blogwaffe

Not a week and a half ago, I commited a bit of iTMS stupidity. To add insult to injury, the iTunes free download of the week this week is a song I purchased (for money) nearly two months ago: “I Predict a Riot” by Kaiser Chiefs. While it’s nice to think of myself as ahead of my times (actually, I prefer “prognosticator of musical import”), I’d rather be cheap.

It’s a good song, though. Get it while it’s free.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Delicious.

I prefer crunchy peanut butter (without funny, non-peanut oils in it), raspberry jam (jam has seeds in it – as I recall, fruit spreads get called different things in different countries), and either potato bread (any Idaho jokes will be met with a bitch slap) or Mom’s white bread.

I also prefer not to run out of jam while making the damn thing; the peanut butter to jam ratio is key to a good sandwich. Now my mouth is all stuck together.

I’ve always hated Bryan Adams’ music. “Everything I Do”, “This Side of Paradise”, and (I loathe writing it down) “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman”, suck. I tried to think of a more diplomatic way to put it, or even something a bit more intellectual and substantive. But “sucks” is really the best way to express the way in which I detest his music.

Dixie informed me today that “Summer of ’69” is a Bryan Adams song. Man that’s an awesome song; I always thought it was Bon Jovi.

I honestly don’t know how to move forward in my life knowing what I do now. Bryan Adams, the putrescent archon of pappy crap, wrote “Summer of ’69”, a mid-eighties musical and lyrical work of genius.

My entire world has collapsed.

Following Paul.za’s lead, I’ve decided to write up a brief sketch of some of the background behind my current research: Quantum Spatial Search. Be warned, this is the longest post blogwaffe has ever seen. Skip to the last page of this post and read the last line if you want the short of it. For the long of it, read on.

Use the little page numbers below to navigate this post.

Nooooo!!!

I just bought a song off iTunes. A song I already had. That’s ninety-nine cents (three tacos minus tax) down the drain. All for a stupid Jimmy Eat Flippin’ World song.

Why they hell didn’t I bother to search my library before buying, you ask? Because what kind of douche bag owns “Sweetness”? I mean, it’s hella catchy, and the subject’s fair, but, let’s be honest, it’s a little repetitive.

Well now it’s even more repetitive, since I have two copies. I’m listening to them back to back now.

Woah-oh-oh-oho-o.

Holly and I went to see Born into Brothels on Wednesday. The documentary follows a photographer, Zana Briski, who originally went to Calcutta’s red light district to shoot the lives of the prostitutes but eventually became attached to the women’s children. She began giving them photography lessons. As Holly notes, the kids become really empowered by their new means of creation and communication. And some of their pictures are really freakin’ good. One of the kids, Avijit, was invited to Amsterdam with eight other children from around the world to exhibit their works internationally.

It’s really an amazing story. Here are these kids that live in a brothel; about twenty people all living in one apartment, each family with its own little room. When their mothers work, they pull a curtain across the bed, so the children don’t see anything that goes on. The sounds, I imagine, are harder to filter out. To escape, the kids go play on the roof or in the streets, but they themselves work most of the day too: washing dishes, going to the market, cooking. These kids are like ten years old and they work long days, see there mothers abused, beaten or burned to death, (more or less) go to school, and still manage to have fun. They play games, fly kites, laugh with each other. That’s what amazed me most watching the movie; there were times these kids were genuinely happy. I probably would have withered away a long time ago if I’d grown up in similar circumstances. Maybe the ones like me already have, and we’re only left with the strongest. It really shows how resilient little kids can be in terrible conditions, but makes you wonder just how psychologically damaged they’ll end up.

Photography, for some of these kids, is their way out of their abusive, drug riddled environment – a way out of prostitution. Through photography and the monumental efforts of their teacher, many of them were able to attend boarding schools (that is, were able to leave the red light district) and pursue a real education in a healthy environment. What’s sad is that this woman spent years of her life with about eight kids (at least that’s the story of the documentary). Eight. There really needs to be massive organizational change in order to help more than handfuls of children at a time.

Holly speaks more on these issues. I’d suggest going to her site for discussion.

I mixed things up a bit today and took a shower in Greg’s today. Wow. That is one tricked out shower. I got in, turned on the water and immediately began twiddling the positioning of the two shower heads. That’s right, two. It really makes for a much different showering experience to be sprayed with water from two angles. What those angles should be is left to the showerer; with four articulating joints and three valves, the contraption offers quite the range of possibilities.

Greg’s also got the shower radio thing going, though it’s a little hard to tune. I turned it on, and what else should be playing but Hollaback Girl of blogwaffe infamy.

Got mah grüv on.