The StuSie

International Relations Brought Home

The world is indeed a small place. Having studied international relations, and being an avid follower of world news, I have come to appreciate at least some of the difficult international relationships that threaten to harsh everyone's mellow. What I never expected however, was to have these relationships recreated before my eyes on a micro level. My building is fast descending into a sort of cold war. It's cold because I haven't snapped yet. Maybe a more fitting analogy is the situation between the U.S and North Korea. Let me explain.
As many may know, the people downstairs don't like noise. I don't make much noise, but they know that I have the potential. They constantly ask me to turn my music down, even when it's at conversation level (and it's never any louder). I have politely complied with every request, but it's pissing me off. We have monthly meetings to deal with the upkeep of the building as a whole and yesterday I received the agenda for tomorrow's meeting which includes the following item:

• Reminding people to keep the noise down after 22:30.

This really chaps my ass. They're not talking about weekdays here folks, weekdays I'm supposed to go into blackout mode at 21:00. I'm like Anne fucking Frank up here, terrified that they'll hear me. I'm tiptoeing around in a condo I own for fear of creating a situation of open animosity which would make life very difficult indeed, and they keep pushing me.

So, to return to the IR analogy, I am North Korea. I have a big stereo, I haven't hidden it, and everyone knows I have it. I do not, however, use it. The people downstairs are the U.S. Admittedly, they've done much of the leg work for the building association including getting the gutters cleaned, the landscaping taken care of, etc. Sounds good, right? Wrong. I think the main reason they've done this is because they don't trust anyone else to, and also, nobody else has the time/energy. Lissi and I work very hard and we're up late a lot. Having said that, we're also almost always the first people out of the building in the morning when I take her to work at 05:45. The U.S. downstairs work cushy 9-5 jobs and have nothing better to do with their time than find things to bitch about. Plus North Korea's stereo scares them. They're terrified we're going to turn it up, so they keep trying to push these rules on me. 21:00 on weekdays. 22:30 on weekends. Pushing, pushing, pushing. But one of these days, and it may well be tomorrow, North Korea's going to snap. I don't even want to blast the stereo, do they have any idea how fucking busy I am? But they've pissed me off so much that I think I might, just to spite them.

Of course that's exactly what the U.S. wants. They want North Korea to snap, turn up our stereo and show the world that we are exactly the sort of trouble-makers they've been saying we are all along. Hell, that might even justify a pre-emptive war. I think the U.S. has some troops left that aren't dead yet, why not? Ok, now I'm just bitching about Iraq.

What a monfuckingstrosity of a problem that's turned into. Odd eh? Who could possibly have realized that our WMD Easter-egg-hunt turned Nation-building exercise would result in such a mess? 2,000 U.S. soldiers dead, that's 2 every day since we started. Not to mention more than 30,000 Iraqis. They voted on a constitution though, so I guess they came out ahead. I mean, the country's in shambles, the economy's in ruins, they can't walk in the streets for fear of dying and they're occupied by a foreign force not large enough to keep the peace but too large to be ignored by those that resent their presence. Oh, and we're not leaving any time soon, but don't worry, reinforcements aren't coming either. I mean first they tell us not to invade them, now they don't want us there, make up your minds, jeez...

Lets not forget that we're supposedly spreading democracy to those parts of the world too corrupt to adopt it themselves. At least that's the second reason they gave us, after the Easter-egg hunt turned out to be a bust. Nice work fellas, let's show 'em what freedom is all about. As it turns out, freedom according to the clowns we've got in charge is leaking the names of covert operatives, money laundering and crooked campaign financing. Yee haw...

Ok, I think I feel better now, sorry about that.

posted by Der Staubsauger @ 13:24