Deterioration and Dysfunction

New York Times Headline:
U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan

The punch line:
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

And there's more - but really, we know everything we need to know from the excerpt. The US fears China will move in and keep the minerals for themselves so now that Afghanistan can become a playground for Mountaintop Removal, we're never leaving. Unless the Taliban kills us all.

Pentagon Geologists probably had a pretty good idea about the mining bonanza in Afghanistan for some years, but the technology to prove their speculation has only recently become available. Otherwise Dick Cheney, the Bushes and the Bin Ladens would have already started digging. We can be sure they've already tied up the mineral rights. The deposits are estimated to be worth One Trillion Dollars.

And now, who gives a flying fuck about the Gulf of Mexico when the mountains of Afghanistan are as wide open as California during the gold rush? We know that mining is only a problem when the mine operators care about the miners and the environment. Afghanistan already looks like an ashtray, and if we cared about their people, we wouldn't have been killing them from helicopters as if they were biologically based video game characters.

You better bet this announcement could "fundamentally alter" the Afghan war. Thank goodness we've already occupied the country and started moving in heavy equipment.

My mother has always believed that the reason we rushed to the aid of Kuwait years ago was not because Saddam Hussein was a vicious dictator who ate babies and stuff. It was because he was swiping Kuwait's oil with the Slant Drilling.


Makes sense.
So do these mineral deposits.

Frankly, I don't really care about these things today except for that the news provides a distraction from the heartbreak that is Velvet.
Or Tiny
Or Ming the Merciless
Whatever my child's name is these days.

I keep trying to tell myself that this unrest is simply a typical manifestation of the ongoing dance of attachment and separation, but that doesn't stop my tears. I don't think he's an evil bastard who doesn't care about anything except his own pleasure. It's more like he's turned HQ into a battlefield by his behavior and he's distressed about it, but he can't recognize or admit his own role, take responsibility for his actions and begin to make necessary changes. In my mind, that's what grown-ups do. Brats piss on you, and when you tell them to cut it out, they get angry at you for objecting and keep pissing on you.

At issue: He keeps sleeping with Cupcake in my house even though I've told him they aren't allowed to sleep together in my house. They can fuck when I'm not here - just like the rest of us did when we were 18 - 20 years old and home from college. If for some reason it gets so late that Cupcake needs to sleep over, she can have his bedroom and he can sleep on the couch. The couch is a maximum of 30 feet away from his bed, and I believe that even the drunkest sailor in Singapore should be able to stumble 30 feet to the sofa.

The latest incident occurred on Friday night, when he was supposed to be sleeping at his father's. Since I banged on the door and insisted on driving Cupcake home at 5:00 am back in May, I figured there was no reason to repeat that scenario. I assessed the situation and went back to bed. My son woke up around 6:00 and shuffled her out. I called him at about 6:30 to ask: Why is the one simple rule in this home too difficult to follow?

The situation has deteriorated, so that now all we do is shout at each other over the phone. He sleeps at his grandmother's apartment - which is where Buzz Kill lives, but Buzz Kill is always over at his girlfriend's apartment. Buzz Kill doesn't even know when his son hasn't come home, and Buzz Kill turns off his phone from Midnight to 6:30 am allegedly because he doesn't want to receive calls from India and China. Maybe so - but he can't get calls from the emergency room either.

As long as his son is living in that apartment, the boy becomes Vagina Dentata's creature instead of Buzz Kill.

Recent photo of Vagina Dentata in a performance at the Senior Center
She's supposed to be in costume, but the only difference between this outfit and real life is that she would wear a different hat

Vagina Dentata is already turning Velvet into her drinking buddy. It won't be long before she starts trying to get him to walk her home when she's gotten drunk at the restaurant down the block. Velvet is a bus boy there this summer. Vagina Dentata has been drinking there so long that the manager happily employed Velvet. If Velvet isn't careful, he'll wind up not only being her walker, he'll be wiping her ass when Buzz Kill heads for the hills.

Buzz Kill's rich sister, the robber baron, cheerfully subsidizes Buzz Kill and Vagina Dentata in the magnificent rent stabilized New York apartment so that she doesn't find Vagina Dentata installed in her guest house on the West Coast. I don't blame her one little bit. But it's a drag when you see your child falling into dysfunctional family patterns