Tuesday, May 16, 2006

how everyone needs to stop taking everything so seriously

i just read an article on cnn that stated that christians around the world are protesting the impending release of "the da vinci code" with boycotts and hunger strikes.

fine. go ahead. be my guest.

i mean, you can get angry about any movie. southerners can protest over "gone with the wind". little people can protest over "the wizard of oz". hell, the germans can get angry about "casablanca". every movie will offend someone - or a large group of people. they should. if nobody's offended, then the movie sucks.

but then i got thinking about the muslims reaction to the cartoon of mohammed. originally, i was sensitive to them, and how everyone knew they would get incensed, and the danes published it anyways.

isn't it hypocritical for me to be sensitive to the muslims and not to the christians?

that's what i was thinking of when i was being cabbed home tonight. i always talk to my drivers, and i usually get a laugh from them at some point. and, to be honest, most of them are arab. i never had a problem with any one of them.

my driver tonight was talking on the phone with someone else speaking in arabic. this also happens a lot. but something very rare happened: the driver laughed during his phone conversation.

i gotta say, for all the times i've ever been in a cab with a driver who's arab and has talked arabic on the phone, that was the first time i heard laughter in a conversaion between two middle easterners.

now, that means either they don't laugh, or they're not funny.

like i said, i make my cabbies laugh.

i guess my point is that it's everyone's right to protest.

but, for the sake of everyone else, it might not hurt to stop taking yourself seriously, and to have a sense of humor, and that not everything is life or death.

you know, maybe save your protests for something important, and then it might mean something. movies don't mean a thing. cartoons don't mean a thing.

it just comes off as whining.

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