The Intelligence Curse

I will never understand why people think “intelligence” to be a quality: In my opinion it’s a curse. yes, this is experience talking.

When you are intelligent, you are blessed with an amount of intellect which is going to facilitate surviving everyday life. If you study you will get good grades. You will get a good job. You will buy a fuel-efficient car. You will invest in property and maybe win a little more than an average person in Poker. You will have your moments of brilliance, and people will laugh at your jokes. Your parents will boast about the grades you got, the competition you won, the books you read, the awards you got. You will have friends and you’ll make merry on Christmas. If luck has it, ceteris paribus, life will be good.

However you will always be very acutely aware of you being intelligent but not brilliant ; How far away you are from ever doing anything genius. In the gallery of life, you will be the curator. You will have an eye for a great piece yet you’ll never be a great painter or a sculptor. If you are lucky you will have some random one night stands with some up-&-coming artists but every night before you go to bed you are destined to mull over your lack of such absolute talent which you get to see every day, sometimes in the shape of a song you heard on the radio, sometimes in the ingenuity of the great advertisement hoarded on your side-walk, sometimes in the painting you saw at a roadside by an ordinary looking bloke. It will just never be you; a genius.

Intelligence to me is God playing an evil joke on you. It’s like you’re caged in heaven, you can smell it, you can see it, but all from a distance. You shall never be let into these gardens. It’s this dark secret that you’re forced to live with, day-in, day-out . Others around you, in their innocence, pass their compliments and you can never really take it with a just a nod of the head and a “thank you”; There is always that loud internal “little do you know.”

The worst drawback however remains the ability to coin justifications for our shamelessly askew actions. “I love you but I really need to concentrate on my career right now!”, “There’s nothing wrong with smoking up; it’s not addictive”, “ I’ll go on a vacation next year; Right now, I really need to save up for a car”… Every day, we let go of so many “little” things for the sake of the “big” ones. Every day we break hearts, we disappoint, we dream less. We read the best-sellers; we are fans of “The Secret” and Deepak Chopra. We analyze and think and ponder and over-analyze. We are probably more depressed and confused than the dumb-bimbo-brigade , but self-preservation has us thinking we are better off. We are the ones who become agnostics; we are the ones who become the fundamentalists. We run in circles, trying to do what is right, and most often than not, miserably fail at it. We try alternate life styles, we experiment. We are experts on theology and philosophy and yet nothing cures the forlornness that incubates in our heart, haunting our days and nights.

I guess, all this leads to one question: exactly how does one go about being intelligent?

Easy; You need to be a genius.

The very Un-cool me

Over the course of past few years, during my transition from the very-tomboyish-me,to the very gothic-AND-Punkish-me (Excuse me for not being able to distinguish between the two..*sheepish grin*) to the Highheels-and-Neon-Clothes me and lastly the ME (said like it says it all!) i have finally come to terms with the fact that i might not be "cool", and not because IamHOTsoIcan'ttechnicallybecool way nor the proudtobepaindu way but the rather distastefull uncool, which once you've been branded as, you're doomed kinda way.

So here ya go. I have admitted the fact, instead of debating over it, which I have done previously, again and again. I just admit my fate. Infact just saying it out loud, is part of me embracing it, peacefully. So now the question in your mind must be "How does this rather pretty, and disarmingly charming person not be cool?"...Well its not just one thing, So here is a list, My first official list...aaah, how I like these, and yes there is my reason # 1

Reason#1
I like corny facebook-ish lists; The random 25 things about you was my all-time favorite. Then the Soundtrack of your life, the other dumb lists which i am not gonna name... all of them... and i totally copy/pasted them and tagged people, and emotionally blckmailed them into making their own ...*giggles*

Reason#2
I dont listen to the bands no one else has ever heard of. I loved Spice Girls and BSB, I still dont hate them. I dont like Pearl Jam, Tool or a Perfect Circle, and growing up I dispised my brothers for making me listen to ACDC. I would like to take this moment to say I hate ACDC. Also i do NOT like trance,house, psychedelicwhateverthefuckyouwannacallit...I shall ban it if I ever become the PrimeMinister or the President or the Chiefofarmystaffturnedchiefexecutive..I am telling you now!

Sadly its not just those there is quite a list of big musical giants who I never listened to or cared about. Jimmy Hendrix, Slipknot, Kiss, Korn, Black Sabbath, INXS, The Killers and there are many others. Michael Jackson died, and while there were heavy duty discussions going on about his albums and his videos, the world was in Mourning, and our Sindh Assembly was observing a minute long silence to do their part, I was Wikipedia-ing and Youtube-ing him, as apart from Thriller, Black and White( 0r was it black or white..*scratches head*), and ermm ....earth, I had never listened to the dude... No he wasnt the part of my parents child-rearing programme so I totally missed out on him ( In their defence, there was a fair amount of old hindi classics, Frank Sinatra and some Doris day... So yeah, like I said..Thoroughly uncool

Reason#3
I love to read. However I am not into Science Fiction at all, and I haven't read the big cool names such as Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke,J R R Tolkien, Will Durant, Rumi, Bernard Shaw, Khalil Jibran.... Yes, I know that i don't deserve to claim a 5-hour-everyday-reading routine and yes i am so not a cool reader.. Also, not to forget, I loathe Classics.. apart from a few exceptions i can't stand anything written by anyone before the 1960's...

Reason#4
I didnt do my A-levels or highschool. I did my Fsc, that too not from a private college where they actually take attendance and actually care whether you sit through an exam but a Government college with around 5000 other girls, no exagerration... Now I know this sounds like I'm taking the educational elitiest point of view here but no it's not that! it's the way GC affects you in these irreversible ways. The way you acquire a lesbianish-vulgar sense of humor, how you can't help but cackle instead of laugh like normal people, You dont mind jumping queues and pushing people to move forward, and the list goes on. My brother often says: "You can take Annie out of GC but you can't take the GC out of Annie".

Reason#5
I didnt go to a cool Grad-School either.

Reason#6
I don't have any cool celebrity sort of friends. I haven't ever had my picture taken for GT or Dailytimes or for the online magazine Skoop ... I don't know any of the ubercool socialite types either... What makes it sadder is that no, i am not a hermit..I do have more than 450 friends on facebook...yet not a single one of them is from that bracket of ohsocool people!...not one!

Reason#7
I dont have any interesting cool drunk stories as I dont drink. Neither do i have intersting tales of my vacations abroad, as I have never gone abroad for vacations (apart from 2 times, which really doesnt count as the first time i was 7 and the second time i was 16, but was with my Khala so yeah!)

Reason#8
I don't have a cool job. I'm an Assitant, Secretary in layman's term!... which means i am at the receiving end of an endless baragge of corny secretarytoboss jokes, which most of the time include blowjobs or doing it on the table.. You can well imagine the level of self-respect i am left with, after reading all those.

Reason#9
I don't have a cool car. My mehran 98, has no side mirrors, is scratched all over, is filthy from the inside and filthier from the outside, has no AC or tape recorder, forget a CD player and to top that all is a shade of PakistanJhandaGreen...

Reason#10
I live in Pindi. Dhoke Paracha to be precise. Need I say more?

Reason#11
My English sucks. I do not understand Grammar at all. My pronounciation screams "IamaPunjabi" even though technically I am not, what with my Dad being Urdu speaking, and his Cadet college Gora Angrazi and My mom being from Murree... I speak with only one consideration and that is "Does it sound okay?"..

Reason#12
I love writing. Its almost therapeutic for me and I have been writing since i was 9 however i can't seem to write a good ending to anything I write. I just don't know how people write an ending. When I'm grown up with a real job and money I will hire an editor just so that she/he can write endings to my otherwise notthatbad diary scribblinsgs/blog entries/emails...

Till then just make peace with uncool ones like this..

I realized it was wrong even back in my school days, when i saw Vinnie in two advertisements, Tibet Snow and Lux. How can you not have no work ethic whatsoever, how?!?!.. but well not many noticed that and it went under the carpet like it always does.

but then came Ali Zafar, God bless his soul, if he has one to begin with! Click Here

Once you have seen this , also watch this one

and then you friggin watch this one!

Errr, I am upset beyond words. Upset at the lack of professionalism. Upset at how I have defended all these no-morals-no-values musician types on so many levels yet they themselves are bent on proving that all those stereotypes about the rockstarspopstarswhatever are there for a reason. Also 'cause after meetimg him once, I found him to be a sweet decent guy after which I started defending his sexuality!... So upset that i can't even be my charmingfunny self, which i always..ermm ..okay most of the times, Am! (*no sniggers allowed*)

What is this world coming to when even money is failing at buying you loyalty!...what will work then! huh, huh, huh!!...