A good day
Today, boys and girls, will be a good post. It will be educational, good natured, and as always - ripe with dry humour. So allow me to start the festivities, if you would.
To start with, I had my Arabic lesson at the regular time. In an unquestioningly conciliatory move my teacher wore an even lower cut shirt than usual (rhymes with ripple, six letters). Its good to because she just recently got pregnant which means…you know….she has a child developing inside of her. I found out today she’s Muslim too, I had always assumed she was a Lebanese Christian due to her lax dress code. Anyway, the lesson went well and I skipped the workout today because I figured going on the weekend would be more enjoyable.
After I got home I called Nima (the BBC contact) and got no answer. She called back in an hour, I identified myself, and she recognized me. She said that the position hadn’t been filled yet but that BBC was in the process of relocating to Dubai Media City, which is very close to my house. She did say that I had been short listed (meaning out of the initial pool of applicants I had made the first cut) and they would make the final decision in mid December. She seemed happy to hear my voice though and stressed that I call her back right around the middle of next month so it’s not looking bad at all. I took the opportunity to do some ass kissing and offer myself to help move into the new locale. She says she’ll get back to me on that.
Dubai Media City sent me an email confirming that they wanted me as a volunteer to help out with the Dubai film festival. They unfortunately sent me the email today when orientation was yesterday but did say that if I couldn’t make it I need only send them a letter saying as much. So that’ll give me something to do in early December.
Now for the goddamn interesting part of this post ... I can almost see your collective bodies leaning forward toward the screen. I’m reading voraciously as I have all this free time and usually get through a book every two days or so. The one I’m working on now is called The Da Vinci Code, a fictional piece which is mostly based on reality. There is some mind-blowing shit in there such as PHI (1.618 - the most beautiful number in the universe). What’s remarkable about this number is how often it comes up in nature. If you measure the distance from the head of your head to the floor (ie - your height) and divide it by the distance between your belly button and the floor you get 1.618. Check out the distance between your shoulders and your fingers tips, then divide this by the distance between your elbow and fingertips. 1.618. Your hip to the floor divided by knees to the floor. Yup, 1.618. Same with finger joints, toes, and spiral divisions. Freaking awesome.
Far from just being in humans its all over the biological world. There are always more female bees than male bees in a naturally occurring beehive. Pick any beehive at random, count the number of female bees and divide them by the number of male bees and guess what the answer always is? 1.618. The ratio of the diameter of the spiral of one nautilus shell in compared to the one further in? 1.618. Sunflowers grow in opposing spirals, and guess what ratio each rotations diameter is to the next? 1.618. Spiralled pinecone petals, leaf arrangements on plant stalks, insect segmentation, it all displays astonishing obedience to this number (also known as the Divine Proportion, because ancients thought it must have been preordained by the Creator of the universe). Tell me that aint fucking cool! And if you cant take my word for it, google it.
Another fascinating thing was about the Mona Lisa. For those of you who don’t know, Leonardo Da Vinci is widely known to have been gay, and was a feminist way back in the day. If you look at the Mona Lisa you’ll see the background behind her face is uneven, with the horizon line on the left significantly lower than the one on the right. The reason for this was that by lowering the countryside on the left, Mona Lisa looked much larger from the left side than from the right one. Conceptions of male and females have historically been assigned sides - with the left being that of the female and the right being that of the male. Because of Di Vinci’s advocacy of female principles he made Mona Lisa look larger than life and more majestic from the left than the right. Then there is the issue of her smile. Why is she smiling so mysteriously? Another inside joke of Da Vinci’s. “AMON” was the Egyptian God of fertility and represented as a man with a ram’s head. His promiscuity and curved horns are related to our modern sexual slang - horny. And the Egyptian Goddess of fertility? Isis, whose previous pictogram was once called L’ISA. Take the letters from both of these words and write them all out. A - M - O -N -L-I-S-A. An anagram (rearrange the letters) for Mona Lisa. Believing that a human soul couldn’t be enlightened unless it had both male and female elements. Thus, the androgynous looking (computerized analysis of some of Leonardo’s self-portraits confirm startling points of similarity to the Mona Lisa) Mona Lisa was a political statement on woman’s rights way back in the day. And Mona Lisa smiles so slyly because she knows this.
Ah well, that is all I got today boys and girls. I hope you learned something and enjoyed it. I aim to please. Alas now I must got and burn dad and mom a copy of the Manchurian Candidate so the family can watch it downstairs. Take it easy, and remember…1.618 Let the responses begin.
Peace