pills, thrills and foreign pharmacies

i see buying somewhat illegal narcotics abroad as an entitlement. it is a human right violation that i can not purchase tylenol with codeine in the states and by god i am going to exercise this right given to foreigners as much as eating a croissant in montreal or drinking shiraz in australia. in fact, i am going to purchase as much as the pharmacy will allow me. so what if I am carrying 5000 codeine tablets across the border, i earned them.

when entering a foreign pharmacy, i put on my best innocent face and try not to look like the lecherous drug hound that i am. chris always gets embarrassed and tries to pretend he doesn't know me. recently in quito, ecuador i found a very accommodating pharmacist who was willing to let me purchase as much valium as i wanted. i asked for a box, and he came back with a huge green box. when asked how many pills were contained inside, he said 500. out of the opposite corner of the store, i hear chris yell “no.” i understood this very strong “no” to mean chris did not want to travel around with a valium drug mule. i bought a respectable 20.

unfortunately, due to a harrowing bus ride through the andes on mud roads and steep deadly cliffs, 20 pills were not enough. while back in quito, i tried another pharmacy to score some more. this time they were not so accommodating and the pharmacist tells me to speak to a doctor. when i ask where you can see a doctor (calling their bluff and trying not to look like a total crack head), they say they can get one and all of sudden i am being led down a long hallway and end up in an office telling some foreign doctor i need a script cause i am going on a 3 day bus ride to la paz and don't want to freak out. he gives me the script and i have it filled and leave the pharmacy 20 minutes later to a very upset chris wondering where the hell i was.

chris is not the only one who becomes ensnared in my exercise to purchase fun white pills abroad. during a very long road trip with my father through the southwest, i bullied him to about 15 mexican pharmacies in the border community of cuidad juarez, which should be called cuidad shitty, searching for anyone who would sell me vicadin. i eventually scored some, but didn’t have enough money, so i had my father buy them for me.

the lesson of the story is, if you are abroad with me, i will stop in the local pharmacy. traveling is fun, but traveling on an assortment of colored pills is just a little more fun. i can’t wait for southeast asia.

américa del sur, primera parte

Note: I sent this by email to many of you before – although frankly it was way too long and I would be shocked if anyone had the time (patience) to read about my gallivants. I broke it down (because i know you all have attention disorders) and edited it for your reading pleasure – because it’s all about you.

we touched down in bogotá about 2 in the afternoon. i was thrilled and could not wait to start our 16 (later adopted to 17) day tour through bogotá, colombia and a good cross section of ecuador.

when we got in the cab to be taken to the hostel platypus, i felt immediately we were no longer in the usa. our taxi driver pimped out his ride with some booming speakers and one of those tiny steering wheels that look like it belongs in a go cart rather than a car - which actually made some sense since the car was the size of a go cart. he then tore through the city streets barely missing other cabs, trucks, meridians, light poles and pedestrians. i began my foreign country taxi buddhist chant:

"thedriverdriveseveryday….iamsureheknowswhatheisdoing….andknowshewon'tkillthatchildontherightside"
or
"ohmygodohmygodohmygod…stoplookinginthefront…justlookthesidewindow"

the bogotá 500 ended at our hostel which lonely planet describes "the kind of backpacker mecca..." thereby insulting Muslims everywhere. Although it wasn't the crappiest hostel i have ever stayed in (that award goes to the china train station hostel in hohot which did not charge extra for the feces on the floor), it was no mecca. it’s the type of place where you wear your shower shoes in the bathroom and for that matter, you never take off your shoes at all, and pray you don't get bed bugs from the college futon bought in 1984 which you now call your bed for three nights.

we quickly escaped to grab some food and the closest place turned out to be an israeli owned cafe l'jaim which was to have some awesome typical latin food of shwarma. since i am an awesome new jew, i was all for it. i kept saying we are going to la ham in which chris was quick to correct me saying it probably stood for l'chiam. i never said i was a good new jew.

my expectations of bogotá or should i say my stereotype was a bunch of coke smugglers funding their guerrilla war to smuggle more coke. okay, maybe i wasn't that stereotypical, but what i found in bogota is one of the most charming cities i have ever been in. it is a complete cafe culture with many people on the streets strolling the cafes, shops and outdoor markets. the first evening we stumbled upon a street fair complete with a transvestite comedian (comedy loses something when you only understand every 30th word), jugglers who set fire to tennis rackets, and traditional dancing. it was an amazing stumbling find - the kind that makes you want to travel forever.

the only downside was my street meat envy. bogota had huge chorizos on a stick topped off with a potato rolled in rock salt. YUMMY! i avoided this because my intestines are a fragile flower that I must tend to or they will pluck me out of the country. Other street food I passed on to not be airlifted from yet another continent included homemade donuts with glowing goo dripping from their powdered sugar middle, grilled corn with kernels the size of my thumbnail, and special herbal tea which I thought smelled wonderful and chris believed it was made from sewage.

more in the next blog....

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i believe religion serves many needs – good and evil. i also believe one of the most important needs filled by religion throughout history is entertainment . you’re bored working those salt mines? chant to allah five times a day. hot day in the rice paddies? meditate with buddha. tired of picking up twigs to keep your fires a glowing? worship the sun god. the list is endless.

what else did people have to do? theater – maybe on special occasions. parties – again something most peoples could not sustain everyday.

in the past century our entertainment options have multiplied, but one true option is worthy of worship. with the dawn of dvr or 1 ad (after dvr), my life begins again. dvr is my new god.

dvr lets me whiz through programming at the attention deficient speeds i demand. no more commercials, no more hosts introducing america’s funniest videos leaving me waiting to see an overweight housewife trip over her overweight dog, and no more five minute recaps of lost trying to piece together its absurd plot and multitudes of insignificant characters dying by mysterious fog, polar bears or that creepy leader guy with the bug eyes. dvr is efficient, it is personal, and it is glorious. all hail dvr.

now well into 2 ad, i have become addicted to dvr. i no longer can watch live television. even if i am watching a program live, i will tape it and watch something else, so that i may return to it when i am able to zip through it.

my mere worship had grown to fanaticism. watching non-dvr television is blasphemy and i firmly believe a hate crime. catholicism never really worked for me, but I am proud to say that the ideology of dvr fits my lifestyle just perfectly. so please excuse me, as i need to lay fruits around the dvr box and light a candle to chant that it’s little green light never burns out. Amen.

sometimes good friends go bad, then crazy

chris and i had a interesting 4^th of july in dc this weekend visiting my long time friend michelle. the weekend was full of weird moments flashing michelle's true crazy potential. she was stoned the entire weekend (putting a bowl to her mouth the minute she awaken) which you would think would relax her but in reality didn't seem to phase her; it just made her repeat things over a thousand times ('we have to go at 230pm to meet my friends' was vocalized about a dozen times - each time she would get more agitated and angry at us for reasons unknown). michelle also was unable to do one thing for more than 15 mintues without feeling the strong urge to leave or do something else. sometimes, if we were in a museum, she would text message me 100 times stating: she was bored, going out for a cigarette, where are you, bought a bracelet cause she was bored, standing outside, i really don't want to be here anymore, smoking another cigarette, do you want to go, where are you - all within a 20 minute period of time. she also can no longer hold a conversation for more than an hour without bringing up some horrible trauma in her life. on saturday night, we got in a confrontation at a bar which i (and therefore chris) walked away from her to go back to the apartment. that is when the real crazy kicked in - leaving her screaming "my mother was a heroine addict" and "i was molested when i was 9" in between throwing things against the walls.

chris and i decided to flee her apartment for a hotel room. michelle sums up her anger here in one of the many, MANY emails/sms messages to me (i have changed nothing):

“look, i didn't know i was offending chris. but the way you approached
it mike was way out of fucking line in my opinion.

my real friends tell me to my face if i am offending them. i HONESTLY
didn't realize i was doing anything WRONG.

was winning the game pissing him off?
was i being too whatever?

i asked you to come here so i could have a FRIEND around to get over
BRIAN and what do you tell me to do?

STOP CRYING BABY, GET A THERAPIST

GEE THANKS FRIEND. THANKS FOR THE HUG, THANKS FOR THE FUCKING SUPPORT.
THAT'S ALL I FUCKING WANTED. BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOU HAVE TO TELL ME
TO GROW UP AND STOP CRYING.
I DON'T STOP.
MY MOTHER IS A HEROIN ADDICT, MY BROTHER IS IN A HOME, MY FATHER IS IN
A HOME, I WAS SEXUALLY, MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY ABUSED BY SO MANY
PEOPLE YOU CAN'T COUNT THEM ON YOUR TWO GAY FUCKING HANDS. I FUCKING
HATE YOU. YOU ARE THE WORST FRIEND I HAVE EVER HAD.

I WENT TO FUCKING BRIAN'S LAST NIGHT CAUSE HE IS MY ONLY FRIEND WHO
WOULD HELP ME LAST NIGHT.

you have so many people that just love your funny nature so much but i
know the real ASSHOLE you are.
I hope one day you realize how controlling and what a fucking dick you are.
maybe not. oooh look at me, i am so cool i travel all over. ooooh
look at me. i am so awesome i get to go all over cause i am so
fucking great.

take a minute and think about what a jerk you are.
i know i have my faults. i don't deny them, i list them, i work on
them, i deal with them.

you, you laugh and make fun of everyone.
is that your defense mechanism to make fun of people who are NOT like you?

YOU ARE GAY. HA HA YOU'RE GAY. GAYS ARE RUINING THE USA. YOU WANT
TO HEAR THAT ALL THE TIME FROM YOUR FRIEND?

ALL I WANTED WAS A FRIEND CAUSE I WAS GOING THROUGH A HARD TIME WITH
LOSING BRIAN, BUT YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT FUCKING ANYONE BUT YOURSELF.

WHAT DID I DO THAT WAS SO FUCKING OFFENSIVE?”

needless to say, i don't think i will make it on michelle's christmas card list this year. i think the above sums up how our weekend was. although the fireworks were pretty awesome, as was the afghani exhibit at the national museum of art. ttfn.

hot steamy dog shit

whenever i am confronted by our furry four legged friends, there are two things that instantly go through my mind a) is it going to jump on me and soil my clothing and b) will i feel compelled to pet it and therefore suffer from dog stink on my hand. i know all owners of dogs are adamant their dog is clean – guess what? i don’t care how fucking clean your dog is, there is always residue dog stink on your hand after petting it. although there are varying levels of stink; some less than others, there really is nothing as repugnant as an “outside” dog’s vile dander on your hand after pretending to like canines and scratching its back.

and if your dog slobbers or breathes its hot little doggie breath on me, i am not exactly ready to gush on how cute he/she is. many times, it is not the dogs fault for being annoying – like it wasn’t properly trained or it’s dressed up like a doll by its owner. honestly, in nyc people put rain boots on their little purse dogs. i firmly believe that people who dress their dogs beyond a jaunty little bandannas should be euthanized.

not being one to hide my emotions on my face, immediately when confronted with a slobbery dog, the owner will say “you’re not a dog person, are you?” i want to say “yes” – because i feel if i say “no” it makes it look like i am a bad person and let’s face it, my personality is so borderline i don’t need another item to weigh in on the “evil” side of the lady justice weight measure. so i say yes, but it is a lie – which makes me wonder, is it worse to lie about liking dogs than actually not liking dogs?

another sex in the city moment there. that damn movie is everywhere right now. i don’t really hate the movie as much as the hags that can’t wait to see it. i use to watch sex in the city on television and liked it. recently, while mending at home on my back for five weeks, i tried repeatedly to watch the reruns and just found myself nauseated by the pathetic storylines and ‘hipper’ than bitchy attitude all four main characters have. i guess i can see some sort of camp value in the upcoming flick, but that would be a lie – and i’ll leaving lying to whether or not i like dogs. i guess the real point here is: will i ever be able to end a paragraph with a question without envisioning sarah jessica parker typing on her bed about the latest dipshit she’s dating?

and since we are talking about dogs in the city (drum roll, please), i would have to de-evolve to be reduced to take a thin plastic bag and pick up hot steamy dog shit off the sidewalk every morning/night. it’s just never going to happen. not only that, but i curse all city dogs owners who pollute our sidewalks with brown stains, who are the real culprits in the waifs of urine we are so lucky to smell, and who kill more trees than bette milder can plant.

now, don’t get me wrong, i am really not against dogs. to be honest, i actually find them comforting to have around. i understand the bond one can have with an animal – i loved my childhood dog, ginger. she was so important to me that when i was 7 or 8, i planned on taking her with me when i ran away (side note: i would tell my mother i was running away, usually after a good beating, and her response was always “i’ll pack your lunch,” classic karen).

to sum it all up - i guess i like the concept of a dog, just don’t make me pet them.

NOTE FOR FRIENDS WITH DOGS: there are always exceptions to the rules, and there are dogs i do genuinely like – so please don’t ask me whether i like your dog or not, cause the answer is always yes, whether i do or not.

my phone, my nemesis

there are moments in which i am capable of super human strength, much like the incredible hulk. in fact the incredible hulk and i have one important key characteristic in common - we can only summon our super human strength when we are angry. we differ as i did not obtain this super power by some failed government experiment (like rachael ray) - mine is purely genetic - from the deep pit of anger which pretty much defines my mother.

many schoolchildren used the "my father can beat up your father" analogy to boost their pride. i can say with ease that my mother could kill your entire family within 5 seconds - not so much for my pride, as more of a warning to you. karen (my mother's name to the outside world, or 'killa gorilla' in fight club) could summon up hateful rage to stomp out many evils in our house - like beds made WITHOUT hospital corners (for those savage pigs who do not know what hospital corners are - it is when you corner tuck the sheets in a perfect 90 degree angle), watching tv before 4pm, or pretty much anytime she was annoyed.

a special offense which would unleash quick and immediate tirades (read: beatings) was to eat food on the forbidden list. karen was a heavyweight fighter weighing in around 300 pounds (give or take a bag of lays or two) which gave her a special interest in the quantities of food available in house at all times. food falling below certain quantities would bring about beatings. this created a special food edibility pyramid in my house which only the local culture (myself, my sister and my father) could comprehend - although many times the locals could not understand what the beast wanted. in karen's house, all foods had levels of edibility - depending on where they fell on the pyramid. a food on the forbidden list (food seemingly purchased for consumption, but in reality evil booby traps set by karen to release her inner rage) ranged from anything from pretzels to fruit to bread.

not only were foods categorized but also weighed - so that if any one member ate more then the allotted or "fair" amount, karen could (and would) quickly squash such uprisings. my mother was like a somali warlord with the key to the wheat harvest and no one in the family was going to establish any other order.

in fact their was an actual key which unlocked a pantry, which my mother would hold, to protect the precious stash of food stuff from the groveling peasants. at one time, this included 14 cake mixes and matching icings - because karen knew my sister and i were aching to bake a wedding cake behind her back and not share a crumb with her.

besides a locked pantry and established fear, my mother also had a hidden stash of food in her dresser - which would include multi-pack bars of candy, snack chips, nuts and other assorted treats any good diabetic needs. i knew all these secrets because, like my sister, i was part of the food resistance.

to digress, i too have inherited the ability of irrational blind rage - which i have been somewhat successful in suppressing with my drug and alcohol abuse. at times though, like the hulk, i loose control and become enraged - mostly on inanimate objects which laugh and taunt me.

since purchasing my razor (spelled razr by the assholes at motorola) phone, it has belittled me with mystery rings, scourged me with unintended photographs, and in general made calling friends and retrieving voice-mail unnecessarily difficult. this past sunday, while driving home from the national alliance of mental health fund raising walk (i kid you not), the phone mocked me for the very last time - incessantly ringing to tell me i had a voice mail - which i was already alerted to every 20 minutes for the previous 3 hours. my face turned green, my body grew, at first twice and then three times the size as normal and then, i snapped the phone in half.

now, many people would think i snapped the phone where the hinge was (as it was a flip phone). that my friends, would be for those without super hero strength. i snapped my phone in half right below the 4,5,6 buttons. later, i learned from the razr gestapo that i snapped the motherboard (her words, not mine) in half and rendered the phone useless (one tiny step below its original ranking if you ask me).

therefore, i do not have a phone at the moment, but look forward to my new blackberry i purchased online. i hope it is fully trained not to annoy me or else i may have to unleash the rage again in a sequel - 'son of killa gorilla.'

daddy needs his medicine

my favorite day is when i get to drink vodka until i start dancing around my living room to music on demand videos, then lay on the couch until i fall "asleep", wake up at 2am and debate whether i want to make the effort to take out my contacts or not (i always rally and take them out - ripping my corneas in the process - but they grow back, right?). of course this activity is one you can not do everyday or else you create habits that are frowned upon by your spouse who yet again has to listen to you belt out the lastest kayne west song. i love kayne west when i am drunk. no, this is a hobby you can only enjoy every now and then, and guess what - tonights the night!

mmmm, the vodka is so cold.

today was the first day back to work after "the man" took some of my intestines. it went fine, i am sore but nothing a fifth of vodka won't cure. it is very strange that the concept of sitting is painful. walk, stand, jumping jacks, dancing to kayne west is fine - sitting, painful. but that is what vodka is for.....