You gotta love Matt Stone and Trey Parker! No matter how much u may dislike their work, you have to admit that they are pioneers and innovative! Other than the excellent South Park, which does get boring sometimes, they created two of the funniest filme ive seen, the shocking South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut, and Team America: World Police.

Basically, they insult everyone and anyone in their shows! Jews, Christians, Muslims, African Americans, Asians, Canadians, fat people, handicapped people, gay people, old people, famous people, the devil…..absolutely everyone!

In last week’s episode, they apparently made fun of scientology! All of a sudden, it became interesting!

First Isaac Hayes, the voice of Chef on the show, decided to quit the show because of the show’s insensitivity to religions! LOL! Oh yeah, he believes in scientology! So basically insulting every religion and every kind of person is ok, but when it comes to his beliefs (which are based on some guy’s ideas) then the show is being insensitive! Hypocrate!

Then comes the most annoying celebrity of 2005 (yes he actually was voted that!), Tom Cruise! The psycho midget scientologist actually blocked the rerun of the episode using his power in Hollywood!!

In their response to the issue, the creators of South Park declared a war against Scientology! This is their statement -

So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!”
………
“Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu”.

LOL! How cool is their reply??!

This brings me to my main point………

Will we ever get someone as creative for us here in Kuwait? Someone who would cause some controversy and discussion???

Dawood 7sain? Hasan AlBallam? Tareq AlAli? They are as fresh and exciting as a 2 year old bowl of stale rice!

In my opinion, we do have soe creative minds here in Kuwait! And the best example I can think of is Nazar AlQandy and his group!!

From the old days in 1994 or 1995, there was a phone number that everyone used to call to hear the really funny and creative answering machine messages! I am told that it was him, but Im not sure.

Also, in 1997 I think, him and his friend (unfortunately I cant remember his name) had a show on 99.7 called the Bug and Baldy show! That show was incredibly funny! What a big big difference between that and the candy coated crap they have on now most of the time! The show was so crazy that it was stopped for being too much for the public!

After that, I remember the Ramadan series, U-turn, which is the funniest and smartest thing Ive seen on KTV! So much effort was put into that, but as usual, no wasta means no timeslot! I remember the show being on at the weirdest times ever! 12 PM and 12AM, which in Ramadan, are times you are never at home watching TV! I was lucky to catch a few episodes and bought it when it came out on DVD. I still watch it every now and then with some friends and it still has some amazing stuff! (For anyone who’s seen it, the episode of the Salahudeen movie mixed with special effects was incredible!)

Not all of it was funny, some of it was really lame, but most of it was great! But as usual in Kuwait, any innovation or something new is discouraged and blocked in favour of shows like Dawood 7sain and co.!

If you can’t beat em….join em!

Obviously, today was a very bad day for stock markets all around the region! Our market went down 3.7%, Saudi 4.6% in the opening 2 mins, Qatar down 3.3%, Egypt down 4.9%, and Dubai a whopping 11.7% in one day!!!

Billions have been lost. Many investors, most of whom are small investors, are suffering and losing alot at the moment!

The downfall is not a small one by any measure, for example, look at the staggering numbers where I show the difference from the highest peak till now! Most of these peaks are only 2 months old too!

Kuwait - 12054 to 10045 = 16.7%
Dubai - 1302 to 693 = 46.7%
Saudi - 20635 to 14900 = 27.8%
Qatar - 12930 to 9282 = 28.2%
Abu Dhabi - 6258 to 4021 = 35.7%
Egypt - 69158 to 52683 = 23.8%

Looking at these numbers, our market is still holding on comparitively although today was disastrous looking at the number of trades and orders.

Anyway, this brings me to my question…..what next??

This crash will cause a major social problem without a doubt! Many people have lost their money in the market, since most are not really investors as much as they are day traders looking to make a quick buck, which means they lose their buck quickly too! Many of them cant afford to do so! After everything is done and dusted, we will have a whole class of people who will be in heavy debt and in huge financial burdens!! Many people took loans or mortgaged their houses to catch the wave, and now they wave turned into a tsunami that is destroying them!

Realistically, these people I am talking about will not be able to afford their BMWs and Mercedes, and will start thinking of getting Hondas and Toyotas, they will have to find jobs much harder, they will switch from shopping at Sultan Center to trying to buy in bulk…and so on. This is not a joke, everything I am talking about is something that is realistic result of huge financial losses and being in debt! In Kuwait, I would guess the effect would be felt alot less than in Saudi, where so many more people are trading there. Many will be desperate…..what will they turn to? God? Drugs? Alcohol? Terrorism? Socially, this will cause a major problem in my opinion!

Politically, this desperation will also cause changes! For example, we have had people in protest outside the stock exchange as well as the parliament in the past few days asking the government to interfere! It has turned very political and very ugly! Since everyone is used to the government taking full care of them as well as give them free money all the time, everyone is expecting the government to enter the market with their millions and save them!! Who cares about the future generations?? We cant lose money!! Give us back our money!! Its ridiculous really, but its happening with the support of many ppl believe it or not! The concept of a free market doesnt work here.

Also, the market started its crash the same day the new government was formed! This cannot be a coincidence! The market reacted negatively on the appointed government from top to bottom! Alot of resentment started happening, and slowly went into previously uncharted territory, the Emir himself! In all my years, I have never seen so many people publicly criticize the government and Emir! Go to any of the web forums and websites dedicated to the stock market and you will be amazed by the comments written! I dont think its right to blame the Emir or the government for the crash at all, but at the same time I dont think its smart to have pics of the Emir and the head of parliament on a picnic one day played billiardo, and looking for fagi3 the next on the front pages of the newspapers when everyone is suffering from the market, it really isnt the smartest message you want to send! Then right after that the Emir goes fishing in Oman, and by reading some of the comments on those websites, many people are unhappy. So it will be interesting to see which way the government will go on this….will they be smart on how to handle the situation or will they just have a reaction move just to please the masses.

To make things even more interesting, it is nearly an election year!! So most parliament members will try their best to please the masses to get the votes even if that means the country will lose millions in the proccess.

One example of what has happened is the news that Dr. S3afag Al-Rukaibi has resigned from his position as head of the Kuwait Stock Exchange following a meeting with members of parliament and that the attacks went to a personal level from them against him!! I did say before that I think he should take responsibility for something like the system failures hat occured so many times, and also some rumours about him being corrupt (nothing thats proven till now)……but the fact that he resigned because of pressure from parliament members because the market is falling is just ridiculous!! If thats the case, then he should be given a few million KD as a reward when the marken went up from 2000 points to 12000 points!!

I know this post is longer than usual, but I really think its an interesting scenario that we are living right now! How much further will it go? What will be the political response? and what will be the social effects in the future?? For us and all the countries in the region!

الناس استخفت!!

أحلى شي الشاي و الزقارة! هاهاها

أكيد كلنا نتذكر الأمورة شيماء علي نجمة نجوم ممثلات رمضان اللي كل سنة تضيف طابع جديد على ملامح وجهها التفاخية

الظاهر صارت هي القدوة للمثلات … و بنفس الوقت أكيد هي تعتبر إعلان متحرك لدكتورها اللي صنع وجهها!

الحين يللا حاولو أعزائي القراء معرفة منو الشابة اللطيفة في هذه الصورة؟؟

Just in case you missed the Oscars a few days ago, the “Best Motion Picture of the Year” award went to the movie Crash.

A little background on the movie -

• The main actors are -

• Dr. Sa3faq Al Rukaibi

• Small investors

• The government which keeps saying they will interfere, and then saying they wont, and now they say they will again! (since the new government was formed, the market has gone down more than 10%! I would love to see approval ratings!)

• All the major funds and investment companies.

• The genre of the movie is - Action / Suspense / Drama / Comedy / Documentary

Don’t miss the movie! Its playing everyday Saturday to Wednesday from 9 AM - 12:30 PM at the Kuwait Stock Exchange, it gets crowded so be there early!

On 22nd of February, AlWatan published this article in the front page about the Kuwait National team’s historic victory in the Asian Championship and qualifying for the World Cup a 4th straight time.

Please read -

الأولى

Two main comments on the article.

1- The incredible number of Sheikhs mentioned in the article. Some luhum shughul and some maalhum shughul, especially repeating Ahmad AlFahad’s name and his brother Talal as if they are the reason we won!

2- Ra’ees ilitti7aad Naser Sali7 o ameen il sirr Bader Altheyab o ameen il sir Nahar Asfour were barely mentioned once and it really doesnt seem that they are credited with much compared to everyone else!

3- AlWatan has gratefully sponsored the team during their run, that goes without speaking. But its getting out of hand the number of times they keep reminding people that they gave money to the team! Example one was up top, and then for two days in a row, AlWatan would put a table in the front page listing the people who donated money to the team and would list themselves, then AlFahad brothers, then a few others. Ok, why would this be in the front page?? And why two days in a row?? and even make it something this public??

*Update - Just checked today’s newspaper, they still have the table of donations on the front page!

———————————————————————

Im very happy for our team and our handball federation (a seperate post on them coming soon), they deserve all the credit and recognition for making us proud of a Kuwaiti national team in any sport! I was just disgusted by the way AlWatan covered the whole situation.

Switched on the AC tonight at home, gave up on winter!

Results for smoking survey -
Are you a regular smoker?

Selection   Votes yes 32% 28 no 68% 60 88 votes total Poll results are subject to error. Pollhost.com does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

Although this survey is interesting, I would love to know more about the gender specific smoking! Lets try a new survey with more details -