Bible 2.0

I had no idea the bible was this, um, cool! According to the Telegraph UK, the Evangelical Alliance has come up with 10 Commandments for Christian bloggers. Dude, why the non-mention of porn? My personal 10 would be all about porn (thou shall not blog about donkey sex, for example).

Here are the official ten commandments for bloggers, as handed down by religious geeks [and let's see how our hero does]:

1. You shall not put your blog before your integrity. [Strike 1. Damn.]
2. You shall not make an idol of your blog. [Come again?]
3. You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin. [Is having a short--nay, shortest--fuse sinful? Strike. Good thing I only have to count up to ten.]
4. Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog. [Cool, since I'm usually too tired from Friday night's debauchery to lift a posting finger the next.]
5. Honour your fellow bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes. [Damn, no more bitching out other blogger's' love of stray apostrophe's? Harsh.]
6. You shall not murder someone else's honour, reputation or feelings. [Whoa, way to take the fun out of snarking!]
7. You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind. [I guess this is as close to porn as I'll get. But wait--let's parse words. Is it a sin only in mind, but OK in body? Curiouser and curiouser...]
8. You shall not steal another person's content. [So much moral guidance, so little time...]
9. You shall not give false testimony against your fellow blogger. [Insert random comment.]
10. You shall not covet your neighbour's blog ranking. Be content with your own content. [bwah....OK, I'm gasping for air here. So The Onion....]

Your Nine Months Are Up!

I can't think of a worse line to entice shopping mothers than "carrying you forever..." srly, wtf? It's a good thing the Prune line is so darn awesome.

Strip

Broke out of my anti-social mold and went to a bachelorette party last night. Dayyum, in Argentina the male strippers get more natural, if you know what I mean and I think you do. I actually have some x-rated shots, but this is an old-fashioned family blog, fer fuck's sake.

Everyone Hates Me or (otherwise titled) Woe Is Me

It's as inevitable as the setting sun or death & taxes. There comes a point in every personal relationship I have when I become disappointing. (At least here at work it's taken me two years to get there.) And what I mean by that is I just don't need people enough or alcohol-induced socialization enough for whatever the fuck's considered normal, and this lack of need gets in the way of perception. Maybe it comes down to extroversion vs. introversion--not to be confused with shyness--but I really would rather spend my weekends/evenings strolling the city discovering new stuff all by my lonesome, or curled up with a good book, than with mass companions. This has served me well back home, but I'm finding that in the insular, artificially shrunken world of expatting, it stamps a big scarlet S (for "savant") on your forehead (or in my case, fivehead) the more your RSVPs fall resoundingly in the "No" column.

Case in point, last weekend I decided not to go to a progressive dinner party (the kind where you walk to a new home for each course) when I realized there would be kre8tiv games played in teams (such as, create a silly new dance with your teammates!). If there exists an alternative hellish social event as creative team games, I sure couldn't picture it (oh OK, a scrapbooking circle with Oprah fans?). The end result was alienation from a few coworkers. Because here's the thing about international teaching, you are certainly eating where you're shitting and your coworkers are indeed your friends, no matter how much you resist the notion. It's a mind-altering amalgam of that adage, "you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family." sigh

ETA: This is all orthogonally related to whether I like my coworkers, which I do. There are some great people in the bunch.

Paging Mr. Fleeting!

My favorite signs on the voyage.

Name All 3 to Win a Prize!

A girl can dream, right?

N is for Neville, who died of ennui

OMG, when is this writer's strike going to be over? I so need a fresh ep of The Office! Instead, I wasted five minutes of my life creating this.

Stoked for Stokies

My mind can be a fascinating trapdoor of malaise and turpitude. Want proof? In the past when I've been on a crunchy health kick and undergone a fast (abstaining from all solids for days on end), I would Google-image-surf all fricking day for food porn just to reap torture upon myself, usually ending up in a whimpering puddle of drool over such eye candy: ramen in miso broth, with sliced pork fat and bits of pickled bamboo shoots; mango slices, Fanta orange in ripeness, nestling in Thai coconut sticky rice; red velvet cake, blood red, oozing cream cheese frost; plump prawns curled in fetal position, doused in thick curry coulis; etc. etc. Swoon.

Which brings me to now: Because I was foolhardily ambitious and quit sugar cold turkey a few days ago, my mind has taken up a fanatical fixation with--of all things--candy cigarettes! It's crazy-making! All I wanna do is have fun and light up one of those bubblegum cigs (the Lights version, of course, I am a lady)! I guess I need to go to the corner kiosco and see if they carry candy nicotine patches. Arrrgh...I want candy cig! Candy cig wants me!

(Everyone reading this, please send some. Thnx.)

Bizarro World

I'm shiftlessly layabouting in my gorgeous backyard, a pitcher of Paradise tropical iced tea nearby, wistfully trying to recall what life was like back in the states in a manner that only grass-is-greener types can understand. The details of being someplace else are usually vague and can elude me altogether. And it never fails to surprise me how when I'm here, I can't imagine being there, and the vice, she versus.

But don't cry me a river, as I do believe I have the best of both worlds. My stay here in Argentina is punctuated twice a year with a visit stateside, so it's 4.5 months here, 4-6 weeks there, etc. etc. Not bad... Still, you know how sometimes the ratio of things can feel just a tad off? Kinda like how there's too much peanut butter relative to chocolate in a regular Reese's cup, whereas with the mini-version, it's the perfect proportion? I'll break it down for you linear thinkers: In a large cup, pb/choc > 1, and IMO, you need 1 or less to get the perfect bite, meaning I would even allow for more chocolate than peanut butter in this gastronomical equation. Now admire the design of a mini-cup: pb/choc = 1! It's one-bite right or one bite makes might!

It's the same in the world of avian egg: Quail egg is vastly superior to chicken egg in terms of its albumen:yolk ratio. Anyone who's ever gagged on egg white knows what I'm talking about. Having said all this, I will entertain the idea that occasionally, bliss is achieved only in a non 1:1 scale--the Oreo cookie vs. filling being the classic example. (And those diabolical charmers at Nabisco have preyed upon this weakness in creating their Double Stuf spinoffs.)

What does this have to do with anything? Well I sometimes wonder if 4.5 months here is just too darn much albumen or peanut-butter filling. Perhaps the ideal quota for me is 2.5 months (or even 3), followed by a quick plane ride home to get my fill of bagels and boba. (Notice I'm not even positing a 1:1 ratio.) In any case, usually approaching my fourth month here, I begin to feverishly mythologize about what will be once I'm back in the land of the free! It's rather lame of me since everything revolves around food and clothes, but there you have it.

Anyway, because I'm a list whore, here're my must-dos for the next home visit, just for starters:

- Zen Zoo Tea, in Brentwood, home of the most awesome iced soy mint green tea. Also where I saw David Duchovny eating dim sum with his two adorable brats.
- The City Bakery, in Brentwood, for their heavenly pretzel croissant and brioche French toast laced with caramel brittle. Also, you need a spoon to drink their tarlike hot chocolate. Also where I saw Helen Hunt sitting in a corner with her laptop.
- California Roll Factory, on Santa Monica Blvd. Not the fanciest but hell, you can't beat their ingenious roll combos and spicy mayo.
- Buffalo Exchange, on La Brea, retro fashion at cheapo prices
- Thai Town, on Hollywood Blvd! Anywhere, everywhere, oh sweet Thai Town...for sure, Palm Restaurant for the Thai Elvis show.
- Movies, independent, foreign with English subtitles, the lot of them!
- Griffith Park Observatory: Haven't been back since it's reopened. Since I'm in the nabe, the culty Pinkberry frozen yogurt too
- Ethiopian food on Fairfax
- Bookstores, corporate as well as indie, spending hours on end lollygagging willy-nilly, being able to use my 20% teacher discount...
- The beach! PCH to Malibu, Venice Beach and those drum circles, Santa Monica Promenade, Laguna Beach with my niece and nephew
- Artesia, Little India! Footlong masala dosas, the Naz8 theatre with new showings of Bollywood film, where the concession stand serves up hot, piping samosas at intermission
- Driving!
- TARGET!
- Ebay!
- Netflix!
- And of course, seeing the people I love.

(Edit: Upon rereading this list, it's becoming abundantly clear to me what a shallow creep I am. GOD!)

My Java Junket: Intro

I've a self-imposed mission, should I choose to accept, which I do since...er, I thunk it. I call this ill-conceived challenge, my Java Junket. Here are the official rules:

- Take a pic of the next 50 cups of coffee.

- Every cup must come from a different place.

- No repeats (same place) or newpeats (different order at same place)

- Bonus for cafés over restaurants

- Double bonus for new neighborhoods

- List place, order, price, date.

That's it! Stay tuned.

Word Freak

I've been sifting through my backlogged subscription to urbandictionary.com and chuckling over the entries below. For you visual learners, here's a photo caption for one of the words: This morning at the Palermo artsy-fartsy paper store, I witnessed some fine man standing in the front courtyard.

Enjoy these word droppings. (Remember the vocabulary test is Friday...)

- infoporn: information that serves no purpose and consumes valuable space inside your head. (Lordy, I have too much infoporn...like this entire post, for example.)
- foody call: a phone call, page, or conversation aimed at getting free food from a partner in a no-strings attached, no-conversation meal. (I'd rather have a foody call than a booty call.)
- man stand: the act of a man standing outside a shop while his wife/girlfriend/partner shops inside. Man standing involves looking into space, at other women, or in the case of multistory shopping centers, leaning on the railings of an upper floor watching the people below.
- peasantvision: the TV channels you get without a cable or satellite TV subscription. (I hate what Cablevision has to offer and am thinking of peasantvisioning it--that or get a Slingbox.)
- conswervative: a conservative politician or other public figure caught doing things that he has denounced on record.
- butt dial: when your cell phone accidentally calls someone you did not mean to while on your person.
- work hot: a person that may or may not be hot, but is the most attractive person in the set of people you work with so you lust after him/her.
- ignoranus: a person who is not only ignorant, but is also an asshole. (such efficiency in a word!)
- pregret: the feeling of regretting something you're about to do anyway. (rendering the phrase "I know I'm going to regret this" obsolete?)
- iPerbole: the hype surrounding any product Apple unveils.

OK, I'll stop. Your homework: Use one of these urban words in a sentence today.

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

In my version of a Utopian Barnes & Noble (is that an oxymoronic concept?), nary a shelf would be set aside for daft New Agey titles such as DStSS. Still, I feel I could stand to read a page or two from it tonight, as I am sitting here sweating bounteously over itty bitty subjects that look suspiciously like dead horses.

Sigh. I think I'll pour myself a bowl of Chocapic and escape into la fantastica experiencia del chocolate.

Celebrate and Cepillate!

Today as luck would have it, I came across this cute little toothbraste vending machine in the Mujeres room of La Rosalia. Of course, I jammed 2 pesos in there as fast as I could. I so respect the efficiency of an all-in-one, whether in my printer or hygiene care. The neatest part about my discovery? It comes in different colors, each foretelling a grand fortune! It's like getting a cookie at the end of your Chinese meal, minus the carbs or second guessing ("Damn, I should've grabbed that cookie...")

There's some creative laziness on the part of the fortune writer though--I mean, in the art of soothsaying, how is "Tender" even in the same realm as "Wishes to came true"? In any case, who cares?! Because praise the lord, I got red. "Passion at your door"--nothing wishy washy about that! Though now I can't stop looking out my peephole...

Duodenum Massage

One day I really will get my
[s]erebellum soothed or my
[c]idney coddled or my duodenum dandled or my pancreas palpated or ... you get the idea.

Cajita Feliz

My happy box. Contrary to popular belief, life is so much better with a Hello Kitty keychain.

As Promised...

He may be the poor man's (woman's?) Gael Garcia Bernal, but I'm sure he can write in your motorcycle diaries anytime, right, ladies?