Final Islamic Days

So, I have to buy a fucking rug. Bargaining here is, needless-to-say, very annoying. I'm not sure I can get a good price or get things that are good quality. Does it matter? Only if one cares about pride regarding either price or quality. I'll do my best.

I saw Rabat, which I liked quite a bit even though other peope said to skip it. I guess I'm a sucker for castles, Roman ruins and graveyards over the ocean. Now, I'm in Fes for my last days. Fes is THE imperial city, they say. These AT-ATs better be good.

I liked my sister's Islamic hand on her door so I searched Marekesh for a hand. After all, maybe my big problem in life is that people have been casting evil eyes against me. After about an hour of hassle, all I found was bronze poorly cut and dented like childrens work and jewelry that cost way too much. I finally found a clearly mass made metal hand, but it has felt on the back. The felt shows age, but its clearly not hand made or unique. None-the-less, it was the best thing I had found. I asked how much and was told 700 duram (80 dollars). I offered 150 (18 dollars) which was still way, way too much. The thing is worth like 4 bucks. The guy said I was crazy and I told him he was crazy and I left in an angry huff. His partner ran after me and we made the deal quickly. So, now I have a metal hand. That's their strategy. They shoot astronomically high, you pick something still way too high and the deal is done.

I'm not looking forward to my trip back. My flight is at 7:55 in the morning. Now, the airport is 100 kilometers outside of Casa, so it takes an hour to get there. That means I should leave for the airport at the airport at 4:55. To make things worse, the only cheap transport stops at midnight. Then its 3 hours to Paris, 3 hour layover and 7 back to the US, then the subway home. Ug.

Then, few vacations for a while. Where will I go to enjoy cafes with gangster rap?

Escape from the South

Luck was with me on Thanksgiving and I caught a taxi out of Tafrout with three young Berbers and a young French hippie mother with a 5 year old child (she was dating a surfer Berber and the kid wasn't his). They didn't cut my throught (ahamduleela) and I got to Taroudant and had Thanksgiving with an American couple from Oregon, a Frenchman who only spoke French and Spanish and a Corsican artist who was here to paint naked Moroccan men. Chicken Tagine replaced turkey. Getting out of Taroudant proved more difficult (7 hours on a slow bus), but I made it back to Marekesh. The city is oddly comforting the 3rd time around. I know where the good shwarma is and the hotel people love me for coming back a third time. I'm going to try to get to Fes before leaving via Casa but I am very sick of buses. Its five hours to Rabat. I'm not sure if I can tolerate it. Well, Thanksgiving weekend is all about the pain of traveling, right?

Thanksgiving in Tafrout

No, Tiznit was not quite the shiznit. I only spent a few hours there, but it seemed to be nothing more than a dusty transit town. It had a nice wall and people were generally shocked to a foreigner there. A school full of kids crowded around me while I waited for the bus. This is standard for many places I've been. It was charming until they started asking for pens and then durham.

I finally was able to catch a bus to the small village of Tafrout. With a population of 5000 and only a handful of travelers, I was expecting a kind group. Sadly, its just easier for them to find me, harass me intensely or cheat me. I said to one, "you must come to terms with the fact that I will never come to your shop; then you will be free". It didn't work. Tafrout is hardcore muslim with women scarcely seen and when they are, they are fully covered in dark black like fundamentalist Iranians.

The nice thing is that Tafrout is in a breathtaking valley with palm trees, weird rock formations and clean air. I could spend weeks hiking around here. Its too bad the sun sets at 5:30 and I have evenings to kill. There's no one to talk to and nothing to do. If only I had a book other than the LP Morocco guide.

Well, it'll likely be a boring Thanksgiving.

Ocean City for Saudis (minus funnel cake, plus whores)

After leaving the delightful (and touristy) Essouria, I caught a bus down the coast for Agadir. The bus passed through miles and miles of goats in trees and by breathetaking bluffs before arriving at the very clean and modern Agadir. (The goats in trees eat nuts that are later harvested from their poo to make fine oils for expensive cooking).

Strangely, I miss the dirt, hassle and poverty of the north. I have entered a beach holiday city for people that don't get into swimsuits and hate to tan. Oh sure, there are a few French people, but Moroccans and Saudis line the boardwalk, eating ice cream and holding hands (the men hold hands with eachother, that is). The Saudis are easy to spot. They are much fatter than Moroccans and the women either wear super-eloborate, princess-like covering or sweatsuits.

Cheezy restaurants that sport live singers line the boardwalk. Again, McDonalds is the best place to watch the sun set. Beggers are well fed, well groomed and put in little effort. I'm assuming that any woman who sits at a cafe alone in this town is a prostitute. Like any other beach city, other than eat and people watch, there's not much to do. Supposedly there's an active club life here, but I don't have much urge to pay western prices to dance with prostitutes at 3 am.

I never understood the existance of places like Ocean City. The expensive, yet trashy appeal seems to be universal. I'll be off to mountains again tomorrow.

More Royal Than the King

Like most stupid Americans, my concept of Morocco was a large marketplace filled with Arab men in fezes trying to sell me crap while the monkey on their shoulder screached and a little boy picked my pocket.

Well, I've only seen maybe five fezes, three monkeys, zero pickpockets and the sales preasure is way below that of an Egyptian of a Vietnamese (Allah willing).

These Berbers though fit the mold better. While only half of the Arab women even wear head covering, all Berber women do. Arab women, if they do wear them, don't seem to start until maybe 14. The Berbers have toddlers covered.

Berbers also seem to hassel people more. Maybe its because they are poorer or maybe its because you're an isolated target in their small village. They also live in the dessert, ride camels and are very dark. Whatever-the-case, they seem more Moroccan than Moroccan just as the Afghans are more Muslim than Muslim and Worf is more Klingon than Klingon.

Arabs, being the vast majority, are free to do as they please while Berbers, being isolated, need to act their role. Like an only son with the obligation to carry on the family name, the Berber must be hardcore. Either that or they don't know better.

(On a side note, there are things worse than working at McDonalds or being a Jizz mopper. Tanning leather is the worst job ever, I've decided.)

When People Asume You Speak French

Being a foreigner in Morocco, people natually want to sell shit to me. They cannot since I speak English and they only speak Arabic and French. It puzzles them quite a bit, almost as much as this Arabic keyboard with the A in the Q spot and the M in the semicolon spot. In this crazy world, foreigners speak French.

Luckily Im travling with an ex-french foreign legion Belgian who knows French. He is dying of blood cancer and is visiting the widows of his dead war buddies all who died from blood cancer. They all got cancer from radiation from bombs dropped in Bosnia. He and one other are left out of 16. Hes on widow 11. What a quest.

Morocco is beautiful- its like a dumpy Spain or Turkey. People dont harrass you that much unlike say Egypt or Nam. They dont stare, but they look out of the corner of their eye like the Japanese. The women are mostly covered, but they still flash eyes at you at the last second when you pass by. Their coyness is very striking. Casa was quite a gross city and its much better in Marakesh, but I was expecting it to be warmer. I havent broken out the shorts yet.

Insight? I have none. My brain still is jetlagged.

On

We all understand, at least on a subsidence level, that there is a place for things to be.

A mustache belongs on a face and, thus you shave it off. A fingernail belongs on a finger, thus you cut it off. Clothes belong on bodies, thus you take them off.

If an athlete is not doing as well as he should be, he is said to be having an off day. When an archer misses his target, something he should hit, he is off his mark. When a person has gone insane he is said to be a little off.

Things are generally supposed to exist so when something is eradicated, it is killed off. Furthermore, we are supposed to be working and in school so days we are not are days off. Ovens are supposed to cook and irons are supposed to iron so when they are not, they are considered off.

But every essence my being says that I’m not supposed to be in a cube staring at a screen. I’m not supposed to be wasting my existence doing nothing pretending its something so I can earn money, which is essentially nothing, but allows me to buy stuff that is also essentially nothing. I’m not supposed to be working, I’m not supposed to be in DC and I’m not even supposed to be in the US, despite being an American.

So today, it’s not beginning of my vacation; it’s the beginning of my occupation. It’s not the beginning of my days off; it’s the beginning of my days on. I am not off to North Africa; I’m on to North Africa.

(So fuck on, all you jack ons. I hope you figure out where you’re supposed to be.)

Playing the Probabilities

Our world is chock full of game theory situations. Some of them we play on a conscious level and others we play on a subconscious level. Still others we are unaware of. In some situations, we would actually benefit from taking more time to calculate things.

Say you have a diamond that a thief is trying to steal. You possess two safes, one at work and one at home. And say the thief only has time to go to one of your safes and will only try for one evening. He has a 90% chance of cracking the safe at home and a 50% chance of cracking the safe at work. You and the thief both know this information. Which safe do you hide your diamond in?

Many would choose the safe route and choose the one at work since the thief has a 50% chance of cracking it. 50% is better than 90% right? In truth, you can do better than those odds. After all, if the thief chose work and you chose home, he would have a 0% chance of getting the diamond. Of course, if the thief thought you would purposely put it in the weaker of the safes, he might try for it there and now he has a 90% chance. You can second-guess each other all day like the Sicilian from Princess Bride, but this is never-ending speculation. Second-guessing each other is likely to go your way 50% of the time. This means the thief is likely to get your diamond 35% the time (0% averaged by the average of 50% and 90%)

You can still do better. The best system is to randomize your choices to an optimal level. If 64% of the time, you put the diamond in the better safe, and 36% of the time, you put the diamond in the worse safe, the thief’s odds of getting the diamond drop to 32% no matter which safe he chooses. Even if the thief finds out that you have randomized your choices, it is in his best interest to randomize his response and flip a coin to decide where to go. The nicest aspect of the randomization is that you do not have to regret anything. If the thief gets your diamond, you say, “oh, well, that’s my luck” and you do not have to obsess about which safe you should have chosen.

So, how does this relate to non-diamond thieves?

Say you are trying to decide whether you should marry someone and they are trying to decide if they should marry you. If you both choose “marry”, the relationship will continue. If one chooses “marry” and other person doesn’t, the relationship will end. If you both choose not to marry, the relationship will also continue.

So let’s add some math to this. Let’s say that Person A is slightly happier unmarried and Person B is slightly happier married. Both are much worse off broken up. What should Person A and Person B do if the marriage question arises?

................................................Person A
.........................................Marry....... Not Marry

Person B.......... Marry..... 40, 80...... 20, 20
.................Not Marry..... 20, 20....... 90, 30


Now, if we look at the happiness levels above, we find that if both choose “marry”, Person A has a 40% chance at happiness while Person B has a 80% chance. If both choose “not marry”, Person A has a 90% chance of happiness while Person B has a 30% chance. If they mismatch their choices, they break up and both only have a 20% chance at happiness.

Now, in this situation, if either person leads, the other will have to reluctantly follow. If Person A declares, “I don’t want to get married,” Person B will respond, “I don’t either” (since 30% is still more than 20%). Conversely, if Person B declares, “I want to get married,” Person A will respond, “I do too” (since 40% is still greater than 20%). So, whoever goes first wins.

Realizing this, though, both would want to declare their intentions first which would result in simultaneous declarations. Simultaneous declarations, though, would lead to other choices. If Person B spat out “marry”, they would have a 50% chance at happiness (80% + 20% by 2), but they also know that Person A has a 55% percent chance of happiness spitting out “not marry”. Would “not marry” be a better choice? What if they plan on saying “marry” thinking I will say it? As you see, this would to lead to second-guessing again.

If Person B picked a word on a 50/50 split (second-guessing Person A), they would have 37.5% chance (80% + 20% + 30% + 20% divided by 4) at happiness assuming that Person A also second-guessed Person B. Person A would have a 42.5% (40% + 20% + 90% + 20% divided by 4) chance or happiness. Second-guessing is this case actually has better odds than following the other person’s lead.

Of course, optimal randomization is best the solution. If Person A randomized their choices and chose “marry” 65% of the time and “not marry” 35% of the time, they would have over a 45% chance of happiness (.65 * .55 + .35 *. 30). Now, if Person B also randomized, things would get more complicated, especially if they knew that they are both randomizing. If they did, calculations would shift and eventually settle with both parties choosing something close to an even split of saying “marry” versus “not marry” (the final resting place would favor both parties saying “marry” slightly since Person A is proportionally happiest there).

So, what has all this horrid math taught us? Leading can be very advantageous. Additionally, the fear of following a choice can force a person to choose faster since following can be an inferior position. (Who wants to be stuck in a position where someone is asking “where is this going?”) Additionally, random action and especially weighted random action can lead to optimal situations. Most importantly, weighted random action frees human beings from obsession and regret.

Thank goodness no one lives in the world of Person A and Person B, right?

From Mockery to Adoption

I remember the first days of the Beastie Boys. Three white boys joked around and made ridiculous raps about girls, White Castle and getting drunk. They flaunted the most comical clothing of hip-hop at the time. It was like they were in costumes with their weird hats, gold chains and oversized Adidas. The suburbs liked it because it funny. It was funny and then it wasn’t. I don’t mean that it became unfunny or tired like Andrew Dice Clay. Instead, it became normal.

Years later, friends of mine mocked rockers who wore studded clothing and referred to guitars and “axes”. They also joked about their outlandish “tats” containing girls, skulls and other tasteless items. My friends adopted the language, the clothing and the ink ironically. Then, it all seemed very natural.

It seems a very odd transition to go from mocking to liking. I know people that have done it with professional wrestling and monster truck rallies. I know girls that have done it with boy bands and the Simpson sisters. Some watched 90210 (and later the OC) at first for the camp and then it was for the drama.

This phenomenon is puzzling and perhaps I am guilty of it with something. It scares me as well. The Blue Collar Comedy Tour and their TV show made the American south the butt of the joke. Somehow poverty and ignorance were satirized. Then, it seemed they were glorified. The audience was not rich, educated people laughing condescendingly at how backward people could be; it was the South laughing at itself. They laughed proudly at themselves with cheers and calls.

Ironic satire to proud assimilation. Why do people do this? Why do Republicans become bigger and bigger pricks with time and have even more outrageous pundits speaking for them? Why is alcoholism on the rise in Ireland? Why do gay people become flaming? How can MTV keep putting on those Real World shows?

I think back to Sisyphus and his eternal fight with the boulder. He tries and tries to push that boulder up, but fails. If only his chore were to push it down. That would be a lot easier. Well, Sisyphus wasn’t delusional enough to define up as down, but we non-underworld dwellers seem to switch good and bad all the time for our own convenience. If you can’t beat them, join them.

People know certain music is crap and yet its infectious so they embrace it. Rednecks can’t rise from their puddle of shit so they roll in it merrily. Republicans are sick of complicated problems and the pain of caring for others so they only think of themselves. Stupid people can’t think so they hate intellectuals. Perhaps all of that initial mocking was an attempt to convince themselves of something. They failed so they embraced it ten-fold.

The Choice to Restrict Freedom

Free will is perhaps the most thought about subject in the history of humanity. Whether it’s Oedipus or the last of the Ten Little Indians in a zombie flick, the struggle against destiny defines the human condition. Add God into the mix and you get paradox with your opiate.

Woody Allen wrote this in his play entitled “God”:

WRITER: But you're saying God comes in at the end and saves everything.

ACTOR: I love it! It gives the people their money's worth.

DORIS: He's right. It's like those Hollywood Bible movies.

WRITER: But if God saves everything, man is not responsible for his actions.

ACTOR: You wonder why you're not invited to more parties . . .

DORIS: But without God, the universe is meaningless. Life is meaningless. We're meaningless. (Deadly pause) I have a sudden and overpowering urge to get laid.

http://members.fortunecity.com/bookdepository/plays/god/god2.html

Yes, if God exists, man has no free will. Evil is caused by the devil, God has a plan, you have a role and there are no choices of your own. Nothing is man’s fault because God created the universe and nothing is man’s responsibility because God will save us. The comforting bosom of a higher power and universal meaning leave man with no choices and no freedom. Even if God’s plan isn’t set and there is no predestination, we’re still left with the choice of God’s laws or infinite agony. Some choice. It’s God’s way or the highway (to hell).

Though this tired “destiny versus free will” may seem like only an abstract concept, it, like pretty much everything, really just tells us about ourselves.

In life, we are given choices and freedom. Like swimming alone at sea, this freedom is not always what we want so we limit ourselves for comfort. Sure, we can see this in the government with the Patriot Act and extra security measures, but we choose to limit ourselves all the time in our every day life.

In relationships, we make a deal with our significant other not to change our minds through marriage. It is not good enough that two people would enjoy each other’s company. The freedom of choice must be taken away to give comfort (and some would say meaning) to the relationship.

We sign contracts with businesses. We buy homes. We form friendships. We ground ourselves with obligations. Those without jobs and homes and friends are seen as having meaningless existences. Like a leashed dog, we hold ourselves back and protect ourselves from choosing a less comfortable and “meaningless” path. That way we can’t fuck up and be responsible for our own destiny.