For the love of the children.

I’m going out on a limb here, but Trinidadian parents have got to be the most ignorant in the world. Not ignorant due to lack of knowledge you understand, at least not in all cases, but rather because you stand the risk of personal injury in the event you are misguided enough to comment unfavourably upon either their offspring or their parental skill.

I didn’t realise that Prestige Holdings’ greasy fingers had grabbed a hold of another piece of Arima with the opening of a Long John Silver’s restaurant along with Pizza Hut, TCBY, and an additional KFC until earlier on this year. But although Arima is now officially cinema-less, you can still stare at some inane movie while sending your cholesterol level through the roof, via the flat-panel television screens that hang from the ceiling. And all those years those bouncers spent blocking movie goers from sneaking KFC into Windsor. Ha! Well we’re eating KFC in the at least what used to be the cinema bitches. Whatchoo gonna do now, huh?

So I’m at a table munching on some fries and wondering if, with all the renovations, they ever got rid of the roaches that had made the Windsor, in all its dank, urine-(and God knows what else)stained glory, their personal utopia. Of course it’s hard to stick to a chronological, coherent train of thought as there is an inordinate amount of seemingly unsupervised children engaged in vigorous physical activity all around me.

Now the good people at Prestige Holdings have supplied a playroom for the children presumably to encourage the whole ‘family friendly’ aura or to provide a place where the little fuck-trophies could burn off all those large servings of trans-fats. What the playroom does however is turn an otherwise routine bout of digestive tract abuse into a mental dissertation on the benefits of mandatory sterilisation.

’Member ting like licks? ’Member how like ah arse yuh used to feel after yuh get a good boff from mammy and daddy because yuh was playing de arse an embarassin dem in front ah everybody? Remember discipline? Parents nowadays are pansies. I’m sitting there listening to children refuse to leave when their parents call them and I’m seeing the parents concede defeat without even making the effort to straighten out the little buggers. Hell, there were so many kiddies running wild and unsupervised that if I were a paedophile, I would have been in heaven.

A woman at a neighbouring table decided to take God out of her thoughts and brought a couple’s attention to the antics of their female progeny:
“Da’s yuh chile? Buh look she missin ah shoe. Come dahlin, wha yuh do wit yuh shoe?”

“Hello, hello! Dat is not your chile. Leave my chile alone. I go deal wit she. I cyah onerstan why allyuh cyah leave odder people chirren alone yuh know!”

“Buh yuh cyah see de chile runnin arong wit only one shoe?!”

“Well she fadder here an he go handle dat. D_ look M_ lorse she shoe.”

“Oh gorsh. Doh jumbie de chile nah. Mih mudder go sen a new shoes fuh she.”

And that was it. The whole issue wrapped up nicely without once having to bother little M_ and having to divert her from her busy schedule of scampering behind a budding bandit.


I don’t know if the headache was brought on by my body’s exertions to assimilate partially hydrogenated soybean oil, dehydrated potatoes substitutes and whatever other crap Long John’s fries are made of or if it was because of the knowledge that same situation, albeit at ritzier locations and with more hybrid accents, is echoed throughout the country almost constantly.

So I left. And I thought of little M__ and her lost shoes. And I thought of her parents hostile reactions to a stranger who was trying to help. And I thought of the general lamentations of how today’s youth have no sense of responsibility, no sense of sacrifice. And I thought of how when we were younger we would take care of the two pairs of shoes we had (school shoes and ‘going out’ shoes) because we knew “mammy and daddy were working hard to feed us and provide for us and send us to school so we would get and education and make something of ourselves”. And I wondered if that litany would have any meaning to the children of today and I am tempted to try it out, but I don’t want to be the one hundredth and somethingth person killed for the year and over a shoe no less.

I leave de people dem chirren alone.

You don't make friends with salads.

The advantage of being a vegetarian in Trinidad is that no one visits you for lunch. Or dinner. Or for any festival which involves food. In essence, no one visits at all. The disadvantage is everyone is convinced you have a secret affair with The Colonel and incessantly try to tempt you with the cloying odour of flesh that has been deep fried in recycled oil. Yummy!

On revealing your diet choice to the average Trinidadian, more often than not you will be greeted with the following: - “Wait nah, you doh eat meat?! Well da’s haf yuh life gone dey aready! I cyar eat by you!” As if you ever invited them in the first place.

I honestly believe that most Trinis are incapable of understanding the concept of a meatless diet. Our seeming national obsession with wild meat is legendary, if sometimes disturbing. If I had $10.00 for every person who dismissed my eating habits with “allyuh young people and allyuh fashions” and “Doh worry, yuh go grow outta dat jes now.” I’d be able to quit my job and bitch full time. It doesn’t bother me though – sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me!

So we’re in the season of Lent and every Christian worth his unleavened bread is on the hunt for Nemo and friends, as if meat is the only thing worth sacrificing. How many people do you know who give up sex with the horner (wo)man? I swear the collective I.Q. of the office plummeted when I was asked the ultimate question: “So since you’re vegetarian you don’t really have anything to give up for Lent, do you?” Ironically, at that point I was trying to resurrect my New Year’s Resolution of renouncing cursing. It would seem that I stand a better chance of winning the Lotto; and I don’t even play…

Personally, I have nothing against meat eaters. I wouldn’t do it, but then again I wouldn’t do a lot of things. Listen: live and let live, eat or be eaten, it’s all good to me. Besides, if it’s a matter of my survival, I can’t say I would remain on my high horse and scornfully decline any drumsticks, flanks, ribs or - God forbid – fingers that may come my way.

See, I don’t eat meat because I think it’s wrong to kill animals for food; heck, my love of dairy products would incite the ire of even the most pacifist vegans. As to the health benefits…the water retention caused by my saturating just about anything that goes into my mouth with salt has me resembling Keiko’s younger cousin. Essentially I’m vegetarian because I can be. It’s all a matter of choice – the same way I can choose to pursue tertiary level education, choose who to marry and when (if at all), choose to work, and choose which god to worship among other things. I am grateful to belong to a society that in spite of its shortcomings, doesn’t deny me basic rights because I’m female or black or unmarried or whatever, and I have every intention of protecting my rights of choice regardless of those who would try to convince me that my selections are wrong. This is the same reason why I don’t go around condemning people’s decisions to adhere to a meat based diet. Hey if I can choose, so can they. Once they don't choose to barbeque my dogs...

FW:Fw:fw:

The only way I would endorse violence of any sort is if it is wielded against the scum of society: rapists, animal abusers, racists, paedophiles, wife-beaters, wilful environmental polluters and the jerks who insist on forwarding every single email they receive to me.

Ok, so in the beginning it wasn’t that bad. I was just getting into the World Wide Web thing and everything including the porno and casino pop ups were so gosh darn exciting. In those days whenever you stumbled across something funny you just had to send it to your bestest net friend, or when a co-worker’s address shows up in your inbox with the subject “You HAVE to see this!” you look, declare it worthy, and then forward it to Bob because you know he would appreciate such smutty humour. We’ve all done it. But at least have the sense to send the stupid email to only those who would like whatever the message is about.

I hate those religiously themed emails that ask you to send a copy to everyone on your contact list because if you don’t you’re showing that you’re ashamed of Jesus and when you die He’ll be ashamed of you too and will send you to burn in Hell for the rest of eternity. I mean hey, it’s bad enough I’m not liked well enough to be sent a simple “Hey Shrew, how you doin’? Let’s lime sometime.”, but I have to worry about the afterlife too? Oh hell fucking no. The Catholic Church is doing a mighty fine job of that already thank you very much.

Now correct me if I’m wrong (and I doubt it), but wasn’t e-mail’s original purpose to provide a faster and more cost effective way to communicate? Then communicate with me damnit! Personally!

Few things are as annoying to me as receiving the same forwarded crap multiple times from the same asshole. I usually feel like calling them up: “Oh, hey, ummm…about that email you sent me the other day; the one with the little kitty hanging from a twig or something and he’s saying “Hang in There.” That was so cute…the first couple hundred times I got it. Fuck bitch, what are you, retarded? Hey, here’s a thought: how about coming up with your own stuff you un-funny piece of shit.

Man, I’d like to see them forward this.

Sick Day

This is the result of a day spent away from work. It’s amazing the kind of latent crap that comes out when you have diarrhoea. Heh. Heh.

So here’s a little something I conjured up between my time spent on the throne and in the shower. I saw it on someone else’s blog and being the covetous rat that I am, I immediately hatched a plan to acquire one of my own.

Well, I visited the site and in ten minutes my little doppelgangers were born. Its likeness to me is nothing short of remarkable - crucifix, horns et al.

I must say I felt more fulfilled accomplishing this than I do after an eight hour day at work. Go figure. Now if only I could find a way to bring them to life, we’d take over the world! BWHAHAHAHAHAHA…..

Damn I feel ill.