the mandarin reel and the bbc

I am listening to my various daily podcasts: right now it is the bbc world news telling me about how these are the worst days in history for the tamil tigers. desperate days! MIA's father is a Tamil tiger. The people in Chennai where Charity is living right now speak Tamil. These are my Tamil ties. It makes me think of Bridget Jones: Chechnya, Chech-NYA..."so what do you think about this situation in chechnya, is it an absolute nightmare?" hugh grant: "oh, i couldn't give a f@$k, Jones."

Now the story is about Army Day in Kathmandu and talking about how to integrate the Maoists in the government and army. Maoists. As if you don't know how I feel about those assholes. Anyway, Charity, Corinne and I are going to Kathmandu in april as a little detour off our india extravaganza. good to know the maoists have been disarmed. i should drop off a bunch of jung chang's scathing mao biography for their perusal. no, actually, i don't care that it is not a balanced portrayal.

i have been trying to listen to the world news mandarin reel. damn my mandarin is slipping. they are talking about making contribution sources for campaigns public, and i seem to understand that some new shit has come to light about chen shuibians daughter and his money. urg. i have to listen like 3 times to put things together poorly. i should just read the bbc page where they tell me things in english about chen shuibian's hunger strike and his totally mafiosa wife. i appreciate her not letting her disabled status get in the way of her money laundering and shopping prowess. one should not underestimate the capacity for evil in the disabled. james bond villains taught me that valuable lesson.