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Archive for the ‘American thoughts’ Category

Blah, blah, blahg

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Angelina Jolie, International Adoption, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Older women, On getting older, Younger men on November 15, 2007| 2 Comments »

There are topics arrayed before me like so many tubs of ice cream at a Ben & Jerry’s, some even looking as potentially tasty as Chunky Monkey, but I haven’t the energy to dip.

You see, I’ve already written almost 2000 bloggity blog words … 1,811 to be precise… on three blogs, and although I do this most days AND manage to plop something here since it’s NaBloPoMo, today it’s simply not in me to wax on again about the fact that today is Mark’s birthday or the very interesting “All Things Considered” piece on race in America or the new blather on Angelina Jolie’s adoption issues.

If you’re interested in what I’ve written, you can check out the News Blog, the Older Parent Blog, or the International Adoption Blog.

I’m going to go for a nice, long shower and get myself smelling sweet, brushed and tidy so I can welcome my Birthday Man home in an hour. Once clean and dressed, I’m going to sit down and read to my kids until Daddy’s truck pulls up and we all run to greet him with smiles on our faces and joy in our hearts.

Oh, one thing …

This morning, Mark asked Sam if he had any presents for him. Sam answered, “Of course I do, but you don’t get anything until tonight!”

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My November Blues are green

Posted in American thoughts, Expat Living, Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles, tagged , , , on November 14, 2007| 1 Comment »

November is a tough month for me under any circumstance. Following directly on the heels of a Halloween that isn’t in this country, we have a Thanksgiving that isn’t anywhere I’ve lived since 1993.

Thanksgiving is … was … probably my favorite holiday; all about family and food, but without the pressure of gifts and parties. Important traditions run deep and wide, and emotions can run high over things that to an outside observer might seem a trifle, like green Jell-O.

From the beginning of time, my mother’s Thanksgiving meal included a Jell-o mold of green Jell-O with alternating pineapple slices and red maraschino cherries. One year … for some reason she never clearly explained, but one that must have had something to do with the onset of menopause — at least that’s how we’ll call it now … she took it upon herself to throw years of comfortable ritual to the wind and make an ORANGE Jell-O mold, with carrots.

Well! You can imagine how THAT went over.

Yes, the customs of Thanksgiving are dear to my heart, and I have now had to forego them for 14 years.

Sure, I try to revive them here, but my attempts are pitiful imitations, piffling forgeries of fowl, as many years no turkeys make it this far until just before Christmas, and they’re pathetic representations of the species most of which have known the frozen state for many years before I can even think of stuffing them.

I’ve learned to be grateful for a skinny bird topping out at 6 or 7 pounds … Cornish Game Turkeys, if you will … and have managed in recent years to coax flavor and enough juice for gravy out of birds that died in Russia circa 1999.

Because there’s no holiday on a Thursday in November in Seychelles, any Thanksgiving that I may pull together has to happen on a weekend, and no matter how long I live here that just doesn’t feel right.

Because there are very few Americans, the guests I invite never ‘get’ the holiday, and few have a clue even about cranberry sauce.

Worst of all, of course, is the fact that my mother, my grown kids — my daughter, with my granddaughter, and my son — my brothers with their wives and kids, are all sitting down on the other side of the world. They may not be at the same table, but they’ll all be looking at green Jell-O.

There will be more on this before the month is over …

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What sort of homosexuals DO you have in Iran, then, Mr. Ahmadinejad?

Posted in American thoughts, Celebrities, WTF?, Younger men, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 25, 2007| 4 Comments »

I like the Huff Post and go there a lot to check out the latest, almost never failing to find something that educates or amuses.

Because of where I live, however, I don’t get to take full advantage of the cool features today’s news providers offer like on-demand video. No, I just get the ‘quick read’ version and the headline.

On this occasion, that’s enough. Well, enough for blog fodder. I mean, really!, who can pass up as tempting a news canapé as Iran’s beady-eyed slip of a President announcing “We Don’t Have Homosexuals Like In Your Country”?

Okay, maybe one or three bloggers out of a zillion wouldn’t be tempted, but that wouldn’t be me on a Tuesday in paradise, especially when this pops up right after a read about the little git going on about the Holocaust being iffy and 9/11 deserved.

I will not, however, take issue with his pronouncement. Heck! I’ve never set foot in a Tehran Boy Bootie Bar, so what do I know for Persian Poofs?

He does invite speculation, though, doesn’t he? So, feel free to chime in any time with your own answers to the question Ahmadinejad begs: “What sort of homosexuals DO you have in Iran, then, Mr. President?”

I’m starting off with a guess that theirs are more likely to have facial hair, much like ours did in, say, the ’70’s when everyone wanted Freddy Mercury’s top lip hair. The style’s gone stale here, but they’re big on bristles in the Middle East.

Cross-dressing is probably not as big a turn-on for Iranian gay men, perhaps except for the chubby guys. After all, black IS more slimming than white.

I doubt that ‘outing’ is a big deal, either, since I understand that bum bumping with boys isn’t considered ‘homosexual activity’ — more a right of passage … so to speak. It’s not like repeated dips in the jeans pool is going to have anyone thinking you’re hiding something.

Could be that more Farsi Fags are married, and to more than one woman at a time even, and unlike American wives the gals aren’t likely to be tracking their hubbies down at dinner time and dragging their sorry asses home for their meat and two veg and quality family time with the kids. Hanging out with the boys day and night, night and day, is de rigueur, and what goes on between the buddies is no business of the biddies, so riding both the horse and the cow gets brownie points without the farm making the front page.

And that’s just a bit of speculation from me on the differences between American homosexuals and their counterparts in Iran. As I said, all additions are welcome, and anyone with first-hand information is encouraged to spill.

Hey! The president started this train wreck of thought, so we might as well go along with him.

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Marcel Marceau tribute … sort of

Posted in Celebs, tagged , , , , on September 24, 2007| 3 Comments »

Before attending to anything else today, before a word is written on any of my pro blogs, before I work out, shower, dress, before I do a thing other than get my kids off to school, I have to make a confession …

I hate mime.

From my days as a young child, I’ve hated mime. Clowns scare the crap out of me, and street mimes are more annoying than breaking a heel on a manhole cover. In fact, watching a mime is very much like a hasty navigation of busy sidewalks with a dire need to pee, no toilet in sight and one Jimmy Choo four inches shorter than the other.

Why does a well-loved art form (Who are those people?) bug the bejezzus out of me, raise my intolerance levels to just below the slapping point and set me spinning off in the opposite direction, even if that involves some Irish git blowing his lungs into a digerado?

First, we’ve seen it all. How many ‘walking against the wind’ impressions must one view in a lifetime?

Second, what’s with the whiteface? It’s cadaverous and grotesque. It freaks me out. And it looks SO greasy. Yes, I know it’s called GREASEpaint, but knowing the name doesn’t make it any less disgusting. Mouths surrounded by the stuff become revolting caverns of obscene pinkness is comparison, and those half-way-up-the-forehead painted eyebrows, although apparently intended to radiate expression and convey silent emotions, end up looking like a couple of over-enthusiastic punctuation marks in search of a sentence.

Third, as I tell my kids about twenty times a day, “You have a voice, so use it already!”

There are at least as many more reasons as stripes on a mime’s shirt to have the silent silliness of ‘man walking up stairs’ and such grate, but I’ll forego the lot to join the French … the French are big on mimes, well, French mimes, of course … and most likely Robin Williams, in noting the passing of Marcel Marceau who died this week at the age of 84.

Since the guy didn’t talk much, I hadn’t heard that he was big in the French Resistance and that his father died in Auschwitz, but I will admit that I’d never given much thought to where the world’s greatest mime came from.

Reading his obits, however, I have … too late, I know, but what would he care anyway? … come to appreciate much about Monsieur Marceau’s life, if not his art.

Wiseass that I am, however, my first thought on reading of his death was: How can they tell?

My second … wondering if he’s been posed in his coffin with his hands facing away from his chest, his palms forward in that “pushing’ position we all know far too well.

“Man in a box” has been done to death!

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Airport bathroom: Photo op?

Posted in American thoughts, The USA from the outside in on September 18, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Anyone looking for a hot new vacation destination might want to consider at least passing through the Minneapolis-St Paul International airport.

According to the BBC, the bathroom that was the scene of Senator Larry Craig’s bust for soliciting sex from a cop is now attracting tourists.

Yep.

“People are taking pictures,” Karen Evans, an information officer at Minneapolis-St Paul international airport, told Associated Press.

I have to admit, if I found myself in the general vicinity of that particular men’s room, I would be sorely tempted to send my husband in with my digital, although I would demand that he wash his hands before and after.

As it is, the BBC is doing it up. This sort of story is right up their alley … a little racy, a bit of poof, and any story that can be made to stretch to cover both wank and Yank gets it’s own headline for sure.

They’re quoting the shoeshine guy with the stand next to the lav saying, “it’s been crazy. People have been going inside, taking pictures of the stall, taking pictures outside the bathroom door.”

Classic.

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Taking the “tit” out of titillation

Posted in Adoption, Island life, Seychelles, The USA from the outside in on July 22, 2007| 12 Comments »

What is it with Americans and boobs?

I just finished posting a blog on the Adoption News page that included a bit from ABC on how some people view breast feeding in public.

Holy Victoriana, Boobman!

Four … count ’em FOUR … US states have laws on their books that make it illegal for a mother to openly provide comfort and nourishment to her child anywhere other than in her own home … and better she’s behind closed doors even there … or in a toilet cubicle should her baby need feeding while she’s out and about in the world.

Yes, to 57% of the American public putting breasts to their intended use is considered as unacceptable a spectacle as taking a dump. Seventy-two percent object to even having to witness the act on television, although I’ll assume they’ll make allowances for National Geographic documentaries on Namibian Bushman Tribes.

Here in Seychelles, boobs are everywhere. Not just the swaddled, strapped, perched, hefted and covered versions, but the bouncy, fleshy, stick-right-out-there … or hang-right-down-there, as the case may be … meet the twins, real things.

Bosoms are bared to feed babies on busses, at bus stops, in shops, along the road, in church, at funerals, while waiting in line at the bank, buying stamps at the post office and paying electric bills … basically anywhere babies get hungry.

It goes pretty much like this: baby fusses, mom opens her blouse, baby nurses, no one pays one bit of attention, except maybe to notice how cute the baby might be.

Tourists can’t wait to step out of their bras, too, as tanned tits are a prized souvenir of a Seychelles holiday. Beaches and hotel swimming pool decks are littered with matching sets of blistering boobs, and although application of sunscreen can get attention from any Americans in the neighborhood, no one else takes much from the process other than a prompt to renew their own film of protection.

Getting all het up over a couple of blobs of flesh-covered fat seems darned silly to most people in the world, especially when there happens to be a baby between the boob and what should be the casual observer.

It’s time to take the “tit” out of titillation, folks. In other words. GROW UP.

Here’s a link to information on breast feeding an adopted child. It includes another link to a bit about breast feeding fathers that some may find interesting.

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There goes the neighborhood …

Posted in Celebs, Island life, Seychelles on July 15, 2007| 8 Comments »

Bill Gates is moving into my neighborhood.

Yep, the quiet, sleepy confines of the part of this island I call home is undergoing some huge, noisy and ugly changes, and there are billionaires’ fingerprints all over it.

Hardly a day passes without me being jolted out of contemplative blog-writing revelry by a blast of dynamite shattering granite boulders behind my house to smithereens … the dogs and kids are really fond of these terrifying booms, as I’m sure you’ll understand … and like the cannons in the William Tell Overture, the explosions merely add emphasis to the buzz of chain saws, the roar of dump trucks, the shouts of 850 imported Indian workers, and the pounding thrum of dozens of machines designed to move mountains and turn forests into roads and hillsides into villas.

It’s a Four Seasons Hotel project that’s going in … a hotel, plus a slew of multi-million dollar holiday homes … a company Mr. Gates recently moved into major shareholder-ship in.

Not featured yet on the web site, we will nonetheless be surrounded by extremely rich people within a relatively short period of mega-construction time.

How these people are to integrate with the local population, or how they’ll avoid doing just that, are topics of most conversations around here, as you can well imagine. Somehow, folks don’t see these newbies shopping at the local SMB franchise and being philosophical about a temporary dearth of onions or butter or toilet paper or milk or yogurt or salt or sugar or … well, you get the idea: we often live without stuff some could get used to always having on hand.

Then there’s the issue of beaches.

MY beach … meaning the one at the end of the road where I’ve been splashing around at least once a week for the past eleven years, and Mark has enjoyed since childhood … is soon to be surrounded by $6 million private homes. Any guesses as to how the owners of said homes will react to Gay and I tromping through their gardens with our snorkel gear and the kids’ pails and shovels? Of course, to do that we will have had to scale walls and avoid snazzy security equipment, I’m sure.

And what about the pickup-loads of Sunday picnic people; those festive folks who descend on mass ladened with boom boxes and barbecues for a fun-filled day of drinking and dancing and volleyball? Will they be welcomed with open arms by the super-rich Saudis and Russians who are already putting deposits down on these properties?

Um. I don’t think that’s likely.

Of course, maybe I’m jumping ahead to a scenario that won’t play out. Perhaps everyone will chip in with necessities when the shops run out of stuff and be happy as happy clams to share the beaches as we have always done… and maybe Bill and Melinda will invite Mark and the kids and me over for sundowners on his veranda.

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Trainers for tots?

Posted in Family, Island life, Seychelles, The USA from the outside in on June 25, 2007| 1 Comment »

A weekend just came and went, and although I spent far too much time in front of the computer, the rest of my family was out and about in big ways.

Mark is clearing the lower bit of our land, so was up and down the hill like so many monkeys jumping on a bed, toting chainsaw and grand kuto … Sam on his heals, then running back up to be well out of the way if and when the call comes, “Timber!”, making the most of our acre-plus and the surrounding jungle. Cj, too small for a Tarzan impression, kept herself busy jogging up and down our road, scolding the dogs as she went along and stopping occasionally to examine whatever pretty rock or fancy bug that happend to cross her meandering path.

A few more hours outside saw buckets being filled and dumped, resulting mud puddles targeted for hops, skips and jumps, sticks tossed for dogs that have no inclination to fetch, flowers picked for mom, and assorted other vigorous activities of the fun kind.

A couple of hours on the beach had both kids running and jumping, chasing crabs and practicing cartwheels while loading their hair and ears up with sand as the days wound down, and some living room dancing had the whole bunch of us movin’ and a groovin’ before settling in for pre-bed quiet time.

A story in this morning’s news had me wondering, though, how parents in the rest of world manage to get kids to pass weekends in any sort of healthy fashion.

This in the Huff Post, reporting that nearly a million American kids have personal trainers, about had me gagging on my guava.

What kind of life is it when children no longer walk to school, play outside or ride their bikes, but instead need parents to fork out $60 an hour for someone to put them through paces in a gym?

it seems the whole concept of being a kid has changed drastically, and I can’t help but worry about this generation. Things do run in cycles, however, and this may just be a phase that will have its own backlash someday.

Maybe by the time today’s pampered kids hit their stride, a rousing game of Ring-around-the-Rosie will serve as an icebreaker at cocktail parties and tag will be an Olympic sport.

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Politics near and far

Posted in Adoption, Seychelles, The USA from the outside in on June 20, 2007| Leave a Comment »

A victim of my own success, I’ve now got the new blog gig over on the pro blog site I work for, Adoption.com, and am a bit busier than I like to be.

Don’t get me wrong; I like the work and enjoy having such a huge platform from which I can point out the idiocy of idiots and add up the moron quotient in spewed drivel. It does this old heart good to know that I’m doing my bit toward keeping the world somewhat livable … or at least managing to cause some irritating rashes to break out on those who attempt the opposite. It’s not a pleasant thing to pull off scabs and get pus oozing, but that’s often what it takes to eradicate dangerous rot.

But the point of this post has bifurcated prematurely; it’s politics I set out to write about today.

Monday was National Day here in Seychelles, a big deal of an event that marks not much of anything but is celebrated with hoopla nonetheless. It’s one of three public holidays in June and falls between Liberation Day … the day of the coups d’etat that toppled the government of the first president … and Independence Day.

The President’s National Day speech is always eagerly anticipated, as it often gives clues to what’s ahead for the Seychellois. This year we learned there are changes in the wind for tourist-related business, which sounds good, and if they figure out how to get the site right, you can read the whole thing in English here in the Seychelles Nation newspaper. (Don’t count on it, though.)

My editor on the Adoption News blog wants me to gather info on presidential candidates in the US race for 2008 … an assignment that has me realizing how far removed I am and how long I’ve been away from the States.

I mean, really! Who are these people?

Of course, I know about Hillary and Rudy, and Edwards, Biden and McCain have familiar faces even to me, but although I know him now Obama did seem to pop up like a genie from a lamp. And Kucinich? Brownback? Mitt Romney?

Have we ever had a candidate called Mitt before?

That reminds me of the repeated process of learning to live with a new name in the White House. Anyone remember how odd the combination of the words ‘President’ and ‘Clinton’ sounded before Bill moved in?

I clearly recall people saying that ‘Reagan’ could never seriously be attached to the title, and ‘Bush’ just sounding silly.

So a G.W. was no leap, as a Hillary wouldn’t be … we’re all accustomed to the rhythm and cadence of their last names tacked on to leader of the free world … but we’ll get used to making easy reference to whoever ends up in the job.

Well, there are a few names that should never be conjoined with the title … I’m thinking Limbaugh, Liddy and Hilton, off the top of my head.

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Paris Hilton = Brain Death … be afraid!

Posted in Celebs, The USA from the outside in, WTF? on June 9, 2007| 2 Comments »

I am APPALLED!

Really, folks … can some please tell me WHAT IN THE HELL is going on in America these days?

When today’s perusal of the newsal pops up with this … the Huff Post’s report on Paris Hiltons’ failure to pitch a hissy grand enough to keep her out of jail … what can possibly follow but a jaw-drop, a head-scratch and a WTF?

I am suddenly so pleased that the loop in which this spoiled brat of a nothing special is focal only rolled into my world a few weeks ago … not being at all familiar with a Paris Hilton that isn’t a hotel … and can’t begin to comprehend, “… paparazzi sprinting in pursuit and helicopters broadcasting live from above …”.

Let me get this straight …

This pampered young woman, a life-long recipient of special favors and undue positive attention who may very well be accustomed to having staff whose job it is to take whatever punishment has been deserved since she was old enough to shout orders at underlings, gets busted.

She’s given parole. While on parole, she gets busted not once, but twice for the same dangerous and totally illegal behavior. A judge decides she’s just not grasping the whole consequences thing, so ups the ante by putting her in what is likely the first time out of her life.

Being that all this takes place in L.A. where every nobody would give their left leg to be a somebody, even if everybody agrees that nobody is ever all that impressed with anybody because they’re all so busy trying to impress everybody else so nobody is looking at anybody but the somebody everybody already knows, this modern-day ZhaZha (No offense … I could have easily used Charo, but she’s a bit too talented for the comparison.) had the opportunity to talk or blow or grease her way back to Mommy … or at least to Mommy’s big house with all those people there who do what they’re told.

Now, a judge … that’s a guy who’s in charge of laws and stuff, so therefore able to make decisions … sends her back to the pokey, apparently unimpressed by tears and tantrums (Wow! He must be really tough!), and the scene carries more media weight than global warming or the discovery of a new planet?

Huh?

As if it wasn’t disturbing enough to learn that my home country now worships at the feet of the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Simon Cowell … a dawning awareness that had me asking a few weeks ago, “What the hell are you thinking over there making mediocrity so lucrative?” … do I now have to start accepting the fact that my compatriots have completely substituted absolute rubbish for sustenance?

Any idea where that leads?

I’ll tell you where it leads, and it’s not pretty … it leads to mental starvation and brain death. Keep this up for much longer and you’ll soon be putting morons in the White House and getting yourselves involved in un-winnable wars.

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