I'm going home. It occurs to me that I'm still quite bummed. There is more spring in my step, that's for sure, but I think that I'm shoe-shuffling, listless, and generelly "poopy."
Reihan - 14:44
This is the newest, bluest indigo eye patch
That I snatch, a whole batch, from some latchkey kids
Soon to be doing bids, dancing on top of Tupperware lids
I can now be bold. Fresh.
Reihan - 09:20
18.10.01
Mecca-lecka.
Reihan - 15:21
Flibbertigibbet, I ribbit like a frog
Hop around in a fog, the smog of my bog
I'm ogling, boggling the mind
Though my spine's aligned correctly
Fecklessly, recklessly I wander and warble
Wamble, I mean amble and ramble
About blackberry brambles, and I make wine
From water, my super space otter
Slaps me with a flyswatter
Reihan - 08:08
17.10.01
In case you think it's an idle threat, or in case the notion of a Reihan with a charming disposition, counterpoint to Reihan without, strikes you as beyond belief, picture this: me, rowdy and in ten gallon hat, spitting tobacco juice into your coffee mug. A lot worse than I am now, ain't it? Darn tootin'. That and a bag of chips will get you a bag of chips, "effendi."
Effendi, don't offend me
With your bindi and your mural of Jesus Christ
Wearing a polyester vest during a bank heist
Reihan - 17:21
I've noticed that, because it is imaginable that someone other than yours truly may come upon this web site, if only by accident--say the person in question is searching for "reihang.blogspot.com" or "reihab.blogspot.com," neither of which exists as far as I can tell but sound like they'd be titillating in the extreme--I've edited my stream-of-consciousness ramblings a good deal. For example, there's been no mention as yet of my undying love for athletic footwear, which some find unsavory, or even my penchant for shaving in the dark, which is on my mind a good deal.
Reihan - 17:16
I am on the lookout for albums by Sloan; in Washington, D.C., where I've parked myself for the year, I've yet to find any, which fills me with, well, mild irritation. This is no laughing matter. With enough mild irritation, I could develop a less-than-charming disposition, and we wouldn't want that. Nope.
Reihan - 17:12
There are some fine albums in existence. Of late, I've been listening to a fair amount of non-hip-hop music, which is a change of pace. In particular, I've grown quite fond of the Pulp album "Different Class"; "Pencil Skirt" and "Disco 2000," not to mention "Common People" and that first song, are really something else. Something else if that thing in question is "bad" or even "not genius-level rockin'."
Reihan - 17:09
One of these days, I will learn how to "link" these, as they say. Hey man, does anyone remember
Reihan - 16:48
Yikes.
Reihan - 15:50
That shouldn't have rhymed. Yeah man, that was an unfortunate chapter. To tell you the truth, I never had a bloody chance. I am of modest size and can't play an instrument, though I can create surreal soundscapes with a kazoo or harmonica if I have the time or inclination, which is nothing to sneeze at. No, it is in fact something to sneeze at. Sneeze, sneeze away. I've received some traumatic news today. It is bad news, but I've decided to take it in stride. I considered flailing my arms and running about and along the corridors, disturbing boors and bores and Boers, of whom there are none in this particular space. But yes, leaving that aside for a moment, it was an unfortunate chapter, and sad to boot. I think sad is the most apt characterization. The bone-crushing, carrot and legume mushing jaws of utter, desolate despair, and the utter, desolate despair industry from here to the Indus River, were hard at work, having a field day with my mangy, dingy, dinghy heart thingie. It's a damn shame. To quote some sort of dude or fellow, neither senior nor junior, "that poots," which captures my sentiments exactly. And that's hard to do, particularly since my sentiments are often ill-formed and slightly smelly, wafting overhead like a bad breeze.
Reihan - 15:39
Yeah man, so that whole episode was really quite rough. I was deeply bummed, bummed down to my bum; shiver me timbers, the bummery was in full bloom, parakeets and pigeons were dropping out of my inky blue sky; I badly wanted some pecan pie, or wry bread with cinnamon in it, because that would pick up my spirits I thought, and not for naught, it turns out: cookies and milk straightened me right out, and now I feel not bad, not quite sad, I suppose.
Reihan - 15:26
No, wait a minute. I'm pretty committed to establishing this as the hip thing:
Alright, Czech it, as in the Republic, let's take this thing public
Watch the stock price skyrocket, then plummet
Yum, it tastes like oregano, L-M-N-O-P, it's elementary,
Holmes
Leave you scratchin' your domes, dig the cuts by DJ Romes
And I read mammoth tomes, some written by Peter J. Gomes,
But I don't though, oh, that's prevarication, some Haitians
Speak Creole, and others wear tap shoes and like to go bowling
Rolling along, singing along, handle my salad with tongs
Sociological like Dennis Wrong, I'm righting them
And fighting them with wordplay
Kay-Bee toy stores ain't got nothing on me, yes
My chest riddled with riddles,
Like if you're such a cool cat, where are your Tender Vittles?
In Mitteleuropa, underneath the sofa? Left on your loofa sponge
Or trapped in a dungeon where you have special luncheons?
Reihan - 15:14
There are a lot of well coiffed girls here, which makes me sad, but I am ill-suited to romance: seven out of ten girls I've liked find me scrawny and undesirable. The other three are celebrities or long-dead flappers I've swooned over from a distance. This used to bother me, but now I think it's the hip thing. This could mean that I'm delusional. You know, I think that's very clever.
Reihan - 15:03
Against the idols of the age, strutting like peacocks in knee-high knee socks
But then the rocks are thrown and the glass is shattered
Which should give you pause if you think that anything matters
And it lies in tatters, it being the battered and the bruised good news
That's now yesterday's news, a ruse that we dismiss as we stop to snooze
That is, we don't lose sleep, although sheets are rustled
Can't hear your own thoughts thoughts above the hustle and bustle and din
Eat thin mints, the crumbs become lint
Reihan - 12:14
You can't stop, you can't stop the children with the flat-tops, high-tops and moptop rowdies
How did these kids
Get to be like this, is it 'cause they take rids?
I don't know, I do know that they do know
About things, wearing diamond rings on their pinkies
And if you think these rhymes are a waste of your time
Recline, and relax; to do otherwise is taxing
Reihan - 11:59
The weapons of the present range from the precise, with discrete, identifiable victims, to the terrifyingly imprecise and indiscriminate; and as it turns out, the most menacing weapons are in the hands of the nihilists, as Charles Krauthammer has shrewdly called those who've declared war on the United States. And our weapons, and those of our Israeli allies, are often precise to an astonishing degree, the paradigmatic example being the missiles that localized the damage to the body of a single malefactor. Extraordinary: weapons that correspond to our legalistic understandings of right and wrong, a testament, I think (and this might be a controversial proposition), to the essential decency of our civilization, which, I'm sorry to say, may be the only suicidal civilization in history. It is my dearest wish that the United States remains the open, affluent, and secure society it is at present, but there is no doubt in my mind that we'd risk it all in the name of human decency and freedom tolerance, the constellation of values that Americans have been dying for, sometimes fitfully and sometimes forthrightly with tremendous, uncompromising courage, these past several decades.
Reihan - 10:10
It might be wise to reconstruct my life; in fact, it would be unwise, but it might prove to be a useful diversion in these troubled times. I am by no means paranoid, I should say straight away; that said, it occurs to me that those stricken Hill staffers, nameless victims, their numbers rising all the time, could very well have been dear friends of mine in a slightly different world, which is nothing less than a damn shame. It serves only to reinforce my deeply held belief that the miseries of the world are ultimately indivisible.
Reihan - 10:09
Banquets and croquet and charcoal briquettes are okay, it's all in a day's work they say
And I am sitting here with a black beret, a cup of Yoplait, it's not Biopot
It's not hot outside anymore, and we get bored, Oh lord
Reihan - 09:52
16.10.01
I wonder if anyone had read this bloody thing as yet. The notion of a web page of this sort going unread is rather appealing in its own way, hence the voyeuristic thrill of reading the "blogs" of others; and so it is a little like illicit hank-panky, I gather, but not quite. And thank heavens for that. I've been reading voraciously as always. I've always enjoyed footnotes, primarily because it makes a text come to life; an inanimate thing, bound and bound, is part of a transhistorical dialogue. That's "strictly slammin'," which is, by the way, what I hope to call my first album--that or "strictly pablum," i.e., "trite, insipid, or simplistic writing, speech, or conceptualization," which is, I think, a fair characterization of my schtick.
Reihan - 14:25
Ahoy, it's about time we did some serious chattering about the world at large. Perhaps this will be like a brief, a position paper, a statement of principles, a brief, which rhymes with Chief and Lateef, but it's not about that, I had a spat with some cats, they're feline, so make a bee-line for the mouse souffle. So what is there to discuss? Many things, I strongly suspect. First, an excellent question would involve my precise reasons for having undertaken this venture. Well, for one thing, it seems as though the passing fancies and less-than-thoughts of a large number of middle class North Americans are being permanently recorded, or rather semipermanently recorded, via this particular medium, which strikes me as nothing short of remarkable. What an invaluable resource for the historians! Mind you, historians of the future will be positively flooded with the wealth of data offered by the metropolitan West in this day and age. Of course, there are many questions that will be left utterly unanswered: perhaps they will know little about the illiterate, the impoverished, those doomed to an ahistorical voicelessness. That's bad news. In the contemporary United States, there is very little illiteracy, though I'm told there's a fair amount of functional illiteracy; that aside, it's remarkable that the affluent reaches of the world have accomplished near universal literacy, but, I'm afraid, it is increasingly nothing less than a bare necessity and, in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa to identify only the most egregious examples, illiteracy is widespread, as is hunger and preventable disease. I am from Brooklyn, New York and my parents, and, broadly speaking, my ancestors (the term strikes me as portentous), are from Bangladesh. It is a remarkable, beautiful, and inspiring place, but the grinding poverty that is allowed to exist there ought to shame all decent women and men everywhere. (I should say that I am a right-winger of sorts, by no means namby-pamby. That said, I can't fathom the logic behind any moral imagination that counsels indifference to such conditions.) And so perhaps I have more perspective than some, though I have so little that the above observation gives me pause. So why have I started this log? When I vanish into dust, and the Church of Sweden will apparently allow people to be frozen upon death, pulverized, and then used as fertilizer, so perhaps that'll be the fate of my benighted bones, there'll at least be this record of my having passed through, however briefly. If you're idly wandering about and reading web sites and come upon this one, be good, don't take wooden nickels, stay healthy.
Reihan - 08:23
Hello, I just spent a long time watching some moving pictures with "the kids," you know, the kind of thing "the kids" like, the way they liked Ike when he was in fashion, stashin' lots of candy in your stockings, rocking chairs, putting on airs, that's what you do, everytime you step through my portal, I chortle and chuckle.
Reihan - 07:32
15.10.01
What is in the air, the ether right now? Well, there's a lot of serious thinking, a lot of serious stinking, rat finking and even blinking, but not linking to my web site 'cause it's brand new, nobody knows it exists, so boo-hoo, I'm weeping, liquids are seeping through my pancake three-piece suit and my latke boots.
Reihan - 15:38
Waters are choppy and I'm on my jet skis, I only drink tea made from Tetley teabags, the snag in my reasoning is not such that it can't be cured with proper seasoning, but I never use paprika, I hear that there's a young lady named Mika who went to school with the friend of a friend, my mind bends and extends far and wide, I climb mountains and I hire a sherpa or a guide, but Infoseek and Lycos are on their last legs, and so are the days of easy breezy access to MPEGs, oh, woe is me, my flow is mean, cinema halls I frequent are always green, because I've always liked that color, I eat many pastries: danishes and even crullers.
Reihan - 15:32
I've decided to change my "template." Some would argue that this constitutes fickleness, well, I'm in a pickle, Ms. Whatever, always use Lever 2000 when I'm not web browsin', which I do exclusively at work, it's a perk of my internship, like the good ship, it's a sop to land-lovers and other fops, climbing the charts to the top of the pops, I stopped wearing the flip-lops I left in Scotland, which I wore with diapers: I scurry around and try to dodge snipers with rifles, they rifle through my things; in fourth grade, I had a friend named Ming.
Reihan - 15:23
Hello, this is my first post. Perhaps I will write a good deal. I certainly hope so. This strikes me as an extraordinarily valuable resource; indeed, it may prove to be a perfectly sound way to spend a good deal of time that I'd otherwise spend sniffing glue. No, good heavens, I certainly wouldn't do that. That would be perfectly ghastly, and unwise to boot. But yes, this is my first post.
Reihan - 15:04
