Needs, Wants and Rights: Occupy Grocery Stores

Dear readers,
This week I am inviting you to read my second blog. Thank you!
Here is the beginning:
“You can’t always get what you want”, cries the stereo and I am thinking that all I want at 6 A.M is a comfortable bed; instead I’m on the road, going to visit regions. Singing along, I am thinking, can I get what I want, or at least what I need in this country?
Wants, needs and rights have been on my mind recently. Absence of such. And silence on this subject. That is the biggest problem: not that someone violates your rights—an eternal problem everywhere--but that there is nowhere to report and defend yourself. So, you either conform or stay bitter.
Being different in the frames of the norm is an advantage, but being different outside those frames sucks—we’ve all been to high school. Being stuck in perpetual teenage bliss, Georgia, a collectivistic country, has these frames very tight around a person’s neck."

For the rest, please copy and paste this link:

http://pik.tv/en/experts/story/24241-needs-wants-and-rights-occupy-grocery-stores/

Georgian Manual on Proper Use of Wife, Husband, Whores and Mistress

It is not a surprise for me that Georgian men cheat on their wives and it is considered normal. However, recently my very close friend encountered this problem and it became personal for the first time.
I will generalize once again and make hasty conclusions!
So, how do we operate?
On one hand we have a girl. Let’s say, Article #1. A WIFE MATERIAL.
Operation manual: marry and impregnate. Description: nice, tender, pleasant, pretty, feminine. Beware of the false product with the following labels: feisty, sexy, strong, opinionated, independent. Warrantee: virgin till marriage or return for free, minus the marriage costs. Maintenance: food, shelter. If necessary, give pocket money for girly stuff like clothing. No sexual satisfaction of wife material needed. Alert: if wife material tries to satisfy your perverted sexual fantasies—because any sexual activity without procreation is a sin—she is a whore. Return for free, minus the marriage and living costs.
Results: cleaning, cooking, children. Side effects: whining and nagging. Could be treated by ignoring or by gifts. Do not operate heavy machinery under the influence of nagging. Health hazard: her tears may cause discomfort; try avoiding them.
Article # 2.A HUSBAND MATERIAL. Operation manual: use as a money machine. Description: strong, manly, hard-working, protective. Guaranteed: some sexual experience before marriage. Experience gained most likely in a bordello--group visit with friends, or under wise guidance of an older cousin or uncle (not father). Maintenance: requires food, taking care of, clean and pressed clothes, babying, and providing sexual pleasure upon request. Alert: if a boy declines to go to prostitutes with his friends, washes dishes at home and does not wear black coat, he could be gay. Discard into the nearest trash bin immediately. Might be contagious.
Results: providing for the family, building a shelter, occasional emotional support, guarantees girl’s status of a married woman. Side effects: none and closed to discussion. Health hazards: brings venereal diseases from the prostitutes.
Article # 3. CHEAP WHORE. Operation manual: give money and fuck. Description: old, smelly, looks like one’s grandmother, has no soul, emotions or feelings (like any prostitute). Guaranteed: gives boy an opportunity to claim that he is sexually active. Maintenance: single-serve, no maintenance required. Results: worse-case scenario, feeling disgusted with oneself but bragging lies to friends. Best-case scenario: ejaculation and still bragging lies to friends (I made her do…). Side effects: Feeling of disgust. Bad taste in one’s mouth. Heath hazards: venereal diseases.
Article # 4. EXPENSIVE WHORE. Operation manual: give lot of money and fuck. Description: Slavic-looking, pretty, has no soul, emotions or feelings (like any prostitute). Guaranteed: actual pleasure from a sexual act. Maintenance: single-serve, no maintenance required. Results: ejaculation and bragging to friends about incredible stuff she did (I made her do…). Side effects: Feeling of disgust (maybe). Heath hazards: venereal diseases.
Article # 5. MISTRESS. Operation manual: give fake promises and fuck. Description: nice, sexy, obedient. Guaranteed: actual pleasure from a sexual act. Maintenance: one needs to make promises to leave one’s wife; providing occasional vacation trips. Results: sexual and emotional satisfaction. Side effects: if one is not creative, one can easily get lost in all the lies one tells the wife and the mistress. Requires too much conspiracy. Is more costly than a prostitute. Health hazards: might impregnate a mistress.

Warning: any deviance from the rules of the operation manual may lead to condemnation and consequent isolation from the mainstream Georgian society. The society is not responsible for any damage caused by improper use of the above-mentioned articles. Proceed at your own risk.
The pic: I asked my hubby to take a pic of underwear and this is what he came up with.

HR Interrupted

Like a swirl of fresh air, like a shower of clear water, Budapest swept me into its golden-leafed arms and injected me with addictive doses of HR. Now I am suffering from a hangover.
I attended a study session on social inclusion in Hungary—title to long to print out.
Prior to the session, HR always meant Human Resources for me. From now and forever, HR is Human Rights and I--endlessly confused person, labyrinthing in concepts, schools of thought, remembering my college essays on cultural relativism, switching from defending western perspectives to that’s-all-just-power-games, trying to come up with a smart-ass definition of HR for this post and getting tangled in all the bullshit.
So yes, I was born with rights like calling my next-door neighbor moron and she has an intrinsical right to complain about every single thing I do, but it gets complicated on a bigger scale.
The time of concept-heavy, argumentative judgments is over for me. I left that with wide-open-eyed, 20-year-old Lika reading Kant in her philosophy class, an uncompromising warrior and contributor to the tree decline and paper industry-enhancer—oh those 12-page papers on abortion and capital punishment…I have raped my brain to the point that it can’t cognitively tell right from wrong and always gives safe answers like: it’s never black or white—just grey, depending on a context and such. Those vague blabbers of nothing at all.
From now on I am just a human. Granted, my frontal lobe is still intact, but I know that brain research is still guesswork—I am a neuropsychologist after all—so I just go with my feelings.
And you know what? Some things are just not fair! Like when my distant cousin can believe in Orthodox Christian God and get praised for it and my brother would get ridiculed for his Buddhist ways; or that my brother is happy with his girlfriend and the whole family supports him, but my friend can’t admit she has a girlfriend; or that my aunt works two jobs and gets less than my co-worker who is very successful in re-addressing letters to higher-placed people and avoiding any responsibility. This is why I think that religious intolerance, homophobia and ageism are bad—they hurt.
And maybe some people claim that life is pain (bloody Judeo-Christian philosophy), but I believe that I was born to be happy and I will do everything I can do to be happy and to be surrounded by happy people.
Also, I came back from the session stronger and a lot more confident.
So, my dear next-door neighbor, if you think that I am spreading the dirt in the hallway (I am installing new door) and refusing to clean the mess before it’s all done because I am:
Impolite
Un-neighborly
Rude
Irresponsible like my generation
I can advise you several ways how to go **** ********!!! Without hurting yourself, of course.
The pic: Budapest at night