victims of capitalism

they recently inaugurated a new memorial somewhere in dc for the victims of communism. in doing so, of course, there is a lot of fist pumping chest thumping go go capitalism and democracy going on. http://www.victimsofcommunism.org/history_communism.php

now without in any way diminishing the evil shit that has happened, i feel that they may be ignoring a few of the blemishes on the beautfiul rostra de capitalismo.

so i compile a rough and completely unpremeditated collection here.

slaves - hundreds of millions, civilizations decimated
indigenous peoples - aborigines, native americans, maybe half a million?
trade union leaders, preachers, and others working on real development - who knows
people imprisoned, tortured, or murdered by `friendly´regimes supporting this war against communism - who the fuck knows but a whole lot
peasants and farmers who have died fightiing against oppressive governments or who have been laid to waste thanks to neoliberal econmic policies - a whole fuck of a lot

so i guess its about even

too much

coffee, tea, and chinese food.

lazy eyes

recently i have started looking at any new material good, and visualizing it as how it would look if i was looking at it 20 years from now, like a 1970s basketball game with short the shorts. its suddenly become almost impossible to look at things any other way.

rockers up high

love the ethiopian airlines, where else can u hear "a dub you can feel" up in the skies? then there was the ethiopian radio station, where the dj has the reverb on full, like old lee perry records. lots to love abt the place, tho i only saw a tiny slice. great weather, beautiful and friendly women folk, good food tho i never found much anything different than the veggie plate b/c its lent, and for 2 months the good christian folk give up meat (and make up for it by eating lotsa fish). and apparently somewhere in the hills there is a city given by rastafari to the rastafaris, which is said to be quite the spot.

in transit

ok so i copied this from an email i just wrote to cc. anyways:

i'm in transit like always.

somehow mixed myself up on the days, and managed to get a day behind schedule, which aint no big deal except when you got a 2 am flight to ethiopia to catch. so some chaos ensued, but tonite i am off on a 4 am flight to ethiopia, a few hundred dollars and many fairly amusing hours later.

all to see mr yttes ingag (spelling things backwards so it dont pop up on no google search), which actually was quite worth it, hes quite a piece of work, a bit loco, but in a good way, his foundation, the neerg eert noitdnuof , has the motto: The Promoter of the Massive Vegetation. How can you not love that?

so last nite i managed to get into the airport even tho my ticket was for the day before (not easy to do in india...must be a BONA FIDE passenger to enter airport. they like that word). i was thinknig there was another flight that i could squeeze myself onto, but, contrary to what i had been told, there was no such flight. And, being india, once your BONA FIDE ass has made it into the airport, there aint no going back out. So, i was in the rather amusing position of trying to convince some rather unconcerned dudes with aging weaponry to let me out of this airport. It took a trip to the airport manager, who, not knowing i understood hindi, was saying some pretty funny stuff along the lines of what idiot let this guy in, etc.etc. Eventually mr airport manager makes a call and i am free...

so now i off to ethiopia for 8 days instd of 10. should be good. gots to see my dad who happened to be landing in delhi an hour after me. lots of happenings and chance thingems. my grandma happened to have a heart attack while i was at my cousins house and they thought it was the end. shes ok now tho. wasnt really a heart attack. ava happened to be in banaglore at the same time as i. well i was supposed to be gone but i got a lil confused b/c of the pain meds. anyways. loveya

pics

So i know that microsoft photo editor sucks, but i was truly amazed by how thoroughly it mauled my pics...so i gots to figure out a mo better way to make the pics smaller so i can upload them easier. I used the blogger uploader now and it works, tho i underrotated. well thats progress. more pics 2 come.

nothing overly exciting happening, i down in kanyakumari, the southern tip of india, where chaos gets drowned by the ocean, and got myself a nice place w/ a kicking ocean breeze, coconuts swaying, all good and well, well and good, even got a tv, which the brit likes to watch tho i would do better without. she smokes way too much and is a bit crass, but otherwise a fine traveling companion.

lalrammawia chhakchhuak

and i be getting together on tues, hopefully. feeling more chilled out after vacating my prison-cell-box of a room, and taking the novel approach of phoning ahead for a reservation, which actually only worked due to divine interference, as the receptionist, one mr baloo, put my res down for the next day, and we just happened to arrive at the desk as mr- guest who was staying in the room i now call home was finishing checking out.

i had been trying to post to el blog via email which hasnt been working, so for a rapid summary of the last weeks events: chaos, complete and total mind-altering body shaking chaos, and then it turns out that this last weekend was the greatest and most auspicious day to get married for the whole year, so no hotel rooms to be found, thus landing me in box-like-prison cell room whcih literally was the second to last room left in town, the last one being the other box-like-prison cell room next door.

anyways perceptual filters have been activated, the mind is somewhat shielded from sensory assault, very star-trek like actually, cannons torpedoing the mental defenses, survival realized only through a fantastic combination of grace and luck. found some company in an older, guessing early 40s, cute and nice woman, who i ran into at the railway station somewhat disconcerted over being totally fucked for finding a room, having already tried 2 other cities, so she thus had no choice but to come with me and share a room in a town 4 hrs away, but we havent gotten down and dirty or anything, not yet anyways, i'm often quite shy really when it comes to initiating the process of getting into the pants.

i forgot my camera cable at the hotelito so pics soon.

no pics yet

damn indian batteries arent worth a dime. thought my camera was broken, turns out these batteries i just bought are filled with curry powder or something, dont quite work, or they probably been sitting around for a few decades. so no pics yet, tho some should make their way to these pages soon.

i had a rather long voyage over, just the usual missed connections and lost baggage stuff, tho there was one new and unusual twist - my ny-london flight couldnt start their engines... not really what you want to hear sitting on the runway.

they fixed em good tho.

in other news, there was a reasonably vigorous riot last nite a few miles from where i am right now, for the rather belated purpose of protesting the execution of saddam hussein. they managed to burn some shit, and close down a good part of the city today, so what they lacked in punctuality they made up through straight bullheadedness.

and one other news item i found interesting is that a rather large temple somewheres around here recently became the first one in the world w/ ISO 9001 certification, as they wanted to make sure that their devotees could be assured a standardized and high quality experience. now thats some real east-meeet-west action there.

crazy pete is back

so crazy pete is back on the rampage (at the bay), he recently went gorilla on a conga drum that he mistakenly thought was mine, smashed it to pieces. hopefully he stays away from the kayak, if i was not leaving the country in 48 hours i would probably go up there and rescue it. apparently this rampage is justified by my "opposition" to the "war." and my lack of care for the bay house.

i went to philly thurs nite, took friday off cuz i felt like it, and since i was working on monday. came back sat mornin to help the parents with prepare for the fiesta they had planned for sun for my nephews 1 yr bday / coming home from the nicu (neonatal i/c/u) day, which was fun in the way that things where you meet lots of people, who you are actually happy to see, and say the same things over and over again, till you finally just start pouring drinks and chill out somewhere till its all over, that kinda way.

on a totally different note, verizon amazed me yet again with their inability to do anything correct, even when all they need to do is do nothing. i'm switching our work dsl to them and called to set up a march 1 start date. well, in response, they set it up in a little less than 18 hours, calling me this morning to say its all ready to go...i was amused.