"It's the little things in life, ma'am"

There's a guy at Walgreen's, who works in the photo department, that lives by the mantra that it's the little things in life that make a difference. On several occasions, he's demonstrated this to me.

A few months back, I was getting pictures developed and he told me to wait a few minutes for them to print. I wandered into the used-movie section and awaited my pictures. As I read the back cover of "The Story of Us," my pictures popped into my line of sight. There he was - this photo technician - standing there with a smile, hand-delivering my order to me in my isle. Surprised, I said, "Wow sir, thank you so much - you didn't have to bring these to me over here."

"It's the little things in life, ma'am," he said with a smirk.


Months later, I'm wondering if he's right.

Dear Walgreen's worker on 16th and Camelback: You're much more than a photo-technician. And, I think you're fantastic.

Zing, Zang, Zoom; We'll Miss you MJ

From my standpoint, the circus was a two hour jackpot and combination of all things amazing and fun: synchronized elephants performing headstands, women being catapulted out of 20 feet canons, crazy clowns juggling bowling pins, magic, tightrope performances, circ du soleil-esque ribbon people, poodles riding tri-cycles, performers jumping through, literally, flaming hoops - and tigers.

At one point, two large circles were outlined in the arena and a group of horses were ushered into one (the one nearest our seats) and a group of zebras into the other. I was pissed that we got the ordinary horses and could hardly see the zebras. That is, until the horses began to run in circles and, on command, neigh up in unison, then continue running, and again, in unison, begin to hop and perform tricks. Meanwhile, the zebras were merely running from one side of their pin to the other, simultaneously tripping over one another and doing nothing as spectacular as my horses.

It seemed that white and black striped animals - they don't have to do tricks. It's cool enough that they're uniquely patterned.

First trip to the circus - success. Zing, Zang, Zoom.

Which flowed right into the following day at work, in which I discovered that Michael Jackson had died. The only thing I could do was march back into my office, change my online Pandora radio station to Michael Jackson's, turn the volume up, and gaze blankly at my computer screen.

It was such a bizarre feeling really, just to think back on a good chunk of my childhood, all laced with Michael Jackson's music: cross-country road trips, inside jokes, and of course, the dances my friends and I used to make up to his songs, only to be performed in my living room for my family. At this time, we had his tapes, and one of us would push down on the play button and then sprint back to our positions. And man would we put our emotions into these dances - leaping and bounding off of beds and fire place mantles. We felt the rhythm and we were super, super cool.

Thinking back on it, the family never did laugh or show anything but awe and encouragement, which is, to put it lightly...impressive. It wasn't until years down the road, at a highschool pep rally, that Michael Jackson made his next appearance in my dancing life, and along with the cheerleading squad, we performed Thriller. Dressing the part, we all looked dead. And with red food dye dripping down my face, one thing that stands out in my memory, was throwing my fake arm into the audience.

It's so cliche, but the impact he had on so many of our lives...it was something. And for me personally, this was quite the loss. You will be missed, Michael Jackson.
You will be missed.

The land of dogs, beer carts and coworkers

It's been an interesting first week at MA. I've been diving in full-speed to learn and get involved with everything tourism related from an agency side.

My office - near the basketball court, frequented by a number of dogs and visited by the beer cart at 4pm on Friday. Well, and it's always productive and efficient.

So far, so good.

Today, I got an email to the entire staff stating that circus animals were being unloaded into our neighbor building, the US Aiways Center. Without wasting any time, I was out of my office and bolting out the front door to see the action. And low and behold, there were nine or 10 elephants being unloaded off of a train and into the arena. Then came the tigers, then came the clowns.

The circus is in town.

Good thing for me, media had tickets - and I snagged two. I'm in.

I'll have to report back.

Proof: The World is Full of Lunatics and Crazies

Present company included, the world is full of mad men.

In the month and four days Mr. Benson and I have resided in our new abode, we've seen a plethora of them (being the nosy neighbors that we both are). But one in particular, who we've designated, the marker bandit, has stood out enough to qualify for a shout out. This marker bandit has defaced pool furniture, poles, nearby office building doors, even a car - all with the same alias, "Mr. Sub," and all in thick black marker. Now, if you ask me, this seems to be a cut and dry case. This is the bandit's way of lashing out against some individual who drives a Sub[aru], almost mocking the man, Mr. Sub. If you ask my neighbor Sara, it's a phallic alias.

And that's the tip of the iceberg for the neighborhood. In the limited time we've lived here, and the even less time I’ve actually been home enough to spy on others, we’ve established the likes of a dreadlocked prostitute, a family of at least 15 Indians all residing in the same third floor unit, and all other kinds of friendly neighbors.

And that's just Phoenix, Arizona. I've recently been devouring a new book called The Sex Lives of Cannibals by Maarten Troost, which April passed along to me (ahem…some pastor). And through this charmingly hilarious adventure of a man who relocated to an equatorial pacific atoll called Tarawa, I've learned there are also crazies at the end of the world. Here's a brief excerpt of a shining example of the crazy, I-Kiribati islanders:

…”I began to notice with no small amount of disgust the sudden appearance of a large number of soiled diapers scattered around the house. They had been thoughtfully deposited there by dogs, who had picked them up from the reef, and happily emptied them of their contents. I will no hear another word about alleged intelligence of dogs. A soiled diaper is like catnip for dogs. They are ravenous for them, and what the dogs didn’t ingest, they left in disturbing little piles around the house.

…”Soiled diapers are repulsive, particularly for those who are unrelated to the soiler. I grabbed a stick and collected the diapers, placing them in the rusty oil drum we used as a burn bin. Without other alternatives for waste disposal, we burned everything – plastic, Styrofoam, paper, even the expired medicine we found in the cabinet, a tangible catalogue of the ailments that bedeviled Sylvia’s predecessors. In case anyone was wondering what they should do with an old asthma inhaler, I can state with some authority that throwing it into a fire is not a good idea, unless you are prepared to spend the rest of the day deaf and bewildered from the subsequent explosion. As I doused the diapers with a generous amount of kerosene, Tiabo came by to see what I was up to.

“You are going to burn the nappies?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“You cannot do that.”

“I am fairly certain that I can burn the nappies.”

“You must not burn the nappies.”

“Why”

“Because you will burn the baby’s bum.”

This gave me a pause. As I stood with match in hand, I did a quick mental inventory to see if I missed something. I checked the tattered remains of the diapers a little more thoroughly. There were, as far as I could see, no babies in the diapers. I pointed this out to Tiabo.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “If you burn the diapers you will burn the baby’s bum.”

Tiabo scooped out the diapers and returned them to the reef. I was baffled. I am very fond of babies, and under no circumstances would I ever wish for any harm to come to a baby’s bottom, but I was mystified here. Somewhere between cause and effect I was lost.

“Tiabo,” I said. “I don’t understand how burning diapers will lead to a scorched baby bum.”

“In Kiribati,” Tiabo explained, “we believe that if you burn someone’s…um, how do you say it?”

“Shit,” I offered.

“Yes,” she giggled. “If you burn someone’s shit, it is like burning a person’s bum.”

To readers, I wish to apologize for the frequent references to all things scatological, but such is life on Tarawa. I tried resorting to cold, heartless, Western logic.

“Tiabo,” I said. “I can prove to you that burning diapers will not harm the babies. We can do an experiment. I will burn the diapers, and you listen for the wail of babies.”

Tiabo was aghast. “NO!”

“I swear. No babies will be harmed.”

“Yes they will. You are a bad I-Matang.”

I did not want to be a bad I-Matang. I thought of myself as a good I-Matang, a good I-Matang who happened to be at wit’s end. “But, Tiabo, something has to be done. It’s not healthy to live surrounded by dirty diapers.”

She pondered this for a moment. Then she came up with an idea. “I will make a sign,” she said.

On a piece of cardboard, she wrote something in I-Kiribati. The only world I understood were tabu and I-Matang. “What does it say,” I asked.

“It is forbidden to throw diapers on the reef here. All diapers found will be burned by the I-Matang.”

“That’s good. Will it work?”

“I think so.”

We posted the sign on a coconut tree near the reef. The real test came on a Sunday. Due to their expense, diapers are used sparingly, and it was only on Sundays when mothers resorted to their use. The churches in Kiribati are, without exception, shamelessly coercive. It mattered not whether it was the Catholic Church of the Protestant Church or the Mormon Church or the Church of God, or any other of the innumerable churches to have set up shop on Tarawa; if a family found itself unable to pay their monthly tithe to their church, which typically took 30 percent of their meager income, they were called up to the front of the church by their pastors and loudly castigated for their failure to pay God His due. And woe to the mother who decides to skip the four-hour service to stay home and tend to a newborn.

On a Sunday afternoon, after the churches had released their flocks, I was pleasantly surprised to see a woman approach the reef with her child’s morning output, pause for a moment to read the sign, and turn around, no doubt searching for someplace where she could be assured that her baby’s poop would be spared the flame. That’s right, lady. Not In My Backyard.”


So yes, I understand this is the other side of the world, and therefore there’s an allowance for any backwards (pun intended) views on everyday life. But, still. Burning diapers leads to burned baby butts?

Back to the Westerner, we don’t allow nonsense, crazies. Example number three: I’ve also been recently been robbed by the book bandit. In today’s world, it’s not at all anomalous to have someone steal your card information and fraudulently make online charges to your account. After all, it’s America, we don’t trust anyone for a reason. But one that steals your information to purchase literature? I mean, really? The book bandit… strikes again.

And I won’t even go so far as to leave myself out of the crazies. By all means, I’m the ringleader. In the past week, I’ve joined the batty body with two documented acts of insanity. My memory has gotten to the point of dangerous and embarrassing activity on a daily basis. Pertaining to the book bandit, as I was on the phone with the bank, aggressively disputing charges in New Jersey, Florida and Massachusets it turned out that two of the charges, were in fact mine.

No, I had NOT gone to Barnes & Noble in Florida. Who was this imbecile? I lived in Arizona.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. WAIT.

Yes. I had, confirmed my wedding date in which I attended a ceremony in Palm Beach, Florida.

Oh dear.

And because that wasn’t quite enough, Monday morning came and greeted me with a pounding migraine. I mean, so much so, that the light was like a punch in the face all the way to the back of my skull and each step felt like… I couldn’t breathe. It didn’t help that I had only gotten three hours of sleep the night before. SO, I decided to balance off the lack of sleep and eating and pounding migraine with some Aleve, six to be exact. I’m now only instructed to eat bland foods for the next two weeks. The banana was the highlight of my morning. Crazy, indeed.

And my chef roommate, Mr. Benson, who I could never leave out of a fruity blog post, is in fact, also berserk. His latest theory: Cows and puppies – they get stressed. And, they have anxiety.

I sincerely think not.