Here are the things that I will do for charity this month.  This month’s charity money will go to aid one of the recent earthquakes, Taiwan, Japan, or Chile.

Platinum Option – ($25+) – A Skype or Email interview.  I’ll answer ANY question you ask, with honesty and full disclosure.  You can ask anything you want, things personal, vulgar, sensitive, ANYTHING.   If you are clever in your questioning, you could find out some very interesting things about me, things that very few people, if any, know.  ($5 per question, a minimum of 5 questions.)

Gold Option – $10 – I’ll Give you 5 days worth of advice that will change your life (via email).

Silver Option – $5 – I’ll Send you sexually explicit text messages for 10 days in a row (back by popular demand).

Leave a comment below choosing your option.  Use a valid email address and I’ll respond in a timely manner.  Cheers to charity!

I am sitting in my office.  But in a much (seemingly) realer sense I’m thousands of miles away.  I’m sitting in a cave made of crystal.  A fortress of solitude, so to speak.   Actually it’s Superman’s fortress of solitude, so I hope he doesn’t show up any time soon.  I’d build my own, but his is so much cooler.  It is a little cold though.  And he should get a rug, because the floor is solid ice.  And there is this old dude, who claims to be my father, telling me how I should respect the humans, and that I was sent here to protect them, and bla bla bla, leave me alone gramps, I’m trying to do some thinking here!

Reality, it’s a fickle creature.  It means so many different things to so many different people, and yet each person’s reality holds the same amount of weight.  Actually, each person’s reality is more valid than every other person’s reality if you consider the fact that we most often value our own opinion over everyone else’s.

Why are we so attached to our current beliefs?  Why do we always think we are right?  What is it about the memories that are already formed in our brains that make them more valuable (today) than the memories that we will form tomorrow?  Why do we place so much emphasis on what we know to be true?

I don’t know about you, but I learn that my beliefs were wrong, or that a greater truth exists, all the time.  I am proven wrong often, and I continue to learn.  And yet, still, I tend to believe that my current thoughts are correct, over and over.  I continue to argue with people with the (pseudo) knowledge that I know right, I know what’s best, and that you need to listen to me and adhere to what I’m saying.  It’s quite arrogant of me, wouldn’t you say (of course you would, until I said that you do the exact same thing, which would put you on the defensive, rendering this entire statement ineffective, and causing us to argue for the rest of the day… pfffffffffff.)?

So what is in us biologically that drives us to believe what we know to be true so strongly?  I used to think it was mostly men, but I realize that women feel this way just as strongly as us, it’s only recently that society deemed it fit to allow women to voice an opinion (and I’m not here to argue about women’s right, at least not now, so hold those thoughts for another day), so now we are starting to hear it from them more.

I’m in a strange place right now.  I’m about 100 days from being married, and while I want to share everything with this girl, I find that I fear losing my independence.  I imagine she feels the same.  I am really into who I am RIGHT NOW, and I don’t want that to change.  I am strong in my purpose, diligent in pursuing my goals, and enthusiastic about the man I’m becoming.  I don’t want marriage to come in and wipe it all away, leaving a shell of a man, who shops for kitchen appliances, curtains, and coffee tables and lacks passion, enthusiasm, or a spine.  Today’s Ibrahim is my favorite in a long time, and I don’t want to see him go.

I keep telling myself, “our marriage will be different” and “she understands me” and “I can still do the things that I want,” and I believe that to be true.  The only problem is what if what I want starts to shift.  What if I become content, complacent, and docile? What if I become DOMESTICATED?!?! Then what becomes of the world that I want to change?  Then what becomes of this reality, the one I hold in my mind today?  Does it die along with the passionate Ibrahim?  It there a heaven for the best of intentions, even if it is replaced by a new reality that cares little about the big things and lots about the little ones?  Can I rest my head at night knowing that the all inspired reality that I hold today has a place in history where it will be remembered?

No, no I can’t.  No it doesn’t.  Should I choose to change, and consequently lose the fiery passion that burns within (not herpes), this reality will die a slow, painful, and horrendous death.  It will not be remembered, nor will anyone even notice it’s gone.  Except me.  And I will be forever guilty for its death.

Reality is an attention whore.  Take your eyes off of her for a second and she’ll be gone, leaving you without a backbone, shopping for minivans.

Fuck minivans.

[This is the first post for my sideblog Ibrahim The Hater... enjoy!]
Here’s the news.  I’m about 120 days away from being married.  I’m excited and not very nervous at all.  But that’s not what I’ve decided to write about here.  Read on.

Married people are a bunch of losers and douchebags.  And I hate using the word douchebag, so you can imagine what I think about married people.  The interesting thing about married people is that there tend to group into a few different types of douchebaggery, and I’m going to introduce you to some of those groups today.

The Narcissistic couple -  This is one that really gets on my nerves.  There are people out there who think that just because they are married, they have become members of some sort of elite group.  All of a sudden they know so much more than me about relationships, they feel qualified to give me advice, and they are headed towards such great things in live, while somehow me not being married yet means I’m stuck.  Never mind the fact that they don’t have jobs, or have low paying jobs, are in massive amounts of debt, and haven’t gone a week without arguing, nor have they had sex in 6 months.  They’re married, and I’m not. End of story.

The into-each-other-so-much-it’s-sickening Couple -  We all know a couple or two like this:  They are the ones who have googly eyes for each other so much it makes us nauseous. They are always smiling at each other, holding hands, and kissing and such, even in the most ridiculous of occasions like church or a funeral.  Everyone else is disgusted by their public displays, but they don’t care because “they’re in love…”  Newsflash!  As soon as you stop staring and touching each other, you’ll realize how little you even like about that person and how you’re just in love with the idea of being in love.  Get over yourselves already.

The Dictatorship Couple – This is the couple that bothers me the most.  I’m a really independent guy, and so is my lovely fiance.  We do a lot of things alone, and we function great that way.  I love having my own apartment, my own set of friends, and doing my own thing when I want.  And I love spending time with her when we want to.  But here’s the problem:  For some reason, these types of couples think that once we are married, I can’t do my own thing anymore, nor will she.  Once we are married, everything is an “us” situation, instead of a “me” situation.  These dictator couples control each other so much that they project it on me, and think that this is just how things are.  Which would be fine, except that they feel a need to group me into their douchebaggeryness, and tell me that I wont be playing basketball with the guys on Saturday nights anymore “unless the wife let’s me.”  Let me just say one thing:  When it becomes a matter of “if the wife let’s me,” there won’t be a wife anymore.  Cause that’s how I roll, and you are a huge loser for giving your testicles to your wife.  I’d tell you to go ask for them back, but she’d probably just take your penis away as well…

The Public Confrontation Couple – You know, the ones who don’t mind fighting in front of you, no matter how uncomfortable the situation.  They yell and rant and rave and insult, all the while you’re just sitting there, dumbfounded as to how they could possibly not realize how insane they both are.  The worst part is that this couple also often tend to be the so-into-each-other-it’s-sickening type, when things are going well, which makes them even more annoying.  If you happen to fall into this category, you should know that nobody can stand you two as a couple, and the only reason we haven’t told you is because we don’t want to have to endure the fight that will inevitably come with said message.  Also it’s because we are slowly learning to hate you.

The Passive Aggressive Couple – Trust me, you know this couple.  I’d be willing to bet every single person on earth has a friend who is part of this couple.  These are the ones that come to you every time they have something to complain about in their relationship.  They complain and talk shit and just slander the hell out of the other person for a few hours, then go home and act like nothing happened.  The worst part about these people is that they condition you to hate their partner, and you can’t just turn that shit off when they are finally on good terms again.  Guess what?  If you’d share with your partner half the verbal vomit you spew on us, your relationship would move a lot more smoothly, or would end abruptly.  Either way is fine by us.  P.S.  Stop calling me!

The Facebook Couple – Though this couple isn’t really doing anything wrong, it’s just kinda gross.  And maybe I am being a bit hypocritical, because there have been a time or two when I fell under this category. Anyways, on to the description.  This is the couple who talks to each other so much on Facebook, leaves status updates about how in love they are and how great the other person is, and even has matching profile pictures.  Oh God how I can’t stand matching profile pictures.  And the funny thing is, when you look at the times they are writing these updates, you know they are at home and the other person is probably in the same room.  Well I have a message for you: Nobody cares, you’re gross, get a life.  And for God’s sake, and mine, please ONE of you change your profile picture.   NOT BOTH OF YOU, because you’d probably just use the same pic again.

By observing these couples over the years, I think I’ve gotten a great sense of what type of marriage I want to have.  And even if I can’t figure that out, at least I have the landmarks of a few types of crazy relationships so I know to steer clear.  Of course, with my level of insanity, I’ll probably just cook up my own type of crazy, and our relationship will be even worse than all of these combined.  One can dream, right?

So, Farah, my love, I love you so much that I hope we never become any of the types of couples described above, till death do us part.  Amen.

That’s it, I’m going to play ball… anyone wanna try and stop me?

This is the first installment Bizarre Philanthropy.  This month each option will go to a Haiti aid organization.  Let’s start things off right, shall we?

1. Platinum Option – $50 - I will write your personalized message across my chest in permanent marker, take a picture, and email it to you.
2. Gold  Option – $25 – I will photoshop your face onto someone else’s body, and make it look real. (You supply both your head and the body you want to photoshop onto, and faces must be facing same direction. P.S. nudity is a plus!)
3. Silver Option – $10 – I will text message you very naughty text messages each day for 5 days straight.

There you have it folks.  I’m willing to do some pretty strange things to help out a charitable organization.  Are you?  Leave a comment below or contact me with details.

Also, if you have a good idea for things to do next month, Let me know here.

Greetings lurkers.  Welcome to the new and improved IbrahimHusain.com.  I’ve totally revamped the site, and decided that rather than choosing between making this site either a personal or a business website, I’m just going to do both.  To those looking to be entertained, you’ll probably want to skip the “Down To Business” section.  To potential business associates or future employers, don’t judge me based on the “Let’s Get Personal” section.  It’s not for you.

So today starts a new era at IbrahimHusain.com.  Let me introduce you to a few new features that you will see coming soon here.  First off, there’s the  a projects list, which will encompass many of my projects, both online and off, with my short description on why they are interesting to me or what I accomplished with each.  Hire Me will encompass all of the different things you can pay me to do that I can do well.  And by well I mean super awesome, so good you’ll slap your momma! I don’t really know why people say that… but I digress.

Writing is pretty self-explanatory.  I do a lot of writing, have personally published over 250 articles online, and like to showcase the things that I am really proud of.  Mom, I hope your proud of me too!  I’m a big boy now.  Check out the writing list to get an idea of what I’m all about, since I only write about things that interest me.

Artwork is a collection of all sorts of different graphical design and manipulation I do.  I don’t generally do this stuff for pay, it’s more of a hobby, but if you are willing to pay me for a project I will gladly take your money and make you the best damn digital piece of art I’ve ever deemed awesome!  That’s right, I decide what’s awesome, and the work that I do for you will be just that.

Experience is just that, my experience.  It will be mostly a professional recollection of the things that I’ve accomplished that are worth noting.  Think of it as an online resume.  Or don’t think of it at all.  Either way, it’s pretty much the greatest online resume around these parts.

Next we have the Vision and the Life List.  The vision will be my personal mission statement and visionary goal for my life.  It will encompass all that I hope to accomplish with my life and will be my life motto.  The Life List is a bucket list of sorts.  This will include all the things I want to accomplish before I kick the bucket.  I plan on blogging about each thing on the list as I complete it.

Then we have the F.A.Q. The F.A.Q. is basically a list of questions you never thought to ask but will be glad to know upon reading… probably.  Actually, you probably don’t care, nor should you, but I’m narcissistic enough to think you would care, so there we have it.

Ibrahim The Hater is going to be a really fun section of the website.  Basically, Ibrahim The Hater will be a place for me to rant and rave about all the things that have me disgruntled.  I’ve been called a hater by many of my friends and I’ve decided to embrace it.  Ibrahim The Hater is the love child of my love for writing and my hate for everything else.

Bizarre Philanthropy is a stolen idea with a twist.  I found on a friend’s blog “Shit I’ll do for money” and she came up with some pretty hilarious things, so I decided to do the same, except for charity.  I’m always looking for different ways to help out charitable organizations and this is just one of the fun outlets that I will use to help.  Paypal only homies!

That’s all for now, but there will be plenty more coming in the future, so keep coming back to IbrahimHusain to be dazzled, bamboozled, entertained, and embarrassed at the fact that you’ve got nothing better to do than check out some dude’s website, as awesome as it may be!

Tell your friends!

-IH

TwentiesLife.com is my newest project.  It is going to be an online magazine that gives twenty-somethings tips on creating the type of lifestyle they only dream of.  No longer will you have to wait till retirement to really start enjoying life.  We’ll show you how to start today.

The topics that will be covered at Twenties Life are vast, and not all topics will be useful to everyone, but the overall message will be useful to any young adult in any stage of life.  At the Twenties Life we will be helping you shape your present life along with your future.

So what will we be talking about? Lifestyle. Plain and simple. This covers everything from Fashion & Dress to Sex & Love, Culture & Fine Living to Health, Business & Money to News & Politics. We’ll pretty much be talking about everything that pertains to a twenty-something’s life.

Check out TwentiesLife.com now!

BrainVault.net is the site that I developed in order to hold myself more accountable for each of my personal experiments.  I have used it to document my biphasic sleep experiment as well as my 6 pack abdominals experiment.  I have a couple of ideas for my  next experiment, so we’ll see how it goes.

Check out BrainVault.net!

ZenCollegeLife.com was the first blog I ever created.  It took a lot of long hours, and the learning curve was tremendous, but after two years I built a strong following of over 1400 subscribers and 30,000 pageviews per month.

The purpose of ZenCollegeLife.com was to assist students in focusing on academia.  I researched and read many different books, blogs, news articles, and research experiments on ways to optimize academia and shared my findings in an easily identifiable manner… a blog.  The approach was simple, clean, and to the point.  Readers commended me time and time again on my hard work and dedication to helping others succeed.

Finally, in late 2009, I made the difficult decision to sell ZenCollegeLife.com.  After having graduated college and taken a full time job, I found it increasingly difficult to manage the site and keep fresh content that my readers had grown accustomed to.  I was sad to part ways with ZCL, but I have high hopes that the new owner will take good care of it.

I founded, designed, wrote for, and managed ZenCollegeLife.com from October 2007 to November 2009.