california; where ambition goes to die

come here and be famous.



wear bikinis every day and schmooze with beautiful people that surf.



immerse yourself in a caffeine-free religion, sponsored by walt disney.



it's a place where you can be a builder, fireman, indian or amateur shadow puppet.



meet strangers from the internet (who also like to write, blog and tweet).



california; where even deadly wild life is made to look cute.

share the trail

the only thing separating maine from kentucky are rebel flags, phonetic stress put on the letter "r", and about 3 feet of snow.

rednecks are heavily camouflaged up here; subarus, ski poles and a kilo's worth of expensive puffy jackets make them hard to spot, especially as the breed native to the northeast never actually develops a mullet.

in the southeast, sharing single track with equestrians is tedious and riddled with rather large and fibrous turds, but far worse than ticks, rattlers and mountain lions- even bubba on an ATV- are the fact that maine's trails are on 'guns and ammo lock down' august through november, showcasing a different weapon of the month. november is the crossbow.

in maine, a home owner must post signs on their property stating that they have had endless meetings with the bank, some lawyers and a plethora of annoying real estate people for the privilege of having hundreds of thousands of dollars withdrawn from their checking accounts every year. should the happily mortgaged choose not to nail garish plastic message boards at the perimeter of their property, then it is within the jurisdiction of any redneck worth his blood alcohol level to take a fire arm onto said property and shoot at will in the direction of anything deemed worthy of sharing that evening's dinner plate with some mashed potatoes and A1 sauce.

staying classy in the 04240

small(er) town living means being on a first name basis with your mail carrier, facebook friending- and donating farm animals to- the postmaster at the down town building, and being given your very own nickname ("fred") by the postal workers in the back sorting office. it also means contributing to the max. capacity for fire safety statutes at 'maine's very first gay bar's last night in business'.



preconceived notions that a new england drag show is just an endless stream of leggy blonde lovelies twirling ski poles on their adam's apple, or at the very least a puffy jacket striptease down to the long, silk undies, are about as false as their fleece lined implants.



these are: thepeopleofwalmart.com(afterhours).

la grande pomme

a recent symposium on leadership proved to educate, validate and raise my own fallow unibrow. i do not heart NYC. crowds, traffic, and terrorist targets are for the less abstract complaining xenophobes, and since most NYC-ers can barely deign to acknowledge your presence, let alone open their mouths to inform you to get the hell out of their foxtrotting way, the accent issue, isn't even worthy of one.

seriously, who has that much black in their wardrobe? the urban-scape is replete with osteoperetic candidates teetering across chelsea in search of a designer hearse to go with their patent jimmy choos. the only white disruption to the silhouette being that of the omnipresent ipod cords. panty lines are optional.

my first cavity search

as an alien 'pilgrim', of 10 years, i have successfully secured a seat at the harvest table of many adoptive families keen to break corn bread and take cranberry-jelly-in-a-can communion with me. christmas is another kitchen spectator sport holiday, where "who can drink the most mimosas" is played simultaneously with; "who can aggravate mum the most while she's obsessing about the perpetually undercooked turkey".

i have never cooked something that comes with it's own skeleton inside-- i would rather watch a live lobster witness their final seconds, before plunging to a scalding death, than have to complete a procotology exam on a large, dead bird-- and am as incongruent a fixture amongst kitchen aid and kenmore as i would be dispensing peanuts at 37,000 feet (flight attendants are obviously dipped in shellac before take-off, whether it's long haul or commuter, i always disembark onto the jetbridge looking like i went two rounds with a rabid, industrial fan).



what person, not employed by a restaurant that has more fungus and garden snails than the lake district, spends 6 plus hours standing in a kitchen?

my default is to throw plenty of garlic at everything and crack open another bottle of shiraz. or order the freeze dried astronaut holiday dinner from amazon.com.

it's so cold, you could cut reinforced steel with your nipples

severe weather is the only thing that could usurp the current orgiastic underage/premarital/republican/pregnant media ruckus occupying people magazine and the aqua netted TV "journalists" on fox news. the hysteria over precipitation in the northeast (or midwest, or san diego for that matter) is commensurate with the release of a new harry potter book, or the naan bread being refilled at the $4.99 indian lunch buffet.

i am beginning to question the reality of the "new england winter". salesmen at lowes, ex's mothers, friends who would not be able to identify the state of maine on a map, have provided the reassuring posture of an epileptic bobble head that it gets cold-- very cold-- "up there". winter is now the scary monster in the basement, or nessie, or the abominable snowman...maybe nancy reagan, without her make-up, wearing saran-wrap.

the opinions of others (except when it comes to liking me) are generally disregarded. this was reinforced after several repeated cautions that a 45 minute hike through mammoth cave, kentucky was going to be more physically grueling than pulling a london bus, with my teeth, while having a case of delhi belly.

perhaps it is denial, but as a 10 year resident of the ohio valley, i have seen meteorological meltdowns supersized to texas hair proportions. all the naysayers are invited up for crustasceans and butter- capilene, monogrammed fleece underwear will be waiting for each of you.

yankee doodle redneck

kfc's are to the bluegrass state, as red lobster's are to vacationland (that's kentucky and maine to those of you not proficient in your state license plates), and these fast food eateries are surprisingly lacking in both aforementioned locations. contrary to the perception that new england is the breeding ground for harvard grads (separated by half a degree from the kennedy's), that were weaned as infants from maple syrup to lobster, quoting thoreau, en francaise, from the cradle, to become nobel prize winners who drive an l.l. bean upholstered subaru to the family's private ski resort, the illusion is dispelled when walking into any wal-mart (vermont may have banned billboards from their landscape, but you cant outlaw wally world); which are just as replete with wifebeater wearing folks, as any rebel flag loving mullet man, in dixie.

in the northeast, however, roundabouts are as commonplace as the very anglo-saxon sounding streets/counties/towns (gloucester, scarborough et al., although the pronunciation is somewhat reminiscent of a midwesterner's elocution of versailles) and yankee motorists actually know how to use them.

roundabouts are also one of the few traffic features that don't have a toll booth upon entering or exiting them.

kentucky: where the grass is blue, the necks are red, and colonel sanders isn't as popular as ronald mcdonald

10 years ago when i announced that i was going to graduate school in kentucky, i was met with the: "i just smelled boiled eggs dipped in cat litter and deep fried in garlic" face. i personally, can imagine far worse places to pack your 'two suitcases at 40kg' luggage allowance, to begin accruing tuition debt at exorbitant international student rates. while kabul and east st. louis no doubt offer a competitive package for inexpensive accomodation and an affordable cost of living, the 'getting shot at/stepping on a landmine while nipping out to the supermarket to buy a (competitively priced) carton of milk, holds about as much allure as trying on lance armstrong's bike shorts after he finished the final stage of the '05 tour de france. but then it's a bit odd what some people come to identify as "home" for themselves (zip codes with an emphasis on genocide rather than generic front lawns, or trailer parks in the midwest where the retail demand for miller light is only surpassed by the high consumer interest in sudafed), no more than speculating why a chihuahua is now an acceptable definition of "dog", or that dressing in voluminous floral trousers, showcasing every colour in the crayon box is o.k., especially when co-ordinated to match the "dog".

in the last decade, i've only seen a handful of KFC's (and certainly never from the interior), have not become destitute as a result of buying a horse, gambling on multiples of them, or just trying to purchase a regular admission ticket to the derby. my taste buds have proven impervious to the local zealour for graeter's ice-cream, or an even more inexplicable and ungodly adoration for ramsi's (a long standing "ethnic" restaurant), earning it's "genre" as mediterannean, because it serves overpriced, flavoured hummus. find me an arab who eats fire roasted garbanzo dip, and i will try to find an israeli that munches on sun dried cinnamon raisin bagels with blueberry brown sugar cream cheese. for me, "the big lebowski" was mostly experienced during REM sleep, so an entire weekend festival devoted to it, is about as appealing as a BLT is to a hasidic rabbi. i have seen muhammad ali twice, never eaten a white castle hamburger, and cannot stomach the american version of "biscuits", "gravy" or anything else that represents the "country cooking served in platters upon 20 foot long picnic tables covered in checkered cloths" food group. i do enjoy looking for rednecks, just not in a 'steve irwin to snapping crocodile' proximity. there are also many things that are not typically associated with kentucky that i have experienced, and would never have had the opportunity to do so, had i not chosen the road south of the mason dixon. now when i tell people that i am moving to maine. i get the familiar "face", followed by "wow, you know, it's really cold up there in the winter".

"no shit?!!"

obviously, living in the bluegrass state the last few years, i have been completely cut off from any news and weather that didn't involve histrionics over 'o-zone levels' and panic over the possibility of an inch of snow accumulation. however, there are just as many rednecks in the northeast as there are in the south, and quite frankly the northerner's tendency to punctuate the "ar" sound at the end of certain words (making them sound like they just got stabbed in the chest), grates on my ears more than a twangy drawl operating slower than jessica simpson's limbic system.

how to: use a roundabout

i love america. i love americans. i do not love the fact that (most) americans haven't the foggiest idea how to use a roundabout (yeah, yeah "traffic circle"). really, it's not that difficult. and it's so much more efficient because it keeps traffic moving (again, if you know how to use it).

yesterday, i had a near collision at the roundabout on cherokee road. i had already entered it when a woman (bloody women drivers anyway), pulled out and was apparently wanting to engage in a game of roundabout "chicken". driving in the middle east has trained me to be very defensive when operating a vehicle, however this was not acceptable roundabout behavior, so i proceeded, as i was legally allowed to do so. she, in turn, proceeded to drive right up my arse (that'll teach me) and maintained no stopping distance whatsoever the entire way down the road until i turned off at the park. this is the kind of behaviour i expect from a 17 year old in a honda civic, not a middle aged house wife in a gold hyundai.

you know what else? i don't like peanut butter and jelly, or reese's peanut butter cups. go ahead, revoke my greencard- i hid it in the marmite.