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Serious satire
"Humor is a funny way of being serious"
-Thomas Edison
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Copyright© 2001-2010, Renato Obeid
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"Top blog/Renato Obeid's World/Today's pick: This rambling weblog is worth reading not so much for its satirical posts but more for its insight into the minutiae of life in Lebanon, including the etiquette of road accidents and how to hire a taxi.”
-Jane Perrone, The Guardian
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
A neighbour (of the dry laconic sardonic type endemic to this part of the country) was telling me about a Saudi he knew who wasn’t particularly clean. ‘’He got around to washing his d---* let him wash his face too’’.
*The longer more comprehensive Muslim ritualistic ablutions, which are conducted before major events like Friday prayers, a pilgrimage etc, include washing the private parts.
I can’t actually read or write Arabic but I think that if I wait around a couple of years I won’t need to. Lebanese Arabic transliterated into Latin letters is fast becoming all the rage here especially amongst the younger internet generation. In Lebanese internet chat rooms you won’t see a stitch of Arabic script but Lebanese Arabic written in Latin script. In fact Latin font is the only script allowed in the ICQ Lebanon chat room for example (ostensibly because some computers don't support Arabic font). My young cousins will chat away for hours in instant message exchanges on the internet with their friends in Arabic written in Latin script. I’ve even seen advertisements in newspapers and on billboards, television promos and blogs that employ the same technique. Lebanese Arabic could eventually go the same way as Turkish which abandoned the Arabic script for the Latin script they now use.
2:45 pm
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