And I'm back in the game!

Thurday's shopping list:

Beer
Wine
Peanuts
Condoms
Stropwaffels
Kettle One
Lemon
Tonic
Lube
Grapefruit juice
Strawberries
Face Wash

Look kids, Big Ben!

Visiting the UK is the best ego booster EVER. A history of weekends in the British empire:

• Fall 2001: Stef flies over Atlantic for first time to visit Anna at LSE. Weekend of debauchery, falling asleep standing up, getting hit on incessantly (quote from friend Mark "Is it always like this when you two go out?"), and innaugural upchuck moment in major European city. Establishment of bouncer bonding. (Not sure when Anna said this, but has always stayed with me: "British girls are ugly")
• Summer 2003: Radcliffe goes to Henley. To quote myself: "Best vacation someone else's money can buy." Week of long skirts and weird hats, male-to-female ratio of 11:1, public grouping, Strongbow, and UW heavies. First encounter with outdoor sex and adults who drink before noon (waaaaaaay before noon -- "Go slower!").
• Spring 2006: Pleasure/business in London. Luggage explodes on belt, exposing thongs but resulting in free suitcase. Leigh and Stef enjoy house music, misue their bodies, and dance like bellends. Business trip deteriorates into bottles of tequila and karaoke. Inital understanding of expense account abuse.
• Summer 2007: Long weekend in London/Oxford. Explanation of the British "butter face" theory to fellow international coworkers. Evenings of excessive drinking and dancing. Record with bouncers continues. (Not sure when Leigh said this, but has always stayed with me: "British guys like American women because British girls don't give head." This doesn't mean I gave any bouncers head, but rather that your accent = the potential that you'll give head. Or something like that.)

That rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!

As part of my job, I am supposed to read a couple of newspapers or magazines every morning. To prevent me from straying from my "news" course while browsing online (oooooh, Lindsay Lohan cleans toilets....), I get Google news feeds from reliable sources like New York Times and BBC. I also get feeds from CNN, but some of their headlines in the past week left me more than a little disturbed. What the hell is with all this animal death and humping and how the hell does that make my news feed when a Category 5 storm misses it? Here is where I would make a commentary about the sad state of media in the world today, but as I am part of that machine I'm not going to bite the hand that feeds.

• Woman fatally crushed by pet camel
• Bears eat man at beer festival
• Blessing the moose

(Anybody friends with a techie who can explain how the news feeds work? Key terms that get picked up? I can't even get my cable up in my apartment.)

I have nipples, Greg, could you milk me?

So I got to hang out with Leigh's boyfriend this weekend! (in the photo, he's the handsome fellow sitting one from the right -- this pic is from Paris in March and all those are Leigh's Paris Friends. Some day, I too will have a photo with me and a group of friends...sigh...such aspirations.) Anyway, I was all set to give him the third degree, find out his deepest darkest secrets, how many STDs he has, number of illegitamate children in Mexico, etc. But then I got stoned and went home.

Anyway, his name is Greg -- he is wonderful and thinks Leigh hangs the moon. Example of endearing things Greg says: "Leigh can cook." (Leigh, he wants cream cheese eggs by the way...he might not know it yet, but he does.) and "I just want to spend time with other people who love Leigh...I miss her."

I'm done with theater. The playhouse is for dreamers. Look what the dream brought us.

Let me preempt this by saying I don't have some unhealthy obsession with masturbation. Really, the freak-show play was just a coincidence in timing with the whole battery-operated situation.

I won two tickets to the opera this week! I was so excited -- I've never been to an opera and its always been on the list of things to do, along with "jump out of a plane" and "eat chocolate covered grasshopers." Anyways, I was all pumped for last night's show, wore a friggin dress and everything. Opera was called "Siren Song" by a Dutch guy but performed in English.

Let's just say there are not enough shrooms in the world to convince me last night's performance was actually an opera. I mean, there was singing (and the female lead did have a nice voice) and a story and a stage. A play? Perhaps. A musical? Potentially. Wacked? Definitely.

So my buddy and I show up a few minutes late to the performance which means we don't get to sit in the super sweet row 9 seats I've won. I'm a bit bummed (but ultimately thankful), and we tuck up in the balconey and still have a nice view of the stage. They've done some modern thing where the musical accompaniment is actually up on the stage (though it doesn't end up being part of the play, which annoys me). And some chick is singing but off-stage and there is one guy is in jeans, a t-shirt and a sailor hat (red flag number one). On a gigantic screen behind the orchestra is a video of a woman's hair cascading like a Pantene comerical or something over and over and over again.

Next Davy the sailor is falling in love with the off-stage singing woman, named Diiiiaaaaannnnaaa, who he's never met or even seen a photo of (they exchange letters). His two compatriots with uh, nice bodies (we got to see them in speedos later - which was red flag like 1026), weave in and out of the scenes while Davy whines about love; these sailors never say anything, they are like moving props, also wearing sailor hats (red flag number two and three).

Then Davy gets a letter with Diana's supposed red panties and it goes from a "little different" to "fucking weird."

The screen in the background is no longer cascading hair but some naked chick in a sauna or something. First it's just her legs with sweat golblet, but then its her massaging her tits over and over and over again (you never see her face). Meanwhile, Davy is on-stage, supposedly yanking his chain but it looks more like he's having a seizure. This goes on for...too long. No full frontal chaci or anything, but my friend and I are like what.the.fuck. -- did we miss the sign for the opera and end up in experiemental erotica? Is this tryouts for the new Skinamax series? The music is heavy and violent sounding -- poor Davy looks more like he's getting tortured than getting off.

Thankfully, we weren't the only people attempting to stiffle laughs -- the woman next to us almost fell out of her chair and some prude in the front balcony walked out. The plot unfolds into something slightly more normal -- imaginary Diana "haaaaaaaas cancer" (sing it with me) and then its the typical gay-guy-as-con-man-tricks-innocent-sailor story.

Seeing an opera remains on the list of things to do in life.

The Latin for banana is ariena

Amsterdam is one of the original cities of free love, complete with a gigantic obelisk (cough cough, phallic, cough cough) in Dam square where all the hippies used to hang out, half (or fully) naked while tripping on acid. And while LSD isn't the daily staple anymore (soooooo 1960s), that whole sexual freedom thing is still ringing, except now in the form of commercial tourism. (favorite thing ever said to me in the red light district: "Ladies, ladies, big cock? big cock?")


Despite my past promiscuity, I'm kinda a prude when it comes to me. (why do it yourself? What the hell are men for?) Already one of my colleagues at work is declaring that I absolutely must go to a live sex show while living here and that something called the "Banana Bar" is a bit of a uh, spectacle. So, unless I've actually been rufied (sp?), I'm going to take a pass on the later (I've seen what women can do with Canadian Loonies; I can infer what they do with bananas). But I have promised myself that under the escort of Senor Cuervo, I will, someday, go watch people bang on stage. (apparently, it's actually really tasteful. Okay, not tasteful, but not like Japanese-porn raunchy. There are supposed to be acts -- like guy and girl, girl and self, girl and girl and guy, etc. And I've heard people clap for good performances. Like your curiosity isn't also peaked? Come on!)

Many a friend have insisted I get into myself, and one went so far as to purchase me a vibrator as a going away present (what is it with being abroad and vibrators? Though unlike Anna I wash my sheets). You'll all be proud to know that (drum roll) I took it out of the package and put a battery in it! Now all I have to do is use it (there won't be a post about that, sorry....).

Gay Men Are So Hot...It's Tragic

I've been to a few gay pride parades in my day (I'm straight, not narrow) and to a couple of even awesom-er displays of queen-dom, such as the annual Poodle Beach Drag Volleyball tournament. But the gay pride parade here last weekend trumps all by a landslide -- I mean, this might be the closest I've been to unclothed man in...well, that's a whole 'nother conversation.

First off, it's not a marching or walking parade, but a continuous stream of floats. Literally -- boats run along one of the major canals with displays of everything from S&M to choreographed dances to the likes of Gloria Gaynor, Madonna, etc. Pink and skin and pink skin everywhere. Apparently, in the past few years the floats have had to be a little more tame since, according to the city, this is a family event. Before this major "crack"down (get it? crack? as in ass crack? yeah, I know it was weak...), the more-than-occasional nekkid man was a float staple. Guess I arrived 3 years too late. Well, there's always the live sex shows downtown...

Everyone wants to be like Mike...

...or Leigh. Well, not Leigh right now (i.e. "in a relationship") but Leigh two years ago when she was busy gettin' busy, seducing any man in the service industry who had an accent. Or who was missing teeth. Or both.


So I will start my European philandering and hope that 2 years from now I too will have some hot sugar daddy who gets in free to Disney Land. In the meantime, I'll burn one down for Leigh.