The Irony

The Arab Creativity

Gotan Project will release their newest album on April 20th 2010, called Tango 3.0

The album cover will originally look like this

In the Arab world, it will look like this

Lebanese Politicians Playing Football

Bobby McFerrin will not like this

During my visit to Beirut (my hometown) last week, and during my ritual visits to Virgin Megastore there, I spotted Bobby McFerrin’s new album on the shelves. I ran over to snatch it before someone else does, and the image above was what I saw.

The album’s name is Vocabularies, translated clearly on the album cover in many languages. The idiocy of the Lebanese General Security shown in 2 ways:

1. They erased the Hebrew translation in black marker without knowing what it meant, and knowing full well that Lebanon does not have anything against the Hebrew language.
2. They only erased 1 of the 2 Hebrew words written on the cover.

When will this absurdity stop? When will they become civilized human beings in dealing with culture and art?

Please leave my music alone!

Music Was My Idea

I've been absent for a while from my "battikhosphere", as I've been working on a new project, another breathing space for me, specialized for music blogs, thoughts, releases, and whatever comes to my empty head.

The new blog is called "Music Was My Idea", even though music is too big to be anybody's idea, but I like the name.

I won't kill this blog, I've been doing what I'm doing and spoiling everyone minds since 2006, and planning to keep doing the same.

You can find my music blog here: http://www.musicwasmyidea.com

On Time

I always find it difficult to explain to people that the expression "time" does not exist, and that it is a misconception of what we usually relate that term to.

Imagine sitting in a sealed dark room, with no view of the outside world whatsoever, and of course without a wrist watch, a mobile phone, or any other device that has those figures on it. You don't know how long you've been there, until someone comes in and asks you "what time is it?".

This example shows you that time is usually misinterpreted into a standard, tangible, and existential duration that has a fixed standard starting point, while it is not, nor it will ever be.

It happens, by complete accurate random luckiness that we don't have any control over, that:

• The Earth makes a complete rotation around itself in a very accurate way that makes each complete rotation equal to the previous one.
• The Moon makes a full trip around the Earth every 27.3 times the Earth rotates around itself, which the Earth sees as 29.5 due to its own rotation around the Sun.
• The Earth makes a full trip around the Sun every 365.24 times the Earth rotates around itself.

All this is done with complete randomness, and human beings invented "time" as a map to measure the events that took place within their space and duration using the earth's movement.

What would human beings have done, if say for example, they woke up and the Earth was at a still point in space?

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass

From the people who brought you the Treadmill video, OK Go has done it again with this astonishing attempt that never fails to amaze us.

After a long dispute with EMI, I, along with so many other fans, am able to embed this video into my blog.

Now enjoy the video and keep in my mind that it was shot in one take!

Goodbye Earth

Art by Chase Stone

Original post on COOLVIBE

Oh Canada!

On February 21st, Canada was beaten in Hockey by the U.S. team in Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Of course this win is massive considering border hockey wars between the North American countries, but this is how the Canadian fans responded... Priceless!

Original post here

Live By The Gun, Die By The Gun

His wife was waiting for him in the car, it was her wedding night, but her husband had a different fate waiting for him when his uncle, stupidly pulled his gun to shoot a "celebratory" gunshot in the air, when it accidentally hit the groom in the head. They said that they carry guns to protect themselves from thieves... Hmmm

Growing up during wartime in the west side of Beirut, I've seen a lot of guns, rifles, bombs, robbers, thieves, criminals, warlords, and all the things you see in a movie while you're crunching on some pop corn.

No matter where you come from, or what your background is, guns are just wrong. How can a human mind, comprehend that it's alright to hold a piece of metal, and decide whether the opposite person gets to live or die?