I'm picky about who I sideline on this damn blog. I gotta have a FEEL for the blog, It's gotta MOVE me. This one looks damn promising...it intrigues me, so I'm gonna be watching it. This gal strikes me as pretty radical and besides, she doesn't seem to like men and that alone ALWAYS gets my attention. Her site is affectionately called: JUST BITE ME!

I wear a flyfishing hat with that aphorism emblazoned on the front.

God, I love it.

So!!! The latest news on the Jeeemeister front is my total immersion into the world of Yerba Mate. As you all know, Eve, my African princess, turned me on to the popular South AMERICAN ......NOT South AFRICAN...... pastime of Bombilla sipping the strangely exotic Yerba from a Mate gourd.

Well, traditionally for me, I tend to take new experiences to untested and wonderfully exotic levels of obsessive-compulsiveness. In following through with this tradition, I ordered three gourds (some of them rather ornate and relatively expensive), two bombillas (one with an Argentine seal and one gold-plated one), a kettle and not one, not two, not three but FOUR packages of Yerba.

Packages?

In the U.S. we are not on the metric system. In the rest of the world, a kilo is the standard dry weight measure. These packages are LARGE. Two of them are a kilo or 1000 grams. Equal to 2.2 pounds U.S., for all my North American readers. The other two are slightly smaller, at only 500 grams.

Doesn't mean anything to you, you say? Well, perhaps my PC to PC conversation with Eve tonight will ring true......

Eve says, "Oh my God! One kilo package will last me six months!"

So, Eve and I figure I am good for at least three years or more.

The thing is, I took a gourd, bombilla and a 500 gram package of Yerba into work today and decided to give it a try. Everybody said, "What the hell are you smoking?" as the apparatus tends to resemble a bong of sorts to the folks I work with.....that's what you get when you work with a bunch of ex-drug addicts.

The folks who tried it, myself included, all ended up making an awful face and commenting, "Yuck! It's bitter!"

Great.

So now I'm stuck with three years worth of bitter Yerba Mate. Knowing me, I will FORCE myself to like it and acquire a taste for it. Eve tells me that I will only gain from this experience and to forge ahead! Given her latest accomplishments in life, I have very little doubt in my mind!

-Jeeem-

SUMMER LUST

Got your attention again didn't I?

I am having an affair.




















The "affair" is with a Creative™ NOMAD Jukebox C mp3 player.

Herein lies another dilemma....

I don't ever read the instruction booklet so it may be a while before I return.

It's a guy thing

-Jeeem-

ANOTHER ROBBERY

Well, who woulda guessed? I go to pick up my laundry today and Bristol Laundromat has been robbed. This is one for the record books. Doesn't look like a (hee, hee) professional job though. Talked to Joyce when I picked up my laundry and she says,

"Did you see the door?"

I said I hadn't and went to go look. Appears as if somebody put their fist right through the glass.

"We've been robbed," Joyce says, adding "We know who it is."

Ever seen that show about the WORLDS STUPIDEST CRIMINALS or something to that effect? Well this one would qualify. Seems the culprit(s) were interrupted in their crime by the newspaper delivery man and off they went......

Leaving a trail of quarters to their hideout.

DUH!

-Jeeem-

ALERT!

Got your attention didn't I? Just wanted to let all my visitors to this site know that I have added a link up above, "SIGN MY DAMN GUESTMAP!!" or something like that. Shirl created a monster when she introduced me to the simplicity of HTML some two or three months ago. Now I'm an HTML'ing fool.

News on the Jeeem front:

Something crawled up inside my cat and died.

It's awful. The windows are open and the ceiling fan is whirling. I just got back from Cricenti's and have purchased Air Freshener. It's enough to gag a maggot. Yuck. Damn animal. I musta done something wrong and she's getting back at me. I swear I heard her laughing just a second ago.

Bill, the guy from the West, who has raped the forest across the street from me, remains a mystery. Word about the neighborhood has it that he was locked up for a few days in town and has a restraining order placed on him. I don't know the details but I'll continue to keep my ear to the gossip channel grapevine in town. He hasn't been back to do anymore raping except to occasionally drive by late in the evening....a suspicious act.

Poor numby Bill. He obviously does not understand that New Englanders handle things differently. I warned him of that when I first met him (having built a log cabin not far from here) but it appears he decided to do things here like they do out West. A mistake in New England. Word has it that a "Cease and Desist" order has been placed on him. Kinda reminds me of the old Western movies when they run somebody out of town.

A terrible outbreak of Yard Sales is occurring in the surrounding neighborhoods. The intriguing factor of this common Summer event are the signs. Yard Sale signs come in all different forms, sizes, colors, materials and verbiage. Some people get pretty inventive, spray painting "YARD SALE" on the junk hood of a car and leaning it against a sign post or fashioning a sign out of a piece of cardboard with an arrow pointing in the general direction of the sale.

Some people have no concept of direction. The arrow on the handmade sign points into a clump of bushes or in such a general direction that the driver has a variety of options in which to take. You follow the arrow, follow the signs down a country road for miles until it just peters out. No yard sale in sight. Sometimes signs fall down or get stolen. Sometimes the sign maker just takes it for granted you will figure it out.

Once you get to these sales, they are typically in the persons yard. The whole damn family is usually there, but sometimes it is a good excuse for Papa to take the kids and go fishing. Men usually hate yard sales. Either that, or the wife wants to get rid of them because she is interested in actually selling something. Men always want to get tough on prices, often standing firm on a $20.00 item when his spouse would have easily settled on $10.00 or less, if nothing else to just get rid of the damn thing.

Yard sales take many forms. Garage sales, Moving sales, Porch sales, Backyard sales, Breezeway sales, Driveway sales and House sales come to mind. Anything catchy to get the attention of the passerby.

Bartering is part of the fun of yard sales. Bartering is an international sport. I've done it in the Philippines, in Mexico and in China. It's fun. My strategy in the fine art of Yard Sailing, is to wait until the late afternoon when yard sales are getting ready to wrap up. I walk up to the huge box of books, peruse them a bit and offer to buy the whole box for .....say $2.00.

Strategy?

The box didn't sell and they want to get rid of the crap. Most of the time it works.

After the yard sale closes, hubby comes home with the kids and the fight starts.....

"Whadda ya mean you sold my Skillsaw for $5.00?"

"Those waders were worth at least $50.00! Whadda ya mean there were holes in them? They can be patched ya know!"

"I was gonna use that bowling ball!"

Yard Sales. An American tradition. Did you know that your yard sale is not an OFFICIAL yard sale unless you are selling a fondue set? Some people don't realize this. You're not supposed to buy them. You go to the yard sale and look for the fondue set. If you can't find one.....LEAVE. They are kind of like parsley. You don't eat the parsley on your plate, now do you? Ergo, you don't buy a fondue set.

Well, the WEATHER STICK is pointing downwards so we are gonna get some rain. We need it. It's pretty crunchy here. Hope you all have a great weekend!

-Jeeem-

SIGN JIM'S DAMN GUESTMAP

Okay! For those of you who have tried and failed miserably to sign my guestmap, I have a link for you to use. Yeah, yeah, I know this is cheating but my philosophy in life is, "Whatever Works." The difficulty you all have had, seems to be a browser issue. It does not work with Netscape like AT ALL but seems to work with Internet Explorer alright. Still, some of you are having no luck at all so here is the link ------->

MY GUESTMAP

Hope that works for you. A grand total of like four or five people have signed the thing, including me. It's pretty cool cause you can make yourself a little people icon and place it where you are on this earth, as well as leave a message for all to see and also put your countries flag on it. Cool huh?

Sign away little campers!

-Jeeem-

THE MYSTERY OF DRIVING AMNESIA

Somehow I drove from home today and arrived at work. I don't remember driving to work though. I was somewhere else completely. I remember turning onto Meredith Center Road and I remember pulling into the parking lot at corrections, but I don't remember the rest. How the hell did I do that? It's actually kind of scary.

Where the hell was I?

Who was driving my truck?

Wow. Seriously, I drove twenty miles and only remember two tiny little bits of it.

I'm sure we've all done it. I know I've done it before but not for a long, long time. Every morning I maneuver through complicated traffic congestion and avoid stupid moves of other, less alert drivers to avoid a collision.

Less alert?

Hell, how "less alert" can you get than driving while in a different dimension? I don't even remember what I was doing or thinking about at the time. I just remember turning and arriving. Weird.

I'd love to hear other people's stories about this. No doubt it only occurs on well-travelled routes....or does it? Where do we go? Is there a zone out there where we all stop and have coffee? Can you imagine a meeting place on a different dimension where all us drivers go, sharing conversation and maybe having a Danish and watching ourselves drive to our destinations?

"Hey guys! I gotta go! I've arrived!" says Bob.

"Bye Bob! See ya again Tuesday!" the crowd shouts, raising their Danish and coffee in mock salute.

Holy smokes. What if I'm right? Perhaps this is gonna be some paradigm shift and I'll get the Nobel prize for my Driving Amnesia theory.

It could happen.

-Jeeem-

What to post, what to post....

The heat here has been almost unbearable lately. Lawns are crunchy yellow and plants, shrubs and trees are dying. It is a sad thing to witness and no rain is in the forecast. My weather stick has had a hard-on for quite a while now.

Weather stick you say?

Yes. I own a weather stick. I thought I told you guys about it, but in re-reading my posts, I don't see any reference to it. The folks up in Maine make em. These are simple little sticks that you tack to the side of your house and watch them move, according to the weather. Up = Happy weather Down = Unhappy weather

Actually, we could use some.....Down = Unhappy weather ....right now.

When the mercury rises, the tempers rise.

Hummmm.

Temperature (Latin temper¨¡t¨±ra = due measure)
Temper = To strengthen through experience or hardship.....To harden or strengthen (metal or glass) by application of heat or by heating and cooling.

From the Latin temper¨¢re time, season.

Interesting. Interesting to me because I have a temper and lately I've had to keep it in check. Why? you ask.....well, I used to say that stupid people piss me off, but lately I've amended that statement. Now I say, "Stupid people at least have an excuse." So, it's the "so-called" intelligent ones that DON'T have an excuse for opening their mouths and allowing CRAP to flow out.

Many people hide their true stupidity behind a mask of intelligence. They blather on and on and on about crap that makes no sense except in their own heads, which serves only to make themselves feel better. Kinda like self-recognition. They use big words, get political, use fill-in smoke screens and blather on and on.....essentially to accomplish saying something that they could reduce into a couple of sentences.

You have seen, heard and read them.

Finger pointers....passive-aggressive prejudice.....bell ringers.....blamers who hide behind their excuse of free speech to condemn whole countries and try and sound like they have a big fucking solution to world peace. They accomplish nothing but pointing their sissy little mamby-pamby fingers at any country of their choosing, typically the United States, because of our so-called WORLD POWER status. Well, I have news for you. No matter where you go in this world, some ivy league grease monkey is gonna point the finger at you. Perhaps you should move to the fucking MOON.

Hey, if you can't run with the big dogs, then get the fuck off the porch!

These socialite intellectuals have no common sense. They blather on for days and sometimes weeks about, "Poor me, poor me," and rarely, if ever, truly do anything about what they are actually bitching about. They point the finger at other cultures, blaming other cultures or countries for their woes and slamming everything in their path to the glee of their own pseudo-egos. These cry babies do not have the true mental capacity to count their own chickens. They blather on and on and on about their elite social circles and their scholastic achievements and lapse into pseudo-political-tirades that truly make little sense.

HUMILITY

I've discussed it before. True humility holds no prejudice. It does not take intelligence to get it or to hold onto it. In fact, intelligence often destroys it or gets in the way of it. The only way you get it, in my opinion, is experience. You don't get it by blaming others or pointing the fingers at whole countries or cultures, no matter who their leaders are. Perhaps you do if you have a little Adolf Hitler in you though.

Temper = To strengthen through experience or hardship.....

Some people just can't see the forest for the trees. They do not have the capacity to look beyond their own nose. If you don't have humility or have not tasted humility, then you don't have a freakin' clue what the hell it is!

Temper = To strengthen through experience or hardship.....

Prejudice, either to race or origin, equals stupidity. If you are not stupid and have an education, then you have no excuse and therefore, you are doubly stupid. There is too much hate in this world and too many people who, if they took the damn silver spoon out of their damn mouths and took a look around them, might learn a thing or two. There are so many narrow-minded people out there who jamb all Americans, Africans, Europeans, or Whoeverans into one big ball when they begin blathering on and on politically, oblivious to whom or whose feelings they might hurt.

Yes, I am educated. I didn't have the money or the grades or the luck to go to some fancy school but the schools I have attended dole out academia bull crap just as thick as the ivy league and pristine campuses of the elite. I've read scores of books, studied for hours, obtained degrees and paid thousands of dollars.

BUT

My best lessons in life were not taught in a classroom. They were taught through life experience. They were taught through pain. I did not learn humility in school. I got a good dose of it in life though and I'm still learning about it through life.

I once sat through an individual session with a kid who had killed his best friend in an automobile accident. He had been drinking, the weather was bad and speed was involved. The vehicle flipped over and his friend was killed. When I sat and talked to this kid, he had just served five years incarceration for the offense of vehicular homicide. He was just a kid. I liked him. I have since put some thought into what it was that I liked about him.

He was humble.

Ever hear that old saying, "Bad things happen to good people?"

He wasn't a whiner. He wasn't prejudiced. He didn't whine and go off on that pseudo-intellectual, mamby-pamby pity-pot that I've witnessed lately. He was grateful for what he had and he dreamed of goals he wanted to accomplish. I prematurely told him about a young woman I knew about, whom I thought had some humility, but I was sorely mistaken.

It's gonna be tough for him. He is a felon now. He cannot own a firearm. He cannot vote. He will struggle advancing in a job or even getting a job. Why? Because he's a loser?

No.

Because bad things happen to good people.

hu · mil · i · ty - Lack of vanity or self importance : modesty, humbleness, humility, meekness, unpretentiousness, self-effacement, reserve, restraint, constraint, lack of boastfulness, restrained behavior.

That's a hard word to live up to. I remember watching the TV series "KUNG FU" when I was a kid. I used to get frustrated at David Carradine when he would walk away from a fight (restraint). I'd be yelling at him from my living room, telling him to, "Kick his ass Grasshoppa!" But Grasshoppa never did, unless he was pushed to a limit where he had to protect himself or someone else. He remained modest and meek until he kicked the living daylights out of someone. I always wanted to see the bad guy get the crap kicked outta him so he'd learn a lesson to NOT MESS with humility.

Another thing that pisses me off is when good things happen to bad people. But, my belief....as irreligious as it may be, is that if you are bad or you are ungrateful for what you have in life, you will get yours....in the end. Some people call it Karma. I call it, "YOUR DUE." Sometimes "YOUR DUE" comes NOT in the form of punishment put simply in living a miserable, unhappy life.

What a way to go....

Am I targeting a particular individual in this blog posting? Well, you might say so.....but, if so, they know who they are and they may or may not get the message. I'm also making a general statement because this is not the first time this has happened. True intellectuals don't talk about their smarts. They don't have to.

Have a nice day!

-Jeeem-

Today I told the boss I was quitting work early and going home.

"Why?" he said.

"The heat" I said.

Then, somewhere along the way I got the bright idea to purchase an air conditioner. I think it was somewhere around the time it occurred to me that "home" was just as hot as "work" was. Today was not just hot, it was miserable. Sticky, exhausting, lumpy, slow heat. The kind that drains you quickly. So, I plucked out one of my few credit cards I haven't maxed and got on the phone to check the balance.

"Whoopie!" Enough to buy two air conditioners if I wanted! Cool! (no pun intended).

Problem was, EVERYBODY is sold out. EVERYONE. Wal-Mart has been sold out for a while. The Gilford store has four of them, but they are the GAZILLION Btu ones that make icicles form on your eyebrows and only plug into a 220 volt socket. Even the famous HOME DEPOT is out of them...all of the stores.

By the way, that is the first time I've been to a HOME DEPOT and I can see why the Tim the Toolman types love the place. Too much mass confusion for me though. Being home-fixer-upper dyslexic has something to say for itself. I think they have just about everything in that store.

LOUIE TO THE RESCUE!

After calling Louie to ask how many Btu his air conditioner was, he offered to sell me one. He has three of them.

Correction.....

Had three of them

So.....now I've got a six thousand Btu, remote control, super duper, refrigerated, cool air thingamajig that is just about the best purchase I've ever made. I can feel it on my back as I type this. Whew! What a relief. The thought crossed my mind to even bring the thing into work tomorrow. It's not really that heavy. We'll see.

Stay cool folks!

-Jeeem-

UGLY ITEMS


























The World's Most Deadly Feast?

The Asians are at it again. I'm telling you, ugly things are not supposed to be eaten! This one though.....well, let's just say the Asian folk had to be into the sake pretty good when they thought this one up. They call this exotic dish "FUGU."

Fugu is referred to as blow/globe/puffer fish since it blows its body up. The kanji (Chinese characters) used to write fugu indicates "river pig." In western Japan, fugu is called "fuku," which means "to blow" or "happiness."

River Pig huh? Oh yum!

There is an old expression such that "I want to eat fugu, but I don't want to die" in Japan.

Those Japanese and their expressions....

Since fugu's poison can lead to instantaneous deaths of diners, only licensed cooks are allowed to prepare fugu. You must have special skills and knowledge about fugu to be licensed. Poisonous parts of fugu differ, depending on the kind of fugu. Because of the strict regulations, the number of deaths is decreasing.

Whoooo boy, now there's good news!

Fugu dishes are usually expensive. One meal can cost $100 to $200 per person at a famous restaurant. But there are inexpensive fugu dishes (from $15 to $20) available at some restaurants.

No way José, if I'm going out, I'm going out in style!

It's said that the most poisonous fugu, "Tora-fugu," is the most delicious. Tora-fugu is expensive and can cost over one hundred dollars at a fish market.

Why NATURALLY, who would have thought otherwise?

Nowadays, prepared-fugu are sold at grocery stores and online stores, and fugu are eaten at Japanese homes. Fugu dishes are becoming more common than they used to be.

In China a family is limited to one child to control the population. In Japan......

-Jeeem-

OUR FIRST FIGHT



























Eve and I finally had our first argument. Yeah? "So what," you say? Well, I don't do anything conventional you know.....

Eve is 8204 miles away.

Anyway, it's not important that I won. Nobody's keeping score.

Yet...

-Jeeem-

Emberton's at it again....

Dave reveals the truth about our computer chat acronyms, LOL, ROFLMAO and the like. Then he goes one further and suggests newer, more truthful acronyms like:

VABNR = (vaguely amused but not really)

GALF = (get a life funny-man)

PKFOTIPS = (please kindly fock off, this is practically stalking.)

Hey! He's progressing from "FUG OFF" to "FOCK."

This is good....this is good.

-Jeeem-

SUMMER CICADA



What summer means to me
by Jimmy Anderson

I remember the sun's heat beating down on my shoulders. Hot sidewalks and asphalt streets under my bare feet. Wavy water mirages on the road ahead of me. The smell of wet mesquite in the air, signaling the arrival of a rain storm. Bathing suits rolled up in a towel, heading for the local pool. Frantic touch football games on side streets. Racing after the ice cream van. Snow cone juice on my chin. Swamp coolers whirring on rooftops.

the drowsy buzz of the cicada....

The sound was so common that you would forget it was there. Occasionally one would get nabbed by a bird and the buzz would sputter out only to be replaced by another.

The empty carcasses....hollow shells of amber, clinging to the chain link fence or a tree trunk.

I heard one today....

buzzing away in the huge maple tree by my home and it brought me back to a time when life contained no worries, no concerns. Days seemed endless and nights brought only sleep that melted into another endless day.

-Jeeem-

HOKKIEN MEE

Gesundheit!

Kinda sounds like a Chinese sneeze. Not so. It's yet another Asian concoction that Charmaine has drummed up for us. Typically, Asian dishes contain an ugly item. I thought this one was going to be different until I saw:

1/4 lbs Squid, cleaned and cut up

Yuck. Squid is an ugly item. Even a shrimp is prettier than a squid. A squid looks like an octopus that somebody let the air out of. When people don't know what else to do with ugly items, they just toss them into really good dishes like hokkien mee.

-Jeeem-

Shirl is getting a tattoo.....

What is this world coming to?

-Jeeem-

FOOD SCULPTING

Well, since I've gotten on the subject of weird things kids do, I've been doing this mini-inventory of my childhood. Seems I did a lot of weird and semi-weird stuff....like food sculpting. It was a wonder I thrived when I was young as I didn't eat much. The only time I was hungry was after I had been swimming all day at Grandview Pool.

If I wasn't hungry, I sculpted.

Certain foods are great for sculpting....like mashed potatoes, white bread, cheese or jello, to name just a few. White bread can be picked at, forming holes (portals) and rolling the bread to form cannon balls, rocks, tree trunks and the like. Mashed potatoes can be fashioned into contemporary housing, castles, volcanos (gravy is a nice addition) and the like. Cheese, especially Swiss, can form lunar surfaces, asteroids, meteorites and contemporary housing. Jello? Use your imagination.

Kids come equipped with bizarre imagination. I was no exception.

I sculpted whole villages out of my food. My food couldn't touch except in these instances when I wasn't planning on eating anyway. Broccoli became exotic jungles of foliage surrounding hidden potato villas and jello huts. Bread people lounged about the village and plotted revenge on the cheese droids. I became engrossed in complicated scripts involving my food and plots to overtake the silverware clan.

Usually, my parents or my grandmother came along and removed my whole set, actors, actresses and wardrobe alike, dumping them time after time into the garbage bag in the kitchen. When they weren't pissed, I got desert. Ice cream was the best.

Ice cream shapes well.

-Jeeem-

WEIRD THINGS KIDS DO

Yeah, I know....I said I don't DO kids. Well, I don't, but that doesn't stop me from poking fun at them, now does it?

Kids do WEIRD shit. They eat dirt. They talk to imaginary people. They mourn their poopy going down the toilet. They collect boogers.

I know. I was a kid once.

Did you do anything weird when you were a kid? I did. My "WEIRD" thing only lasted about two or three years. I eventually grew out of it. It wouldn't have lasted that long if my parents hadn't been so damn co-dependent and enabled my weirdness. Actually, my weirdness had a sort of "lay over" effect into my adult life. Nothing a little Prozac wouldn't cure though.

My weirdness involved food. I wouldn't allow my food to touch. My mashed potatoes were not allowed to touch my broccoli and neither could be allowed passage into my pork chop territory. I ate out of plates that had little "compartments" to separate my food. I was careful while eating....something reminiscent of that game "OPERATION."

I vaguely remember feeling a certain level of anxiety if my food touched. I couldn't tell you how bad that anxiety was, but it was evidently bad enough that I remember being even more careful the next time I ate.

I remember my dad saying to me, "Just eat your damn food and quit playing with it. It's all going to end up in the same place anyway."

This sent me into a mild panic.

I hadn't thought of that. Surely my stomach was inter-compartmental. If I remember correctly, my father's statement required a certain level of rationalization and justification before I could eat normally again.

To this day I eat one thing at a time. I never mix.

Oh, the food can touch though! Yeah! It took several courses in Biology and Anatomy & Physiology before I got through the inter-compartmental stomach thing.

One thing at a time. That's not so weird.

I never ate dirt, couldn't stand to look at my poopy in the toilet and I never collected boogers.....that crap is too weird.

Besides, Dee Dee, my imaginary pal who lived in the wall heater told me not to...

-Jeeem-

I AM GOING BANANAS

Neophyte Psychology major to Dr. Sigmund Freud:

"Dr. Freud, do you realize that the banana you're smoking is a phallic symbol?"

...Dr. Freud takes a long draw on his banana, extracts it from his mouth and thoughtfully looks at his banana before replying......

"Ah you seely lad, sometimes a banana is just a banana."

***********************************************************

At least that's what I thought....a banana is just a banana.

Until reading an e-mail link sent to me by Annie.

It seems banana's (Pisang) are either,

Pisang mas
Pisang rastali
Pisang berangan
Pisang raja
Pisang abu
Pisang awak
Pisang nanka
or
Pisang tandok

cripes! A banana isn't just a banana anymore!

I sampled LEPAT PISANG (Steamed banana parcels) when I was staying in Mindanao and thought I was eating a snack made with plantain...perhaps I was. Little kids run about holding these rather bland snacks in their stubby little hands, peeling away the banana leaf to get at the pasty, starchy treat. I didn't much care for them but then my taste buds had been raked through the coals at this point, having sampled raw sea urchin, barong sauce and other fine Filipino delights.

Is that a Banana, Bananier Nain, Canbur, Curro or Plantain in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

The history of the banana and its tendency to produce mutations have resulted in an extensive number of varieties. When I began to search this subject, I became buried in information too numerous to mention here.

Too much banana info? Well, a banana aficionado never knows how much banana knowledge he or she might have to possess. There is always that emergency situation when a banana challenged individual attempts to make Goreng Pisang using a ripe pisang mas instead of an abu, a raja or an awak.

Silly fool.

-Jeeem-

THE MALAYSIAN SWEET POTATO CONNECTION

When I was a kid growing up in the desert southwest, I disliked a lot of foods. It is easier to list the foods I liked rather than the ones I didn't. I liked:

Tacos
Hamburgers
French fries
Fried Chicken
Steak (both barbecued and chicken fried)

That was about it. Trouble was, my parents had this ridiculous idea that I needed to eat vegetables and fruits to stay healthy. Yuck. Hell, if they would have fried them, I'd probably have tried them. Some days I found my plate filled with liver and onions. Liver and onions smells good while being cooked but it's a different story on your tongue. The other staple they tossed my way was the sweet potato. Looked like a big, orange turd on my plate. I'd poke at it, mash it, smother it in sugar ..... no matter how I dressed it up, it was still a sweet potato and I didn't like it.

Different strokes for different folks.

Have you ever seen a Malaysian woman spot a barbecued sweet potato from afar? It's embarrassing.

They love the things.

They look like big, burnt, orange turds. A sweet potato, that is. I just can't understand it. Different cultures have different tastes. I watched in silent horror as Christine, my Malaysian friend on the Forbidden city tour in China, freak out at the sight of a burning sweet potato. She stood there haggling with the sweet potato burner for a reasonable price before purchasing the thing, still smoking, handed to her in a piece of newspaper.

There I was, crammed into a tea house, participating in a formal Chinese tea ceremony while sitting next to a beautiful Malaysian woman gorging herself on a burnt sweet potato and filling the pristine ashtray in front of her with burnt sweet potato skin.

I'm still getting over it.

Help me here Annie!
-Jeeem-

EXTREME FILIPINO TUPPERWARE

The name is as American as apple pie.

Stuff it, snap it and burp it.

Earl Silas Tupper had the idea right to invent a product that every household could use to store it's leftovers. But it wasn't until after the introduction of the "hostess party" that Tupperware really rose to prominence in 1950s America........and the rest is history. We all remember the famous Tupperware parties our parents went to and in certain circles they can still be found today with a 2K twist to them.

Before I left to visit the Philippines I had corresponded with Cely and learned that she had traveled north to Butuan City with family members to attend a Tupperware party. I thought that was pretty cool and remember thinking, "Everybody knows about Tupperware!"

During my second week in Mindanao, traveling from baranguay to baranguay one particular day, Cely pointed out the window of the Jeepney we were riding in and said, "That's where we had our Tupperware Party."

I looked out the window to where she was pointing.

"Where? I only see a soccer field." I said.

"That is where it was." Cely said.

"In a soccer field? How many people were at the party?"

"About five thousand"

Now, I want the reader to understand that the biggest Tupperware Party I had ever witnessed in my adult life was about twenty people.

Crammed into an American livingroom.

I began to understand the five-thousand-strong Tupperware party once I had been in Mindanao for a week. Filipino's take Tupperware to new and exciting levels. They possess types of Tupperware you will never see in a catalog. They have a Tupperware container for everything. You see, it is H-O-T in the Philippines and they LOVE to party. Refrigeration is not an option so Tupperware comes to the rescue.

Americans are Tupperware whimps in comparison with Filipino's. But I brought back a wealth of knowledge with me when I returned from that hot archipelago.

Too bad the crap is SO DAMN expensive over here.

Welcome to America.

-Jeeem-

It's hot.

It's not just hot here, it's hot all over the place. People are complaining about the heat. The heat is getting to people. The word FUCK is used more frequently in direct proportion to the increase in temperature.

Seriously. It happens.

The word FUCK is a powerful word. Some people shun it. FUCK can mean several different things. It can denote surprise, anger, pleasure, euphoria, disappointment and sorrow, just to name a few.

Potkettle said it HERE
Peter says it all the time
Annie doesn't possess it in her vocabulary as far as I know
"Fug off" is as close as Emberton gets to it
Eve says it.....and you'll just have to take my word on that
A Citizen of the World said it recently but warned the World before saying it
Shirl says DANG instead

I think George Carlin had it right when he included it in his SEVEN BAD WORDS YA CAN'T SAY ON TV.....

"And of course the word Fuck. The word Fuck, I don't really...well, this is some more accidental humor, but I don't really want to get into that now. Because I think it takes too long. But I do mean that. I mean, I think the word fuck is an important word. It's the beginning of life, and, yet it's a word we use to hurt one other, quite often. And uh, people much wiser than I have said, I'd rather have my son watch a film with two people making love than two people trying to kill one other. And I of course agree. I wish I know who said it first, and I agree with that. But I would like to take it a step further. I would like to substitute the word fuck, for the word kill in all those movie cliches we grew up with. 'Okay Sheriff, we're gonna fuck ya now. But we're gonna fuck ya slow.' So maybe next year I'll have a whole fuckin' rap on that word. I hope so."

Ain't the English language great?

Well, you think we've got it rough? Have you heard about the British and their, "Cockney Rhyming Slang?" Oh FUCK. This stuff is nuts. Here's a sample:

'Allo me old china - wot say we pop round the Jack. I'll stand you a pig and you can rabbit on about your teapots. We can 'ave some loop and tommy and be off before the dickory hits twelve.

translates to:

Hello my old mate (china plate) - what do you say we pop around to the bar (Jack Tar). I'll buy you a beer (pig's ear) and you can talk (rabbit and pork) about your kids (teapot lids). We can have some soup (loop de loop) and supper (Tommy Tucker) and be gone before the clock (hickory dickory dock) strikes twelve.

Jaysus! I have enough trouble just learning Spanish let alone that stuff. That's gotta be tough to learn. It doesn't qualify as a language cause it's in English and it's not a true dialect since the speakers of this slang are also perfectly capable of not using it! Kinda like our Pig Latin.

Language is interesting.

Untilway extnay imetay oggerblay ansfay....
-Eeemjay-