Since nobody asked for it...

Back by popular silence, the long winded tirades will soon commence. This blog will hopefully carry forward in the whimsical traditions of the critically acclaimed Sense and Senseibility. However, a warning to the internet generation whose attention span now approaches that of a meth-addled kitten, I am going to be a bit more bi-polar in this corner of the blogosphere. I'm writing a series of essays, tentatively titled "Shards of Sand," which will explore a more serious side of the middle east in painfully flowery poetic language. You will of course be duly warned before one of these thought provoking monstrosities appear. The ultimate goal of this will be to finish a book length anthology. "Anthology" is of course Latin for "too god damned lazy to finish that novel you're supposed to be working on."

I would like to find an Indian somewhere to do some pro-bono html work for me so that this thing doesn't look like some grandmother learned what the word "template" meant, and actually give it a decent layout, but we'll see how that goes.

Most of you, and I don't really know who "you" are, also missed out on the last couple years in China and Southeast Asia, so I will probably go back into the vault and pull out some flashback pieces on some of the more cringe-inducing moments of that culture clashing clusterfuck. Also, there will be swearing. The public demands it!

Some of you may be perceptive enough to notice that I live in Saudi Arabia, but all of the early posts are about Oman. I'd like to work through all of the Omani stuff, since I was there for a year before I came here, and also because I haven't done anything worth writing about in Saudi to date...and there really isn't a whole lot to do. I'll be in Saudi Arabia for the next 22 months unless I get fired, and I plan on taking most if not all of my vacations to other parts of the Middle East, or MEAST as nobody in particular calls it. I've got a flight to Lebanon in September and I'm leaning toward Syria in November. Egypt looks likely for the spring of next year. After that Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia might be in order. I'd like to go to Israel but apparently they don't let you back into Saudi Arabia if you've got an Israeli stamp on your passport.

For any of you who are wondering, Yes, I am going to try to get into Mecca and Medina. No, I don't know how or if it's possible. The area is off limits to non-Muslims, but it's a pretty easy conversion process, and since I don't think they've created a device that can detect trace elements of holy water yet, they shouldn't be able to figure out I was Baptized.

I will end on a more serious note, because after all I'm not 23 anymore, and I'm painfully sober every day. There are a staggering amount of misconceptions out there on both sides of this fence. The only consistent aspect of human nature that I've observed in all my travels is that young men want booze and sex, regardless of any qualifications, and women want to take advantage of drunk puss-hounds and make them look stupid by robbing them blind. Alright fine it wasn't Shakespeare, but I'd rather you, the royal "you," find out about how the Middle East and Arabic culture operate from me, than from Bill O' Reilly. Fair enough? Great.