Happy Happy, Joye Joye!!

I know that I usually reserve Wednesdays for my weekly update and how my online income project is going, but I decided to share one of my fruits of that labor with you instead. And any of you who are smokers, and would like to get that little "you are probably going to die" annoyance you have in the back of your head whenever you light up, out of your head; you may want to read this post!

I have been a pack to a pack and a half a day smoker for about 20 years now. I know, it's stupid. It got to the point where I was waking up every morning  and coughing up horrifying black material in the shower. This was my personal wake-up call that I needed to get rid of these smelly, dirty, and deadly little torches I was carrying between my fingers all day. The birth of my twin girls solidified this to the point where action was made in the form of trying to quit cold turkey in the beginning of this May. I was a prick. 20 years of nicotine infused blood was something that my body didn't really want to say goodbye to with any comfort. I found myself snapping at people close to me as well as clients I was working for. And I am not the kind of person snaps that anyone, in fact my laid-back personality is something that is always endeared me to others.

So after about a day, I found myself running to the market for another maliciously underpriced (about one dollar US) pack of Marlboro reds. I apologized to everyone around me who I threatened to stab the day prior, and tried to come up with another way to kill this smoking habit. Patty and I went into San Jose that weekend, and I decided to give the nicotine patch a try. I thought that maybe if I came up with a hybrid rehabilitation method by using the patch smoking a bit more herb for the oral fixation, I would see more success. Nope. My first hole in that plan was supplementing more herb. Trying to code a complex point-of-sale database while stoned did lead to some pretty hilarious results, but there was too fine a line between something funny and something I could lose my job over for me to continue this way. That, and the patch just made me itch and didn't really reduce my cravings at all. So I was back to the drawing board with my Marlboro reds yet again...

So I did some research, and I found out about the new phenomenon called electronic cigarettes. These are little devices that consist of a battery, and atomizer, and a mouthpiece that contains nicotine infused liquid. They were invented in China during the first half of the last decade, and they are now beginning to see some worldwide use. They really intrigued me because they utilized water vapor as opposed to smoke as both a medium and the only exhaled byproduct. I scoured all over YouTube and the Internet for information on them, and eventually found a forum maintained by people who really enjoy and swear by them. There were literally hundreds of posts from people who were lifelong smokers who completely kicked the habit by using these devices. And there were also an abundant amount of threads dedicated to modding and reviewing them in a way that this was obviously becoming one of these people's favorite pastimes.

So I lurked for a little bit, and watched all the reviews on YouTube that I could for the various models (and there are several), and I eventually settled on the Joye 510. The biggest challenge for me in ordering anything online is my location. Costa Rican customs enforcement is world famous for its corruption and frequent ability to "lose" incoming packages that are addressed to people from English-speaking countries. So I bought my new stogie from a US-based vendor, and had the package sent to my mother's house where she would repackage it to make it look like a child's birthday present. I was amazed at the insane variety of flavors and nicotine strengths that you could choose from when ordering these puppies. I decided to get a sample of about 20 different flavors at the highest nicotine level, with the plan being to eventually wean myself down to the zero nicotine level strength liquid over the course of a couple years.

So my package took about a month altogether to get here, but opening it up was like Christmas day for me. I charged up the battery, loaded the cartridge with some Dr Pepper flavored e-liquid, pressed the button and took a long drag.

Absolutely brilliant...

It feels like what smoking should feel like, and with the strength of the e-liquid that I use, five or six puffs still gives me that goofy head spinning nicotine rush that you get when you go several hours without a cigarette. The flavors come out so beautifully, and the vapor leaves absolutely no smell whatsoever. In the short time that I've been using these, I have not had a single craving for an analog cigarette the entire time. The Joye 510 is famous for hitting more like a bong than a cigarette, and I can definitely attest to that. So my new habit comes with a lot more advantages than my old one such as:

1.) I can and have smoked in a movie theater during a movie as well as on a bus and my favorite bookstore. And yeah...I can smoke WHILE taking a shower in the morning.
2.) I feel all of the benefits of quitting smoking like the return of my sense of smell and taste, and my physical endurance has risen sharply as well.
3.) I can pick a flavor according to my mood or occasion. Cappuccino in the morning, Dr. Pepper when I am out and about, and  jasmine when Dr. Girlfriend and I are watching TV in bed together...(yes I can smoke in bed now too!)
4.) It just looks frikkin cool when the green LED lights up whenever I take a drag.
5.) I can smell my baby girls and I don't smell like an ashtray anymore.
6.) I am thinking of starting an entirely new blog based on the crazy ass lucid dreams I have when I smoke these things before going to sleep.

I can't say enough good things about this little gizmo. I believe that it has literally saved both my health, and possibly my life. It is a way more enjoyable habit than smoking cigarettes, and I can't recommend it enough to anyone I know who is still chained to those stinky coffin nails. If this gadget is something which you can use, I already did all the research as far as prices and websites that sell them. If you live in the United States or Canada, I highly recommend these guys. They have the lowest prices outside of ordering from China directly, and they have a huge variety of models and flavors of e-liquid to chose from. If you live in the UK or parts of Western Europe, rumor has it that these are the guys to turn to. But no matter where you go to order these things, I urge you to do so. It's nice to wake up in the morning and not feel like you are dying....

And to wrap it up, here is a video of Katherine Heigl sharing her e-cig with David Letterman just to show you that I am not making this up!

Thank You So Much, Nicked-Out Chinese Inventors!!

Tuesday Travel With Vice Magazine: Filipino Feed Lot / Soup No. 5

 I think one of the biggest challenges facing anyone who wants to travel the world is wrestling with the reluctance of one's own appetite. If you really think about it, a lot of the culinary staples in American and other Western diets are pretty disgusting. Cheese for example is something you never see many people from Asian countries eating because the thought of leaving cow's milk to rot for months is pretty damn gross. And the thought of taking the most undesirable meaty portions of an animal that you normally would feed a dog with, and making a red tubular concoction out of it isn't very appetizing when you put your mind to it either.

One of the features of this blog is still "international eats" even though my lazy ass has skipped it for quite a few months. And in that feature we will explore more specific examples of where cultures digress when it comes to food. But for those who are curious, you can check out my first (and only) installment of this feature here.

Luckily for me Costa Rican food is actually more like a milder version of Mexican cuisine, so my spoiled American palate wasn't too traumatized when I started eating like a local here. It's mostly beans and rice, some kind of grilled animal, and garlic and lemon seasoned slaw with lots of corn tortillas. However, ex-pats and other world travelers in places like Asia and Africa have a little bit more internal wrestling to do with themselves when they sit down for a locally prepared meal.

In this week's episode, Vice correspondent Ivar Berglin travels to the Philippines and decides to sample some of the local delicacies from one of the more "authentic" restaurants in Manila. Filipino cuisine, much like other cultures and Asia, prize freshness and beauty of presentation above most other aspects of food preparation. Ivar finds that out himself when he is asked to go retrieve and have butchered his own chicken for one of the restaurant's specialties. Despite the unique way it was prepared, one cannot deny that the chicken will be very fresh....

Mind you this video is not for the squeamish or culinarily closed minded

Mother's Day in Costa Rica

Well I hope everybody had a great weekend, mine was a bit too busy to actually have time to sit down and enjoy it, but I'm looking down the barrel of this next workday with a little bit more confidence. This week is gonna be a little bit more active than most because I felt the itch to get some writing done finally. Kudos all you fellow bloggers who manage to do this seven days a week, 365 days a year, I don't think most readers realize how exhausting it can be to come up with something original to write about every single day. My hat is definitely off to you!

Today is Mother's Day in Costa Rica, and my fiancée Paty ( a.k.a. Dr. Girlfriend) gets to celebrate her second one of the year. One drawback of being the alpha male in a multicultural household is that the incorporation of two different cultures' holidays means you better keep one eye on the calendar at all times lest you get the dreaded "how could you forget?!" conversation no man ever wants to have. And it also sucks that they don't have Halloween down here, and I really wish the gringo population here would get together and market it a little better. After all we do celebrate Cinco de Mayo in the United States, why not Halloween in Costa Rica? But I digress...

They celebrated a little differently down here in that Mother's Day is actually a national holiday that everybody gets off from work. It's a day when you see entire families in the parks and plazas just walking around together, enjoying the weather while greeting friends. I couldn't help but fall in love with the way, Tico culture puts family in such an important place in their national identity, from the time I first started walking around and exploring down here. Whenever you see a family in the park, it's almost always the entire family right up to the most elderly in their wheelchairs.

The way we treat our old people in the United States is abhorrent, bordering upon a human rights violation in my opinion. If you don't believe me, take a day trip to a nursing home. So one of the things that I love about this place is the fact that the elderly have the right to die at home surrounded by family, and aren't left in institutionalized human dustbins once they become a "burden". I am actually comforted by the notion that if I am unfortunate enough to live past my bladder's shelf life, I will most likely be in one of my children's houses, playing video games and trying to stay as intoxicated as possible.

And the mother of my children (80% of them anyway) is who I have to thank for this. She gave me four gifts that I will always be grateful for in the form of our ridiculously gorgeous kids, and the way she has kept her beautiful heart the same the entire five years she and I have been together. This is a person who gets up at 4:30 AM every day, wakes and bathes and dresses four human beings, then walks with all of them to the local bakery because she likes that the kids eat their bread and tortillas just as they come out of the oven. She then comes back, feeds all four aforementioned humans, cleans up after them, and then wakes up her man with a kiss as he mutters and swears all the way to the shower. Mind you I'm not swearing or muttering at her, it's actually the impending work day that I am voicing my hostility towards. At least she finds it funny...

Throughout the day, she reads, plays, entertains, spends all of her time with the kids. She never takes a break. She never busts into my office demanding help. And she actually comes in and rubs MY shoulders when my own work day is getting a bit stressful. There is no possible way that I can ever be more grateful for a woman in my life than this one. And I am also thankful that I was given the foresight and the experience to truly appreciate her as much as she deserves to be appreciated. I will treat her like a queen until my last breath in this world. I try my absolute best to give her rest whenever she needs it as well as to help with the four very active kids in our lives. Time alone is definitely at a premium, but every once in a while circumstance or necessity permits us to take a little trip together into San Jose without the kids, and we always make sure to enjoy to the fullest. This is probably for the best, because our Pisces/Scorpio natures and her Catholic upbringing usually means that time spent alone we've each other can very easily result in more children. We are kind of wanting to hold off on that for the next 20 or so years until the current kids can start picking up that slack.

But I absolutely love this woman. Even though we are 13 years apart in age, I often times feel as though I've met a kindred spirit in her. She is just as curious about the natural world and just as passionate about her ideals as I am about mine. It is to her that I dedicate this blog post on my fifth Costa Rican Mother's Day, it is to her that I dedicate every single noble action I can make in this life as well.

I'm wondering if I should call and wish my own mother a happy Costa Rican Mother's Day.... Yeah I probably should. Maybe the allure of having two mothers days a year will be too much for her to resist, and she can finally move down here permanently....

An Open Letter To America

Our country was kicked in the balls last Friday by Standard and Poor's downgrade of our credit status as a country. Were still at AA plus which isn't too bad (seems to work okay for New Zealand), and the other international credit agencies still have us at a AAA status. So no, it's not an instant thunderous crash to national bankruptcy. But it is a slap in the mouth that the United States cannot afford to ignore, and it signals the need to stop our idiotic family feud that has made us the laughingstock of the international community. This stupid liberal versus conservative nonsense will literally destroy us as a nation if we keep going down this fool’s path. No more fighting over the wheel while we are around so many icebergs.

I will confess to being guilty of adding my own fuel to the fire in the form of things that I've written in the past and the times when my mood and sensibilities make me feel compelled to add my opinion to the mix. I have very close and deep-seated beliefs politically, and in the last 15 or so years I felt the need to take sides against what I saw as a movement to turn the United States into a fascist theocracy. But on the other side of the fence, there was no doubt conservative counterparts to myself who felt the same way. They saw my side of the argument as being for some kind of Marxist/Communist takeover of our beloved democracy. Well I am here to tell you my friends, the egg has been on both of our faces because neither argument bears out the true facts.

And those diehard, like it or not facts are this: both of our sides are right, and both of our sides are wrong. And they're a lot of places of agreement that we have that never seem to make the airwaves that are full of the hot air that keep both of us at each other's throats. We are being divided and conquered by our very selves. Never before in the history of nations has there been a time when a country willfully destroyed itself from the inside out as we seem fixated upon doing. The only way to find ourselves out of this and back to where we belong is the hurry up and find out where we agree and go from there. Through talking and research, I myself find quite a few points that I'd like to share right now, and I'm sure other thinking people could come up with even more.

1. Both of us love this country immensely, and both are dedicated to its original ideals of liberty and equality. 
2. Neither of us want the legitimately needy should be completely without a social safety net to catch them when there's no one else to turn to.
3. Both of us believe in the freedom of the individual, and the notion that through hard work and perseverance, they can make their life better through their own means. 
4. Your real-life typical conservative would be the first person in the room to knock a man's teeth out should he suggest the United States follow the path anywhere close to that of Nazi Germany. 
5. Your real-life typical liberal would be the first person in the room to tell a Leninist or Maoist to sit down and shut up should they start spouting off red communist nonsense. 
6. The wing nuts on both sides, the extremist freaks that is, make up a small percentage of either side’s overall camp. But just as the crazy yelling homeless man sitting in the back of a city bus, they somehow get all of the attention and are labeled the "typical conservative” or "typical liberal/progressive”. 
7. In our own families, there are people we love with all our hearts who are of opposite political affiliation, and it doesn't matter one bit to us. 
8. Neither side wants to watch the beauty of nature destroyed. 
9. Both of our sides listen to Led Zeppelin and Johnny Cash.  
10.  Both of our camps were devastated at the loss of life during the September 11 attacks that seem to be the catalyst for our new mindset as a nation. 

 

And these are just 10 that I could pull out of my head right now. As far apart as our ideologies may seem sometimes, they are just different roads to the same destination that both sides want. A peaceful and secure place to raise our kids where freedom of the individual and the freedom to navigate one's life as they see fit is the kind of country we all want for ourselves and each other. I don't think we ever needed to be a superpower, and should that status ever go away, our innermost values as Americans won't permit us to miss it very much. Sure we are competitive as a culture, but we are also disarmingly laid-back when the situation allows for it.

Digging ourselves out of this hole that we fought ourselves and to won't be easy. But the first step would be to turn off that damn noise and start talking to each other as people and communities. This is how our country started. Ideas were shared, compromises were made, and a unified 13 colonies rose up against an apparent juggernaut and sent it packing across the Atlantic. In 2011, another wolf is at the gate, and we ourselves put it there. The noise put it there. The noise I'm talking about is from the mouths of people who profit in our conflict with each other. Media figures like Limbaugh, Maddow, Beck, Olbermann, Hannity, and Maher have told us what to think about the other side and have warned us of the danger in their ultimate victory. All of them are full of shit. Because there is no ultimate victory, we live in a republic. The founders of this country set it up to where one side doesn't really have enough time at the helm to screw things up so badly that they can't be fixed. Our history shows this time and time again.

The next step would be to go back to our roots as a democratic republic and give the states more of the authority that has seemed to slip away from them over time, more so since the Great Depression. Let "red states" be red states, and let "blue states" be blue states. If it's not in the Constitution, then it goes to the states, period. I have my own feelings on abortion that I won't share here, but it is not mentioned in the Constitution. That means it should be a state issue, and if the residents of that state disagree, then there are plenty of other states who feel the same way they do where they can move. This is just one example of a single issue that both sides seem to have a disconnect on that can be completely nullified by just giving the authority to the individual states. Sure this might result in a mass migration to and from the different states that seem to jibe within individuals own value system, but in the long run it would be for the best. Because I feel that we could better come to mutual agreement a lot easier if everyone felt they were permitted to live the way they saw fit to live.

The third step would be to end both of these idiotic useless wars that we have entangled ourselves in and have not made us any bit safer than we were on 10 September 2001. 10 years, guys. Time’s up. These operations are money pits that are making us broker by the day to the tune of about $1 billion a week. We went about this stupidly in that we did not raise taxes to accommodate a 10 year war, and in fact we lowered taxes for the highest income brackets during a time when we apparently needed more laser guided smart bombs than usual. This was a dumb move. Both sides need to acknowledge this as it is a major contributor to both our deficits and our debts.

The fourth step has to be a combination of both real spending cuts and real tax increases. We need to find every able-bodied person that is on the welfare rolls unneededly and cut them off. Our recent actions against illegal immigrants means that there are a lot of fruit picking jobs out there. From here on out, anyone caught trying to get federal funds as a source of workless income should be charged with a crime. Then they can go to jail and pick fruit. At the same time, the upper income brackets need to start paying their fair share in the form of taxes and realize that the tax break they got from Bush came with a heavy price that they need to help repay. Their luxury came at all of our expense, but we should withhold our anger and trust them to do the right thing for the sake of the country that gave them the freedom to be so successful.

The fifth, final, and most difficult step would be for the United States to completely purge its government of every single last sitting congressperson, senator, and president that is currently holding office right now. They are responsible for fanning this flame we have found ourselves in with their snake oil salesman promises every few years that none of them ever keep. To my conservative friends I pose this question: for eight years you had the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of our government in your control. Why is abortion still legal? To my liberal friends I ask this question: we had both houses of Congress and shiny bright new young president for two years. Why is our concentration camp in Guantánamo Bay still open? All of them need to go. And they need to be replaced with people who have proven track records of making a difference for the better in their communities. Whether they be respected deacons of the church in the more conservative districts, or a devoted activist and progressive thinker in the more liberal ones, we have to start electing people who we can believe in by their actions and not just their words from now on.

I know that I am just a blogger with a modest audience in my own little corner of the Internet, but being outside of my country looking in, my heart aches sometimes. And it is ached for a long time. The pain started when I saw people jumping for their lives out of the windows of the World Trade Center, it started to hurt worse when I saw our clumsy and misdirected response, and the knowledge that we violated our own treaties by utilizing torture on prisoners was what made me too angry to stay on American soil anymore. But most of the people I love are still there, as is my deepest ingrained cultural identity. I will always be an American, no matter where I decide to hang my hat. I believe in freedom and a hand of friendship extended to all who will shake it. But the mother country really needs to get it's shit together....

 

Bastard Costa Rican Wildlife: All These Damn Ants!!

Living in the tropics has its ups and downs. Sure you get nice weather year-round, gorgeous scenery, beautifully exotic locals, and cheap produce. But the downfalls can be many as well and they can range from moderately annoying to out right infuriating. Mother nature hasn't really been subjugated in these parts of the world, nor is she likely to be any time soon. So we denizens of the tropics have to put up with things like freakishly powerful hurricanes, volcanoes, predatory animals that take cues from stories like Jaws and Jurassic Park, and the bugs... The fucking bugs...

A few weeks ago I wrote about a friend of mine named Geoff who lives somewhere in my work desk. He and I never really hang out that much, but he shows up every once in a while to make sure that the insect population isn't completely overrunning my office. Well I haven't seen Geoff in about two weeks, and I am beginning to fear the worst. And as a result of his unexpected absence, I once again find myself competing for my own food with these dickhead little ants that are damn near close to making me want to blow up my own house.

Here's a typical lunch scene from the last two weeks: Dr. Girlfriend walks in with a great big beautiful plate of "arroz con bistek" (fried rice with strips of sirloin) and all the delicious Latin trimmings like fried plantain and yucca. Basically rib sticking deliciousness. I thank her profusely for her kindness while I fire up a freshly downloaded TV show or movie. She sets the plate on the table behind me and I take a moment to visually savor every single step she takes back into the house (my office is outside). In the short time that elapsed between her beginning the walk, and the abrupt cutoff of the angel chorus and white beam of light from the sky that was shining on her rear end when she closed the door, my plate of food is crawling with these teeny tiny little black fuckfaced ants.

there are so many of them that you would think that she had set the plate down in the middle of the freaking nest of them, but she didn't. There wasn't a single ant on that table 2 min. prior. It took only 2 min. for my food, utensils, and glass of fruit juice to be completely covered by these teeny tiny little ants. I don't know what kind they are, but they are about the size of a grain of beach sand and apparently 1 billion of them live in my house and office. And yet, as many as they are, you never see them anywhere until you place some kind of food on a surface that they can get to. And it doesn't matter what it is, the little fuckers will literally eat anything.

I have small children in my house, so I'm reluctant to go on a good old American style killing spree with a can of bug spray. In the environmental laws down here are such that what passes for exterminators are little more than herbal advisors. Very few insecticide chemicals are available without a hugely expensive permit, if even available at all. Being the tree hugger at heart that I am, I guess part of me sees the value in this. Except of course during breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late-night munchy time. I literally have to hold whatever plate I am eating out of in my lap, and keep whatever beverage I'm drinking placed in a random location on my desk every few minutes.

Geoff needs to get his ass back here...