please pay me like you want me

i went to beantown yesterday. it started as a disaster and ended on a pier with an ice-cream cone in hand. the purpose of this visit was to interview with a man with a monotone voice to see if i was a most suitable candidate to manage his newspaper in cambodia. i was.
the day started in the imperial capital at an early hour in a beltless costume on the metro in foggy bottom (a stop at which both the illustrious orange and blues lines pay frequent visits). i had forgotten that different color 'tro lines had a habit of wandering off in diverging directions- and needless to say i entered a train on the wrong line. luckily i recognized the error of my ways at the penultimate stop on the blue line which advertises some destination known as franco-springphonia. i can't imagine what is out there. the suburbs have always filled me with a sense of horror. so i doubled back to rosslyn (similarly frightening) and waited for the orange line to whisk me off to West Falls Church. I left the comfort of the urban 'tro with sincere regret and great speed as to make a bus to the airport which was scheduled to leave at precisely one minute before i arrived. i didn't make it and i found myself in what can only be described as a developer's dream and a citizen's nightmare. a quick reminder that dc and its surroundings are revoltingly hot during the summer months. humidity causes sweat to pore from one's brow, back and shins (yeah, even shins) like a beading mint julep on an alabama porch. the developers of west falls church had clearly taken this into account and decided to plant a tree here and there, after having demolished the forests which had stood there since the mesozoic era. so there were three trees. and a hell of a lot of sun. unfortunately for me, none of the three trees was over four feet tall and my bus wasn't scheduled to arrive for another half hour. so i stood and i sweated.
the bus did come. but i was late and i missed my flight (security). i had to stand spread eagle and have some sort of sonar device caress my body for 10 minutes, while my plane was boarded, the doors were shut and the safety measures read aloud. i got on a flight 2 hours later and sat next to a lady with a penchant towards violently flipping pages of her in-flight magazine towards my face for the one hour and twelve minutes we were in-flight. i considered my patience (e.g. not grabbing the fucking thing and beating the hell out of her with it) a sign of maturity. we landed in beantown and i went to meet the man with the monotone voice to discuss our future together. he was a nice man. an interesting man. and i pretended to be so as well. we hit it off and began to discuss specifics. "i hate to ask such a question," i ventured in, "but , can you give me an idea as to how much i can expect to earn?" my face betrayed a look as if it wasn't something i was particularly concerned about, but felt i had to ask in case my girlfriend brought it up. "$1300." he said with a straight face. hmm. surely this would include transportation to and from, what my father recently referred to as the nebrahhska of asia... no. well, surely this would include room and board... no. surely i could make some money on the side doing freelance work... no. we would share it. he sensed my concern. "well," he knitted his brow, "as long as you don't waste it all away on beer, then you should be okay." FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!
damn right i will waste it all away on beer. and vodka. and grass. and ... well... you know. i'll need a girlfriend.
fuck.
so, if i end up in cambodia in a few months, please send beer, vodka, grass and girls. cuz i will be eating rice, drinking moonshine and once again considering girls with downy upper lips.

guapos with gringos

i ate lunch at guapos yesterday with a friend of my dad's. while i was waiting for him to arrive a young bucking journalist from the right-wing sponsored DC Hexaminer interviewed me about something I knew nothing about. while questioning me the guy sat down and before i knew it ended up eating lunch with us. it was surreal.

anyway, he quoted me, so i gots to give him a shout out. (scroll down to bottom of link, unless dc insurance policy interests you... then you can happily read the article in its entirety)

where's bebs?

one of the absolutely necessarily bizarre aspects of life in ol' capult (does it still exist?) was the regular arrival of eccentrics from the beyond. one of my favorites was a frenchman from seatle going by the alias of bebs. he'd arrive at odd hours of the night and sometimes morning with this crazed raskolnikovesque look in his eyes. thin as a rake with his belt looped around his waist like tom sawyer, he'd fly in and out of the dining room between half-baked adventures around the corner and over the mountains and through the poppy fields.

he was a photographer.

his forte was... bricks. this man loved bricks. bricks in piles, bricks in ovens, bricks on walls, bricks on the ground, flying bricks, broken bricks, red bricks, brown bricks. bebs had photographed them all. and to be fair, capult offered some fine bricks.

anyway, i saw this photograph on my friend's website www.crisispictures.org and it reminded me of bebs:

dead as a doornail?

does anybody know how machiavelli died? did he fake his own death?

did he reincarnate as karl rove?

does anybody know?

yaaawwwwwnnn, scratch, scratch

well, well. the shuttlecocks are flying again. i've moved on to richer pastures and now spend my awfternooons gazing at the lovely gals in country life magazines. lovely well-skinned ladiez studying theology and art history all waiting for me to sweep them off their feet with stories of slicing backhands and grand slams and dames.
i'm back in the tawdry imperial capital like a squire on an ass. frothy frocked gals delight, yet an emptiness settles in like a big portion of mashed potatoes from a martini glass. should i stay or should i go... can i afford to stay or afford to go... is there a place to fondle ideas? or is it here? madame george says i'm a nitwit to keep running off (or away, rather), but seems to think that it might be the right thing to do. i think i will stay, but perhaps that is simply the weight of the humid diamond-shaped swamp that is below me. but then there is nevsky prospect... perhaps the humidity could hold me there too. but it seems broken hearts peer from every corner, and might they all be mine?
kabul does not call. it doens't pick up the phone. it's happier without my likes. but ohhhh i did like to get drunk there. early saturday afternoons with boxed-red wine hostessing jail breaks and hungover days, afternoons and nights with the one and only lady jane. lady jane. lady jane!!!! like a popsicle first thing in the morning. pop.
ha. assinine nostalgia. fuckereerereererssssss!!!!! ha. i'm out like trout. up stream like clotted cream. busting out at the seams.
it's hot and humid and swampy and sweaty and shiny and down right dirty in dc. so come visit me.
i have 24 more country lifes to go through before i can decide which one will be my future wife. so many lovely choices in life