Firas Durri

Inspired by Mark Pilgrim (see ‘can’t’ and ‘how not to’), here are some search queries that have lead people to firasd.org. I’ve added a response under each.

• blowjob enthusiast (result)
  Everyone with a Y chromosome, and more besides.
• conquer fear of pigeons (result):
  I know of a restaurant in Rome that can help. Nothing rids a phobia like chomping down your psychological assailant.
• sylvia plath “i felt a funeral in my brain” (result)
  Nope, it’s by Emily Dicksinson.
• how to get ex out of my house (result):
  Well, first you need to inform him (or her) that you actually expect them to leave. Once that rather delicate conversation is settled, depending on what their temperament is like you may need to say that after a certain date their residence in your property will be considered trespass. And if things really go south, you may need to change the locks once they’ve gone.
• marilyn manson is hot (result):
  Tell your grandma that.
• the creators and beginning of Nike (result):
  Too easy. Start at wikipedia, google ‘nike timeline’, and for a juicy narrative, research the relevant books on amazon.
• turtles god (result):
  Wikipedia again: ‘Turtles all the way down’. They call it a view about cosmology but I’d say it’s more significantly a take on cosmogenesis.
• “vive voltaire” (result):
  Oh God, yeah! *gushes* One of my favourite intellectuals of all time.
• bills proposed by nancy pelosi (result):
  Go to the Library of Congress’ THOMAS site and use the ‘Browse Bills by Sponsor’ feature. Right now I can’t find a quick way to look up which bills she’s cosponsoring. Also: house.gov/pelosi and speaker.house.gov.
• wife tells husband sex with ex (result):
  Hoo boy, don’t ‘fess up. Just don’t do it ever again.
• lord byron rock star (result)
  He definitely was. It’s probably possible to investigate the emergence of “mass culture” and pin Byron’s image as enabled by the technologies of mass culture, exactly as with 20th century stars.

• dialogue casino royale train lamb (result):
  Amusing line. Check imdb:

  Vesper Lynd: How was your lamb?
  James Bond: Skewered.

• coldfusion and the antichrist (result)
  Nuclear physics and Biblical millenarianism? Now that’s arcane!
• freest country (result)
  Depends on your definition of ‘free’. (cf. Rousseau: “he will be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence.”)
• freud – tall buildings (result):
  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
• does the government fuck with our heads (result)
  Yes, but in a more intense and less sinister way than you suspect.
• scriptures disproving the big bang (result):
  Puzzling. If you’re going to start by taking the Bible as literal truth, then why would you care about disproving the Big Bang anyway? Bit of an inversion there.
• i dreamed that you bewitched me into bed (result)
  Incredible Plath poem: ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song’.
• how to prevent throwing up when sucking dick
  Communicate. If you’re gagging, tell your partner to chill with the whole ‘grab hair and push head down’ thing.
• programming addiction (result):
  Eh, programming is a bit too cognitively active to be a conventional sort of addiction. You might as well say that someone’s addicted to rock-climbing or to writing.
• 2008 presidential canadates and the 2nd amendment (result):
  ontheissues.org is great.
• css barchart using lists (result)
  Yes, I experimentally demonstrated those once. I think it’s preening overkill. Use image formats for your charts.
• bad decisions of dick chaney (result):
  Count the ways… (Joe Biden: “every single person out there that is of any consequence thinks, knows the Vice President doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I can’t be more blunt than that. He is yet to be right one single time on Iraq. Name me one single time he’s been correct.”)
• meaning of “dura lex sed lex” (result):
  Translates to: ‘the law is harsh, but it is the law’.

• what does “meme chose” mean in french
  Literally translates to “same thing”. Searcher landed on me quoting James Baldwin (from a preface to Notes of Native Son):

  ‘Plus ca change,’ groan the exasperated French (who should certainly know), ‘plus c’est le meme chose.’ (The more it changes, the more it remains the same.) At least they have the style to be truthful about it.

• “life imitates farce” speech (result):
  Gephardt, Democratic leader, on the House floor before the Clinton impeachment vote. Full text and audio.
• foot sex sleeping (result):
  Another fetish and you’ll have a trifecta.
• “men have what we like to call a columbus complex” (result):
  I’m officially stumped. What’s the ‘Columbus Complex’? Is it the one where you head for India but are so stubburn about not asking for directions that you end up in the Caribbean?
• president bush give a man a fish:
  “Give a man a fish and you… you feed him. Teach a man, you… you won’t need to give him anything.”
• to annihilate the world by annihilation of oneself (result):
  Well, as Plath finished the sentence, it’s “the deluded height of desperate egoism” (interestingly this notion is also expressed in Mad Girl’s Love Song: “I shut my eyes and the world drops dead.”) Whether reality is just an artifact of perception may be a nice abstraction to argue about, but metaphysics aren’t always terribly relevant to the real world (Philip K. Dick: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”) Nobody being chased down by an arrow was ever saved by Zeno’s paradox.