Posted: 2/28/2008 12:26:55 AM EDT
It is Arbae'en, a Shia holy day/period/festival or something, and they're all out beating themselves. In conjunction with that, all the mosques are blasting this incredibly monotonous droning, chanting, howling shit over their loudspeakers. It's not like anything I've ever experienced. It's endless. It makes me want to... to not hear it anymore! I'm in a reasonably hardened structure, and it penetrates easily, even over Stevie Ray Vaughan. Fuck me running.  No wonder arab society hasn't progressed much in the last 1300 years. Yeah, yeah, you invented the zero, I got it. What have you done for me lately? |
- not well)
Same here, I lived in Bahrain for 10 months and got to live off base in an apartment. I hung out at a lot of local establishments and talked to the people a lot and they just never made sense to me. But then again, we don't make sense to them either |
There's your trouble. Too plinky-plinky. You need Metallica, Ozzy, Disturbed, Korn etc. to drown out that junk. |
He needs Ramstein. |
 Ah, the joys and wonder of international travel. Gotta love that wacky Hussein!!! |
Bells are nothing. Listening to hours of monotone droning over a loud speaker is enough to make Ghandi holler "SHUT THE F**K UP ALREADY!". |
| You too will wind up beating yourself, in the hopes that by damaging yourself you will not hear the awful noise. Concentrate on hitting your head with the chain, especially around the ears. That ought to do the trick. (though it doesn't seem to be helping the assorted crazy muslims taking part...) |
Yep lovely shit aint it ! BOSE noise cancelling headphones are your friend. IB4TL |
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I think the self flagellation coupled with the monotonous repetition of mind numbing ritual shit is a form of self hypnosis, or at least leads to a state of easily induced suggestion masquerading as original thought. Pretty handy stuff for incitement of a mob in a sensory deprived mind numbed state. Substitute sensory inputs once conditioned and now you got a bunch of single minded pudding heads waiting on a leader to come up with a good idea, no questions asked. |
The volume and duration of church bells doesn't begin to hold a candle to this. It's not the same universe of monotonous droning suck. Not even close. |
There are a small number who do various things like "crucify" themselves on Good Friday and the like....but it's nowhere near the level you see among Shiites. Christian women don't take knives and cut their small children to make them bleed in celebration of Good Friday. It doesn't do any serious harm to the kids, but it's still  . But there's nobody screaming "HEMDELAAGEMDELAASCHUTELBAAANEGRENAAA" in the same note over the loudspeaker for seven straight hours while tens of thousands of people holler the words back.  WOOHAA!!! Gotchoo all in check!! |
The Gospel according to Alfred Nobel? 
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