belts, henna, incendiaries, et al.

first, i want to say, mom i hope you are feeling better and i hope the doctors are figuring out what is wrong. don’t MAKE me come semi-global to whoop some ass.

now, let the non-sequitur begin. so many things to update.

so, yeah we left early on tuesday – diwali, but around 1:00PM when the driver arrived with lunch. we just had him take us back to the hotel. took a nap, watched a movie, dicked around until me, emma, and paul split some red wine he got in hyderabad during one of his recent trips there for work. I don’t know shite about wine except that wine-tasting is a pretentious activity. I don’t wanna taste it, I wanna drink it. wtf? and the REAL stuff, with the smelling the cork, taking a small first drink and saying “yeah, that’s good”, swishing it around the glass, smelling it, swishing it around in the mouth and spitting it out… now that is REALLY fukked. what a waste of alcohol. anyways, we drank that, i talked about some wine i had at a fancy dinner back in the day. it was my roommate, Christy, and her chef boyfriend, rob, me, and they hooked me up with a date. see, this is fancy restaurant. i’m SOOO-LOOO-MAINTENANCE, i knew this was going to suck. before we even made it to the restaurant, i’d spent maybe $50-70 on a shirt, tie, and slacks because it’s one of THOSE places and i didn’t have any of those, only work jeans and polo shirts with weld burns. so we go, we have the pre-drinks, the tiny meals (i had ostrich which was actually pretty good), the stinky cheeses, the post drinks. they know i don’t like win very much, so they got a REAL sweet one that was awesome. came in a tiny little bottle an they said it was very popular around valentine’s day. that is one wine i would have to say i ACTUALLY liked. but i don’t know the name. Christy, what is the name of that wine? call rob if you have to, i want some. so, enough of that aside… we drank our wine, one of the hotel associate managers, kept calling the room for us to come down. they were holding up the finale for us. the half-day we were at work, it sounded like we were being attacked with the firecrackers/M-80s/M-100s/etc. going off. but at night it was like a war zone. smoke everywhere, significantly sized firecrackers going off in narrow alleys, emphasizing the noise. i’m surprised there weren’t any buildings caving in. they shot off some rockets (tracer fire) that were rather unimpressive, but hey. so we went down to the hotel parking lot (yeah, i’m finally getting back to that story), and they were handing out homemade sparklers made out of sulfur, whatever makes the spark, and wrapped in Indian newspaper. they let off like 250 BIG Saturn rockets (T knows all about those it’s like nam, man!!!. now, at times, i’m concerned about Chinese made fireworks and those guys have been doing it for hundreds if not thousands of years. they freakin’ invented gunpowder, so combined with the Indian newspaper sparklers, i was a little concerned. rightfully so, we were lucky enough to have some of the Saturn rockets rain upon us, some still half lit, some spent but still warm. then for the finale they lit a block of 5000 firecrackers. the thing danced and bounced and zulu convulsion danced it’s way around the hotel yard out front, spitting half lit fire crackers at the crowd and hotel front. it was lovely and loud. so in short, diwali is kinda as important as Christmas but looks like 4th of july. end of story 01.

with the R0 TA here working, emma had begun smoking at work. i’d then noticed that smokers have this inherent bond. you don’t have to know someone to ask for a smoke or a light and it starts up a conversation. granted, emma knew rocco from the training center, but still. that is a cool network. i wanna be part of that network… and i like pissing off people who say i can’t smoke because i don’t smoke. mwah hah hah. rocco likes to push emma’s buttons as well (they argue like they are married), so he offered me a cigarette at the bar one night. i smoked it, hacked up a lung, and got some tips. to breathe in through the nose at the same time. kinda dilutes it or at least buffers it a bit. after that i was a pro. well not, really, i wasn’t doing any Gandalf-ian smoke rings or shotgunning or anything, but i wasn’t hacking. and the best part. one cigarette and i was dizzy as fukk. it was great. better than the beer/whiskey i was drinking all night. hah. i’ve been having one every once in a while for shits and giggles, primarily to push emma’s buttons. it is funny i’m figuring out at almost 28 what most 12-year old kids find out in their basements. it makes you cough but it makes you dizzy. grand stuff. but i’m not getting hooked (famous last words). it’s not THAT good for me, just a little dizzy and i know i’ll lose that if i do it daily.

in other news, emma bought some henna (locally called mahendi) tubes a while back, and we finally used them. i practiced henna a couple years back when i had someone to practice on. it was fun. she gave me free reign. i did a little doodle on the back of her neck, a tribal on her lower back, some barbed wire on her ankle and a "mom in a heart" tattoo. that was great. and she is SOOO intimidating. even after going over the tribal, which is kinda big,
twice to thicken it up a bit, we still had maybe ¼ tube left. the stuff goes far. she did one of my original designs on my left arm and i wrote “THUG LIFE” on my gut. that’s real cute. i’m so cool.

I HAVE A BELT!!! my belt broke a couple weeks ago and i’m just not motivated to leave the hotel anymore. it is completely dark when we leave work now at 6:00PM, so i just go back, shower, eat, drink, and sleep. you have the pin of the belt that goes through the hole and you have the C-shaped bar that it butts up against. well the C-shaped part broke on mine so all i had was the useless pin (2 actually because it was supposed to be a heavy-duty belt). so it was useless. i rigged it to kinda work for the past couple weeks by putting the belt through the belt’s own loop, then the pants belt loop, and folding it back over to go the opposite way through the belt’s own loop. kinda making it bight (knot term) on itself. to make sure the belt didn’t slide past itself in the belt loop i had to place an obstruction. this obstruction varied depending on what i had on hand. i’d used a broken pencil, a bottle opener, a broken plastic razor blade handle, anything i could find. but i’d noticed that my pants are falling off more and more easily. this sucks. i have no ass as is, and i’m losing it. my rigged belt is still holding in the same place but if i put my keys and wallet in my pants, i gotta hold em up by the time i get to the end of the hallway or i’m going to embarrass someone. so i finally caved and went to get a belt two nights back. see, i know my weakness. even though it wasn’t a major investment, i know i can get sold so easily. i went to the men’s shop in town, and bought two belts. they showed me their biggest (assholes) and they were 110cm (man alive i’m a bigun). i wrapped them around my waist WITH MY PANTS AND CURRENT BELT ON, and i was going to be on the tightest hole. i told them 100 or 105 would work fine, that would put me at the middle of the belt which i find is a comfortable place for growth and shrinkage. they wouldn’t hear of it. instead they had a belt punch and put two extra holes in my belts. i mean, they were all the same price. i just think they couldn’t sell the big belts so they were doing their best. so i got sold, not out of money but out of what i knew would fit best. then i told them i wanted some handmade pants. emma got some cargo pants made from a pair she gave them kinda like what she wanted. i didn’t have such (plus her pants won’t fit me), so i told them i wanted pants LIKE hers. i was practically molested in the middle of the store. they need to measure me, and nothing i’m wearing fits. the waist of my pants is too big, they are too long, and the crotch hangs a bit low. so they throw my shirt up to my tits, gut hanging out for all the Indian ladies to see. i’m trying to pull it down and the tailor is saying it’s in the way. i think he had some “tendencies” . then he had to measure from my belt position to the back of my pants under the crotch. told him to make it a bit smaller and he damn near castrated me. i would like to have children SOMEDAY! so they took my measurements… 10 bucks for the material, $7.50 for the tailor to make them, i get them in a week. awesome. we’ll see how they work. i also threw them off with wanting EIGHT, count ‘em, EIGHT pockets. 2 front, 2 back, 2 cargo on the thigh, and 2 cargo about calf height. we’ll see what i get.

ok i think that is enough for now. if you are still here reading, allah/mohammed/god/ Krishna/UNAbomber bless you. more on the flipside. i need a smoke.