The Life Experience ~ Fall '07

[bloodyrosemccoy]

 What I Learned This Season:

• The sun sails from dawn to dusk and back very regularly along the equator, without a whole lot of pausing for twilight.
• If I were a magical thinker, I would totally believe Ganesh and I were buds.  The number of times he has popped up—sometimes to save my ass—is uncanny.
• Things rural Kenyans know about our culture: Doctor Who, The Flash, X-Men, George Bush, Coca-Cola, English, WWE, Barack Obama, and of course Chuck Norris.
• Things rural Kenyans don’t know about: secularism, pet cats, Spanish, states other than California and Texas, and of course bears.
• Things I knew about rural Kenya: tin roofs, farm animals, squat toilets, chicken slaughters, malaria, mosquitos
• Things I didn’t know about rural Kenya: cell phones, hot water for baths, ant holocausts, malaria being treated like chicken pox, tae kwon do, flying somersaults, ugali
• The recipe for ugali is as follows: boil some flour.
• The phrase for “turkey” in Swahili, bata mzinga, literally means “cannon duck.”  I don’t know why.
• It’s a good idea to wear shorts under your skirt, because 1) it keeps your thighs from chafing, and 2) you never know when you might have to hitch up your skirt to hike across the god damn ocean.
• Mosquitos will bite you more if you eat bananas.
• One of the traditional ways for a Swahili to make herself alluring is to stand over a censer while wearing a big skirt so that the smoke theoretically goes straight up into all the nooks and crannies to make them smell more pleasant.  I do not know why a man would have his nose there in the first place, but who am I to argue with Tradition?
• Sending postcards is expensive.
• Mosquitos that have already consumed blood explode when you swat them.
• I have good luck with people whose names start with some variation of "Kris."
• EVERYBODY uses Facebook.
• EVERYBODY.
• Kenyan outlets are something like 250 hertz, which will give your iPod superpowers but which Nintendo DS’s refuse to even acknowledge.
• Bagels are like the holy grail of food.
• The book Clan of the Cave Bear is a well-researched story with some very interesting, if not always well-written, details on the possible lives of the Neanderthals. The sequel, The Valley of Horses, is basically caveman porn.
• Goat meat is pretty good.  Not so much goat intestine or liver.
• Donkeys make the second most annoying sound in the world, right after mosques.
• The Swahili I learned from my book is the kind spoken in Tanzania, which is more formal than the kind in Mombasa.
• The Deaf accent trumps all others.
• Fridges and ceiling fans are the GREATEST INVENTIONS EVER.
• Al Gore is a helluva sport.
• There actually exists a canonical Sherlock Holmes story where Holmes and Watson get baked and have a gay moment.*

*While I can slash away with the best of fans, I can’t actually understand the consistent slashing of these two.  I have no real argument against it except that they just don’t seem like a couple—sort of like my somewhat obtuse argument against Bert and Ernie’s closetry being “But they’re Muppets.” However, this does not mean that Holmes and Watson cannot have gay moments.

Comments

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I was surprised by the Who thing, too, but when the kids in a secondary school class asked what my favorite show was and I answered that, they all got very excited.

Al Gore's awesome was represented in the Futurama movie. I know his daughter used to write for the show and it's been a favorite of his, but I'm impressed by the jokes he took with good grace. (I also loved the BUSH "WINS" headline in the movie.)

We got a lecture on Swahili beauty where she explained that that was a way to allure one's husband. She demonstrated, too.

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

I like a man who can laugh at himself. Gore's discovered that since 2000 (if he had it before, he had no idea how to portray it publicly). Prior to 2000, he came off as a robot. An intelligent, well-intentioned robot, but still a robot. I swear, that man has had one of the most productive mid-life crises ever! He went from being a robot to being awesome.

[spotweld.livejournal.com]

Too many handlers prior to 2000 would be my guess.

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

Or the wrong handlers. Something to do with his PR people, definitely.

I do think there's an element of the mid-life crisis in there, at the very least. Here's a man who built himself a career aimed at being president and he "lost" in a very suspicious election. Now what do you do with your life? And how he answered that question has been very impressive.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

your icon wins!!!