I just purchased my round-trip tickets from Chicago to Amman a few minutes ago, and as I watch the various confirmation emails flow into my inbox (from the purchasing website, the airline, and from the credit card company wondering why I’m making such large purchases) a range of conflicting emotions are starting to flow in as well.

The tickets have me leaving on the 20th of August, which means that I literally have 25 days remaining in the country of my birth before leaving for four months to teach computer hardware in a country where I can’t yet speak more than a dozen words of the native language. I’ll be leaving behind all of my family, all of my friends, and the rather cozy Wisconsin fall climate. I won’t be back until Christmas, and then only for a week. I won’t know anyone except my new colleague/guide in my new home, and I don’t know whether my students will like me or not, or whether I’ll even be an effective teacher.

Those are the worries that I have. However, at the same time for the first time in weeks, I’m quite calm when I think about the future because I know that I’ll be doing something I love – teaching computer hardware – and helping the Iraqis who need it. Hopefully, I can use my almost a decade of experience with circuits, cables, and troubleshooting for their benefit. Many of my friends can attest to the enthusiasm which I talk for hours about how aspects of computer hardware or software work (often far beyond the point where they’ve stopped caring and are just in “smile and nod mode”) and I hope that this love that I have for sharing my knowledge can translate into Arabic. Heck, it will probably be a good experience to make me slow down, choose my words thoughtfully, and be more concise!

I just turned 22 a couple days ago. It’s a weird feeling – it’s like 21 is the last time when you can be a kid, or a student, and party and be a little crazy and not be concerned about things. I want to make these last 25 days in America count, and spend as much time as I can with the friends and family that mean so much to me. Just like they always say though, I have a feeling that the days will fly by even faster as the sun sets on my time in Madison.

I went out to see The Dark Knight yesterday evening, and of course I couldn’t let the opportunity for a simple yet visceral theatrical experience pass me by. Although originally a few other people that I went with planned on dressing up too, in the end it was just me. I don’t quite have Heath Ledger’s bone structure, so I couldn’t pull it off entirely (his face is much broader than mine) but I liked the results, especially since I kept it pretty close to his interpretation. It’s too bad we’ll never get to see him play another role as the Joker.

I wish I could have dressed as him too, but oddly enough, I couldn’t seem to find anyone that actually owns a purple suit. I ended up just wearing a purple t-shirt over a green button-up shirt, and then throwing a tie in for good measure. It wasn’t a very good costume, but people got the idea.

I saw this epic scene as I was walking home from work; my eye caught by an uneven shuffling near the corner of the wall next to my feet. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was one of those things that you only really hear about in middle school biology classes: a tiny black ant of the standard Wisconsin variety, tugging the hulking carcass of a massive bumblebee. Or was it a carcass? With some sense of anthropomorphizing morbidity, I noted that the bee’s legs were still kicking feebly, and one wing fluttered as the ant stubbornly dragged his victim along. Although I thought the motion could have just been attributed to the bumping and dragging over the tiny pebbles, the ant stopped as my shadow loomed over him and started to fumble for my camera. The bee kicked twice, twitched, and then was still again, confirming that the huge insect was still (somewhat) alive.

I wondered what had happened that this duet was able to come to pass. Probably, the bee had more than likely stung someone or something, and being only a bumblebee with one sting in its life, was dying when the ant came across it in the dust. I suspect that this particular ant was definitely going to move up in the world. Top Drone, I hope.

The ant, sensing that the paparazzi had come to witness his superhuman strength, turned from his parallel course with me and began to determinedly carry the bee up the wall to his right. It was quite amazing to watch – the ant never faltered or changed speed at all as he rotated, backwards, 90 degrees, and I found myself wishing that my camera’s puny 3x optical zoom was closer to 30x. I can only imagine how on earth he was able to move so fast, backwards, vertically, while carrying a victim four or five times his size. He was moving so fast that my little point and shoot (definitely lacking the ability to capture motion in low-light situations) couldn’t even create an image without blur. I was glad to get the plant in the picture though, to showcase which way is upwards (would I lie to you?)

Let’s all be very glad that ants are tiny creatures. We would be in a lot of trouble if they were closer to our size. More specifically, we would all be dead.

Over the past few months, this video has been showing up all over Facebook’s news feed. People of all political backgrounds have been watching it and have been justifibly disgusted by the conduct of the Israeli Defense Force. The video is a little long, but it’s highly worth the watch – especially at the end, when the woman from the IDF contradicts everything you’ve just watched. I encourage you to be your own judge. As I watched this video I looked for loopholes and fabrications, but could find none. Although I understand that perspective is always going to be an issue, please watch this video, and let me know your thoughts.

As far as I can tell, this video is from its official source on Google Video, with an account name that is identical the original videographer. This is real, sickening footage. I don’t want to believe that this is true…but I can’t help it.

A year and a half ago, when I first visited Washington D.C. as an activist and not a tourist, I was a little worried, uncomfortable, and put off when the organization I was about to join, the Campus Antiwar Network, turned their chants from the illegal occupation of the nation of Iraq into “Free, free Palestine! Long live the Intifada!” I had never before read anything or studied anything about the Palestine/Israel conflict, and all I knew that I had Jewish friends and a Jewish aunt, and they were all nice people, and there was a lot stuff happening on both sides I didn’t understand. For that protest in January 2007 and for many months afterward, I respectfully maintained a silence during that particular chant, as I was unwilling mentally commit myself to supporting the Palestine cause as many of my fellow activists did.

However, a year and a half with activists in meetings, discussions, and watching some rather disturbing films with eyewitness testimony have resulted in a sick feeling of revolting similarity between the illegal occupation of Iraq and the illegal occupation of Palestine. I just finished reading Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, the controversial treatise by former president Jimmy Carter, and found my concerns about Israel’s insane foreign policy justified. I wish that I had read the book when it originally came out in late 2006 instead of over a year later, but I’m ashamed that I had no inkling or interest in activism at that point.

I found Carter’s frankness and colloquial writing style very engaging, and was able to read the ~250 page book within a couple of days. Carter’s description of his earliest engagements with Israel as a man who was “infatuated with the Holy Land” having taught Bible lessons for 20 years and visiting in 1973 before becoming president, viewing the “Palestinian problem” with a sideline concern provides details of his perspective’s metamorphosis. This is a man who has arguably spent more time in the occupied areas of Palestine than the vast majority of Israeli citizens and therefore would be considered by an objective audience to be a very qualified, non-biased reviewer of the situation.

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I was on my way home after walking a friend back to her apartment when I saw the flashing red lights of a fire department vehicle about a block away, just across the street from my office building. I walked up to see what was going on, and was treated to this beautiful sight of the fire hydrant being flushed, framed in the glow of the fire truck behind it. Fire hydrants put out a lot of water, and I stood for a few minutes and watched the huge arc the jet of the hydrant made, the droplets fanning out and almost reaching the other side of the street about ten feet away; quite the distance. Behind me, trickles and rivulets streamed down the slight slope of Charter Street and vanished beneath darkened cars, gurgling away into the hidden drains. The fire department guy monitoring the whole situation sat on a bench nearby, smoking a cigarette and watching me with bland curiosity as I snapped a few pictures. I guess he was too used to the whole thing to notice how beautiful it was.

We had just gotten back home from watching Wall-E, which I haven’t yet heard a single bad review of from either professional nor word of mouth (we agreed that it was an amazingly adorable film). My friend and I had planned on just biking from my apartment to the theater, then catching the bus back, but I seem to have this gremlin-like ability to repel Madison Metro buses away from me when I need them. So we ended up taking an unplanned bike-back as well, for a total of around 15 miles or so. Ironically, we were a mile into the trip when the very bus we thought we’d missed roared past us, getting all the green lights (as we got the red ones shortly afterward) and vanishing quickly over a massive hill. The route took us through Speedway, which is a darkened path with a cemetery on either side. Lightning was already crackling in the distance, which of course made for a stereotypical Frankenstein-esque scene on either sides of the road as we biked through it. I wouldn’t have been half-surprised to see a hunched figure, illuminated in a dim glow, unearthing ancient remains beneath a crumbling tomb.

After I got home, the heavens pulled a fire hydrant imitation and started roaring, just barely missing drenching me completely with bullet-sized droplets and soaking the windowsill of my bedroom. At least that part of the night worked out well!