snake festival

apparently, today is a snake festival day. don't know the name, but on the way to work today, our driver pointed out small pockets of people huddled around tree roots, and they were offering milk and eggs to the snakes. i saw smoke at times, so i'm not sure if they smoke them out to see them first (punxatawney kumar?). i wonder how many people get themselves dead trying to give eggs and milk to deadly snakes.

apparently, my mama has a hiatal hernia. that's gotta suck. it's cuz she doesn't listen. she tried to lift things she shouldn't, do work she shouldn't, and it gets her a whole bunch of heart attacks and hiatal hernias. still, the doctors don't know if that's what is causing the pain. yea, like 12+ years of post-high school education and interning and they think she is drug-seeking?!?! WTF?

"hmmm, we don't know what is wrong with her, let's use a buzzword... how about 'pandemic', no, no, 'bird flu', nah, too in the papers, wait... ummm, what as that word i heard on "ER" last thursday when i was sitting around practicing my thumb-up-my-ass technique? uh, 'DRUG-SEEKING'

shite heads. i don't know. first they misdiagnosed her as having a kidney infection or something. i'm thinking hernia/kidney infection... way fukking different. sure, i'm not a doctor, i don't know. and there can only be SO MANY symptoms the body can come up with, and they have to be shared with all the fukked up diseases out there, so they is a lot of cross-referencing, but come on. whatever (better laundry airing and webtime, mom?) hope she feels better.

well today is saturday, it is 4:44PM and i'm just waiting for the customer to come in and ask us to work tomorrow. they do it so often though, by contract, we shouldn't. i'm trying to come up with plans so i can say, "oops, sorry, contract says 6 days a week and you won't change it, so i'm busy, see ya monday". but i'm too tired to come up with anything good. even the indians know there is nothing cool to do around here, so they know we'd just be sleeping in at the hotel.

EDIT: i just found in the local newspaper (courtesy of the david, the excitation TA) news about the snake festival. this is performed 4 days after diwali or the first full moon day after diwali. this festival/holiday is called Nagula Chavithi in andhra pradesh, but has other names in the rest of the country. legend has it that lord shiva sucked poison from the mouth of some super-snake when the world was just a churning ocean of demons and gods and some of the poison fell to the earth to ward off evil. indians re-enact this (don't get the correlation) by force-feeding the milk to cobras, lots of it at times, like liters. snake charmers (and i'm guessing locals in areas like this), force a funnel down the throats of the snake, pour milk in it, and suffocate them often-times. ain't that a nice thing to do to a god-like thinga-majiggy. i'm guessing i was right about the smoke, and if i was a cobra, sure as shite, i'd kill someone on my way out.