Skip to main content

I'm unbelievably famous

Last weekend I had a jarring experience--I met someone who had read this blog. She's an ex-Peace Corps volunteer married to an Afrikaans guy. They live in Northwest near a couple other volunteers.

She's the first (and probably only, let's be honest) person I've met to stumble on this place before actually meeting me. I have to say, I felt a bit uneasy. I did a quick mental review of everything I've ever posted. Most of it--total garbage. Would I make this my first introduction to a person? "Hey, nice to meet you. Read 9000 pages of rambling nonsense. I'll be over here." The whole point of a blog is that no one ever reads it, right? Right?

In any case, she didn't seem too visibly offended by my obvious lack of tact or panache. Bullet dodged. Or maybe it is a good introduction--maybe I really am a pretentious buffoon constantly holding forth on topics obviously beyond my pay grade.

Comments

  1. If by, dodged a bullet, you mean, you met someone from the south, who, from her upbringing, by nature, is extremely polite and tactful, then, yes, i agree. I stole her corn and rama she brought to share with our group but no one cared to fat because they were drinking their carbs. Does that mean i am completely unconcerned with my impression on said guest? Perhaps. Although, surprisingly, she seemed quite taken with me. Flattering, yes, but strangely interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm confused...so you're saying that if she had been from a less polite culture (say, New York), then she would have kicked me in the junk, trussed me up like a chicken, doused me in honey, and left me to be eaten by fire ants--as I so richly deserve?

    ReplyDelete
  3. -Good to know the Rama found a home…especially with someone I strangely enough did become a bit taken with.

    -Just so you know even if I wasn't from the south I do believe your blog would give me no reason to kick you in the junk upon a first meeting. I cannot say how I will behave upon our next meeting though. Especially after the drunken insight into your personal life I was privy to on our drive to your B&B:)

    Hope you both are doing well. If you would like some more food that you don't have to steal come for a visit during your long holiday this month. -Kelee 072-385-1444

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actually b

The Basic Instinct of Socialism

This year I finally decided to stop beating around the bush and start calling myself a democratic socialist. I think the reason for the long hesitation is the very long record of horrifying atrocities carried out by self-described socialist countries. Of course, there is no social system that doesn't have a long, bloody rap sheet, capitalism very much included . But I've never described myself as a capitalist either, and the whole point of socialism is that it's supposed to be better than that. So of course I cannot be a tankie — Stalin and Mao were evil, terrible butchers, some of the worst people who ever lived. There are two basic lessons to be learned from the failures of Soviet and Chinese Communism, I think. One is that Marxism-Leninism is not a just or workable system. One cannot simply skip over capitalist development, and any socialist project must be democratic and preserve basic liberal freedoms. The second, perhaps more profound lesson, is that there is no s

Varanus albigularis albigularis

That is the Latin name for the white-throated monitor lizard , a large reptile native to southern Africa that can grow up to two meters long (see pictures of one at the Oakland Zoo here ). In Setswana, it's called a "gopane." I saw one of these in my village yesterday on the way back from my run. Some kids from school found it in the riverbed and tortured it to death, stabbing out its eyes, cutting off its tail, and gutting it which finally killed it. It seemed to be a female as there were a bunch of round white things I can only imagine were eggs amongst the guts. I only arrived after it was already dead, but they described what had happened with much hilarity and re-enactment. When I asked why they killed it, they said it was because it would eat their chickens and eggs, which is probably true, and because it sucks blood from people, which is completely ridiculous. It might bite a person, but not unless threatened. It seems roughly the same as killing wolves that