Liquids? You have got to be putting shit in my pants, TSA. First off, banning something after the dudes have been arrested and their plot thwarted is FUCKING BACKWARDS YOU TWATS. If y’all were spending my hard-slacked tax dollares properly, first you ban something, then you thwart a plot. Not the other way around. I seriously believe soon we’ll all have to change into TSA-approved scrubs under the watchful eye of TSA ass inspectors at the airport, put into opaque hermetically sealed containers which will be loaded onto planes (what no longer have windows, in-flight service of any kind, bathrooms or air conditioning since terra-ists will be suspected of using line-of-sight communication, peanuts, free maxipads (sleds to you, Mark) or cold air (to drive a terra-generating heat engine) in any combination to wreak havoc) and flown to your destination with four F/A-18 escort planes and Red Chinese soldiers on board hired to poke at you with a rusty Tokarev SVT-40s to make sure you’re not having any fun whatsoever.
Stranger things have happened. We used to laugh at Matt’s craaaaaazy ideas about pissing into cars’ fuel tanks by the year 2000 and the Scroty-Toteâ„¢. Mercedes recently announced a method of injecting urea to reduce NOx emissions in their diesel engines so they would be CARB emissions compliant. Yes, urea. As in “urine” as in “to piss”. No word yet on anyone planning widespread adoption of the Scroty-Toteâ„¢.
Which is one reason why I ain’t yet nor do I plan to move to California, the land of fruits and nuts. I like my diesel car, especially that 11% of my fuel comes from locally-grown soybeans. It also seems to me that living in California makes you soft, much in the same way living in NYC makes you hard. Plus I like cold weather and the Midwest. And my dog. And this lamp, and this chair. And my yo-yo. And Martin being done with school. Again. I congratulate you, sir!
But I tell you what, there is one thing that frightens me on planes.
Motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking planes.
Apparently it’s quite hot in Berlin and there is no air conditioning at the hotel. Or at the conference, where people are hot enough in the lectures that they’re taking off their shoes to add foot funk to European swarthy body funk. No restaurants seem to take credit cards, which makes eating even more difficult than just being a vegetarian. Add in a craaaazy language you don’t speak with some folks being real jerks and I can see why she’s not having a decent time.
Hope you get to come home early, darlin.
I found out Tuesday that I’m going to China for work.
…tomorrow.
So instead of being at the office, I’m at home washing clothes and packing, which mostly consists of drinking beer and smoking cigarettes while the machines downstairs slosh and rattle.
None too thrilled about 3 days notice for a 10 day international trip over a 4 day holiday weekend, but I’ve been keeping my mind limber with a strict julep regimen.
Hopefully, my holmes Ray will be able to come over from Seoul and hang out next weekend. No promises, nor do I know what my itinerary over there will consist of. We’ll see how this trip turns out.
Maybe going to China for work, had to get pictures for the visa application.
(more…)
The spirals painted in the urinals in SeaTac are merely a suggested aiming spot, not a hard and fast rule.
Ganesh willing, I’ll be coming back ot sweet home Chicago tonight via a big silver pinstriped dong. In the meantime, you can read the crap I wrote last year in India. Obviously, it’s unfinished, has poor grammar and even worse punctuation. Shut up.
I’ll get around to writing more about India when I get back. Swear to Shiva. It’s nice, but seeing as it’s business travel I’m insulated from the rough edges of the country I so desperately want to explore.
(more…)
…except theirs is very different. As much as I loved Pulp Fiction, it is imminently clear that John Travolta’s unenlightened character was wrong about Europe, at least the parts I’ve been to. While I’m not exactly a jet-setting multimillionaire playboy, I’ve been in central europe for nine days several years ago and spent five days in London and another five in Iceland back in Octember (plus ten days in India last winter). And they got wholly different shit than what we got here.
Examples:
- Well-built small cars. For the longest time, all you could get in the US as far as small cars were shitboxes like Ford Tempos (which had a nasty habit of catching on fire). Over there? Hell, they can get all manner of amazingly well-built small cars. Things are getting better on this side of the Atlantic but they’re nowhere near the amazing selection and variety they’ve got. I’m on the prowl for a different, more fuel-efficient vehicle. They’re barely meeting my demands over here.
- Anti-climb paint. It looks like black, tarry oatmeal that you paint on stuff you don’t want getting climbed. Brilliantly simple. Never heard of it until we were in the hotel, sucking back cans of lager and watching too much BBC 4. Apparently it contains a bunch of slippery shit (banana peels, goose shit, vaseline) that is also very tacky, so it sticks to the surface you paint it on and to the would-be climber, but doesn’t allow them to get a good grip.
- Bizarre drinking laws. I’ve been told it is recently no longer the case, but while we were there, pubs closed at 2300. Being used to Chicago-style drinking, where one doesn’t even venture out until 2200 but can remain out as late as 0500, just won’t cut it there. We befriended some punters in a Highgate pub (a nice change from central London) and apparently the way they do things is to hit the pub straight from work, eat there (or get a curry takeaway) for dinner and stay there until last call. You still get in five hard hours of drinking but can still get home by midnight. How… sensible.
I could probably go on for hours about other shit (widely available and inexpensive GSM cell service, crazy savory breakfasts standard, indian takeaways on every corner, drinking in public or on the tube) but you really gotta experience it first hand. Is it any better? In some ways yes, in some ways no. What really matters is that it is different and perhaps helps you get a different perspective on things.
