Clearing the air!

Please don't be fooled into thinking I'll be writing two new blogs a day. While I do have a multitude of pent up, irrelevant and, at times, tedious stories to tell, this enthusiasm and fervor will quickly diminish into a state of complete apathy and the blog will end up floating around in the part of cyberspace where blogs go to die. 

The reason for Saturday's double header is that I have a few things that I feel urgently need addressing. The first one being, what the hell is a lipsty??? The reason I pose this question is that according to the gatekeepers of the predictive text dictionary at Nokia, a lipsty exists yet Kirsty does not. To add more fuel to my fire, my phone won't even allow me to save Kirsty in the predictive text dictionary. This being both time consuming, frustrating and a potential RSI risk. A mere slip up on the part of a Nokia employee or GROSS MISCONDUCT!!! YOU BE THE JUDGE.

While we're on the topic of names, another thing that needs to be addressed is how to create funny nicknames. This is topical because in the past fortnight one of my students has started referring to me as 'fried chicken' a favorite 'delicacy' (if you will) in Taiwan. The reason being? My blonde, curly hair.  While I find the link tenuous (my hair isn't greasy, stinky and immersed in a deep fat fryer) I also find the resulting nickname suitably unfunny (is that a word? who cares!). Nicknames have to be:

- contextual (derived from a funny incident, like my nickname K-Lo - for being kicked out of a computing class when I was 19 for spinning on my chair singing 'My Love Don't Cost a Thing' at the top of my lungs).

- a play on words - usually the person's name (like my high school friend, Matty Moore, who I dubbed 'Matty Morphosis'. Hilarious, if I may say so myself.   

- based on a positive physical feature (like everyone's 6ft4" friend called Shorty) 

If my student's English ability were greater (or my 'nickname' Chinese better) I would be able to explain this concept to her, since I can't, you must endure the lecture instead. Please think twice before you create an embarrassingly lame nickname for your friend or colleague. 

Finally, before I sign off and resume my weekend as my alter ego, 'Regular Citizen Without a Blog, Nothing To See Here, Move Along In An Orderly Fashion,' what do you do when someone tells you something they think is funny but it's not? I have always taken this to be the reason I'm here on Earth. To work out a suitable way to deal with people who repeatedly tell you anecdotes that they find hilarious and you find embarrassingly awkward and particularly unfunny. These situations are possibly the only thing worse than being granted the gift of a lame nickname. 

Unfortunately, over the years that I've been studying such people, (I fancy myself as an Anthropologist of socially awkward people), I've never been able to perfect my fake laugh. This regularly results in mutual embarrassment for the story-telling inept person and I. Unfortunately, now I find myself in a situation where I'm exposed to this kind of person on a regular basis (too regular - I deserve a community service award for my tolerance) and I have this overwhelming feeling that it is my moral and social obligation to find a way to make the rants stop. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. 

Remember: If you get into a sticky situation today, just think, "what would Oprah do in this situation?" and people in glasshouses shouldn't call the kettle Peter or Paul...or whatever.  

Moby Does It

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm a 34 year old man who grew up on a cattle ranch at the base of the Colorado Rockies. Tired of the year-round -40 degree temperatures I accepted a position as a back up dancer for a Korean pop outift called 392-hello. I ventured out into the Orient to find fame and fortune with nothing but my cowboy boots, a tu-tu and a dried out goat's skull that I found on a neighboring property.

I guess this is why so many weird things happen over the internet. It's so easy to let your imagination do the talking and your fingers do the walking. While I'm disappointed that this was the most imaginative fabricated life story I could invent - it is nonetheless invented now, and waiting to be rectified.

In reality, I'm a middle aged, 26 year old female, trapped in a female's body, teaching English and "studying" Chinese in Taiwan while hastily slapping together an exit strategy (which doesn't discriminate against job offers in circuses or garbage trucks). I was raised in the kind of environment where you never let the truth get in the way of a good story and I intend on applying that motto to this blog. Caution: READ WITH A LARGE BUCKET OF SALT.

You see, in my experience, other party goers don't want to know that you woke your neighbors up by screaming at a spider the size of a five cent piece. They want to hear that it was the size of a dinner plate, it didn't actually bite you but the force of it's weight alone, descending upon your arm snapped your radius and ulna in two. The result: 3 months in a plaster cast and 6 years of physiotherapy - which luckily just ended in time for this party!!!

It is important to do your research when telling stories like this, had I merely said, "arm" instead of, "radius and ulna" it would have sounded less authentic. Using the technical bone terms makes it sound like I really got to know medical terms during my 2 month stint in hospital nursing the arm that the spider fell through.

Anyway, after many years of fighting the battle of the blog, I finally succumbed. Why? Because Moby has one. Not really, but I'm using that as my justification mainly because I am renowned for saying that blogs are for geeks (which isn't that derogatory because I've always had a lot of time for geeks, and I'm a certain breed of geek myself!). But seriously, if Moby has one I don't see why I can't have one!

A lack of avenues (here in Taiwan) for publishing the tons and tons of rubbish that oozes out of my brain everyday led me to believe that a blog is the only way forward. It's time to get the monkey off my back and put it online (I've never used "monkey on my back" in a sentence so forgive me if it's out of context). Speaking of context, I won't be held accountable for any grammatical, spelling or vocabulary mistakes found in my blog posts. My full time job is to worry about that stuff. If any of my messages are impossible to decipher, please remember the problem lies within yourself, not me.

So here we go! Thanks for sharing the adventure with me. I trust that you will never mention the fact I have a blog in public (despite the fact they're cool because Moby has one).

Until next time, please remember these two things: whenever you find yourself in a difficult situation, just think "what would Oprah do right now?" and also, a blog in the hand is worth two in the bush...or whatever.