“The result of this election is perhaps most astonishing to those who boycotted it, albeit it won’t register in their minds as such. With a large turn out of the electorates (though they might dispute that, too), not only did their strategy fail but also the winner was a candidate who stood for everything they despise, from the aesthetics of his appearance to his rhetoric of Islamic social justice. The boycott camp is left with two options: first, question the validity of the tally and insist that the great majority of the people boycotted the election; second, question the maturity of the voters, condemn the masses for their backwardness.”

I am done talking about politics on this blog. The above says all I wanted to say with regards to how people outside of Iran look at the election.

Now we can all pick up our toys and go home. ( picture taken on 101 south, right before the 405).

I thought I woud show the difference between a tiny digital camera and an SLR digital camera.

Now that was with the compact camera, let’s look at the SLR pictures.

And finally the cooked dinner. If you are curious, that’s salmon, stuffed with garlic, marinated in a combination of soy sauce and sweet and hot chili paste on top of green peppers, mushrooms, chinese broccli, potatos, onions and garlic with a tiny bit of olive oil.

Happy B-day to APGIC

No I didn’t write this. It’s rather old but very funny.
–
The pet store was selling them for five cents a piece.
I thought this was odd since they were normally a couple thousand. I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth so I bought 200 of them. I like monkeys.

I took my 200 monkeys home. I have a big car. I let one of them drive. His name was Sigmund. He was retarded. In fact, none of them were really bright. They kept punching themselves in the genitals. I laughed. They punched me in the genitals. I stopped laughing.

I herded them into my room. They didn’t adapt very well to their new environment. They would screech and hurl themselves off the couch at high speeds and slam into the wall. Although humorous at first, the spectacle lost its novelty halfway into it’s third hour. Two hours later I found out why all the monkeys were so inexpensive; they all died. No apparent reason. They all just sort of dropped dead. Kinda like when you buy a goldfish and it dies five hours later. God damn cheap monkeys.

I didn’t know what to do. There were 200 dead monkeys lying all over my room; on the bed, in the dresser, hanging from my bookcase. It looked like I had 200 throw rugs. I tried to flush one down the toilet. It didn’t work. It got stuck. Then I had one dead, wet monkey and one hundred ninety-nine dead, dry monkeys.

I tried to pretend that they were just stuffed animals. That worked for a while, that is until they began to decompose. It started to smell real bad. I had to pee but there was a dead monkey in my toilet and I didn’t want to call a plumber. I was embarrassed. I tried to slow down the decomposition by freezing them. Unfortuantely there was only enough room for two at a time, so I had to change them every 30 seconds. I also had to eat all the food in the freezer so it didn’t go bad.

I tried to burn them, but little did I know that my bed was flammable. I had to extinguish the fire. Then I had one dead, wet monkey in my toilet, two dead, frozen monkeys in my freezer, and one hundred ninety-seven dead, charred monkeys in a pile on my bed.

The odor wasn’t improving. I became agitated at my inability to dispose of the dead monkeys and I really had to use the bathroom. So I went and severely beat one of the monkeys. I felt better.

I tried throwing them away but the garbage man said the city was not allowed to dispose of charred primates. I told him I had a wet one. He couldn’t take it either. I didn’t bother asking about the frozen ones.

I finally arrived at a solution. I gave them out as Christmas gifts. My friends didn’t quite know what to say. They pretended to like them, but I could tell they were lying. Ingrates. So I punched them in the genitals.

I like monkeys.

I tried to sneak it under the radar but Nasy blew my cover. Yup it’s my b-day and I’ll be 29 today. Feels a bit weird, one more year till the big three oh. I know Negar can’t wait till I am an old man. I am pre-ordering my walker and getting a compass. I am sure as an old man I am going to get lost and break my hip on a regular basis.

I don’t really celebrate birthdays, I figure if I really want something I’ll buy it for myself, it’s a great tradition that I started in college by buying a pool cue. When the .com boom was going on it was a brand new car and tomorrow it will be me quitting my job. I wrote a very caustic letter and on the advice of my friends decided to not send it. It’s hard not to be emotional about my job, when you work at a startup you have to believe in what you are doing, there has to be a little bit of faith that your lottery ticket is going to come in at some point. When your management makes it clear time and time again that you are only a cog that they can easily replace it’s time to move on. I don’t have a job lined up so in some ways I’ll be jumping blind but isn’t that the best way of doing things ?

So great Internet help me choose. Here are the options.

1.Continue the sales engineer career, I am talking to a few companies and recruiters. Friends have pushed my resume but I am taking it very slow, the next job I take will have to be something I will hold onto for a few years at least.

2. Do some volunteer work overseas, peace corp, doctors without borders, … I don’t mind the 1-2 year commitment, I will be perfectly happy living in a tent in a 3rd world country so long as I get to help people. I don’t have any ties to LA I am on a month to month lease.

3.Take an English teaching gig overseas and while there look for a better job. There are a lot of countries I could do this at but I am not sure how long I would be happy teaching.

I’ll find out how much longer I will have my job for, it could be the regular 2 week notice, just a few days till HR does the paper work or the end of July when we finish our quarter. In either case August is my travel month. I am going on the cathay-pacific asia pass.
Here are the countries I am definitely going to

Singapore
Philippines

The following I am not really sure about yet.

Malaysia
South Korea
Thailand
Taiwan
Japan

I am going to be traveling for about 4 weeks and visiting 4-6 countries ? Any suggestions ? Anyone wants to meet me on a beach in a foreign country ? Come on quit your job and take a vacation. All the kids are doing it.

P.S. To the people who called me and sang happy b-day without saying their names. You all suck I will find out who you are somehow. To the rest thank you for the ecards and yahoo messages.

The elections are done and the boycott didn’t happen, this has made a lot of people angry. For the first time they are realizing how little influence they have on Iranians in Iran. I am guessing that the majority of the people who are angry and shocked by the turnout were just as angry and shocked when Bush was elected for a second term.

The expat community thought they really understood Iran because they read some blogs and traveled to Tehran on vacation once a year. They failed to grasp the fact that Iran is more than Tehran, or even the rich parts of Tehran. When was the last time you heard an expat talk about Sistan or Qazvin or Mazandaran ? Iran is a big country and most people see very little of it. And Iranian bloggers don’t represent the entire country, think of it, who has the money and the time to buy a computer get an Internet connection and start a blog ? Only a tiny fraction of Iranian are in that position, those are also the most likely to ask for change and the least likely to do anything about what they demand.

Now let’s look at the average Iranian who sees Bush and Rice on TV making threats and the same threat is echoed by some of the dissidents, a few here and there who suggested we needed a debate with regards to an invasion. Am I really going to follow anything these guys suggest ? What’s my motivation here ? Human right abuses ? Students in jail ? I didn’t get accepted to a university in the first place so I am not really commiserating with those guys. I don’t live in a big city, don’t have a car or a girlfriend and I don’t get hassled by anyone with regard to my hair or cloths I can’t afford to do much about either one human right abuses are at not my priority. I might have lost my dad, uncle, cousin,… in the war an experience the expat community decided to skip on. About the only thing I would look to those guys for is a guide on how to get out of Iran and get a job overseas.

They can hold as many parades as they like, sign online petitions and argue about what’s best for Iran online. Not only are they not in Iran 99.999% of them will never come back to live in Iran so again why should I even consider what they have to say ?

The expat community has managed to convince themselves that Iran is a hellish place where people are beaten on a daily place and indeed it might be a hellish place for the select few who live in Tehran and can afford the satellite TV, Internet connection and a second car. The rest of the country is much more concerned about dinner, getting a second job and going about their daily business.

Iranians voted for Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad for the same reasons Americans voted for Bush. They want a strong leader to confront an external threat and guarantee their security. Most people are predicting a Rafsanjani victory but don’t be surprised if Ahmadinejad comes out on top. Fear of terrorist elected Bush just as fear of US troops will elect Ahmadinejad. Bush and Ahmadinejad will provide great lines for the Daily Show but not much else for their respective countries.

But somehow I don’t think this is going to change anything in Tehrangeles, Reza Pahlavi will continue to attend hunger strikes and people will continue to talk about unity with the MKO disregarding the paltry support these guys have in Iran. People will continue to march under the lion flag and in a few months they will be convinced that change is just around the corner. After all they read all about it in a blog.

P.S. Reading this story, it says “BTW a journalist / documentary filmmaker by the name of Masoud Raouf was beaten up by embassy officials inside the compound” I like how they refer to the embassy as the “compound”, what was he doing inside the embassy in the first place ? If anyone has access to the Ottawa Citizen please post the story.

P.P.S. Javod has a similar take.

0:00
a cloud of dust appears on the highway, cars in front of us slow down a bit, did someone spin out of control ?
0:05
no it’s much worse than that, an older SUV has flipped over and come to a stop upside down with the roof on top of the divider.
0:10
stop the car, run over to the SUV, people are running over from both sides of the highway. Someone pulls a 10 year old boy out of the car, he has at least a broken leg and is crying. The mother is still inside.
0:20
the mother is not responding, people try to rip the doors open but they are just mangled pieces of metal. A handle breaks. I reach inside and hold her hand, she’s out cold, I feel for a pulse. People are crowding around asking me if I felt a pulse. I say yes, there are relived smiles all around.
0:30
her neck is completely twisted, her body trapped by the crushed roof and the divider people are yelling for a doctor or a nurse, there is no way to get her out. Gas is dripping out of the car. An army guy shows up with a first aid kit. I step back my co-worker mentions that we have an appointment to get to. There are a lot of people there and there is nothing else we can do. I feel so helpless. I really didn’t feel a pulse, I am not sure why I lied about that maybe because I wanted to be wrong. The little boy is still crying as we drive away.
6/16/2005 Highway 5

P5280016

Originally uploaded by Asadb.

Birthday dinner for my sister in NYC. For once there are some people in some of the pics.

Sitting in my non-space again, 30,000 feet above the ground. The routine is memorized, laptop in hand, anime dvd in, a fellow frequent traveler who is reading a book, exit row seating and a short flight.

How can you not find happiness in this atmosphere ? 4am alarm clocks, coked up co-workers and a boss who hates his family. Well really it’s the bosses, bosses boss I think there’s a dotted line to another boss but we are a startup so we try to keep overhead down.

I had a great idea for the blog, I was going to die and then write from beyond the grave as the worms munched on tasty internal organs and I conversed with past prophets. Somehow it sounded a lot better when I was talking to Negar about it. The execution came up short.

My vacation might get pushed back again, nothing new about that it’s been getting pushed back for at least 2 years now. I always find a good reason why now is not the right time to take a vacation. Big deal coming through, job changing, just too many other things that need to be taken care of.
Well enough whining let’s head on to a something more random.
–
A plate of watermelon that’s what was for dinner, why else would you live by yourself if not for the occasional watermelon dinner or a breakfast of cold pizza after a one night stand.

A one night stand, a one night stand, … I am sure there are at least one or two hundred songs about one night stands out there. I think she wanted to stay but the first rule of one night stands is that you can’t stay over. The second is that no one is going to call the next day or the next day or the day after that unless there is going to be another one night stand in which case you have to follow up the rules of two night stand.

It’s a complicated set of rules that you have play by, you can’t hit on her best friend, no anal sex the first time you have sex or the second time. The blindfolds can come out on the third time around. No going down unless she’s a vegetarian and manscaping is not optional. Do comment on the lowriders and how they complement her ass, you can never complement her ass enough. Even though it’s a flat ass but when it’s a one night stand you don’t get to be picky about the ass.

Meeting the family is a bigger commitment than sharing cigarettes and you can’t under any circumstance give him/her the spare key unless he/she is really that good in bed. Shopping together is the first step, sharing closet space should be the last one.

You are not responsible, she is not responsible, responsibility is a heavy burden you don’t need anything heavy in a one night stand. Drawing lines is always good, one decade younger or two decade older senior citizens not allowed, not even if they are hot we always make exceptions for the rich. Beer is no excuse, beer with pot and X is a good excuse.

bop boople bop bobble booble

We (group of tanukis) that maintain evilasad.com are sorry to inform you that we have grown tired of the crap Asad feeds us. Frankly with our photoshop/html abilities we could be maintaining some other hot site. So we have decided to cut out the middle man and make it look like an accident. Thanks to Sushi/Sashimi/Ginger and Soy Sauce Asad is out of the way. The blog will now be maintained the way it should have always been. badly.