Letters from Grenada

cartman gets an anal probe

maria — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:25:00 +0000

Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.

As long as I can remember, my dad has gone through what I like to call phases. Like the time he went all Catholic and bought a little wooden saint with peeling paint and no hands. Then one day he up and decided that was idolatry and threw it down the incinerator chute in his building on Pelham Parkway. The “phase” he happened to be going through when I was eight resulted in my being baptized a Methodist, a religion about which I still know next to nothing, because he lost interest within a year and so we never went back.

Then I’m 12 and he has his Whitley Streiber phase. Whitley Streiber is this guy who wrote some novels — including Wolfen, which, if memory serves, was made into a movie. Then he writes the first in a series of ostensibly autobiographical books describing his encounters with and abductions by alien visitors. The cover art was a close up of a visitor from the shoulders up. (See above.) South Park later used the same basic depiction of “Greys” to depict the aliens that give Cartman an anal probe. Dad really digs this book, and totally encourages me read it. Then, as now, I will read anything, and I have a weakness for stupid supernatural shit like vampires and space aliens and schools for the gifted in outer space. We both read the books, and conduct many in-depth discussions about them. Mostly, I just listen. Lo and behold, I start having nightmares, and he’s all, oh! She was totally abducted by aliens! And this proves it!

My dad is a very post hoc ergo propter hoc kind of guy. I won’t be offended if you feel the need to roll your eyes at him.

Now we come to the really funny part. He hasn’t said anything to anyone of us about this in oh, 15 years at least. Then last year my dad and my brother are on some road trip and end up in a redneck bar somewhere in bumblefuck western New York. After a few beers, Dad says to Bro, oh, you know your sister was abducted by aliens? Don’t you remember those nightmares she used to have? It so totally never occurs to him that the books were perhaps the CAUSE of the nightmares. But what really gets me is that this is still something he thinks about, even after all these years. It’s one of the many absurdly untrue things he believes about me.

I wish I could make up stories like that. Instead, I just get to live them.

my life is so weird

maria — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:05:00 +0000

My life is so weird.

This is a walking stick, in my kitchen.

This is one of my neighbors, and his iguana.

This is the ice cream truck, stopping right next door.

This is a bat, not unlike the ones that chirp
nightly past my verandah.
(Did you know that verandah is a Hindi word?)

These are some kids my uncle inducted into his moth-hunting army.

And this? This is breathtaking. Wow.

This isn’t bad either.

My life is so weird. But I can’t complain.

spicemas 2k8

maria — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:34:00 +0000

Nothing of note to report on Carnival this year. I kept my misbehavior at home.

But check out my jab jab helmet!

Doesn’t it kind of look like I’m in a foxhole calling for reinforcements?

***

You can listen to this year’s soca here. I have to agree with YY that this season’s selection is not quite so fabulous as it has been in years past. Soca, however, is not unlike ~~sex~~ pizza, in that even the worst isn’t all bad.

I get a major kick out of this artist, GG, and her song, Ease Up. She’s new, she’s a chick, her lyrics are hilarious and the outfit she wore to the Soca Monarch semi-finals was bravely hawt. Enjoy!

red, red wine

maria — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:44:00 +0000

(I took this photo. I cropped out the people.

What remains is the standard Sunday meal

at my house in Grenada, eaten on the verandah

overlooking Westerhall Bay…

accompanied by chilled red wine.)

Put your prejudices aside and really think about it, and you’ll have to agree. There are certain circumstances when it’s totally appropriate to drink chilled red wine, and being in Grenada is one of them.

Yes, red wine is technically supposed to be served room temperature. But this is a rule invented in climes where only during the dog days of summer does so-called room temperature approximate Grenada’s daily average. Under tropical conditions, only the finest of red wines are remotely palatable, and even they suffer. Those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, rest your red wine next to a heater for half an hour and you’ll see what I mean.

Why am I even bringing this up? Because I cannot resist telling you that the New York Times agrees with me.

bad, bad blogger

maria — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:37:00 +0000

(Three random Grenadian kids playing

cricket in the road. My brother took this picture

when he was here for Carnival in 2004.)

I have been a very bad blogger lately. I did prettify the thing a bit, but that hardly excuses. (Though I do hope you like the new header.)

My housekeeper/babysitter/maid/cook fractured her foot and hasn’t been able to work. She takes care of my grandmother too, so her injury has a net result of much less free time for me. That sounds bitchy, perhaps, but trust me, she’s just fine. I’m ok too. Just really fucking tired. I finally got a good night’s sleep last night, for the first time in weeks, and it’s a holiday in Grenada today (Emancipation Day, though it was actually Friday, but whatever), and I realized we’re now several days into August, and that’s just dispicable. So here we are.

Random musing of the day: Grenadians love to eat hot soup for lunch. I have nothing against soup. I like soup. The right soup, I’ll even love it. But eating soup at noon in the tropics is madness. And yet they insist on it. What is up with that?

"librarians are the superheroes of democracy"

maria — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:29:00 +0000

Last week the McCain campaign declared war on free speech and sweet little gray-haired ladies. Here’s Rachel Maddow telling it like it is:

the king is dead, long live the king

maria — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:16:00 +0000

The preliminary results of the Grenadian general election are in.
Bye bye, Keith. It was fun while it lasted.
And thanks for the memories… especially this one:

secret life of gringas

maria — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:13:00 +0000

My brother and his ladylove are currently living in Santiago, Chile, teaching English and perfecting their Spanish. I’d be jealous if I were not living in my own personal paradise.

My sister-in-law, the aforementioned ladylove, is blogging about her experiences there. Check out her musings on her favorite things about Santiago, tampons, and mayonnaise.

m’s roundup

maria — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:04:00 +0000

(This is not just any pomegranate.
This is the first fruit of the tree my mom
planted nearly two years ago.
It was even yummier than it looks.)

I decided the other day that instead of adding a disturbing number of “Posted Items” to my facebook profile, I will do this:

From an excellent friend and fellow mommy, I got an email with a link to this article about a boy who drowned hours after swimming, in his own bed. Oy, shivers down my spine. Dry drowning? How horrific. And I take my toddler to the beach once a week or more. Then while reading the RSS feed for one of my favorite mind-candyish sites, the Urban Legends Reference Pages, I found this explanation of the difference between dry drowning and secondary drowning, which at first made me feel much better, then not so much.

I’d heard of the infamous daisy ad, but had never actually seen it. (I heart youtube.) As creepy as it is, to me it looks totally modern in spite of its being older than I am. (I am a sucker for black and white.) Tony Schwartz, creator of this ad, passed away last week. I heart wikipedia.

The new Governor of New York State (you know, the blind West Indian guy who replaced Eliot Spitzer after that unfortunate hooker incident), has pardoned Slick Rick. Slick Rick is British. Who knew?

I love the Vanity Fair online archives. (Scroll down the menu on the left.) If you missed, say, “Shattered Glass” when it was published in 1998, you can read it now.

Firefox rules, in spite of technical difficulties.

I’m not one for gratuitous derisiveness towards lawyers, but this is ridiculous. A group of lawyers are suing Rockstar Games, the makers of Grand Theft Auto, because the game includes some very sexy easter eggs. They are disappointed because of the millions of people who bought the game, fewer than 3,000 have filed a claim. It apparently has not occurred to these chuckleheads that people who purchased Grand Theft Auto are probably not easily offended. For more madness from the U.S. legal system, read this.