NEW SITE
Hey Friends,
I have moved to a new site. You can find the blog updated weekly as usual at
www.boehmcke.com
or
http://boehmcke.blogspot.com/
See you soon!
Best
RIchardo
The Airport and the Painting
I fell in love with this painting at the San Telmo market in Buenos Aires. It was fantastic, very much for me, and I was delighted I was able to talk the guy down from 500 to 400 pesos. My only concern was that I would have some challenges getting it home.
Challenges turned out to be an understatement.
The tough thing about backpacking in a foreign country, or anywhere for that manner, is carrying 40 pounds of your own stuff on your back wherever you go. I am lucky enough to have a pretty nice backpack so getting around isn’t too cumbersome. But it has a lot of straps and attachments that hang off.
So I have an oversized duffle bag with a shoulder strap that I stuff it in before I check it in when I am getting on planes. It helps keeps the bag protected and in good shape.
When I was leaving Buenos Aires for the last time I had scheduled a cab to the airport so I figured I would put it in the duffle ahead of time as I would just be going from the curb to check in.
I lost count of how many miscalculations I made on this trip.
I get to the airport and at curbside check in there is a machine that wraps your suitcase in cellophane a bunch of times to ensure it stays sealed under the plane and no one has gone into it. They charge about 10 dollars for this.
I figured this would be a great way to protect my painting. I ask the man to wrap my painting, and while this was probably the first time this man had ever done such a task, or possibly used his arms (he looked like a Double Dare contestant in the middle of some sort of awful physical challenge) we manage to bundle up my painting nicely.
I go inside and get on a very short line to check in. I am excited about this. All I have is my bag to check in, my small backpack to carry on, and my painting which is about 20 by 30 inches. I was somewhat concerned about it fitting in the overhead compartment.
So I checked with one of the airline reps who once again (all together now) did not speak English. So I am trying to ask him if it will fit on the plane, but this has brought a whole new line of questioning about.
He wants to know if I have a receipt for the painting. Of course I don’t because I bought it at a market. He says I can’t get on the plane without a special something or other from an office at the very end of check in. I calmly accept it and with my 40 pound duffle bag slung over my shoulder and my painting delicately in hand, walk down to where I thought he pointed.
After 10 minutes on the wrong line the gentleman at this particular window is very accommodating ands starts giving me people’s names to contact and office doors to knock on. I decide to just go back to my guy at check in, plead ignorance and frustration and try my chances.
Poor decision.
I schlep my 40 pound bag back to the check in desk where the guy insists I get the documentation I need. My previously unflappable cool has given way to a very obvious frustration which I am sure doesn’t bother him because he doesn’t really speak English which shouldn’t even bother me because I am in ArgenFrigginTina.
Finally he learns that he needs to tell me to go to the police depot, which is located 1000 yards past the wrong place I went to last time, in baggage claim inside of a suitcase, under a bridge, guarded by a fleet of magical unicorn-riding trolls.
Well, it might as well have been anyway.
So back I go carrying pack over my shoulder like I’m a lost mortician hauling a dead body to the incinerator.
I finally find a man who asks me if I have a painting, I tell him yes. He gives me an acknowledging nod and shows me into a room. When I get into that room 4 men in uniforms (with no guns or any other type of official thing on them) tell me I am in the wrong room.
So I walk out and the same man who told me to go in sees me, walks me back in, tells the 4 guys in uniform what I am doing. They nod their heads that I am, in fact, in the correct room.
So another non-English speaking man comes out and asks me where I bought my painting. I tell him. He asks for my receipt, I tell him I don’t have one. He then says I can’t take the painting on the plane.
As though this guy was the last line of defense against art thieves in Argentina. Surely no thief would try to get on a plane without a receipt for his stolen painting! In hindsight I am pretty sure I could have written “Rich bought this…no seriously, he did” on a piece of paper and it would have sufficed.
The guy insists I can not leave the country with my painting.
He was acting like I was standing there with a dead Alpaca full of exotic birds and needle drugs. It was a damn painting. I bought it at the market. How does this not suffice?!
Finally he brings in an English speaking woman who knows I am about to start kicking people, and calmly explains that if I undo the 10 dollar wrapping job I have on my painting and show it to the man, AS A FAVOR (they really emphasized that) they will let me take it with me.
But they really wanted me to know that this was only a favor.
A favor really? Ok well I’ll make sure the next time this turd waffle is trying to leave America with something he rightfully owns, I’ll do him the favor and let him. What the hell?
He hands me a box cutter so I can undo the protective wrapping on my painting. Immediately I realize these employees are not cut of the finest cloth because they know I am visibly pissed, yet they still decided to hand me a weapon.
So it takes me 5 minutes to undo the green cellophane around my painting and when I finally show it to them, I swear to you, and I can’t prove that they said this;
“Oh yea that is nice.”
”Yea it’s beautiful.”
But I can’t prove that.
They say it’s ok that I can rewrap it and the man will walk me over to check in to vouch for me, because apparently we are now BFFs.
So I rewrap it, which is kind of like trying to rewrap your Christmas presents after you’ve already torn off the paper. In fact when I finish trying to put it back together, it looks like it was wrapped by a 5 year old.
I walk all the way back to check in desk and walk to the front of the line, because I am NOT about to wait on that crap again. And if somebody had challenged me about it, it would have been sad, but I would jammed my painting in their eye.
My new friend says my painting is NOT in fact stolen, and belongs to me.
As though if I had shown him Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and pinky promised I had bought it at the market, he would have cleared this as well.
Idiots.
I eventually made it through security but I was so frazzled I wanted to just sit down on the floor of duty free and crack open a bottle of Blue Label. But I didn’t. I came home, and so did my painting, undamaged, and in tact.
It now hangs happily above my bar. Which is appropriate, because I need a drink every time I think of what it took to get that painting home.
The Iceland Cometh
One of the things Buenos Aires also had to offer was a man from Iceland named Ragna. When I met Ragna the first night he was nice enough for about 40 minutes. Then he started talking more... a lot more. So much more that I took to staring straight up into the sky to avoid participating in the conversation.
One hopes to meet cool interesting friendly travelers on the roof of a hostel, not people who lecture about how great Obama is and the quality of Bush's decisions and the world economy and the Icelandic sunset schedule and life in Oregon and how to bargain and blah blah blah.
I came close to leaping off the roof, but instead 4 of us, including Ragna went to dinner. Thank god I had somebody else to talk to.
The next night we are all sitting on the roof drinking chatting and eating empanadas at midnight when we decide its time to go out, because people don’t leave until after midnight. So a couple of Americans, Ragna from Iceland, a Polish chick, and an Israeli dude head out for some drinks. We are enjoying ourselves when Ragna starts getting a little strange.
He orders a Cubra Libra (because apparently its 1988) and then sends it back. He orders another and then sends that one back. I say something like, ¨Man I guess they make bad drinks here huh? ¨
What Ragna must have heard was,
¨I HATE YOUR COUNTRY AND BJORK AND ALL ELSE IT PRODUCES! ¨
Ragna starts saying to me, ¨Do you have a problem with that? Do you? Do you have a problem with me?¨
I do a double take with another American to see if Ragna is kidding but we are both not sure. It happens again and I kind of joke it off because I’m not sure what is going on.
We finally get our bill and he asks me if I want to pay for his drinks as a sign of friendship. I'm not sure what kind of crazy America-Iceland treaty exists in his world but the last thing I want to buy for this maniac is a drink. I attempt to politely decline which seems to put him off.
He then casually says, ¨Oh its nothing, I’m on coke.¨
WHAT?
Now my knowledge of drugs is equal to my knowledge of Spanish but ít didn’t look like he was on coke. Or so I thought. As it turns out, apparently as we were sitting at our table drinking Ragna had been not so discreetly giving me the finger the whole time, which I didn’t notice. So we all leave to go to another bar, and the other American and I hang back and just let Ragna and crew keep walking off into the night.
Peace out.
So the 4 of us are at a bar now where Poland and Israel are working on their international relations and the other American who speaks Spanish is sitting in a director’s type chair talking to some Argentinean women. I sit down next to him and since I don’t speak Spanish I just sit there like I’m Regis Philbin´s crappy fill in co-host.
We got home at 6 in the morning.
Fast forward to my last morning in Uruguay. I flee on another grey morning. I go through customs where the nice people ask me questions that go like this.
"Habla Espanol?"
"No"
"None?"
I'm not sure if they were expecting me to burst into Spanish here and say something like, "AHH Just kidding. I love messing around with South American customs officials. I really got you guys huh?"
I take the 3 hour boat back to Buenos Aires and check back into the same hostel. It is amazing how some hostels become these ever evolving families of people coming and going. I slide right back into the sway of things. Right away I make sure I book tickets to 2 events.
The first event is a Tango show. Tango has its roots in Buenos Aires when it was first danced by the immigrants, and there being not enough women it was danced man on man. (Can you imagine how different Dancing with the Stars would be if THAT didn't change.)
I go with a bunch of other folks from the hostel to a very dodgy neighborhood called Boca. The show is very Disney, there are characters that walk around, and even a town drunk. Though considering the show went on for close to 3 hours I began to wonder if he was in fact "acting."
We have a decent dinner where a tango couple come around and take pictures with people. One of the guys at my table refuses to take a picture with the tango woman. I can understand though. I too find it offensive when strange exotically dressed women who don't speak my language ask to take a picture with me while throwing their leg around me like a sash. Yea, what a turn off.
There is something about me folks. At large group gatherings there is something about me that makes the players in these events search the crowd, find my goofy face and pull me out to play along. It happened with the Big Foot show in Orlando, the Hula Dancers in Hawaii, and of course the Tango Show in Bs As.
So I get pulled out onto the floor to dance tango with this woman who keeps screaming "PASSION" at me and while she is leading I am trying desperately to keep up. She then jumps into my arms and has me spin her around while screaming, “DO YOU WANT TO BE MY BOYFRIEND?”
I was pretty sure I was going to get dizzy and fall down or accidentally drop her. Luckily I survived and so did she.
The next day I went to a traditional Gaucho ranch. These were the original lonely cowboys of Argentina. The place has horse rides, a huge Asado and a little show.
I had been really interested to go to this and kept asking the people at my hostel front desk to look up shows for me. But I kept mixing up the word for Gaucho Ranch with the word for Parking Lot. So I kept saying to the desk
"Can you book me a reservation for the parking lot? I really want to ride horses around the parking lot."
You can imagine the look they gave me. This happened at least 4 times.
So I go to the Estancia and ride horse. My horse is friendly and doesn't really follow directions. There is a photographer walking around taking pictures of us on the horses. My horse refuses to pose and walks away so this woman is screaming at me.
"STOP STOP, STAY RIGHT THERE!"
Are you kidding me? I am not a centaur. Contrary to what you may think, this horse is not just an extension of me, it is its own animal and I do not speak horse. He just ignores her. I do too.
I also quickly realize why nobody wears shorts while riding a horse. If I could pick any word to describe riding a horse in shorts that word would be Chafe.
We have a massive lunch where I eat blood sausage. It tastes exactly how it sounds.
So we finally get out of there and head back to the hostel. I change my clothes and head to a 9 course tasting dinner with another American.
We had some ceviche, some goat cheese foam, some caramel apple and lots of other things but there are 2 that really kind of stuck out in my head.
The first was the lamb. It was 2 small pieces. I have only had lamb a handful of times. But this lamb was unlike any I had ever had. It was tender, and the texture was incredible. The taste was outrageously good. I was in love with it.
I tell the waiter it was my favorite. And he asks me if I know what part of the lamb it was, which I don' t. So he tells me.
It was tongue. Lamb tongue. And it was goooood.
The other dish that figured prominently in the meal was the octopus with tomato air. The tomato air was essentially bubbles that tasted not so awesome and the octopus well... I am not a squid or octopus fan.
And this octopus isn't even deep fried. I don't so much look at it I just pop a large pink piece into my mouth and start to chew... and chew... and chew. And then I look down in my bowl to actually examine my meal. And I see the suction cups. And I realize why I don't like it.
It tastes like I am eating a rubber bathtub mat. I feel like one should not eat anything found in a bathroom.
Luckily my last 2 meals in Buenos Aires were steak, and lots of it. Seeing as I am back in New York now I am already going through withdrawal. I crave to feel the feelings I felt in Buenos Aires.
Maybe I will go out and buy a steak... or maybe I'll just go chew on my bathtub mat.
Your a Gray
So my last night in Buenos Aires there was this big rumor about some drum show that was going on. I didn't know much about it except that everyone was talking about it like Jesus had risen from the dead, and taken up the bongo.
JESUS ON THE BONGO, ONE NIGHT ONLY.
So myself and the other 15 or so kids from my hostel leave like a heard of cattle and go to this drum show near... I don't know what. We wait on line for about an hour before we enter this outdoor arena with a huge orange iron staircase. We stand outside drinking over sized beers and waiting for the fun to start. Finally around 8 a group of 20 or so drummers come out stage and fire up the music.
It was awesome, bongos, and all manner of percussion being banged and hit on, heavy thumping beats, dancing, and laughing. Culture gyrating and mixing like a drum smoothie. It was awesome. We then went out to dinner afterwards where I waited an hour to get a plate of uncooked ham and cheese and salami. It was salty but tasty.
I did wake up in the middle of the night thinking that I REALLY wanted to return all of the food I purchased. However, I was able to hold on to my purchases.
The next morning I wake up and pack up my crap to get a cab to the port to take a boat to Uruguay. So I get up to the counter at the port and the man says, "Do you have your passport."
I literally scream, "FUCK!"
Counter guy then says to me, "You can't leave the country without your passport."
Oh really Columbus? Thanks for the hot tip, I was hoping I could get into Uruguay with a package of Duty Free Mentos and my charming smile, but I'll go back and get my passport.
Jerk.
It's 10 am and I'm trying to catch and 11:30 am boat. So I shlep my shit and hop back in a cab driven by an old white haired dude with awesome posture. Immediately this guy punches the gas and we are off and flying. He pauses at a red light to offer me a cough drop. I figure why not, so I take his mentholly goodness.
Light turns green and my driver starts weaving through Buenos Aires like a Geriatric Steve McQueen. It is awesome, he's honking, shifting, cutting people all off, and still able to say the rosary and kiss his beads as we pass the churches. He never loses his cool, he never changes his perfect posture. He even offers me a cigarette. Perhaps he thought maybe his driving might cause me to crave a nicotine addiction at this point in my life.
So we hit the hostel, I grab my passport from the safe, and make it back to the boat with plenty of time to spare.
I take the one hour boat to Uruguay. Go through customs, which is basically a guy who shrugs when I show him my passport. I try and store my bag at the bus station but nobody speaks English so I end up paying this woman at the cafeteria 3 dollars to keep it behind the counter.
I walk around Colonia which is a UNESCO world heritage site. To be honest I really don't know what that means, but I'm starting to think that just means that a place is really old with no other tourist options. I spend a couple hours, snap some pictures, have some pizza and Uruguayan wine which tastes like grape ocean water.
Mmm grape ocean water.
I take a 3 hour bus ride to Montevideo. Another white knuckler since I don't know how to convey that I don't know where we are going. All I can say is,
"At what time... Montevideo?"
So I get to the... I don't want to say 1 horse town, because I saw at least 12 different horse drawn carriages on the street in the 36 hours I spent there. So I go to dinner. I go to bed.
I try to sleep but between the Israeli kid who snores, and our bedroom door which doesn't... what's the word... close. Our balcony door doesn't close either. And because its a windy night the wind makes our bedroom door slam close like an angry pubescent teenager leaving the house on a friday night.
There is nothing more awesome than being woken up at 2 am by a slamming door to realize you have slat marks in your side from the worlds awfullest bunk bed and now you can't fall back asleep because of the snoring Israeli and you lost 3 of your earplugs so all you can do is jam one earplug so far into your head that whats left of your brain starts squeezing out the other side.
I wake up, go for a walk on a cloudy day, get a sunburn. Have lunch, eat ice cream. Finish a book, sit in a hammock, have a giant asado (grill) where I eat like 6 different kinds of meat... twice.
I hang out with an Irishman and a tool bag 20 year old from Washington. The Irishman buys a round of drinks, I buy a round of drinks. and then I realize why I never buy drinks for 20 year olds... they don't return the favor.
Toolbag.
I would like to tell you more but I am really not sure what happened to my one earplug so I must go and make sure I actually took it out... 2 days ago.
McGruff Goes to Argentina
Welcome to sunny Buenos Aires, where the culture is rich and the sidewalk is a frigging minefield. In all honesty it looks like the city suffered an anvil storm about 3 years ago because every 20 feet there is a MASSIVE hole in the sidewalk. They are not repaired so much as they are just kind of filled in with rocks, or not filled in at all. I trip every 8th step. I have twisted each ankle so many times I´m surprised my feet haven´t started facing different directions.
So I got into Bs As (that is how you abbreviate it) and caught a shuttle into town. Going through customs was a lot easier and I didn´t have to pay the 135 dollars I had to pay to get into Chile. I´m still not sure why they charge people that. It´s like they said, ¨Hey we don´t have too much cool stuff here how do we get more people to come? Charge them!¨
So I clear customs behind a man who when he was asked if he was from the United States he shivered like he had just put his thumb in a socket. Turns out he was from France. Yea I wouldn´t like it if somebody screwed it up for me either.
So I check into my hostel and go out for a stroll. I want a slice of Pizza and since Bs As has a tremendous amount of Italian culture (half the people here have at least 1 Italian relative) I find myself a place to have a slice. Good, tasty, delicious. I walk for a while and decide I want another. So I go to another place, and seeing as my Spanish is what it is... I accidentally order a whole pizza.
Now I watched the guy put it in the oven, but I couldn´t very well stop him at that point because all I would have been able to say was
¨No no, one pizza, ONE pizza.¨ So I just paid for it and ate most of the damn thing.
Bs As is beautiful and old and diverse and a little dirty. There are so many unique neighborhoods and places to eat and the shopping is incredible. So many neat and different stores. It is still probably 90 degrees out but I love it. I don´t know what the temperature is in New York and I don´t want to know.
So my second day I take a gorgeous stroll along their revamped Puerta Madero area which converted all of these old shipping building into trendy lofts and restaurants with a beautiful promenade.
I was needing a snack so I went and got an empanada. I couldn't really understand the menu, but they had something called Bife Suave, which I interpreted to mean Slow Beef... or Handsome Beef. Either way it sounded tasty. So I ordered my Handsome Beef Empanada and it was good.
I then went and found an ice cream place and ordered a cone. For you Spanish speakers out there you might know that the word for ice cream cone and the word cucaracha are damn close. I am just glad I got what I intended.
The woman then proceeded to scoop and pry a pile of ice cream the size of a bean bag chair out of the freezer. I worried that perhaps I had accidentally ordered 10 ice cream cones. It took her no less than 5 minutes to get the chair sized scoop out, but I did not complain.
I then took a 4 hour bike ride around the older parts of the city really getting a feel for the city, the immigrant neighborhoods, the new yuppy buildings etc. The city has a lot to offer.
This is where I was about to tell you a story about something that happened over 2 days but for safety reasons I will jump ahead in my story and skip this part for now. You will understand later.
The next morning I go to the San Telmo market which is full of antiques and art and local creations, lots of locals, lots of tourists, lots of walking really close to people. Places like that always make me a little concerned.
I´m always very cautious, I wear a money belt, don´t carry a wallet and keep my head on the swivel. So I´m walking enjoying soaking it up when I feel a woman walk uncomfortably close to me, and my spider sense starts tingling. I keep my eye on her and she just looks shifty. She´s too tan to be a tourist, her backpack is conspicuously empty, also meaning she´s not a tourist, and she wasn´t with friends.
So I don´t think of it until I see her again, 5 feet away from me, standing next to some German couple and she is definitely eyeing his wallet. She moves in close behind him and turns to look around. That´s when I hit her with the crook eye and she froze and tried to play it cool.
But I just kept staring at her. She stood there looking uncomfortable. I warned the German couple but realized I couldn´t just follow this chick all day. I´m not batman, I´m not polizia. And I can´t report her for being sketchy. I don´t know how to say that in Spanish. Hell if people went to jail for being sketchy I´d be serving a life sentence right now.
So I just walked away knowing that chick was probably going to get someones wallet, but like Smokey the Bear says, ¨Only YOU can prevent creepy locals from picking pockets in the markets of Argentina while you´re on vacation.¨
I was wearing my Tampa Bay Devil Rays hat this day (Thanks Grandpa) and it had provoked a couple of conversations. While at the market, a woman approached me and asked me if I spoke English (which I do) and then asked me if I was from Tampa.
Long story short she takes a picture of me and her husband and says;
¨Tell your grandpa that you met someone in Argentina who works for the Devil Rays... my husband´s the General Manager.¨
Unbelievable.
So I walked around a bunch more, bought some things, and looked over more stuff as the San Telmo market devolved into stinky hippies selling stuff they made and burning incense. I walked over to the wealthy Recoletta neighborhood and another market.
At this point I was starving so I sat down at an outdoor cafe to have lunch at like 5pm. Every meal I have had I have either been way too early or way too late for, as much as I try to blend in with the locals I cant eat dinner at midnight, go to bed at 2, and be ready for lunch at noon.
So I sit down and in my fake Spanish order something I thought looked good. My waiter, a dead ringer for Daddy Warbucks, comes over and when I tell him what I want says a bunch of stuff in Spanish and turns to a different page in the menu.
I guess he didn´t want me to have what I ordered.
So I look on the page he turned to and point to something fairly priced that says Especial in front of it. Especial? Well that must be good! He seems delighted by my choice. He brings me my half bottle of wine (which is something very prevalent down here, its way better than just one glass) and gets my setting all put together.
Then I understand why he smiled.
He brings me out what appears to be a fully grown adult cow. And I realize, I ordered the steak for 2. It doesn´t even come on a plate, its comes on a miniature grill because they want to keep it warm as I eat my 437 ounces of beef. Well, when in Buenos Aires...
I am no longer capable of burping, I try to burp but all I can do is... well... Moo.
I saw the Cemetaria Recoletta which is home to the richest families in Buenos Aires. These massive mausoleums are unreal. It is like a tiny walled-in city, but instead of every one living in massive homes, they live in these massive stone closets, and instead of living, they are dead.
Its kind of weird to catch yourself leaning against one and then go, OH MY GOD I AM LEANING ON A DEAD PERSONS HOUSE.
I saw Evita's grave. Didn´t take a picture because it seemed too creepy.
The next day I went to the Zoo, did shopping in SoHo (they have one too) and had another salad to combat my beef-itis.
There is much more to tell but I am tired, I have to prepare myself for a big day of fighting crime and ordering 2 meals at a time. Ciao Ciao.
Foosbeach
One of the problems with not knowing Spanish in a Spanish speaking country is transportation. Riding the metro is easy enough. Especially when its as beautiful as it is in Santiago. Taking a three hour bus ride to the coast however, is another story.
I was on my way to Quintero for a couple days at the ocean. I went to the bus station and bought a ticket for what was called the ´Direto¨. I thought that meant it would go directly to the beach and I could just get out there.
No, apparently direto means that the bus will pick up every single person on the highway with their thumb out, and make tons of stops in random towns. The whole trip was a white knuckle adventure for me because I didn´t know what the destination looked like and more and more people were getting off the bus. Finally at the last stop there were just 3 people left when we pulled up to a dirt field where people were riding horses, luckily my stop was the next one.
So I get out, take a taxi to the beach. The taxi, like every single taxi I have been in since I started my trip, was of course a Toyota Yaris. (You could start a clever side business Sophie) I get to the beach and am greeted by a lovely German girl who works at the hostel which is just a cute pair of houses steps from the beach.
So I drop my stuff, slather on a ton of sun tan lotion and go for a stroll along a dark sanded beach. Of course I put the lotion on myself so I couldn´t reach every spot. So there is a very red bat-shaped rhombus in the middle of my back now. Perhaps I should have gone against my instincts and said to Angie ¨Hey we´ve just met, but hows about you rub some lotion all over me?¨ Yea perhaps so.
The first night a bunch of people from all over checked in and we had a pirate party. Most of you know I do not need a reason to act ridiculous. Drinking in itself is enough of a reason. So as you can imagine, dressing as a pirate while drinking the local favorite Pisco, did nothing to subdue me. If anything it added to the nonsense because I was able to buy an eye patch in town. This was only kind of cool, because while I got to end every sentence with ¨ARRRR¨ I also kept walking into shit.
So by the time 1 am came, and we´d had some drinks, and I was trying to shoot pool, while wearing an eye patch... well, let´s just say we never finished that game.
The next morning I tried surfing in an ocean with an extremely powerful undertow. Our surf instructor was face down on the beach when we met him. He also didn´t speak English. He was very friendly though and I had a Mexican friend with me who helped translate. That however did not enable me to do any real surfing.
I did a lot of paddling, a bit of flailing, and some partial drowning. And then my cord broke and my surf board floated away. So I watched as the locals on the beach laughed at the skinny pale kid trying to run after his surf board which was moving way faster than him. It was around this point that I stepped on a sharp sea creature... or a steak knife... it really could have been either one. So I pretty much lost at surfing
We then went into town, got some groceries so our Mexican friend could cook us a feast. When we got back we played paddle ball and volleyball. I lost at volleyball as well. So I had pretty much lost at every activity I had played. So for that nights Mexican feast (we all dressed as banditos) we headed down to the bar and I tried to redeem myself at pool. Once again I lost.
All of a sudden someone from the hostel comes up to me and tells me these two Chilenos want to play me in Foosball or what they call, ¨TAKKA TAKKA¨ (say it out loud, its fun).
I honestly thought I was about to get hustled. Like this was some sort of a scam. Hey, get the gringo with the bat-shaped rhombus on his back to play Foosball, we´ll take him for every peso he has. I was even more skeptical when before I event agreed to play these kids are betting. They wanted me and the Australian kid who I´d been paired up with to bet them beers. So I said OK.
It is at this point that I must reference my senior year in college when we had a Foosball table in our house. This is one activity I do not suck at. Those Chilenos bought us some beers after a rousing game which we won 5 to 1, then they won the second game, but the third game we claimed in the name of of the pale folk! They had raised the stakes at this point so we were playing for empanadas! We felt bad taking their money though, so we just kept their pride. It felt good.
I woke up the next morning with a considerable amount of mosquito bites on my feet and hands and arms. There is one on my finger so big that it looks like I am wearing a flesh colored engagement ring.
Not cool.
Hopefully I don´t get yellow fever, but there´s really no guarantees in life.
I jumped into town around noon to go back to Santiago and got right on a bus which said ¨Direto¨ and this bus stopped at every street for about an hour. I was nervous I would never make it back to Santiago. Also when I got on the bus the driver handed me a tiny key which I said wasn´t mine, then he said something which I pretended meant it was for the bathroom. So I kept it.
As you can imagine my Spanish is still nonexistent. I only know 2 phrases, and ¨Please don´t molest me¨ has turned out to be only slightly more useful than ¨My wife is an engineer.¨
So I get back to Santiago, crash for the night, go to the airport the next morning and fly to Buenos Aires super early. I will tell you about Buenos Aires as soon as my rhombus heals.
JFK to Nowhere
Normally when someone goes on an exotic international adventure they start with some crazy tale of how they almost didn´t make it.
My tale will be no different.
My flight left on Friday at 10 am from JFK airport... or so I thought. Turns out I was leaving from LaGuardia... which I didn´t realize until I was already at JFK. So clad in my beachwear I ran outside (where the temperature was 8) to wait for a bus that didn´t come, got in a taxi, and while suffering the worst case of hypertension of my life, made it to LaGuardia airport to catch my flight to Atlanta, where I hung out for 2 hours before catching my flight to Peru, which left late, leaving me 15 minutes to get to my gate to catch my flight to Santiago.
As we are getting off the plane the flight attendant gets on and goes, ¨There are 2 people going to Santiago Chile, Joe shmo and Richard...¨
Dramatic pause
¨Boomka.¨
Hey that´s me! So me and my special attendant SPRINT through the Lima airport to catch my plane... and sit on it for 45 minutes before it took off... without my luggage.
Yea my bag didn´t make it until about 12 hours after I did. Oh well.
So I have spent the last 3 days in sunny Santiago (where it is about 90). It is somewhat blended city of no real skyline and an atrocious poo colored reservoir that runs through the middle. As well as an ungodly amount of large, depressing looking dogs who just lay in the middle of the sidewalk like they just got laid off. And don´t say awww because most of them look like they got the mange.
But despite all this I was excited to get out into the city and hone my Spanish skills.
I probably should have ACQUIRED some Spanish skills first because nobody in this city speaks English. My communication has been reduced to a series of awkward shrugs, confused pointing, and caveman like grunting. It´s actually kind of embarrassing that I can´t communicate better. This is by far the least English speaking country I have ever come across. I wouldn´t say this is a beautiful city necessarily but it is interesting.
My first night the hostel had an all meat barbq on the roof and I ate so much meat I expect to pass a fully formed cheesesteak at some point in the near future. I met some Aussies and some Brits and we went out and drank some Cristal. Not the champagne mind you, but the local beer. That and Escudo, both very drinkable. We got home from our dance party at around 3 am and I slept til almost noon, which is fine, because nothing really happens in this city until then.
I spent the next day at the city´s museums. I went to a Chilean History museum which essentially said this on every exhibit;
¨The indigenous people did this. Isn´t it interesting? Yea we don´t know why they did that.¨ Apparently early Chileans snorted a lot of drugs but nobody knows how they got them.
I checked out the modern art museum which had an entire floor dedicated to Chilean Comics... since I don´t really speak Spanish the whole thing was pretty much wasted on me. I also checked out the home of poet Pablo Neruda, where my guide was like a pint size version of the latter half of Cheech and Chong. His moustache was not to be reckoned with but he was by far one of the coolest people I have ever encountered and the tour was all the more awesome because of him.
I had a great lunch of Salad (I figured I could use the roughage after my all meat binge) and a glass of fresh strawberry juice. Delightful. I have so far avoided the local custom of a Hot Dog loaded with Mustard, Ketchup, and Avocado.
Oh my god I almost threw up just typing that.
Anyway today myself and some good kids from MIT went wine tasting at 2 different vineyards. It was way out of the way, and thank god I was with them because the power of 5 people not knowing Spanish was way better than my own incompetence. We squeezed 5 people into a cab several times, including on the way to a restaurant our cab driver did not recognize so he kept stopping and asking strangers on the street where it was eliciting the exact same reaction every time. They would extend their arm all the way as though they were pointing to the moon and presumably tell him to just keep going.
It ended up being worth it because my bacon wrapped steak, which was roughly the size of a duffel bag, was awesome. The vineyards were beautiful, decent wines, but I didn´t find any I wanted to take with.
Tomorrow morning I will abandon this city for the coast, 2 and a half days at Quintero to just chill and read and do squat. I cannot wait.
But before I go, my first horrible experience of the trip.
I did not sleep very well last night. Well I did from about 12:30 until 3:30 when I awoke with a shock to the awful sound of a family of sea lions being slaughtered. No no, no sea lions in my room. It was just the chubby German in the bunk across from mine wheezing and snoring like he was running some kind of comatose marathon.
At first I thought he had managed to accidentally slip his closed fist into his mouth and was trying to breathe around it. Then I was almost positive his entire arm had become lodged in his esophagus. This was excessive sleep apnea. Every snore got louder and louder until I was sure he was either going to wake up, or choke.
I have to admit I was sitting there praying for choke. But nothing happened it just got louder and louder. I wanted to throw something at him, or roll him over... or beat him to death, regretfully I did nothing. And so I spent a considerable amount of time listening to what evolved into him breathing through a mouthful of wet spahgetti. Hands down the most awful snoring I have ever heard. God help him if he is still there tonight.
To the Beach!
Taking Shots
How much would you pay somebody to stab you?
Probably nothing right? If anything you would probably ask to be compensated for being stabbed. And you most certainly would not go out of your way to be stabbed. You’d probably avoid it at all costs.
Normally I would be like you. But I recently paid 290 dollars to be stabbed. Not once, but FOUR times. Twice in each arm, by my doctor. It was almost a deal at 75 bucks a stab.
I leave this Friday for South America. I’m taking a two week vacation to Chile, Argentina, and possibly Uruguay. Apparently South America has diseases and stuff that I need to be protected against. Of all the countries I’ve visited before, these are the only ones I’ve been vaccinated for prior to traveling.
I think it was probably a good idea considering there was a 4 year stretch of my life where I got Mononucleosis, Strep, and Shingles in rapid succession… and that was just in college! If you add my time in Spain, Turkey, and Australia to the list you can include Bed Bugs, Salmonella, and some kind of weird rash.
So I’m pretty determined to ward off disease on this trip.
I went to my appointment with my nice, but slightly socially awkward doctor. He asks me where I’m going and types the names of the countries into his computer database.
“Ok Hepatitis A, you’ll need. And Hepatitis B. And let’s see here, Tetanus booster. And Yellow Fever. You’re going to Buenos Aires and where else? You’re not going to any of the…” and he rattles off the names of like 5 different regions of Argentina. And because I haven’t done as much research as I should have, I haven’t ever heard of any of them. I half lie and half guess that I won’t be going to those regions.
“Oh yea, umm, no just going to hang out around Buenos Aires,” I say, completely lying to my doctor.
Then doctor says “And here’s the good news…”
At this point he chuckles but then kind of catches himself realizing he might have said the wrong thing.
“Well not really good news, but, um, none of these are covered by insurance.”
Of course not. (Smooth delivery on the joke by the way Doc) Why the hell would yellow fever be covered by insurance? I suppose if insurance were around during the renaissance period, insurance companies would have been like, “Oh yea the Black Death, oooo we don’t cover that. Not deadly enough.”
How much do they cost Doc?
“Their all around 100 dollars each.”
My butt cheeks instantly clench and my heart rate goes into over drive. Shit. I’m going to go broke before I even get to South America.
“What was that third country you are going to?”
Now I’m in full on panic mode. I can’t afford any more shots! I’m being inoculated against half the diseases in South America, could I really need any more? Do I want any more?
“Oh,” I say, “it’s Uruguay, but I wasn’t even really set on going there, I was just going to go for a day and if I need more shots I’ll just skip it,” once again straight up lying to my doctor.
My heart is out of control and I contemplate the consequences. I made it through 10 days of Montezuma’s revenge in the Mediterranean, how bad can Typhoid fever be? I mean really, do I even know anybody who has ever had Typhoid? I’m sure if it was something to worry about I would have heard more stories.
If I go to Uruguay or anywhere else, I just won’t eat or touch anything. I’ll Purel the hell out of everything before I touch it. I won’t eat any fruit, and I promise not to hold or lick any frogs.
But luckily I don’t need anymore shots. So we go into the stabbing room and I take off my shirt, and doctor comes in with 4 different viles.
Really doctor? You can’t mix a couple of those together like a Hepatitis smoothie or something? Do you really have to shove 4 different needles in my arms? He picks up one vile looks at it and says, “Oh this ones not right.” And he leaves to go get the correct bottle.
My heart, again, goes wild.
He comes back in with the correct vile, “It was on the wrong shelf, they had it on the wrong shelf.”
Well it’s a good thing you read the label doctor because if you had injected me with Avian Chicken Mutaba and I had died I don’t think the “Wrong Shelf Defense” would have worked in a court of law.
Then he asks me which arm I want to hurt more?
Oh this one doctor, please, give me pain here! I opt for 2 in each arm, so I have my pain equally distributed and won’t have to walk around the office like Quasimodo with one arm hanging dead at my side.
He gives me that awkward laugh again before saying, “Um, ha-ha, you’re going to be in pain tomorrow.”
I hate you. Do you know that doctor?
So he stabs me once, twice, puts a band aid on. Walks around to the other side, stabs me once, twice, and puts a band aid on. He then gives me a yellow card with some epileptic scribbling on it and tells me not to lose it otherwise, “They won’t let you back into the country.”
Thanks doctor. Good piece of info there. You’d think that would have been included in a pamphlet he gave me, and not just a side note like, “don’t forget your vitamins.”
The rest of the evening the pain in my arms starts to come on, the soreness is setting in. I go to sleep and hope for the best.
By the time I wake up the next morning it feels like a gang of monkeys had been pounding on my arms throughout the night and I had somehow managed to sleep through it.
The pain is numbing. If I don’t move my arms it’s almost bearable. But if I try to move my elbows even close to parallel the pain in my arms almost bring tears to my eyes. I considered wearing the same outfit for three days straight just so I wouldn’t have to lift my arms above my head to take off my sweater.
The pain feels like somebody is trying to pull my arm bones out through my shoulders without making an incision.
Sitting, standing, leaning, and walking are all painful. The only position that seems appealing to me is “crumpled heap.”
I consider drugs, but don’t want to numb myself so that I accidentally cause more damage. I just want the pain to go away as soon as possible.
The knowledge that I did this to myself doesn’t really make it any better, nor does thinking about what would have happened had I forgotten to go to the doctor before I left.
Really I won’t know if these shots were worth it until I come back to America disease free. But if I come back with Typhoid, I’ll be sure to let you know if it was worth it.
The Proliferation of Naked
We come into this world naked. We shower naked. The doctor sees us naked. The people we love see us naked. It would seem that would be enough naked for any of us to stand.
But no, there are some people who need a larger amount of naked in their life. Being naked for a select few doesn't fulfill their needs. They desire a larger audience to view them in their birthday suit.
To these people, there is no bad opportunity to show off every crevice of their body. The obvious offenders are nudists who feel the need to be naked everywhere all the time. But there is a group of people somewhere between nudist and normal who are naked in my life just frequent enough to make me uncomfortable. Let’s call these people the Subtle Nudes.
The most obvious location to observe the Subtle Nudes is the locker room at the gym. Like most people, I'm aware that my naked body is not necessarily a work of art. I am CERTAINLY not secure enough to stroll around a locker room full of people I don't know, butt ass naked. Alas, some people are, and those people make me extremely uncomfortable
In my gym, there are showers. Great, brilliant. Very necessary for the removal of scum, funk, and all physical manifestations of nastiness. The showers at my gym are nice enough with soap, shampoo, and conditioner. There is even a nice little hook that allows one to hang their towel and clothes outside the shower so they don’t get wet.
However the hook goes largely unused, at least by the people in my gym.
It seems it goes like this. At the very beginning and very end of your life, being naked is no big whoop. I think the only difference is that in the beginning you love to run places naked, and when you’re old, you just shuffle. Either way, your ass is bare and you just don’t care.
Little naked kids = cute.
Little old naked people = saggy, horrific wrinklyness.
When I see old naked people in my locker room it’s like a big naked prune out for a stroll. Go away prune, go away!
I’ll admit I’ve considered strolling naked through the locker room before, but I know it would inevitably end in me running like I was about to jump through my sprinkler when I was 5 years old.
When I am changing in the locker room I try to remain as covered up as possible. But if I allow myself to get all the way naked my goal is; Get some underwear on ASAP. Once I am completely naked, the first move is always to stop being naked.
But not for some people. Some people feel the need to do other things. Fold their clothes, organize their wallet, write a sonnet. I can see them out of the corner of my eye, because it’s very hard not to notice a naked person next to you, just hanging out naked. You think it’s bad if they are sitting on the bench naked, because then you think, oh god, their gross rear has been on the same bench that I am now touching.
Ew ew gross gross gag blah.
Or the nudie will be standing, as though crouching weren’t enough; they feel the need to prominently display their stuff like a naked Superman.
But sometimes those standing people bend over, and that is when my I go into seizures and the blood vessels in my eyes explode. Come on man! Not here! Put it away! There are no naked calisthenics here. Go back to your colony for your thread bare Jane Fonda time.
Inevitably I will see some oblate spheroid shaped naked man in the locker room trying to put on his socks.
Really naked man? You can’t think of a better article of clothing to put on first besides your socks? How about a muumuu, or a tarp, or the entire Macy’s bedding department?
Though being naked indoors makes sense to me when you compare it to those people who insist on being naked outdoors.
At least at the gym you can rationalize, ok we are a select group of people who pay money to belong to this facility I should be able to walk 20 feet naked if I so choose.
But the nude beach, I mean come on man what is that all about? What kind of person decides, ya know what, being naked in private isn’t enough for me. I need to be naked in front of a lot of people, preferably in a place with tiny bits of rock and ocean and sun.
Many people don’t want any tan lines. If you want to look like George Hamilton, by all means go for it. But does anybody really need a tanned butt crack?
I live by myself now, and when I first moved into my apartment I did not own any blinds or window coverings, so my neighbors could see directly into my room. This bothered me at first and I would make sure to cover myself up while coming out of the shower. Then I started realizing… who cares? There is nobody else IN my apartment.
Here comes too much information folks, but now I shower with the door open and I prance around as naked as I want.
I don’t look out my window very much, and even when I do, I can’t really see very well into other peoples apartments, at most I can maybe see what’s right up against the window, I figure they must not be able to see into mine.
I think the only difference between me and the gym folk is that my apartment is my channel. If other people want to tune in, that is their prerogative. I shouldn’t feel obligated to alter my life accordingly. If they don’t want to see what’s on my channel they can just look away. Whereas those naked folk in the locker room…. they aren’t a channel. They are a test of the Emergency Nudist System broadcast directly into the cortex of my brain.
I don’t anticipate any major changes in my life philosophy in the near future. But if I do have a major awakening of my naked senses, I’m pretty sure I won’t have to tell you. I think you might just notice it in your peripheral.
Cookie Cookie Cookie Starts With Me
I am going to miss my metabolism.
Now granted I am 25 years old, in great health, good medical test scores, low cholesterol, healthy waist line, and no reason to worry. But I am well aware that my days of eating anything I want, whenever I want, as often as I want are numbered. And when my day of reckoning comes, my waistline is going to blow up like a peep in a microwave.
I wouldn't be worried if I didn't eat so damn much. I must eat, all the time. It's not that I am a compulsive eater. But I have a problem not putting food in my mouth. If a Mexican fairy came into my home and put down a bowl of infinite tortilla chips and salsa in front of me, I would eat it until my internal organs leaked tomatoes, and flooded my belly with deliciousness.
I don't have a shut off valve. Take bread for example. If a restaurant provides a basket of bread for a pre-meal snack, I do not think of it as a way to stave off hunger. No, my goal is to eat as much of that bread as I can.
Especially if I am working out at the time (I'm really into fitness) I eat like a maniac. My largest expense every month is food. When I go grocery shopping I have so many bags I feel like the person ringing me up will ask, "Excuse me sir but is anyone else from the orphanage coming to help you carry these bags?"
I eat healthy during the week, but sometimes I slip.
One weekend not too long ago, I woke up, had some Bruff Cakes for breakfast (Bruff Cakes, for those of you who do not know, are brownies made in a muffin pan and then finished off with frosting to take on the best characteristics of brownies, muffins, and cupcakes), which I followed up with 2 bagels with cream cheese. Then for dinner I had a small pizza (thin crust) with a Caesar salad on TOP of it, and then I chased that with an ungodly amount of ice cream from Cold Stone.
Had I been running a marathon the next day, this might have been a wise menu choice. But my athletic activity for that Monday was staring at a computer screen for 8 hours.
I visited my parents' in South Carolina for Thanksgiving. I of course got to stuff my face with all the food I'm too incompetent to cook on my own. And I started shoving my hand in the cookie jar every hour. I ate like I was on the Fatkins Diet. Or maybe the South Beached Whale Diet.
This past Christmas weekend involved another trip to the parents', which meant more eating of sweets. I was in the HOV lane on the obesity highway and I didn't even mind. I walked into my parents' home to see not 1, but 6 plates of Christmas cookies sitting on the dining room table. It looked as though we were getting ready to distribute treats to everyone in town. But no, they were just for our family Christmas.
We have four people in our family.
So I did what any normal 25 year old with a healthy metabolism does. I started eating 13 cookies a day. Not just as dessert. I would have a couple after breakfast. Some after lunch, and then a sensible dinner.
That's actually a lie, I ate a cookie every time I walked by them. My logic goes like this, if 1 of something tastes good, then a 100 of something must taste even better.
The piles of cookies were so high, it seemed I had barely made a dent. So I rationalized I hadn't eaten that many cookies. And the cookies were so frigging tasty.
I was like a crack addict. If I had gone too long without a cookie I started twitching and my skin started to itch. Cookies dipped in chocolate, then rolled in sprinkles and crushed up Andes Mints? I mean come on! After a while I didn't even taste them. I just wanted to inject them into my blood stream so I could pass out on the floor in a cookie coma.
I never have to worry about a problem like this at home, because I will never walk into a store and buy 400 cookies. I will never walk past a truckload of cookies sitting on my dining room table. I don't have a dining room table, or a dining room... I don't even have a table. But if YOU have a table full of cookies, yea I'm going to eat them.
My mother bought me some pants for Christmas, that when I tried them on Christmas morning, fit perfectly. When I tried them on again 3 days (and innumerable cookies) later, I fully expected to need one of those button extenders so that my pants would close. Amazingly they fit.
In order to battle the fear of my impending obesity I went for a jog. It was like trying to drive a car with a gas tank full of Pepsi. My system was so full of cookies I was downright lethargic. I felt like I had a wagon full of fat 12 year-olds strapped to my waist.
The holidays are almost over now, and I refused to take any cookies home with me back to New York. I have no need for them. I am not making any New Year's resolutions about cookies or fitness or anything. But I am making a goal to not do so much binging when it comes to cookies.
That is of course until I go and visit my parents in April, because that's when we make Easter cookies, and then I'll really do some damage. It's round 3 in Cookies versus Metabolism. It's going to be epic.
Big Orange Bastard
I am going to rob the Home Depot.
I mean, technically I've already stolen from there once, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to do it again. And there is nothing you can do to stop me. It's not my fault, it is the fault of the depot. Here is why.
First of all, I hate the size of that place. It's not a store it's a zip code. It's too damn big. I can't walk from one end to the other without having to stop for a Gatorade and a change of socks. I've been to countries with smaller square footage than that. Every Home Depot should come with it's own public transportation system.
Secondly, I do not understand the pricing structure for the Home Depot. My only option is to buy things in massive bulk. They have put all other hardware stores out of business. Stores that sell things in lesser quantity. I went in to buy 2 nails not long ago. Two nails! Granted its probably my own fault for wanting to do such a ridiculous thing. But Home Depot does not sell nails in packages of 2. I suppose its like going to Costco and asking for 5 cheerios.
I tried to find the nail aisle (which, consequently isn't called the nail aisle. Nails are in the aisle called "Hardware." This is the Home frigging Depot. Isn't every piece of shit in this hell hole, hardware?)
By the time I finally found the hardware aisle I spent another 10 minutes staring at an entire rack, 6 levels high full of 2 pound boxes of nails. I had no idea what to look for. Technically I was looking for nails so that I could hang my harpoon on the wall. But there were no boxes that said "Harpoon Nails" on them. How do you even inquire about that without seeming like a nutbag nautical weapon collector?
In the "hardware aisle" I evaluated a dozen different nails before I noticed there was a kind of overspill area at the edge of the rack where loose nails hung out. To me this was like being in a Dunkin Donuts at 4 in the morning. Those donuts are all just gonna get chucked anyway, might as well give them to me for free. These nails didn't belong in a box, they were obviously homeless. So I adopted 2 of them and gave them a new life in my wall.
Most of all though, my biggest complaint with the Home Depot is the fact that there is nobody there to help you. I could be running through the aisles engulfed in flames while screaming that a dragon emperor had burnt my village and still, the megadouche in light bulbs would keep his back turned to me and tell me that Dragon Emperors weren't his department.
How many people work at the Home Depot? 5? Maybe 6? It must be somewhere around there, because every time I'm in there, I see one guy at the entrance, one guy at the exit, 2 registers out of 19 open, and 1 confused looking associate walking the aisles telling people he doesn't know the answer to their questions.
I'm in Plumbing trying to find a new drain for my sink. I am trying to get an answer and an associate says "I don't know, I work in cabinets" Well get the hell back to cabinets then because some other poor sap is probably walking around trying to get help from some other associate who can't help him because he works in garden tools, or catamarans, or whatever the hell other aisles they have.
Cabinet man then turns and literally yells, "DAMIEN, YO DAMIEN WHERE ARE YOU?"
I can tell already this is going to be an awesome experience.
Damien comes out of the ether and approaches. He is an older, slightly frazzled Jamaican man who, upon further interaction, seems like he might have spent the first half of his life handling... and maybe even eating out of, lead pipes.
When he walked up to me 3 different customers just started talking to him. He was facing me, as though we were going to have a normal human conversation, but then these cannibals started jumping in, yelling questions like he was Peter Pan and we were his lost boys. Tell us Peter Pan, where is your plaster of paris? Tell us peter pan, where are your filangees?
When it was finally my turn with Damien (not really I just started talking hoping he was paying attention) he pointed to a shelf near my Dad (who god bless him had accompanied me on this trip to Gomorrah) and said, "It's over by dat man." When Damien and I got over to dat man he started rifling through boxes that looked like they had been torn open on some sort of Plumber's Christmas .
There was no order. There was ripped packaging, torn bags, and random pipes hither and tither. Nothing made any kind of sense. I told Damien that I knew the part I was looking for was in the store because I had been on the website and it said online that the part was available in store.
Damien responds by asking me for the part number. I don't have the part number because I don't regularly buy plumbing supplies and I am clueless. So Damien says;
"I don't know man, you got to go on de line. You go on the de line and get de part number and then you bring dat in." Silly me, I thought that if I had seen the simple sink drain on de line, I could just walk in and find it. Little did I know I would be in the middle of a massive sink and pipe orgy of stupidity.
When I finally got and paid for my part I had to hand my receipt to the disinterested looking man in the "Loss Prevention Services" jacket at the exit. He looks briefly at my receipt before running his highlighter over it and sending me on my way. He didn't pat me down, or check the items in my bag.
I totally didn't need to pay for my stuff.
But if in the future, I need to buy 3 screws, or 1 washer, I will just shove them in my pockets and walk out. I will certainly not be paying for it. Unless of course I can find it on de line. In that case, I think I will have to pay.
The Follicle Chronicles
I have never gotten more than one good haircut in a row. The entire haircutting scenario sets you up to fail. This traces all the way back to when I first starting getting haircuts as a child.
I remember my mom taking me to the barber. He was an older Greek man, maybe Italian, who worked at one of those barbershops with the spinning red and blue pole outside. He would talk in his thick accent saying things I didn't understand. He also helped me lose a tooth.
I showed him one I had hanging by a thread , and he quickly yanked it out of my face. I am pretty sure today this would be an offense punishable by law, or at least a damaging statement from the American Dental Association, but back then it was cute I suppose.
As my barber and I got older I learned that while he was lovable and endearing, his haircuts were less than symmetrical. And symmetricality, at least for me, is an important quality when it comes to the shape of my head. That is was why I stopped going to my beloved Greektalian barber.
When I went out to Arizona for college many a haircut took place at Supercuts when I was feeling cheap... which was pretty much all the time. There I would sit in the waiting area looking through old issues of Cosmo Girl for inspiration, finding none. Really Supercuts? What am I supposed to do, go up to my stylist and say, "Hey, can you make me look like this picture of Mandy Moore?"
The only saving grace was that I kept my hair short enough that if I had a bad haircut I didn't have it for long before I got another.
Sometimes when I was feeling trendy, I would go to one of the more zestily named places like "Grooming Humans" or "Grooming Humans II." More often than not, the only thing that would determine whether or not I went back to a stylist was how attractive she was. I found this great woman who was adorable. I have no idea if she did a good job or not because I was too busy trying to make her like me.
I am not very good at meeting girls.
Another challenge I face is the woman who does the shampooing. (How this became a strictly female profession, I will never know) This woman is always 1 of 2 kinds of people.
She is either some sort of Ex Bavarian Torture Frau who had been laid off and turned to hair washing as a back up. This woman inevitably alternates between scalding and freezing my scalp with extreme water temperatures and then scrubbing my head so hard that I often wonder if there will be any hair left to wash.
The other type of hair washer is the woman whose hands are magical. After a 2 minute shampoo and conditioning I am often rendered speechless and asleep with a parade of drool running down my face.
I always close my eyes during shampooing. I do this because I find it awkward to be staring upside down at a strange woman massaging my head. The massaging is so relaxing that I often open my eyes feeling like i had just finished a Nyquil-tini and all I can say is something like. "ohshlumpsfea" while squinting like I just came out of cataract surgery.
Then I go to to the actual stylists chair where she says, "What are we doing today?"
What are we doing today? We're cutting my hair! What do you mean what are we doing today? I don't know what to tell you, your the one who spent months learning how to use a scissor. If I knew what we were doing today I would have done it myself in the bathroom. Lord knows I tried (more on that later).
Here's what you're gonna do today.
1. Cut my hair.
2. Don't stab me
3. Don't make me look like Friar Tuck.
Deal?
I mean seriously that's about all I really desire. And then afterward they say, "What do you think?"
I have no idea what I think. I think I have less hair than when you started. I always think it looks good. And then I wake up the next morning and realize my head looks like a toilet brush. I just assume the haircut is good and tell them so. And then, pending they haven't stabbed me, I tip them nicely.
I feel you shouldn't have to tip on a haircut until 3 days later when you have had time to sleep on it (literally) and can see what you truly think. I am so rushed and confused after a haircut. What am I supposed to say to this woman?
You ruined it! You ruined me! The woman has a BOX of sharp scissors and razor blades on her shelf. I'm no fool.
No, for better or worse I just lie and hope for the best. And unless we change the payment scenario for hair stylists, I suggest you do too.
I have been keeping my hair a bit longer these days (women seem to prefer it) and when it grows for a while without being cut it takes on a shape that can only be described as shrubesque. So I try to go to nicer places to ensure a shrub-free-me.
But I got a bad expensive haircut this spring. I tried to rectify this by getting a bad cheap haircut 2 days later. I tried to rectify THIS by cutting off chunks of my own hair in my bathroom with a Leatherman pocket knife. I got this idea because the expensive place cuts my hair with a razor blade. So I figured razor blade, pocket knife, whats the big difference? Turns out the difference is HUGE.
The whole fiasco was exacerbated by the fact that when I finally went for another haircut 2 months later, the stylist was baffled at the condition of my head. She seemed to believe I had let some blind thumbless toddler cut my hair.
I didn't contradict her. It was either that or tell her I was kidnapped by a band of hook-handed beauty school pirates.
I read that Cary Grant and George Clooney cut their own hair. I was hoping this was a hidden talent I possessed. As it turns out the only I can do well with a pocket knife is accidentally stab myself.
Multiple times.
So I just got my haircut this weekend. Does it look good? I have absolutely no idea. I think there's a good chance people at work will stop referring to me as "foofy" but I think its still too early to come to a conclusion.
Otherwise its back to Cosmo girl for inspiration.
I hear Mandy Moore's hair is looking great these days.
For some weekly nonsense, send an email to boehmcke@gmail.com.
Dr. Mother Nature
I got sick this summer. This is something I do on a semi-regular basis. I'm kind of a collector of diseases. I won't list them for you here, but it is safe to say I pretty much have had most of the terrible/awful/disgusting/embarrassing diseases. I've warded off the really bad ones as of late, but this year I got this nasty head cold that wouldn't leave.
If your anything like me (and god help you if you are) you probably wait too long to go to the doctor. Nobody wants to go to the doctor on the first day they are feeling sick only to have the doctor make fun of you for being a hypochondriac. But on the same token I tend to wait until the disease has almost completed its course and prescription drugs are pretty much not needed.
This happened with my head cold. It was a head cold, that became a neck cold, and then a chest cold. I finally went to the doctor and he asked a couple of questions. (What color is your phlegm? I don't know doc, Magenta?) Then he prescribed me the beloved Z-Pac. This is the equivalent of the baby Jesus of the antibiotic world. It is the savior of all.
Except for the fact that Z-Pac is kind of like carpet bombing your system. It's like if you are trying to find an escaped felon in Disney World, but instead of just targeting him, you blow up the whole theme park.
In this scenario the felon is the disease, and my body is Disney World. Don't ask me why, it just is damn it.
Anyway, doc gives me Z-Pac, and the cold goes away. Not really totally but most of the way leaving me with a little cough that lingers.
A couple months pass before the same cold comes back. This time the doc doesn't even ask any questions before giving me a Z-Pac prescription again. He literally asked me no questions. It made me kind of nervous. I mean I could have been some kind of antibiotic junkee looking for my fix of germ killing drugs. Maybe that's the kind of sick thing that gave me the thrills. I don't know.
But doc gives it to me again. I blow up Disney again. The disease goes away again. But not totally, it came back last week. By this time I had had it with the "doctor" as his diplomas refer to him. So I said screw it. I'm going native.
I don't really know what that means but I figured it meant natural. I thought I would try out mother natures cures at the Natural Store. I used to think that Natural Cure stores are for stinky hippies and people without health insurance. People who can't afford to pay 185 dollars to have a doctor write them a prescription for a 10 dollar medication that makes zero dollars of difference.
Anyway I go in, and I'm just as baffled as being in the regular pharmacy. So I go up to the "pharmacist" (as his name tag calls him, where did this Natural pharmacist go to school, The Academy of Leaves and Moss?) and I tell him I have magenta phlegm and ask for a recommendation. He hands me a bottle that looks like a speakeasy flask full of something with elderberry (older wiser berries?) and some other crap in it.
I tell him my friend (who is not a "pharmacist") recommended Osha root. I don't know what that is but she said it would clear me out. He thinks this is a good idea. I'm not sure why he didn't recommend it right of the bat but hey, as long as I get healthy.
So I buy the berry juice and the Osha root from some hippy looking woman who walks like she'd been riding a horse for 8 days straight.
I take them home and give them a shot. The berry juice is surprisingly sweet, and I find myself taking more than just a teaspoon. I take a swig from the bottle. Kind of like when I used to eat 3 or 4 Flintstones vitamins at one time. If I was only supposed to eat 1 you shouldn't have made them so damn tasty Flintstones folk!
The berry juice needs to be kept in the fridge after opening. So twice a day I'm sneaking off to the office fridge to take swigs of what looks like moonshine. I even felt like I was doing something wrong.
The Osha root on the other hand... is awful. It smells like bad scotch. I dilute a spoonful in a glass of water and take a sip. It tastes like old dirty socks boiled in ass. It defies foul. But because I want to get better, I take more than the recommended dosage.
Each time I take it I use less and less water until I am just pouring it directly into the back of my throat with an eyedropper. I try to follow it with the elderberry juice but the only appropriate chaser would be a box of jelly donuts. After I swallow it, I cough like a cat trying to cough up... another cat.
It is now a couple of days after I finished consuming my plant and berry medicine. Do I feel better? Yes. Do I still have a cough? Yes. Am I able to see any discernible difference between drinking boiled sock water and antibiotics? No.
So what the hell did I figure out?
Well, I figured that that Osha root is probably an awful drink mixer, while elderberry juice would taste wonderful if mixed with Vodka. And as for what I'll do the next time I get sick? Considering it will probably be in a couple of weeks, I'll have to figure out something soon.
I'm thinking a combination of Oreos, Nutella, and Milk. It may not seem effective to you Medical Pharmacists, or you Natural Pharmacists. But I am a cookie Pharmacist, and if I'm just going to get better anyway, I might as well enjoy the process.
For a weekly giggle send an email to Boehmcke@gmail.com
Midnight Madness
Black Friday has always been, in my family, a chance to make fun of people who are so obsessed with finding a deal, that the laws of rational behavior no longer apply to them. After eating enough turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cornbread, apple pie, ice cream, and cookies, to fill up a small barn, I usually like to lie down on the couch and sleep until Christmas when I will wake up and promptly do it again.
But some people in America, lets say a couple million, find it necessary to wake up at the very butt crack of dawn, stand on line in freezing cold weather, so they can get 92% off a cashmere hat and scarf set. I even made fun of my dad when he went to Sports Authority 2 thanksgivings ago to purchase a $99 set of golf clubs of which the 6 iron snapped in half like a pretzel rod the second time I used it.
Sure I love a bargain; I would sleep in the changing room of the Banana Republic outlet if I could. But I have my limits. I won’t battle screaming hordes, I will not rise before the sun, and I will not wait on outrageous lines.
So I was more than a little confused when I found myself standing next to my sister at 11:57 pm Thanksgiving night waiting for the J.Crew outlet to open. How had I gone from distributor of sarcastic remarks and condescension, to active nutcase and midnight shopper? What the hell happened?
I lost my damn mind is what happened.
The clever email advertising got me hook line and sinker. The idea of an extra 50 percent off made me giddy. I literally had to have my sister tell me what I didn’t need from the items I was holding when we got to checkout. I get so greedy at these sales.
J. Crew also had a woman whose sole job was to be the greeter. I can’t think of a single human being (aside from maybe a hooker or a crack dealer) who would be happy to see a line of people trying to get into their store at 1 a.m. It takes a special kind of person to be the greeter. If they had made me the greeter, every person that walked in the door would have received this tasty zinger;
“Go home moron face!”
Perhaps greeting is not for me.
While waiting on the epic line I started doing a little dance to the music to keep myself from falling asleep standing up. My sister looked at me and said, “Don’t dance you look silly.”
Really? I am standing in J.Crew on a 60 person line at one o’clock in the morning holding a hundred dollars of merchandise for myself… what dignity am I clinging to at this point?
The woman behind me started laughing. She too saw the ridiculousness of the situation.
She mentions she is having so much trouble finding something for her husband. I looked down at my arms, loaded up with over 100 dollars of merchandise… for myself, and realized just how selfish I was. Not only was I ridiculous, now I had guilt to deal with as well.
I was bargain hunting for myself, in the middle of nowhere South Carolina, with a bunch of school children from Savannah who had showed up 6 hours early to wait for the Abercrombie Store and Hollister stores to open.
I was standing behind someone who said that it wasn’t that bad that they had to wait 3 hours for stores to open… so they could buy underwear and t-shirts. I know those stores are absurdly overpriced but are their underwear and t-shirts really that worth it?
I felt far superior to this simpleton. But, and this might be revealing a bit too much about myself, I have absolutely no will power and I am easily swayed by clever advertising.
Percentage off signs are really what do it for me.
Anything less than 20 percent doesn’t even warrant an eyebrow raise. If it’s 30 percent off, hey I might swing by at lunch time. If I see 40 percent off, I will definitely make some extra efforts to get there. And what I found out this weekend was, 50 percent off, I will leave the comfort of my couch, to drive 15 minutes, to stand with a bunch of nutcases up from Savannah so that I can buy a striped vest and some argyle socks.
Really Rich Boehmcke? This is the kind of man you’ve become?
I think what I found most interesting were the people waiting on a 40 person line, holding 1 item. And not even a big item like a cashmere coat or a new suit. No, they were holding like… a glove… or a sock. Granted there were some people on line who looked like they were trying to clothe their city, but most people only had several items.
In Banana Republic as soon as we walked in I just got on line. I didn’t have anything in my hands so I picked up a tiny purple woman’s sweater. I didn’t want somebody to ambush me and say something like, “HEY ARE YOU JUST A PLACE HOLDER?” I don’t really know if that is illegal, but when it comes to the type of people that wake up at midnight to buy socks, I really wasn’t willing to take any chances.
By the time we left at 2:30 a.m. the parking lot had emptied slightly… but not much, there was still a line to get into Coach, and now there were flashing lights from police cars outside Nike, as something had apparently gone horribly wrong at their sale.
Was the entire scenario ridiculous? Yes. Do I regret going? Absolutely not. Do I now realize that I have no right to make fun of anybody ever again? Well…
You betcha!
Riding With the Crazies
The concept of public transportation is pretty good in theory. Like the carpool, it operates on the premise that if everyone is going in the same direction it is more convenient if we go there together. What it doesn’t take into account is every single person’s bizarre quirks and weirdnesses that combine to make traveling by public transportation a symphony of strange.
With cuts in the transportation budget of New York City on the horizon the frequency of service is sure to decrease, making every train even more jam packed with maniacs. This will only serve to drastically increase the volume of this symphony, and create new instruments to drive everyone out of their mind.
Millions of people ride the trains, commuting from one corner of the city and back again. Sometimes they spend 10 minutes, sometimes over an hour. And it is those people with the longest commute times who feel the need to do what I call “private time activities” while on the subway. They are also the ones most likely to completely lose their shit for no reason. These are the people who sit next to me.
Case and point, not too long ago I was riding the subway into the city on a weekend, so the train was relatively empty.
Hooray.
I found a seat and opened my magazine for a pretty relaxing ride. That was until I heard the unmistakable “click….click…..click” of a nail clipper.
I turned to my left to see a gentleman, no that’s not right, ogre-man clipping his nails. The sound alone sends such a violent chill down my spine that I can feel my insides twitch. There are few things that skeeve me more than watching someone remove parts of their body they deem to be no longer necessary, and then spread them amongst the ground like a flower girl at the wedding of gross and disgusting.
Would you ever just take out a scissor and starting cutting your own hair on the train? No of course not.
And nails being clipped don’t just fall to the ground, they fly off the clipper like rocketships leaving planet yuck. The man clipping his nails was considerably larger than me so I didn’t say anything, and I probably wouldn’t say anything if the person was smaller than me either. If you’re crazy enough to think that clipping your nails on a subway car is ok, god knows what else you’re capable of.
Some people discreetly bring their crazy onto the train. They are just feeling it that day. Maybe they found a cucaracha in their cheerios or something but they just decided before they left the house, “I’m going to grab a little extra insanity from my stash and throw it around like it’s a ticker tape parade.” Once again, these are the people who sit next to me.
They are just waiting to be tapped or bumped into. They have their nonsense at the ready, hidden deep within their pockets. Kind of like a jack-in-the-box. They wait with coiled spring for somebody to turn their handle just far enough so they can explode.
Case and point, recently on the subway a tiny Hispanic woman was almost bumped by a larger Greek man, so she opened her bag of crazy.
“Excuse me. Excuse me!”
“What?”
“You almost hit me. You almost bumped into me.”
“You bumped into me!”
This went back and forth escalating more and more and culminating with the Hispanic woman saying;
“Just remember, joo have a mother and joo have a sister. God bless joo.”
I’m not really sure what having a mother and a sister has to do with anything. But ya know what crazy lady? If there are 200 people in 9 square feet of space, somebody might hit your bag. I constantly have to stand with my pelvis inches from people’s faces, they don’t enjoy it, and frankly neither do I. But I don’t go bananas.
And I’m working on a theory here, but the amount of bags you carry with you is directly proportional to how completely out of your mind you are.
1 Bag = Normal
2 Bags = Slightly off
3 Bags = Audibly and visibly crazy
People with one bag tend to blend in pretty well. People with multiple bags most likely speak in tongues and have suitcases full of dead squirrels.
There are three times as many people on the train as there are seats. Odds are you will usually be standing because 4 million people ride the subway every day and they are ALL on every train. Nobody knows who is getting off at what stop so everyone has a moment of anxiety when the train pulls up to a station and a sitting person stands up.
Then the subway becomes kind of like musical chairs. Except there are no kids, there’s no reward, and everyone hates each other.
In fact it’s more like musical chairs meets thunderdome. And I tell you, it is funny when 7 year olds lunge for a chair and miss, it is down right hilarious when a grown up does the same thing. And if you do manage to get a seat you are probably sitting between a woman who looks like she could use a shave and another who is putting on blush like she’s dusting her face for finger prints.
Now that winter is upon us, people are getting on the train fully clad in every wool item they own. So they will get hot, which will lead to cranky, which will be immediately followed by crazy.
It’s really only a matter of time. Something will happen soon, I can feel it. Until then, God Bless Joo.
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Shopping Does This To Me
The Holidays are fast upon us which means soon, we will all be spending way more time in malls and major department stores than we prefer. There will be consumers everywhere. Oversized bags, strollers, and bell ringers will impede our movement throughout the malls of America. But it isn’t the other shoppers in the store that will cause the most stress.
There is a disease that affects millions of shoppers every year, and there is no cure. It is both annoying and frustrating. Have I mentioned there is no cure?
I’m talking about Commercial Retail Anxious Paranoia. People across the country and the world suffer from Commercial Retail Anxious Paranoia, or CRAP. Symptoms of CRAP include
-Frequently purchasing items you don’t need
-Yelling at store clerks
-Wandering aimlessly through the women’s intimates department looking for power tools
I really enjoy shopping. I don’t always have the money for it but I like looking at stuff I might one day own. A nice suit, a sweet laptop, or even a fancy watch are some things that might catch my eye. But when I walk into a store I am so fearful of being accosted by a sales rep or other employee that I go into CRAP Red Alert.
I know most sales people work on commission and they are hungry for that percentage. So when I walk in it is quite an uncomfortable scenario.
Employee: Hi welcome to…
Me: JUST LOOKING THANK YOU!
And I run to the back of the store and hide in a sale rack.
Somewhere along the line I got it in my head that every salesperson in every store is a used car sleeze trying to sell me a 1976 Jalopy. It’s not like I have to leave there with a car, or they are going to try and rip me off on price. But I get so stressed about it that I freak the hell out.
I don’t want to hear what they have to say. I don’t want to know about the sales or special items. And I certainly don’t want to know their name. I am terrified that I am going to be duped, or confused. I struggle to balance my desire to be nice to the clerk, with my desire to get something I actually want. And the internal battle ends up making me look like a raving lunatic. CRAP does that to you.
On the off chance that there is something in the store I am going to purchase, when I get to the register and they ask me if anybody helped me I usually point to the person who tried to say hello to me because I feel so bad.
I think I feel pressured by the pushy sales people. I remember trying on these jeans once at some mall store. I told the woman my size and she brought me some different kinds. “This pair is slim fitting but their great.” Ok jean lady. Do you normally wear boys’ pants? We’ll see if their great.
So cut to the dressing room and she knocks on the door while I’m shoving my legs into these pant legs like a fat kid trying to get into a snowsuit. “How are you doing in there?” I look at the pair of pants that have become immobilized halfway up my thighs, “I can’t get my legs into them.”
Pause.
“Well that’s normal their supposed fit tight.”
If I had been able to move my legs I would have run out of the dressing room and drop kicked her in the face.
I don’t even like going shopping with my friends. I like to go shopping by myself. I can’t be talked into anything that way. This is what is known as Amicable CRAP. Even though your friends mean well, they can cause CRAP to come out quite quickly. Shopping alone is easier. If I don’t love something, I put it back; if I can’t put it down I buy it. And I don’t have to worry about somebody else hating the thing I love, because I’m the only one there. I always agree with myself.
Even when I ask for feedback I don’t trust it.
There is one store that I go into, staffed by a lot of women in black clothes, where everything I try on looks good to them. I can’t not look good in something.
One woman even said to me, “Oh you’re the perfect size, you could be a model… ya know, for fit.”
Thank you for pointing out that I could not be a model on looks alone, because I HADN’T realized that already.
But everything I try on looks great. I could be wearing a sundress made of pink marshmallow peeps and they would say, “Oh yea absolutely, its so you.”
Shut up lady, you’re giving me CRAP.
CRAP does not only apply to the retail industry. Service industry folk are responsible. Like my nice Asian cleaners for example.
I recently brought 4 pairs of pants to my dry cleaner to have them hemmed. They were about 2 inches too long. A week, and 36 dollars later, they are all an inch too short. How did this happen?
Well to be perfectly honest my dry cleaner doesn’t speak the best English. And I was duped into thinking he was a skilled tailor by the sign in the window that said “Tailor.” Any other sign I would have doubted. If the sign had said “Plumber” or “Accountant” I might have been skeptical. But somehow in my head, since this man washed pants, he must also be able to sew them.
When was the last time you asked the guy at the car wash who wipes off your vehicle to take a look under the hood?
Everything looked normal when my “tailor” pinned the pants for the fitting, and then when I came back to try them on, he kept saying “It’s good, it’s good.” I didn’t really think so because it felt a little short, plus I’m standing in front of a shit mirror in a dry cleaner and I know he’s kind of rushed because there are other customers. So I say yes, pay and leave.
I didn’t realize it at the time but I was having a CRAP attack.
It’s not until I start wearing these pants to work that I notice I can feel the refreshing breeze on my ankles. A wonderful feeling if you are at a beach, or in a meadow, not when you are wearing a suit in an office.
My point is, as you rush out in droves to the retailers that haven’t yet gone out of business, and you realize the salespeople on the floor are even hungrier to make a sale; you are likely to have CRAP attack. But don’t worry. CRAP can be avoided. Just stay home and do all your shopping in your pajamas while surfing the internet. You don’t even need to shower to do this, and most importantly, you will never have CRAP again.
What the Hell Are You Saying?
No matter how much older I get, there are certain scenarios that instantly transport me back to being in school. Something about a circumstance or situation brings me back to feeling baffled in class. Even though I am not that far removed from those days, the feeling of being unprepared, of having not done my homework is something that seemed like a distant memory. At least, until that feeling popped up again unexpected.
I don’t anticipate getting much smarter in the next 60 years, I have to admit to myself that not only will I not increase my mental capabilities, but most likely, I will at best remain stagnant. And I will be reminded of those times in school when I had no idea what was going on.
I was a good citizen this week and voted. I did a little research to see what amendments or proposals I would be voting on before I got to the booth. I did this so I would not accidentally pass a law legalizing the use of arsenic in creamed corn or ban the use of fluoride in water.
I was enlightened to see that there were only 2, one of which was pretty straight forward. The other one read as follows:
The proposed amendment would eliminate the requirement that veterans who were disabled in the actual performance of duty in any war be receiving disability payments from the United State Veterans Administration in order to qualify for additional points on a civil service examination for appointment or promotion. Under the proposed amendment, the disability must only be certified to exist by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. The proposed amendment would also update the reference to the "United States Veterans Administration" to instead refer to the "United States Department of Veterans Affairs" to reflect current federal government structure. Shall the proposed amendment be approved?
What?
My first instinct was to turn to the person in the desk next to me and see what they were writing on their essay.
Then I realized this wasn’t a social studies test, I’m not in high school, and I’m not 16. I’m 20freaking5. I was just sitting at my computer at work trying to figure out what the hell that amendment said. I had to read it twice before I realized I was never going to figure out what it meant on my own.
I had to go to some other website to translate what this amendment said because apparently I only speak English, I don’t comprehend it.
And what the amendment basically said was, “If you got a bullet hole in you, you don’t need to be getting money from the government in order to get a better chance at a government job.”
Way easier that way isn’t it?
No wonder ridiculous laws get passed. People are tricked into thinking that something is a good idea, or a bad idea for that manner. And just think, we vote to elect people into office, to draft these amendments that we then have to vote on but can’t comprehend because the people we elected weren’t bright enough to understand how simple we are.
Easy right?
I once had a teacher in high school who would get frustrated when the classroom got noisy and he would shout “WHY AM I NOT THE ONLY ONE TALKING?”
What?
I had to sit there and repeat the sentence over in over in my head while drawing a tree diagram on my notebook to try and understand it.
Why am I the only one talking? Why am I not the only one talking? How about, why are you talking? Or even better, Shut up! Sentences should not be that confusing. No wonder the class kept talking; we had no idea what the hell teacher was saying.
At the risk of embarrassing myself (which I risk doing every time I leave my apartment) I would like to relate another story.
I recently took a class over 2 weekends that prepares you to sit on the board of non-profits. It was a fascinating class and I learned a lot, but unfortunately we had homework.
One of the items for homework was to evaluate the budget of a fictional non-profit. The sample budgets were shown over the course of 6 different pages. It was confusing at best. There were numbers everywhere that I couldn’t process. I started to get a headache. I started feeling insecure and inadequate. In fact it made me realize I wanted to change my major from Business to something else.
And then I realized I wasn’t in college, I had changed my major, and I already got a C in accounting.
I can so vividly remember freshman year accounting when I was the dumbest kid in my group (possibly the class) and I volunteered to type up our paper so I could at least say I contributed something.
“Shouldn’t we capitalize the R in the word Revenue? That’s what I thought too.”
In fact when I got to my nonprofit class, I was having heart palpitations thinking the teacher might call on me to explain the budgets. At which point I probably would have had to pretend I had a really important phone call or just fake a heart attack.
I don’t think that I will ever understand everything, I am not sure that I will ever stop having those moments of feeling like a confused kid in school again. I’m still trying to adjust to being a confused adult. Perhaps it was the feelings of inadequacy, the constant inability to reach my potential, or always sounding like an idiot when I talk to girls. And that was just last week.
Maybe those feelings never go away.
Either way, I thank you for being one of the people who didn’t forget to choose to not forego reading my blog.
I Was a Teenage Halloweeny
I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I frigging hate Halloween. I didn’t always hate Halloween. During my formative years as a pumpkin, bunch of grapes, hunch back of Notre Dame, and mummy, I truly enjoyed the day. The getting ready, the traipsing through the leaves in search of treats. And of course getting home to find the elusive Vanilla tootsie roll in the bottom of my candy bag.
But somewhere around high school I started to hate Halloween. It was a gradual process but the culmination might have something to do with the fact that I was egged walking home from school in 8th grade.
I remember the day vividly. I had already hit puberty (hooray) and was starting to feel older. Enjoying school and the teenager I was becoming, I was finally in control of my future. I was walking home wearing my Vancouver Grizzlies jacket and carrying my trumpet… ya know, the apex of cool.
So there I am, jauntily swinging my trumpet with a song in my head when several dooshy kids younger than me run up and throw eggs at me. One, two, three? Who knows how many chicken babies were wasted in such senseless violence?
They didn’t punch me, or steal my trumpet, or do anything else. They just stood there laughing at me. And I wasn’t really a tough kid…I’m still not. To this day the only man I’ve ever punched was a snowman. So when these kids threw eggs at me, I didn’t really have much retaliation. Seeing as I don’t regularly carry grocery items of my own with me, I couldn’t really do much at all.
However I was not alone. No sir. Thank god that old woman was walking behind me. The egging happened and I stood there in disbelief like I had just been slimed on Double Dare… even though I had NOT agreed to take the physical challenge. And the old lady behind me says something to the effect of, “Hey, that wasn’t nice, apologize!” Which I’m sure they probably did. Thank you old lady, we sure showed them.
If my memory serves me correctly, for the next 4 years I came right home from school and went immediately to bed. I didn’t want to have anything to do with Halloween. Just give me some candy corn and get out of my face.
My point is there was a distinct moment in my life when Halloween went from being cute fun to absolute nonsense and insanity. By time I got to college, with my Halloween chip firmly implanted on my shoulder the day had become mostly about getting drunk at a place where you could see girls dressed in slutty costumes. Naughty Cop? Excellent. Naughty Nurse? A classic. Naughty Nun? Quite the juxtaposition!
Other spectators who criticized were mostly women who exclaimed, “It’s just an excuse for girls to be slutty!” Good observation, I am glad we are both fans.
Granted at this point I had become predisposed to hate Halloween but even my attempts to love it had been met with defeat. Around senior year when I was coerced into putting together a last minute costume for a party, it was a let down. My friend and I spent a considerable amount of time setting my clothes on fire in the driveway so that I could be “Struck by Lightening.” And after some clever hairstyling and makeup I was ready to embrace the night again.
But struck by lightening is no bunch of grapes, and nobody understood my costume. They just kept asking why I had soot on my face and smelled like smoke. I would tell them. They would grimace and just walk away.
Idiots.
I should have been Naughty Struck by Lightening.
I am older now. And the pressure to do something on Halloween is not necessarily as great. Sure there are parties and functions of a classier variety. But a large part of the population still spends the night dressing slutty and getting drunk. And my fear of being egged remains.
So I was excited to be part of a group costume. My sister had slotted me for a role in her group of “Three’s Company,” the hit television show that mixed 1 part mischief with 1 part social norms for a result that always equaled hilarity.
I dressed up as the Landlord, or Mr. Furley. A character portrayed to perfection by the comedic genius Mr. Don Knotts.
And on this most ridiculous night it felt kind of normal to walk around Manhattan with white hair, a neckerchief, the ugliest shirt on the planet and pants in colors that can only be described as Enchantment Under the Sea Dance blues and greens.
It really was just an excuse for me to act like an idiot and say inappropriate things.
I mean, that is what I do normally…except on Halloween I got to do it in a neckerchief.
And you know what? If you are with good people, and you all look like idiots, it can be fun. Having drinks with a shorty-shortted John Ritter and a side-pony tailed Susanne Summers is a damn good time. And mugging for the camera in your famous television advertisement group pose is always a hoot.
Plus it was fun to see people out and about making huge fools out of themselves. Like the trio of gentlemen who I first thought were dressed as “morons.” As it turns out, they were just from Staten Island.
But it was entertaining to see a Yankee Baseball Player, a gentleman who was (and I’m not joking here) “Hung Like a Horse” and some other tool in a tank top hit on women.
Maybe there is some fun left in this day after all. Perhaps I will try to enjoy Halloween again next year. Honestly the most fun part of the holiday is the innovation and social commentary in some costumes, and the complete lack of creativity and healthy dose of embarrassment in others.
And as for those who insist on a costume such as our friend of the equine variety, well… maybe some people do deserve to be egged.
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Please Do/Don't Look at Me
In college I majored in Human Communication. When I tell people this they usually respond by saying something outrageously hilarious like “Oh, as opposed to animal communication?” No you moron, as opposed to just studying language and words I learned how human beings throughout the course of history have interacted with each other across cultures and different mediums.
Woah, sometimes I lose my cool.
As a Human Communication graduate, I try my best to make my interactions with all people pleasant and enjoyable. However, the amount of people in the retail/food service world that refuse to make eye contact while talking to me is driving me a little bit crazy.
I was at a Subway “Restaurant” a couple of weeks ago and when I got up to the register man behind the counter took my sandwich to bag it and ring me up. He was about to tell me the price when his cell phone rang, so he ANSWERED it before telling me the price and completing the transaction all without looking at me. I was so confused I put the change in his tip jar.
Yea, I don’t know why I did that.
I actually can understand incompetent store help avoiding eye contact, but the detached robot-like answers I have started receiving are just weird.
New York City has a drug store called Duane Reade. There is one a block away from my job in Manhattan, and one a block away from my apartment in Queens. It was here that I was the recipient of bizarre communication.
I was at the Duane Reade near my apartment because I was out of hand soap and was having people over. Nothing says “I’m a gross human” like not having hand soap at your sink. You might as well put a sign on your door that says “I don’t believe in bathing and I eat trash.”
So I’m standing in the soap aisle contemplating the many varieties of soap. I am reading labels, opening bottles and examining the contents. I am quite aware at this point that I am rapidly losing masculinity points. I go to start sniffing the products to see which I like best when I notice a man next to me checking out the Axe Body Sprays. I know something is wrong with this man because… well… because he is checking out the Axe Body Sprays.
But he is not just reading the labels, he is spraying them… on himself.
I am so fascinated by this man that I have become completely oblivious to my sniffing and submerge my nose into a bottle of green tea and aloe scented hand soap. In my haste to classify Mr. Axe as the moron, I have quickly pulled ahead in the standings.
Standing there with soap all over my nose I quickly realize the 2 of us look like the guests of honor at the Drug Store Idiot Convention.
Eager to get out of this hell hole I wiped the soap off my nose, grabbed a bottle of foaming hand wash (masculinity falling faster now) and headed to the counter. As it was 7 pm on a Saturday night, it was pretty much just me and Lord of the Body Sprays in the store so I waltzed right up through those black poles that show you where you stand before you pay.
It was at this point that the woman behind the counter looked me straight in the eye and said, “May I help the next customer in line.”
I kind of squinted for a second before brushing off her strange way of addressing me and walked up to pay. Perhaps she liked formalities. As she handed me my change I almost said “The customer thanks you” but I thought the better of it.
I paid no mind my counter exchange until the following week.
I was at the Duane Reade in Manhattan buying candy. I work in an office and if you don’t have a regular supply of candy, people go completely bat shit crazy.
What is even worse than never having candy to begin with i if you have candy… and then you run out. People who normally take the candy will walk up, throw their meaty paw into your giant sparkly hat, or wherever you keep your candy and say something like, “Oh man, what happened to all the candy?”
To which I usually respond, “Have you checked your ass you Butterfinger-for-breakfast creep?”
No I don’t say that… but I want to.
I’m not sure if it bothers me more that people take candy and don’t replace it, or that people purposefully walk by known candy suppliers just to see if the stash is full. I want to put a live rat in that deep dark candy hat one day so I can see someone walk by, shove their hand in there and scream “EWW A RAT!”
“Oh I’m sorry I forgot to tell you, we switched from Hershey kisses to giant live rats. I hope you don’t mind. You do eat giant live rats right?”
ANYWAY I was in Duane Reade buying some candy (because they don’t sell rats). I grabbed a bag of York Peppermint Patty minis (half the size, just as good) and went to go pay for them. I walked into that little roped off area and prepared to approach the counter. I was the only one waiting, there was nobody behind me, and there were 3 Duane Reade associates behind the counter.
One of them, once again, looks directly at me and says in a voice that makes her sound like she’s working the checkout counter at Guantanamo Bay’s torture store, “May I help the next customer in line please.”
I stopped and had a momentary panic attack. Was I not really there? Had I ceased to exist? Had I turned invisible? Why wouldn’t she just say to me “Can I help you sir?"
Was she a robot? Animatronic? Blind? I didn’t know. I seriously had to make sure I was
A. Not a ghost
B. In fact, clearly visible
C. In the line for the counter
What happened? Is Duane Reade brainwashing its employees Clockwork Orange style? Its bad enough they ask me every single time if I have a club card. Don’t you think I would show it to you if I had one? Damn it I don’t want one. I just want you to treat me like a normal human being and look me in the eye like I actually exist.
Maybe I should have just majored in retail communication. Maybe I just take things to literally. Ah hell, I’m just cranky because our sparkly hat has no good candy in it right now.
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Rest-room for Improvement
There are few things on this planet that cause me as much stress as using a public restroom. They seem like simple enough establishments to operate. Use, flush, wash hands, throw out towel, exit. But this is not what happens. It appears (from my personal experience) that it goes something like this;
Use while dancing around
Don’t flush
Dump entire contents of soap dispenser on counter
Wash hands with no soap and splash water around sink area
Scatter crumpled paper towels on the floor around trash can
For some reason or another, public restrooms turn people into wild savages completely incompetent of behaving in a sanitary manner.
Our seemingly civilized country has restrooms that constantly leave me on the edge of a nervous breakdown. And while some restrooms have made tremendous advancements that really put them on the forefront of potty wizardry, I find myself struggling with the same issues no matter where I go.
Every restroom I have ever used has always had a very distinct smell. They either smell like they were just hosed down with bleach, or they smell like an elephant farm. There is no in between.
My first problem has to do with the toilet itself. They are often in poor condition, or have a wobbly seat, or are not clean. Sometimes they are all three. And those little slices of tissue paper that even MacGyver couldn’t figure out how to use do NOTHING to improve the situation. I usually go through about 5 before I get one to work that isn’t ripped or hasn’t sunk to the bottom of the toilet by the time I sit down.
But even if I can bring myself to sit on the porcelain throne, I am very insecure. Nobody looks cool sitting on a toilet. Nobody sits on the toilet with perfect posture and their legs crossed. Nobody leans back like their sitting on a Lay-Z-Bowl. No, everyone sits on the toilet the same way; hunched over, forearms on knees, in the ready position, with their face about 18 inches from the door.
My greatest fear, as I imagine most people’s is, is of somebody bursting into the stall. For whatever reason, people don’t precariously open stall doors, they swing them open as though they are going to yell “Surprise!”
Whenever people knock on a restroom door while I’m in there I get a shot of adrenaline and for some reason I resort to the third person, and in a panicked quasi-pubescent voice shout “SOMEONE’S IN HERE.”
Someone’s in here? What the hell is wrong with me? I guess I get paranoid that if I say “I’m in here” they may not know who I am. And the last thing I want to do is encourage more conversation at that point.
“You're in there in there? Well who are you?”
Yea, no thank you. I think from now on I will resort to Spanish and just scream “OCCUPADO!
In general I really prefer the handicapped stalls. I know its probably not the most ethically responsible thing to do but to be honest I just feel more comfortable. There is space, I can stretch my legs if I want to. Comparatively the other stalls seem just a little claustrophobic. Regular stalls are so tiny I feel like I’m crouched in a cannon waiting to be shot into space… with no pants. And that’s a bad feeling.
So if I can find a toilet that doesn’t look like its falling apart, bring myself to sit down on it, AND lock the door, I am about ready to relax. But some people insist on talking. Talking while standing next to somebody at a urinal is bad enough. I can barely concentrate on one task at a time. But once I am in the stall that is the fortress of solitude. That is quiet time, concentration time. Ladies, from what I understand talking to each other while in the stall is commonplace and accepted. That is fine, you may continue to do so as I will not (to the best of my knowledge) be using your restroom in the near future.
Most of the time while I am in the restroom all I am thinking about is how long it will be until I can get the hell out of there.
I’m not opposed to noise in the restroom. Actually I prefer it. The restroom is a place of noise, of bodily functions. We should feel free to be ourselves there. But perhaps that might be easier if we had some medium volume bossa nova music playing. Something that could act as kind of a distraction sound if you will.
I don’t like to touch anything in the restroom either. I push the door open with my shoulder and flush the toilet with my foot. If it were up to me the whole restroom experience would be very similar to a surgical operating room. I would back into the room where someone would put latex gloves on my hands and scrubs over me. I would do my business and then I would throw everything in the trash on my way out.
But until I can set that up I will be forced to do what I always do; Hold my breath, not touch anything, and be ready at a moment’s notice to scream OCCUPADO!!!
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