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In a meeting among many many meetings last week I heard this phrase " I think that’s a great idea, in fact I’d go as far as to say that is an insurmountable opportunity"
I’m still pondering this one. When I finally find meaning in it I think I may possibly unleash some law regarding oxymorons that will change my universe and render me immune to mendacity.
In contrast I also heard last week a phrase that will go down as amongst one of my most treasured memories.
It snowed this Saturday and I was at a fund raising pre-valentine party where people were being sold off with no pretense of an offered skill or function, a simple "if you fancy me enough please buy me" auction. It consisted of a large circle of previously bought and soon to be bought people (a never-ending cycle of victims), standing around a small enclosed space in which the latest flesh on offer stood with an expression I thought I would only ever encounter in a Dickens’ novel. An orphaned look of forlorn, needy, hopeful embarrassment. Shortly after arriving, after witnessing three girls gather in the middle to the cry of "what more could you want? A blond a brunette and a redhead" I found myself trying to persuade my flatmate Alvise to brave the snow to go meet our other flatmate Jake, who had wisely skipped the party in favour of a quiet bar and a warm drink of scotch.
The snow was deep and we were dressed lightly having been given a lift to the party from home but I was adamant that he was being a wuss for not coming. I was fierce in my criticism and so felt particularly guilty when none of the emotional manipulation worked and he in fact turned in the direction of home while I, with three of his friends that I had stolen, started the downhill slide towards U street and inebriation.
I was in the middle of saying how maybe I had been too hard on Alvise, how maybe he would have come if I hadn’t called him names, when his first snowball hit me in the head. Through my cries of joy that he had joined us I wasted no time in employing the same logic pioneered by Bush, Cheney and my other heroes and promptly scooped up a snowball and launched an attack on Thomas who was standing innocently by.
The ensuing snowball fight resulted in us taking two hours to traverse two blocks.
I digress though, the phrase I mentioned, the moment that memories are made of, came at the point where Jake had joined us from the bar. All of us were fairly drunk at this point, and had started a snowball fight that had spread chaos along the sidewalks of u street. Jake, wielding a mean right arm combined with eagle eyed accuracy, was mercilessly pelting pedestrians with the cry "There are no neutral bystanders in this war". In answer to the plaintive appeal of one reveler who, after attempting to throw a couple of snowballs, wept "I am drunk and tired and I just want to go home" Jake had cried cheerfully, whilst lamping him in the face with a snowball "Don’t worry we’ll soon turn on each other in a degenerate style with no honour" as, uncannily, Alvise attacked him from the rear.
In the middle of this all, Alex, a half Iraqi half English waif we had befriended, raised above his head a veritable mountain of snow that he had lifted off a nearby car. With a cry of "JIIIIHAAAD" he started running full pelt down the road towards Alvise and his flatmate Onur who were lobbing snow grenades from a distance. In time with his frantically beating legs he continued to scream "Jihad jihad jihad" in a high pitched yell, bearing down closer and closer on the rapidly retreating Alvise and Onur. At this point U street, it’s vendors, pedestrians, homecomers, homeless and hopeless, had all stopped, open mouthed, breathless, half disbelieving what they were hearing, to watch as the drama unfolded. As Alex bore down on Onur and Alvise, the distance between them now barely a metre, he gave one final yell of "Jihad" before suddenly, quite unexpectedly, he slipped on a frozen grate.
For a moment time suspended and Alex was caught mid fall, one leg pointing skywards, buttocks falling grate-wards, head thrown up towards the sky mid yell, his arms reaching up as if to grasp and embrace the mound of snow poised mid air ruthlessly above his head. And then, just as the eye had gathered it in, he fell, the snow landing nicely on his head as Onur, laconically and compassionately, leant forward and uttered the immortal phrase:
"What is your cause my friend? Why did you become a suicide bomber?"
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