That feeling of impending catastrophe is back . . . could be because it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas here despite summer not having happened yet, could be because of the triangulation of MTV ignoring Kanye West again just as Nawaz Sharif gets deported from Pakistan and my parents leave town. But I can't help but get the feeling something big and ugly is going to happen. I get to feeling like this periodically . . . it usually comes to nothing . . . but, well, you know. Oh, and it's September 11 too. Riiiiiiight.
Anyways. Speaking of Kanye West, I mentioned I went to Antwerp with my parents. Antwerp is a diamond finishing and trading capital and it's still stuffed with tourists buying up rocks to get married with because they're slightly closer to wholesale prices there. However, it's been losing trade to Indian capitals because EU regulations are cracking down too hard on conflict diamonds. You get the full import of that phrase, right. Cracking down harder - which means they're still there. Losing trade to Indian capitals - because cracking down on conflict diamonds raises the price of the rocks unacceptably and regulations are slacker there.
Anyways, Kimberley Process diamonds, fuck that, et cetera. Just because income from the diamonds is going to government-approved agencies doesn't mean they're clean . . . Zimbabwe is part of the Kimberley Process, for fuck's sake, it's not UNICEF. Why are people still buying that shit, for god's sake? Can't we leave the pebble nonsense to the penguins? Cute cute penguins. Look, a cute penguin:
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What a cute penguin!! Don't you just want to pick him up and put him in a pile of snow?! I guess he's happy, though.
We were lucky that when we got engaged and married, my mother had a diamond that wasn't in use and we were able to use it (and a few little friends that she had in a ring). The diamond in her engagement ring had gotten lost at one point and for some reason my cousin was vacuuming my mother's car and found it after she had gotten it replaced by a cubic zarconia (however you spell that word) so she had the diamond but not in a ring and was happy to give it to us to use. This suited us both financially and morally. One of my cousins asked me at the wedding why we didn't just get our own diamond and I could have given her a 3 hour lecture but instead I just told her that we always like to reuse things instead of buying something new.
I would have been happy with any stone in my engagement ring but Nick is a bit of a traditionalist and he wanted a diamond. Plus this way we were able to design the perfect rings for us instead of heading to people's and picking an "engagement special."
I was desperate for a moonstone for my engagement ring, but the jeweller made it clear that this would be much more costly. Four years later, now that I'm in my full bloom of confidence, I would have insisted. Ah well.
We listened to Kanye West on the drive home to my parents (where I am right now). What a great album, and fairly child-friendly if you don't have the lyrics turned up too loud!
The new album? I heard 'Stronger' and it was alright so I'm curious about the new album.
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