hawshietashie's Blog
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Where Traffic and Rainy Nights Meet
- Posted on 06.26.09
I don't know WHAT is going on this year in terms of the weather, it could be foreshadowing a dark future...BUT the monsoon of a spring I experienced back home in DC was insanity. My room is all windows (so cool, right?!), so when the sun is out, it's as though I'm just floating in the sky; it's majestic. But when it's raining, or worse, lightning, outside, I feel like Dorothy on her way to Oz. And I don't have Toto there to cuddle with, so I'm seriously SOL. A few months back, on a hoppin' Friday night, I planned to go into the city and, I don't know, socialize or something. There LITERALLY aren't enough cute clothes to wear in the rain to make that a possibility. I don't have a shower-proof wardrobe, though that would be awesome, and I refuse to look frumpy, so I said, 'screw it, I'm stayin' in.' I lit some candles, downloaded a movie, and cuddled under my blanket for a night of excitement: I had downloaded "Taken." PS- this sure as hell was while it was in theaters! Ohhhh, the wonderful internet. Anyways, I had no idea what it was about, though the title really abolished any type of guessing game I wanted to play, so I was pumped to find out what was about to entertain me for two hours. Essentially, that movie THREW human trafficking at my face. It said, "Hey you, uh, wanna deal with this? Because it's happening..." While it wasn't an Oscar-winning picture, it got the point across. The main girl ran like a duck and was incredibly annoying, but still. The characters didn't matter: what mattered was what issue it brought to light.
One after the other, all of my friends began watching this movie, each one more shocked than the next. Where some of them are complete air-heads and said, "Oh My God! Wouldn't that be soooooo scary if it were real??" others were like, "Alright, let's NOT travel alone and meet cute, foreign boys in the taxi line. Let's learn Krav Maga." But, one thing they could all agree on was it wasn't its cinematic excellence that made it so powerful, it was the, "Oh PS, this could happen to you" factor that blew them away. And, unfortunately, it's true.
While this story line was fictitous, the idea isn't. This week is particularly reflexive of that with the release of Aaron Cohen's book "Slave Hunter," an account of his excursions as an undercover sex tourist in various third world countries, attempting to save one woman at a time from slavery. With such a busy summer, I forgot about it's rapidly approaching release date until TUESDAY, the day it hit bookstores. I bolted from work, went to Barnes & Noble, and pestered a sales associate to find me that book! "We won't have it 'til Friday, sorry!" Well, Friday has come. And I'm thinkin' tonight might be a scary repeat of that rainy Friday night, months back...
Related causes: Human Rights
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