For all those poor souls who endure the pain that is ‘sharehousing’ here is the book for you. Cleaning the Fucking Kitchen – for dummies™. (via brainsluice et al.)
I didn’t miss much over the last week while I was offline due to my ‘puter shiteing itself. Shauny seems to be settled into her new abode, Graham seems to be spending his pay on CD’s and Hamilton has gone all yellow on us. Oh, and the date has returned to English now. I hope you have all learnt the names for the days of the week in Spanish. There will be questions in the exam about them.
One of the best sites to visit whilst all this Afghanistan biz is happening is theatlantic.com. It is the companion site to the magazine ‘The Atlantic Monthly’. I subscribed to this mag about 2 months ago and am not disappointed. Clear, concise and well researched articles abound in this publication. Anyhoo, one article caught my eye on the website. It is a collection of links to previous articles about Afghanistan – dating from the late 1950′s until present. Very well worth reading. There is one passage of text that caught my eye commenting on events after the Soviet army withdrew in 1989.
Because the Afghans lack the material wealth that people in the West are terrified of losing, they were psychologically able to go on fighting and suffering…. The very underdevelopment of the Afghan economy made it difficult to destroy….
In the end what "worked" in Afghanistan was not reason or negotiation or the advent of perestroika but the Afghans’ willingness to die.
I don’t agree with the comment that Afghanis in general have a willingness to die though. Maybe some do, but right now I’d reckon that most want to live in peace just like the rest of us. Enough said already…on to other things like……
Birthdays. Happy birthday Shauny.
As far as the election goes, I’m quite worried about enduring another term of Liberal antics. I remember as a 23 year old pre-polling (before the 1996 election) in the Brisbane CBD covered in dirt from gardening in a major city park (it was my job – I didn’t go into the city to do a spot of gardening). I pre-polled because I was leaving for my English working holiday before the election. Three ‘suits’ caught the elevator with me back to street level after we had all done our deed. They were cracking all sorts of jokes about Paul Keating, some of them quite funny. One of them stated that only dirty, filthy labourers voted for the Labor Party, glancing at me for a reaction. I returned fire with several punches, kicks and tirades of abuse. Yeah, I was young and stupid then and would never dream of using violence to get my point accross now. But the arrogance, ignorance and conceit that these three ‘men’ displayed towards a fellow hard working citizen has come to typify the attitude of this present government towards average people.
Needless to say I have decided to vote Labor after several weeks of swaying towards the Greens and a crackpot Socialist Alliance candidate. I am even going to hand out ‘how to vote’ cards for the ALP at my local booth, 200 metres from home. Fuck it. Go with the devil you know, the devil who might take more care when making decisions about education, health, industrial relations, immigration and foreign policy issues.
By the way, check out the seat of Melbourne’s candidate list. One independant candidate has his occupation listed as ‘wizard’. I might just change my vote after all. What we all need is a local member who can perform majik!