The Mongoose Lives - Blog Note

So I've noticed that you people have completely given up on even acting interested in my whereabouts and wheretofores. At first there were several questions about when I might start posting again, then general dribbles of "Hey wassup. Just checking" messages. And now, not so much as a glance. How fickle, the six of you.

Notwithstanding the neglect, I am passing through to confirm to no one in particular that posting officially resumes on the blog on November 1st, although I may try to add some content before then. The reason for my absence - a new job that has been consuming all my waking hours and most of what should be sleeping ones - will also restrict the range of topics I can cover as well as the range of people I can piss off. Not even sure I can say "piss off", but there I go, living on the edge.

Still, let's see how far we get with these new parameters. See you in November.

My Google-inspired imaginarium

Google Reader, whenever it suddenly goes offline, generates the error message: Sorry an unexpected condition has occurred (which is preventing Google Reader from fulfilling the request). The font of the message is larger than the text on the rest of the page, and is sometimes against a pink background. And each time I see the message, I get startled and take it personally. It's such a severe message: "an unexpected condition", and so non-specific. How did it just occur, the condition? Was there no pathway to this destruction? I start to think ohmygod did I just spontaneously fall pregnant while I was sitting here dreaming up names I would give my pet elephant? Did something fall out? Or off? What fell off?! Was it something I need? And then the second part - the part in brackets that I don't really pay attention to at first - further anthropomorphises the whole scenario. It's as if they're saying 'god, woman, get your nose. We don't mind continuing but we'd rather not do it with your nose all rolling around on the floor and sh!t.'

Or I think maybe it's environmental: some hi-tech tsunami warning that Google and its futuristic, marginally scary braininess have managed to generate via Google Maps or Google Earth or Google We Might As Well Stop Branding And Go By A Symbol Like Prince.

Or supernatural. Like The Rapture is occurring and all ambient energy is required to suck the chosen up into the stratosphere.

But mostly, it's just a lost internet connection. Obviously.

Life is so much better in my head.

The goat-dragon in the backyard

Work has been feeding on most of my daytime hours as I plow toward a deadline. I've started five posts which remain in draft, mocking me, so I haven't much to share apart from this small story:

In the backyard a few minutes ago, I dropped a clothespin. My sister's dog, Ellie, immediately pounced on it and started to eat it. I don't mean playfully chew on it; I don't mean toss it around with her mouth; I mean she genuinely tried to ingest the thing. I think she thought I had tossed it to her, and since I had tossed it to her, it must be safe to eat, and furthermore, delicious. Such blind trust. I wish I had that kind of superpower with human animals. Not that I would try to feed people clothespins. At least not most people.

Epilogue: I couldn't get the clothes pin away from Ellie, who is caught in an identity crisis that makes her part goat, part dragon guarding a cave just beyond King Arthur's kingdom. But thankfully, she got bored and stopped trying to eat the plastic snack. This is a relief. It could have gone so much worse.

The mongoose is your dear old aunt (Happy birthday to me)

First let me apologize. I know I've been missing for a week, and I don't have an outstanding reason, except that my monitor decided to go rogue and become the matrix. It's now covered in flickering lines, spots and other vision-obstructing paraphernalia. The good news is that my life-(and blog-)saving friend brought me a monitor to hook up to my laptop at home. The not-so-good news is that the coming week is filled with birthday celebrations, so I may be missing a little more.

My sister's birthday is Thursday, and my birthday is today. Thweep! (That's my noisemaker.) I love birthdays. I was up at 5:30 a.m, and out on the road by 6:30, two sisters in tow (they're on holiday; I'm just idle), all three of us wearing party hats and accepting kind wishes from strangers. There were a few nasty don't-these-three-idiots-have-anything-better-to-do looks as well. We just blew our noisemakers at those people: Thweep!, beyotch. We're having a party.

So yes, I love birthdays as an occasion to celebrate life, learning and love. My mother started that tradition among her three girls growing up: we treat the birthday person well, acknowledge that on that day it's not so much about us and a bit more about her, and we use it as a time to take stock of life, thank the universe (she would say god, and would grimace long-sufferingly at me for saying 'universe') for what we have, and purpose to be better people in the next year of life.

I'm getting old, y'all. Sometimes I'm in the middle of a story, and I'll hear myself saying something like: "that was ten years ago, in Venezuela, under the old presidente", and I feel like an old seafarer back from a lengthy voyage. It's great. I feel learned - with two syllables, and I also now call teenaged boys 'son', for which my friends laugh and point at me, and deservedly so because really, that's not necessary.

So I'm young and still learning, but old enough to do so with some clarity, so that the lessons stick instead of bouncing off my thick head to be lost forever. Clarity is great. Life is wonderful. Long live (the uncompromisable goal of) absolute world peace.

The (triumphant) return of the mongoose!

Ok, not so triumphant. I haven't been off fighting a war or liberating meerkats in captivity or anything. But I have been getting readjusted to life in the tropics. Yes, you read true: I'm back in Barbados for the medium term, struggling to cope with the white sand beaches, the brilliant weather and all the mangoes I could ever hope to eat. It is such hard work being me.

But fear not. While I expect to be covering quite a few more local and regional issues than before, the blog will maintain its international focus. We are, after all, citizens of the world, concerned with truth and justice everywhere. Can you sense the excitement and the superhero passion in my words? It's because I'm so thrilled to be blogging again. I've missed my readers and commenters so, even the crotchety ones - that's how high my spirits are. So, without further messing about, let us onward.

Have you missed the mongoose?

There's a lot happening in the world, and unfortunately, I've had neither the time nor internet connection to comment on it all, since my move. We're not fancy enough around here to have a whole coordinated guest blogger system, so you'll just have to miss me terribly. But at least I'm all moved in now! So things are looking up.

Thanks for the comments, questions and "what the hell is going on?!"s. Be assured that as soon as someone hits me with some wireless (although at this point I'd settle for dial-up. [No I wouldn't.]), a mongoose will be up and running again. Let's hope it's soon.

In the meantime, keep the messages, newstips and general indignation coming. You all know I love me some indignation.

Wake up, mongoose!

I haven't been as industrious with the blogging of late because I'm a little busy with planning a move and all of the phone calls, paperwork and appointments involved in wrapping up one life and starting another. One upside of the whole thing is that I've been very motivated to spend time with friends from the area that I won't see very often once I've left. You should live every day like you're about to move. Either you'll remember why the people in your life are there, and appreciate them even more, or you'll all realize you hate each other and get tired of the love-ins pretty quickly. The former rather than the latter applies in my case (for me, at least. One hopes all others involved agree). But either way, I'd say the process is useful.

Fear not, however! I have a folder full of blogworthy (I hate that word. Someone find me a new word) news items and thoughts to attend to; complete with underlined words and exclamation marks and lions and tigers and bears. So I hope to have some time this week to jump right back into the fray, fighting evil, championing justice and eating jellybeans. That last one is just for me.

I'm in ur blog...tiefing ur comments

So I've been avoiding the whole Comments Policy fandango because in my mind, it was simple: be a human being and your comment will be published and engaged. Well, surprise surprise - that needs some further clarification. So pardon me while I get all superstar and offer 3 guidelines:

1. My name is Mar. That's how I prefer to be called on the blog. For my friends and others who might know me and other incarnations of my name, let's stick with Mar only. If we went to primary school together and you know that everybody used to call me Snarf, yeah let's just keep that between us. No one wants to hear that.

2. If you use the Comment box directly underneath the post, I'll assume you'd like your comment published, and vI0la! It shall appear. If you just want to send me a private message, use the Comment box at the bottom of the page. You'll find a link to it in the column on the right. Or just email me directly.

3. I do not prefer, but do allow, anonymous posts. However, if the point of your comment is simply "yoar wrong and I bet yoar foots smell 2!!111oneone!!1", and it's anonymous, it won't be published. Because if I'm going to engage with idiocy, I at least want to be able to identify you. It's also possible that ye of the "foots smell" commenting use a name and your comment is not published. Sometimes, even identified, pointless foolery is not worth my time or that of my readers.

That's all I can think of for now. I'm going to link to this post in the side panel so everyone knows the Policy exists. I'ma add more as/if it becomes necessary.

Prelude to a failure and stretchy pants

My dears, I have a confession.

On some days, like today, when I have had very little sleep the night before and have been racing madly towards a deadline, and it's the end of a long week, I come here to the little box whereforeinto you are bidden to type things, and I ponder. And what I ponder is the following: you, mongoose, have read about several important things today, including Obama's extremely controversial release of the torture memos and his admonition not to pursue prosecution, with (measured) supporters and naysayers aplenty. You have things you might say about this, or about the Fifth Summit of the Americas, or about several other serious things. And you should do so.

What you should not do is fail to write a serious post and instead write something very silly. If you must write something light and inconsequential, at least balance it with a second, more substantial entry. (!)

Well my confession is that I will not be successful at this. I'll contribute more in the days to come, but for now, all my brain can manage is to relax and watch Nacho Libre, which is possibly the most delicious nonsense ever made. But the above issues are some of the ones occupying my thoughts as we move into the weekend, and I'll be back to talk about them (or something completely unrelated - whichever) on Monday.

So until then, Nacho and Esqueleto bid you a good weekend.

Note to future self: nopales are never delicious

In one of my moments of silly idleness breaks from a hectic and wildly exciting life, I came across FutureMe.org, a website that allows you to send a message to your future self.

I can think of several uses for this handy little tool (or at least I could if I turned my brain on today. So far, it seems not to be cooperating), including a portal for reminders of lessons that you've learnt and want to remember when confronted with similar situations. It would certainly have come in handy for me when I was trying to end a particularly toxic relationship with a man whose manipulation arsenal included the manoeuvres of pretending he hadn't heard the "we're through" from a previous conversation, and then showing up for the regular movie night with a tape (yes I'm old) and candy while you blink and wonder if you'd dreamt the whole ordeal the night before; or trying to distract you from what he knew was the impending breakup conversation with news of some manufactured crisis: "Do you remember Charles who came with us to the grocery store that one time and didn't have enough money for cheese and we had to buy it for him? Well his mother's neighbour's dog stepped on a nail at the airport and was detained by security and Charles had to borrow the car to get her out but when he was driving into the airport ran over one of the nails too and now I have to go get them all with just my bicycle!"

So after I had had enough of all this, I decided to make breakup reminder posters. So that the next time he revealed his true asswipey self - which he inevitably did since he was made of pure, 100% unfiltered asswipe - I made a large poster that said "BOB (let's call him Bob) IS A ****! BREAK UP WITH HIM NOW!" and stuck it above my bed. And since I'm hapless before self-imposed instructions and to-do lists, it worked. And Bob was no more.

Of course, if I had had Futureme.org, the whole process could have been considerably more labour-saving and private, and Bob would not have had to see the actual poster. (You are not allowed to feel sorry for Bob. Bob was a ****, remember?)

So while I coax my brain over the Monday lag, regale me with stories of how you could have used or would use Furtureme.org. (By the way, the title refers to my apparent inability to remember that I do not like nopales and never will. As much as I love my Mexican sistren that I've spent so much time with, stop trying to feed me that thing. It is cactus and tastes like it.) What do you want the future you to learn or know or remember? I await your brilliance.

Peanutbuttereggdirt au gratin

My dearests, I'm afraid I'm having another peanutbuttereggdirt day today, exacerbated by the fact that the article I wanted to write about this morning, that I've been saving as a draft until I could come to terms with all the deliciousness I wanted to express about it, has disappeared. The Nation newspaper has switched over to a new format, and apparently, "How to Redirect Your Links and Establish Archives" isn't being covered until next semester, along with "RSS Feeds: Actually Important" and "Making Links Clickable 101".

And since I have a really busy week ahead to which there is as yet no rhyme or reason, I'm using my Monday and this space to utter random things and clear my head. To wit:

Shivnarine Chanderpaul > Andrew Strauss

What rabid strain of delusion are the creators of this show suffering to think they can recreate the insane awesomeness that is Absolutely Fabulous?

When I buy a house, it shall have a lanai, and The Lanai shall be the Sacred Place where my family/group of friends/whoever the hell is living there goes to resolve conflicts and gain perspective, just like the Golden Girls did. It shall also be the place whose better light we use to answer the question "What is that? Like...a rash...or a bunch or pimples or...?"

Ah these Londoners and their 'T-shirt weather', which is apparently anything warmer than 'arctic blast'.

What the hell kind of g-ddamn Spring is this? Outside looks like a scene from Pan's Labyrinth.

It would be great if a funding proposal could consist of just the words: "Me bright. You send money. Me do things."

How can I already have my year planned right up to Christmas? Man, 2009 is going to be the shortest year ever.

If another person pulls that "equality means never having to say you're sorry for hitting back a woman"* bullshit I'm going to eat Aretha Franklin's hat.

There's a bird in our little lagoon whose call sounds exactly like a snore. Or maybe she's watching a Clive Owen film.

Yogurt is what evil would taste like.

Guy pushing the stroller: I can see you have an infant in your giant, starship Enterprise pram, but as much as I would love to fling myself into oncoming traffic to accommodate you, I don't think room to tiptoe along the edge of the pavement is too much to ask.

Chuck Bass wants to eat my soul. Don't look directly at him!

I'm sure there's more stuff in there. But I think I have to get on with life now.

*Much more on this in a subsequent post.

Peanut butter Egg Dirt!

This isn’t a Sandra Lee recipe. It’s a line from one of my favourite television shows, Scrubs. It was a string of words shouted by Zac Braff’s character to prove that he was not as predictable as assumed, and that no one could guess what he would say next well enough to say it at the same time. Of course, this being a sitcom, they did. And the result was hilarious and random.

This line has, embarrassingly, crept into my vernacular and become an important tool. When I’m having a day where too many unrelated thoughts are assaulting my brain, I stop and yell “PEANUTBUTTEREGGDIRT” as a cue to order them and clear my head. Don’t worry, I work alone. So I’ve managed to avoid being carted off to the sanitarium. Actually, most of the time I ‘yell’ this in my head. I’m not good at shouting feelings and talking to myself in the mirror and letting people catch me and all this touchy-feely ballyhoo. That’s why I’m usually banned from team-building outings. (No, really I just call in sick, but they wouldn’t want me there anyway; I would harsh their vibe.)

Today is definitely a peanut butter egg dirt day. And since you are my new captive victims audience, you are forced to let me peanutbutter-egg-dirt you. Yes. I’ve now made it into a verb. The process is just to write all the thoughts somewhere, separate them into tasks and ideas, read them once, then tuck them away and proceed with task number one as prioritized on the list. I’ve listed the tasks already. Now, you get to share the thoughts. And we’re off:

-I wonder if anyone has ever popped his eye out while taking out contacts.
-I need to order contacts.
-The cow on the Skinny Cow label looks scary and cracked out and about to ask me for some spare change.
-I CANNOT EAT ANOTHER PIECE OF SALMON!
-I’m starting to develop a blinking habit like my mother.
-In what kind of godless underworld does it get dark at 4 p.m?! (I need to move back to the tropics.)
-Why do I still write like a drunk cockroach?
-Obama looks old in the Time cover portrait and his ears aren’t really that big.
-Remind me never to get into the dairy industry in China.
-Mmmm horses smell good.
-Horses
-Grass
-Whatever happened to that guy who used to jump into the wharf in exchange for a quarter?
-Horses!

Ahhh, that's better. Back to work.