Finally, a cause that I can totally get behind! Pardoning the horrible pun. And something worthwhile to do on Valentine's Day, to boot! Not that spending time with my honey wouldn't be worthwhile, but when it helps women in India by mailing pink underwear and drinking in a pub, I think it could be the next great holiday trend.
It turns out that India has been growing its own conservative Hindu movement, and that a group of these went in to a pub and assaulted some of the women there, presumably for not keeping with Hindu culture. There is a common practice of burning Valentine's Day cards in India because it's considered to be a lewd holiday. Considering this is the culture that gave us the Kama Sutra, the dichotomy is interesting, if nothing else. While I support a culture that holds its women in high esteem, forcing them to dress conservatively and look or act a certain way in public to maintain that culturally accepted understanding of womanhood is... well, unacceptable. This is a country that threw a shit fit when the cricket teams imported Western cheerleaders in short skirts because it impinged on women's moral character. Such a far cry from Italy, my friends.
In response to this unwarranted bit of violence, an internet campaign started up on February 5th - that's right, less than 10 days ago - to address the issue. The Pink Chaddi campaign, begun by the Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women (say that five times fast while sober) is asking women to send in pink underwear. Once collected, it's to be mailed to the leader of the group who's followers played rough with those women. Then they instruct women to go to a pub and raise a pint, or whatever they fancy, in a peaceful act of defiance.
Sadly, I found out about this movement too late to mail a pair myself from the US, but I think hitting the pub to participate in the second part is highly doable.
This is probably not what Gandhi had in mind with his peaceful protest movement, but I don't think he would've thumbed his nose at it, either. :)
In other news, I have rekindled a love of .html that I had in my early twenties when I created pages for the things I enjoyed. It feels good to get back in to something I enjoyed and realize I hadn't forgotten anything. Still trying to figure out how to set up the page for the trip to Japan, something I think I might do with my spare time in week 5 of the course coming up.
Also, in the category of "Sometimes Good things DO Happen", I won an eBay auction last night.
Oh yes. This is news, you say. eBay never has winners of auctions, you say, and that's why it's not a multi-million dollar business with millions of users browsing it every day. Good show.
To you I say... shaddup and let me finish here.
You see, I am a fan of quirky and unusual video games. A friend turned me on to Rez and I can't thank him enough for it, as it's one of the simplest, most fun games I have ever played.
There are others that I love that are just pure weirdness, like Loco Roco on the PSP, and fLow on the PS3 (spelling intentional). New and creative concepts tickle my fancy.
I had been drooling over an import game for the better part of six months called Electroplankton. Not the most compelling name, it does make one think more of cleaning out the tub than playing a game.
It was originally released in Japan for the DS, and the game is about poking plankton to get them to produce certain sounds as they interact with you, each other, and their environment. It's fascinating, and fits in with my second favorite genre of gaming, music!
Because of its import status and limited availability in the US, copies of it usually sell for $50+, with it being very common to see it priced out at $75 plus $15 shipping from such exotic locations as Hong Kong. I had all but given up hope of ever acquiring a copy in the English language (and had some nefarious plans to snag one used in Tokyo while we were there if it were possible) when I found it on eBay. For $19.00. AU. That's about, oh, $15 in US dollars? And shipping is a laugh! It may only be the cartridge, but I saw additional auctions for the box and guides, to be snagged later if necessary.
So. Yeah. I am freakin' excited. This was an awesome auction to win!!
I'm still working on the socks. I had to take a break and make some amigurumi to relieve stress, which is amusing. Knitting gets old, so I go pick up a crochet hook. My brain doesn't seem to care that it's just a variation on messing with yarn. But whatev. I have a cute white kitten with pink eyes and several fluffy valentine's day amigurumi to show for it. Now that those are finished, I can dive in to Bob's other sock, the fluffy alpaca socks I made that don't fit me, and the mystery socks for the mystery person.
Some day I will actually make socks for myself. But do not hold your breath. *chuckle* That and all those other projects I'm dying to do!
Bob found another reason to celebrate. It is 1234567890 day! Basically at 3:31 pm EST today the clocks that calculate out time for Unix will have ticked through that many seconds from the official inception of the program in 1970. I'd say that's a damned good reason to raise a glass, and I totally will later.
And, of course, it's Friday the 13th. So far the only truly major disaster was putting some clothing on inside out and not realizing it until I got to work. That's a function of getting dressed too fast in a dark room, and I've done it before. So I"m not blaming this poor arbitrary span of time-space continuum for my lack of observation skills. CH-ch-ch-ch.... KA-ka-ka-ka... WE should totally watch a scary movie tonight, though.
I was sneaky and bought Bob irises for Valentine's Day. I like being that quirky dame that gets flowers for her man. They only started blooming this morning. My god, such a gorgeous indigo... *happy sigh* I almost feel like trying to paint them.
Last thought-dump for the day. I played my DK last night in WoW, and when done finally made a journal entry for her. I felt like I'd gotten to know her motivations in that time, so I started.
Michael Crichton stayed in medical school so he could take notes for the books he was writing. I'm playing WoW to have something to write about in Kaetze and Krotze's journals. Hmmm....
I like the game, but with the old crew having totally dissipated, it feels like logging on in to nothing. Nobody's ever on and it's definitely just for the sake of playing the game and experiencing it on my own again. I think I'll just embrace the fact that I'm really just collecting fodder for my fanfics and get on with it. Either way... I'm kind of proud of what I've started.
I think that's it. Needed to just do a massive brain-dump and get everything out so I could think clearly without it whirling around noisily. Thanks for reading if you do, happy Friday the 13th (aka Arbitrary Scary Date Day) and everyone have yourselves a good Valentine's Day however you celebrate it where you are.
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