Harry and Izmir's Excellent Blogventure

2007-02-02T14:30:00.000+02:00

Hmmm... Maybe I should have taken to monkey with me on my trip down south. Izmir really hates to travel, though. He has gotten cranky recently. I think he knows that he is getting old. He has these crazy nightmares wherein a hooded lemur, representing the eerie spectre of lesser-primate mortality, beckons him with his opposable thumb. When Izmir approaches, the Lemur pelts him with poo. This is the poo of death.

Seasonal Defective Disorder

2007-02-02T14:21:00.000+02:00

Goddamn... Dr. Harry just got back from Luxor. He locked up the computer while he was away, so I haven't been able to post. Or look at monkey porn. Also, I ran out of booze a week or two ago. It has been a difficult time. Now he is here, so these important activities are once again possible. If I wasn't so depressed, I might even be bit enthusiastic.

Merry Christmas

2006-12-23T10:38:00.000+02:00

A Very Izzy Christmas

So, it is the New Year and you are probably asking yourself, “Why doesn’t Dr. Harry ever write anything topical? Why does it always feel his columns are beamed down from Mars with no reference to the time, place, or sexual orientation of the reader?” To all of you out there in readerland who were thinking these exact thoughts I say, “Hah Hah! Only dorks live in readerland!”
But seriously, I have been enjoying a bit of eggnog and as a result am actually feeling a bit of the holiday spirit. So, without further delay, I give you this year’s Very Izzy Christmas report.
I had a great time this Christmas. As usual, I put coal in Izmir’s stocking and he put poo in mine. And then we started drinking. After a few eye-opening glasses of morning eggnog, we were in such good spirits that we began to sing such old favorites as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus, and Silent Nacht. This last tune I especially enjoy. We do a bilingual version. I’m not sure where Izmir learned German; he is quite good at it, though. Izzy acquires languages almost as easily as he acquires STD’s.
Actually, I don’t really have much more to say about the holidays. It is hard to get in the spirit while I am here in Cairo. I’m not sure why, but nobody ever seems to care too much about Christmas around here. Maybe it has something to do with this “Islam” stuff I keep hearing about. I should probably look into this…but for the time being I will write about something that interests me a bit more, namely graduate school and the Algerian War of Independence.

Applications, Crap-lications

Much to Izmir’s chagrin, I have recovered from my post-Christmas hangover and am currently working on my graduate school applications. He believes that it is forbidden to do any work between Christmas and New Year’s. In fact, he believes it is forbidden to do just about anything during this week except drink copious amounts of eggnog and puke on the Christmas decorations.
However, after several hours of filling in online forms and trying to figure out exactly what my purpose really is so that I can write a “Statement of Purpose” about it, I too am ready to start throwing back the nog. A few years ago, when I was applying to the CASA program, I wrote a “Statement of Porpoise”. It was mostly about my pet dolphin. For some reason they didn’t let me in.
Izmir is lucky. He has never had to apply to anything. All the great things he has done in his life have just kind of fallen into his lap. Like the time he was passed out drunk in the gutter along the Champs-Elysées. Jacques Chirac saw him from his limo and recognized Izmir from their days fighting in Algeria. He picked him up, cleaned him off, and then gave him a state dinner and a medal for bravery. Afterwards, Izmir told me this story:
“I was passed out drunk in the gutter in Oran one day when a group of French soldiers started kicking me and calling me Pepé le Peu. Thankfully their commander intervened and, when he learned that I spoke Arabic and French, hired me to be their interpreter. Later on he realized I was a smelly monkey and began to regret his decision, but by that time we were in the thick of the fighting and there was no time to find someone else. Anyway, I saved the lives of our entire battalion one day when I convinced a large group of enemy soldiers that we were in fact a wandering band of existentialist poets from the Basque region, and that Mr. Chirac was actually a mutated weasel-man from the planet Zorgdor. For that, I was admitted to the legion of honor.”
Jacques actually called Izmir the other day to ask if he wanted to serve with the “peace” keeping force in Lebanon. He turned him down. This is probably a good thing, since Izmir hates peace. I’m pretty sure he would be able to get the civil war going again within a week of his arrival in Beirut.

Crappy New Years!

I have a little more space to fill here, so I was thinking I would give everyone a run-down of the hottest spots for New Year’s parties this year. I then realized that in fact this magazine will not be published until after the first of January, and so the list would not be of much use. I also realized (or rather Izmir reminded me) that I am a loser and as such do not know where any cool New Year’s parties are. Likewise, if you have read to this point you are probably also a loser (and a resident of readerland) and as such have no need for cool parties.
Losers and otherwise, stay tuned next month for Izmir’s Valentine’s Day Guide to Monkey Love.

Anarchitecture

2006-12-16T16:35:00.000+02:00

Izmir was pretty pleased with that architecture article. Izmir likes to think about buildings and ponder the prospects of them falling down. He also enjoys reflecting upon the possibility that a new building might be really ugly. He calls this line of thought anarchitecture.

Flaming Towers of Poo

2006-12-05T23:57:00.000+02:00

Hey, it's been a while since the monkey got to write anything! What can I say, I have been busy.
So, while sitting around the house and thinking about cute monkey chicks I occasionally boot up the ol' internet and search for snotty yet brilliant articles about architecture.

Happy Monkey Day!

2006-11-23T14:17:00.000+02:00

Izmir and I are going to a Thanksgiving party tonight. You know; turkey, football, and a few people you don’t really like. Plus a lot of people you do like. That is what Thanksgiving is for me, anyway. Izmir doesn’t like anyone, so in that sense Thanksgiving is no different from any other day for him. He does enjoy carving the turkey, though. Where Izmir comes from, people eat monkeys. Whenever a large dead animal is present he gets kind of smug, because he has managed to avoid that fate. At this point, I don’t think anyone would be interested in eating him, unless they like the taste of old monkey flesh soaked in gin and cheap cigarettes.
A few years ago we were having Thanksgiving at my parent’s house when Izmir got the brilliant idea to hide inside the turkey. He jumped out just as my dad was about to carve it, wearing his fez and smoking a cigarette. Best Thanksgiving ever.

White and Nerdy

2006-11-14T09:58:00.000+02:00

To this day, three different friends have emailed me a link to watch “Weird” Al Yankovic’s White and Nerdy on Google Video. What does this mean? Well, I guess that my love for Mr. Yankovic is well known. As well as my appreciation of awesome pop hip-hop songs. And of course, my general nerdiness.
Unfortunately, my internet connection is not fast enough to watch the video online. I am currently downloading it, though. Izmir is very excited. Which is weird, cause he doesn’t usually like pop music. I think he is just looking forward to the opportunity to make fun of me.

A bit of verse...

2006-11-12T21:27:00.000+02:00

“A monkey’s lament is a lemur’s convent”

Such was the nonsense Izmir was spouting about when I arrived home yesterday morn. It seems he had become enamored of some eighteenth century verse, and was aspiring to imitate its flowery and baroque phrases.
I told him to pipe down and get back to work. We have begun our own company, Izmir and myself. We are in the import-export business, and we are currently preparing a shipment of 500 plastic pyramids to a dealer in Singapore. Izmir has proved himself quite adept at this business, which I am thankful for. Writing worthless trash about imaginary animals has not been paying the bills recently.

“Once over the hill one dost naren’t look back”

What does that mean? Is that even English? I don’t know. I think I need a nap. Or a drink. Or a nap, than a drink, then another nap.
The problem with my going into business is that I frequently hear, in my own head, the voice of my father, nagging me;
“I can’t believe my son turned out to be a capitalist rapscallion. I raised him on a good diet of Marx, Gramsci, and Dr. Seuss. And here he is, becoming rich off the blood, sweat, and post-nasal drip of the working class.”
Then I try to explain that I am running a Fair Trade business but he just kind of looks away and starts humming the Internationale. You see the kind of crap I have to put up with? Disobedient monkeys and eerie surrealist day dreams. I wonder how I stay so sane…

Boo

2006-11-02T10:23:00.000+02:00

Izmir and I threw a Halloween party last night. He dressed up as Curious George. Izmir always has the best costumes. He can be King Kong, Curious George, or any number of other famous apes whose names elude me right now. It is a bit more difficult for me. One year he convinced me to be Jane Goodall, but I think he just wanted an excuse to throw poo at me.
It was a great party. I tried to dress as the Pink Panther, but people said I looked more like Bunnicula, the rabbit that sucks the juice out of vegetables.
There were a lot of cameras at the party. My room actually became basically a photo studio for the better part of an hour. I particularly enjoyed this shot, which features my roommate Adam dressed as a communist revolutionary and holding pirate Dina hostage.

Fil Mogamma

2006-10-20T20:25:00.000+02:00

I went to the Mogamma this morning. By the Mogamma, I mean the big scary-yet-beautiful Egyptian bureaucracy building where one must venture to get a visa, driver’s license, monkey permit, etc. I have been trying to pick up my visa for several weeks now with limited success. Today was no different, but several amusing things happened which made the day not an entire waste of time.

For one, I had a date. Whenever you need go to a sovietesque-scary place, it is best to bring along someone cute. Waiting in line is more fun that way.

After a couple of hours I was standing along with several other lost and desperate souls, waiting for someone to dig up my passport from under a stack of Applications for Extension of Temporary Residence when the women behind the desk held one up and said “Where is the Israeli who belongs to this passport?” This took me a bit by surprise but I recovered to look around for the brave Israeli who was going to claim his passport deep in the left ventricle of the Arab Republic Of Egypt.

All I saw was a little woman wearing a headscarf standing next to me and attempting to pipe up “me, that’s mine”. Unfortunately for her she was very quiet and polite, which is no way to get things done at the Mugamma. So I, being a strong brave man, and wanting to impress my date, hollered out “Yes, the Israeli is right here!” I said this very loud, all the time pointing emphatically at the nice little Palestinian lady standing next to me. I did not want to cause any unnecessary confusion. In the end, she got her passport. I did not receive mine, but I plan to return next Saturday. I am hoping that someone will show up with a old passport from the Third Reich and I will be able to yell “Yes, the Nazi is right here!”

Anger!!!

2006-10-14T15:01:00.000+02:00

It's true. We can be angry and violent. This piece is by my favorite artist, B. Young. It is called Angry Monkey #2. More of his brilliant work can be found here.

A monkey's place in history

2006-10-14T14:54:00.000+02:00

Izmir has been excited about this North Korea nuclear test drama. He thinks it is about time the world gets really interesting and violent again.
Monkeys love war. Did you know that? Nothing makes a monkey happier than some serious armed conflict, and Izmir is no exception. I think this stems from the fact that the first domesticated monkeys were made so in order to fight for the kings of Mali against the hostile Eskimo invaders from the north.

Kiss my arsenal

2006-10-12T00:13:00.000+02:00

After tiring of throwing poo at the neighbors' children I logged onto the BBC in an attempt to relieve my horrible boredom. I came across this picture of North Koreans dancing in the street celebrating the joyous occasion of their recent nuclear test. My only question is: who are those British-looking folks joining in the hoe-down?

More like Al Poosica

2006-10-10T00:46:00.000+02:00

You know what makes for a good blog post? Something that is not totally lame. Warsha Shmarsha? I have pulled better stuff than that out of my miniature monkey butt.
I had never thought of it as miniature until I fell out with the Governor Rockefeller and got sent to Sing-Sing.
Maybe some of you didn't get that last joke? Well, I shall elaborate no further.
Anyhow, whilst Dr. Harry was at his yuppie musical love-in, I have been enjoying some excellent Ramadan moselsellat (for all you khowaga out there, that is Arabic for soap opera) (for all you gringos out there, khowaga is Arabic for gringo).
Anyway, it seems that Ahmed is in love with Hoda, but unfortunately her father, Abdel Rahman, has declared that he can only have her hand in marriage if he manages to find the jade monkey before the next full moon.
Good stuff, huh? It's too bad he isn't looking for the jaded monkey, cause that would be easy. Most of us are bitter and cynical by the time we are done sucking at our mother's miniature monkey teats.

Al Moosica

2006-10-10T00:38:00.000+02:00

I went to a good concert tonight. It was put on by a theater troupe/band called Warsha. Good stuff.
There's this one dude, Zain, who can really wail. There is also this young woman, who's name I forget. She as well can really wail.
Rock on Warsha. Rock on.

Baby Beluga

2006-10-09T00:35:00.000+02:00

I have been working on my "Statement of Purpose" recently. This morning it started to become my "Admission of Lack of Purpose". I hope to turn this startling trend around tomorrow.
Have any of you ever had this problem? Does anyone have any advice?
Last year, for a brief moment, I thought that I had found my porpoise in life. It turned out it was just a plastic dolphin.

A monkey's lament

2006-10-07T11:30:00.000+02:00

So, yeah, there hasn't been a post in a few days. What, you think just cause I'm in Cairo my life is so exciting that I have witty things to say about it all the time? Maybe I spent last night eating banana peels and watching Battlestar Gallactica. What now?

Evil!!!!!

2006-10-02T23:46:00.000+02:00

OK, that poster is pretty funny. That's what most of you said, anyway. But some readers, no doubt, were yearning for more.
A meatier piece of commentary.
A thinker bowl of soup.
So here it is folks; Dr. Edward Said's FBI file. All 146 pages of it. Enjoy.

Evil!!!

2006-10-02T11:54:00.000+02:00

I have noted a request for a picture of the monkey. None are available at this time, but perhaps this poster I found in England will tide everyone over.

I think he's leaving me for Pepé le Poo

2006-10-01T22:26:00.000+02:00

Did any of you guys see that last post? What a load of shit! Not as big a load as I left around the flat when the "good" doctor abandoned me to go hang out with his frenchy friends. I think I'm going to call him Dr. Toad from now on. You know — Frog and Toad are Friends. I'm so mad. I don't think I have anything more to say about this.

A new day

2006-10-01T16:23:00.000+02:00

I left Izmir at home today and went to orientation at my awesome new Arabic school. The apartment was pretty gross when I returned, but that is a matter for another post.
I am very excited about my re-entry into the world of higher education, and as a result I don't know if I have anything funny to say about it. The school is a program of the French government and, as a result it is:
a)filled with French people
b)really cheap
c)they sell beer at the cafe
The last two are obviously positive, and I have a good feeling about the first attribute as well.
Excelsior!

The monkey cometh

2006-09-29T01:57:00.000+02:00

So I was showing my new blog to my pet monkey Izmir and he was like "Dr. Harry, your blog is totally boring. You should let me help you."
Honestly, I think he's right. He's always right, cause he is one smart monkey. From now on, I'm going to let him contribute.
Okay Izzy? Are you happy? Do you have to poo-poo everything I do?
Stupid monkey.

A fast way to heaven?

2006-09-28T11:48:00.000+02:00

So, here is the thing. Everyone around me is fasting, ie. not eating, drinking, smoking, or having sex during the daylight hours. So I kind of feel like I should too, as a social parity sort of thing. But, Muslims have a clear reason and inspiration for their sacrifice. I would imagine this helps when it is 3:30 and you are really thirsty and there is a cold bottle of water in the fridge...but no, do not drink it. God is watching.
I do not have this, however. So what angle do I take? Self-sacrifice? Weight loss? If anyone out there has any suggestions, please throw them out. Unless they are good suggestions, in which case you can post them as comments.

Ramadan al-Karim

2006-09-27T15:02:00.000+02:00

As you may or may not know, it is Ramadan right now. As you probably don't know, it is about 4 in the afternoon and I have been walking around a bit and checking out all the grumpy people. I have fasting myself today, so perhaps I too am a little grumpy.
Muslims aren't supposed to drink, eat, or smoke during the day. I think the third condition is especially difficult for a lot of people. I saw a guy trying to pull into a parking space and instead backing into a parked motor scooter and knocking it into another car, making a big dent.
It will all be worth it once iftar arrives and the party gets started. Just another couple of hours...

Welcome to all

2006-09-27T13:03:00.000+02:00

Hello. I am Mr. Harry and this is my new blog. I should perhaps explain that while my real name is Harald, I often go by Harry here in Cairo, since it is much easier to pronounce for Arabic speakers. And there are a lot of Arabic speakers around. Last year I taught at an elementary school, where I was promptly dubbed "Mr. Harry". I have also been known as Dr. Harry, but this is a topic for another post.