mein gott

yesterday was miserable.

my life began to unravel around 930 after breakfast.

i was standing with the dope italian girl underneath a huge cedar tree discussing the most esoteric of sciences when a fucking bird plopped its innards on my freaking forehead. the dope italian girl said it was a sign of a good day to come...

so, four hours later i go for a walk with the aforesaid dope one and old mother hubbard. hubbard was in search of the sweetshop so she could please the palette of many a nice young afghan male before she returned to the land of marmite and mushy peas. well, out on the streets of capult mother hubbard made the error of giving the first beggar we saw 10 afghani which meant that the rest of the trip was spent surrounded by poor miserable looking kids. which is, simply put, the pits. i soon became the object of one of these kids desire and despite my crowd-weaving skills and stealthy road-crossing i couldn't shake the little bugger. he followed us for blocks and when i finally thought we were safe the kid came out of nowhere and latched on to my right leg. he gripped on to it with his life and i couldn't pry him off. it was dreadful.

the dope one asked if it was my son and old mother hubbard gave me a lecture on poverty in developing nations as i was trying to free my damn leg from his kung-fu body grip.

finally ridding myself of the poor kid, we walked on in the crowded streets for a couple more blocks before admitting defeat and turning back. old mother hubbard leading the way, the dope one and i fell back a bit. we stopped to look at some megaphones and thought of building a mosque, when suddenly out of the crowd an afghan yelled to me in english, "hey, handsome!"

slightly unexpected.

homosexuality is rampant in poppystan, albeit with totally different social distinctions than i am used to in the lands of westbeefs. but, mein gott...

crikey

just to give an idea of how fucking weird it is here:
i just walked into the toilets and there was a man in a stall drinking tea. he smiled and said he would be a minute.

wasting away

recent events in the life of drake studebake, shuttlecock salesman, the color red, have included a snorkel into the world of employed humanity and a happy resurfacing onto the arid land of the unemployed. brethren, i have returned unscathed. i have witnessed the plight of man due to institutionalized industrial insanity. a sad state of affairs, i do declare. what is employment really? a survival tool? or simply a lack of ingenuity? i dare say, both. but to continue on such a subject would only dampen our outlook. better to dwell on the fulfillment of unemployed life.
to start chronologically and, as a man of pleasure and leisure, to start at the apex of lackadaisical freedom:
when employed, a man (or woman, although in my experience women do not tend to enjoy unemployment as much as men, the proof, of course, being in the pudding) has every right, not only to awake at any time, but, more importantly, to rise at any given time. this is the most fundamental freedom in the life of the unemployed. my recommendation, however, is to rise shortly before lunch, steam and shower, and then sit to your meal fresh. a thoroughly wonderful start to the day.
at this stage half the day is over and one need only waste several more hours before the employed race returns to entertain.

ah, it is terribly important as an unemployee to be witnessed reading a volume of immense intellectual sophistication. this allows the rest of the world to assume that you are a) spending your time wisely, and b) too intelligent to stoop down to discuss employed people's lives. for honestly, what is more dreadful to an unemployee than talk of the daily grind? do we give a toss about an insubordinate's inefficiency? or a boss's demands? please. and if your photocopier has broken, no need to share. i just don't care.
when it comes down to it, employment is simply the most uninteresting thing a human ever does. if only the russians had realized it and put their revolutionary zeal to a better cause. unemployed people of the world unite! now that would really bring a change.

god, i'm bored to tears here. i'm going to lie down.

recent e-vents and blond torment

its saturday. i work on saturday.

thursday night i went to a dinner partay with boxed red wine, arguably the loveliest gal in capult.let it be known that i am he who argues- for her dinner manners are as bizarre as afghan traffic patterns. the party was hosted by a futuristic point-guard and the man in a ski-chalet sweater. amiable hosts, who provided a favorable ratio of young ladies, fantastic food, and flowing libation (which i greedily sapped in between conversation revolving around me, myself and shuttlecocks).
now, boxed red wine was initially as excited as a loon at the prospect of a full tum and pirate's rum, but she soon discovered, to her dismay that the party's members were heavily weighted to the land of the lawd. that sweet country with a monopoly on freedom and the most super beings that the remaining world emulates with unmeasured obsequiousness. the land of i. and the beloved letter w.
well, boxed red wine became nervous for she, dear reader, be from that land formerly known as great. she sensed a superiority in the air, and suddenly felt her shoes too big and clothes too chic. she gobbled her meal and slurped her wine. begged this salesman for support in an evening clearly beyond her intellectual and cultural capabilities. the conversation rose to heights unknown on the continent: the art of hip, the shuttlecock dip. the scent of virtue, the overspent gumshoe. she was helpless. like a box of wine drained of its final contents, left to sputter out final sediments and sentiments.
i attempted to make rise to the occasion, as a salesman of my stature is only expected to do, but in her anxious state she knew not how to act and unleashed words of unblogable combinations, denouncing structural society and immediately calling for an anarchic takeover in this land of poppies and blue duvet covers. she raved at the good god-fearing folks from within the purple mountain's majesty, calling for their immediate surrender to her countrymen's pre-postmodern colonial two-step. she bubbled and boiled, tossing shoe-horns and iron stokers towards the innocents. they fell in twos and threes. broadsided by the frustrations of an empire lost and another gone enron.
i fled, i'm afraid. the scene was too bloody for a mere salesman like me. i hopped in my bathroom-tile pale green 1945 volga and rocketed through capult at an ungodly 45 kph. i made it home, just, and having foregone my beloved toothbrushing ritual climbed deep under the covers and curled up tightly.

lesson learned: party + boxed red wine = big trouble in little china

the mini-burqa

keep the boys at home. shade the eyes of the innocent. i'm back with a new product that will, simply put, revolutionize the world. robespierre, trotsky, khamenei your ideas to turn society on its head were mere playground talk compared to this plan. stand back, breath deeply, rub your eyes, dear reader, prepare yourself for this summer's craze: the mini-burqa.

the mini-burqa conforms to the offensively bullshit "islamic" law of completely covering a woman's head, shoulders, chest and torso. the small grate for the eyes to barely see through remains. the only difference, really, is that instead of flowing repressively past the victim's (excuse me, adorner's) ankles, the mini-burqa stops just above the upper thigh. a dangerously suggestive spot, rarely even seen on the catwalks of paris.

imagine the dusty streets of poppystan hosting thousands of long dark anonymous legs. roar, says the mullah. rrrr, says the ex-pat. ahhh, says rkelly.

mini-burqa production begins this afternoon. March 8th, 2005. My gift to the women of the world on their day.

(the only potential downside is the shape of afghan women's legs. i have never seen a pair before. perhaps i should have a crate of thighmasters imported...)

day two of misery

i miss my shuttlecocks. i miss the smell of fresh dusty rubber. the feel of sharp white plastic poking my palms. the look of an old one-legged ex-talib smashing an overhand into a young northern alliance soldier's chest. the line and dive of a well played shot. but enough. i shant speak of them again.

i'm moving on.

although no advice regarding my future was volleyed my way (other than n-ko talking about frogs), i have decided to step up and spend the remainder of my life unemployed. i will wander about capult until allah directs me to the heavens or another superpower directs me to hell.

actually i might just go to some more ex-pat parties and make fun of all the boring people i meet. the half-court squire is visiting his other half and the most verbose Taj has been quietly reloading. half the other peeps i've met here in the past month have already rolled, i don't blame them. poppystan seems to have a higher turnover than a dan snyder operation. it's because it basically sucks shuttlecock here.

it's international women's day. i'm going to celebrate.

nabbas

where's the madness?

help

i'm shit out of luck. i've taken my case to the minister of the eradication of colonial sports and apparently badminton is indeed illegal in poppystan (unless played with the balls of a virgin morco polo ram). so, i've packed up my belongings: one monocle bling-string, seven pairs of afghan wedding shoes, two wives, a seven volume set of w. churchill's "confessions of a shuttlecock salesman", 450 cases of cheap gin, and the beginnings of my forthcoming manifesto: "bring it on: make your shuttlecock hit like a shuttlebus". i'm selling my warehouse to a poppypusher and moving across town.

a new line of work is to be found.

options include: the world's first rapping afghan, burqa exporter (for that significant other you just can't bear to look at any longer), a contributing member of society, the new stud on the oc, dental assistant, leach, creep, canadian, televangelist, republican columnist pushing the administration's latest error in judgement, believer, old or new, drinker, sitter, liar, alyssa milano, shuttlecock salesman, loser, fuck, help me.

shuttlecocked

i'm in ruins.

reputation: gone

business: gone

prospects: gone

wives: down to two

sense of self: none

37 freaking talibs rolled up on my place of business this morning and robbed me of 43,000 prime quality shuttlecocks and my goddamn monocle. they claimed that the Qur'an forbids not only the play of badminton, but the movements of all types of cocks, even the shuttle. fundamentalist bastards. fascists. republicans.

then this upstart punk grabbed my monocle and batted it out the window with my 1983 Prince Woodie. its now sitting somewhere in a mined field on the way to Bamian. i had just bought a slammin' bling-string to attach it to my coat lapel.
where the hell does one buy a new monocle in poppystan?

alas...


i'm afraid the shuttlecock has finally been put to rest in central asia. roll up your nets, comrades. stack your racquets in the cupboard. the shuttlecock shall not fly again.

a dope italian girl just brought me a cup of coffee and saved my life.

i just saw the most depressing thing i have ever seen in my life. i was walking past chicken street which is like the m street of kabul and amongst the hoards of children begging and playing and just being so devastatingly poor and futureless was a five year old boy standing completely still in a light blue shirt crying. sobbing aloud.

is it love that hurts?

i spent 24 hours in bed this weekend recovering from a serious bout of food poisoning combined with a bucket of j & b. i was so dehydrated when i awoke that i had lost fifty percent of my lips, and my tongue was too big to ask why there were seven chinese prostitutes eating my breakfast on my bedroom floor.
i am still ill, but the worst result of hurling a full RACTED dinner (thanks for the invitations, but please leave me alone) is a pulled neck muscle. it is difficult to find exercise in poppystan, as the air is too foul to breath deeply into the lungs, and the land has been left demolished by the "cold" war's biggest blunders. therefore my RACT of tossing was the most exercise i've had since january.

so i'm left with a crooked neck.

damn, i'm sensitive to the ills of humanity.

for clarification...

in response to a number of queries (1) as to my professional activities and whereabouts, i am currently residing in a land of shattered dreams and europe's primary source of opiates (hmm... sums up the world rather nicely).

i am selling shuttlecocks, otherwise known as birdies, flying nipples, testicular missiles, and a series of unpublishable names. badminton is played ferociously in poppystan. under the cia, er, i mean taliban, losers were often "birdied" to death after a match. currently, in our more moderately fundamental times, losers are forced to swallow the final shuttlecock played. this practice is not necessarily condoned by my company, however we do firmly prefer it to previous tactics.

with respects to popi pete

the birth of a salesman

i have taken to wearing a monocle. my esteemed predecessor, willy, was right about one thing and wrong about another. a measure of success might indeed be in the eye of the beholder, however, it is my disposition that this measure is simply measured by producing an appearance of the upmost respectability and sophistication. (personality is in fact of only minor importance in the grand life of a salesman.) the wonderful result of wearing a monocle (in the left eye, as it is) is a vision of the world always at odds with half of one's brain. poppystan is a place where a full vision might be rather devastating to one's constitution.
ah, but the most satisfying effect of the monocle is the red ring that remains around one's eye after it's removal (the monocle, that is) at the end of a long day in the local opium dens. i find this, along with my flattened lashes and reddish eyes to be a great draw amongst the fairer sex. and what is sales, i ask, if not the art of seduction?