" paegan holidays and intercultural osmosis "

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funny thing about "holidays." when you're in a far-off country, you start to realize that you really don't care about celebrating them. which brings into question if you really enjoyed them at all.

i'm sure that i do enjoy halloween, but being here, it just makes no sense. there are all of these talk-shows and music programs that are all halloween-crazy, showing ways to make a home-made costume, where to go party hearty, and explaining why ghosts are real and really scary. it's not that this information is not valid or useful, but it's just sort of a sociocultural tangent.

it's akin to folks in the states going nuts over songkran-the thai new year's festival, or zimbabwe making state-wide preparation for the italian tomato-lobbing festival, or even the russians selling the idea of a really sweet voodoo ceremony. it's sorta cool, but ultimately displaced, disassociated, and disempowering.

not that it's bad or shows a lack of respect. moreover it just looks...well, sorta funny. although in thailand, there is a really deep-rooted belief in animism and the spirit world, which is more of a subsect of the current national religion (buddhism) but is readily practiced (ie - spirit houses). so that's kinda ghost/spirit oriented.

you begin to see how even though you come from a country that is all amass with dressing up to a)take some kids out trick-or-treating so that "crazies" won't get to them or accidentally eat a syringe, or b)get super sloshed and snackered at a friend's house by consuming too much "spooky punch" and tipsily dance around with a "slutty" (insert any normal occupation of women in uniform here) or a (insert stereotypically male/queer/movie reference/comic book/my little pony outfit here) until you pass out in the bathroom and puke on yourself something fierce so that you end up having a "great time" but your friends have to "clean-your-drunk-ass-up," that you somehow are just not "feelin' it" this year.

[and yes, i fully acknowledge that i just made a much too long single-sentence description of my thought pattern and overused the quotation marks as a viable punctuation, thanks for noticing.]

i'm not saying all of this to poo-poo on everyone's fun, i'm just disappointed in not being able to participate is all. so go. get out there tonight all of you ghouls, godzillas, dead hookers, x-men, "doctors," french aristocrats/ren-fair geeks, dirty schoolgirls, cavemen/witch doctors, matrixed-out drones, and betty rubble's, i 'm rooting for you.

just remember to drink some water before you go to bed, and don't forget that the election is coming really soon (hey, i bet bush is dressing up as a stupid fucking puppet that doesn't know what he's doing......mmmm, yeah yeah yeah...and so on and so forth). and crazy teenagers? don't egg my house this year, cause i'm not going to be there to clean it up. while you're at it though, you could clean my car; i promise to pay you in milk duds when i get back. really.

so yay all hallow's eve, and yay trick-or-treating.

tonight's homework:

this year, how about doing us all a huge favor, and try not to make the fat kids dressed up as spider-man cry by scaring them too much. i mean, c'mon guys, their cheeks might be huge, but their little hearts...they just can't handle it.

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