The Saxon hordes are invading. They’ve been steadily invading for the past two months. Every day, as soon as the sun comes up, the banging, drumming and yelling begins.

I’m not nuts you know. They’re building the next row house next to ours, and every day, like some sort of malicious and extraordinarily proactive (gah, I hate that word!) alarm clock, the dudes next door, right after the morning call to prayer, proceed to attack the exterior wall of my house on the left side. I can’t sleep in anymore, even if I want to.

I swear, it sounds like they’re trying to burrow into our house and claim it like an invading force. Sure beats building a house, just take over an already built one like some sort of parasite. What a grand plan! Get some bricks, some cement, bamboo poles, a donkey and a bunch of laborers (yep, apparently that’s all you need to build a house here. Give props to the wonders of RCC and physics) and pile them all up on an empty plot next to an existing house. Then get your laborers to busily construct a scaffold and a false house front. When the scaffold is done, have the laborers climb up and covertly hack a hole in the wall of the house next door. Once you’ve made a whole large enough, send in the Marines! Or at least send in the laborers with shovels and hammers! Claim the house next door as your own and there you have it: your own house at a fraction of the cost.

I think I’m over my earlylife crisis. After agonizing over my inabilities, failures and lack of accomplishment, I’ve gone back to being normal and not giving a damn. What a relief, to be my slacker self again. Sorry to have gotten you guys all worked up. I mean, I probably will go back to college, but if I don’t study psych or save the world, its not going to be the end of me.

I’ve got this really aggravating acute feeling of the ticking of time that often springs up, which I immediately try to crush with my happy fatalism. I guess it comes from being half Asian immigrant, which means I should be insanely competitive and a crazy over achiever, while the other half of me comes from a small town in the American Mid-West where getting a high school diploma is a wonderful accomplishment and people take life easy. I’ve got an uneasy yin yang personality thing going on.

I’ve always hated that feeling of time is money and life is a race, and you my dear, are nothing more than the rat in that race, which is such a part of life back in the US. Living in a huge immigrant community back in the States, most of my friends were typical first generation Americans, those who insist on straight A’s, know they’re going to be doctors or engineers, have their colleges picked out in first grade and will give up their health, peace of mind and happiness to get all this.

Me, being the idiot non-conformist (I’m different, dammit!), I of course HAD to rebel against that. I was always the evil peer pressure influence on my buds “No, you don’t need to study, come on, let’s go out and play,” “Hey man, a C is satisfactory, so you should be satisfied,” “Why do you even bother, as if getting a 36 on your ACT is going to make you any less ugly.” (the last comment in jest. I’m not that cruel)

I went to a stinky average school, did okay in my classes, refused to be pushed into jumping through hoops by the silly teachers, and constantly railed against the system of accomplishment and the unrealistic pressures being put on my fellow peers. Yeah, and me railing against the system involved one grouchy, irritable hijabi yelling at disinterested and pimply teenagers as they passed me by.

Its just that I don’t understand why you’ve got to push kids so hard for things that don’t necessarily ensure their contentment and stability in life. In grammar school the thought was do really well on your proficiency tests and be on the super honor roll and you’ll get into a great high school.

In high school you had to enroll in the hardest classes, take after-school programs, be in summer school to get an edge, score well on your ACTs and SATs, and join as many teams, clubs and societies as possible to look involved and then you may get a scholarship or entrance into the college of your choice.

The cycle continues in college, getting harder at each step of the way as you climb the degree ladder. And the sick thing is, chances are if you’ve done REALLY well, lucky you, you get to work in the profession of your choice where its going to be even more insane and ten times more Machiavellian.

Its like a gag prize. You run and run and run, working yourself to the bone, wasting your youth and life, just to be dropped into the higher echelon of the profession of your choice where your coworkers are just as insane and competitive as you are, and won’t let up from the race even then.

When do we get to sit down and breathe? Does any of this ensure happiness, contentment, peace of mind or satisfaction? Nope, you just get a really challenging way to waste the rest of your 30 years of life. No need to stop and consider where we’re going and what is the purpose of our lives, we’re just meant to be wonderfully distracted until the age of mandatory retirement, where they suddenly cut the cord and tell you to take up golf, which should be equally distracting until you’re dead. Isn’t it great?

Yeah, so after I was done with high school I decided that I couldn’t take the pressure of this so I upped and ran away to Pakistan. Yup, if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen, and dudes, I was gone. Anyways, I guess because here I’m so removed from society, being an artificial import and all, I don’t feel the passage of time and the pressure to conform. I did get a degree and I’ve been working full time for two years in Journalism here, but its all at such a slow and lackadaisical pace that I have time to think, to sleep, to read good books, to cook (read as ‘char’) horribly complicated foods, to enjoy my crazy family and to be able to sit back and watch the world burn itself out.

So why did I throw a gasket last week and have a ‘what the hell am I doing’ moment? I blame it all on you! :) Yeah you! You crazy first worlders with your talk of college, exams and responsibilities give me a friggin complex! Have a heart would ya? Leave sad me, who wasn’t able to cut it in the modern world, alone to contemplate the greater meaning of the word ‘squash’ while drinking Rooh Afza and watching the buffalos parade by my house.

To quote Monty Python “Its a fair cop but society is to blame.”

I’ve got bad news yo, I think I’ve got SARS! :::cough, gag, wheeze, choke::: Aw arright, maybe I just got my seasonal lung infection again, so now I’m tearing around the house sounding like a 90 year old lady (and yes, if you read my stats, you’ll be surprised to note that this might be an improvement, since I was born in 1900).

Today has been the day of the bugs. At work they finally sealed off the opening from where all the moths were entering my office, but unfortunately, they’ve sealed quite few in with me.

Yesterday I battled three of them, finally tiring of poisoning myself with bug spray (its a small office, one squirt and the whole room is polluted, and ofcourse, I the mondo beyondo genius, often spray the stuff within inches of my own head ::cough:::) I rolled up one of my newspapers and took care of them softball style. Coach Ryan would be proud.

Anyways, today I thought I was in the clear, since I’d taken care of the monsters yesterday, but without fail, as I was doggedly hacking away at my work a moth bounced off my head and went skittering about the office. Later one tried to attack me when I went to wash ink off my hands. I didn’t have the guts to smash it with my trusty bat, er, newspaper, so I poisoned myself again with way too strong perimeter spray. I got worried after inhaling the stuff after awhile (the room was getting pink and fuzzy, not unlike an elephant), and grabbed the bottle to figure out how dangerous it was. Just my luck, the whole thing was in Malay. Chances are I’m dying as we speak, or maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up a giant vermin. (Gregor Samsun awoke one morning...)

And to top it all off, as I sat here typing my blog and singing extremely loudly and off key, I heard a funny scratching sound. I turned around to find a two-inch long cockroach not less than a foot away from me, listening to my horrible performance with much attentiveness and wiggling his antenna at me in a menacing manner. I tried to smash it with my shoe, but I didn’t hit it hard enough and it ran out and ran across my foot. To borrow from a Sana-Saharism... I DIED! No really, I was jumping up and down screaming, trying to knock the beastie off me, and of course, laughing at my own stupidity. Paired with the fact that I’m asthmatic, over 103 years old and suffering from a lung infection, I ended up hyperventilating and THEN dying. I ran screaming from the computer and have only returned many hours later, wearing some great big bug stomping running shoes and a having squeegee near by to defend myself with.

I asked my dad to rescue me but he made fun of me.... sniff.... he asked me what part of me is Pathan. Its not fair to expect me to be able to handle EVERYTHING by virtue of the fact that my dad’s ancestors were the decedents of Genghis Khan. HE didn’t know one day his progeny’s progeny would be a sad, coughing, passive aggressive Muslimah who’d unfortunately watched the movie The Nest.

Ever heard of it? Its like a D class horror movie where a cockroach queen the size of Shaq organizes her little roachie friends to take over the world. They infest people and move them about like zombies full of bugs, and eventually their skin falls off and you can see whole masses of roaches controlling the skeleton. I’m shuddering just remembering it. Of course, its all very cheesy, and it would be hilarious if I was made of stronger stuff, but the dang movie was enough to ruin cockroaches for me forever. Now whenever I see one I think it is gonna try to crawl into my head to control me. Run away!!!!

Man, I am so out of it these days. I’m never very bright as it is, but today I’m hitting a new low. There is just something about Sundays for me. My brain goes on vacation. Its making up for the six days a week I have to edit nonsensical English journalism written by Pakistanis who think in Urdu and like to use phrases like “A rumpus in the National Assembly” on a daily basis. So, in punishment, or maybe revenge, on Sundays I’m a doddering idiot who can only barely manage communication with other human beings. Gaaaaah.... if my English deteriorates any further I’m going to have to move onto sign language....

Information you could have lived without: My computer at work is trying to tell me something. When I run the spell check, it turns ‘Vajpayee,’ the last name of the Indian prime minister, into ‘vampire’. Let us contemplate the greater meaning and symbolism in this :::holds head, tries to have deep thoughts, pulls a muscle::::

Also, it tries to change Farooq Leghari (name of the Millat Party chief and former Pakistan president) into Foghorn Leghorn, the great fast-talking chicken in the Loonie Toons cartoons of olden days. What could all this mean? Is it part of some great cosmic scheme (why am I rhyming so much I dunno, Imma poet and I didn’t even knowit).

I am very serious about going back to school. Is anyone going to recommend a college somewhere, preferably in the Gulf, where I can study something like psychology or social sciences? Come on yos, I’m trying to mooch off your good will and allegiance to the stupid lunacy of Degrouchyowl, but ya’ll are just not cooperating (save for Queen Hera, Jazakallah sis!). Jump to it men, I need info and I’m too damn lazy to get it for myself!

Sigh.... I’m overtly introspective these days. Generally, I’m running amok, not thinking below the most superficial level of thought (I like cheese, lets eat cheese, I need sleep, now I sleep, eek a bug, runaway.....) and just trying to hang on and not go postal. But now I’m worrying about where my slacker go-with-the-flow mentality is taking me. I’m getting rather old, so I’ve been told (Dad sez: Aniraz, you can’t drop water balloons on passing villagers, stop whining, you’re not 12 years old anymore! I’m not?! OH NO!) and I want to set some goals for myself and start aiming for appropriate targets that normal, non-water-balloon-hurling-adults do. So real college is one of them, and so is a real profession, and maybe some other things like I dunno, a 401k, whatever the hell that is. I have no idea, but folks are always talking about them. Must be important.

Is it normal to be having a midlife crisis before you finish your earlylife? I think I’m going to run out, get a trophy husband, some unbecoming hipster clothes, a race car and a pair of rad sunglasses.... yes......

Yeah so that's why I haven’t got a stupid offering to make to ya’ll, and I don’t have any great harebrained ideas, though I’m working on aunty repellant and plans for global domination (aside from asking really nicely “Mr Bush, can I have the world please?).

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Wait wait, I have a deep thought, or so I hope....

I remember hearing some people talk about the words nigga and -ahem- nigger, and how when people of African origin use the word, its alright, because they’re reclaiming it and removing the potency of a word that has hurt them for so long. They redefine the words when they use them with each other out of love or in a joke, and thus take back power.

I can understand that. I sorta feel the same way about the words fundamentalist, extremist and to an extent, terrorist. Before 9/11, back when I was living in the US, me and my fellow practicing Muslim friends used to jokingly refer to each other as fundus, terrorists, ninja spies, camel jockeys, flying nuns, harem members, fourth and fifth wives, oppressed females, unwashed heathens, beardos and probably a lot more I‘ve forgotten. Of course, none of us are terrorists, extremists, ninja spies and whatnot, but it took a bit of the poison out these insults that we’ve been subject to for so long when we called each other these names in jest.

Now, after 9/11, I’m extremely careful about joking like this, because people are very antsy and ‘vigilant’ and I don’t want some fluffy old lady with blue hair calling the Feds on me for an innocent joke I had with my peeps. I also don't want people to think that I identify with murderers and people who attack innocent civilians for their deranged beliefs, so I stick to the sillier ones, like ninja nuns, unibrowed barbarians, ninth wife, and the like. Sigh...scary times we live in eh?

I wonder though, are words like terrorist, fundu and extremist ever going to be okay to use lightly again? I mean, Bush throws them around like so much confetti, but he is serious when he calls everyone under the sun a terrorist (his briefing dudes forgot to tell him that terrorism is a military tactic, employed by many militaries the world over, and has been considered by them as a valid strategy in warfare. Its not a ideological belief or religious indoctrination and no there isn’t a chapter in the Qur‘an on ‘How to be a terrorist’) They will probably remain taboo and volatile for a long time coming. In the meantime, I’ve gotta find new silly things to call my fellow Moozlums.