Some “Sentimental Rai” songs:
Cheb Nasro - Ndirek Amour
Cheb Hasni - Dak El Marhoum
Alex loves rape and Beethoven: what do you think that implies?
Stanley Kubrick: I think this suggests the failure of culture to have any morally refining effect on society. Hitler loved good music and many top Nazis were cultured and sophisticated men but it didn’t do them, or anyone else, much good.
When King Faisal had hemorrhoids
‘I want you to make sure tomorrow’, said Faisal, ‘that the people are told precisely what operation I’m having. The Minister of Health will probably dress it up with long medical words, but I want the announcement to use the words that everyone understands – bawassir , piles.’
Robert Lacey – The Kingdom: Arabia & the House of Saʻud
On the possibility of making contact with extraterrestrials
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so enthusiastic about making contact with intelligent extraterrestrials. Scientists point out that on the earth, there are two types of animals: predators like cats, dogs, and tigers (which have eyes to the front of their face, so they stereoscopically zero in on their target) and prey like rabbits and deer (which have eyes to the side of their face in order to look around 360 degrees for the predators). Typically, predators are more intelligent than prey. Tests show that cats are more intelligent than mice, and foxes are more intelligent than rabbits. Humans, with eyes to the front, are also predators. In our search for intelligent life in the heavens, we should keep in mind that the aliens we meet will probably have evolved from predators.
The Origin of Children
“From my own youth, I remember a fantasy concerning the origin of children: after I learned how children are made, I still had no precise idea on insemination, so I thought one has to make love every day for the whole nine months: in woman’s belly, the child is gradually formed through sperm - each ejaculation is like adding an additional brick…”
“The Aka, are … convinced that semen is a nutritive substance that enhances fetal development and leads to healthy babies.
….
The concept of “seminal nurture”—that semen is a kind of milk for developing embryos—is found in many other cultures across the world as well, most notably in South America.”
The hook caught on a rock, and the rope broke, causing the Hodja to fall onto his back. Lying there he saw the moon in the heaven and cried out, “Praise and honor Allah! I injured myself, but at least the moon is back where it belongs.” Nasreddin Hodja Rescues the Moon (Folktales)
Ken Saro-Wiwa’s “Robert and the Dog” conveys the poverty of the mass of Nigerians by the powerful device of Bingo, the dog of Robert’s European wife:
Try as hard as he could, he could not dismiss from his mind the fact that the dog was doing better than himself. And he detested this state of affairs. He could understand a dog being invited to eat up an infant’s faeces. He could understand a stray, mangy dog with flies around its ears being beaten and chased away from the dwellings of men. He could understand a dog wandering around rubbish heaps in search of sustenance. But a dog who slept on the settee, a dog who was fed tinned food on a plate, a dog who was brushed and cleaned, a dog who drank good tinned milk, was entirely beyond his comprehension. On one occasion, the lady took the dog to a doctor. And that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
All that day, Robert felt his stomach turn. And when he got home in the evening and saw his children with distended stomachs gambolling in the filth which simmered in a swollen stream at his door, and watched them hungrily swallow small balls of “eba,” he asked himself, “Who born dog?” And all of a sudden he developed a pathological hatred for Bingo the dog, his master’s dog. All night long, he saw in the eye of his mind, the dog cuddled in the warmth of the settee which he would have to clean and brush in the morning. And he asked himself again and again “Who born dog?”
” Source
