vday wretch

valentine's day. where to begin. if you read that sunday source article this weekend about V-day gone bad you'll probably want to grab a vomit bucket first. there i was on sunday morning, settling in with the SS in one hand, my delish blueberry waffles, homemade pork and foie gras sausage and eggs sunny in one hand when i take in the feature, written a la YM embarassing confessions (remember those?). low and behold out of the 20 something stories, pretty much every single one was a "i bought him/her ____ and he/she got me ____. [blah blah] and that's why i dumped them." shallow, pathetic, materialistic undescribably mundane. not only about gifts, but their precise dollar values. so i guess that's when i found out this was not just another made-up 'holiday', one where your relationship hedges on dinner reservations (must be made the the man, of course. and be expensive! and frou frou! and just what your lady was imagining! and if you're gay, well...don't know exactly how that works) and then you need the perfect gift (dollar value must match or exceed your partner's!) and ultimately the perfect night...though i don't know how many of you have ever been out on a v-day night with one of those fixed course meals. insert finger in throat. if i'm not out getting drunk at asylum, there's a slim possibility i might look into buying oysters and a bottle of champagne. where does one get oysters? all of which takes work, while walking to chief ike's doesn't, and doing anything only perpetuates this shit for the rest of my life. and besides, at my house, every day is valentine's day :)

more on sudan

there was an article in the post the other day on all the super fancy ultra-rich development in, of all places, Khartoum. so apparently, they are pushing all the poor people further into the desert with bulldozers to make room for more fancy hotels. this process even has a name: kasha. man, look at that crazy egg shaped hotel! you can drink lattes while being sprayed by a delicate mist! i asked a friend who is there now why he keeps complaining about being bored and lonely when there is all this fancy stuff to be outraged at.

and he responded:

"I work 10 blocks from that crazy hotel thing. It is financed by Moammar Gaddafi. And I have had lattes at the mist cafe, it is called Ozone.

There is nothing at all, at all, good about this place. The money being poured in is from oil, purchased from China who could care less about genocide.

I will honestly say there are probably 150 people in this country of 45 Million that are profiting from this establishment. It is hurrendous, or how ever you spell it.

Name a country in Africa that has oil. Nigeria, Angola, Sudan, Equitorial Guinea................Oil is a curse. It makes your more poor somehow. It's amazing. This place offers nothing to no one, unless you're soul is rancid then you might profit off of the back of some naked tribe's land.

At least I have an ipod full of punk rock and a case of Stella Artois."

and then i thought, if they have oil and they're arab, i wonder why we aren't bombing them? or at least plotting to?