The Concept of Alsh

One of many Facebook groups dedicated to the study of alsh, labelled 2alshology. 2 is
Internet-Arabic for the Arabic sound (a').

If you're living outside the African country of 7000+ years of civilization (the same one that popularized mulokhia, the green stuff that wiggles, and bellydance, that describes how the green stuff wiggles) you most probably did not ever hear of the Egyptian-Arabic term alsh.

And you seriously need to know what it means.

WARNING: From here on, the post has nothing useful. You will be very sorry once you're done because there is no real information. The stuff above was useful...Well, if you never knew that mulokhia wiggles or that it can dance that is.

Alsh by definition is the act of throwing in a completely lame joke while knowing that it is lame. It is so intensely ridiculous, it has been restricted to teenagers of the age 14-18 though older people will usually use alsh in hopes of actually producing laughs. Hence the confusion among many that alsh is really very hilariously, hysterically funny.

There are mainly three types of alsh:

1) Geeky Alsh: This is alsh among colleagues studying the same thing. It involves you making scientific jokes that you will never, ever laugh at had you said them in your mind first. e.g:

-Just think what it would be like if we can just get this idiot in a cannon and just...shoot him to the stars!
-Yeah...The projectile motion will have to be carefully determined though.
-The what?
-The projectile motion? It's a cannon, right?
-...
-WHAT?
-STFU!

2) Word-Play Alsh: This is the most common type of alsh. It involves you just twisting around words to fit another meaning in an endless series of meaningless ideas and will use the word 'or' a countless number of times. For e.g:

-You the manager?
-Manager...Or womanger!
-...
-Woman-ager or woman-younger hahaha
-...
-WHAT?
-STFU!

3) Random Alsh: Again, very common. Meaningless and unfunny, this is very hard to produce unless you are extremely frustrated or tired. Consider:

-Dude you got a pen?
-Yeah *hands over pen*
-I hate this class.
-Yeah and it's Sunday hahahaha
-...
-WHAT?
-STFU!

Alsh usually occurs through exchanges of conversation. It is necessary to understand that alsh does not have to be funny; just very lame so that after a while you start laughing at the sheer lameness. Not making sense, still? Consider this snippet of conversation from a Messenger chatroom:

-I'm sorry, I got DC
-DC or AC hahaha (For those clueless, this is an example of Type 1. It's a reference to direct current and alternating current in electrical circuits? Gosh, study harder people, it's very very very obvious!)
-AC or AD hahaha (For those clueless, you need some serious work with your alphabet! This is Type 2)

You are only left with one single little piece of information: The singular form of alsh is alsha. So a single piece of alsh is an alsha.

This is all you need in your journey in life in Egypt. You have to master the art of alsh in order to meld in properly in the society. You may need to use these five precautions:

1) Never use the same alsha twice.
2) Never laugh at an alsha unless you're very convinced it's gotten lame enough to do so.
3) Remember that people will not like you if you do a lot of alsh.
4) Same as rule 3.
5) Same as rule 4.

Hey, I said five! You got five!

Now...
Take care of yourself,
Until our next meaningless meeting.