I piss on the Faroe Islands from a great height

It was up on the screen at the end of my block; the beer truck was parked and in full operation, and thousands men, women, and children cheered on the Georgian National football team as they played the Faroe Islands team in first round of the UEFA Cup qualifiers. Did Georgia win? In a big way. Nicely done Sakartvelo.

As far as I know, I was the only person to actively wish for the defeat of the Faroe Islands team for no other reason than it’s associated with the Faroe Islands. The Faroe Islands can kiss my narrow (more or less) white ass.

Why? Well, here’s the thing: the Faroes are to Denmark what, let’s say, Puerto Rico is to the U.S., but where P.R. is a fantastic place (except for a few minor issues, like Vieques and the late Filiberto Ojeda Rios) that has great climate, great food, and amazing scenery. The Faroe Islands are a bunch of rocks in the North Sea between Scotland, Norway, and Iceland. They belong to Denmark, kind of – if you’re interested in Faroese politics, your priorities are your own, I guess. Anyway.

Faroese eat puffins.

Faroese eat dolphins.
Now, you may say: but wait, these are traditional foods for these people! Fie on you for not being more sensitive to the glorious traditions of the noble Faroese!

Fuck them. Right in their ears. In my peoples’ traditions (which are many and various), things to be eaten on a regular basis ranged from unleavened bread to other people. Big deal. As an example, the Israelites believed some crazy backwards shit. In the Bible, it says that a woman is unclean for a week after the Communists have invaded the summer house until, on the eighth day, she brought two turtles and two pigeons to the temple. They would then set a turtle and a pigeon on fire. (If you meet Bible-thumpers who believe in the absolute truth of The Word, ask them how they handle this issue.)

But I digress. Point is, I eat very little unleavened bread, and no long pig at all. We move past our traditions, or we become sophisticated enough to embrace them symbolically – e.g. the wine and wafer, the lamb shank, whatever. But why the hell would you eat a puffin? It’s a seabird that eats fish, like a cormorant; they taste shitty, so we don’t eat them. Eat damn fish, you dumb bastards. Especially if you belong to Denmark – why not eat canned hams? Or cheese, carved into a puffin-y shape? Plenty of food out there that isn’t puffin.

And don’t get me started on the dolphins.

If all the Faroese were to starve to death in order that the puffins were to be preserved, that would suit me fine. I prize human life – certainly my own – but let’s face it, we’re a weed species able to grow anywhere (e.g. the Faroe Islands) and drive out other, more valuable species (e.g. the puffins). You may say, but puffins don’t have any intrinsic value per se; which is fair enough. But do people? Who kill and eat puffins? Hell no. Puffin populations are declining; human populations are not. If the Faroese want to be respected, they should stop acting like weasels and aspire to be like the Danes. Consume fish, consume canned ham, cheese, Tuborg, milk.

Sure, it costs more than puffins. And the Faroese whine about how poor they are. So fix your problem, Faroese whiners. I always say, If life gives you poor, make pornography. Eating puffins is the reason why your damn football team sucks so bad. The Danes are currently ranked 30 places above the Faroes. Coincidence? Only if you’re stupid.

GO DENMARK!

GO GEORGIA! Of course, now they have to play Italy, France, and the indomitable Ukraine – none of which have puffin as their traditional food. Sigh.

Traffic news, old porn news, and a modest proposal

First item:

There’s a site run out of Georgia – jobs.ge –  that has job information for individuals residing in the country. It’s a good site, both technically and with respect to content. I peruse it occasionally, in order to find out what the working classes are doing. Today I saw this. It sounds like a pretty good opportunity for those young Georgians who are interested in getting into animation services – providing

“… a stimulus to the mental, physical, and emotional life of people in a given area which moves them to undertake a wider range of experiences through which they find a higher degree of self-realization, self expression, and awareness of belonging to a community which they can influence.”

This is the part where I give my Beavis chuckle.

I had a friend in Uzbekistan who went to Turkey to do much the same thing: he got work in the hospitality industry (ahem, a travel agency, no, really), and was going to be making good money, and was given much the same job description as is in the first part of this ad. He got there, and what happened? First, the job was not as advertised… nothing too unpleasant, but the pay was next to nothing, living conditions were squalid (that’s a fun one to say), and so forth. Plus, his passport was taken from him when he got there – ostensibly so that his employer could work on his visa – and not returned. He got out of the deal, but it was a pretty educational experience for him. And for me, too, I confess – I’d always thought that Uzbeks only got trafficked to be, um, “maids.”

Anyway, have fun in the animation and dancing industry. Send me a card.

Item two:

How did I not know about this? Johnson’s Russia list let me down. The eXile let me down. I had to hear about it on the set of the soap opera. God bless the Asian Sex Gazette (though there’s a Moscow Times article that’s good as well). The ASG article is sheer genius; if you think that your employer may not want you clicking onto the site, here are the salient points:

• The main actors in the film have the same first names and bear a striking resemblance to Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.
• The article said that the producer had to abandon plans to invite Russian porn star Elena Berkova to play Yulia Timoshenko as the actress’ relatives in Ukraine had been receiving threats.
• Georgia’s president Saakashvili is played by an Armenian (can he bring the necessary savoir faire to the role?).
• Ukraine and Georgia have both protested against Mitrofanov’s project, and Ukrainian media has spread a rumor that a gay porn film featuring look-alikes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Ukrainian PM Viktor Yanukovich is being made as a result (no further data available on this).
• Mr. Mitrofanov faces an uphill battle for acceptance in the artistic pornography arena.

There’s an artistic pornography arena? Okay, here’s an idea: “Gladiator,” only in that kind of arena. Wait, no, that’s a bad idea. Actually I think they already did that one.

Anyway. The director is Russian parliamentarian Aleksei Mitrofanov. He’s a member of the LDPR – that’d be Zhirinovsky’s LDPR, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Mitrofanov dismissed all the criticism as groundless. He told the media that

“‘Yulia’ is a film that will take foreign relations to new heights – literally and figuratively. “Political erotics are a new genre that I have discovered,” he said. “The film is about politics. It makes a political statement, they don’t just [have sex].”

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I think this sort of statement has already been made. We call it “satire,” though. It’s kind of funny; in America, they have pornographers that encourage freedom and democracy, this seems to be the LDPR version.

Finally:

I think that the EU and US donors should seriously consider requesting proposals to help get the pornography – whoops, sorry, the political erotics industry in CIS countries (and former CIS countries, and soon-to-be-former CIS countries) on its feet. Training in screenplay writing, production, and so forth, as well as promotion and sales, would be easy enough; and then, my God, imagine the possibilities.

1. It would help vitalize political culture to a degree that previous democracy and governance grants have not.
2. It would allow cross-border exchanges between and among groups that have frozen conflicts (e.g. Armenians and Azeris, Georgians and Abkhaz) in safe spaces.
3. It would help vitalize the technology and communications sectors of the economy, given that folks would want to disseminate this political message over the Internet.
4. It would increase general awareness of the peoples, cultures, and practices to be found in an area about which Europeans and North Americans are largely ignorant.
5. It would increase tourism (come on, the NYT’s Frugal Traveler keyed in on the scantily-clad ladies of Issyk-Kul, although see Comment #26).

… I could go on. But really, where’s the downside? I don’t see it, honestly. I mean, here’s you have an industry that promotes democracy, culture, the economy, health – pick the sector to target. Mitrofanov may be onto something.