My Summer Ennui

I haven’t written a blog entry in more than 3 weeks. I think about it – I do. And then I just say, “eh?” and lie down on the couch reading historical novels. And I realized that this happens every year to me around this time: My Summer Ennui.

It’s about this time of year that it hits me that it is, in fact, summer and that all this hot weather and tank tops aren’t going to be going away any time soon. I can’t write because I CANNOT THINK IN THIS HEAT.

I’ve lived in much hotter places, like Los Angeles, but this Belgian 80° F (26°C) stuff is still too hot for me. It will all be too much for me when I am an old woman and I imagine I will have to retire somewhere like Siberia to avoid it all.



Why does anyone like hot weather? It’s so inhumane! How does anyone sleep in the heat? I can’t! If I lived in some equatorial region I would quite literally never sleep. I would roam the streets at night looking for air-conditioned bars. Sleeping in the heat is unbearable. I can’t get comfortable by scrunching the duvet in some direction, and usually one mosquito who found a way to sneak in to our house will spend the entire night buzzing around my head. And if I’m lucky, if I’m lucky one of my cats will leap on my head in an attempt to get to the mosquito. If I’m even luckier my cat will eat said mosquito whilst perched casually across my face while another cat tries to tackle him to get the mosquito away from him. I will mumble, ”There’s a person under here!” feebly from under the cat heap but it will be to no avail.




Then during the day: What to wear? If I wear jeans I’m too hot. If I wear a skirt, my legs are too white. And a jacket is right out of the question. I love wearing jackets. They’re sort of my “thing”. I remember years ago when I was still living in Los Angeles, I had this wonderful oh-so-hip jacket that I liked to wear everywhere I went. Since I usually only emerge in the early evening it wasn’t too much of a problem, but I do remember there was this one occasion where it was unbearably hot and I was wearing my jacket walking down the street towards a gig. I was in a horrible mood because of the heat and I was eagerly anticipating the cool slap of air-conditioning that would hit me upon entering the club. So this lady stops me on the street and says, ”Aren’t you hot in that jacket???!!” and I shouted, ”Yes! It’s too fucking hot in this city! Why do people live here??!!” Then I let out a random scream of embarrassment and ran away. I looked back and she was just standing there looking at me like I was crazy. And maybe I was. But I never would have got that crazy if there had been a cool breeze.

Another time I had to go to this stupid job interview that was clear across Los Angeles and there was a heat wave and it was about 104° F (40°C) outside and I had to drive there and I didn’t have air conditioning in my car.



The directions I had to follow were ridiculous and I’d had to wear nylons because I needed to look “officey”, so I was basically encased in synthetic fabrics in the pounding heat, and there was hardly a breeze because traffic was at a standstill in so many places. I was miserable and sweating and then I started crying because I still had to work a day job because I didn’t have a trust fund like so many of the other comedians and my only other option would have been to work comedy clubs on the road and clearly I didn’t want to do that because that would have meant a whole life of driving to Godforsaken places in my non-air-conditioned car. I was sobbing like a baby and people in air-conditioned cars next to me were staring at me.

When I finally got to the job interview I was 45 minutes late because of the traffic and I was so covered in sweat that I looked like I’d just fallen in a pond, and to top it off, unbeknownst to me at the time, all that crying had made my eye makeup run down my face in a blurry blackness. Plus I had a pounding headache which was probably the beginning stages of Heat Stroke, so my mood wasn’t at its’ best.

When some colleague of the person I was supposed to interview with said that because I was late everyone I needed to talk to had just gone to lunch and I’d have to wait nearly 2 hours, I think something rather important in my brain just snapped. I didn’t say a word, I just walked outside, opened my water bottle, poured it over my head, and headed home. As I was walking toward my car, I glanced over my shoulder and the colleague person was staring at me through a window like a frightened prairie settler.

Later, the employment agency that had set me up with that interview left a message on my phone machine reprimanding me for my Very Strange Behavior. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.

Not my fault though. It was the heat.
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What Every American Expat Hears on the 4th of July

I have been living outside the US for 9 years; first in the UK, and now in Belgium. That’s a pretty significant amount of time. Enough time that my accent has long since lost that nasally twang and now hovers rather indefinably somewhere over the mid-Atlantic, I’ve accepted that ice cubes aren’t always present in drinks and I’m totally OK with the concept of instant coffee. I’ve adjusted fine; it’s American friends I talk to on the phone occasionally who haven’t.

Every year around this time I have a conversation that goes something like this:

FRIEND/RELATIVE IN AMERICA: So what do Belgians do for the 4th of July?

ME: The same thing they do on the 3rd of July.

F/R.I.A: they celebrate it for two days??

ME: No, they don’t celebrate it at all. It isn’t a Belgian holiday.

(PAUSE)

F/R. I.A: So how are you going to be celebrating it?

…And it is at this point that I wonder if they honestly imagine me standing in the middle of a Belgian street dressed all in red, white and blue, a hotdog in one hand and a sparkler in the other as the Belgians go about their normal activities around me.

And that would be a vegetarian hotdog by the way.

I’ve been a vegetarian for 20 years! There isn’t anyone I know who doesn’t know this! And yet still I also get phone calls in November asking, “What are you doing for Turkey Day?”

*sigh*


Do these particular Americans not remember how I was with the 4th of July when I was there? It has never been my thing. Why would I participate in a holiday that revolves around 3 things that I’m against: Meat, Fireworks, and Blistering Sunshine? Fourth of July parties were always an ordeal for me of having to bring my own package of Vegetarian hotdogs and then spending half the party standing there supervising while they were on the grill to make sure no one let them touch the meat. Then I’d hunt around for a bit of shade to sit in and watch as everyone else ate the rest of my Veggie Dogs (because they taste much better than the meaty ones).




Then just as I’d be nicely settled into a lawn chair drinking a Piña Colada and perhaps having a nice conversation, the party host would invariably shout, “Come on everyone! Let’s head down to the beach to see the fireworks!!” …No, let’s stay here where the beer and chairs are, I would think, but I’d end up getting swept along with everyone else. At that point my mood would begin to plummet as I overanalyzed the banality of it all.

Yes, I am the Ebenezer Scrooge of Independence Day.




Fireworks are like The Emperor’s New Clothes and everyone reacts with “Ooohs” and “Aaaaaahs” as if reading from a script. I can think of very little less impressive than fireworks. They are so predictable: They go up as one little light and then they burst into a big flower shape. Yawn! Once you’ve seen one fireworks display, you’ve seen them all. The only skill involved is that the people setting them off manage to light the fuse without blowing their hands off. Whoop-de-do. And every year some kid somewhere does manage to blow a body part off. Who ever came up with the idea of marketing explosives as entertainment? …”Here, kids, here’s something with gunpowder in . Have fun!! Whoops! Don’t light it in your hands, you might – -“ KERPOW!! …..Ooooooh! Aaaaaaah!


This year some of our friends invited us over for a “4th of July party for Jovanka” which was really just an excuse to get together and drink some beer. No barbecue, no blistering sunshine, and no fireworks. Just the way I like it.


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Fame

So I was out for a walk the other day and I saw this car. Luckily I still have the camera that I “borrowed” from The Russian a few weeks ago so I took a picture of it.

I couldn’t figure out what they were trying to say here. Was it a statement? Was it a request? Had they just got through seeing The Secret and they were “putting it out in the Universe”? Did whoever owned the car also have cars with the words, “Money” and “A Stable Relationship” emblazoned on them?

I spent enough years in Los Angeles to have personally witnessed the High Priest and Priestess of self-promotional vehicles owners; Dennis Woodruff and Angeleyne, respectively.

Angeleyne is the lesser of the two. She began her quest for Fame on a series of billboards in Los Angeles.



Her goal? To be famous. Period. She wasn’t an actress or a singer or even a model; she just wanted to be famous for nothing, making her perhaps the only truly honest person in Hollywood, also one of the few truly successful ones. She wanted to be famous for nothing; She is famous for nothing. Mission Accomplished! She’s so famous that people, including me, would squeal with delight whenever they’d spot her in her signature pink corvette.



I once made a wish in my mind while I was driving late one night, then I stopped at a red light and she stopped right next to me. And the next day the wish came true! Coincidence?! I hardly think so, my friend.

Dennis Woodruff’s story is a little more involved and far freakier. Legend has it that he came to Hollywood in the 1970s to be a star, it wasn’t working out, so he started decorating his car (which he was living in) with pictures of him in the windows and crazy colors and the plea, “Cast Me” lest you weren’t getting the message.



Every time he got a different car he would doll it up in the same fashion.



Meanwhile he started making his own independent films, which he would sell out of the back of his car. At first, people thought he was just crazy. But after several years of this he began to gain a little respect as a Hollywood fixture. Hollywood hipsters started paying big bucks for his cars and he started having cult appeal and getting cast in films – his little plan had worked! Oh don’t get me wrong, he was still crazy, but in Hollywood “crazy” sells as long as it’s packaged right.



What gets me is why this elusive thing called “Fame” is something that people think they want. It seems to me that fame would be a rather huge pain in the ass. Famous people are constantly scrutinized. They are followed and photographed and examined by a maniacal portion of the public who are waiting to see them at their worst so they can hold up pictures of them and scream, “See? Those famous people are all idiots!!” when all the time they themselves would like nothing better than to become one of Those Famous People.

Why? Can you imagine how annoying it must be to constantly be interrupted and be made to sign a piece of paper that is being shoved under your face? And by the way, what are autographs for, anyway? A sort of “I was there” proof that you actually “met” (accosted is more to the point) that particular celebrity? Surely something is wrong with the state of your relationships if your friends demand written proof? And then who’s to say that you didn’t just scribble the word “Madonna” on that napkin yourself? It doesn’t sound like your friends are trusting you much there buddy, so unless they’re expert handwriting analysts, you’re going to have to do a lot better than that. Can you get a DNA sample next time?


I’ve had teeny tiny tastes of fame, and that was enough. Not for me, thanks. It feels decidedly odd to have people grinning at you like you’re some sort of Circus Freak just because they saw you on Tee Vee the night before. If I ever did accidentally become actually famous, I would hire an actress to do all my interviews and public appearances. She’d be the one having to constantly worry about her weight and what her hair looked like, while I’d be in a back room somewhere eating pizza and speaking into a prompter she’d be wearing so she’d have clever things to say. This way if someone criticized “Jovanka”, I’d be able to disassociate myself from “her” and join in the gossip saying, “Yes, she has got really fat lately……Bitch”.

But whatever I say on the subject, people will continue to pull silly stunts in the quest for notoriety. Maybe Dennis Woodruff has developed an international following, with people from different corners of the globe aspiring to his greatness.

Still it’s interesting to note that when some Belgian guy saw this:



He decided to pare it down, remove all the bells and whistles and produce this:



No nonsense, straight and to the point. Because Belgians don’t go for all that crazy stuff.
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Me and Sports: Not a Good Mix

Football season is upon us. Perhaps it has been for several months, I really wouldn’t know. I only just noticed it last week. And by the way, when I say “football” I don’t mean what Americans call football, I mean what Americans call soccer. Outside of the US it seems you don’t really use the word “soccer” unless you’re a teenage girl in a badly fitting gym skirt trying to get out of P.E.

Right now as I write this, the finals of the European Championship are being played. It’s Spain vs. Germany; two nations with a common bond of past fascism and a love for goofy music (I give you Los Del Rio and The Kelly Family, respectively). Wim is in a bar with some friends watching it, and I am sitting at home in stripy pajama bottoms and a comedy club T-shirt not watching it, like a civilized person. I tried (I did, I did) to get into it this year. Three days ago I went to the same bar to watch Russia and Spain compete in the semi finals. I ended up being put off the whole sports thing once again as I was reminded of that caring-so-much-about-the-outcome-of-a-ball-game thing which I have never been able to get my head around, try as I might. I made the mistake of watching a football game that Russia had no chance of winning (apparently) with actual Russians. They were so upset by the outcome of the game that three days on their lives are still in utter ruin.

This was my friend Anya before the game:



Looking relatively happy and enjoying an evening out.

And THIS is Anya after the crushing 3-0 defeat of Russia:

Devastated. Lost. Inconsolable. It’s sad, really.

At that point I tried all my lighthearted ”It’s only a game” ploys, but she was a lost cause.

Luckily there was lots of alcohol.

But it got me thinking: I will simply never understand this phenomenon. The only allegiance I ever feel toward a particular sports team is if they have a lot of good-looking players or if I like the colors of their uniforms. All that running about and ball kicking they do is completely inconsequential to me. Don’t get me wrong: I like football. In fact it’s the only sport I really do like because it's easy to follow. The ball either goes one way or the other and if they get it past the little man and into the net thingy it’s a goal. I’ve been known to watch entire games and even follow a World Cup tournament. But at the end of the game, whether the good looking guys in the pretty outfits won or lost has no effect on me.

I once was hosting a comedy show in Denver Colorado on a night that the Denver team (American football) had lost to someone else in the Superbowl thingy. Like the truly hacky comic I was at the time, I started my set out by saying, “How’s everyone doing tonight?” to which I was met with steely stares and faint groans. For a few seconds I stood there flabbergasted staring back at them. I mean you would think I’d just bounded on stage in a Nazi Death Camp and said, “Hey gang! Why all the long faces?!” – So momentarily suspending all comedy (which didn’t take much effort in those days) I said, “Why are you letting yourselves get so upset over this? You should be happy! After all they came in second!” And I meant it with love. I mean clearly the Denver Broncos should have been proud that they were better than all the other teams except one, right? They had proved their skill, but another team just had a bit more skill, that was all.....These were the things I was arguing under my breath as I was dragged off the stage by the club manager to the angry jeers of the crowd.

I just didn’t get it.

Another time I was in San Francisco when one of their American Football teams won a big thingy (maybe it was also the Super Bowl thing. That’s the biggest one, right?) and there were people screaming in the streets and sounding their horns and this guy ran out of his car right towards me (Why? Why?), picked me up and swung me around screaming, “We’re number one!! We’re number one!!!!!”……I turned to a friend and asked, “Do you think he’s on the team?” because I didn’t know. And the guy was practically humping my leg and screaming the same thing over and over. I kind of got caught up in the frenzy of it all, but I still can’t say I understood it.

And why is it acceptable to act like that over a ball game but not anything else? Why don’t you see rabid Chess enthusiasts spilling out of sports bars in euphoria screaming, “Vladimir Kramnik Won! Valdimir Kramnik Won!!!!” and then getting into brawls with Veselin Topalov fans?



……….Am I missing something?

And here’s what I don’t get: What is this big thing that’s supposed to happen when your team wins? People always say, “It would be so great if __________ won” but after all the “We’re number one!” screams have died down, what really changes? Unless you had money riding on the game: Nothing. Nothing ever happens as a result of these ball game wins and yet every day millions of people jump around acting as if it does.

OK – Just now I turned on the TV out of curiosity and apparently Spain have just won. (This is the first blog I’ve ever written in Real Time!) They’re still in the jumping around and throwing each other in the air afterglow, and the German guys are looking like they’ve collectively just realized that Bratwurst is high in saturated fat. They came in second and they can’t even enjoy it. And their misery is made all the more painful by the orgy of jubilation the Spaniards are displaying. I’m pretty sure I can see them mouthing the words, “Numero Uno!” over and over again. Will one of them suddenly stop in his cute red shorts, realize “Nothing has actually changed in the world” and plunge head long into an existential crisis? Only time will tell.


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My Triumph Over the T-Rex

Lately I’ve been having a run of dinosaur nightmares. I tend to get these whenever I watch any dinosaur based movie, namely Jurassic Park, or whenever dinosaurs are brought up in conversation or whenever I eat at a diner. I’m dinosaur sensitive, one might say. I just don’t like them.



And as if the fact that they used to exist weren’t bad enough, the mere suggestion that they could one day be cloned and live again is just too much for me to bear.



And I suppose also somewhere in the back of my mind is the notion that if “God” did indeed create us in His image, that this was only after his first project failed. After the Giant Flesh-Eating Lizard experiment didn’t work out we were, it seems, merely Plan B.

So along with my fear of clowns and flying, I live with a mind-numbing aversion to dinosaurs, and in particular T-rexes.



I am constantly on the lookout for cures for my phobias, and one method I believe wholeheartedly in is the immersion theory. I once was cured of my fear of heights by having a bunch of people hold on to my legs while I hung backwards over the edge of the cliff. Incidentally, this also cured me of my fear of Strange New Age People. So when I saw that Jurassic Park was going to be on television the other night, I thought it might be a good idea if I made myself watch it. It didn’t work. It only made things worse. It made me feel so creepy that I was actually checking for dinosaurs behind the couch cushions (stop looking for rationality in any of this or you’ll just hurt yourself), and that night I had a nightmare that a friend of mine had cloned a T-rex and needed me to babysit it while he was out of town.



The nightmare was so vivid that I actively resented my friend for several days afterwards and a part of me is still convinced that a baby T-Rex is sitting with him watching TV in LA right now.

So as TV stations tend to do these things in clusters, the same station that had shown Jurassic Park the other night then a few days later decided to show The Lost World (Jurassic Park II). I took this as a sign that I should continue my therapy and I watched it.

Read no more if you’re like me and don’t tend to see films until several decades after they’ve come out.

Well I hadn’t seen The Lost World before, but the basic premise was that a bunch of freaks return to the breeding island for the original J-Park and there are these hunters who cause all sorts of mayhem (I always approve when hunters of any sort are shown in the bad light they deserve). From what I can tell, The J-Park series operates on the same premise as all Ghost Movies. That is to say that people do what THEY WOULD NEVER DO IN REAL LIFE and spend the night in the house that everyone says is the gateway to hell even though everyone who stays there becomes possessed and goes on murderous rampages. Only in this case they return to an island with dinosaurs and an almost 100 per cent kill rate and decide to camp out for a while. “Everything will be fine,” They think as they pitch their tents, “because where the big flesh-eating monsters live is half a kilometer away and they never come here.” ..................Morons!!



Then of course the Big Game Hunters come, looking for the most ostentatious trophy imaginable to mount on their wall (What kind of furniture goes with a giant T-Rex head mounted on a mahogany panel?)



They take a baby T-Rex (and I struggle psychologically while that pulls on my heartstrings) to bait Mr. and Mrs. Rex, and after the now predictable tousles with velociraptors (who are thwarted by a child gymnast…I’m not making this up.) they all end up on the civilized mainland where the male T-Rex gets loose. At this point the film is not so much a monster movie as it is Kramer vs. Kramer as the daddy T-Rex runs all over town trying to get his son back. I ended up siding with the T-Rex, which while perhaps not boding well for Mr. Spielberg, did wonders for my Dinosaur Paranoia. By the end of the film I just wanted the T-Rex to eat the guy who started all the trouble and return home with his kid and that’s exactly what happened.

And that night I slept like a baby.



So, it seems that the cure for a fear of dinosaurs is not a Dinosaur movie so much as a really bad dinosaur movie. Waterworld might be just the ticket for Hydrophobia is what I’m saying.
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An Open Letter of Appeal To All Cats

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to you on behalf of the United Syndicate of Small Rodents (USSR) with regards to the practice of sport killing. Basically we feel that this is an inhumane practice that has got to stop. You people cling to the reenactment of threadbare stereotypes, insisting on tilting your ears forward and calling it a “game” when the other participant not only has no chance of winning, but never signed up to participate in the first place.



As a member of the race that opens your cans and scoops your poop, I am hereby calling for an international boycott until you people decide to organize and change your ways. By the way, none of this by any means means that I am Catist; some of my best friends are cats. I've got 9 of you people sleeping on my furniture right now. I'm not denying your cuteness or your fluffiness. But I'm also not going to turn a blind eye when I feel your actions are unjust.

You claim to want to live up to our finer achievements; you want to eat our food, sharpen your claws on our couches and sleep on top of our television sets – and no one begrudges you these social advancements.

But when you insist on emulating the very lowest of our society, you make a mockery not only of us, but of yourselves, and you can no longer claim moral superiority.



Now don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with feral cats who have to hunt for food - chances are not many of those cats have internet access anyway so they won’t be reading this – but to those of you who live indoors, eat out of aesthetically pleasing molded plastic dishes and think every time the refrigerator opens it’s all about you; to you I say: Stop the cruelty.

Or, in terms you can better understand: ...............No!
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Manuel

OK - we've got a bit of a problem here. Wim was just on his way out the door for his evening run, when he saw the neighbor's cat "playing with" a rather terrified little field mouse. As you and I and that field mouse know, a cat's idea of fun can be very one-sided. Wim ran back in the house to get a container, ran back out, and rescued the little guy just as the cat (who's name is "Muis", incidentally) was playing a new game that involved tossing people in the air and catching them in sharp teeth.

Luckily we've got lots of empty critter cages and hay and food laying around, so the little terrified guy (who I've called Manuel) was quickly packed into one and I've put my black raincoat over the cage to make him more secure.

So anyway, he's sitting there breathing heavily and his leg is sticking out funny (not funny "ha ha") and I can't tell if he's wounded or just traumatized. So - while I hate the thought of keeping him in captivity especially if he's got a family waiting for him, I just can't put him back outside on the off chance he'd be walking with a limp, which would very likely attract the wrong sort of attention from the wrong sort of "people".

Aaaaaargh! What do I do? I wish he would walk around or something. Or at least stop standing like that.

So if he looks like he's still feeling poorly tomorrow, I'll have to go to the pet shop and get him a play wheel and a friend (mice don't like to be alone). I hope I'm right that he's a boy.

It's always something........

Farm Hunt II - The Saga Continues

So our Farm Hunt continues, and this time when we went out looking at places I remembered to take pictures of everywhere we went BUT now the connection thingy is broken on the camera so I can’t load the photos onto my computer. (Plus the button thingy on the camera is weird so you have to hold it down for a really long time then it takes a picture right when everyone is blinking, but that’s neither here nor there) So I’m afraid you, the reader (and I do mean that singularly), will have to make do with the photos I’ve provided.



So we have seen even more places and yet we are still in love with the very first place we saw. Apparently “love at first sight” works in the case of houses, too. I already knew it worked with men and cats.

So here is our problem: This whole venture is loosely based on a combination of the films Field of Dreams and The Secret. We are actively looking for a house without having what one would call actual money. But if we visualize it, as Kevin Costner and Ramtha would have us believe, so it will materialize. Also there’s the fact that sometimes people get lucky at auctions (not in a dirty way). We’re not completely without a plan - Wim has been buying lottery tickets and I’ve been refilling water bottles to take to the gym – but apparently it’s just as well that we don’t get too attached to anything just yet. Still, miracles do happen, and encouraged by stories like the one about our friend who bought the haunted house for mere pocket change, we’re still feeling positive.



So the one we like goes on auction the first week in June and we’re hoping that no one else will see how abso-fucking-lutely cool it is. It’s structurally sound and yet a little run down looking. It doesn’t really have a kitchen to speak of, but Wim and I are willing to move in and order pizzas for however long it takes to build one. It has a nice big back area with chicken coops (wheeeee!!) and lots of room for rabbits and other rescue critters. And it’s definitely a place where I could have a pet pig and several watchdog geese (If they were good enough for the Romans, they’re good enough for me!), and there are lots of rooms and an area we could build into a guest apartment so our visiting friends will no longer have to sleep on our fold-out couch and get shat on by our cat Walter (it’s one of his quirks).



Ah, but I mustn’t get attached! And I definitely mustn’t get obsessed like I did about the neighbors’ house. So right now, we are treating all these houses like the book The Rules tells unmarried ladies they should treat the fellas. We’re still seeing lots of other houses until one of the houses realizes that we are A Creature Unlike Any Other and shows that it’s serious about us. And until then, we’re definitely not sleeping with any of them.

The Good, The Bad, and the Haunted

So Mr. Jovanka and I are currently looking for a house to buy at auction. We got the idea when our neighbor’s house went on auction, and having been there for a party where I saw how cool it was inside I became mad with the need to possess it. I thought we’d get a good deal on it, too, because our friend Robbie bought a house on auction and there was only one other bidder who got there too late to bid, so Robbie got it super cheap. Granted Robbie's place needed work, and it was haunted by the spirit of a dead crack addict who’d been found inside, but apart from that it was rather fabulous. The spirit has gone, by the way, after a conversation I had with him at a party where I urged him to move on. You’d think these sort of things would be obvious to spirits; I’m dead, I’m stuck on the earth plane, hey what’s that light over there? and that they wouldn’t need some drunk woman at a party to shout, “move toward the light!” into and empty room, but dead people aren’t too skilled with deductive reasoning, apparently.

So when we were getting ready to go to the auction for our neighbor’s place I was feeling very positive. I was certain we’d be the only people at the auction and get the place for like 20 Euros or something. I was already eyeing the place possessively and telling the rabbits they would finally have a garden. When perspective viewers came by to look at the place I would try to send them vibes saying, ”You don’t want this place” and we purposely left our bicycles tipped over and generally didn’t clean up in front of our house so they’d think the neighborhood was shabby. We were also encouraged by seeing a few of them arrive to view the property with smiles on their faces and leave with furrowed brows and looks of concern. On one particular viewing day I was positively dancing around the living room at the looks of misery as they left the place. “Look at them! They hated the place! It’s ours I tell you!! Ours! OURS!”

So I was, to say the least, rather nonplussed when on the day of the auction nearly 100 bidders showed up; in fact there weren’t enough chairs in the room. Given the rather non-Rockefeller state of our finances, we were outbid rather quickly (before we’d actually made a bid, actually), and we went home where I suppressed the urge to throw a tantrum. But the whole episode had sparked something and we soon discovered that there are auctions going on all the time, so now we’ve begun looking at the listings and yesterday we had our first day of driving around and looking at places.

Here’s what we are looking for: A small farm. Belgium is absolutely silly with small tracts of land with 100 and 200-year old farmhouses on them (some even older!) just screaming to be painted all sorts of funky colors and turned into small animal sanctuaries. So that’s what we looked at: Places with the word “farm” somewhere in the description.



A few places we saw, we didn’t even bother getting out of the car. Some people’s concept of “farm” must be a warehouse 2 meters from a major highway with Russian mafia guys hanging around outside, is all I’m saying. But we did end up seeing a few charming places. One was so charming that I forgot to take pictures of it. It was in a tiny village that takes “charm” to almost sickening levels; it was big and roomy inside, and the rabbits would go absolutely nuts if they saw the garden. In retrospect I’m glad we didn’t bring them along for the viewings for this very reason.

So we were in a great mood and ready for even more charm when we went to see the next property. It was way back, remote, tucked away away from everything in an overgrown field, which I love. So points on right away. It was slightly shabby-looking, but hey, what’s wrong with a fixer-upper?



Aaaaaand, then we went inside. This was the kitchen:



Hmmm. Being generally cheerful in nature, though, I thought well hey, what’s wrong with an even bigger fixer-upper? I tapped my fingers reassuringly against the green metal wall paneling and we moved on. Here’s what the living room looked like:



I was just trying to talk myself into thinking that the dark oppressive feeling was nothing a lick of paint couldn’t brighten up when we saw the upstairs. First of all, I use the term “stairs” very lightly; it was really a barely glorified ladder that the strange woman showing us around planted herself at the bottom of and refused to go up. I soon found out why:



Mmmmmm. Nice, eh? So….Let me paint the picture for you: These people knew that people were coming over to see the property to possibly bid on it. Did they think, “Perhaps I’ll fold a few things, put some things in a drawer, tidy up a bit.”? No. Apparently they instead opted to present it in the “decrepit neglect” style, chucking a few broken chairs on top of everything to complete the look. Before we had started to ascend the “stairs”, the strange woman told us it was a bit dark up there because the light bulb kept going out.

“Oh really?” Wim joked, “Have you got a ghost?” To which the strange woman replied with an awkward silence and a swift change of subject. We soon realized why. We felt an icy chill behind us, turned around and saw this:



OK. I exaggerated that a bit with special effects. But still, it looked like this:



And it was really spooky. Trust me. I guess you had to be there. There was definitely a ghost there. And you really have to wonder about a ghost who would be willing to be seen in such an absolute state. I was temporarily overcome with the urge to stand in the doorway with a glass of wine and shout him toward the light. But I thought better of it and instead struggled down the ladder first so Wim would have to be the one standing there alone for a few seconds.

I tried to think of positive things about the place. Maybe it was better on the outside?



Unfortunately, the “farm” bit consisted of a rather grotty and decidedly small bit of yard at the side of the house. The current crop looked to be ready-for-harvest tracts of ragweed, and while they did seem to be flourishing, it wasn’t quite my cup of tea.

But the good news is we could probably get it really cheap. And us being who we are, that was how the conversation ran the whole way home in the car.

“OK. There isn’t really any land to speak of, the electricity won’t work because someone died upstairs, there’s green metal paneling in the kitchen and it’s smaller than where we live now…But do you think we could make it work?”

Gym Stories - My Jurassic Experience

Being in the throws, as I am, of the crazy endorphin rush of the first few weeks of heavy physical training, I am reminded of various adventures I have had in gyms throughout the years. I am reminded of little else, BTW, because what these endorphins seem to do is to economize everything in my body to serve the Muscle Building Machine. My IQ has been cut down to just about the level one needs to operate a can opener (still got one up on the cats! Yaaay!) and I find I can do little else but sleep, watch funny things on YouTube and drink wine. It will pass, I know, but right now it’s all very Flowers For Algernon for me.

I am reminded of a similar time, years go, when I was living in San Francisco. I joined a gym that was about a 15 minute walk from where I lived, and I committed myself to going there and heavily working out every morning before work. Since I’ve always been pretty useless in the mornings, I would sleep in my workout clothes so when the alarm went off all I had to do was put my shoes on and run out the door. If I hadn’t done this I would have wandered around my apartment in a fog of half-sleep for 45 minutes trying to find my gym socks. And besides, when you are in the first few weeks of working out it’s best to get yourself out the door before you are fully awake so you don’t talk yourself out of anything. Usually I would officially wake up about the time I was walking in to the gym and then it was too late for any excuses.

So at this time, Jurassic Park was showing in the theaters. It had been on for quite a while, but I had taken some convincing to go see it as I’m not exactly keen on dinosaurs. I have three fears in this life: Flying, Clowns, and Tyrannosaurus Rexes. I find I get along nicely enough keeping to surface travel and avoiding The Circus, and of course there’s the added help that T-Rex and all other dinosaurs are extinct. And you know what I say? Good riddance to them! Look, I love animals and I’ll go out on a limb for some really unattractive and even viscous critters, but I draw the line at T-Rexes. I’m sorry, but I fail to see where a 30-foot lizard with 3-foot razor sharp teeth has anything constructive to contribute to society. If they were alive today my life would be a living hell of having to stand perfectly still while they sniffed through my neighborhood crushing everything they stepped on, so I’m glad the fuckers are all dead.



So anyway, I finally agreed to go and see Jurassic Park with many assurances that it was “just a movie”. Ha! From the moment where that glass of water vibrates because of the coming T-Rex onslaught, I was hiding under my jacket screaming like a child…which might have been endearing if I had actually been a child, but I was old enough to have my own apartment and get drunk after seeing the film, so, well, kind of not so cute, really.

A few glasses of wine later I had calmed down to the point where I was able to go home, put on my track suit, and go to sleep.

Now another thing that happens when I am in the first few weeks of working out endorphin rush is that I get really vivid dreams: Those really realistic dreams where upon waking, you aren’t sure whether it really happened or not. So I ended up having on of these. And unfortunately it was a full-on Technicolor dream about T-rexes stomping around my neighborhood in San Francisco. They were everywhere and I was having to hide from them. And just when one was outside my apartment building peering into my 3rd floor window, my alarm clock went off and I had to jump into my shoes and run. In under a minute I was outside the building heading for the gym, when suddenly I remembered the neighborhood was under siege by dinosaurs.



It was still pitch black outside and I wasn’t more than 15 per cent awake, so I could hear them coming for me. I flew into a blind panic and started running at breakneck speed for the gym as if my life depended on it. All the while I had to keep turning around and looking for the T-Rexes but they were hiding behind the buildings so I couldn’t see them. I knew they were waiting for a clean moment when they could pounce and I wasn’t going to give it to them. I broke Olympic records for 100, 500, and 1000 meter sprints and I may have even broken the sound barrier and I got to the gym in seconds flat, all but throwing myself in the doors upon my arrival. I fell to the floor heaving for breath. One of the gym employees ran to help me up, looking outside and wondering if he should call the police. And it was exactly at that moment that I started to wake up.

“Are you OK? Was someone chasing you?” He asked in earnest.

“No, no.” I gasped, between breaths, “I just didn’t want to be late.” It was a weak excuse but it was all my endorphin-laden half-awake brain could muster.

He looked around the empty gym, then back at me.

“Um.....OK.”

I could tell he thought I was retarded, but my only recourse would have been to explain that I thought I was being chased by dinosaurs, so I didn’t say anything. Instead I gave him a stupid grin. So for the rest of my time as a member of that gym, I let him go on thinking I was retarded. Because retarded is always better than crazy.

What I Put Up With

Recently, I’ve started going to the gym every day. I’ve been a member of the gym for about 2 years but it was doing absolutely nothing for me. I was about to sue until someone suggested that I try going to the place. It sounded aggressive, but I decided ah, what the hell.

To my surprise I discovered that my gym is not just this abstract idea that takes money out of my account once a month and sends me the occasional email about yoga classes; it’s an actual building with sports equipment inside – who knew? All of it makes you feel uncomfortable and imposed upon when you use it, but they assure me that it will all result in health benefits later on.

To get to my gym in the first place I have to climb 6 flights of stairs, which I’m pretty sure is against the terms of the Geneva Convention. After climbing 6 flights of stairs a gym is pretty bloody redundant if you ask me. And there isn’t even an elevator! Why??!! (Apparently I’m the only person who has ever asked).

So here’s the worst part: After spending the better part of my morning running on a treadmill and getting absolutely nowhere, I emerge from the gym and what is RIGHT next door?? A PIZZA RESTAURANT! What kind of sadistic freaks would build a gym up 6 flights of stairs next to a pizza restaurant?