It's so Cold in the D

Boom Boom Boom Boom

So it's Memorial day and you've pulled up Sardonic Shock Syndrome - I can only guess that it's because you A) just got my card because I met you at the DEMF, B) are a regular reader and you want to see what I've got to say, C) this blog is coming up in your RSS feed, or D) Your holiday weekend was as dull as unbuttered toast and you're desperate for entertainment.

Well sadly, I can't help any of you.  It's 6:00 AM on Monday and I've been awake for a loooong time, and that time I haven't been awake has been time spend drunk as fuck or alternately dancing my ass off. 

Boom Boom Boom Boom

What's to say about this year's DEMF aka Movement aka Tech-Fest aka Day Rave?  it absolutely exceeded all expectations.  Yes, there were a lot of Hot Topic Goths and Juggalos, but there were also so many people from the old school. that the whole thing was infinitely entertaining, and a great big mixer of good friends new and old.

Shut up, I know that sounded all kinds of sissy.

At any rate, to address my earlier predictions - I already talked about the Juggalos and Hot Topic goths, so enough said about that, BUT - the weather has been excellent, a point upon which I was totally wrong (though there's a day still to go,) there were enough hipsters to be be both conspicuous and disgusting, and also there was enough overlap from the competing sound stages to make for an obtrusive and mind-numbing whub-whub-whub, but the sound at the stages themselves was great.  After ten years of practice they seem to have nailed that, but I'm off topic again.

Boom Boom Boom Boom

I've been drinking and dancing and just raving my dam face off for 3 days and I am dog tired.  While at one time I might have decried DEMF as a tiresome exercise in a long-gone scene, I have to say that this year blew me away.  The festival itself was hot, and the after parties were goddamned epic, so:

Now I'm going to stop writing.  I'm winding down and watching a fucking John Water movie - I don't know how you could possibly improve on that sort of perfection, but I'm eager to hear how you try.

Good morning, and goodnight!

Boom  Boom  Boom Boom

Boom, Boom, Boom

I've longed and pined for it, and it is here at last - the first DEMF I'll have the pleasure of attending in 3 years.  Sure, I could in theory have flown back every year, but the cost was prohibitive and frankly, by year 7 of annual DEMF-ing, I was a little burned out on the whole thing.

This year, I've managed to score a free ticket (courtesy of my amigo, Big Clobby from the PGH-PIT), so I'm stretching out my legs, looking for comfortable shoes, and  stocking up on glow sticks.

PLUR!

After a three-year hiatus, I am ready to get my rave on.  Rave-ish.  "Day Rave" as some of my friends call it since rave itself is dead and buried and all that remains are clubs and "after parties."  While after-parties may conform to the first definition of a rave as an after-hours or all-night dance party, they are not raves based on their conspicuous  lack of vicks vap-o-rub and Blue's Clues backpacks.

I am cautiously optimistic for the festival itself.  A big part of the experience for every DEMF except the first is to complain about how it's all gone downhill since (pick at least one) A) Carol Marvin stepped in B) They started charging or C) All these stupid fucking newbie ravers started showing up. 

This year, they say, is going to be amazing.  "Prepare to be impressed," one friend said to me, and I am - I am ready to go downtown and get my socks blown off (albeit that I will be wearing sandals, but you get the drift). 

Back in time like Huey Lewis

So I'm going in this year with only the most obvious of assumptions.

Assumption 1:  The weather will turn to shit. 

Weather.com says the whole weekend will be sunny with highs in the mid-80's.  This is because weather.com thinks its funny to see people in shorts getting rained on and shivering as they freeze to death.

Assumption 2:  Whub whub whub

While there will be pockets of aural acuity, most of Hart Plaza will be covered in overlapping zones of sound from competing stages that are playing different music at different tempos in different keys, which will have the net affect of meaning that most of the festival grounds will sound something like two pairs of sneakers in the dryer.

Assumption 3:  Juggalos

Juggalos, Hot-Topic Goths, and all other forms of subnormal youth culture have long been a DEMF staple.  I predict this year that Hart Plaza will be thick with mouth-breathing downriver kids in black strappy parachute pants and ICP jerseys.  Many will be wearing black armbands or sporting new commemorative tattoos in honor of the dead Slipknot guy.

Assumption 4:  Hipsters

Fucking hipsters.

Know what would be really ironic?  A glowstick mustache.

So again, I remain cautiously optimistic.  I figure with an open mind and good spirits, I should have a good time and failing that, The Comet is within walking distance and they have one dollar drafts of Milwaukee's best.  Plus I have a cooler, and enough money for a fifth of paint thinner.  

Furthermore, I'll have a lot of friends there - many are my day-to-day amigos, but many more are visitors from out of town, people who have moved away and are now coming back to walk around in the freezing rain and reminisce about phat pants, visors, and kandee bracelets. That's probably the best part - big huge DJ's and all that business?  That's fine - but nothing can replace the good company of your OMG BEST FRIENDZ 4-EVAH!!!

It's always been about the music

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Don't Drop the Soap

Yesterday, Kwame "Killa" Kilpatrick, Detroit's "Hip-Hop Mayor," went up for 18 months to 5 years in the pokey. 

Number 702408, but his new friends call him "Ass Princess"

I got the questionable privilege of being able to sit out the very end of Kwame's mayoral "service," but all that really means is that I had to do more homework than your average Detroiter to get really pissed off at what transpired while I was away from the city.  Then again, there are a lot of Detroiters who are not quite pissed off enough about those misdeeds, so let me just go off and explain, for anyone still staying at Kamp Kwame, just why this man needs to go to real, federal, pound-me-in-the-ass prison. 

First, the charge:  Perjury.  In short, it means bald-faced lying to a judge not ten seconds after you promised to tell the truth to the judge.  It is important to remember that this is the principle crime for which Kilpatrick has been charged because frankly, I'm tired of people saying shit like "So what if he just wanted to get some booty? Why is that a crime?" 

Let's all get this shit out of our heads:  Kwame is not going to jail for porking Christine Beatty.  Kwame is not even going to jail based on some sort of rigid application of an adultery blue law because he cheated on his wife in order to pork Christine Beatty - Kwame is going to jail for porking Christine Beatty and then lying about it to a judge, going to jail for the lie, getting out on probation, and then lying some more to the court and to his P.O.

OMG U R So Hot - CUM over NOW!!! <3

But I can still hear a chorus of people saying "So what?  Who's going to tell the truth about keeping it on the down low / nobody has to know?"  and I just have to think that this is the engineered response of Kwame's defense team because it is like six degrees of separation removed from the actual crimes Kwame committed while in office. 

Kwame Kilpatrick squandered a shitload of Detroit's money - money Detroit did not have - and since Kwame's lawyers seem kind of savvy and smart (despite their recent defeat) the city will not get that money back.  Kwame is going to slime, squirm, lie, and cheat his way out of paying his $1 million dollar restitution bill - believe it.  

So in lieu of cash, Detroit will have to take flesh.  While Detroit won't receive proper remuneration, just maybe the city can break and destroy the man who symbolizes so much of its recent decay.

 That suit cost more than a Detroit child's education

While in office, Kwame did a lot of shit one kind of expects of a politician - splurging with some taxpayer money, making some kind of shady deals - Chicagoland type stuff.  While we expect a politician to dip his fingers in the honey, we don't expect him to take the whole pot, and while we look the other way when business and politics give each other hay-jays under the table, we expect that coitus to result in a money shot of jobs and tax revenue.

Kwame didn't run Detroit - he mugged Detroit.  He grabbed what he could, and expected that the city wouldn't waste time and resources investigating or avenging the crime.  He still evidently expects this to be the case as, like I've said, Detroit is not going to get its restitution money (since ordered to pay back that 1 million dollars, Kwame has moved to Texas, bought new cars, new clothes, and plastic surgery for his wife).

But Kwame evidently wasn't counting on the vindictiveness of the little people he trod over, and it bit him in the ass.  Idiosyncratically, the whole process has cost the city still more money that it will not recoup. Meanwhile, Kwame can take notes for his memoirs and maybe start up another website  to trick the undiscerning into believing he is some sort of victim (Warning - do not click link if you are just about to eat).

 

A lesson in metonymy: Kwame does not "look like" a pimp

Maybe, should he write those memoirs, he'll actually give us a proper account of what he did with all that money he funneled into under-performing or non-existent family-and-friend businesses.  Maybe, in those memoirs, we'll get an actual sincere apology as opposed to that "I'm a new man" bullshit that he fucking dared to try to speak at his sentencing.

I don't think so, of course.  I mean, here's a man who was only being investigated in the first place because of a laundry list of questionable, seedy, and downright nefarious deeds, some of the worst of which have been glossed over and ignored.  Stripper party at the Manoogian mansion?  Not particularly becoming behavior, but that sort of thing just makes the suburbanites shake their heads and say you have no class.  Killing a stripper because your wife caught her dropping down to get her eagle on in front of you, got pissed, and attacked the stripper with a baseball bat?  That's some Sin City shit right there.

Kwame is not a tell-all kind of guy.  If he were a tell-all kind of guy, he wouldn't  be having this trouble, now would he?

Just 'cause she dances go-go / that don't make her a hoe, no

It's just so American, the whole Kwame thing.  There are parallels to be drawn - a city that boomed and busted, a mayor who spent more on Escalades than Education, a big showy sports spectacle in place of anything resembling real urban renewal...and then there is the angle of racial disparity and prejudice:  Would Kwame have these problems had he been white?  Would he even have been elected? 

Tthese topics are for another time.

For now - our "hip-hop mayor" gets to round out his thuggified gangstah image by serving time in Jackson Correctional.  Whether or not he'll release a hot new album featuring T-Pain remains to be seen, but the important thing is that Kwame will get to meet a lot of the people he failed up-close and personal:  the kids who turned to crime because they had no education and the young men who did the same because they had no jobs.  Maybe while Kwame's in the joint they can all thank him, personally, for helping to make them the people they are today. 

So enjoy your new jumpsuit, Kwame.  It's not as warm or comfortable as the bespoke suits you love so well, nor will the warden monogram the cuffs, but maybe you'll get used to them - they sure look right on you.

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Jugendherberge! Part 4

When you're traveling on the cheap, you have to be very careful about what you're eating for two reasons:  First, you may not know what it costs, and second, you may not know what it is. But let's not mind the strange things you'll find in your mouth when traveling* (when you get hungry enough, you will eat whatever vinegar-soaked blood-and-brains dish someone gives you and you will thank them for it, believe), and pay more attention to how much they'll set you back. 

Blutwurst - breakfast of champions

Here, again, it's really, really helpful to speak the language of the country you are visiting, but I'll tell you what:  just speak another language and you'll be much better off than if you didn't.  The people of the country in which they speak your second language will just be all kinds of flattered that you made the effort, and the people of the countries that neighbor that country will at least be familiar enough with your second tongue** to point you in the right direction.  The point being that when you are an American who speaks a second language, people abroad want to do you favors.

Except for Belgium, which is a toilet.

A typical Belgian

Remember that you should be looking for a hostel with a refrigerator - one that lets you keep food with you, so that you can  buy groceries and then eat just as well as you do at home which, well, come to think of it, you're probably a big fat cheeseburger-sucking American and you're going to go to the grocery store and come back with 8 tubes of pringles and a stick of butter, then wash it down with a gallon of milkshake before complaining about the small European portion sizes, so let's look at your alternatives. 

America won the so-called Culture Wars a long time ago.  As I've said before, everyone wears blue jeans and drinks coca-cola, and never mind that me and a bunch of other snobs will go on and on about how European coke is so much better than American because they don't use high fructose corn syrup (it's true), the point is that Brand America is a big deal. This means that in all but the most rural backwards towns, your freedom-loving fat American ass can walk into a McDonalds and shovel in a tray of cheeseburgers.  Yes, by the way, they do serve beer at German McDonalds.  No, it's actually not worth drinking.

Shalom-a-size it for just a shekel more

So as you travel on the cheap, the dollar menu remains your friend just as it does in America, though there are better options.   Thanks to the massive influx of Arabs, Europe is dotted with cheap Donner joints.  In America we'd just call it gyro or, if you're really cosmopolitan, souvlaki, but it's something a bit different for all that:  It's a hot pita, a greasy helping of spitted mystery meat, and a load of vegetables, and it costs about 3 Euro (4.50 US).  I've seen it sell for as low as 2, and as much as 5, but it's still a poor traveler's best friend - bread, meat, and vegetables all for a pittance.  

The reason you subject yourself to such greasy cheep food for 2 meals out of the day is so that you can actually enjoy the third.  See?  I wasn't going to tell you to go "Freegan" or anything like that - I'm encouraging you to get out and get some culture, and a big part of culture is food.  Going to Germany and not getting Schweineshaxe and beer is like going to Seattle and not drinking coffee, or going to Detroit and not getting stabbed.  If you can cook for yourself for 2 meals, you can have one hell of a third and still keep your costs below what you would at home.  

Don't do this

Travel is all about going out and seeing how other people do things, and for me a large part of that is seeing how they do the same sort of things I do at home.  That means that I spend a lot of my travel time drinking (that being what I do at home, after all).  I say this now only to answer the last question of travel:  What do I do when I get there?

The answer is: do what you normally would.  It's really easy to get caught up in sight-seeing, and sight-seeing is certainly fun, but if that's all you do then you'll be missing a lot of the experience.  Consider that if you go to Paris, you can see Notre Dame Cathedral - well, Notre Dame isn't going anywhere, but the people around it are.  Plus, to be honest, unless you're really into art studies or cultural theology, most of Notre Dame is going to be lost on you. Is it big and pretty? Yes, but so what?  It's a Cathedral - it's supposed to be big and pretty, but also dark, scary, and confusing - you're supposed to walk away going "OMG Jeebus is so BIG!" which is probably what's going to happen to you.  Is that really how you want to spend your week in Paris?

Yup, still there

When you travel, get out and meet people.  Go to the places where people go, and not just boring ass tourists - go to local bars, local clubs, and local restaurants.  Get dirty, watch the locals - walk around and do nothing.  Big touristy things are fine, and there are plenty of them that you should do and enjoy if you think you'll regret it, but mostly the best thing about going somewhere else is getting good and drunk with the people you find.

Because tourism is objectification - going straight for the things you can take pictures of tells the people around you that you don't care about them and what they're doing, only what people that died at least 100 years ago have done.  The people around you become obstacles in your way to an attraction, and to me, that's no way to live and no way to consider people.  Believe me - the people living in the shadows of those monuments are by far more dynamic and exciting than the monuments themselves. 

Having addressed travel, accommodation, food, and entertainment, I think I've given a nice overview to anyone thinking of taking the plunge and going abroad.  Of course this has made me hugely nostalgic for other places I've been and, wouldn't you know it, just as I run out of money - but lest we think travel is all about going to strange new worlds and seeking out new civilizations, it's also about going out, meeting, seeing, and experiencing.  In that regard, a trip to another city can be as rewarding as a trip to another country so long as you undertake that trip with open-minded joie de vivre and at least a half gallon of gin.

 I am Magneto - this is my home

* That's what she said

** That's also what she said

Jugendherberge! Part 3

First things first:

First blue ribbon I've seen in 10 years that didn't have "Pabst" in front of it

When I started doing this, it was just about getting thrice-a-week writing practice.  It's since become something a lot more important to me, and a part of enough people's weekly lives that it's built up its own momentum, and it's that momentum that's made it possible to keep this going with the small handful of "occasional excuses" I boast in the header. In short - I'll keep on writing them as long as you keep on reading them.

Back to business.

In Jugendherberge! 1 I covered the reasons for travel, and in Jugendherberge! 2 I talked about modes of travel - getting there and getting around.  In this installment, I want to talk about where you can stay, cheaply, without getting too molested.

Kidnapping and torture - the least of your worries

Naturally, the best and cheapest option is to stay with someone you know - this is not always an option, so I'll only mention for now that the best crash option is a friend's couch.  Let's assume that one isn't available at your destination.  

First, you need to know where you're going, how long you're staying, how you're getting there, and what your budget is. If you're just flying out to the coast for a couple days, this is pretty obviously an invitation to stay in a hotel.  2 or 3 nights in a Motel 6 comes out to something like 100-150 bucks, and it's comfortable and usually clean.  Flying with camping gear is a pain, and what with everyone charging for checked baggage, it's money out-of-pocket up front, plus sleeping in a tent is only comfortable compared to sleeping exposed to the elements - suck it up, pay for a room. 

Now, if you're going cross-country by car, camping is a fine option.  You can keep way more camping gear in your car than you can check into a plane, so you could actually make comfortable accommodation for yourself.  If you can afford the ultra-awesome option of hauling a trailer behind you, even better.  Plus, camping is its own thing - you don't do it for the comfort or the convenience - you do it because it's rustic and backwards and fun.  Sure, maybe you'll sleep on a rock, and maybe a bear will murder you in your sleep, but that's all part of the experience. 

750 pounds of crushing jaws and slashing claws

I'd love to hear from someone with experience at American hostels, because I've never stayed in one, nor have I even seen one.  I've heard they exist, but you'd have to show me.  Unfortunately, that means I can't make a recommendation on them one way or the other, but I can recount my own experience in European hostels. 

First, hosteling across Europe is loads of fun.  You meet tons of people, and it's really casual.  That being said, let me break the most common misconception: It's not cheap.  Yes, it is cheaper than staying in a hotel, but cheap is not free, and most people set out backpacking under the assumption that it is.  I know I did, and I arrived back in the US essentially penniless because of it.  

In Germany, the cheapest hostel I found was 11 Euro a night, which at the time was about 16 bucks.  That did not include breakfast or internet access, though I did get fresh linen every day.  The most I paid in Germany was 25 Euro a night, and I only stayed there one night.  Nothing else was included, just a bed in an old castle.  

In Prague, the price was a meager 9 Euro a night with a stay 9 get the 10th free option, reducing the price to just over 8 euro, or about 11 bucks a day, with coffee, free internet access, and sandwiches included.  The rate varies pretty widely, but it's important to remember that you'll be doing this every day.  It adds up. It's one thing to be happy that my hostel only cost 8 euro a night and that I didn't have to spring from lunch or internet access, but it's another thing altogether to fork over 110 dollars to sleep in a bunk bed for a week. 

Nuremberg - I slept in the stable

Hostels are cheaper if you're young (thus the German name for hostel, Jugendherberge, meaning "young something something").  Then again, when you're young you don't have any money, so: so what?  Basically the price jump in hostels after the age of 25 just keeps up with your anticipated earnings.  

The traditional notion of backpacking across Europe seems to have died out - the vacation your hippie parents took in the 60's consisted of granola, hitchhiking, casual group sex, and flip-flops made from old tires, and I didn't meet many people in that situation, or even anything close to it, though apparently they still exist.  Regardless, charming Belgian dairy farmers are less and less likely to let you sleep in their haylofts, and American tourists are less and less willing to do it because we are all fat and spoiled.  

BUT, Europe (and especially Germany) is camping-friendly, and if you can lug a pup tent and bedroll around with you, there's no reason except good hygiene that you shouldn't go ahead and rough it.  Proper campgrounds are very cheap (a token payment of a 3-5 Euros that sometimes they don't even bother to collect) and on top of that, most provincials are perfectly willing to let you set up a tent in their empty fields. They are even more willing to do this if they don't know about it, so there's 50 cents worth of free advice.

Cheap, and good for trapping your backpacker stink in a nice little breathable bubble

Naturally you're not going to sleep outdoors in the middle of winter, and you may not be too keen on the notion of sleeping outdoors at all, so let's go ahead and assume you're hosteling like 90% of American backpackers.  You'll want to look for the following. 

- Refrigerator access: this will let you buy and store your own food, saving you serious cash. 

- A bar: great for pre-drinking and meeting people.  Hostels with bars are streets ahead of bars without. 

- Breakfast: it's going to be slim, usually just bread, butter, and coffee, but sometimes cereal and milk.  Cramming a couple euro worth of rolls into your gut can get the poverty-stricken day off to a good start. 

- Free Linen: never underestimate the comfort of clean sheets after a day on a train. 

- Internet access: not exactly a must-have, but something very nice.  There are enough internet cafes in Europe to make this a second-tier requirement.

- Cafeteria: another low priority since you're probably going to try to go out and sample local cuisine, but a very good fall-back nonetheless.  Some places (like the Generator hostel in Berlin) actually had a fine chow line with all-you-can-eat breakfast and decent, affordable dinners.

The sight that greets you when you walk in the door - not shown: people having sex on the bunk above yours

Hostels can be one big party, or they can be a nice place to get some rest, but be warned: whichever one you want, it's usually not it.  My first hostel stay was at the wonderful hostel Frankfurt, which was a bit ghetto looking, and situated in a shitty part of town (most cheap urban hostels are), but served breakfast with excellent coffee and was quite clean for all its disrepair.  It was one big party, and a formative experience.  Unfortunately, next I was off to the Psudfanne hostel in Heidelberg which was quiet, boring, and expensive when I really wanted a cheap and exciting party.  Similarly, there were many nights in Brussels when I just wanted to sleep, but bunkmates insisted that the party keep going until the wee hours. 

But for all my warnings and complaining, I would recommend hosteling.  It's not free, but it is a reasonably cheap way to stay so long as you exercise a little caution to get the most bang for the buck.  You've got to be smart about it and plan ahead, but the experience should ultimately be worth the expense. 

Hostel Frankfurt on Koenigstrasse, Frankfurt

Jugendherberge - Part 2 Getting There, Getting Around

So thanks to the awe-inspiring rhetoric of Jugendherberge! Part 1, you've decided to travel.  Great!  Good for you!  If you're reading this out of some sense of obligation thinking "screw you, Malesh, I learn everything I need to know from watching Jag," and have decided to not travel, then this post might be a bit presumptuous in that it assumes that you have decided to stop masturbating to the moving image of Catherine Bell and decided to start going to exotic locals and meeting interesting people.

Then again, if your entire life is going to be devoted to jingoistic fascism, Catherine Bell, and dirty kleenex, then maybe you, sir, have learned more than I could ever teach, and god bless. Otherwise, let's get you the fuck out of town!

I am so fucking interested in maritime law

First things first: can you do me a little favor? Just a little one?  Tiny, like 2 seconds?  Okay, fill out this quick survey:

Survey:

Do you speak another language besides English?  

Answer key: 

Yes: whole continents are yours to explore.

No: enjoy your trip to Iowa.

That's a misrepresentation of course - you'll find plenty of helpful English speakers in most major cities in Europe.  Iit's just...well, you kind of mark yourself as an imperial. Anyone who saw the stunning season finale of Gossip Girl knows that drunkenly bumbling around in fancy clothes and not speaking the language is a really good way to get taken advantage of, be that fiscally or rectally, whatever you happen to have on you.

Mmmm watcha sayyyyy...mmm that you only meant well?

I only bring this up because it's a worthy consideration.  Do you only speak English like 80% of Americans? Then you need to go somewhere that you will be understood, and where you will not get into too much trouble.  English is a very common second language in Western Europe, but once you get away from the big cities, it's a crap shoot.  In Eastern Europe the dominant second language is Russian, so that knocks English down to a 3rd or 4th language for most people.

As I've only spent significant time in Europe and had a long vacation in Israel, I'm not going to say anything about South America, Africa, the Arab Middle-East or Southeast Asia - I'll leave it for anyone qualified to fill in blanks in the comments section, but I will say judging by my time in the Southwest that if you're looking to go to Mexico, head for Mexico City or Cancun.  In other words, think more "spring break" Mexico and less "Maria Full of Grace" Mexico.

Wherever you're going, you still have to get there.  That takes a bit of doing.

If the distance to your destination is less than 300 miles, well, what the fuck - you're American!  Get in your car and drive!  Oh, so sorry that your butt hurts - it's barely half a day of travel. I've driven across this giant country three times.  I'm not impressed that you're soooo exhausted after your morning commute - I've driven through fucking Wyoming.
 

Wyoming - more nothing per capita than any state

If your destination is over 300 miles away, it may be time to fly.  Along both coasts, hopper shuttle flights are very cheap.  Like honestly, it is costing you more to just stop working and read this blog than it costs to take a shuttle flight from New York to Philadelphia (per the reputable source that is my ace boon coon D20).

If you want to see anything in America, the cost of the actual transit should be the least of your concerns.  Despite huge jumps in the last 10 years, we've still got some of the cheapest gas in the world, and since even driving down boring-ass I-80 can teach you a lot about this country, it's worth the expense.  Like did you know that Wyoming is the most boring fucking place in the entire fucking world?  I know that firsthand!

For international travel, flight is obviously your only real choice since there's probably a big wet ocean between you and your destination.  While yes, Canada is another country, a drive from Detroit to Windsor is really pushing any definition of "going abroad."  Since this is a blog for the cheap traveler, we need to focus on how to get abroad with a minimum of expense.  Luckily, it is not difficult to find a cheap flight.

In Soviet Russia, BAGGAGE checks in YOU! 

I've had a lot of success using Bing travel - it was great when it was branded as Farecast, and Microsoft apparently gave them quite a hardware bump because the site is faster than before. Bing tells you not just what a flight costs, but what it's going to cost if you can wait a week or two.  This spares you the normal travel hassle of trying to figure out if you're flying to a strange destination in the middle of a holiday season or during a slow span when nobody is flying in or out.

There are other options, though.  One is to hit up a local "bucket shop."  These are small travel agencies that only sell tickets to one region, or 4 or 5 countries.  These shops usually service built-up ethnic populations - think Chinatown, Koreantown, Mexicantown...any of the "-towns." You may also have cheap ticket options because you are a student, or because you belong to some sort of organization that works out regular deals to fly for cheap. 

While the movie Eurotrip got a lot of people interested in flying courier class, I haven't heard much  good said about it.   It's better for spontaneous get-up-and-goers who don't have any commitments.  Usually it's a cheap flight and not a free flight (thus shattering misconception number one) and you fly at the hiring party's liesure and convenience.  Furthermore, Michelle Trachtenberg will not sleep with you (and so goes misconception number two).

Dream on, pedo

Once you get to your destination, you still have to get around.  Despite a lot of good and qualified advice, I did not buy a Eurail pass.  I am an idiot - buy a Eurail pass.  I thought that because the pass was not good in Eastern Europe that it wouldn't be a good bargain.  Guess what?  3 train rides in Eastern Europe versus 12 rides in the West - I paid for them all one at a time, and the cost added up fast.

So don't do what I did - when you get where you're going, learn the rail and bus systems immediately.  In Europe, that means getting a Eurail pass and learning to read a train schedule.  This is not quite as easy as you'd think since, go figure, foreigners like to call places by their foreign names: while you're looking for the bus to Ivansberg, the buss to Upside-down-T-capital-Q-backwards-K-berg is leaving the station.

BUT a Eurail pass is still an intimidating first purchase, and you can get around even more cheaply.  I met a man in Heidelberg who never paid for train rides.  He went first-class everywhere because, as I learned, you can buy a first-class ticket while on the train (though this is not why he rode first class).  As he explained it, he would go to the beverage car, drink a beer, and wait for the ticket-taker.  When he saw the ticket-taker, he would go to the bathroom and wait until the ticket-taker passed. Then, come back out and continue on to his destination unmolested.  This way, if he were caught he could just buy a ticket and no harm would be done, but 9 times out of 10 he got where he was going for free.

 Deutsche Bahn.  Or, as the last story illustrated: Douche Bag

In less paranoid parts of the world, people still hitch-hike.  I can't recommend it, especially if you don't speak the language.  The modern equivalent of hitch hiking is ridesharing, and this comes highly recommended.  A Canadian friend of mine got all over Germany and into France just by going to a website and offering to pitch in a few Euro for gas.  Basically, you're just along for a ride with someone who doesn't like to be alone on long car trips.  These people are usually just interested in getting a little gas money and meeting new people, and they're usually not too "molesty."

Still, I'd bring my own refreshments if I were you.

Would you like a pepsi?  Have this one - I opened it for you.

So now you know how to get where you're going, and you've got some ideas of how to get around when you get there.  In the next post, I'll talk a bit about where to stay and how to arrange it. 

Jugendherberge! Part 1

Back in 2008 while I was gallivanting across Europe,  I had an idea for a movie script.  It was to be called Jugendherberge! and follow in the tradition of goofball comedies like Beerfest or...okay, actually, I had Beerfest in mind, and also that episode of The Simpsons where the titular family opens up its home as a hostel.

 

 This kid's got bosoms

Anyway, the movie was supposed to be about a guy who inherits a Euro-style hostel in the middle of nowhere, but the hostel has fallen on hard times and needs a lot of repairs, so thanks to the high spirits of the plucky and pretty girl at the hardware store and some clever montage sequences, the place is soon overrun by eager foreigners ready to see all of the land of the free and the home of the whopper while the greedy land developer falls into a mud puddle and everyone laughs at him - the two leads kiss, freeze frame, roll credits.

Then I got home and kind of forgot to ever write it, but the important thing is that I meant to, and maybe someday I'll get around to it.

I also had a dream last night that I was in World War II, machine-gunning my way across a twisted nightmare version of Bavaria and, for some reason, staying in a hostel after my patrols.  My friend Dave kept stealing my complimentary T-shirts, and I was repeatedly denied breakfast because I can't convert Imperial to Metric in my head.

 "Multiply by 9/5, then add 32."

I've decided that in the spirit of my Suburban Survival series, I should do what amounts to a traveling instructable for the destitute.  This series will focus on food, accommodation, travel, and sightseeing, not necessarily in that order, and possibly with some interruption.

There have already been a lot of great instruction books on traveling cheaply, and a few people have traveled in much more entertaining and rough-and-tumble manners than myself, but what I aim to do is to give anyone thinking about traveling, and really sitting on the fence about it, one big push to get their ass in gear.  I'll keep all the didactic shit to about one hard just-the-facts page, and then try to flavor the business with my own experience.

So that being said, let me get to the first question any fence-sitter may have:  Why?

To be honest, you could look at this picture and stop reading

Travel is going to expand the hell out of your mind.  You think you know something now?  Sure, why not - you are very probably "fact rich," but is there the possibility that you're "experience poor?"  It's all well and good to know something, but without experience it is difficult, even impossible, to know what it means (such as meaning can ever be known - sorry, had to do a dirty little Po-Mo disclaimer there).

Without travel, you risk becoming an Ugly American.  This merits an explanation:  most foreigners do not think of Americans as big fat bloated ignorant hurp-a-durps.  This is what some Americans would like to believe that foreigners think of us (exempting those who hate our freedom or "are taking over," depending on who you ask and what they think is the biggest hugest threat to Freedom and Democracy that day). 

However, it's not true.  While many Europeans can spot Americans on sight (don't ask me how - they just can), they're usually curious and have lots of nice things to say.  They don't see many Americans, and so they're more often than not extremely welcoming, and happy to help you blend in and experience their culture, not to mention buy you a beer once in a while.  Except for Brussels, which is a toilet.

Furthermore, if there is still any doubt on this matter, we won the culture war a long time ago.  Everyone wears blue jeans, drinks coca-cola, and eats at McDonalds.  Convenience stores and newsstands sell American cigarettes (it's really our last great export) and so help me some precious few of them even sell the contemptible piss-water that is American beer. 

Except for the taste, the smell, and the hangover, it's really not that bad

But it's not cut and dried.  There are enough people in the world that think of America as a corpulent sludge of SUV-driving fatties who only stop cramming Big Macs in their mouths long enough to sputter something ignorant out, and whose idea of culture extends no further than Lost and hot new dance tracks by pop sensation Ke$ha.  

So aside from the wide range of experience you open yourself up to when you go traveling, you are also doing America a favor by showing people from other cultures that you are interested, curious, and polite.  This of course means that you should be interested and curious, and usually not acting like a complete ass, but if you're willing to fork over the cash to travel, that should kind of go without saying.  You are helping other people to understand more about us, while at the same time doing yourself a massive favor by learning something about them, and this in itself is very much a thing worth doing. 

As a final note, let me say that this travel series won't be exclusively about crossing national borders.  As I learned the long, slow, hard way, you can have a pretty exotic vacation just by going a little farther in any direction than you ever have before.  I started traveling pretty late in life, and I hope that I can spare someone else the same mistake.  A big part of my reluctance to leave the comforts of my own living room came from doubts concerning expense, but a girl I was seeing gave me the right kick in the pants by giving me pretty much exactly that same advice. So even if you can't afford to fly across the Atlantic today, just go a little bit farther than you did yesterday, and tomorrow you'll go around the world. 

Now then - come back on Wednesday when I tell you how to get "there" (wherever it is) and how to get around! 

lol dongs

Ain't Lookin' for a Job 'cause there's No Job Lookin' for Me

It seems like just 8 months ago I was blogging about my furtive quest for employment, and now here I am again - furtively seeking employment.

I've got about 2 more weeks of working off my contract for the book editor, and I have no idea if that's going to mean that paying work is right around the corner.  In the meantime, I've sent out a few resumes to places in the private sector and every university east of Lansing and south of Flint has my CV on file. I did not send a CV to U of M Flint because I do not want to be murdered.  Really, really, really don't want to be murdered.  In Flint.  Where they murder people.

Flint, Michigan - The graveyard of hope

However - corporate and institutional wheels are slow to turn, and there's a lot of rent to pay and booze to buy before anyone picks me up, which means that my Bukowskian plan to do something low-stress, low-pay, and low-profile for the summer is going right along as planned.

Sadly, this means that I'm going to be pretty poor through the month of August, at least, and I can probably kiss my weekends goodbye - if you want to land a gig at a bar that pays anything above a contemptuous insult, you've got to have 100% availability.  Do they want you for a quiet Monday afternoon shift?  No, they want you on Friday and Saturday busting your hump alongside all the other English majors, serving people who were smart enough to get college degrees that earned them a job. 

And generally, I think this is okay. I mean, I like nothing more than bro-chilling with my bro-dudes duding out bro-style on the weekend, chasing tail and downing whatever's on special at the bar, but - weekends are such a nice, normal thing that frankly, sometimes, they just don't fit me. What I mean to say, in part, is that I identify in a very superficial way with war veterans in that I don't really know how to get along in "the world."   Regular schedules, commutes, weekends, coworkers - these things have become strange and foreign to me. 

At least I didn't major in sociology

Not foreign like an exotic East Asian whorehouse / cockfight ring where what's for sale isn't really flesh, but your sanity - more like strange and foreign in a Christian Metal sort of way, or a corporate training video sort of way, or in a low-budget esoteric B-movie sort of way: something that makes a sort of sense, yes, and obviously seemed normal enough to the person who made it, but when you think of the person who made it you think of a tall, blonde, 40-year-old single white male who wears loafers and a lot of pastel colors, and whose every utterance is met by a bewildered silence and a sidelong glance for the exit just in case this last crazy utterance was the last before..it happens. 

 What is this I don't even...

If that didn't make any sense, here's some perspective;  I've spent the last 7 years drinking whenever I felt like it, partying whenever I felt like it, and under no real pressure to show up to anything at any time ever (unless, naturally, I felt like it) all while studying deep intellectual crap that most people can't even pronounce and beating the tar out of creative and academic challenges with the spiked baseball bat of my own raw wit.

Now, per the societal norms of "the world," I'm supposed to go to one place and do one thing five days a week, all while sober?  I mean, sober? Really? 

Presumably, a good job would offer new and creative challenges every day - this job I've had was not that job and I think it's embittered my feelings on the matter.  I'm like the heroine of a romantic comedy, and that last guy was such a JERK and I really do deserve better, so let's go to the club and dance - come on girl, shake your booty and drink a Cosmo until...it's...could it be?  Could he be the one? 

It is - it's him!

The upshot of this is that I've got a pretty bad case of academic PTSD, and due to my dire financial circumstances, I've not dealt with it properly.  In my attempt to hit the ground running when I left Las Vegas, I never quite re-acclimated to my surroundings. Thus, for 8 months, I've lived two bleeding double lives - one in which I attempted, poorly, to work a straight job and the other in which I, successfully, drank my face off and threw caution to the wind.

I don't know how to reconcile these things, but I'm learning.  I only wanted to write this as a commiseration and maybe a consolation to any other disaffected grad school survivors out there - you are not alone! We are the resistance!  We will find you!  Somehow we will make it so that you can earn a salary and still write your novel or paint your pictures or, I don't know, take a crap on a picture of President Ford and call it "The Crucifixion of Mickey Mouse."

If you're like me, you're still looking for a way to have your cake and eat it too - you want all the trappings of a successful salary man: a house, a car, nice suits - and meals that take more than 30 seconds on high to prepare - but you also want to hold on to your muse and create, and to stay free to do so whenever the mood hits. If I had the solution to that dilemma, I would just come out and say it - but watch this space:  I'm going to be spending a lot of time trying to figure it out.

Rejoice now - soon you will envy the dead

Nasal Bleeding - What's with THAT?

Due to illness, I'm not doing a full update this blog on Wednesday, May 12. 

Really, what would I talk about?  I've spent the last 36 hours in bed, sweating under blankets and drinking lots of warm tea and fruit juice.  It's only this morning that I managed to crawl out of bed, look around, and realize that the rest of the world is still ticking along. 

Normally when I write this thing, I dig into some personal experience or news headline and I respond appropriately, but today?  No, the only stimulation I've had was watching a spider crawl across my ceiling and hope against hope that it wouldn't fall in my mouth as I slept.

It does make me wonder though about what other people do when they get the flu.  I've toughed it out and managed to work a day or two before, snotty and achy, but working...but damn, this thing laid me right out. What does the president do when he gets the flu?  Or a big star athlete sports guy?  Or pop superstar Ke$ha?  I could not imagine getting up on stage in front of thousands of screaming fans and singing "Tic-Toc" while this much snot ran out of my head.

Oddly, just as Posted on Monday about the demands of writing, including the physical, it was Saturday that my weakened immune system started to buckle.  I spent Friday night "in" working on a story that had been brewing for a long time, and sure enough I went to bed feeling uneasy, and awoke Saturday sore and snotty. I'd planned out Monday's entry ahead of time, so that was very easy to write, but  honestly, I"ve been out of commission for the whole first half of this week.

So, now I get to spend a couple days catching up on work stuff and trying to recover.  I am feeling better, thank you very much, but I'm still a ways off from good. Expect more titillating content on Friday!

How Dry I Am

I'm writing this on Sunday, May 9th - that being the case, I'm proud to announce that I have gone one entire week without even looking sideways at a drink. This break was completely by choice, and not the result of A) an upcoming physical that required I not drink or B) abject poverty keeping me from buying a pint of Night Train.

See, once in a while I have to do these little trials of abstinence just to square things up.  See, booze occasionally thinks it's the boss of me, and every so often, when it gets a little too big for its bottle, I just have to remind it that is in fact not the boss of me - verily, that I am the boss of IT. 

Papa taking his medicine

It's a damn near thing sometimes, though, and that's what prompted this last little break. When I wrapped up Penguicon on Sunday, I realized that despite the tremendous volume of alcohol consumed, I still felt basically okay on Sunday (not great, but okay) - we'd been doing a lot of walking and swimming, and I reasoned that all this activity had somehow helped me to pace myself.

Nevertheless, it was the first Sunday in a long time where I felt "basically okay" at all.  My default Sunday feeling for about the last year or so has been groggy, nauseous, disconnected, sore, and craving a big greasy omelet.  As much as I love to drink, it had become very clear that I'd been doing excess to excess. 

I'll help give you some context here:  Ever go to, say, the alcoholics anonymous website or something, and they give you a checklist of questions like "do you have more than X drinks per night" or "do you frequently not remember events that occurred while drinking," and it says that if you check 3 or more of those things then you could be an alcoholic?  Of course you have, and you've probably checked off 3 because some of them are completely asinine, like "do you drink to make parties more fun," and it's like, durrr, that's kind of the point.

Self-righteous smiley-faced asshole

When I take the questionnaires, I approach 90th percentile, because to keep myself honest I have to answer yes to some of the creepy ones, like, "Have your family or friends ever told you that you might have a problem," or "have you lost friends because of drinking," or even "have you ever woken up in a pool of your own vomit, consumed by the dread feeling that you've done something terrible, something too horrible to mention, but you couldn't remember what, and the vague memory of it haunts you to this day years later, and you don't know which you fear worse: the consequences of your contemptible action or the thought of never knowing just what reprehensible and shameful things you've done?"

Well, sufficed to say I like booze more than most people, and (to paraphrase Strong Sad of Homestarrrunner), that means not just that I like booze more than most people like booze, but also that I like booze more than I like most people.The reasons are as follows:

Booze certainly helps get a party going.  If people are all together and stressed out about their jobs, a pot of coffee and a plate of lady fingers isn't going to help shake that up: a half-gallon of vodka and the pop hits of Ke$sha will.  No, you probably can't solve a problem that way, but you can put that problem in perspective by taking the fast train to funsville and getting a little reckless.  In that way, my drinking is no different than that of anyone else.

The ability to drink me under the table is so hot

In addition to all that, I also drink to quiet the shrieking voices in my head.  Writing is a taxing thing, emotionally, intellectually, and even physically.  Something I came to realize this last week was that a part of my drinking comes from a desire to get away from the burden of writing.  These blog posts?  I can do those drunk - I'm just espousing thoughts and recalling anecdotes.  Good fiction, on the other hand, requires more. 

Good fiction, if it is to be honest, requires that I go back in my memory and dredge up painful, shocking, embarrassing stuff from the past and then tell everyone about it.  It requires a degree of honesty that would be horribly inappropriate if you just told these facts or stories to a group of strangers, but yet it is a degree of honesty that is necessary in fiction. 

That also means that, when writing in a mode of jubilation, I don't get to keep good things for myself either.  The page, and this is just my own particular neurosis / psychosis / etc, gets everything, and drinking is a way to quiet that down and feel like maybe, just for a while, it's okay to live my own life and to not listen to "the muse" (if I may indulge an old trope).

I'm holding a beverage here

So what's a writer to do?  Obviously, not drink so much.  There seem to be enough test cases around - Hemingway, Bukowski, Faulkner - that I shouldn't have to qualify that.  A writer who drinks runs a very apparent risk of drinking himself to ruination, drinking himself to death, or drinking himself to irrelevance, producing page after page of incoherent babble as he further and further disassociates from the world around him.

Drinking quiets that murky black fear, that white-hot rage and the bloody red laughter that makes writing possible, and when those deep wells are covered, writing becomes harder.  We writers often trick ourselves into thinking that a couple drinks will loosen us up and get the creative juices flowing, but we know better.  We know that a half drink, a splash of whiskey in water, might relax the muscles and help the brain to explore its dark corners, but that's how the habit starts.  That splash of whiskey becomes a shot, the one shot becomes two, and eventually it picks up critical mass until the writer has to make a choice as to how he will spend his day: writing or drinking. 

Poets get a pass - poems are short.  You can crank them out between rounds

I'm happy that I'm not ruined yet, and if I've gone this long without total disassociation, I 'm doing better than some of my friends and family who've become complete wrecks and ruin, but it's important to me that I occasionally take these breaks.  In the interest of NOT becoming a sanctimonious asshole (I just quit smoking again, that's quite bad enough) I'm not going to quit drinking - but I will keep it under control.

Of course, tonight I'll be celebrating the end of this no-booze vacation with a few strong rounds.  Cheers!

It can't happen to me - it won't happen to me