At7addak.com – A New Online Gaming Website for Lebanese and Arabs

A new Lebanese website was launched in the Lebanese and Arab cyberspace today: At7addak, serving as a social platform for the region’s gamers to, well, play against each other.

The whole idea started when Brahms Chouity’s very pregnant wife kicked him off the couch, which he was using to play PS3 with friends in between ventures, and gave him the push to make a living out of his passion: gaming. And with that, he started his own gaming company: At7addak, with plans to create an arab gaming league.

At7addak.com allows users to sign up and create free accounts. Through these accounts, they can challenge other users via head-to-head or multiplayer modes in the games available on the website. The more these users play, the more points they gain, and consequently the more awards they receive.

These users can also chat via the website’s forums, mainly about current games and upcoming releases, as well as other topics, further contributing to its purpose of an online gamers community. The website will also be up to date will all games-related news: publishers, new releases, technological advances, etc… So for those gamers who don’t want to search for their news everywhere, the website will suffice.

Every season, At7addak will launch online tournaments, categorized according to country and game title. Only users with enough points will be able to participate in these tournaments. Gamers will square off against each other, with their position fluctuating on the leaderboard, depending on how often they win or lose.

At the end of every gaming season, top gamers from each country and game will advance to their “Country Championship Final.” This is not online. It’s a real event that takes place in each country. Gamers will get to meet each other and compete against each other in a tense environment. The winners of these championships will be adorned with great prizes and they will qualify for the “Arab Championship Final,” the conclusion of every gaming season.

In the “Arab Championship Final,” top gamers from across Arab countries and Lebanon will fight it out. The winner will be announced the top gamer of them all and he will win great prizes.

What kind of prizes are we talking about? Well, let me give you an exclusive sneak peak.

On September 3rd, starting 1:00 PM,  there will be a Call of Duty competition at the Beirut Warehouse and Loft. And two of my blog’s readers will get the chance to compete.

What’s at stake?

*Insert dramatic cinematic cue*

The chance to win $10,000.

The location can serve up to 5000 spectators and admission is free. So for those Call of Duty gamers who are interested, all you have to do is follow @At7addak and @eliefares on twitter and tweet the following:

[NEW POST] At7addak.com – A New Online Gaming Website for Lebanese and Arabs http://bit.ly/nvLJZy #At7addak

The competition will end on Wednesday, August 10th at midnight. The draw will take place on Thursday, August 11th.

The event will also have:

• Skateboard and BMX ramp shows
• Extreme racing cars show
• Graffiti artist mural
• Sponsors’ booths
• Gaming lounges
• Large screen projectors
• Live online feed of the action
• Goodie bags and giveaways
• Black Ops real-life military personnel
• At7addak.com army girls
• Food & Beverage

Those of you who do so will enter a raffle (which will be clean and does not include cheating, just to put it out there) to pick out the lucky two.

Let the games begin…

Updating Your Dictionary

It is quite rare when I receive an email that makes me laugh this much. But my friend Cathie emailed me something that I just had to share with you.

Have you ever seen those modified words that make you go: Why haven’t I thought about this before?

Well this post is all about that – words that have been submitted by readers to The Washington Post by changing, adding or removing one letter of commonly known words.

The result is very subtle and quite awesome. I also dare you not to laugh! My favorites? Well, numbers 6, 8 and 14 are pretty cool, no?

Check them out, the new words we have to start getting used to:
1. Cashtration  (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2.  Ignoranus : A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

3.  Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4.  Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5.  Bozone  (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6.  Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid

7.  Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8.  Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

9.  Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late. <

10.  Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease.

11.  Karmageddon : It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodesand it’s like, a serious bummer.

12.  Decafalon  (n): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13.  Glibido : All talk and no action.

14.  Dopeler Effect : The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15.  Arachnoleptic Fit  (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

16.  Beelzebug  (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17.  Caterpallor  (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

And part of the submission as well is for readers to give alternate meanings to commonly existing words. Check these out:

1.  Coffee , n. The person upon whom one coughs.

2.  Flabbergasted , adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3.  Abdicate , v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4.  Esplanade , v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.

5.  Willy-nilly , adj. Impotent.

6.  Negligent , adj. Absent mindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7.  Lymph , v. To walk with a lisp.

8.  Gargoyle , n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9.  Flatulence , n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10.  Balderdash , n. A rapidly receding hairline.

11.  Testicle , n. A humorous question on an exam.

12.  Rectitude , n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13.  Pokemon , n. A Rastafarian proctologist.

14.  Oyster , n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15.  Frisbeetarianism , n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16.  Circumvent , n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

Carrie Underwood: Voice Of Versatility

Everyone knows by now that I’m a huge fan of country singer Carrie Underwood. I also believe she has one of the best voices I’ve ever heard – and no, I’m not being biased. Even if you dislike her, you can’t but appreciate her talent.

So I was positively surprised when I stumbled on a youtube video that is precisely what this post is about: showing you just how versatile a singer Carrie Underwood truly is.

The fact of the matter is, she has tackled more genres than people have realized – and she has nailed every performance outside the country genre, which is supposed to be her home turf.

Without further ado, just check out the video:

Baggage Claim (Single Review) – Miranda Lambert

Baggage Claim - Single Cover - Miranda Lambert

Miranda Lambert is the current it-female country singer. So naturally, her newest single and upcoming album are both some of the most awaited country music releases this year. Set for a late August release, Baggage Claim, the debut single off Lambert’s upcoming album Four The Record, was rush-released to country radio after leaking.

My approach to Lambert’s music is one where enthusiasm and apprehension are mixed. I haven’t been a fan of all her releases but I’ve come to appreciate them. Her single The House That Built Me remains, to me at least, one of those timeless songs that make you happy about your life when you listen to them. The House That Built Me is also the single that made Lambert who she is today – two time ACM Female Vocalist winner and Entertainer of the Year nominee at the CMAs, regardless of how deserving she is of that.

So it is from that base – and it is such a high base – that you’d expect her to approach the lead single off Four The Record. What did she do? She went the opposite – and totally expected – lead single route.

What is the song about? Yes, you guessed it: guy bashing.

If people had worried her marrying Blake Shelton would soften her up, Baggage Claim is here to prove them all wrong – somewhat. “I have been dragging around your sensitive ego, making sure that your bags arrive on time for the dog and pony show,” she opens up the song after a guitar riff that remains throughout the song.

Baggage Claim is a song, which as the title implies, is about Miranda Lambert’s significant other being moved out of her life and home. And she doesn’t leave anything to the imagination as she angrily sings the chorus: “At the baggage claim, you got a lot of luggage in your name. When you hit the ground, check the lost and found cause it ain’t my problem now. I can’t carry it on, I’ve got a lot of troubles all my own. It’s all over the yard, in the trunk of the car,  I’m packin’ it in so come and get it.”

But it is in the second chorus that the song delivers its highlight – and its only one at that. Lambert is known for her lyrics craftsmanship. And while the baggage metaphor is not degrading to the song, it’s not exactly instant-hit material either. However, there’s one sentence in the whole song that’s lyrically highly intelligent: “If it ain’t obvious what has set me off today, behind every woman scorend is a man who made her that way…” and then Lambert continues explaining about what the man did on his business trip.

Repeat chorus, insert useless bridge, repeat chorus… and that’s your whole song.

The problem with Baggage Claim is that, even for Lambert, it feels quite overdone – both thematically and musically. She’s had many other singles dealing with the same topic and they’ve all been better songs than this. While her vocal delivery is quite on point, as is expected from someone of her caliber, the material she’s dealing with is quite weak – especially for a lead single.

The whole song feels like a paint-by-number guy-done-me-wrong Desperate Housewives-inspired song. It feels like the writers came up with the baggage metaphor and thought long and hard about how to make a radio-friendly song that might break Miranda Lambert’s poor streak with lead singles, instead of delivering a great song that would have definitely gotten airplay on radio, with all the hype Lambert has been getting lately.

You see, the reason why the great Dead Flowers, Miranda’s lead single off her critically acclaimed album Revolution, did not manage to become a radio hit is mostly because of its dark theme as well as Lambert’s weak radio performance at the time. She changed course with White Liar, Revolution‘s second single, which gave Lambert her first chart-topping single (or top 2 on Billboard). But at the end of the day, the song that made Lambert is The House That Built Me. And with that song, Lambert took a risky decision to release a not very radio friendly song, but a deep song with meaning. And it worked for her – as evident by The House That Built Me almost winning every award it got nominated for and spending four weeks atop the country charts.

That’s the route she should have taken. Baggage Claim is not a bad song in itself. After several listens, it catches on. But it’s representing a follow up to a highly critically acclaimed album. Hopefully the rest of Four The Record is better than this.

Listen to Baggage Claim here.

Don’t Take Your Health Lightly


I’ve found this to be an almost natural – and quite comical – attribute to the Lebanese person (and possibly applicable everywhere too), which is: there’s nothing wrong with me unless I can’t stand on both feet anymore.

Take my mother for instance. Yesterday evening, she was shaking and trembling, suffering from acute pain in her lower back area, and she was hypothermic. I insisted we’d take her to the hospital because what was happening to her was not normal. But she vehemently refused. And soon enough, after taking a collection of over-the-counter drugs, she felt good enough to function.

My dad woke me up this morning, a scene that is oddly deja-vu, to tell me that we have to take my mother to the hospital. Why? She was having the exact same episode she had the night before. So we took my mom to the hospital and she got examined by an ER doctor who determined that she might be suffering from kidney stones. Further tests need to be done, obviously, but this is not something that over-the-counter drugs can fix.

The scene of my dad waking me up to take my mother to the hospital is deja-vu because it happened eighteen months ago when, after suffering from a mild stomach-ache which she dismissed as stomach flu, my mother couldn’t walk from pain in her lower-right abdomen the following day. Yes, you guessed it: appendicitis.

And the “funny” thing is that this doesn’t apply to my mom alone. Have you ever found yourself in the midst of those visits where people start chit-chatting about their health and prescribing drugs to each other? Well, if you haven’t  let me lay out the scenario.

Person A knocks on person B’s door. Warm Lebanese greetings ensue. Person A enters and sits down. Person B goes to prepare coffee or calls up on the maid to do so. Coffee is served. Person A and Person B start chatting about the most mundane of things. Then Person A mentions that they’ve been having this weird rash on their back. Person B knows just the thing for that! This ointment that he got prescribed by Person C who got it from Person D, etc…

It baffles me how some people can conceive and fully accept the idea that they know more about their health than a physician who went through a decade long educational process and who – in his/her most rudimentary mental form – knows at least a little more about that rash or ache.

So people, instead of seeking help from people who’s only medical knowledge is what they watch on Doctors, how about you go see a real doctor next time? Pain is the body’s way of telling  you something’s wrong. Consider it as a text message. You always reply to text messages (when you have credit). How about a text message that might be the difference between you staying alive or dying?