Pity The Nation

Pity the nation whose sons and daughters have to weep biding farewell to their parents as they go to nations you don’t pity,

Pity the nation whose parents have to weep biding farewell to sons and daughters they may never see again,

Pity the nation whose sons and daughters don’t see as a good place to build their future,

Pity the nation whose parents know whole heartedly that their sons and daughters will not be on their side for long,

Pity the nation whose sons and daughters work hard towards making other nations better,

Pity the nations whose parents work hard to get their sons and daughters through tough life,

Pity the nation whose sons and daughters dream of faraway lands where they would become parents,

Pity the nation whose parents’ daily bread is their grandchildren never knowing who they are,

Pity the nation whose sons and daughters have very few reasons to hope,

Pity the nation whose parents have few reasons to want their sons and daughters to hope.

The Phone Numbers of Lebanese MPs

This is not a breach of their privacy. This is simply what other voters all around the world can do: call their representative and demand he/she votes a certain way on a bill.

Our MPs are not voting on bills or doing anything worthwhile for that matter, so we might as well have the option to call and nag.

Have you heard that political parties are beginning to offer airplane tickets for the 2013 elections? You think they’d offer me a round trip to somewhere in Western Europe? Or it doesn’t work that way?

Anyway, here are some of the phone numbers:

Sami Gemayel: 03-554444

Michel Aoun: 03-191918

Najib Mikati: 03-222828

Antoine Zahra: 03-350498

Nayla Tueini: 03-340000

Nadim Gemayel: 03-410452

Samer Saadeh: 03-444448

Bahiya Hariri: 03-720000

Gilberte Zwein: 03-634142

I actually had Antoine Zahra and Samer Saadeh’s phone numbers before and Zahra’s number matches the one on this list. Saadeh’s number isn’t on it.

You can check out the full list here, courtesy of the Lebanese Memes facebook page.

P.S.: As a reader suggested to me on Twitter, you can call and pretend you want pizza delivery.

Science Facts & Billboards

A friend recently brought my attention to this link which contains 25 billboards by a Vancouver organization called Science World and I found the billboards to be insanely creative. So I figured I’d share some of them with you.

 

You can check out the rest of the billboards here.

And to make things a little more interesting, I’m going to explain the last billboard more. When you are scared, your body activates part of your autonomic nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system. This system is responsible for the three Fs (flee, fight and mate – you can substitute that last one with its F equivalent).

So the sympathetic nervous system prepares your body to either flee or fight in the same way. Part of this preparation is to cause pupil dilation in order to take in as much light as possible.

P.S.: you also see better when you’re aroused.

 

State of Grace (Lyrics) – Taylor Swift

These are the lyrics of the final countdown single by Taylor Swift before the release of her new album, Red, next week. State of Grace is an alternative song about, yes you guessed it, falling in love.

I’m walking fast through the traffic lights
Busy streets and busy lives
And all we know is touch and go
We are alone with our changing minds
We fall in love till it hurts or bleeds or fades in time 

And I never saw you coming
And I’ll never be the same

You come around and the armor falls
Pierce the room like a cannonball
Now all we know... is don't let go
We are alone just you and me
Up in your room, and our slates are clean 
Just twin fire signs, four blue eyes
So you were never a saint
And I’ve loved in shades of wrong
We learn to live with the pain
Mosaic broken hearts
But this love is brave and wild

And I never saw you coming
And I’ll never be the same

This is a state of grace
This is the worthwhile fight
Love is a ruthless game
Unless you play it good and right
These are the hands of fate
You're my Achilles heel
This is the golden age of something good and right and real

And I never saw you coming
And I’ll never be the same
And I never saw you coming
And I’ll never be the same

This is a state of grace
This is the worthwhile fight
Love is a ruthless game
Unless you play it good and right

If Felix Baumgartner Was Lebanese

To break off from the morbid/depressing/overly serious posts my blog has had over the past few days, I figured I’d post a series of tweets that were collected by Lebanese newspaper Al-Safir. The tweets are jokes about scenarios where Felix Baumgartner, the man who jumped 39 km yesterday, is Lebanese.

They range from him taking tires to space to his mother giving him 100 cartons of food. You should read them in a Lebanese accent and I won’t bother translating them because the joke would be lost in the translation (for the full article, click here):