Dear Teetotalers and Non-smokers, Go Fuck Yourselves.

Insomnia: I have it. And it is not pretty. And there isn’t anything I can do about it except open up the ol’ task manager and figure out what’s running in the background, prompting the awakening. I probably should have listened to my psychiatrist but then again – fuck sleep. What a waste of time really.

Not exactly on schedule, but I think I’m on the way to making this a daily routine. And while I’m on the subject of daily routines – Fuck the NATA. Fuck the Kotte Municipal Council. Fuck Carlo Fonseka and all these other political lackeys trying to gain some electoral mileage by distracting people from their woes with these anti-tobacco publicity stunts.

As a tobacco and alcohol consumer, I’m quite happy with the contribution I and others who indulge make to society and the national coffers through excise tax. I reckon it’s probably around or over Rs. 130,000,000,000 per year (I suspect it could be much more). I don’t know about the pseudo-moralists, pseudo-pious and all those other ‘preserve-the-culture-OMG-look-at-that-5-year-old-girl-on-Derana-Kids-Star’ — Pause for a minute. Fuck those shows and the parents that put those kids up there. They should be in school. Not being dressed up like shiny monkeys at a zoo, learning how to gyrate on national television. And also, if you Sinhala Ravaya and all these other ‘we must speak Sinhala, hear Sinhala, eat Sinhala, shit Sinhala’ were so concerned about preservation, why do our local TV and radio stations play Indian content? Why to the TV stations play Indian dramas? Why do our dancers dance Indian instead of evolving and developing our own native dance forms? — people who don’t understand the bigger picture in terms of tax, economics and state expenditure.

Why isn’t anyone opposing this mass dissemination of Indian content and culture? I remember the time when the government cracked down on English content on the media but that’s passed and I suppose that was to establish an easy taxation method. Good choice that one, but this Indian malarkey has to end. We have original art, talent and a rich culture, why spend so much time and money trying to preserve that, yet sustain the Indian-ness, instead of funding the evolution of what is ours?

Reconnecting to the track of that earlier train of thought, smokers and alcoholics are happy to pay for their muse, habit, indulgence, distraction, whatever you want to call it. Our monetary contribution as individual consumers is far greater than that of a pansy teetotaler or non-smoker. So please, dear political parasites, use our money on fertilizer subsidies or foreign teachers for Government universities and possibly schools, or even for a programme where every damn official in public office to get certified in political science and sociology.

And now it’s time for the daily crunch and getting ready for work. But before that, a thought: In 2007, Sri Lanka had the highest prevalence of oral cancer in the world and we are probably still in the top 10, and the biggest cause of this is the chewing of betel. Why isn’t anyone campaigning against betel and slapping health warnings on it?