The Importance of Mitch McConnell

Here is a video I finished a few minutes ago; it is full of reverence for our Nation's Leaders.

The Triumphant Retreat

Am flattered to have received another undeserved award from Her Crazy Quiltiness: http://aldebaran14.blogspot.com/2009/01/awardium-leviosa.html
and have decided as a result of my dubious merit to twitch a lifeless limb on this catatonic scribble den of mine. Can you believe it? Throughout the whole of the blessed Year of Our Lord 2008 I took it upon myself to regurgitate just ONE piddling little post! Honestly, I wasn't that busy.

So I suppose, lacking more original inspiration, I shall reflect on things dismal and beautiful that occurred in that preceding annus (don't you DARE free-associate) of ours. Let's see... in the world, almost one year ago to the day, something happened in Gaza (surprise surprise). That time it wasn't 400 children who were blown up, but the wall on the border to Egypt. I must say I was moved to see the pictures of ordinary people desperately acquiring essentials that this brief window allowed them to get. And now they've received a bountiful gift of white phosphorus.

Also of note was the great Andean Diplomatic Crisis, wherein Colombia had some Death Eaters on their payroll summon the Magic Incriminating FARC Laptop. Its voluminous documentation pointed digital fingers at Venezuela's Chavez, Ecuador's Correa, and revealed once and for all that Santa Claus does not exist. :'(

In the Land of the Freebies, some of the white people finally started to feel the pinch of their Empire's steady economic decline, and thus it became an Official Reality. For this reason they allowed a half white man to cheer them up, and now they are extra pleased with themselves. President B(S)a(a)r(d)a(a)c(a)k(m) Hussein Ob(s)ama will, he tells us, do wonderful things in the coming year, like recognize Israel's Right to Defend Itself (from Jewish academics especially), give more Military Presents to the people of Afghanistan, call Hugo and Evo a Source of Instability in the Region, and invest in fixing (not obliterating) America's Glooooorious system of obsolete infrastructure. Fun times ahead, I tells ya.

Here in Canadumb there was a faux-election, in which 22% of the population elected 46% of the MPs. 900,000 votes for the Green Party (including mine) elected nobody in particular.

Goodness, I don't seem to have found any cheerful macro political happenings in the last year. No, WAIT, there was that shiny pin-hole of righteous footwear-flavored protest from one Muntadhar al-Zaidi. May he be an example to us all.


I don't want to seem long winded (HA!) so I will perhaps touch on events concerning myself in a subsequent post/rant.

Hamlet and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Many things going on, in the big world and my world.

First my things. Last month went to Merry Old Engelonde for to see a suite, if you will, of historical-ish plays by the Bard himself. These were performed to near perfection by the impossible-to-praise-enough Royal Shakespeare Company. I will not get too voluble on the subject but it may suffice to say that the productions, of which I saw all the "Henry"s (IV-parts one and two, V, and all three parts of IV) were graced by vertical entrances and exits (by trapeze), battles both real and abstract (one with a large amount of paper streamers), voluminous organic percussion sound effects, trap doors aplenty, and a very large, rusty metaphorical representation (a tower) of the "realm" at the time of the turbulent events.

At home, my drama company has finally cast itself for our production of Frank Wedekind's harrowing (and very German in that respect) "Children's Tragedy" Spring Awakening. And guess what my chippies... I'm the LEAD. Ohmigoodness. But yes, I will be playing the part of Melchior Gabor (no relation to Zsa Zsa), the free thinker and accidental rapist. Cheery, no? I'm also very pleased to announce that this production will have absolutely nothing to do with the recent Broadway "musical" interpretation of the same play.

Lastly (though there is much else), my original play, Area Code 419, Africa Calling, has been selected as a runner-up in this year's Young Playwright's Festival. True to form, I at first wondered why it was I didn't win, like two years ago... but that's really neither here nor there, as it will be staged regardless, and that is what counts.

Anyway, perhaps a little about the big world now...
Mr. Obama, I would really like to believe in you. It's just that... You're a Democrat. I have come to the conclusion from much reading and ponderation that this so-called "people's" party is really the true obstacle to genuine social (not to mention political) change in the Land of the (shopping) Spree. I was impressed with your comment on using nukes, but then you say you want to increase the military! You spoke out against the "US-led" Iraq genocide at its beginning, but then you voted every time to fund it! And finally, I have read that you hired Zbigniew Brzezinski as a campaign adviser. This man has admitted to conspiring to start the horrific and endless Soviet-Afghan war.

And for all you "identity politics" voters who are afraid of being either racist or sexist: why not vote for Cynthia McKinney? She is black, and she's a woman! She also happens to be a Green; therefore, owing to the corporate-media imposed third-party blackout, you have not heard of her...

On Auto-independence and Other Such Concerns

I took the Novice, class 7 driver's test (for those readers who are unfamiliar with BC licensing). I passed. This is good. It was my first try too.

I did, however, make a few minor mistakes, one of which (supposedly) was honking at a car that turned in front of me, obstructing my divine right-of-way (Dieux et ma voiture). Really though, if I hadn't slowed I would have hit them. I can only guess why the tester thought this behavior was inadvisable. Perhaps he saw in it the incipience of Road Rage, that scourge of otherwise peaceful developed nations. Whatever the case, I passed. Ha. Ha.

Also, it looks like I may be taking another course as a 'special student' in the spring. This would be Anthropology 100. Why, do you ask? Well, taking this course would enable me to take the 200 level course when I start full time in the fall. Once those two prerequisites are out-o'-th'-way I will be able to take any Anth. 300-level course from second year on. There are many that look quite interesting...

A Joke.

How do you know whether an elephant has been in your refrigerator?

You check the pastry shelf for mushroom tidbits, stand perfectly still and attempt to move only your jaw muscles, stomp on thirty-two wretched roadside snails, start a virtual fire and burn down the internets, call your imaginary elephant mother and ask her whether uncle Floopert has gone missing, grow the fine mustachios, order a box of peppermint polyps, publish a pseudonymous tract against firemen, paint your ears bright yellow and then mauve, move to Malaysia, forget to wash your Monday-stars, read a signatory's signature signature, write down the exact number of daisies it would take to convince a head of state to scratch him/herself, open a roti stand, ride a sedentary deer with emotional issues, refer euphemistically to yourself as "me," antonym antonym antonym antonym, and, FINALLY, use a banned quack-medical device to detect the velvety hint of a peanut butter footprint on the floor of the fridge.

Where's the Love?

So I'm just about finished with this Suitable Boy tome, with about 150 pages left. (Do not anyone tell me any ending secrets or I will personally see that those blabbers receive as much Evil Eye as is humanly possible.) Grammatically dubious parenthetical thoughts aside, I've been fishing around for another novel-type-thing to take its place when I've done with it. I usually have about five or six different books going at any given time, only one of which specifically falls into the comparatively "light" category of novel.
And so it was that I turned to Arundhati Roy's "the God of Small Things." I thought it sounded interesting, despite some dire warnings of hugely depressing subject matter from other parties. So while I was locked out of my house yesterday afternoon as a result of my own stupidity I sat down to read my borrowed copy, rather fittingly, in the rain.
Very little apart from Lemony Snicket could have prepared my for the startling morbidity of this text. Every character is either dead, a murderer/manslaughterer, a rapist, an abusive husband, a wretched "man-less woman," or some variation on this general theme. The only characters, in fact, who seem to have any love for each other are the miserable dizygotic twins, Rahel and Esthappen. They, needless to say, are the continual victims, thus far, of brutal neglect and a horrendous destruction of innocence.
Why must a novel contain such lurid, over-drawn melancholy? This is merely my first impression as I haven't finished the book, but, simply put, प्यार कहॉ है?
I will grant that the whole thing is written in an intriguingstyle with lots of linguistic liberties given and taken, as well as a capitalization Free For All, and I admire these things. But I contrast Roy's approach to subject matter with that of Vikramji, who imbues his novel with plenty of sadness, but everything else as well! and frankly, I find the latter more aesthetically satisfying...

On Things

Well, I had an eventful Summer, but not so eventful as some previous ones perhaps. However this was all right. I didn't go to Europe. I didn't set anything on fire. I didn't steal the phone repairman's shoes. I didn't cast out any demons. I didn't hide in a port-o-potty.

I did get some writing done. I decided pull a George Armstrong Custer (attempt something I am almost certainly incapable of) and develop some female characters. This has had mixed results, but at least they're results. A woman called Deianeira Hodgson-Heyworth is the obscenely wealthy widow of "noted industrialist John C. Heyworth." She lives in New York (or somewhere very similar) in the 1920s. Apparently most of her friends have gone the way of her husband, so she resolves upon hiring a "lady companion" to share in her personality, which is far too, shall we say, dynamic, for one person. Her companion is named Mercy, which is appropriate. They have many adventures.

Thus far they've had two adventures, but they'll probably be seen to experience more.. but who knows?

Other than that I am taking tomorrow my last ever cursed standardized test: the biggest of them all in fact, the SAT (Sordid Atrocious Taunting). I've been preparing for this God-forgiven piece of rapacious inhumanity for many moons, many Yojanas in fact. Predictably my math skills were on par with that of a two-headed with brucellosis. We'll get through somehow.

If you're looking for an unfathomably good, epic-length novel, try A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.