Spanish phrasebooks don't include things that they should. Maybe someday I'll write a phrasebook. The first page would contain:

• I know the American political system is screwy.
• Not all Americans are like that.
• Not all guys are like that.
• I swear I don't have a cell phone. That ringing in my pants is something else.
• Hello. Good day. I'm looking ( Read more... )

Spanish phrasebooks.

Three weeks now and I'm still doubling my vocabulary by the hour. (Well, by the waking hour, otherwise at that exponential rate I'd have exhausted the dictionary by now, of course.)

(I sleep a lot.)

Well, I've graduated from the online personals (it's amazing how large things sound when measured in cm) to warning labels on appliances and ( Read more... )

It's really the little things about living here that are a little odd. The bidets everywhere that no one uses. (In two apartments I viewed, they used their bidets as shelves for reading material. But they were embarrassed about it.) Pepsi cans have smaller mouths, the size they did the States 15 years ago.

And then there's my dishsoap:


( Read more... )

My roommate, the Chilean anthropologist, blares one of two things from his room: 80s music, or the Rolling Stones. Funny, I always thought the lyrics were
I'm only huuuuuuuuman
Flesh and blood, and brains...

But in fact they're:
I'm only huuuuuuuuman
Of flesh and blood, I'm made...

So, no brains for the author of this song.

...

( Read more... )

Damn. I bought calcium-enriched no-pulp orange juice by mistake. What a way to ruin a morning. It's like I'm drinking liquid chalk.

I'm not unemployed and broke in May! Now I'm just broke! Woot!

That's a gigantic load off my mind. Breathe. Deeply. Breathe. Deeply. Exhale.

It's not supposed to snow!

There have been two loud arguments this week opposing the non-binding war resolution making its way through Congress. These arguments aren't based on whether the Bush escalation is a good plan or not. Rather, they focus on absurd irrelevancies:

1. Al Qaeda will read the resolution and be emboldened by it. This is bad for America, and, further, ( Read more... )

To friends that keep me from doing stupid shit:

Thanks, guys.