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Tomato, Tomato

2008-07-28T23:33:00.002-04:00

In Jordan an "Afro" (the hairstyle) is called a "Negro."

Religion is Gay

2008-07-25T23:19:00.003-04:00

I was just hit on by a catholic priest. I couldn't quite tell what the guy was saying during most of the conversation because he was so so drunk. But I did catch that he was a priest at the big church up the street from the restaurant.

Religion is an inevitable topic of discussion when you work with a bunch of Arabs. Multiple times, multiple different Arabs have asked me what religion I follow. To avoid getting into it, I just tell them I don't believe in anything. It happened again today. This guy today found it impossible to consider that when you're dead, you're dead, there's nothing after. He said that he KNEW there was something after. Fine, whatever you believe in.

Toward the end of my shift, he came up to me all excited, "Hey, we're talking about religion! Come join us!" Going against my better judgment, I followed him outside. I was introduced to the aforementioned priest. I knew the guy was gay because I see his fat ass walking his fat schnauzer up and down the street every day and it's pretty obvious that he is a homosexual, but to hear him speak with his lisp just verified my initial assumption. He also told me that I was handsome.

The same bullshit was exchanged, "No, I don't believe in an afterlife and I'm satisfied with that." So after some some drunken mumbling and stumbling, his gay friend came to take him to the bar. The priest patted me on the stomach (?!) and offered to buy me a drink. I told him I had to work.

Appetite for Destruction

2008-07-19T00:02:00.005-04:00

While Manhattan is filling up with yuppie scum at an exponential rate and just getting boringer and expensiver, Brooklyn is getting awesomer. You know all those old movies about NYC that make it look like a place full of diversity, crazy people and violence [excitement]? Well Manhattan isn't like at AT ALL anymore, it's safe, bland, and too rich to afford any culture.

Brooklyn on the other hand is holding it down! If anything, it's getting more crazy and more violent.

http://gothamist.com/2008/07/12/stabbings.php

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6270812

Say what you want about Williamsburg, but it's essentially the only part of New York where anything happens any more. Quoted below is a friend of mine's account of something he saw in the neighborhood.

"i saw a dead body tonight

a guy fell off the roof of a building across the way from my house"

"i had just finished my run

so i was walking

and i didn't see

but i heard what sounded like maybe a tv falling and shattering on the ground

then i look up at the roof and i here a girl go "oh my god"

so i keep walking

i go around the block

so i come back around because i see a cop car there

a guy is lying on the sidewalk"

"i had never seen that kind of stillness

there was a puddle of blood under his head

and his eyes were open

i just kind of can't believe the sound i heard must've been his bones shattering or something

it sounded almost like glass

i didn't know how to feel

i feel like death is getting closer to my house"

Excuse You

2008-07-17T15:35:00.007-04:00

So apparently burping and farting in front of Arabs is considered extremely rude.

Yeah, I know it's rude pretty much everywhere, but Jordanians will take extreme offense to it. Like, even when you're hanging out with your bros, having a beer, well, Muslims don't drink alcohol, so having a cola, or in my case a seltzer, the carbonation in which can make a person burp, is STILL considered rude.

I got a stern talking to after a belch that wasn't even that good. I was told that if you burp or fart at a table full of people in Jordan, they would all leave. Like, it's ok if a fart sneaks out and you couldn't stop it, but if you, like, lean over and really rip one, people won't be your friend any more. How ridiculous is that?

So, like every time I burp in front of these guys, drinking my seltzer, they go off muttering in Arabic.

That's right, I didn't stop burping OR farting. Just because they said it's considered rude in their country? Well you know what? You're in MY country, where dudes can burp and fart in the presence of other dudes. It's one of our many freedoms. We also don't stone people to death.

Non Sequitur

2008-07-16T15:55:00.004-04:00

The other night I was at work and something was burning in the kitchen.

"Ooh, that stinks," I said.

"You think that smells bad?," the Mexican chef asked me. "When I was in the army, I had to search for the victims of a helicopter crash in the jungle. When we found them, they had their eyeballs all back here [motions to the back of his head] and had been dead for 5-6 days. Now THAT smells bad!"

Home is Where the Blood and Teeth is

2008-07-13T23:12:00.007-04:00

Brooklyn, unlike Manhattan, is still real, at least for the time being. I was at a rooftop BBQ last night in The 'Burg, and one of the girls who lived there told me about a shooting that occurred the night before, right in front of the building. A 16 year old kid was shot in the face five times, blowing up his mouth all over the street, after saying some bullshit to some other kid. The paramedics left a big pile of blood and teeth and medical equipment like bloody rubber gloves on the street. It was left there ALL WEEKEND because of some stupid rule in NYC where the property owner is responsible for cleaning up such messes. Because the incident occurred in a parking lot belonging to the MTA, and they "had the weekend off" or some shit, nobody did anything about it.

And you know why else New York sucks? Because when a stranger runs up behind you as you go through the subway turnstile, doubling up, and you don't realize that he did that until you are all the way through, you BOTH get a $100 ticket.

My court date is in a month. I'm definitely going.

All I Ever Really Needed to Know About The Middle East, I Learned by Working at a Middle Eastern Restaurant, Chapter 2

2008-07-03T11:30:00.002-04:00

I was standing out front of the restaurant yesterday with one of my coworkers when a jogger ran by. He was wearing tiny, little short shorts and nothing else. I joked that someone should tell that guy to put some clothes on. My Jordanian coworker replied that if that guy were running around in his country, everybody would come out and throw rocks at him, "Boom, boom, boom, there would be blood all over the place! HA HA HA!"

All I Ever Really Needed to Know About The Middle East, I Learned by Working at a Middle Eastern Restaurant

2008-06-29T21:14:00.004-04:00

You know the argument about how America's drinking age being 21 leads to kids younger than that binge drinking, whereas if the law was more lax, kids wouldn't feel the need to break the rules and overdo it?

Well, the same applies to Arabs and sex. I work with multiple male virgins in their 20's and in some cases, 30's. Let that register...

Because Islam "encourages" monogamy to such a strict degree, it kind of makes the men who follow it a little crazy. Perhaps surprisingly, prostitution is a booming industry in the desert, as pious as they can be over there. The following is an account of what passes for a party in Jordan:

A bunch of dudes will get together, maybe 10 or 15 good friends. They'll hire a few hookers, like maybe 3. Then all 15 guys will fuck and fuck and fuck the same 3 hookers all at once, over and over again, taking turns, etc. as the case may be.

The End.

Peace in the Middle East

2008-06-21T00:31:00.004-04:00

I work at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Brooklyn. When the Arabs aren't having knife fights in front of the restaurant (totally serious), they're in the kitchen, fighting with the Mexicans.

One night, after having been out somewhere that day, the chef, Mexican, had forgotten to tuck away the little gold cross that he wears around his neck. One of the particularly crazy Arabs saw it and yanked it off of his neck, threw it on the floor and spat on it, saying something like "What the fuck is this?!"

Without hesitation, the Mexican chef headbutted the guy in the face, knocking out a front tooth. The guy started yelling and threatening. He was fired and was never seen again. Not too long after, the guy's cousin came around, confronting the chef about knocking out his cousin's tooth. When the Mexican admitted to it, the Arab shook his hand, saying "Thanks for doing that! That guy's crazy!"

On Top of Hamburger Hill

2008-05-07T12:31:00.003-04:00

I've finally found it.

Hamburger Hill.

It was something that I had heard about when I was a young kid. It seemed too crazy to really exist. But it does. It's in Cambodia, and I have a feeling there are many such places.

I had been offered a ride to the shooting range in Phnom Penh by many moto-taxi drivers. Even by the guy who drove me to The Killing Fields. As if, after looking at piles of skulls and pits where babies' bodies and bodies without heads had been found, I would want to go straight over to shoot a machine gun at stuff. A surprising (well, maybe not so surprising) amount of people actually do go to Cambodia to shoot guns.

I overheard a tourist talking with a local guy who had just taken him to the shooting range. He had shot a pistol and a Tommy Gun. I asked the Cambodian if he had ever heard of "Hamburger Hill" and described it as a place where you can pay to shoot live cows with a grenade launcher.

He said "Yes, you can do that here. For $250* you can shoot a cow. You can shoot all types of animals, pigs too. We take you up to the mountains and you shoot the animal with the gun that you choose. You buy the animal and bring it up there." Then he said something about gasoline and a bazooka that I didn't quite understand, but he made an explosion noise with his mouth "PCHOOOWW."

He got a lost look in his eyes as he stared off into the distance remembering a woman who had bought "a whole bunch of pigs..." then he made a bunch of shooting noises.

*Price negotiable, I guarantee it.

Clean as a Bean

2008-05-06T12:24:00.005-04:00

Even the Tide in China is Chinese. I bought this detergent when I needed to wash clothes while I was over there. I chose Tide because it was the cheapest. I don't know how much soap is in the bag, I can't read it, but it was maybe 1 lb. for like $0.30.

Notice the Kung Fu master in the top left corner. That's like trying to sell a product to black people by putting a cartoon minstrel on the packaging. And to really make it Chinese, they use the power of green beans to clean your clothes. Or maybe it's green bean scented. Either way it makes no sense, but that's China.

Everything You Know is Wrong

2008-05-02T18:00:00.003-04:00

Before actually ever meeting any Buddhist monks, I had this idea that they were all pious and solemn, or perhaps jolly, and exuded some kind of inner peace that you could feel just by being near them.

Wrong! They're just kids!

In Southeast Asia, at least, serving time in a monastery is almost mandatory. In such poor countries, parents are happy to dump their kids in a monastery for a while, where they'll be fed and taken care of, half the families down there send their kids off, thats why you see so many running around, not because they actually believe any of it.

The young monks all go to regular school with non-monks (laymen?) and have non-monk friends and they dream of the day when their time of service will be up. They smoke cigarettes, have tattoos, speak excellent English, and use expressions like "Oh, my God!"

Pardon the Interruption

2008-04-04T08:13:00.002-04:00

All blogs are outlawed in China.

Death and Destruction

2007-12-05T20:24:00.001-05:00

Journalists become desensitized to violence after a while. I was hanging out with some of my coworkers the other night and the line "There are no good stabbings anymore" was spoken with total sincerity.

Well, lucky for us, the past couple days have been pretty violent. Shootings, stabbings, suicides, and car accidents have abounded in New York City. And, lucky for me, I have been assigned to shoot them (with a camera).

Yesterday I was sent to Brooklyn to photograph a shot up and bloody car parked at a bus stop in a residential neighborhood. The police had already gotten to it, tagged it up and covered most of the blood (this isn't late-breaking shit). Here are some really bad pictures of the scene:

the back windshield was also blown out, pieces of the car were all jumbled up inside

the driver was killed, the sheets are covering the blood

some small spots of blood in the back seat

Today I was sent uptown to look for a dead body. Some woman was found with a wound to her chest in a park. On my way up to the scene, the paper called and said that it had learned that the dead girl had been a suicide, which makes it much less newsworthy. The voicemail told me to "Get the photo, but not to kill myself over it."

The body was long gone by the time I got there. It had started to snow. I didn't know exactly where in the park the body had been found. I took some pictures around the area, picturing the girl's dead body lying on the asphalt in any of these spots only hours before.

"It's a Free For All!"

2007-11-30T13:06:00.001-05:00

How sad is it to see a happy little toddler bouncing along the sidewalk with an ice cream cone in his hand, ice cream on his face, and then to see him trip and fall, dropping his ice cream in the dirt and start crying? There's something about the couldn't-be-happier, on-top-of-the-world vibe being suddenly crushed to the opposite extreme of complete hopelessness.

That still exists in the grownup world. I saw it today at the Chinese embassy while applying for a visa for my upcoming trip. The experience started when I first walked in and took a number, 219. I sat down and watched the screen slowly count up, 203, 204...

I saw a white woman go up to the window and get into an argument with the teller. "Maybe I spelled the name [of the city] wrong." She keeps repeating the name of some city in China and the teller has no idea what she's talking about. "It's three hours south of _____." like, quoting her guidebook. The teller still has no idea what she's talking about and sends the woman away. "This is ridiculous!" she says, as she huffs and puffs her way out the door.

The numbers started zipping by, so I was all like, "Fuck Yeah! Here we go!" A crowd gathered at the window. I figured they were just doing something Chinese people do (there were seriously like 5 non-Chinese in the whole place), so I stayed in my chair. Number 218 was on the board, my turn would be any minute.

I was sitting behind your standard American couple. The husband walks up to his wife and exclaims, "It's a free for all!" They both get up and go to the window. I had heard that the Chinese don't give a shit about lines, and I was seeing it happen right there at the embassy. I got up and got right behind the American couple, who verified that there was, in fact, no longer a number system.

We got to making small talk, "Why are you going to China?," etc. The American woman was a teacher and was taking her kids on a class field trip to fucking China. The couple's turn at the window came. Wifey pulls out her manila envelope full of her students' passports, with the visa applications all filled out and neatly folded inside of each one and passes them under the window. The teller, in broken English tells the couple that the passports are no good.

Right there! The Fallen Ice Cream Phenomenon! We had been happily chatting, getting all psyched on our trip to China, "You gonna see the Great Wall? How long you gonna be there for?" To a sudden and drastic change in mood. "What do you mean they're no good?!?"

The teller tells them that they need passport photos, and hands all the paperwork back under the window. The couple had apparently forgot to affix a passport sized photo to each application. "Well where do we get those?!!?" (They were also, apparently, idiots).

I piped in with a "You can get them at any, like, little camera shop." That's me trying to be helpful and keep the mood light. "Oh, don't cry, you can get another ice cream cone, it'll be OK."

By now, every white person who I had seen go up to the window had gotten into an argument and had been turned away without a visa. It was now my turn. After pushing an old Chinese man out of the way who had been trying to squeeze in front of me, I put my papers down on the counter.

The teller takes a look at the application, my passport (barely), then the second page of the application for a little longer. Under "Occupation" I had written "Freelance Model" with no employer contact information. I was a little worried about that.

I'm handed a ticket and told to come back on Wednesday.

Success!

The whole thing lasted no more than 45 seconds. I waved happily to the American couple on my way out, who were still arguing against the wall.

Potty Humor Isn't Funny

2007-11-20T19:58:00.000-05:00

The only thing more depressing than a B-list celebrity scraping the bottom of the celebrity barrel is making your living by leaching off of B-list celebrities scraping the bottom of that barrel.

I was lucky enough to be present at the grand opening of the holiday-season-public-restrooms at Times Square.

I guess Molly Shannon is OK, but what the hell are you supposed to talk about at a public restroom opening? Even a comedian can't make that funny. After listening to her tell mom stories about potty training and the difficulties of finding clean restrooms in the city, she cut the ribbon (toilet paper) and everyone went home.

Of Course Not, Why Would They?

2007-10-21T15:17:00.000-04:00

My last day in Peru was spent in Lima, a hospital in Lima. After climbing around the mountains for a few days, it was time to head back to our jobs, etc. back in the U.S. Ray was all set, no internal bleeding and a new tooth in his mouth. Jess was still feeling shitty though. After her first ER visit, she had been treated for dehydration and had been taking multiple different antibiotics for traveler's diarrhea. Once we got back to Lima, she came down with another fever.

Again, we made our way to the hospital, this time it was a big, busy one. There was a crowd gathered around out front. I guess there are a lot of emergencies in Lima on any given day. A security guard or some guy in a uniform saw us on the outskirts of the crowd and pushed us through a mass of people that was mostly composed of old, worried women. White people at a hospital in residential Lima attract attention, dead white people attract negative attention. "Let the gringos through!"

Jess was once again led into the back room where she was once again hooked up to IVs and pumped full of goodness, while Ray and I once again acted as her nurses, getting supplies and paying for each item as we went along. In between carrying supplies, we ate ice cream with the old ladies, bought from the snack counter next to the pharmacist's desk.

At one point we had to bring a sample to the lab upstairs for analysis. We were led into the patient area, and then upstairs to the lab. We sat on some chairs in an empty hallway. My old friend stopped by for a visit and I went looking for a bathroom. Like every other bathroom in Peru, this one had no toilet paper or soap. This hospital bathroom, one that only doctors and nurses have access to, had neither toilet paper nor soap. I ended up using some receipts and business cards that were in my wallet, and feeling sorry for the patients of this hospital.

Probably the best thing about Peru was Jess' doctor in Lima. He had a big coif of thinning red and gray hair, gold chains hanging among his exposed chest hair, and big sunglasses. He didn't wear any gloves, but he kept washing his hands. Instead of drying them though, he would run this wet hands through his hair, slicking it back.

Jess came out of the hospital a few hours later, with a new diagnoses, it wasn't just traveler's diarrhea, it was an intestinal infection. She was told to stop taking the pills that she had been taking for the past week and was given a new batch to take. Vacation well spent!

"Sometimes I really hate this city."

2007-10-16T19:21:00.000-04:00

I usually don't give a shit about celebrities. Couldn't care less about them either way. But Donald Trump makes me want to kill myself. Here he is looking like a big, overgrown baby:

To promote his new book, he was literally giving out money at a Barnes & Noble up in midtown Manhattan today. He wasn't actually handing out the money, his goons were. The first hundred people were given $100.

(I'm pretty sure a lot of those signs were made by his PR and handed out to people)

Here are his "Fun Girls" which any respectable business man and/or writer needs to have around:

Not much of the crowd actually knew what was going on. The ones who turned out for the event were mostly homeless people, junkies, and general weirdos, people that would really appreciate $100. Parents took their kids out of school for the thing. One lady wore all pink because "it's the year of the pig." This guy was easily my favorite:

He claimed to be the first boxer to wear pink gloves (?) and that he has devoted his life to the Spice Girls or some nonsense. See his shirt? He made it by sewing a poster to an undershirt. He kept pulling a stack of little photos of celebrities and himself with celebrities, out of his tiny little shorts. He must have shaved his own head because there were all these patches of hair that he had missed. Here is a picture of him from behind:

When it was his turn to get his book signed, he brought out, from some hidden place in his tiny shorts, like a rabbit out of a hat, this big title belt, like the kind wrestlers, and i guess boxers, win. All the body guards started yelling "Only books, only books!" and pushed him along.

Seeing people's genuine adoration for Trump really made me depressed. Watching a homeless guy walk out of Barnes & Noble with his hundred dollars that he was definitely going to spend on booze, thanking Trump the whole way, broke my fucking heart. Doesn't that asshole realize what his fan base is when he sees a constant stream of these people as the only people who show up to his event?

He also got the title of his own book wrong. The title of his book is Think Big and Kick Ass. He said "I'm here to promote my new book 'Think Big and Kiss Ass!'," he wasn't joking. What a shitty old man.

Something Strange in your Neighborhood

2007-10-07T11:38:00.000-04:00

The City of New York just devoted a memorial to 20,000 dead slaves buried under Manhattan in the 1600's. 25 feet below street level, and spanning about four square blocks under streets like Broadway, the graveyard sits under downtown Manhattan with buildings over it and busy sidewalks. The grave site was only discovered in 1991. They call it the "African Burial Ground." Thousands of people are walking over a mass grave every day in New York City. How crazy is that? All we need now is the underground river of pink ooze from Ghostbusters to bring them all to life or whatever.

Come Get Your Stuff!

2007-10-06T12:41:00.000-04:00

I recently moved into a new apartment. Before I moved in and after the last guy moved out, a subletter had the room for a couple months. From what I hear she was an interesting character. She was an Irish lesbian who played soccer for the British national girl's team or something. She apparently had a beautiful girlfriend who would come over and make loud noises in bed, a bed which was a bare futon mattress on the floor. There was nothing else in the room, furniture-wise.

I've had subletters leave things after they've moved out, like one left some pens and markers, another guy left a pair of socks. This girl also left a few things. We've tried to contact her about getting her stuff but she hasn't gotten back to us, it has been over a month. Here is a catalog of what she left:

pillow

soccer cleats

motorcycle helmet (lesbian, remember?)

weights...

computer?!

mail. she lived here for all of two months and she made it her mailing address. we constantly get her mail.

box of books, including a diploma?

and my personal favorite, a duffel bag full of teddy bears

Contact me through Craig's List if you'd like to purchase one or all of these items:
http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/for/441768927.html

Diente Fresco

2007-10-04T20:12:00.000-04:00

After being told that there would be no buses for a week, we found a bus leaving Tiny Town, Peru the next day. We were glad for a change of scenery from the ER waiting room. Oh yeah, here is a picture of the painting that they had hanging up in the waiting room of this little hospital, its Jesus with one hand on the surgeon and one on the patient:

The city of Cuzco is located right at the base of Machu Picchu. Anyone who hikes up the mountain spends at least a night in this city. It's a really touristy place and they really try to sell the bullshit magic and mysticism of the mountain to the tourists. They also have dentists like New York has delis, it's the strangest thing. You wouldn't know from looking at the locals that they are at all concerned with dental hygiene.

Good thing too, because the bull chipped one of Ray's back teeth. Ray grinds his teeth in his sleep. It's so loud that it will wake you up if you are in the same room. Its one of the worst sounds you've ever heard. So Ray had a chipped molar and after a couple nights of grinding his teeth, he significantly fucked his chipped tooth up. He would wake up with pieces of tooth in his mouth.

We found a nice little corner dentist/beauty salon/souvenir shop in Cuzco and made an appointment to get his tooth fixed for later that day. While Jess and I read books at the gift shop, Ray got his tooth fixed for $20, it took less than an hour. Here is a picture that Ray took of the dentist and dental hygienist. They didn't speak any English:

The Morning After

2007-10-02T18:27:00.000-04:00

note the soda bottle with markered skull for disposal of biohazardous material

Having spent the night in the emergency room after Ray's encounter with the bull, we were all on top of our game the next day. Jess woke up saying that she felt terrible, and she looked it. We went back to the emergency room where she was injected, inspected, and treated for severe dehydration.

shot in the ass

The hospital was so understaffed and underfunded that Ray and I were running back and forth from the pharmacy with supplies like IV bags, pills, etc., paying for each item as we got it. This required getting a receipt from the nurse, a stamp from the pharmacist, running to pay at another window for another stamp and another receipt, and back to the pharmacy for what we needed. This had to be done multiple times. It was the same work that I had done at the hospital in Brooklyn, only I was a citizen here, or worse, a tourist, and the process was ridiculously inefficient. The hospital pharmacy didn't have everything Jess needed, so Ray ran down the street to another one for those items. After a couple hours, Jess looked a lot better but was still suffering from other problems.

ER visit #2, done.

Bulls, Balls

2007-09-26T20:35:00.000-04:00

We were lucky enough to have connections while in Peru. We knew a girl working in some shit-town for the Peace Corps, so she could recommend where and when to go. She told us about a small town where the Semana Santa celebrations are the best in the country and that we'd be the only tourists. The highlight of the whole week was the running of the bulls. We had no idea that it was going to happen until the night before when everyone was buying red t-shirts and bandannas. I was really psyched.

We woke up early the next day to make sure we were there in time. There was a band, singing, marching, flag waving, and a lot of drinking. At 10 in the morning. Overall, it was much smaller than what goes on in Spain, but this was Peru, and a bull is a bull and we were happy to risk our asses.

The animals were paraded through the crowd, steaming and dripping snot and saliva. They were pulled by the horns behind cowboys on horses, the faster the horses ran, the faster the bulls ran. The rope was long enough to allow the bulls to attack people along the way, and the cowboys were sure to run through the crowded areas.

Most of the time my friends and I stayed together, but every time the bulls came running by (they were constantly running around, allowing time for a crowd to gather, and then running through again), we would get separated. We could find each other again easily until Ray disappeared.

(all photos courtesy of Ray)

After a while, we found Ray in the crowd. He told us how he had kept running after the bull to take pictures (he had a fancy new camera). He told us how the animal had turned around and faced him and how he kept taking pictures. He told us how he tripped and fell over backwards as the bull came at him. This is the last picture he took before he blacked out:

Ray described how he was told that the bull repeatedly smashed its head against his body but that he had apparently fit between the horns so he wasn't gouged up. It still hurt though. All his clothes were ripped and dirty and he was bleeding.

Ray wasn't feeling well for obvious reasons and Jess had the beginnings of what we were eventually to discover was an intestinal infection, so we went back to the room to lay down. Ray woke me up and asked me if I would go with him to the emergency room. While we had been sleeping, he had been laying awake with intense stomach pain, "thinking about death." We spent that night in the hospital of this tiny town and came out, after various tests and proddings, with a bill of $13 for the entire ER visit. $13.

Coke and Sympathy

2007-09-14T16:28:00.000-04:00

Its not hard to find sex or drugs in Peru. Aside from the coca leaves that abound and are legal to buy and chew and make tea with, etc., there is plenty of the processed product available as well.

My first night in Lima, on one of the busiest streets in the city, among all the hustle and bustle, less than 50 feet from a police officer, were two women handing out fliers. We were looking to get a taxi when the women approached us. I saw that their fliers had photos of naked women on them.

Being stupid, American tourists, we didn't know where we were going or where our hostel was. The cop offered absolutely no help and told us to go down the street. The women were much more helpful.

Jess, Ray and one of the women were asking the cab driver that we were finally able to flag down, about finding this street that we probably weren't pronouncing correctly, while one of the women took me aside. She asked me if I wanted coke. I politely declined with a laugh and a shake of my head. Then she asked me if I wanted company. Company? Oh, company...

Meanwhile, I see the other woman get into the cab. When the woman I had been talking to sees this, she follows. "They're coming with us, they're gonna show us the way" says Jess.

I grabbed her by the arm. "Do you know what these women are? They just offered me drugs and sex." Jess realized her mistake we decided that we didn't need a ride after all. We went down the street and got a drink instead. Who the fuck knows where those women would have taken us?

A Gay Ol' Time

2007-09-10T20:55:00.000-04:00

I traveled through Argentina with two dudes that I met in Brazil. They were good friends since they were little babies. They kissed each other, but mostly just on special occasions. The fact that they were British doesn't explain anything. One night, they told me a story of their childhood.

It's not uncommon for little kids to bathe together, I know I have at least one picture somewhere with me too young to realize what is going on, in the bath with another kid. It's OK when you're young, but sexy when you're older. These two kids that I was traveling with however, were eight years old and still bathing together. Which is weird.

So, they were in the bath together, doing whatever eight year olds would do in a bath together, when one of them (the gayer one) lost the bar of soap up his own ass. I didn't get a clear answer as to how this could happen. My assumption was that he was either trying to force it up there, or experimenting with how far he could go with it. And, from what I understand about asses, there is a point of no return, which was reached in this case. He wasn't able to get it out manually, which I'm sure he was trying with this other eight year old in the bath with him. The story ends here.

Untitled

2007-08-24T22:43:00.001-04:00

Traveling through Argentina, one thing stood out. There are NO black people. Having come directly from Brazil, where there is a large black population, it was quite a strange thing to notice. The three black people that I saw in over two weeks in Argentina were tourists, and they were in Buenos Aires.

Argentina was an importer of slaves like any other country in the western hemisphere, so where did they all go? I finally found out while speaking to a local in Salta. In the 1860's there was a war between Paraguay and Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Argentina sent all their black people to the front lines and they all died. They all died.

Smoking Kills

2007-08-08T19:54:00.000-04:00

Maybe the greatest thing I've ever done was hike an active volcano in the Congo. By far the craziest and most dangerous country I've been to (cannibalism is still practiced), for a nominal fee, you can have a machine-gun escorted (rebel armies, both from Rwanda and the Congo, hide out in the area) hike up to the top of an 11,000+ ft. mountain filled with fire.

The hike is so difficult that, by the end, you are delirious with exhaustion, dehydration and endorphins, so that when you look down into a depth of pretty much the distance you just climbed, the boiling, steaming pit of the guts of the Earth is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. It is almost a religious experience.

A funny thing though, as hard as the hike is, the porters (pocket change) do double the amount of work that you do. With the gear they carry, they go up and down in one day, whereas we split the journey, then meet you again the next morning at the top, all without flashlights and wearing the cheap, ubiquitous, rubber African sandals. The most they expect is a piece of white bread and the freedom to drink their fermented sorghum juice.

One week before we made the climb, a Chinese woman fell into the volcano and died. The tourist industry, however small it may be, didn't even hiccup. A small cross, embedded in a pile of rocks, marks the spot. If there is a hell, this is what it looks like.

At the base, the old sign, right, is full of bullet holes, the new sign, left, is much nicer.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6936799.stm

Out With The Old, In With The New

2007-08-07T19:01:00.000-04:00

Goma is a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that sits right under an active volcano. Periodically, the volcano erupts, burying the city and killing its citizens. The locals are resourceful and unlucky enough that they don't have much of a choice in their situation, so they just build a new city right on top of the old one, with bricks made of lava rock carved out of the ground. As you drive through the city, you can see bits of cars and buried buildings poking up through the lava. Whereas a lot of African cities have red dust filling the air and red dirt roads, Goma has black dust and streets, due to the lava rock that is literally everywhere. There is a six foot wall that has been shaved into a ramp where the lava flow stopped and hardened, it's the entrance to the town.

The most impressive lava-landmark was an old church that had been surrounded by lava and destroyed. Most of it is still standing, but it's been covered in graffiti, and is largely used as a public restroom.

Is This Funny To You?

2007-08-02T12:23:00.001-04:00

People are generally pretty religious in Uganda, which means that they are ignorant of things like science and homosexuals. This is what passes for humor in that country:

Queer 4 U

2007-08-01T07:10:00.000-04:00

English language newspapers in East Africa are made by morons, for morons.

One Wife and Three Spare Tires

2007-07-26T11:46:00.001-04:00

Before we went to Uganda, we had heard that women are so subservient there that they have to bow down before any man that they come across. This turned out not to be true, but there was still enough sexism to make your mouth fall open.

Men in Uganda, if they can afford it, have multiple wives. The current king, yes, they still have a king, has four. His grandfather made a name for himself by allowing women to eat chicken and eggs. This happened within the last hundred years. Before him, chicken was thought to be too sweet of a meat for women to eat. Imagine, if women were allowed to taste the sweetness of chicken, how much food would be on the table by the time they were done cooking it? They would have eaten half of it before it even left the kitchen! HA HA HA HAA!

Uganda also has a booming music industry. They love their own music and crank out hits. One music video that I saw was for a song called "Love Goes On." In the video, a woman is beaten by her husband, but all is forgiven. The artist was female.

We actually liked some of the music, and being so inexpensive (hundreds of songs burned to an mp3 CD for $6 in a shop with two computers and nothing else) we bought some. The guy burning the CD described the meaning of some of the songs for us, because they are all in Kiganda. One was about having two wives, one of which is lazy. Another was about owning a big bed so that when you fight with with your wife, you can make her sleep on the far corner.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6936885.stm

High Rollin'

2007-07-18T13:01:00.001-04:00

Rwandan money is worthless. 100 franc notes, worth less than $0.20, are the lowest denomination you can get, you hardly ever see coins. The bills are so ratty and disgusting you'll see store clerks scotch taping torn ones back together, which only50% of businesses will accept anyway.

Diarrhea is your closest travel companion in Africa. It is far worse than anything I experienced in South America. We are talking pure hot water here. You dehydrate so fast, you wake feeling fine in the morning and are suffering severely with a fever by noon.

Bathrooms in this country are disgusting, no plumbing, and certainly no toilet paper. Most often, the best you can hope for is a fetid hole in the ground (or if you're lucky, a decent toilet that doubles as a weapons closet).

When you're suffering so bad that you need a toilet more than anything else, you don't think about the future, you have blinders on. You locate the first place you can explode in. Then you realize that you are squatting on a filthy floor, your ass splattered with hot, filthy water, with nowhere to go.

So you do what you have to do. You wipe your ass with money.

Man's Best Friend

2007-07-16T12:20:00.000-04:00

I was reminded of this story recently, while traveling through Africa with my friend, whose story it is originally.

Like a lot of us, my friend grew up in an American suburb. Also, like a lot of us from the suburbs, he grew up with a dog. And, like some of us, from especially safe neighborhoods, he left his doors unlocked.

There are always those strange kids you grew up with. Those who came from families with tons of kids who are all underachievers and have broken machinery and garbage on their front lawn. My friend happened to live next to one of those families.

Economic depravity and parent's lack of birth control doesn't necessarily lead to sexual perversity in their children. My friend's neighbor, however, was unlucky enough to be born with all of the aforementioned qualities. This is all fine, live and let live, until you find these people in your home, uninvited, while you aren't there, committing acts that are technically illegal.

The first indication that something strange was going on inside my friend's home happened one day as my friend was coming home from high school. As he entered his house through the front door, he heard a door slam through the back. When he went to investigate, he saw his neighbor running through his and his neighbors' back yards. Maybe that would worry some people, but suburbanites are trusting. Nothing too bad can happen in a nice neighborhood, or so goes the popular thought.

The jig was up when the neighbor was caught with his hand in the cookie jar a second time. On a sunny afternoon, as innocent as any other, my friend walked into his own home to discover the unthinkable. It all happened too quickly to act. The neighbor, under the kitchen table with the family dog (male), had his dick out of his pants, and was whispering to the animal. When he saw that my friend had come home to discover this strange situation, he bolted. Out the door, he was too quick to catch.

Now, personally, I would have grabbed the nearest object that could have been used as a weapon and followed the crazy asshole through the neighborhood until I caught him. My friend, perhaps more forgiving than myself, allowed the kid to escape; but not without recompense. Phone calls were made, to the mother of the offender, to his friends, to anyone and everyone with a phone and an ear. This kid's reputation was destroyed (or created, depending) and it ruined his life. Or maybe it didn't. Given the circumstances of his personality and his upbringing, he could have ended up the exact same way. He never went to college, never left the neighborhood, and pumps gas for a living.

Mommy?

2007-07-15T15:01:00.000-04:00

People are maimed and killed in violent ways every day in Rwanda. Just the other day there was a cave-in at a construction site in Kigali that killed four people and injured more. They risked (and lost) their lives for about three dollars a day.

Down the street from our house here in Kigali, in what is considered an upscale neighborhood, one of the neighbors killed his own mother. Apparently they were both drunk together and started arguing. The argument escalated and the son strangled his mother to death. This happened right next to where we buy our groceries.

Measure Twice, Cut Once, When Making a Dog Bonnet

2007-07-14T19:40:00.003-04:00

Modern Music is Garbage

2007-07-13T12:19:00.000-04:00

Rwandan music is separated into two categories, that which was made before the genocide and what came after. After the genocide, all the music is crap, it's all European techno inspired stuff like what most of the rest of the planet outside America listens to. The main reason for the abrupt change in style is the fact that all the musicians were murdered in 1994.

Before the genocide, Rwandans were making the best music you've never heard. It's really folksy and sad and blows anything Bob Dylan ever did out of the water. The melodies make you tear up and the acoustic guitar is basic and perfect. The recording quality is abhorrent and you can only find it on dubbed cassettes (by far the most popular method of listening to music next to the radio in Rwanda) and burned CDs. We got a tape from a drunk at our favorite restaurant who had brought it to listen to on the restaurant's sound system while he ate.

Black or White?

2007-07-12T18:29:00.002-04:00

A.D.I.D.A.S.

2007-07-11T01:31:00.000-04:00

Larium is a Malaria prophylactic. One takes it in order to avoid getting Malaria while in areas of the world like the Amazon Rain forest and most of Africa. There are many different brands of Malaria medication, but Larium is the cheapest. Its low cost is due to its side effects; it is known to cause depression and nightmares. Before I started taking Larium, the prospect of crazy dreams was exciting. A friend of mine would wake up the entire neighborhood screaming with night terrors in Costa Rica. I have also heard of support groups in Sweden for people with depression caused by the medication. I was disappointed, however. I had no such side effects.

What I did dream about was sex. Very vividly. While in Brazil and Argentina, I dreamt about sex with pretty much every girl I knew, good and bad. Girls that I never, ever would have considered a prospect became some of the sexiest creatures of my dreams. There was a new one every night. I revisited old ones, ex-girlfriends, and imagined new ones. I also dreamt about guys wagging huge dicks in my face, which was disturbing.

Here in Africa, its been all about fat chicks. Every night I love another 300+ lbs. woman. The first one was a big, black woman. Last night was a southern white woman, who I was able to lay on top of, floating on her flesh and riding the waves, bobbing up and down, it was nice.

I don't know which is worse, realizing weird fantasies that I never knew I had, or the subsequent wet dreams that make me feel like I'm in 5th grade again.

Failing at Life

2007-07-06T02:51:00.000-04:00

Kbuye is a small town in Rwanda on the shore of Lake Kivu. It is especially known for its efficient killing during the genocide. There is a memorial devoted to a church that Tutsis were told to go to for safety, which was then bombarded with grenades.

We were there taking in the scenery last weekend when we found a tiny, abandoned puppy, crying like a human baby, literally in the gutter. He was so young he hadn't yet opened his eyes. He was covered in fleas and lice and blowing blood bubbles from his nose. We took him back to the hotel and stopped the bleeding. I didn't expect him to survive the night, but he did. I brought him on the bus back to Kigali in my backpack, wrapped in a sweatshirt.

If he went too long without crying, I nudged him awake to make sure he was still alive and was surprised to find that he was every time. I fed him milk from a teaspoon when he cried, and he would fall back asleep. We found a farm veterinarian downtown and got some flea bath and some other stuff. We bathed him and killed the lice that were constantly swarming on his little face.

He would cry all night in a bed of Ted's and my t-shirts, and we took turns with him on alternate nights, we got very little sleep. I felt like a real doting mother. "Baby needs his milk!"

Then he started to sleep without crying much, but still crawled around in his t-shirt nest to change positions. When I picked him up one evening he felt cold and wasn't as squirmy as he usually was.

Ted and I started Googling everything about puppies. When puppies are particularly young, they have trouble regulating their body temperature, and they dehydrate easily. We did the skin-pinch test that I used to do with the monkeys, where we lightly pinch their skin and watch how long it takes to return to normal. If it takes a long time, then you have a dehydrated monkey, or puppy, as the case may be. Our puppy's skin didn't flatten, but stayed pinched. We were really worried. We gave him that powder mixed with water that replaces your electrolytes and vitamins and stuff when you have diarrhea and become dehydrated. We also packed him in bottles filled with hot water.

He slept in my room that night. When he would cry, I would give him some milk and water and replace the hot water bottles. I was woken up early the next morning when I learned what a death rattle is. I picked up his little, chattering body and he pissed all over the place and died in my hands. We buried him in the front yard. I cried like a baby.

R.I.P.
? - July 4, 2007

Plus, Jess sent me this article today, just to rub salt in the wound.

Finding God

2007-06-29T15:22:00.000-04:00

Today I met God. He is a little boy who lives down the street from me. I don't know his address, but he lives in the neighborhood of Kimihurura in Kigali, Rwanda. Here is a picture, he is the first from the right:

People in Rwanda don't have family names. They typically have two names, the first being something in Kinyarwanda, and the second often being something in either French or English. When talking to white people, Rwandans will often use the second, French/English name, which is funny when they use the second name of a white person when talking to a white person because they don't realize the culture difference. For example:

"I know McCarthy," he said.

"Who?" I replied.

"McCarthy." as he shows me his business card.

"Oh, John! Yeah, I know John!" referring to John McCarthy.

You are probably familiar with Hispanics naming their kids Jesus (pronounced "Hey! Soos!"). Well, Rwandans don't fuck around. They straight out name their kids "God," or in the French, "Dieu."

This little boy and his pictured friends follow us down the street every time we leave the house, often screaming "BONJOUR!" along the way. One of us asked the most boisterous one what his name was. He didn't really understand the question, but did some little kid shuffle-dance. His older sister (not pictured, but who often wears dresses so filthy that I want to buy her a complete new wardrobe) answered for him, "God."

At first I thought she meant that his second name was "Got." But no, Taylor, who has spent years in the country, explained it to me. That little boy really is God.

How to Be a Good Rwandan

2007-06-29T02:06:00.000-04:00

Walking home the other day I was handed a religious pamphlet.

It was entirely in Kinyarwanda and it was obvious to the woman who gave it to me that I didn't speak a word. Regardless, she let me keep it, maybe hoping that I could get it translated, or at least learn from the pictures. While my studies of Kinyarwanda are slowly coming along, I am already able to enjoy the pictures. Here are some of my favorites:

The majority of them depict white people:

This one is my favorite, it pretty much sums up everything that this blog is about:

I don't really know what this one is supposed to be, "Everyone together in the lightning and explosions?":

African Solutions for African Problems

2007-06-26T17:00:00.000-04:00

Carjackings in Johannesburg are so popular that companies have come up with really violent ways of trying to prevent them. All of the anti-theft devices that I learned about have been on the market within the past couple years but were quickly deemed too cruel to be legal and have since been banned. There are, however, new inventions constantly coming onto the market.

One device has tear gas spray from the top of the driver's side door, at eye-level of a potential carjacker. The driver releases the tear gas and hopefully gets the fuck out of there, while the criminal is left to writhe in pain in the street. This product didn't always work, and when it did, it didn't always work fast enough.

A better way to protect your vehicle is to take away a carjacker's ability to drive. You can't drive without legs. One system had a big, heavy, metal blade come whipping out from underneath the driver's side door with enough force to cut through bone. The commercial for this one showed multiple wooden poles being chopped clean through with one swipe.

Or you could just kill the motherfucker. The absolute craziest device was a flamethrower that came from underneath the car, setting the carjacker on fire and leaving him to burn.

Doesn't this shit sound like it's out of Mad Max or something? Simpler is better for some people. In the real bad parts of Joburg, drivers will just keep a gun on their lap as they make their way to work. When someone tries to pull some shady business, the driver just shoots him in the face and continues on his way. One of the kids that I was talking to had a father who kept his car by doing just that. More than once.

Living the Lifestyle

2007-06-25T10:43:00.000-04:00

Sex tourism is ever present here in Africa. I was already aware of the practice of searching out young girls in foreign countries to do things to, but in South Africa, very little work is required. In fact, no work is required. Young girls come to you, and do things for free.

The Wild Coast of South Africa is an area in the south-east that is largely populated by Xhosa (the 'X' is pronounced with the mouth click). Other than some tightly packed little groups of hostels for tourists, there are very few white people. The locals are poor as hell, so they sell beads and things and put on traditional dance shows at the hostels for coins. They also sell shrooms to Whitey ("Umlungu"), but thats another story.

Late one night, stumbling into a hostel after fixing a blown tire on the side of the highway (there are few paved roads in that part of the country), we were treated to some entertainment that was entirely unexpected. After moving our things out of the car and hoping to get something to eat, we heard music playing in the distance. "Lets check that out" we thought, innocently enough. We walked into the lit clearing and blanked. Standing in a line were about ten girls, average age had to be at most 13, dancing topless in short skirts for a crowd of about 15 white males, one of which had a video camera. Everyone knows what African dancing is like, it involves a lot of shaking of T & A and jumping.

Needless to say, we sat down to watch the show. You might be thinking "It's cultural, it's OK that these girls are minors and dancing topless for a bunch of white men at least twice their age, it's ethnic, it's about history and art." But you really know that it's not OK. Everyone watching that show knew exactly what everyone else was thinking. The discomfort was thick in the air. Mike leaned over and said out of the corner of his mouth, "Don't you DARE take a picture." All I could think about was how much fucking trouble I would be in if I were in the western world. The worst thing about it was that all these girls had perfect tits. Perfect.

When the show was over and the cup went around, I emptied my pockets, and I never give to those types of things. I then promptly took a long, scalding shower, but no matter how hard I scrubbed, I could not get the dirty off.

Warm in the Winter, Cool in the Summer

2007-06-23T12:56:00.000-04:00

The other day, I was caught in an interaction that changed the way I feel about strangers volunteering their opinions, and strengthened my belief that women really do love body hair.

I had just been to visit the genocide memorial in Kigali, Rwanda and was on a minibus waiting to get downtown. A minibus is an easy and cheap ($0.20 flat rate) way of getting around in the city. Essentially, they are vans that take specific, short routes, fit about 20 people (when there is really only room for 10), and don't move until they are full.

I had bought a book which had on the cover the outline of Rwanda filled in with a bunch of black faces. Being carried by one of the 12 white people in this whole country, it drew attention. I could see the girl sitting next to me looking at it, so I gave it to her, hopefully proving that I wasn't some sort of missionary or something. She took it out of my hand less than gently and flipped through it and handed it back. It was obvious that she couldn't read it. After sitting in silence for a while, she asked me, in English, with a big smile on her face, what my name was. I told her and she told me hers, it was really long and complicated and I didn't catch a bit of it. She had a haircut that Ted and I have taken to calling the "Grace Jones" after the model from the '80's, only less severe. It is a very popular hairstyle here and is way more attractive than it should be:

She went on to ask me where I was from (I think) so I told her "New York City." Then she said a couple times something like "You are city?," to which I replied, while smiling and nodding, "Yes, New York City." Then we both kind of just laughed and smiled for a while. Then she started rubbing my arm.

At first she was just going back and forth with her fingertips along the length of my forearm, wrist to elbow and back. Then she started gently pulling little tufts of my arm hair, feeling it between her fingers, analyzing it. Then she grabbed my whole arm and turned it over to see the paler, hairless underside, and she stroked that part a few times. The whole while she was speaking softly in Kinyarwanda, which I don't understand a word of, but I'm pretty sure she was commenting on how hairy my arms were. Africans generally don't have much body hair.

It was over as quickly as it had begun. She took her hand off my arm and sat quietly for the rest of the ride. We happened to get off at the same stop. She stepped off the minibus and walked down the street without so much as a look back.

Eating For Two

2007-05-26T14:13:00.000-04:00

Fellow travelers are some of the worst people to meet while traveling, especially those from your own country. I met a few girls in Buenos Aires that were from the Midwest and they pretty much fulfilled the stereotype of loud, ignorant, Americans to the letter.

My favorite girl of the bunch had been living in a small village in Peru for a while and contracted some kind of parasite, her friend said that it was a tapeworm. If I am getting the numbers correct, this girl lost something like 38 lbs. within a the span of a couple of months. She looked like a fucking skeleton. Her eyes were sunken in the back of her head, her teeth were huge, her veins were protruding, just all around terrible looking.

At first I thought, "Jesus, that is a skinny girl!" but then I found out about the parasite and it was too good to be true. I started getting mad, yelling at the friend, "What kind of friend are you that you don't take her to the hospital?!" The skeleton just said, all slow and drawn out, with her eyes rolling around in her head, "Iiiii dooon't feeeel siiiiick..." So she didn't feel the need to seek medical attention.

All of the other girls were loud, obnoxious, fat, and ugly. Their ringleader was a big Jewy looking girl who had a fresh, infected piercing between her shoulder blades. She kept making Jewish jokes and claiming that she wasn't Jewish. There were problems between her and the hostel staff multiple times every day.

I ♥ Dogs

2007-05-25T14:30:00.000-04:00

Argentina has THE friendliest, most non-threatening drug-sniffing dogs on Earth. Bus rides through the country are constantly stopped for inspection, at least three times on one 18 hour ride. Each time, a couple soldiers in fatigues would come on, one for the top floor of the bus, and one for the bottom, along with, most often, a white Labrador. The dog would walk through the aisle, sniffing around, panting.

On one occasion, I reached out to pet the dog and he just plopped down in the middle of the aisle, leaning against my seat so he could relax while being scratched. I found "the spot" on his rump and his back leg went nuts. When my friends across the isle joined in the petting, the dog was in heaven. The soldier had to nudge and coax the animal before he got up to get off the bus. Through the bus window I saw a soldier wrestle a bit with the dog and give him a toy which he proudly held in his mouth as he wagged his tail while we drove off.

Accident Prone

2007-05-24T10:28:00.000-04:00

I saw more violence in Brazil in five weeks than I have seen in probably my whole life. On my last day in the country, Brazil left me with a little something to remember her by. Have you ever watched a bad car accident happen from beginning to end? It makes you feel weird inside.

Little scooters are popular in Brazil because they can weave through heavy traffic to get shit done. Gangs of these guys exist, called "Moto Boys" and they live a life of violence. At least one of them gets killed every day in Sao Paulo. They have been known to drag drivers out of their cars and beat the shit out of them. But they are invaluable to business in Brazil because they are able to make deliveries that larger, safer vehicles cannot, due to the street congestion.

Riding in a cab on the highway, I saw another cab parked on the shoulder. A delivery scooter drove up an entrance ramp and onto the highway, making its way around the parked cab. The moto boy wasn't paying attention and slammed right the fuck into the side of the parked cab. There was a short, clipping sound of metal on metal as parts of the bike and the side of the cab broke off, and a crash of glass. The moto boy flew up and through the air as his bike went down. I watched this guy soar through the air, from takeoff to landing. His body was hunched over with his arms and legs dangling downward, not at all graceful.

By the time he hit the ground, the car I was in had already passed the scene of the accident and I had to watch out the back window as the biker attempted to lift his head up a little without success, allowing it to fall back onto the road.

Bye Bye Brazil!

Oops!

2007-05-18T15:23:00.001-04:00

Try to avoid spilling boiling water on your leg like I did. The blister was so big, I tore it open with two hands and it soaked my pants like I had peed myself.

Favela Justice

2007-05-17T14:43:00.000-04:00

Because the cops don't have much pull in the favelas, the druglords or "favela owners" are left with the responsibility of maintaining the peace. Favelas are small, tightly knit communities, where everyone is like family. Actually, most people are family, with all the unprotected, unmarried sex going on, most women are mothers by 15, and have babies by multiple different men. Naturally, even the closest of people sometimes fight.

In one of the favelas that I only spent a little time in, there was a screaming argument between two women outside. For disturbing the peace of the community, both of their heads were shaved as punishment by the next day.

Kids With Guns

2007-05-16T16:02:00.001-04:00

The police don't have much power in the favelas. The citizens fear the druglords more than they do the cops, they're just a larger part of their lives. The druglords take the place of the cops by maintaining order and settling disputes. They also use their guns more often. When police presence is almost nonexistant, open crime becomes commonplace.

Right at the entrance to the favela where I spent most of my time were the drug dealers. They were stationed across from the quad where the kids played soccer, had parties, and cut coke in a well lit assembly line. They only used their guns for show while I was around, shooting them "to see if they worked," or just having a good time by waking up the neighborhood in the middle of the night.

Ted was in Rio to film for the NGO that we were working with, but when he took out his camera to film a soccer game, the drug dealers threw a fit. They came up to him huffing and puffing demanding that he not film them, etc. When he explained that he was actually filming the kids playing soccer for the NGO, they calmed down and gave him the thumbs up. All through the soccer game, little kids, mostly preteen girls, were coming up to him telling him not to film "those guys." So I was pretty nervous when I was taking these pictures, and it explains why they aren't very good:

Old Friends

2007-05-14T22:22:00.000-04:00

I ran into an old coworker, B, last weekend. Its always nice to see old friends and catch up on old times. He's doing pretty well, he's on methadone now. He's since been fired from the restaurant though. He was smashed every day at work. It got so bad that he was falling over. Sometimes he had to run out into the street to vomit. Once he threw up just outside the restaurant and turned his head, still bent over in the gutter, to see that everyone in the restaurant was looking wide-eyed at him through the window. He could always make me laugh.

This actually happened: I was at work one day (I was known as the "lazy one") and was talking to a waitress who mentioned that that B was a "really hard worker." I turned to look and B was on the nod in a customer's chair.

By the time he was fired, other people at the restaurant were telling him, and his girlfriend who was homeless and would often come into the place, to get some help, he was so fucked up. He used to sell drugs to everyone there, mostly coke though. He described the various ways he would steal from the place. Mostly just charging the customers for what they ordered but not entering it into the system.

Overall, it was one of the best conversations I've had in months.

Home, Sweet Home

2007-05-11T17:57:00.000-04:00

The favelas of Rio de Janeiro are scattered throughout the city, some on the outskirts, but many within, piled up on the hillsides. I stayed with an NGO in Rio that had a house situated right between two favelas. The head of the NGO told us this story as soon as we arrived:

Recently there was an incident with some members of the favela. While most of the volunteers were at their projects, some guys with ski masks and machine guns stormed the house. They held the volunteers who were there hostage for four hours before escaping with all the computers, cameras and cell phones that were in the house. When the head of the NGO found out about what happened, he was pissed. He made a few phone calls to the people that he knew in the surrounding favelas, demanding “Don’t you appreciate the work we’re doing?!” Word got around to the druglords, and soon, every single item that had been stolen was returned.

The Swedish Forklift-Driving Team

2007-05-10T01:55:00.000-04:00

Scandinavian girls are crazy. I met a lot of them while traveling through South America. Not only are they all skinny, long, and blond, but they're tough as nails. The girls that impressed me the most were a group of Swedes that I met in Belem. They had just spent six months working 12 hour shifts in Norway moving heavy cargo in a warehouse with a forklift in order to travel the world for six months. Many Scandinavians go to Norway to work because they don't need a degree for a menial job like they do in Sweden (must be a college graduate to work the register at a grocery store), and the work pays better.

Some places in the far north of Norway have 24 hours of sunshine for half the year and 24 hours of darkness the other half. Twenty-four hours of darkness for six straight months. The real money can be made in these northern areas working with fish. They told me about a friend of theirs who cleaned fish for two straight years and was set. Bought a house, a car, and started a family.

These girls liked snus ("snoose"). Snus is just like snuff, but it comes in little packages like tea bags and it's put in the top lip instead of the bottom one. They couldn't get it Norway so they had their moms mail it to them.

Swedish girls drive forklifts, spit tobacco, and are way better looking than your girlfriend.

Fast Pharmaceuticals

2007-05-07T11:56:00.000-04:00

In Brazil a lot of medication that would require a prescription in the U.S. is available over the counter. Coupled with that, the pharmacists have no idea what they're doing. In the U.S., to be a pharmacist one needs a specific degree in the field. From my experience in Brazil, I'm pretty sure that any asshole can just walk in and answer the 'help wanted' sign in the window.

Maybe Ted picked up something in the jungle because the skin on his hands was peeling off, more and more each day. He called his mom back home, a doctor, who said it was likely to be a fungal infection and got him the name of some Brazilian anti-fungal products that he should look for.

The first pharmacy we went to we found in the airport in Belem. Ted showed the man behind the counter his hands and asked for some anti-fungal cream. The guy turned around, picked up some milk of magnesia on a table behind him, and told Ted that the problem was his liver and that he just needed to clean his blood. Wikipedia tells us that milk of magnesia is primarily used in alleviating constipation but can also be used to relieve indigestion and heartburn. We left without buying anything.

Later, in Rio, during a particular bout of diarrhea, I went to a pharmacy looking for a specific Brazilian product. I know from my experience with American made products for this purpose that some of them require an empty stomach and lots of water. I asked the woman behind the counter about these factors with this medication, and she said with an uncertain smile that I should take it with soup. Soup? Maybe American pharmacists don't know everything about every medication that they give out, but at least they have a database of information on their computers or a print-out or something that tells them what to tell the customer, so at least somewhere along the line, information is obtained by somebody who knows what they're talking about.

Something else that I liked was that a lot of pills of different kinds don't even come in boxes, they're just in their little foil-punch packets in baskets along the walls, grab-bag style.

Beautiful Belem

2007-05-03T23:35:00.000-04:00

Belem is a city located at the mouth of the Amazon River on the east coast of Brazil. It is known for its beauty and is a popular vacation spot. Or so I have heard. Although it was way better than Manaus, it was still a shithole (The only city worth going to in Brazil is Rio, which is fucking awesome). There were many places where the street looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Just big craters everywhere, surrounded by chunks of cement scattered into the street. We actually saw a turd in a shoebox.

One day, while buying fruit, we spied a completely naked woman walking down the street with a limp and a slight grin on her face. Her hair was one big knot. I had seen this woman the night before, sitting amongst a bunch of plastic bags and couldn't tell at the time whether she was male or female.

(Ted's Photo)

Sex Tourism is for Lovers

2007-05-01T11:46:00.000-04:00

While on a boat on the Amazon, I met the epitome of who every Brazilian parent fears. He was a Ukrainian guy from Canada (strikes one and two) who was in Brazil on business. He sold land in the rainforest to Americans for farming, pure evil. We were first introduced to this guy when we stopped in a port of a small town on the Amazon and he was swimming around among the floating garbage. He kept trying to climb up the side of the boat and kept falling back into the garbage water. Anyway, for some reason he took a liking to Ted and I and decided to volunteer his story. He was traveling with a young Brazilian girl who he said he "found under a rock somewhere" and who "clings to him like a crab." He told us that he he had a wife and kids back home in Canada and many girlfriends in Brazil. He liked Brazilian girls because they don't care that he's 45 and they're much younger (strike three). The one he was with barely looked like she passed for 18.

One morning, he was complaining about how his girlfriend slept through breakfast and wanted him to buy her a soda. For some reason he thought we cared. He refused to buy her a soda, telling her to drink water. He went on to tell us how he would haggle prices with the poor Caboclo kids trying to sell cheese and bread on the boat at the ports, even over a few cents. Maybe he thought this would make him seem cool to us, who knows. It's always strange when people come up to you out of the blue and give out far too much personal information.

I later saw him throwing change off the top of the boat into the canoes of the begging Caboclos in the water down below. Most of the coins would hit the curve of the canoe and go careening off into the river, leaving few remaining in the boat to be collected. I'm pretty sure he liked it much more when the money went into the water than into the bucket of the beggars.

I Know a Guy Who Knows a Guy

2007-04-25T18:44:00.000-04:00

Manaus is a city, smack in the middle of the rainforest, surrounded by thousands of miles of jungle in every direction, there are three roads that go in and out of the city. The people who live there know the jungle pretty well, both as a source of income and recreation. Here is a story that a resident told us while we were there:

"My friend and I were on one of our many vacations in the jungle. My friend was bathing in the river when he felt a pain in his ass. He discovered that a large Anaconda had sunken its teeth into his buttcheek when the snake wrapped itself around his body. He struggled to get free, but the snake was strong and heavy. He was going up and down in the water, losing his head under the surface many times. My friend's arms were free, but even with the use of his hands, he couldn't do anything to save himself. When he finally gave up and allowed the Anaconda to drag him under for the last time, his arms were up above his head and I was able to grab his hands and pull him out of the water onto the bank. We killed that snake."

All Brazilians Love Anal Sex

2007-04-24T19:59:00.000-04:00

While I was living in Salvador, Brazil, I was staying with a girl that "just didn't know how to say 'no'" in her own words. She was real Jewy looking, which is a look that Brazilians apparently love, because she was literally hooking up with a different guy almost every night. This girl was not someone that most Americans would consider attractive, very pale skin (the most attractive quality by Brazilian standards), dark hair, and awkwardly skinny, pretty damn similar to Olive Oil, Popeye's girlfriend. Then again, South American men are animals and will fuck anything.

Many of the residential streets in Salvador were small enough that you could carry on a conversation easily with the neighbors across the street. Here is Ted doing just that:

Through an interaction very similar to this one, Olive Oil met another one of the neighbors from across the street. We were hanging out one night when she came into the room to tell us that the neighbors were coming over. We were just sitting around drinking anyway, so the more the merrier. They showed up and we tried to communicate with them, they spoke some English and we spoke some Portuguese. Things were going well. We went out and invited the neighbors, one of which came with us.

After a while, the neighbor and Olive Oil decided to call it a night and kind of ran away, holding hands. We didn't see Olive until the next afternoon. She didn't look well. Some of us were going to the beach and we invited her to come along. She claimed that she had a fever and that she was going to spend the afternoon in bed.

I found out later that Olive Oil hadn't actually been sick that day. What had happened was that the neighbor had fucked her in the ass and she was in too much pain to even walk. We all thought that was pretty funny.

She also made out with one of these guys one night, I'm not joking:

Masturbation by Breaking and Entering

2007-04-23T13:57:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I had to break into my own apartment. It gave me the willies. It's not important why, but my keys were on my desk in my room, instead of my pocket; I could picture them with the green bottle opener key chain, sitting there, motionless, as I sat on the front steps outside my door.

I was able to get through the main door to the building because it was unlocked as I had planned. What I hadn't planned on was the complete absence and unresponsiveness of my roommates. After reaching the apartment door and discovering that it was locked, I attempted to call my roommates, hoping that maybe I could interrupt one of them from making out with their boyfriends long enough to open the door. Nobody answered their phones, and I got no response by knocking. I started taking out a credit card to pick through the lock but remembered that we deadbolt it, otherwise it won't close. I also thought about how I could possibly communicate with our pitbull and have him miraculously unlock the door from the inside. Also, the landlord's business downstairs was closed for the night, so he was gone and couldn't let me in.

I sat down to wait. After about 2 minutes I realized that it could take hours for either one of my roommates to get home, and I had to change clothes and be somewhere. I decided to act, I had a plan. I saw the fire escape ladder leading to the roof. There was no lock or alarm on it and the bolts were already unscrewed. I climbed the ladder, pushing the heavy cover up and away and letting it drop. When I got to the roof I already felt a sense of accomplishment as I felt to cool night air on my face and street sounds in my ears. I noticed that the hatch door had fallen in the middle of a bunch of empty champagne bottles on the roof, probably left over from last New Year's Eve, narrowly avoiding smashing a ton of glass. I got out and replaced the cover. I made my way to the fire escape on the outside of the building. For some reason I felt frightened, even though I had been on my roof plenty of times before. What would people think if they saw me fucking around up there at night? I walked to the edge of the building and climbed down the rusty, metal ladder. I got to my landing and looked in through the window into the pitch-black apartment. I didn't see the dog. Luckily, it had been a nice day and the window had been left open a crack. I knew that I was home free. I pried open the window screen and slid open the glass window. Where was the dog? I would expect him to be there either trying to attack the intruder or wagging his tail when he realized who it was. I called to him, hoping to avoid the former (it has happened before), there was no response.

I cautiously slipped one leg in through the window, waiting for a bite. The other leg followed. I was now in my silent, dark apartment and I really felt creepy. It didn't even feel like my home, the air was different. I quickly turned some lights on. Where was that worthless dog? It wasn't the typical time that he went out for his walk.

I didn't even know what to do with myself, I forgot what I had come for, I felt so strange. There was a sense of relief that I had made it into my apartment so resourcefully, but the accomplishment was clouded by the much stronger eeriness. I walked around the apartment a couple times and everything came back. I got my keys and the bulge in my pocket felt really great. Mission Accomplished. I got the fuck out of there.

Before I left, I made sure that the kitchen window was closed completely and that the hatch door to the roof was completely screwed down. I didn't sleep at home that night.

I Wanna Be Your Dog

2007-04-20T13:53:00.000-04:00

There is a point of drunkenness that people reach where they are barely human beings anymore. Two good buddies that I saw hanging out with each other during Carnival were drunk enough to be acting literally like animals. One guy, fat, bald, with beady eyes, was holding back his mustachioed friend who was trying to attack some members of the riot police. He was drunkenly oblivious of his own actions because there was no way his dumb ass would walk away from a fight with 5 guys with helmets and nightsticks.

The violent friend was attempting to chase after the cops who were trying to ignore him. His balance was so bad that he started to fall over while Baldy tried to hold him up and back. Mustache kept reaching for the cops as they walked away. Angry at his friend for preventing him from a fight, he bit Baldy on the forearm, it looked funny with his mustache. Mustache fell to the floor. Baldy straddled him with one leg on each side and held him up by the back of his collar. It was like a pitbull on a chain. While straddling Mustache, Baldy smacked him in the back of the head really hard, it was almost becoming sexual. Baldy looked really pissed though, annoyed at having to deal with this bullshit. He just stood there for a while looking off into the horizon with his little beady eyes, still holding his friend by the collar, who might have been taking a nap.

I saw those guys at different points two more times that night. Once being led by the cops through the crowd with their arms twisted behind their backs and another time being strip searched (I’m not kidding) in the middle of the street. They were individually in partial stages of undress surrounded by police who, in turn, were surrounded by the festival. I didn’t stick around to watch.

Choque & Awe

2007-04-18T17:52:00.000-04:00

Carnival in Brazil is a massive celebration that every citizen of that country waits and plans for all year long. The less money a society has, the crazier the parties. What do you get when you plan all fucking year for a weeklong party that is the only escape from your life of poverty and depression? A festival of chaos full of piss, blood, sex, alcohol and police brutality, all set to music blasting from semi trucks so loud it creates wind. The only possible way to enjoy oneself during Carnival is to be as drunk as possible. I don’t know how many people died in Salvador, which is where I was celebrating, but the day after it ended, the newspapers reported 37 people dead in Manaus, and that’s a small city. I personally witnessed more blood and violence in five weeks in Brazil than probably in my whole life. There was a lot of this:

The riot police during Carnival were a phenomenon, not only were they ineffective in preventing any violence, but they greatly contributed to it. There were stands built around the city for them to hang out in, most often they were vacant.

(Photo courtesy of Ted)

On patrol, the cops would walk through the crowd, single file, in groups of about five or six. They wore all sorts of different uniforms, ranging from what you see above to dayglo orange. My favorite was the Choque (Shock) Patrol. They had lightning bolts on their helmets and massive rainbow colored nightsticks like small bats. Mostly, the cops just walked around trying to look intimidating, a lot of them were fat, wore glasses, some were even women, but they all kept as stern a face as possible. Rather than make any arrests, they were much happier to punch you in the head and be on their way. Often enough, however, you could spot a couple cops escorting some bloody motherfucker through the crowd with his arm held behind his back. We were so sick of trying to get through these crowds that my friend, Ted, and I each independently thought of punching some police officer just so we could be escorted out of there (we didn’t do it, girls like my face free of scars).

At one point, tired of navigating through the massive crowd, we spotted a large group of cops all hanging out together. We hoped to take a breather by waiting around with these guys. At least I would hopefully have a break from people grabbing my ass, trying to pick my pockets. Suddenly, in the middle of this group of at least 20 riot police, a fight breaks out. Nightsticks were raining down in the center of the group and cans of beer were flying through the air. See? Completely ineffective. We got the fuck out of their and lived to fight another day.

Sure, I Love Kids!

2007-04-17T17:23:00.000-04:00

Everyone goes to

Brazil

to fuck minors. Child prostitution is a big problem

, even the little kids selling candy on the street have pimps. An old roommate of mine went to Rio a few years ago and paid two 16 year old girls to have a threesome with him. Brazilians are aware of this problem and don’t like it. The thing is, young Brazilian girls are GORGEOUS. Thirteen year olds look like 24 year old supermodels. They develop like rockets. One can’t help but lust after these things. There are signs and brochures everywhere, even in restaurants, reminding you that having sex with children is a crime. A man in a tourist office in the Amazon looked me square in the eye while he handed me, and only me, this one. Apparently I look like the type of person who likes to have sex with children:

Basically, it compares child prostitution to sport fishing, saying that if you understand how fish need to be maintained to provide for good sport, you understand that Brazil’s children need to be maintained for Brazil’s future.

The Good Old Days

2007-02-08T21:05:00.000-05:00

There were two guys while I was growing up that I considered my best friends, that I would hang out with more than anyone else. One ended up going to art school and now he’s always looking for work. He’s an excellent illustrator.

The other one was a strange kid. He was the first of us to start smoking pot. The first to find porn, which he drew little pictures on, like cartoon eyeballs on the vaginas. He was the first to have sex. He used to cry every time he got drunk. It was weird but came to be expected after a while. He had a massive mole on his jaw that became cancerous and had to be removed. His father was a cop and his parents were always yelling at him, even when I was at his house.

This kid had a girlfriend who was really pretty and really sexually charged. He was not her first boyfriend, but she was his first real relationship. He had had an earlier “girlfriend” who had previously been with a guy who eventually came out of the closet, which I always used to think was funny.

So this sexy girl was constantly in the mood. She had a screwdriver that was kept in the kitchen drawer that she used to masturbate with, using the handle, not the scary end. She also used to make out with her younger sister (who was also really pretty, but didn’t look at all like her).

I remember one time when we were at a party I was talking to both of them when they told me that they liked to make out with each other. For a split second I was like “Yeah!” but then I remembered that they were sisters and I got a sick feeling inside. I pushed that feeling away and told them to make out with each other right there. They were hesitant at first, but not much, and got into it. By the time they finished many people were watching but they just looked at each other and giggled shyly as they wiped the saliva off their chins. Then I went to talk to my friend who was inevitably crying.

I moved away during high school and didn’t really keep in touch with either of those kids. The only way I know that the one went to art school is because he moved to New York and I ran into him accidentally. He told me that the other kid failed out of college and was now a junkie-alcoholic, living in downtown Buffalo, NY (which suuuuuucks) taking classes part-time at a community college.

Double Your Fun!

2007-02-02T12:59:00.000-05:00

Don't ask me why, but one night I found myself at Bungalow 8, sitting at a table with the Olsen Twins, having a grand old time. My girlfriend was taking pictures with her digital camera for a little bit until one of the Olsens (I don't remember which one) noticed and demanded, in the most polite way, to see the pictures. She proceeded to delete any pictures with her in them, saying that she couldn't have pictures of her smoking. She missed this one though:

Anyway, we were wasted and it was time to go. I took the initiative to get up, put my coat on and approach the door. Apparently the Olsens weren't done partying. Ashley or the other one was all like "Hey... Don't go... Come back...!" I laughed it off, when, out of the shadows, comes her GIGANTIC black bodyguard. He puts one hand on my back, spanning the width of my shoulders, and pushes me back toward the table, saying in a gruff voice "She wants you back there!"

I wasn't allowed to leave! I was at the mercy of a tiny little girl with a big bodyguard.

You know how it is when you're drunk, tired, borderline miserable and all you want to do is go home? That's how I felt at that point. Plus I was a little afraid now. When and how was I going to get out of there? I sat back down next to my girlfriend, across from the Olsen. By this point, all of our friends were gone so we were left alone to fend for ourselves. I spoke out of the corner of my mouth "We've gotta go." My girlfriend got her stuff together, got up and started walking toward the door. I hastily followed, expecting at any moment to be yanked by the shoulders and set back down at the table like a doll at a tea party. Thankfully, we escaped without issue, but I was really nervous and felt like I was doing something wrong. I was kind of shaken up after that.

Hello?, Hello?

2007-02-01T18:37:00.000-05:00

Have you ever had to call a friend at the psych ward? I have. Multiple times. The patients at Belleview have discovered a way to really irritate the normals who call asking to speak to another patient. It gets you the first few times because it sounds like some sort of technological malfunction until you realize that it is inconsistent in its timing and that it happens to EVERYONE who calls. For whatever reason, patients have direct access to the phone they use to make outgoing calls and receive incoming ones, it isn't monitored by the staff or anything. So I call up trying to check on how my friend is doing.

"Hello?..."
"Is So-And-So there?"
"Oh... No... I'm her roommate, she's not here anymore..."

I knew this was false because I had been speaking to my friend for a while and knew when she was due to leave. So I said thank you, hung up and called back. I got some other weirdo who told me to wait a second while he went to find her. Aside from the fact that I was knowingly calling a mental institution, it was easy to tell that these people were nuts just from hearing them say a few words.

So I'm waiting for the guy to return, or for my friend to pick up the phone, when I hear this ultra high pitched screeching from the phone. It was so loud and painful that I immediately ripped the phone from my ear but still had lasting pain. Holding the phone to my mouth checking if anyone was on the other end, I could easily hear the noise. After a time of it continuing on, I just hung up. I tried calling again and instead of hearing a voice it went straight to that awful sound. My ear was in serious pain. I thought the noise was a result of me using a cell phone. I later tried a landline and the same thing happened. Some loon would answer and, shortly after, the noise would start. They were all in on it and they all loved fucking with the friends and family of each other. About half the time I would get in touch with my friend, sometimes without hearing that sound, but most often they would do whatever it was they were doing to produce that noise until my friend would answer or I would hang up. My friend never figured out how the other patients were causing that noise.

All Asians Know Karate

2007-01-28T14:27:00.000-05:00

Walking down the street in New York City, there is no shortage of delis from which to purchase wares. I am partial to the Asian-owned ones because they are often cleaner and for this reason:

I was walking along one night when I noticed a commotion on the sidewalk. Some giant black guy was stomping around outside of a deli shouting at the people inside. He was pretty pissed off, swearing and yelling racial slurs at the Asians, threatening to sue them for discrimination. There was what might have been a metal bed frame propped against a garbage can on the corner which he picked up and slammed on the ground, screaming. As he did this, he almost hit a bystanding girl in the face, coming so close that had she not ducked out of the way she would have gotten it full in the teeth.

By this point, there were a couple Asian guys and a whole bunch of Asian counter girls gathered at the storefront (it was a large deli). They were calmly watching this guy take out his aggression until he slammed down the bed frame. Suddenly, this guy comes running out of the deli. Tiny, literally half the height of the black guy and 0bviously an employee of the deli, with his apron tied around his waist, a bowl cut and thick glasses. He runs straight at the black guy with full speed, leaps into the air and lands a flying kick square in the middle of the black guy's chest.

I hope I'm painting an accurate picture here. For this little asian to hit this black guy in the chest, he had to have reached a point high enough in the air that he could have cleared the top of his own head. This flying kick had picture perfect form, one leg extended out in front with the other bent underneath it, pointing in the same direction. It couldn’t have been choreographed better. It looked like he was held up with invisible strings as he soared through the air. Think Liu Kang’s impossible type moves from Mortal Kombat. There was no fear in this guy’s eyes, only anger. His landing was just as perfect as the rest of it. He bounced off the guy and landed on his feet in front of him in a fighting stance with his fists cocked, ready to pull out some more awesome moves I’m sure.

The amazing thing about it was that the black dude was completely unfazed. He didn’t even stumble on his feet. This beautiful kick had absolutely no visible effect on the guy. He escalated his threats to sue the Asians, explaining that now he really had a case since he’d been assaulted.

Actually, maybe it’s wrong to say that the kick had no effect, because the guy did start inching away, walking backwards into the street, yelling about how he was going to look for a cop.

The fight appeared to be over so I left the scene. I was so riled up after witnessing what I had that I felt like I had just been in a fight. The adrenaline was pumping and I was filled with excitement. One witnesses plenty of fights in this city but I have never seen anything as incredible as that one before or since.

I bet when the little guy returned to the store he wasn’t even commended. I bet the most he got was a grunt and a nod from his stern-faced father, the owner of the deli, while all his counter-girl sisters returned to work and he went right back to pricing fruit.

I Am Sooo Over Drunk People

2007-01-22T13:13:00.000-05:00

This isn't even a good story.

I was in Williamsburg on Friday night, when I met up with some friends and a friend of a friend that I can't stand. This guy, I'll call him '4', and a mutual friend were already drunken clowns by this point. 4 was walking along and kinda stopped in the middle of the sidewalk in front of some stranger who was walking in the opposite direction. There was a tense moment for about 1/1000 of a second until 4 moved out of the way. We continued down the street. 4 decided to stay behind and scream obscenities at the guy down the street, the filthiest shit you can imagine. All because he was the one who moved out of the way in their little pseudo confrontation. I suppose he felt slightly emasculated, and being drunk only added to the sense that he had to preserve his dignity.

So the stranger was well on his way down the street, probably having entirely forgotten about the incident, when he hears all this bullshit being yelled at him. Eventually, he and his buddy come trotting back. I see them returning and I say to 4, "Here come your friends" (by this point he had stopped yelling and caught up with us). The stranger comes right up to 4, winds up, and smacks him in the face! He then turns around and trots off with his friend. It was pretty funny. 4 was dumbfounded, he just stood there. "That guy just smacked me in the face..." As he slowly realized what just happened, he became more and more angry, wanting to go after those guys and get them, etc. He asked me my opinion and I told him that he had been asking for it.

That was the full extent of the fight, but for the rest of the night he kept telling everyone we ran into, strangers included, about how he was smacked in the face. He continually left out the part about him screaming at the guy down the street for no reason. His story consisted of "Some guy just came up to me and smacked me in the face for no reason." He actually said this. I really can't stand that guy.

Here is a picture of two people that I don't know, fucking on my bed while I was away, that I found on the internet (notice the garbage all over the floor):

That's Fucked Up

2007-01-19T18:47:00.000-05:00

People think I'm a jerk because of what I write about. Here are a few things that other guys, actual jerks, have said to me, so that, by comparison, you can see that I am not, in fact, a jerk:

"I like ugly girls because they appreciate me more."

"I like ugly girls because I can do whatever nasty shit I want to do to them in bed."

"Girls who have been sexually abused are better in bed."

DOGFIGHT!

2007-01-18T18:03:00.000-05:00

My roommates own a pitbull (shown below) who tries to attack every other dog on the street. My roommate's boyfriend wanted to be a nice guy one day and took the pitbull out for a walk. Not knowing the dog's tendencies toward violence he was unprepared when they happened upon another dog. The pitbull broke free and mauled the other dog (I don't know what type it was but it had 20 lbs. on ours). The boyfriend then mauled the pitbull to stop the fight, coming away with a fairly scabby face. THAT is how you stop a dogfight, you jump right in there and physically force the animals apart, not like the idiots I've mentioned in a previous post. Below is a letter written to my roommate by the owner of the other dog. After you've read it, ask yourself, "what was the point of her writing this?" It is a direct quotation.

S,

This morning you called to ask if my dog was okay, and I said yes, she will be okay when her wounds heal. Thank you for your concern.

However, a little while ago, I tried to take her for a walk to do some errands on 7th Avenue. We frequently walk on 7th Avenue. Bibi refused to go there. As soon as she realized the direction, she pulled back, would not proceed, and I had to take her back home.

So now, in answer to your question as to whether Bibi is okay, I say no, she is not okay. She is too frightened to take an ordinary walk on a familiar street. I wonder how I will take her to the park on mornings. I wonder when-and if-she will recover from her fear of a familiar street.

The reason she is afraid is because your dog-Logan?-targeted my dog. He got himself out of a collar and ran in to attack my dog without any provocation at all. Your dog intended to kill my dog-and would have if your friend had not endangered himself by throwing his own body on your dog to hold him down. And you believe your dog to be “innocent.”

Well, why don’t you turn the tables and have someone else’s dog attacking yours. What would you say about that dog. And if the owner of that dog defended his pet-as of course he would-you would probably recognize that that owner was in denial about the danger his dog presented. As are you.

You own a very strong dog who does what he wants to do. My dog was completely overpowered and desperate. Your dog now has a history of viciously and without provocation attacking another dog. Your dog has the smell of my dog’s blood in his system. What should I expect the next time they are in the same vicinity. Will my dog survive that time? And what if your dog decides on some other, weaker target? What will you say then. And are you so naive as to believe your dog will never attack again? It is your responsibility to protect others from your dog.

J

I Don't Wanna Grow Up

2007-01-16T14:44:00.000-05:00

Something that I hope I really, really never have to have is hip replacement surgery. I saw this guy last night who had just had it done and it looked awful. Although it wasn't really the hip itself that was causing the trouble that I witnessed. Complications arose from the surgery that had caused his bladder to bleed. Due to this, he had to have a catheter in place to urinate and for the nurses to irrigate his bladder (clean it out).

For those of you who don't know how a catheter works, I will elucidate. A catheter is a tube inserted through the urethra, in this case, because the patient was male, he had a big rubber tube put in through his penis. I don't know why they couldn't have made this thing with a smaller diameter, but this tube was soooo painfully large that his dick hole (medical term) was stretched open to at least four times its normal size. I couldn't tell if he had been cut to accommodate the tube because I didn't get too close and there was already blood everywhere.

Earlier I had heard this guy yelling "I'm Bleeding!" As six nurses and myself rushed into the room, but luckily it was only his IV that had come out, and since old people don't clot well, there was more blood than there should have been.

The catheter tube stays in place by inflating a balloon at the end of it once it is inside the bladder, this way it can't be pulled out. The guy was having trouble because the balloon wasn't properly inflated and things weren't flowing through the network of tubing properly. The apparatus in this case involved a couple huge bags of saline, the catheter, which split in three at the end, and a bag that was connected to a plastic box called a "urine meter" which I thought at first said "urine master," which would have been kind of funny, but it didn't.

It was time to irrigate this patient's bladder when we discovered that the situation wasn't right. You could see bloody urine in the tube but it wasn't moving anywhere as the saline was put in. Where was all this fluid going? It was coming out the end of his penis, and not through the catheter. Upon this discovery things started getting hectic.

The nurses are constantly sending me down for more tubes and bags that I have to keep repeating the names of as I'm walking through the hospital so I can say "I'm here for the KCJHN3W89 Tubing, or a 9ASFDJN Bag!" Back in the patient's room, there is blood, piss, and saline all over the place. The guy is periodically yelling "My Penis Burns!(pronounced 'Boins')" Whenever we tried to situate him properly on the bed, he yells "AH, My Leg!" At one point I was sent down for the wrong bag, but thankfully they were nice and didn't yell at me.

The nurses managed to reinflate the catheter bulb and stop the various liquids from leaking out and everything started flowing through the proper tubes and into the appropriate containers. The guy was thirsty so I held a little styrofoam cup with a straw for him to sip some water. He handled himself pretty awesomely for all the chaos that was going on, but probably only because he was fairly senile.

My friends make fun of me and call me a Candy Striper.

Don't Get Too Comfortable

2007-01-12T18:22:00.000-05:00

Here is a story that was told to me by the neuroscientist that I worked for that happened to a professor at another university. Primates are a common subject to experiment with because of their obvious similarities to humans. It can be easy to get comfortable around these animals if you have worked with for a long time, but it is important to remember that they are essentially wild animals that are unpredictable, blah blah blah. The particular monkeys that were being worked with have large fangs and a hand strength eight times that of a human.

So, there was this one scientist who had a favorite monkey that he would allow to run around his office unhindered while he was working. One day, the monkey went crazy and gouged out the scientist's eye.

That story reminded me of another eye-related science story that I learned in school. There was a scientist of physics or perception or something, who wanted to study the effects of the sun on the human retina. He closed one eye and stared at the sun until he went blind in that eye (he fried his retina, it can actually happen, your mom was right). Then he wrote a book about it. He thought he was gonna make some big breakthrough, but nobody cared.

Wrong Number

2007-01-06T15:04:00.000-05:00

J: Stephan, Stephan, You wanna blaze?

Indian Man: Fasjp asdknfi asdkfj wienac, asidfdaksdfl.

J: Ha ha. What? Stephan, lets blaze.

Indian Man: Oasdfjkasd asldkfja askdfoin. FUCK YOU!

[End of Call]

Dog Fight!

2007-01-04T21:14:00.000-05:00

I was walking my dog through the neighborhood when we came across a pitbull attacking a poodle. My dog and I were across the street, so we slowed down to rubberneck and assess the danger to ourselves if we were to continue on our way.

Why do people always stand around awkwardly impotent when their dogs are fighting? Why is the reaction time so long? I mean, this pitbull was chewing the shit out of this poodle, behind it, on two legs, with a good sized chunk of the poodle in its mouth, shaking like crazy.

After a bout of staring, finally, this girl starts calling the name of her dog, "Roscoe, No!" While her wigger boyfriend just stood there. After repeating that a few times with no success whatsoever, the girl says to the owner of the poodle, "He won't bite." I assumed she meant that Roscoe won't bite the man, because he was obviously already chomping the hell out of poodle.

So EVENTUALLY the owner of the poodle got a few good kicks into Roscoe and he let go. By this time my dog and I were already almost around the corner. I looked back once and Roscoe was standing, panting but relaxed, like nothing had happened, a little ways off from the poodle, while its owner inspected the damage done to his animal.

Here is a picture of my dog dressed as a Mexican:

Untitled

2007-01-03T22:10:00.000-05:00

Sometimes really obese women come into the hospital complaining of stomach pains only to discover that they have been pregnant for nine months and are ready to give birth. They have been pregnant for nine fucking months and didn't even know it because they are so fat. I wonder what it feels like to suddenly find out that you are going to have a baby today.

Be Gentle...

2007-01-02T13:19:00.000-05:00

I sprained my ankle not too long ago and the severity of the injury required a few months of physical therapy. Up until recently I have been working with the same little woman for most of my sessions. The other day though, she was unavailable at the scheduled time so I had to work with someone else. When I showed up at the office, the receptionist informed me of the situation and told me that I would be working with Jennifer (not her real name). As she asked if I had ever worked with Jennifer before I could barely detect a smirk on her face. I replied that no, I hadn’t worked with this person and sat down to wait for my appointment.

I heard my name called by a female voice and stood up to greet my new physical therapist. What I saw when I turned my head was a giant, muscle-bound, black man in women's clothing and long hair. “Hi, I’m Jennifer,” she said as she put out her hand to shake. All I could do was smile as I shook her hand, which both dwarfed and crushed mine.

Overall, I can’t really complain about Jenn’s work. Although she may have been a little rough at some points, her callused, meaty hands didn’t feel all that bad as they caressed my fragile ankle. I'll bet she doesn’t know her own strength. Plus, she kept singing along to all the easy listening that was playing on the radio, which kept the mood light.

Here are some pictures:

Suburban Life

2006-12-29T15:45:00.000-05:00

The other night I went to a dinner party that one of my mom's friends was having. It's pretty much expected that I'll be forced to go to these things when I go back home. The crowd at this one was exceptionally dull. Aside from both a father and son giving me the type of stare I only get when I'm walking through Chelsea, the night was uneventful. The conversation was utterly boring and separated by long silences.

One highlight though, was a discussion about our neighbors. At my family's home we have a neighbor who likes to avoid us as best he can. Once, he was inspecting our side of his fence when my little brother came home. In an attempt to avoid being caught on our property, he pressed himself against the fence, flattening his back, with his arms apart, as if trying to melt in with it, like someone in a spy movie. The thing is, he is a big, fat guy, and wasn't wearing camouflage so he wasn't hiding from anybody. My brother ignored him and went in the house. The neighbor probably came away with his adrenaline pumping and a real feeling of adventure.

This boring guy at the party had a good story about his neighbor too: This guy had been trying to plant a tree on the property line and had damaged an underground pipe belonging to the man telling the story. The neighbor came over to discuss things on the front lawn when a timer set the sprinklers going. Rather than jump out of the way of the water, the neighbor just stood there talking like nothing had changed, getting soaked the whole time.

Just Say No

2006-12-26T13:15:00.000-05:00

I was stocking gloves at the hospital when I met an emaciated little man who I first thought was a cripple . He was likeable enough, talking casually when I would come in, asking about the weather, etc. I went into his room after he had eaten to collect his tray and he was vomiting into a bucket. “I’m dyin’ here” he says to me. I told his nurse and she dismissed it as having eaten too much. I went in there again and he told me that he was going through withdrawal and that he needed some medicine. That explained the vomiting.

His body was so wasted you wouldn’t even think he could walk around to pan for drugs. I saw both a top and bottom set of teeth lying on the bed next to him. His gown was twisted all around him, with the bow around his neck in the front. He didn’t look at you straight while you were talking to him because he was legally blind.

As the night went on he got more and more whiny, calling the nurses' station more frequently. He wanted more meds. At one point he accused me of trying to kill him. He said “I need some medicine, the antibiotics suck up all the meds, it happened to a friend of mine so I know. If you told a doctor, he would get me more meds. I don’t care if its methadone (pronounced “meth-a-don”), morphine or what.” He said he wasn’t going to make it through the night. I told him I would look into it. I asked a nurse about his situation. She told me to tell him that the nurses were changing shifts and that he would have to wait for pain medication. In actuality it wasn’t his time for a dose. He was lying on his stomach while I was telling him this, his head hanging off the side of the bed. I told him to “hang tight,” or something equally corny, as I left his room, and I'm pretty sure he laughed at me. I didn’t see him again, but there is no doubt he will be injecting something into his veins again soon.

That night I also learned that the actors who played Mr. Winslow and his oldest son Eddie on the show "Family Matters" were both gay and that Eddie has AIDS.