The Lair

So there was a partial solar eclipse going on today. Not that I really noticed – I was awake, but by the time I remembered, the celestial caravan had long since departed. This could well be the story of my life, in a sentence. I still vividly remember watching this eclipse, or at least the parts of it that were not spoilt by dark clouds. Good eclipse in spots, but patchy cloud obscures the rest. That again, could be yet another story of my life.

In a cheery mood, aren’t I? Here’s why.

For the 4th fucking time in less than a year, I have gotten into a minor fender bender with some random twat. This time where some dude actually backed into me on a main road. Yes, I wish I was making this shit up. This was right in front of a traffic cop, by the way – said cop hurrying up onto the scene and then standing around while I did the obligatory waving of arms, wagging of fingers and loudly shouting “NO U” at the other guy. Yeah, so the dent on the shiny bumper is minor, but it’s the principle of the thing goddammit.

If this continues, I may begin to suspect that the gods do not wish me to get behind the steering wheel of a car. Which works fine with me, actually – but I resent being continually mugged by three wheeler dudes for last minute tacked on additional charges to an agreed fare.

Perhaps unrelated: I have this sudden urge to consign more freshwater fish to death. Or in other words, I want to restart the aquarium hobby that I have had on and off for the last 20 years. Nothing too fancy, maybe a 20-30 litre tank. Allegedly, watching fish swim has stress relieving properties. Heaven knows I need that.

I’ve watched The Watchmen before. But not in Sri Lanka, and not with the crowd I usually hang out with here. So off to the cinema we went. The first time, it was the movie experience. This time around, it was the movie going experience. For the past decade or so, I’ve probably watched more movies in a tiny screen embedded into the back of an airplane seat than I have on a large screen.

False alarm of the day: Despite dire warnings, the national anthem was not played before the start of the movie. In retrospect, I can’t even articulate why the concept of having a national anthem played before a movie screening bothers me so much. Except it does and I was glad when it didn’t happen. Maybe the practice has fallen out of favour?

The movie itself: the movie rating system in SL confuses me greatly. Back in the day, you had your general audience movies, the “more suitable for adults” shtick (which in the late 80s really meant a proverbial flash of ankle and petticoat) and the “adults only omgz” which probably included a flash of mammaries at most. Now The Watchmen is rated R in the US and 18+ in the UK. There is violence (big deal, this is the country which repeatedly televised the bug eyed terrorist corpse face with much gusto, we’re sort of used to seeing pieces of limbs and lots of blood everywhere) and nudity. You’d expect it to be an adults only classification here, right? Even the permissive UK slapped a 18+ on it, right? Umm. No. The Watchmen was classified “more suitable for adults” in Sri Lanka. Go figure. I don’t know what people were thinking either.

Then there was the actual movie; which surprisingly enough featured very little in the way of creative editing by censorious morality police. Yes, so Dr. Manhattan’s nether regions were perpetually blurred out (prompting much sniggering from myself). In a blatant double standard, his magnificent blue buttcheeks (I can’t believe I just typed those words out) were left exposed to the cinema goer. The infamous, cringe inducing sex scene aboard the Archimedes was (almost) uncensored, which surprised me no end. All in all, the movie was left intact.

Finally, there was the saga of the beer. Yes, apparently beer can be purchased by cinema going folk (Ok, it’s been years since I was in a Sri Lankan cinema, ok? I don’t know these things). But as usual, there are caveats and rules which make the experience slightly less enjoyable than it could be…

First, no beer purchases before 1700 in the evening. Not unreasonable, you might argue – until you realize that the movie starts at 1630. Or it would have, if they had bothered starting on time (they didn’t).

Second, containers of beer cannot be taken inside the hall. Note that this does not apply to other beverages, which people happily carted in – but apparently beer is … umm … special. Ok, I can see the logic in that too (someone could easily be buying for minors in the cinema hall proper) except that this requires beer be purchased and downed during intermission.

Which brings me to the last element in this hideous trifecta of beerfail – for some inexplicable reason, the intermission was barely 5 minutes long. Ice cold beverage chugged down in 30 seconds or less because omg-the-movie-is-starting-up-again and this is the part where Manhattan is accused of giving people cancer?. Yeah, instant brainfreeze. Not fun.

But hey, it was fun. I probably wouldn’t do that again in a hurry though – if I want to pay for the privilege of sitting in an unpleasantly musty smelling hall; I’d go back to school or something.

For pretty much as far back as I can remember; whenever something wasn’t going too well with the country – someone would always pipe up and say “but look, there is a war on. We can’t be expected to fight an insurgency and do things that make economic sense at the same time”. And this was completely true. This type of war doesn’t make economic sense anyway (OTOH, if we invaded the Maldives and got into a war there, now that may have made some sort of economic sense).

But so it goes.

In the past 20 odd years (really, the mid/late 80s didn’t count too much – economic liberalization really started trickling down in the early 90s), we were the subject of many casual conversations and head scratching by economic types. Usually, you see, other countries with this sort of debilitating civil war tend to do a lot worse than we did. Oh, which isn’t to say that we had it all good – but the relative isolation of fighting to a section of the island (with only the occasional spillover) meant that economic activity could continue.

But there was always this shrug of the shoulders and “Yeah, we’re fighting a war” as an excuse to not even pretend at bridging the deficit, make populist subsidies and the like. How many times has the war been the single biggest electoral issue? I think the last time it wasn’t a serious issue was in 1990/1991.

Which brings me to my main point – there are no more excuses.

In the space of 12-14 months (yeah, I know the offensive started earlier – but May 2008 is as good a point as any), we have been transformed from a case of economic curiosity into yet another common or garden mismanaged third world economy. One with a massive budget deficit, a crushing amount of public debt and a horrifying trade imbalance. And we still have one of the largest cabinets in the world. I don’t mean the sort that you store ornamental porcelain in either.

And I guess everyone thought the hard part is over.