Ms .45's mp3/bureaucratic/gaming blog.

Friday, October 20, 2006

I'm supposed to be writing an essay

What do you do when you're supposed to be researching and writing a 5000 word essay on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood? Why, read comics of course!

I found Thingpart through the Daytrotter website and have been stuck here for two hours. Highlights include:

Number 47

Number 42

Number 57

(They have titles, I just don't wanna blow the punchline.)

Daytrotter is surprisingly good. I've never thought of myself as one of those indie square glass and cardigan wearing hipsters, but I've found a lot of music I quite like on the Daytrotter site, although it usually takes a few listens to grow on me.

Go here for a mindless orgy of downloading, but you should probably check out the artist pages (and the illustrations). People I've liked recently have included Langhorne Slim, The High Strung and Thao Nguyen.

Missed Easily - The High Strung

should totally be released as a single.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Anti yatakallamina aarabii?

I've been taking Arabic* classes for the last few months, with limited success - I can read tolerably well, especially once I already know a word, but I can't pronounce worth shit and I need more vocabulary. I occasionally check out news at Al-Masry Al-Youm (Egypt Daily), not because I can actually read it, but because it's kinda exciting to realise that I can now easily read English words like "Condoleezza Rice" and "Washington" as well as common Arabic words (from, in, and - hotel, long, old).

If you scroll down on this blog, there's an interesting post on the use of words like "alhamdulillah" and "insha'allah". Suffice to say, the author likens them to the invocation of God in everyday English.

*Modern Standard - my teacher is Egyptian (the New Zealanders of the Middle East), which I assume will have interesting effects on my accent.