International Kissing Day, 2015

Gustave Klimt's The Kiss

Yes, today's international kissing day. For the rest of the year, only hugs are allowed. And a lot of killing.

My studies in linguistics remind me that first we've to deal with ambiguity here. Is this a day for international kissing, or a kissing day for more than one nation? I chose the first meaning, but you're free to kiss only persons who were born inside the same abstract, controversial, and man made borders as yours. 

Borders that are now being used as safe havens to withhold cash from your economy, extracting cash from your pockets (which has a dire effect on the amount of kissing you may get or are willing to engage in) through higher taxes to those who cannot evade them. Borders that in some cases are likely to be linked with devastation in many forms. And therefore having to do more with killing than with kissing. 

In some instances, however, the absence of borders is what makes conflict more likely, as in the cases of Kurdistan or Euskal Herria (Basque Country), which are single cultures divided by borders not of their own. People there can on occasion be forced to international kissing even if they don't want to. 

I'd be even more of a fool if I forgot to mention that in Eastern Ukraine the majority wants to kiss Russian men on the lips while in Western Ukraine kissing Germans tends to be more trendy. 

The apparently steady rise of nationalism in Europe will most likely hinder international kissing. In Hungary, the extreme right is gaining ground as we saw by the outcome in the last elections, while, in France, Marine Le Pen doesn't want her dose of fatherly kissing any more. 

And if you're still in doubt that kissing is related to borders, here's one last argument: inserting the tongue in your partner's mouth is a question of establishing a bridge in between two different bodies' limits (borders). And if there were no borders at all it wouldn't be called French kissing. 

So wherever you are, whichever is your gender of the six (heterosexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian, transsexual, or asexual), there are no limits to this international kiss of mine. I particularly nourish the thought of ISIS (Daesh) men French kissing each other today. They are indeed fighting to establish borders where there were none, and their origin is international. Set up the example, boys! And stop fooling around with more borders.

Dogs and Africa

While having lunch today in a local and humble sports club, this very friendly man who lives in our neighbourhood engaged me in conversation over dogs. I passed onto him the information that I know of the association between dogs and humans, and he shared with me two of his experiences back in colonial Angola. 

* * *

In order to cross a river safely, villagers threw puppies into the water. The crocodiles came to snatch them and then the crossing would take place.

* * *

Some villagers painted themselves in white and beat the local dogs. Thus, when the colonial tax collector came, the dogs started barking at the white man they detested giving the villagers enough time to hide their money and their jewels.

* * *

In the first case, my girlfriend's dog carves a snip out of every bone she gnaws at. Is she thinking of retaliating, marching villagers or a cruel red riding hood (photo) into crocodile-infested rivers under the threat of a snip? 

And the latter story makes me wonder if those villagers read Pavlov's research on dogs, or if they had found out how to condition dogs behaviour much before the Russian did.