The number one thing is photos. Yeah I know they sound innocent and 'but we need to reminisce and remember this and that' but that's all secondary. Think about it, its not necessary to have a thousand pics from all your phases in life, you'll just end up spending more of your future thinking about your past and feeling things that might not be of benefit to you, maybe even some harm.

THINK: If something really is that important, it stays in your mind.

But let's say you just like capturing the beauty of some moments, you can't really do that in to the same effect in any other form. Okay that's fine. The thing is, stuff gets complicated when it all goes on the net. Once its there, its free for anyone or many people to look at. Let's look at it in 'layers':

-Strangers will look at you and think things based on what they see. That is absolutely unnecessary and sometimes harmful. Say in one photo you have a certain expression. This guy stumbles upon the photo and he might be thinking 'wow she looks hot like that' or 'haha this guy looks low IQ'. In essence you create the opportunity for people to think or even say false things. If someone has self respect and values himself as a person, he would prevent that from happening. 'Liberal' people will instead say 'So? What's wrong?' or 'If God made me good looking then shouldn't I share it with the world?'

Then you think this: cheap things have many buyers, people will just flock to it. Its value is low. You, liberal one, are akin to that. Hey this is my beauty come everyone take a load of it. Not nice.

-You never know what people think of you or how you look in that photo. And sometimes you don't realize you're in a compromising position. What you deem a simple portrait shot might turn on all the girls on the net, then what have you done? In the first place, it was not necessary to upload that shot. I know I said 'capturing the beauty of some moments' earlier, but the fact is people find every excuse to upload everything. Don't lie to yourself, deep down you just want people to see what a good looking person you are. You are attracting attention, you want attention, especially that of the opposite gender. And girls especially, don't be so simple minded and think 'its just a photo'. A guy can stare at a simple photo of you smiling and use that to think all sorts of things, strip you down in less than a second and before you know it you're a part of his fantasy. If he's a hot guy then maybe you'll think heh that's not too bad.

But think again. You are of HIGH VALUE. You are worth so much that not everyone can just get a hold of you and enjoy something off you like that. Preserve your beauty and treasure it! Doesn't it make sense that you need an appointment and all sorts of whatevers just to get an audience with the queen of England or some other important person? This is because they are of HIGH VALUE. And so are you.

And I don't know if I should talk about compromising positions? Okay maybe I'll put it this way: people are very creative and can link anything to... anything. And these are PHOTOS we're talking about, a lotta time to scrutinize and look at stuff you might not have noticed at the time. And then there's the people in the background too... oh God the embarrassment some of them have faced because of someone else's vanity.

-Lastly, this applies to those who really do treasure their modesty. Sometimes pictures still get around, like the other time I was out with a group and we took a picture and then poof it was on Facebook. My privacy settings didn't allow anyone to see it from my profile, but people can look from someone else's! Which is why I'm glad I left my helmet sitting on my forehead, it kinda disguises me a little. But once I wasn't so lucky. Someone snapped a photo of me while I was walking by and then AGAIN Facebook. For every one of his friends to see. I don't like that, its a disturbing idea. This will be especially disturbing for girls who don't usually have their photos on the net or used to be more liberal but have deliberalized.

If that photo wasn't yours to begin with, its still there for people to see. There are many bored people with nothing to do and someone might see it and think wow cute ass wow nice beard I so wanna touch it. Okay beard for guys, not a girl with a beard. And even with all our fancy privacy settings, there are still people who don't use them and continue snapping away and uploading every damn thing on the net.

In person you might be humble and a decent person, but your one million photos on the net don't say so and you can't really do anything about it. Which is why, SOCIAL MEDIA IS EVIL.

There are still more reasons why its evil. It claims to 'connect' when all it does is open up channels of communication so wide that everything and anything is said, clogging the net with loads of useless and stupid information. Status updates on the sandwich you had. NOBODY GIVES A SHIT AND YOU KNOW THAT. Yet people still partake. We will all do these little stupid things and lie to ourselves that we're keeping connected. But that's not it. We will slowly lose the ability to truly care for what's REALLY important, and when we are faced with the reality that helping someone out might entail more than just Like-ing his status or typing out a quick comment, then we might start to see how far we've deviated.

I'm really tempted to deactivate my Facebook account. But first I want to know how I can permanently remove every trace of every photo of me that has been taken. I don't like it. Then once I can establish an alternate route of communication for all those people who might want to connect with me, I'll do it.

Or I'll just use it mostly one-way. Read what is relevant and ignore everything else. No status updates, no comments, no likes, nothing. Its just 'oh this is Fawaz's account. We're not sure if he's still here but just post your events and he'll contact us if he needs more details'. Like that.

I'm sick of a lot of things, I want to cut off these ridiculous things one by one and I hope my family and friends understand. In fact I hope they see my point and take some benefit from it. The last thing I want to cut is a relationship with someone, however small it might be.

Klassik treatment for your ice

This sicky feeling has been with me for awhile and I think I've taken like three doses of Panadol? For a guy who pretty much doesn't like to take medicine, that's pretty far out. And STILL there's feverishness and whatnot. But I don't care, I've already missed one Saturday and I'm not about to disrupt my gym routine just cos I'm feeling a little unwell. Seriously, this is one of the few things I work so hard for. I know what I want my body to be like and ain't nuthin' gonna stand in the way! Not lack of sleep, not enough time, work, school, rain, hunger, nothing! NOTHING! There's really no excuse since I want this so bad.

By the way, I'm really wondering, are many of my clothes shrinking or am I growing? I can't be sure of the latter because I still look small to me, and its not like I've been making giant leaps in terms of progress all of a sudden. And no matter what people say, there are just too many big guys around for me to be considered 'big'. In fact half big is kind of a stretch hahaha. At this rate, when will I stop???

Yet again I'm forced to acknowledge that my mind thinks the most awesome things when I'm floating out of the seat of consciousness. And it frustrates me that I can't recall even three of the one million things I came here to say.

Whatever. The me today doesn't care, bye!

Khat are you talking about?

This left the biggest impression: 'Real fruit? You make such a big deal when your 'food' contains 'real' ingredients? Isn't food supposed to be from real things? This is just ridiculous... [[and you claim to be an advanced people]]...'

That evening, as the sun was nearly set, he stared out of his office window. Beneath him civilization lay sprawled and relatively motionless. There was the occasional semi-organic structure readjusting itself. But other than that... everything was quiet.

He exhaled against the glass and watched it fog up. With his pointer he slowly wiped away the condensation. 'After all this time, after all we have struggled, we have so little...'

The scientist was trying to explain to his colleagues how the fleet was slowly being pulled away from them. The fleet wasn't aware, or maybe just very slightly, but the pulling forces were ever present. Sometimes it seemed they would wait then reach out with long claw-like limbs and scrape the 'surface' of the fleet and try to pull it in. Why didn't the fleet realize? It was a damn FLEET. But on homebase all they could do was watch. They could not do anything, even if they wanted, because the intergalactic federation had made its case clear. No one dared step out of line. So everyday he made calculations and hoped that someday, something would happen and everything would be set right.

Until then, he had other, bigger things, to worry about. He was fighting... Dammit it was hard, the hardest thing ever, but he was fighting. It was overwhelming at times but then there were the neural inhibitors. Even then the relief they gave was followed by a dark wash. Guilt and remorse, over his apparent 'failure' and weakness. The pain would come back, in the guise of an old friend, who was digging into your back as he hugged you. Who was crushing your ribs as he whispered kind words in your ear. His sweet breath strangely intoxicating yet nauseating.

There was much to be learnt, and he feared he didn't have the time. Time. He could go on and on about it but it never made a difference to what he felt about it. He chuckled. It seems like him and resolve were non-parallel lines. For a long time they headed towards each other, then met once, for one glorified instant, before going separate ways and never meeting again.

He felt small... but that was good. That made him happy. And so he retired to his chamber. He needed sleep. There in his pyjamas and under the blanket he looked nothing like a hero. But that was what he was, he just needed to recharge to save the world again tomorrow.