Just One of Life's Little Mysteries

I was just watching Superman and wondering about something that I've pondered from time to time. Why the hell was Clark Kent so taken with Lois Lane? She's probably the most abrasive, obnoxious, and annoying female character ever and yet he seemed so smitten with her. Was this the feminist ideal of the 70s? I remember seeing this movie at the Kadena AFB theatre when it first came out. I thought she was annoying then too and I was probably five years old. Some things I'll just never understand.

Arugula-Eating Bad Asses: Tough Bo-Bo Sends War Veteran Scurrying for Cover

I just read what might be one of the most absurd quotes of this election. When his patriotism and commitment to success in Iraq was questioned, Obama said, "John McCain doesn't know what he's up against."

John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton when the junior senator from Illinois was starting kindergarten. When Russia invaded Georgia and Obama got his 3AM call he said, "I'm going body boarding." He couldn't be bothered to yank himself away from his Hawaiian vacation to salvage his flimsy foreign policy image. I'm pretty sure John McCain knows what he's up against.

Olympics

I abandoned my principles--I broke down and watched the Olympics. I was at the Ford dealership getting my car fixed and the TV in the waiting room was turned to the Women's 50m Freestyle . I couldn't very well say to the other people there, "Excuse me, but due to China's ongoing persecution of political dissidents, Christians, and Tibet, I insist that we change the channel."

So I watched. In spite of the fact that the Chinese, in their standard Asian commie creepiness, had one little girl lip sync while another sang because the singer wasn't deemed sufficiently cute enough. And in spite of the fact that they had "16-year old" gymnasts who could only be 16 if they were forced to smoke, drink coffee, and sleep in a short bed, which knowing China wouldn't be outside of the realm of possibility and the fact that the Beijing Olympics has been the biggest Potemkin undertaking since Pyongyang. I watched and it was pretty damn good.

Bees!

In addition to your garden variety news items, I can always count on Fox News online to have some distasteful, titillating, or absurd tidbit of news. News items such as, “Weenie Dog Gnaws Off Sleeping Owner’s Toe” or “Hillary Duff Puts Scorpion Down Her Pants” regularly scream out from Fox News’ homepage. It’s the kind of news that’s deliciously tacky and brings no end to the pleasure of everyone. One headline that I’ll remember forever is “Truck Overturns in Canada, Releasing 12 Million Bees on Largest Highway.”

I know that bees make honey and do all kinds of lovely things for the world, but I don’t want to have to associate with them and the idea of 12 million bees loose in one place is horrifying to me. To put it simply, I’m afraid of bees. Lots of people are afraid of snakes, but I’m not overly concerned about snakes. Snakes generally leave you alone unless you make it a point to poke them with a stick or otherwise threaten them. Snakes don’t want whatever it is you’re eating and they won’t swarm together and chase you down just to bite you. It just doesn’t really pay to be afraid of snakes unless you live in India or Africa.

It was with great satisfaction that we paddled up to a beautiful beach after an outstanding day of kayaking. It was truly one of the most perfect beaches I’ve ever seen. The weather was about 85 degrees and sunny. After we pitched our tents, a few of us decided to take dip in the sea to clean off. I had taken great care to ensure every hygiene product I brought with me was biodegradable. What I should have paid better attention to was to ensure that they were unscented as well.

After I cleaned off, I decided to rinse out some of my clothes using the same almond-scented soap. I hung them over the tent to dry and wandered off down the beach. When I came back to the tent, I found it surrounded by a cloud of bees. Not only did they block the entrance to the tent, but they had taken up residence in my open water bottle. I was beside myself. It dawned on me that they might have been attracted by the smell of the soap.

A few yards away, I spied an extraordinarily long stick. I figured if I could get the clothes off the tent and deposit them further away, the bees would leave the tent and I could collect my clothes after dark. Gingerly, I attempted to lift my clothes off the tent frame with the stick. Serena spotted my efforts and came scurrying over telling me not to agitate the bees. “They won’t sting unless you make them mad.”

Serena emptied the bees from my water bottle and told me to just wait until dark unless there was something I absolutely needed from the tent. I decided there was nothing I needed that badly.

The bees continued to follow me along the beach, drinking in the overwhelming almond smell emanating from my hair and trailing along like dorky, hopeful, and eager to please teenage boys after a homecoming queen.

Serena continued to assure me that the bees wouldn’t sting unless enraged and that they were attracted to moisture. I tried to keep that in mind as everything we ate and drank was surrounded by bees. Thankfully, darkness came quickly enough and I was able to go to my tent. I got my partially dried clothes inside and packed absolutely everything I could for a hasty take down the next morning.

Sure enough, I was awakened by the sun and an unmistakable whine--BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! I was packed before everyone else was awake. I was up in a flash, packing my sleeping bag and throwing stuff sacks and dry bags out of the tent as fast as I could. Everyone was impressed by the speed with which I was able to take down my tent and pack my kayak.

As we hauled the kayaks away from shore and out into the water, I felt like the family in Poltergeist, fleeing as quickly as we could, abandoning the island to be consumed by bees.

I never got stung, but the afternoon we got there after my encounter with The Swarm, Serena ended up getting stung by bees--twice.

Stay tuned for Part V: A Hole is to Dig

Bye Bye Cantaloupe, Hello Cold Shock

I’ve always been prone to motion sickness. It runs in my dad’s side of the family. It managed to skip a generation, leap over my dad, and land squarely on my head, while leaving my brother relatively unscathed. Kind of like a terrible barf tornado.

I’ve gotten sick in airplanes, movies in which the camera moved too fast, and of course long car trips. Every summer of my childhood, we drove marathon distances from Omaha, Nebraska to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in either Alabama or Pennsylvania in our 1980 Ford Fairmont. Every one of those car trips involved projectile vomiting, instigated entirely by me. My brother James was a sympathetic puker. The combination of long distances in the back seat, Brach’s Pick-a-Mix candies, and the overpowering smell of coffee from my dad’s giant thermos made my stomach churn. The first time this happened is forever etched in my memory. I vividly recall looking at the front of my pink t-shirt as semi-digested apples exploded downward. I looked over at James. With a look of horror and disgust I’ve never seen on a two-year old before or since, he quickly followed suit. Sometime later in Iowa, the Ford Fairmont screeched into a gas station with my dad screaming, “I gotta get out of this Puke-Mobile!”

Growing up in a landlocked state, I haven’t had much opportunity to bounce up and down on the ocean. So while I can honestly say I’ve never been seasick, it’s only because the opportunity never presented itself.

To say the weather was a bit choppy the first two days on the water in Baja is like saying that if you poke yourself in the eye with an ice pick, it might hurt a little. When we started out, the skies were sunny and the zephyrs light. We loaded the boats and were out on the water in no time. We’d been blessed with three extremely wonderful, patient, and capable guides, Serena, Caleb, and Edgar to lead the way. We were in tandem kayaks and being the lone, unattached person on the trip, I ended up sharing a kayak with Edgar the first day out. I’d paddled in the rain up in British Columbia, but substantial winds were a novelty for me. We saw ominous looking grey clouds in the distance, but Serena assured us, “It never rains in Baja.”

The further we paddled, the greyer the sky got and the higher the winds blew while Serena continued to let us know that it never rained in Baja and when the sprinkles began coming down, she reassured us, “It’s not raining.”

It never really did pour down rain on us. I’ve always heard that the Inuit have some hundred odd words for different types of snow. Maybe folks from British Columbia have varying degrees of rain.

We weren’t out on the water long enough on the first day to feel the full effects. The second day out, the sun was shining. Unfortunately, the wind hadn’t abated. We were about halfway across the water on our way to the island we would be spending the night on. I’d eaten cantaloupe for breakfast along with something else I can’t recall. As our kayaks pitched on the waves, I could feel breakfast sloshing around in my stomach and was worried about what might happen next when my digestive system presented a much more pressing concern--I had to go. And I had to go RIGHT NOW. I mentioned this to Serena and she said, “Okay, just jump into the water and go.”

This took working up some nerve since I’d never jumped into the middle of the ocean before, but I finally jumped out of the kayak into the sea.

About two months prior, Sea Kayaker magazine ran an article about the dangers of cold shock and swim failure. Deep down I didn’t really think this would happen to me. I was in Mexico and it was eighty degrees outside after all. I will say that once I jumped into the water, my priorities were swiftly redirected. It was like coming across a bathroom at a Cenex gas station in Arkansas and realizing maybe you don’t have to go quite so bad after all. If I hadn’t had someone to help me back in the boat, I don’t know that I would have been able to make it back in at all.

I was grateful to finally be back in the boat and shivering with cold, the source of my unpleasantness changed its point of origin. Pitching around on the choppy water for over two hours had finally taken its toll and half-digested cantaloupe began spewing into the ocean coming from guess who. Poor Caleb, who had been so patient with the flabby abs, chicken-armed woman he was sharing a kayak with, remained so throughout the entire time I spent retching over the side of the boat. He told me about being seasick on a fishing boat off the coast of Alaska. “Oh Jennifer, seasickness is so shitty.”

He continued to paddle while I barfed into the sea. We finally made it to our campsite and I couldn’t have imagined a more idyllic and beautiful place to spend the night. Even in my state of physical and mental misery, I had to appreciate the turquoise water and relatively sheltered beach as we paddled to shore.

I grabbed my dry bag with my clothes and quickly stripped down behind a bush to change. It was another hour and a half before I remembered that I still had to go.

Stay tuned for Part IV: Bees!

I'm a New Aunt

In my last entry, I mentioned how my sister-in-law was ready to give birth any second. It turns out I was right! Literally, she was squeezing out the kid as I typed and I didn't even know it. So now I have a niece. Her name is Cosette and she has a head full of dark brown hair. My parents are racing out to Iowa City first thing in the morning. I'm dying to see her. My brother says she's adorable and since that's a word I've never, ever heard him use, she really must be. She's going to be a daddy's girl.

Drink the Kool-Aid, Baby Parsons

When I was deployed, I found a souvenier that I just had to have. It was one of those cheap-o trinkets that can be found at fine souvenier establishments from Abu Dhabi to Damascus. It's a stuffed camel that when squeezed, plays a freaky sounding Arabic children's song and--get ready for this--has eyes that light up red. Yes ladies and gentlemen, a toy obviously marketed for children that would scare the hell out of pretty much every child in the western world. My cousin received a Tickle-Me Elmo for her birthday. She was terrified of it. Some caring, thoughtful relative searched high and low for an overpriced toy that was at a premium and Raven will have nothing to do with it. When I mentioned the camel to my aunt, she said Raven probably wouldn't go for a toy created for Rosemary's Baby.

My brother on the other hand was delighted with the prospect of such a freaky toy. He and my sister-in-law are expecting their first baby any second now. He didn't see the sense in wasting time when we could go ahead and warp the baby as early as possible. This is the same guy who went through a Nightmare on Elm Street phase in which he was fascinated by Freddy Kruger--during daylight hours. Eventually, all Freddy Kruger memorabilia mysteriously ended up buried deep in his bedroom closet, under the bathroom sink, or tucked away in some other odd, out-of-the-way place in the house where there was no chance that the Freddy Kruger doll, poster, or trading cards could ever climb their way out of the toybox or off the wall and shred his face to ribbons while he slept.

Of course I ended up buying him the demon camel. It's the kind of toy that in most of North America would be in a bedroom closet with a chair against the door to discourage any sort of aspirations the toy might have for nocturnal animation and possible escape. Maybe kids in the Middle East aren't worried about a camel with creepy light-up eyes. Then again, maybe it's all relative. They have children's shows that show giant rabbits getting their hands cut off for stealing and bumblebees that teach them how to be suicide bombers. With all that to worry about, maybe a stuffed camel isn't that scary after all.

Who's My Neighbor?

I just got my copy of Outside magazine in the mail the other day. In the August issue, there's an article by Patrick Symmes about Burma just before Cyclone Nargis hit. Symmes left Burma a day before Nargis came to town and relates the details of a corrupt military dictatorship driven by superstition and such profound greed that not only robbed the Burmese people of desperately needed aid from foreign NGOs, but punished local citizens that attempted to alleviate suffering. No one in Burma had a clue about what would happen until hours before the cyclone hit.

Symmes' article detailed the Orwellian, Pyongyang-style creepiness of the junta's dictatorship. I spend my days at work at a computer reading about evil, oppressive governments and dictators with freakish proclivities and bizarre personality flaws. Stuff like this doesn't shock me anymore, although that doesn't make it any less horrible. The thing that jumped out me from this article was something seemingly more mundane.

Last September, Burma experienced what's now known as the Saffron Revolution. Thousands of Buddhist monks led pro-democracy protests across Burma. The junta put a quick end to the protesters. The official body count puts the death toll at 31, but human rights groups claim the number was in the hundreds.

After the cyclone, the only truly effective internal relief came from Buddhist monks who led truck convoys into the Irawaddy Delta to offer food and shelter to victims at village temples.

I don't believe that all worldviews are equally valid or all roads lead to heaven. Following that idea to its logical conclusion is saying that the ideas of Nicolai Ceaucescu or Stalin are just as good as Gandhi's or Mother Theresa's. Most people would agree that's completely silly.

However, I do think that everyone is responsible for using the truth that they have. Certain ideals are transcendent regardless of culture. Theft, murder, and greed are universally condemned, regardless if someone is Christian, Buddhist, or Jewish. If the Burmese generals don't have some sense that what they do is wrong, they wouldn't have anything to fear from the Buddhist monks and they wouldn't work so hard at hiding their actions from the rest of the world.

And as for the action taken by the Buddhist in the wake of the cyclone, if they didn't have a sense that there was a right thing to do, they would have only been concerned about saving themselves instead of taking care of their homeless and hungry neighbors. I highly doubt that Campus Crusade ever showed up at their doorstep to hand them a pamphlet on the Four Spiritual Laws and pray with them to get "saved" and there are the born-again types who would say that if they don't fill that Sinner's Prayer square, they're going to hell. I don't buy that. Only God really knows what's inside a person. Christ used the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate that actions speak louder than the appearance of piety or the letter of the law. Samaritans at that time were despised by the Jews because of their partial pagan ancestry and the fact that their religion wasn't in line with the teaching of mainstream Judaism. They were considered unclean. The Buddhist monks were the ultimate Good Samaritans who didn't have to ask, "Who is my neighbor?" I find it hard to believe that there won't be a place for them in heaven.