Tiny Little Fractures

Politicians eating out (from here)

That’s what I think every time I read about the grinning fool and his idiot brigade of 200 munchkins wandering around China, New York and LA wasting our money, or when I read about how the nitwit with anger management problems is waltzing around Colombo in fine Italian sports cars.

Of course as it turns out its not only the Lankan government that feels like the public’s money is there to fiddle away with whenever they feel like it. It turns out the US Feds are just as bad, wasting a spectacular $146 million (that’s a gadjillion, trillion rupees at tomorrow’s exchange rate as I predict it) on premium business class travel. This is where my 30% Fed tax goes!!? Fucking business class tickets for a bunch of nonces? To think I’ve started to despise local governments (after dealing with them day in and out) now I despise the Feds as well. I have to save up for yonks for this beauty of a lens so some prick at the Pentagon can get champagne on his flight!

Fucking wankers.

I’m talking about none other than His…erm…”Excellency” Nimal Siripala jowls de Silva. He seems to have a fairly decent background, as in he wasn’t brought up by wolves or bonobos or anything like that which might have warped his sense of reality. Of course his comments at the recent International Congress of AIDS in Asia and the Pacific belies any possibility of him having any semblance of a reasonable worldview. I could come up with a number of erudite, meaningful reasons for why old jowly should retire but I think it’s pretty simple to sum it up in a few words (I’m also tired and lazy).

He’s an idiot.

Fuck off that is. What an absolutely bloody miserable day at work. Or was it a really good one? I’ll be buggered if I knew. For once when I needed it to be a crazy day it wasn’t. It’s bad enough that R keeps badgering me to come back in Dec and akks is starting to get on the same train, but the two couldn’t shut it for a bit. And off all the things I needed as I rolled into work was a text from the very reason I don’t want to go back this December (well 55.99% of the reason I don’t want to go back). 

I don’t know whether to be bummed or strangely elated to be missed. Like I needed my head fucked or fucked again if I go down for three years in a row. I’d much rather freeze my ass off with a bottle of rum and a blonde, mindless sudhu badhuwa when the winter season comes around. Get drunk and have mindless sex. Hopefully at her place so I can get the hell out the next morning without that breakfast awkwardness.

What pisses me off is I still don’t know if I’m pissed or happy. Fuck.

Seriously! Can someone please put a muzzle on Keheliya Rambukwella! His latest statement that he would “love to hire some hackers” is by far one of the stupidest things he has said. Yes we know you should be doing that in a strategic sense but the last thing you want to admit in public is that you are contemplating engaging in cyberterrorism. Please someone tell me that neither Keheliya nor Gottabhya have children, because the prospect of these stupid genes being propagated puts me in a depression.

My future vision of Sri Lankan politicians, neutered

Have you ever felt like you’re losing it, just simply losing it? There’s this big, black, fathomless hole in front of you and slipping into it seems so tempting, giving everything up and giving up. It’s been that kind of a couple of weeks, the slog at work, the lack of normal people to hang out with, trying to hold onto something that I think I’ve already lost has all been adding up,. I’m not even sure that that’s even the problem, the problem is I can’t even put my finger on the problem but I guess it’s time to take control now. No more slipping but put out those arms and grab on. Chip my finger nails against the hard rock and try and get going in the right direction, take control. 

In other slightly less neurotic news I don’t have any official right to the nickname childof25, I still like it though and in true fashion will alternate randomly between N and childof25. I have to say it’s a bit tough being one year older and none the wiser and looking back on the last year it was one of ups and downs. A new city and a new job at the start, some new friends, losing a new friend to tragedy, R leaving to Australia, an unexpected trip to Sri Lanka, the realization that feelings aren’t that easily put past you, back to suburban hell, even more trouble putting the past behind me, a new job and currently a slight trip on the insane, dark side.

I’m sincerely hoping that the next year will be more even, but then I’ve already had a bit of a bombshell dropped on me that if not handled judiciously could have some shitty repercussions. Maybe stability, comfort are things that don’t exist, maybe this state of flux and confusion is something normal and I just haven’t learnt to deal with it yet. I guess I’ll find out.

I’m open minded, not sure I’m this open minded though

Thankfully this statement, generally delivered in a disapproving tone is rarely directed at me. Well it may well be directed at me when I’m not around but I sincerely hope not. The statement with its disapproving tone is generally uttered by a female friend or family member. What’s surprising when it’s uttered by the family members is that my family is internationalized to say the least, there are French, Welsh, English, Black, American members of the family as well as someone who I think is a Czechoslovakian, though I could be mistaken with religions ranging from Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant, Born Again (my personal favourites because of the utter craziness exhibited) and even a Muslim. 

But for all this UN-like multiculturalism, there appears one thing the ladies in the family have an aversion to and that’s Sri Lankan guys. This is especially true for the Sri Lankan girls who were born in Sri Lanka but have lived here for some time. And the aversion is also shared by a number of female acquaintances I have of Sri Lankan origin. I think it’s almost subconscious on some of their parts because they start bitching out the species in front of me and appear quite surprised when I, naturally, put my hand up and protest.

The sad truth is though, the reasons they give for their dislike seem to be true, that they are insecure and controlling. I personally have my doubts that this is a solely Sri Lankan attribute but I have seen a number of Sri Lankan guys who do fit the bill of controlling. They don’t like their girls dressing nice, going out by themselves, working, making more money than them or on some memorable occasions they attempt to hit you over the head with a pool cue for talking to them.

I’m a bit peeved with this though, both the generalization and the behaviour of the said chaps. For one thing the former means that a lot of brown girls simply dismiss me out of hand because I’m brown. Sure tell me to fuck off because I’m arrogant, cocky and have an inappropriate sense of humour (though this list is far from exhaustive) but at least let me piss you off with my attitude as opposed to the colour of my skin and the expectations that arise from it. 

Also I’m pissed with the guys, they need to chill out for one. I personally like an independent woman, one who works, has friends to hang out with and does her own thing. Primarily because I have so much crap going on in my life and don’t foresee that changing for the next couple of decades that I don’t have a lot of time to devote to a relationship. Also if she goes out with her mates then I can go out with my friends and I don’t really mind the gf flirting a bit, because then I can. 

The key element in a relationship is trust, she has to know that even though I may flirt (lets be honest, sometimes it helps getting stuff done, from getting tickets changed to real estate records recorded) I would never, ever do anything more (unless I run into Jessica Alba, then all bets are off), and I would expect the same for her. Else I wouldn’t be (hypothetically speaking) in the relationship. Also I prefer the girls I’m with looking sexy, for one thing I’m easily bored and the better she dresses the less I have to drink (I’m kidding, no I really am) and she can dance, flirt with anyone she wants, because at the end of the day she’d be coming home with me, while all the poor sods who thought they were getting some have to go home to their cold, lonely beds. The best part of course is that while she dances with some other guys that leaves me to have a chat with the buddies and try and deplete the national reserves of Reserve.

So in short I have two appeals, one is to the anal retentive guys (Sri Lankan and others), chill out…you’re giving guys like me a bad name and reducing my chances of getting hitched (or laid for that matter) to a nice brown girl. And to the girls, give a brown guy a break, I’m chill, I really am. Also I have absolutely, absolutely no problem with you making more money than I do…if you’re worried about that.

I have no idea what this picture has to do with the post, I typed sloppy reporting into Google and this showed up. Gotta love old Pete though…and miss the Libertines

I seem to hear a lot about the death of Mainstream Media and the rise of blogging as the new news medium. I personally don’t think there’s much to choose between the two, case in point were two articles I read on BBC and Fortune recently. The one on Fortune by Eric Ellis on the “Flying Tigers” did read more like a personal blog post or even a rant rather than a legitimate article. I was under the impression there was two types of articles in such magazines, “news” articles which should be accurate and dispassionate and “opinion” pieces which should involve more analysis and will obviously have some bias as a result.

Where does Ellis’s article fit into this? It’s certainly not dispassionate, nor does it involve a lot of analysis or even thinking for that matter. In fact he trots out that tired line about “the Tigers’ Eelam is a country, with all the accoutrements of state” not mentioning how the Sri Lankan Government and Sri Lankan taxpayers foot the administrative costs. Ellis displays an embarrassing lack of context, no more so when he titles his article “Eyewitness account of Tamil attack.” But then I guess he was just lazy and more intent on getting down the pool at GFH than thinking about what he was writing.

Another article that appears to include the most amazing cop out was this one on Muhammad Yunus dropping his aspirations for a political party in Bangladesh. One of the last paragraphs gave me pause for thought: 

“But correspondents say that many people questioned whether he had over-estimated his popularity in rural areas, where his bank’s high interest rates are disliked.” 

Eh? I could have sworn this was the same man who just got the Nobel Peace Prize for being the “World banker to the poor”  whose micro-credit schemes are available “even to beggars.” Also the Grameen bank is majority owned by the “rural poor it serves” so it’s not even Yunus’ bank. It just seems like some journo wrote up a third of that article, couldn’t come up with a valid reason why the chap was pulling out of politics (maybe he’s just tired of bullshit), really wanted to head down to the pub and just made something up.

Even I don’t…oh wait…there’s that bottle of wine left over from last night…

Or rather lack of. Check this article out here, especially the subheading, "plight of the Tamil Tiger community." To even type something like that really beggars belief with regard to stupidity. It’s reading small town hick papers like this that make me think that most journalists are idiots. Was the embargo not lifted on the NE during the ceasefire, is it not in fact true that throughout the war the Sri Lankan government has provided humanitarian relief to the conflict areas. Relief that has with relative frequency been Shanghaied by the Tigers. I’m glad god motivated Dr. John Whitehall to train Tiger medics, maybe his next step up should be funding some cyanide pills.

Gah, I’m just annoyed at the shoddy reporting in this article, the implication that the Tigers renouncing their demand for a separate state was the basis for the ceasefire. Patently untrue because first they never renounced anything, they just said some legal gobbledygook that made it sound like that (confirmed by the fact that Prabha said he still stood by his order that if he ever gave up the demand for Eelam, his troops should shoot him) and to be honest the Tigers never went into a ceasefire. Unless of course said ceasefires are characterized by hunting down political opponents and intelligence officers and gunning them down in the streets. Oh yeah and importing the odd plane and a few more weapons to enliven things. Piddleshit.

Oh yeah does anybody else find it odd that the photograph was taken by Ned Kelly?

Has bugger all to do with this post but is a beaut of a car

Mahinda mamme really outdid himself arguing the case for purchasing four MiG29’s at a total cost of probably around $60 million (or in Sri Lankan terms, a gadjillion Rupees, in layman’s terms, a whole lot of bloody cash).

Apparently it is not a knee jerk reaction (why would he ever have thought that?) but is part of a “planned development of the ADS” (Air Defense Systems to us laypeople)…err…then why pray tell did we spend almost $10 million on buying MiG27s recently?

Makes no sense to me, if I’m saving to buy a Porsche Carrera GT in a few months time, I’m certainly not going to buy a NSX to ‘tide me over.’ But then I don’t have a scarf cutting the blood supply to my brain, or in fact stand to make a few million from brokering the purchase of a NSX and a Carrera GT.

NB: all facts and the premise for this blog post were shamelessly ripped off from Iqbal Athas and his Situation Report.

So I was reading the SLFP’s devolution proposals the other day, yes I know not the most exciting of bedtime reading but I believe it is important that one keeps abreast of such things. After a 10 hour day at work (sadly the norm now, which is exceptionally difficult for someone like me who is a beach bum at heart to handle…but…oh well…what to do) I really don’t have the energy to rip this arse wipe proposals to shreds. There was however one item that really made me pause for thought, I initially thought my math must be off and if it is, someone please do correct me. The evidence is below:

“1.1: There would be a Chief Minister for each district”

“At present, though there are 25 districts recognized by the present Constitution, the number of districts could be increased to 30 by a Delimitation Commities on the basis of geographical and demographical factors.”

Hold on there Mahinda mamme, you want to add 30 more ministers? On top of the 150 odd (plus or minus defections/defecations) we already have!? Please tell me this is a bad joke…

My head hurts, I mean really fucking hurts. I’m not sure what else could have gone wrong today, we lost the toss, the pitch didn’t swing for us, it did for the Aussies, the weather was perfect for the Aussie batting session, far from perfect for ours and in the middle of this the bloody Tigers go dropping bombs. I don’t know whether I’m angry, disappointed or a heady combination of both. 

First off the match, what on earth happened to our bowling? Why was Murali not bowled out instead of Dilhara? The pitch was just a ridiculously good batting pitch and losing the toss put the conditions heavily in the Australians favour but we should have had some kind of strategy to combat Ponting, we seemed to do with Hayden but Ponting singlehandedly took that game away from us.

Ah, the throbbings too much, I’m off the bed…I’ll be an armchair pundit and general tomorrow.

Unfortunately that’s a real life formula in the title. And no don’t look in any algebra textbooks, it’s a scenario equation. To all of those scratching their heads in confusion let me elaborate. Chinky Pinky joined me for the weekend after a long hiatus, ostensibly to help me scope out some brown badu at the Aluth Avurrudu festival at Woodley Park. Well that’s what I wanted to do at least, I think she was just more interested in drinking at some point of the weekend. 

There were a few possibles around but there was a high probability of them being underage. And as much as I like a handbag to the head from some irate Aunty I decided to keep my distance. The relative lack of hotness was however disappointing, nothing on the scale of back home…oh well what to do. Anyways CP and I were meeting A, her friend from RI who brought along G his friend from out East. Being incestuously Sri Lankan it turned out they were going to meet a ‘friend’ of mine who we shall refer to from now on as Wanker as G knew him, and boy were they happy about having to go. I personally was more inclined to hang out at Woodley, smile uncertainly at aunties and uncles I might know, try and track down some arrack and laugh at N. Unfortunately N was being taken to be groomed by his female retainer and we decided to put A and G out their misery by accompanying them to Venice Beach accumulating Wanker along the way. 

Now I may, truth be told, not the nicest person on the planet, but I do try and be a ‘good’ person. There is many an occasion where I fall short but I reckon I must be doing a decent job on the evidence of the friends I have. R, Bounty, CP, Evil, N, FG, Monkey Boy, etc., one must be doing a fairly good job as a human being to have friends like these. That’s why I cannot for the life of me understand why Wanker doesn’t see the error of his ways. I mean how does one go through life for 23 years and have no friends? Surely he should be able to see that he has issues and that anyone who gives him the time of day does so, well, out of sympathy for the most part.

Let me give you a bit of background on Wanker, he grew up with me and R living in the near vicinity. Back in the day we used to beat on him endlessly but here’s the thing, not one punch was undeserved. I’m sorry but if you chuck a rock at me out of the blue at my head and draw blood you will get hit. Similarly if you say unmentionable things about my mother, you will get hit, if you throw my slippers on the roof forcing me to walk home on hot tarmac, you will get punched. We actually felt sorry for him when we hit him but explaining how to be a decent human being never worked leaving us with no other option. He also had the one redeeming feature of having an awesome garden to play cricket and night cricket in. After he moved we thankfully didn’t see him for quite awhile. 

This year he found me on facebook and invited me to his place. After almost a decade I was expecting improvement. After all I know on several people’s testimony’s that I have, N has and so have a lot of other people relative to who we were back in the day. And I firmly believe in second, third and fourth chances. Sadly it wasn’t to be, he was still annoying only a bit bigger this time. Last weekend however took the cake, not only was he annoying, whiney and obnoxious but he was downright rude.

Wanker took a liking to CP which all of us without exception found hilarious. But what really pissed me off was his behaviour after that. After a night clubbing CP, G and I were on the couch. The former was in the middle with her legs up on me talking to G while I zoned out. After about five minutes I realized Wanker was sitting on the couch next to us giving me what can only be described as a bitter look, before giving the same look to CP and then G and then whispering something to his friend who was sitting next to him. That really, really pissed me off because it was just so rude and not done. Anybody with any social skills should be able to handle non-attainable attraction in a mature way and not behave like a hormonal teen. What I really wanted to do at that stage was to give him a thundering kanne pare that would have echoed across the Western Hemisphere. But I just let it go. If five years of people beating on him hasn’t made him realize that there is something fundamentally wrong in his behaviour towards others then nothing will.

Once a wanker always a wanker I guess, at least for this particular wanker. Some people should just be kept in the past.

There’s Green wash, and there’s Green Wash. CSR is an important step forward in promoting sustainability, social justice and environmental protection along with economic gain in the so called “Triple Bottom Line” in order to make economic growth more sustainable. While I support anything that would help change the way business is done today and promote sustainably, a lot of the CSR programs implemented these days are unfortunately complete bullshit, not all, but most.

Of course of those that are bullshit, some stand out conspicuously. My favourite? The one I discovered reading this article on BBC on the environmental evils of supermarkets. Apparently weapons manufacturer BAE Systems in 2006 announced they are going to make “environmentally friendly” weapons. Amongst the measures are reduced lead bullets, reduced smoke grenades (you read that right, reduced smoke, I’m assuming to reduce the chance of getting cancer from inhaling a grenade), rockets with reduced toxins and composting waste explosives.

Gee thanks BAE, because I’m sure if I was a soldier getting my guts rearranged by a soft nosed bullet I’d at least be able to thank my lucky stars that I wouldn’t have to worry about the many symptoms of lead poisoning which include nausea, abdominal pain or god forbid irritability (though I assume being shot would make me plenty irritable already). So from the bottom of my torn aorta, thank you BAE!

 stolen from here

You know what’s really annoying about being a generation Y’er (only realized I was one recently thanks to Hira)? It’s the rest of the family telling you what to do, what they think you should do. For fucks sakes I’m having enough trouble summoning up the courage to do what needs to be done from my viewpoint, as opposed to decamping to a hut on a hill in a tropical island with a wholesale account with the nearest arrack producer. Having to be lectured on and off by the baby boomers and WWI’s is really pushing me to breaking point.

Having to deal with the ‘serious’ talks and phone calls from distant shores with opinions as to how you should live your life is getting increasingly difficult to handle. Especially because the advice comes from people who love you and in their minds want what’s best for you. Not exactly candidates for the phrasing that I use when people piss me off, i.e. ‘go fuck yourself.’ Instead all I can do is grit my teeth, worsening my already bad grinding problem, nod my head, bite back the smarmy comments and mumble “ok, ok” to pretty much everything.

I think I need a drink, a very stiff one.

Driving, this is in no particular order, though the last is most definitely one that really gets my goat, chicken and any barnyard animal you could name. In no particular order,

1. Driving long distances. Of course I live in the wrong place to dislike driving long distances, getting a hair cut means driving around 5 miles, hanging out with a friend usually entails 45 minutes on the freeway. Not something I look forward to considering I love the convenience of Colombo or London, the former with everything in a 5 mile radius and the latter with its public transport system.

1. Traffic. It’s a weird thing about SoCal that most places no matter how close within about a 40 mile radius will take 45 minutes to an hour to get to, no matter if its 10 or 40 miles away. It’s a law, like Newton’s or Murphy’s; in fact a lot like the latter. There have been those other wonderful times when it’s taken me around 4 hours to drive a distance that usually took me 45 minutes, road rage suddenly became understandable.

1. Long, boring freeways involved in driving those said distances. Boring makes me fall asleep, not a good idea when driving. Usually involves glass embedded in one’s face and trying to explain to a bemused cop as to how you didn’t realize there was no exit ramp where you decided to take leave of the freeway. Usually at an hour at which I prefer to either be sleeping or drunk. 

1. People who brake for everything. Seriously, did you not learn any physics in school? Take your fucking foot off the gas; there is absolutely no need to mash on your brakes everytime you want to slow down. I bitch about this because when one eager beaver lights up those little red lights at the back of their trusty steed, every other dip shit decides to brake as well. End result, traffic slows down, I get frustrated.

1. Last but not least, people who don’t realize the meaning of the ‘fast lane.’ It is not a place to be doing the speed limit, it is a lane meant for people who want to mosey around a bit faster and allow them to pass slower traffic. And it’s almost always a Chinese person at the wheel of a slow car in the fast lane, or a wrinkly old sudda. The experience of tearing along care freely on the fast lane and almost riding up the back of some idiot pootling along smelling the sunflowers without exception makes me want one of the fine instruments depicted below.

Rant over….

Ane happuwa!

Ane aimath happuwa!? 

There I was at the Curry Bowl digging into the lunch buffet with N when A and some other chap charge in to inform me that someone had backed into my double parked car. Following them out with an indul hand, I found some fat, brown, hobag aunty looking at my bumper disconcertedly as if wondering how it got there. Following her gaze I noted one or two minute scratches and kindly, with the patience of Job enquired what in tarnation she did.

I just didn’t see your car 

It was with great self control that I didn’t ask the obvious question as to how in the name of fuck could she not note the fact that there was a great, big, black RAV4 right behind her considering that reversing involves looking in the goddamn rearview mirror. She looked so retarded and pathetic when she asked me if I could move my car so she could back up I didn’t have the heart to point out she had around 3 feet to get her minivan out if she actually bothered turning the steering wheel a bit.

I just smiled sweetly at her, fished my keys out with my left hand, the right still being covered with curry and reversed the car into a spot that had opened up, actually ended up reversing into the space at a ridiculous angle and had to put up with some ribald comments from A about my dodgy parking abilities (fuck you I was trying not to get curry over my car). The fucktarded aunty who had a fairly large bump in her fender shamefacedly sloped off. 

On entering the Curry Bowl I was informed with great joviality that she had actually backed into my car not once, but twice. That sort of amazed me, surely if one is backing up and hears a thud, what one does is stop, get out and check to see if there’s a toddler under your wheel.

NOT drive forward a bit and try and back up again to deliver the coup de grâce.

Here are the village idiots in Sri Lanka, all together in one place, beaming for the camera, thinking less about salaries and constituencies than perks and trips to Thailand (to study their democracy/Tsunami response/etc/etc of course). As opposed to the 35 Ministers promised at elections we now have 104. That’s 1 minister for around 192,000 people. Those bastions of bureaucratic nightmares India and Pakistan on the other hand has one for every 14 million and one for every 10.5 million respectively. That for the mathematically challenged readers is over twice a magnitude in difference (I think? I’ll admit I’m fairly mathematically challenged as well).

Looks like it’s the same same song we heard from Chandrika, there’s just a moustache this time around (well a visible one at least).

If there’s one thing I hate its false representation, an example of which is people passing off pictures others have taken as their own. I do post others pictures on my blog to illustrate the occasional point but never would post someone else picture on Flickr or any other photo sharing webpage and try and say I took it. The reason I’m ranting about this is because about a month ago I came across a picture of a leopard in Sri Lanka. I immediately recognized the picture from a Pbase gallery by David Behrens, specifically this picture posted back in 2002 and which I had come across while still in college years ago. 

In fact looking at most of the pictures hosted on that Flickr account it looks like they have been culled from a wide range of sources. But here’s the crux of the matter, someone commented on the picture and the poster’s reply indicated ownership of the picture. Now that really bloody annoyed me, the decent thing to do in response to the person’s comment would be to admit the poster him/herself did not take the picture but culled it off a website. I in response posted a comment mentioning the original photographer should be credited but it was pretty quickly taken down. That in my opinion was stupid and shows a complete lack of respect for the effort that some of us put into our photography. I know the Flickr poster is not making any money off the picture but trying to take credit for taking the picture is pretty low.

P.S. I’m not entirely sure what that picture has to do with my post, but just thought it looked funny, I did not however draw it.

Anyone who has any iota of awareness on happenstance in America would have realized that being a high school student in the US of A is a pretty hazardous existence. In addition to the chance of your high school sweets wandering off behind the gym for a bit of ‘ball practice’ with the Ol’ gym teacher there is also the off chance that that kid you didn’t say ‘hi’ to in the morning might have got pissed. Pissed enough that is to come back to school the next day and blow you to kingdom come (and a bit further if you are a popular kid). Hell there’s even the chance someone who someone didn’t say ‘hi’ to when you were barely an atom on the world stage might come put a bullet in you like in the Amish case. All in all, perhaps basic training should start a bit early these days and “run away from the pimply kid with the gun” should be added to that old lexicon of “don’t talk to strangers.”

The solution some genius has come up to deal with the mini insurgency? Arming teachers. Yes, take a long pause there, ruminate a bit over what you just read and trust me you didn’t read wrong. The solution is not less guns for the crazies to utilize in popping innocents, but more guns…sigh..sometimes there’s so much stupidity in this world, I’m just left speechless and longing for a stiff Rum and Coke and some pork curry. So I’m off to get both of those….

Meanwhile to those of you who come up with these ideas, I believe the Darwin Awards are looking for nominees.

Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle, I remember reading this article with a sense of disbelief and incredulity. Surely the big man jests, blithely stating ‘Yes, I am down to umpire in the Champions Trophy and I expect to fulfill that appointment.’ Imagine the arrogance in thinking one can get away with accusing teams without basis (in my humble opinion) of breaking the rules, acting outside of cricketing law and effectively blackmailing the ICC. The Aussie apologists of course are backing big Darrell all the way, ‘If he’s one of the best umpires in international cricket then of course he should be umpiring..’ so says that paragon of fair play Ponting. That’s a big fucking IF there old boy.

   One good decision…

  ..leads to another

Imagine if Assad Rauf or Aleem Dar did something similar to this, accusing say the English team of tampering to produce a ‘swinging’ victory in the Ashes, changing balls in the middle of a game that Australia was winning and trying to extort money in response for silence from the ICC. I’ll bet you my right ball that pretty much the whole of Australia’s and England’s cricketing fraternity would be baying for their blood, for them to be hung, drawn, quartered and then forced to watch Warne’s whale sex action tape (google it if you don’t know what I’m on about) as punishment. Any umpire from the Asian subcontinent if they did anything similar would probably be roundly reamed by the Aussies and would not be able to play even one bump cricket on the street.

I’m glad the Indian board has woken up and told Hair to bugger off and hopefully this will sound the death knell for his career. Given Hair’s history and blatant lying that he follows all the rules of cricket (ergo his inability to accept the ruling that Murali doesn’t throw), he is the one that should have the book thrown at him (preferably all the Brittanica volumes if I had my way) and charged with bringing the game into disrepute. I hope Hair gets buggered off the panel and not allowed to umpire anymore while the Pakistanis get absolved of tampering, Ranjan over to you….

From Cricinfo, “Pictures from Sky Sports appeared to show Akhtar flicking his thumb at the ball as he walked back to his mark,”…um…so? Who gives a fuck?! I’ve seen players flick the ball a thousand times when walking up to their marks, presumably to get grass dirt off.  Apparently that is “still illegal as only the umpire can do so.” Please do watch the video below and tell me what you see. If he did something like this repeatedly then fine, there probably was something dodgy going on, but only once? Give me a fucking break, as I said before it happens every time an international match is played, I guess the skin colour is what makes it questionable or illegal.

That this matter even received attention is ridiculous. I mean look at what Nasser Hussain said, “I can’t believe that he would be so stupid.” It’s the bloody WASPS who commentate who are being idiots. What is it about British and Australian teams that make them unable to accept defeat? Something always crops up when they lose or going through bad patches, ball tampering is the obvious example. I believe Atherton in frustration requested the 15-over rule to be changed after we walloped them in the ’96 quarters(though I’m not entirely sure about that). And it’s not limited to the sport of cricket, hockey once dominated by countries like India and Pakistan has now largely become dominated by rich countries after synthetic surfaces were introduced. A change that took hockey away from the majority of those who enjoyed it and gave it to those who can afford it and allowed the rich majority to become the “best in the world.”

What the South Asian bloc should do if these double standards continue is a difficult question. We can walk out of the ICC and bring it tumbling down. After all we have greater purchasing power and clout than Australia, England and NZ combined. Africa is largely powerless with only South Africa being a country of any significance. We walk out and everything falls down, the white countries will play with each other and the browns with each other. The West Indies will probably just disappear as a cricketing country while South Africa will probably stick with the white countries due to “security concerns.” The sad thing is if we do split along those lines, as a friend pointed out the Aussies, Kiwis and the English will probably be pretty happy playing themselves endlessly and competing to be the ‘best.’ The alternative is we put up with it and keep trying to change the system step by step. When I’m pissed I prefer the former, when I’m calm I prefer the latter, well somewhat.

You would think almost getting run over twice on two consecutive mornings would not be conducive to a good mood, but rather surprisingly I find it is. Perhaps it’s the thrill of cheating death in the mornings when I can usually barely get my jeans on without falling down a couple of times and generally pour juice into my cereal instead of milk. I am hoping though that this trend of missing the front end of fenders by inches will not continue, after all luck has to run out sometime.

On the bright side of life I discovered two new bands on my iPod, something that happens with pleasing regularity. I have close to 9,000 songs on there, downloaded from a spectrum of people from British hipsters, Sri Lankan yuppies and San Franciscan liberals. Every now and then it throws out a couple of random gems and today two outstanding songs popped up, Summertime by the Sundays and Turn by Feeder, two British ‘indie’ (if that term really applies anymore in the real world) rock groups.  I would recommend both groups for some chilled out, sometimes upbeat sometimes shoe-gazer tunes.

This week has also been one of the most sozzled weeks since I left college and I’m sure I’ve burnt up what few brain cells I had left. PKS left on Sunday (sadly I don’t have anybody to laugh at with regularity anymore) back to NZ and R has either been trying to celebrate his new found freedom or drown his sorrows (probably the latter) and dragged me along with him. It’s been a steady stream of rum and cokes and vodka/redbulls since Tuesday. One of the more notable nights was Friday at Voda, a brilliant place where there’s no cover charge, drinks are around $5 each and on top of that it looks a bit like Glo. Five shots of vodka, a couple of them free meant that even though I managed to get a number I for the life of me cannot remember who the girl was. All I can recall is that she was Asian and from Fullerton which in retrospect does me no good as that’s around 500 miles south of here. I do quite like Voda though, especially as a start out point to the night.

I’m currently thanking whoever pulls the cosmic strings for making tomorrow a holiday during which I plan to resolutely steer clear of anything with an alcohol content, try and sweat some toxins out in the gym, lose at poker and watch Himalaya, i.e. be somewhat productive. I also intend to spend a good portion of the day putting my thinking cap on and come up with ideas to make a quick $4,000 (preferably something that doesn’t require me to give up a body part) so R and I can hit up SL in December for a couple of weeks, just to try and maintain some sanity. Why did I leave corporate America and a fat paycheck again?

The most obvious case of this recently was the eagerness of South Africa’s players to play in England despite terror threats which was of course in sharp contrast to the hastiness with which they left Sri Lanka, no doubt leaving a smelly trail of pee from Cinnamon Grand to Katunayake. The other two interesting cases of double standards that I came across in my rather obsessive reading of Cricinfo is the issue of ball tampering and countries influencing the choice of umpires.

The ball tampering issue at the center of the current turmoil has an interesting historical context. Though it apparently has been going on for decades it only reached prominence when the legendary Pakistani bowlers Wakar, Wasim and Imran started reverse swinging the ball and getting shit loads of wickets back in the early nineties. I wonder if the Australian or English teams managed to do this with the same proficiency whether there would have been a similar uproar. After all look at the issue of sledging, its most proficient practitioners are the Australians, yet has it been as serious an issue as ball tampering?

The case of countries influencing the choice of umpires though is the most obviously laughable example of double standards at the moment. The ICC talks tough and the Aussies and Brits chime in with enthusiasm in condemning the Pakistan’s attempts to ensure Darrel Hair doesn’t officiate in any Pakistani games. The vitriol is loud and shrill in this case, but the silence is deafening when Cricket Australia proposes waiving the practice of having neutral umpires officiate for the Ashes. Their excuse is that the “best” umpires in the world are Australian and English, a laughable claim. The ICC elite umpires and their countries of origin are shown below.

Aleem Dar - Jhang, Pakistan

Asad Rauf – Lahore, Pakistan

Mark Benson - Shoreham-by-Sea, England

Brent Bowden – Auckland, New Zealand 

Steve Bucknor - Montego Bay, St James, Jamaica

Billy Doctrove - Marigot, Dominica 

Darrell Hair – Mudgee, Australia

Daryl Harper – Adelaide, Australia 

Rudi Koertzen – Knysna, South Africa

Simon Taufel – apparently somewhere in Australia
 

Now I’m no statistics expert but it looks to me like 6 out of the 10 ‘elite’ umpires are NOT Australian or English, in fact only one of them is English. Three are in fact Australian which is a bit odd, considering the Ashes is being held in Australia this year. 

At the end of the day the two scenarios, one with Pakistan not wanting Hair to officiate in their matches and the other with Australia wanting Australian/British umpires for the Ashes are the same packages with different wrapping. Both are countries trying to influence umpire choices, yet one is met with a slap on the wrist while the other is met nary a protest.The Australian and British media can pontificate until they are blue in the face, it is painfully obvious to anyone with any common sense that racism, prejudice and double standards are all too common in cricket.

It’s barely 10.30 in the morning and already I feel like I’ve been slapped across the face with a wet salamander. It all started to slide downhill last night when I had to spend around 4 gazillion hours on the phone with Comcast to transfer the cable and internet over to my name on the account one of the roomies is heading out of San Fran today. Ended up going to sleep at around one in the morning after dealing with the mentally challenged customer service rep at the other end of the line and then proceeded to wake up umpteen times in the night in cold sweats due to the experience.

Add to that this morning I overslept, didn’t have time to grab a coffee, discovered I’d lost my weekly Muni pass and didn’t have exact change for the Muni, all in the space of bout an hour. To add insult to injury I had to see a gorgeous Aston Martin DB9 and a Maserati quattroporte one after another. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the day has to offer.

“The problem is that people here telephone them and ask them to return. If these people don’t call, they will not return.”

You are fucking kidding me right?! I read this and almost choked on my post-gym Nutella sandwich. Sam had a tragic-comic post about the crap that has recently been floating to the surface in Sri Lanka in the news. Even with this in mind the recent comments from his ‘honourable’, probably overweight minister of Labour Relations Athauda Senevirathne does beggar belief though.

Let me get this straight, my mom/sister/daughter is in a country that as we shave, shit and shower is being bombed back into Biblical times and is on the verge of being invaded by a mob of very pissed off Israelis and the Minister is suggesting to ‘chill Winston!’. How absolutely bloody insightful! He goes on to mention that they are used to conflict! I highly doubt a person gets inured to missiles raining down on them and every once in awhile bisecting your neighbour and probably blowing their poodle to kingdom come.

"We are not encouraging them to come back… I don’t think a large number of people want to come back.” Obviously that’s why some 2000 workers braved life and limb to get to Beirut from South Lebanon. Mr Minister claims the evacuated workers want to get back to their jobs. Obviously you dumb fuck they want to get back to work, they after all don’t have the ‘enviable’ luxury of having ‘ripping off the country’ as the first item on their resumes unlike our politicians. I don’t think they want to get back to Lebanon though after they went to the trouble of getting out under fire leaving passports and pay behind!

What I really, really do not understand is how the stupidest 1% of Sri Lankans always end up in Parliament or the Cabinet. This Athauda obviously electrocutes himself with depressing regularity while making his morning tea and probably misses the toilet bowl every time. To say his comments lack sensitivity is like saying Idi Amin was an occassionaly inattentive husband. I’ve actually run out of things to say, I don’t think there are words that have been invented that are quite capable of capturing how absolutely fucking moronic Athauda is. He was probably less dropped on his head as a baby and more had his head run over by an exceptionally long semi while an elephant stomped on his nads.

My sympathies to the poor women in Lebanon whose only crime was to be born poor and search for betterment in life. They bring in a considerable chunk of the foreign exchange Sri Lanka earns and as a reward have their interests represented by this fucktard.

Despite my tired, terrified look, I really want to go back! 

Who wouldn’t want to go back to this!? 

Dammit, I think I spoke too soon about the lack of odorous workmates! Ah well, its not too bad…I guess…

I hate criticism for the sake of criticism. Case in point, the recent furor caused by Asantha de Mel’s comments about Sanath Jayasuriya being ‘forced’ out of the test squad and Moody being crap for the Sri Lankan team. Now the timing for these comments couldn’t have been worse, with a very young and inexperienced Sri Lankan team in England. As expected we did pretty rubbish today and it looks like an innings defeat is inevitable. What I don’t understand is why couldn’t de Mel hold of his comments until at least the first test is over? Cricket is a game where self belief is ridiculously important. Imagine the plight of our openers going to bat against the English attack with the thought that they could be second best in the back of their heads. We Sri Lankans are temperamental enough without emotional baggage like that.

I think de Mel could have done a lot better by shutting the hell up or saying he had full faith in Moody and our team. If we failed in the first test then he could have tried to reinstate Sanath as a response to that failure. It sucks that while we have the talent to be the best team in the world (my belief in the Sri Lankan team beggars belief) we have a bunch of incompetent morons jockeying for the title of ‘biggest idiot’ in our administration. Looks like we can kiss this test series and very possibly the World Cup goodbye.

I hate temp jobs, always boring filing, data entry and trying to direct phone calls to people I don’t know (my solution is to put the difficult ones on hold until they hang up!). Checked the academic.org today and saw that the LTTE attacked a troop ship and blew up a Dvora. It looks like the shit has finally hit the ceiling. Also went onto BBC and read this Q&A about the conflict and saw these inaccuracies.

What the hell does that mean? The LTTE don’t want a different country but want a homeland? Sounds like the same thing to me. Also when Prabha was questioned about his long standing statement that he should be killed if he ever gives up his demand for Eelam, he stated it still stands.

‘2) What prompted the 2002 ceasefire – “Initial fears that the Tigers would use the truce to regroup militarily proved unfounded”’