film for a very particular kind of person. Maybe you were planning to meet up with school friends at the cinema, but no one had a cellphone so they ended up heading there early and seeing something silly like You’ve Got Mail, or whatever it was, so you watched The Matrix by yourself and had your tiny brain blown. Maybe, some years later, in … Continue reading “Resurrecting The Matrix” →

by jad

A Facebook Status about a Bridge Troll in Seattle

Someone threw a sandwich wrapper at me this morning as I crossed the great gulf that splits my city in two, breaking my reverie, to the cackle of his friends. They seemed surprised when I was stopped in my tracks, inquiring: “what the hell was that about?” Their laughter was replaced by silent smirks and a little dance by the trickster doing tragicomic tricks—at a time like this?—a strange two-step to a secret jig playing in his head. He tugged at his loins and approached me, staring me down with Dennis the Menace eyes too dark to read. All the … Continue reading “A Facebook Status about a Bridge Troll in Seattle” →

by jad

It’s More Than True, It Actually Happened

“it’s a couple of years I suspect you don’t have a physical existence anymore like us other humansfor what I know you might not existyou might be a projectionyou might have become an immaterial entityre-assessed only through narrationlike syria, or santa claus” Annalena to my “face” on September 25, 2012 September 25, 2012 was the 269th day of the year 2012 in the Gregorian calendar. There were 97 days remaining until the end of the year. The day of the week was Tuesday. Libra is the zodiac sign of a person born on this day. It has been 3162 days, today included. Or 8 years, 7 … Continue reading “It’s More Than True, It Actually Happened” →

by jad

Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History.

Imagine with me a city with a major transnational logistics provider and several data-mining enterprises wielding astronomical levels of computing power amongst themselves, pooling resources to, I don’t know, maybe help with tracking vaccine doses per medical provider per neighborhood—avoiding false moral dilemmas around “cutting in line” when there are no lines to cut in a spiraling rhizome of geographically-zoned inoculation not that many degrees more advanced in logic and efficiency and care than Balto and his sled—rather than wasting their time trying to stop their employees from unionizing instead. No, but seriously though, imagine with me whole neighborhoods vaccinated … Continue reading “Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History.” →

by jad

Christmas Day 2012

The big data notification angels have reminded me of this moment on Christmas Day, 2012, outside teta Sou’ad’s place in that liminal neighborhood called Mar Youssef (St. Joseph): Mar Youssef just happens to be the saint that Pope Francis chose as Patron of the Universal Church for this coming year, in a letter entitled “With a Father’s Heart.” In the spirit of that letter, this photo, and all mothers, fathers & loved ones we can’t be with today, Merry Christmas to those who go unnoticed, yet nurture us with their “daily, discreet & hidden presence,” wherever they may be.

by jad

‘the piecing together of dissociated knowledge’

Two young men with a tripod and a luminous rod taking photographs in a dark, residential courtyard; a lone smoker sitting on the stone street furniture circumscribing the parking lot on The Mound; a plastic bag blowing uphill, along the designated pedestrian walkway beside the torn up sidewalk; a bathroom light left on. Facebook status, March 6, 2012