Anyone have a light socket I can plug my existence into?

I haven't looked for a job in almost ten years. They seem to creep up on me before I even want them for some reason. Maybe this is where I have failed, by never pursuing anything, just taking whatever shit pile falls from the sky and smacks me down. But I hate looking for a job. I hate it more than working at a mind-numbing-fuck-my-cerebral-cortex job.

See, I have an "enchufe", literally a socket, like a light socket. Everyone knows that you need a socket if you want to connect a plug, you can't just plug something directly into the wall. Looking for job in Spain with no enchufe is akin to trying to plug in a lamp directly into the wall with no outlet, making a bunch of fucking holes in your freshly painted living room wall, never even getting close to the electricity wiring or actually jamming it into wires and getting electrocuted and then getting repeatedly frustrated because you're sitting in the dark, in a room full of holes with your hair on fire. No outlet, no light. No enchufe, no jobbie-job. Thems the rules around this place.

Despite hating this concept and disagreeing with it on every ethical level, I find myself relying on enchufes and also being them. This whole country is a mess because of enchufes. You go to the bank to open up an account and the person that opens accounts doesn´t even know how to type so you wait all morning while he pecks away at his computer, essaying it forever to find the "F" as in "fuck me" key, taking a coffee break mid-way through. The extent of his applicable experience consists of being someone´s brother-in-law.

My enchufe apparently wants me to have a job more than I myself even want one and has pestered me since before I left my other job for me to let him help me. Initially he offered me a job in his company, which didn't materialize into much. I woudn´t have made a good fit anyway there, but he worked his magic elsewhere, through his wife's company, and when that failed, his wife's former employer. And the enchufe gets gradually weaker, but you can still get a little flicker of light from it. Please stay lit, motherfucker!

Today was my second interview.

As far as interviews go, I know all the rules. I myself have spent the last three years interviewing people for positions. I paid close attention to what candidates considered appropriate interview attire (their instincts were almost always wrong).

I paid attention to see if there was any shit under their fingernails (you'd be surprised), how punctual they were (Don´t you dare show up late without calling, you idiot, and don´t show up thirty minutes early and stare me down until I interview you ahead of schedule), if they made eye contact (not avoiding my gaze but not creeping me out either), their handshake (not too firm, not a dead fish. Confidence, but not aggressive confidence).

Thus my instincts to continue this protest against washing my hair, and to wear a leopard print top and some hot pink stilettos, and turn up an hour late had to be abandoned in favor of clean hair, black suit, with no flare or anything that stands out other than my vast experience and impeccable professionalism (can you tell I´ve bought into all this bullshit?). Fingernails clean and manicured? Check. Shoes shined? Check. Self-esteem? Uh...check.


Deep breath. Remember, you don't give a fuck if you get this job. Oh, but you do, but your life has been a path leading to this. Shut up! You don't give a fuck, you're gonna ruin it if you are overly eager. Ok, these people are gonna have to beg me to work for them. Please hire me. Don't you see everything I've ever done has lead up to this point? Whatever, I might consider a position here with you chumps. I might let my talent grace your organization. Oh, please, pretty please don´t let me wither away into an unemployment statistic.

"Hello, I'm here to interview with Ms. Rodriguez"

"Right this way, I'll lead you to the interview panel," says the receptionist.

Interview...um...panel? What the fuck? All I heard was, "Let me lead you to the dungeon of doom where you will have your soul picked apart and you will have to justify your measly existence before a board of PhD's in Bullshit Detection."



Another deep breath.

When I get nervous it's physiological. My voice shakes. I don't give a fuck about this job so why is my voice shaking? My hands tremble. These bastards are gonna have to beg me to work here, so why can't my hands stay still? I can't find the right words. I don´t know why I am acting all jumbled and flustered, these motherfuckers should be jumbled and flustered.

Later in my mind I torment myself by revising what I had said and imagining I could start over again and practice what I would say if given another chance, something more eloquent, more thought through.

Well, I guess I have going for me that I've spent my entire life squirming my way out of uncomfortable situations without anyone seeming to notice I was squirming and nervous as hell, so maybe I did ok.

Fingers are crossed that the outlet I'm trying to plug the lamp of my livelihood into isn't burned out, or worse, filled with water and ready to electrocute me to my economic death.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was just about to post this, when I got a call with a job offer. As you may have suspected, I didn´t make them beg. I thought about it for a second though.

"The Dogs of War" by Stephen Poff found on Flickr.

"The Directors of Distillers Company Limited" by Charlesfred found on Flickr.

"My, what is that you´re wearing?" by Dave77459 found on Flickr.

It might just be my imagination.

I have been house/home-hunting/obsessing for some time now.

Let's face it, I've done a lot of pissing and moaning. We could have filled the swimming pool we don't own with my tears of woe-is-me self pity.

I've been utterly frustrated by what I can afford in this city that has Manhattan prices with Tijuana salaries (ok, I'm exaggerating a bit on both ends but you get the idea). So, with all the frustration and spite that has percolated in the crock-pot of my wretched soul for a couple of years now, I contacted a handful of home-owners who were offering rentals that were far out of my price range by sending the following email:

To whom it may concern (i.e. people I'm about to insult),

We are a couple with a stable income (bold faced lie), looking for property to rent for an extended period of time, three to five years minimum (if we damn well feel like it). We are willing to pay up to X euro with parking and all fees included (clearly an insulting offer). If you are interested in showing the property with what we are able to pay in mind, please feel free to contact me.

Kind regards (i.e. eat shit if you don't answer me),

Bluestreak

I wrote this email with all the spite my mean little fingers could anxiously deliver to my keyboard, knowing that I would be contacted, knowing that we would go see the flat with an "I told ya so" air about us, knowing that we would feel superior to all the greedy fools who thought their stupid little flats were worth a killing and who had hitherto laughed at us young folk and had drop kicked us out of the housing market by their irresponsible "prices-never-go-down" speculation.

Within the hour a woman called me and wanted to set up a time to show her flat.

Surprisingly, I didn't even get remotely excited. My excitement has been exhausted, sold out. I have no further excitement left in me to waste on this. Months before, when I would see a flat, I would show up and think, "This might be my new street". I would get in the elevator and wonder if that would be the elevator mirror I would be checking my hair in every day. I would pass someone in the hall and mutter "Buenos dias" and wonder if that would be my new neighbor and imagine the rooftop parties we would share and coffees we would invite each other over for and cups of sugar we would borrow. And then I would leave feeling defeated.

This time I had contemplated not even showing up. I yawned in the elevator and went over my grocery list in my head.

When we got to the flat we saw exactly what we expected to see; an overpriced flat that wasn't even worth the insulting offer we had proposed.

I wanted to turn my nose up and laugh at the assholes and think, "Who do they think they are with their shitty little apartment?" I wanted to shake their hands and thank them while thinking "Good luck to ya, assholes! I wouldn't live here if you paid me to!"

But I looked at the couple and I saw the woman, pregnant, staring at us wide eyed and hopeful. I saw her husband, full of pride, describing the new fine cabinetry and tilework they had poured all their money into. I saw a couple that had no room for their growing family, that had bought a tiny, dark, overpriced flat at the pressure of all their friends and family who urged them, "Buy! Buy! Buy, before it's too late and the flats cost double!" at the precise moment the market was about to turn on them. I saw a couple that needed to get out somehow, that had tried to sell at a price that wouldn't send them into bankruptcy to no avail and that was now trying to find a tenant who would at least cover a portion of their mortgage so they wouldn't drown in financial ruin and have some hope at affording their unborn child's future. I saw a couple that earned hopeless Spanish professional salaries and that had invested the little money they had managed to save on a couple of properties in the hopes that their future would hold more than a fifty year bondage to the bank and a savings account without a dime in it.

I saw us. I saw what we would have been if my husband had not fought my pleas tooth and nail to buy a house at the worst possible time in history. I saw a glimpse of the financial ruin we would be in if we had done what I had wanted to do. I saw myself, chained to my desk in the job that was sucking the life and spirit out of me that I wouldn't have even been able to contemplate leaving so that I could reinvent my world and self again and find fulfilment in something different and live a life that felt a little less like a waste of human creativity and potential.

I broke down in the elevator going down, this time not in my own self-pity for not being able to afford anything decent for my hard earned cash, but for the regret I felt for writing that email full of spite and condescension that gave the couple a glimmer of hope that they would find a tenent and escape their impending financial ruin.

Maybe I just have a wild-ass imagination.

I hope so.

-Bluestreak

"Se vende" by Adrian Coto from Flickr.

Resolutions of the teeth (and self) improving variety

Well, that’s it. Another year has come and gone.

Happy belated birthday, world (or I should say, Happy Birthday de facto international standard Gregorian calendar).

I’m not about to post my new year's resolutions here and jinx myself, like I’ve done before.

I will tell you that one of these undeclared resolutions concerns quitting a certain disgusting habit in the hopes that my teeth will stop resembling those of some poor chap that was born on the lower end of the feudal scale during the Elizabethan era and that my lungs will be in slightly better condition than those of an unlucky coal miner.

Ahem.

Those Elizabethan serfs had an excuse for the unseemly state their teeth were in; they were busy worrying about more pressing matters such as rotting garbage in the streets and no structured sewage system and oh, you know, stressful things like the bubonic plague. I have no excuse other than wanting to inhale poison for some reason because I guess my life is just too damn easy. My teeth have been unsuspecting casualties.

In light of my rediscovered love of my own teeth (and lungs), I’ve scheduled a visit to the dentist.

The Spanish dentist.

Don’t freak people, this is a first world country. I promise Bluestreak will not end up with gold caps. Although that would kind of rule.

Sometimes I think we Americans might obsess a little too much about our teeth compared to other people. Our teeth do generally kick ass. Well, mine are starting to look as if I’ve been munching ass as opposed to kicking it, but I’m generalizing here.

As an American I know what a dental visit should consist of.

When I go to the dentist I don’t want it to only last ten minutes and to basically just have my mouth rinsed out with a little white hose and then get pat on the back and be told to keep up the good work with the dental hygiene.

No.

I want my teeth to have the living shit scraped off of them and for my bleeding gums to be mercilessly poked at. I want to have to grip the handles on the chair in fear and I want to experience some mild pain. I want the procedure to seemingly go on for eternity. Then I want to be scolded and slightly humiliated for not flossing as much as I should. That would be a normal visit to the dentist.

But this isn’t a normal place, this place I’m in.

This is a place where fucked up things occur, like when a few days after my last dental appointment I went back to the medical center for my gynecologist appointment and the woman that assisted the doctor with my pap smear (i.e. "the nurse") was also the woman that had assisted my dentist with my cleaning days earlier (i.e. previously known as "the dental hygienist").

Um, am I dreaming, is this hell, or am I perpetually living in a Dali painting?



Ok, ok, one of my other resolutions (fuck it, I’m now declaring them) is that I’m gonna try to quit being such an ungrateful bitch and as you can see, that leaves me without a whole helluvalot to blog about. So in that vein, I think I should mention in my most grateful tone that my healthcare is free here and for mere convenience, I’ve felt the need to sign up for private health care at about eighty bucks a month which covers anything that could possibly go wrong with my body or mind, including my beloved grinders and biters. But apparently the nurses under my plan are jack-of-all-trades or jack-of-all-orifices.

Wish me luck on my next visit to the dentist. Oh and on my inadvertently mentioned new years resolutions.

-Bluestreak

"Mouth 4" by ysin from Flickr.

"Bailarina" by Salvador Dali

Don´t expect a thematic post, I´m just rambling

I’ve been a bit busy lately.

I made a ginormous Thanksgiving feast for 20 some of my unsuspecting Spanish in-laws FROM SCRATCH.

No, I’m not insane.

If Betty Crocker and Martha Stewart could spawn, I would kill myself and be reincarnated as their gifted organism. No, scratch that. My husband would be. God or whoever is responsible for reincarnation might allow me to be a mole on his freakishly culinarily prodigious ass.

Luigi usually gets all the credit for the gourmet cookery around this place, but my cranberry sauce makes you want to rub it all over yourself and lick it off while a turkey gobbles circles around you and my blueberry pie makes you want to quit your job and become homeless and hang around outside my building in hopes that I might one day invite you in for piece of it.

I know I said food was for pussies and all, but seriously, I make a mean spread. And plus I’m getting tired of that stupid fucking diet recipe that is beginning to taste like soggy arseholes.

As exhausting as this panoply of traditional American food is to make in this crazy place where basic necessities of life such as Crisco and brown sugar are impossible to find, if I didn’t at least try to pull this off, I would be miserable on Thanksgiving. I NEED Thanksgiving.

But now it is finally over and Christmas is nearing and...I’m going back on the chute-the-chute again.

Back to the BIG.

Big houses with big cars and big boats parked outside. Big people wearing big clothes walking big dogs. Big plates of food on big tables in big restaurants.

Back to the world where you can do the following without fear of becoming a social pariah:
-eat an apple while walking down the street.
-go grocery shopping in your pyjamas.
-write a check for $2.00.
-speak English, loudly.

Back to the world where suddenly everything makes sense, where an American hairdresser can earn more than a Spanish doctor, lawyer, and engineer put together and enjoy a lower cost of living.

Back to the world where I listen to fucktards having stupid conversations and I know they are fucktards. Here they are all just Spanish people speaking Spanish. I can’t discriminate against fucktards here because I can barely recognize them. My prejudices here have never fully developed because I communicate on a subnormal level. I can’t wait to be able to cast my judgement again over idiots deserving of my scornful gaze.

Back to the world where nobody cares where I’m from or laughs at my funny accent or how guiri I look.

My only hope is that it doesn’t feel too good, that the obnoxious machinery of the American dream doesn’t reel me into its rusty wheels and try to spin me round again scraping me with loose spokes and screws and other false promises of grass-is-greenery.

But chances are, it will.

It will be too short a visit to make me want to get the hell out like I did before.

But it will be short enough for all of the nuances of "home" to bolster my idealization of it and for it to nag at my bifurcated sense of self and grab hold of the half that corresponds to it with its monster claws, and scream, "This is where you really belong".

No. It's not.

Ahhh, let the roller coaster ride begin again.

-Bluestreak.

Today I had my citizenry questioned (and probably deserved it, but whatever, Dipshit)

I spend a good portion of my life abroad waiting.

Waiting for old ladies that cut me in line.

Waiting for people to unload their sundries from their car on a narrow Spanish cobblestone street while I’m trying to get by on my public bike that I just waited in line to be able to get.

Waiting for my Spanish friends when we’re walking to another bar because they don’t walk at the normal pace that Americans do.

Waiting for wait staff to decide that they might take my order if they are bored and have nothing better to do.

Waiting for people to do things when they are damn good and ready.

Today, in the spirit of biculturalism, I attempted to partake in this very Spanish custom of making random strangers wait. I was getting my groceries from out of Perplexus´s car and got lambasted by a man with his family who couldn’t get by. His exact words (translated) were:

"I guess our concepts of citizenry must be different".

Dude, bite me. He only said that because I’m a foreigner. If I were Spanish, he would have waited like all Spanish people have to do for each other all the damn time.

I admit it; I shouldn’t have made him wait, as it always bugs me when Spanish people make me wait. BUT FUCKING HELL, "our concepts of citizenry must be different"???. Yeah, dude, I was right about to start chucking random pieces of trash in your direction, and then pull my pants down and take a piss on your shoes, because you know, that’s what we do where I’m from.

-Bluestreak, the damn foreigner.

Cardilicious escapism

"And you may find yourself

living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself

in another part of the world
And you may find yourself

behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself

in a beautiful house, with a beautiful Wife
And you may ask yourself-

well...how did I get here?"

This is a question I ask myself constantly, but especially when I find myself, like this last weekend, in a village with population 324 in the middle of Don Quixoteland eating, I kid you not, brain, tripe, and pig ears for dinner.

I´ve always thought the fact that I can easily tune Spanish out and shut off all the shit-talking noise around me was a plus, but I´m realizing this might be a disadvantage when your organ-indulging, culinarily derranged in-laws, are ordering your dinner for you.

"And you may ask yourself

What is that beautiful house?

And you may ask yourself

Where does that highway go?

And you may ask yourself

Am I right? ...am I wrong?

And you may tell yourself:

This is the precise moment when you close your eyes and suddenly your brothers in-law convert into Lollypop Guild members and Glenda, the good witch appears in her pink bubble and hooks you up with some rockin ruby slippers that you click together and say:

"There´s no place like home, there´s no place like home"

And then you open your eyes and you find yourself here instead (I´ll be the blonde):

And all this Don Quixoteland, organ-eating madness was just part of a really long dream that was sometimes an adventure, sometimes erotic, but sometimes a tooth-spitting, naked-in-public nightmare.

And someone hands you a margarita on the rocks and a salty tear drips into it, but it´s okay, cause you like your margaritas with lots of salt.

And someone is roasting hot dogs. Yummmm.

But then you realize what hot dogs are made of.

"Same as it ever was...
same as it ever was...
same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...
same as it ever was...
same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...
same as it ever was..."

And then you open your eyes and you snap back to surreality and say, fuck it, "Please pass the ears".

-Bluestreak

Modern Outdoor Dining by Spacepotatoe from Flickr.

Italicized are lyrics from Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads.

Dude, do you not realize you're all up in ma face??? Get back in line.

I've been thinking lately.

Neil's recent post plus all of the constant touching, bumping, and close-talking of the Spanish populace as a whole have me thinking about personal space issues in foreign contexts. And here are my thoughts:

Get. The. Fuck. Off. Of. Me.

There are some people that can get away with unreasonable proximity due to their obvious standards of beauty as defined by me and standards of hygiene as defined by 21st century Western culture (the vast majority anyway). In all honesty, there are certain people I don't mind rubbing against me on the bus, ok?

But, as a general rule, most humans fall into the category of People I'd Rather Not Have Skin-On-Skin Contact With At The Fucking Panaderia.

Maybe this isn't a cultural thing. Maybe it has to do with different types of urban cities. Maybe if I had spent my youth hopping in and out of subway cars in New York City, or avoiding accidents in the 'bicycle kingdom' in a bustling Chinese metropolis, maybe I'd feel differently. Maybe it's the fact that I grew up in a place where there is always a parking space available and if the Quiznos you just walked into is too crowded, there's another one just down the road to get your lunch from.

Whatever it is, I find myself screaming internally, "MOVE IT DUDE" on way too many occasions.

This feeling is intensified when waiting in line for anything when you realize that if lines were formed with seats all in a column, most people joining the line would just come sit on your lap.

Just for the record, I am a fervent supporter of the social norm of queue-forming with every ounce my being and believe it to be an essential component of harmonious social interaction and/or me not losin' my shit while I'm buying bread.

Unfortunately though, queue-forming is a fuzzy phenomenon in Spain, and, well, let's just say they cross the line in this regard. Constantly.

Disrespecting the queue-forming social norm + some idiot breathing down my neck and bumping shoulders with me when it is clearly not necessary = me wanting to give Spain the most gigantic kick in the cojones I've ever given it.

And this makes me realize that there are certain things I'll never get used to here. I'm not one of those foreigners that likes to point out to Spanish people how everything in my country is better, or wave my flag around, for obvious reasons.

But I feel like the older I get, the more stubborn I'm becoming with the line-cutting, close-talking violators of personal space and sometimes I just want to say:

We do it better over there. Now GET OFF ME and mind the queue.

-Bluestreak

Dumb. Just dumb. And funny.

Tobi got me all worked up with her awesome post about the housing market.

I try to avoid thinking about this stuff because I like to keep my faith in humanity and the spectacular brain-power demonstrated when we pull all of our collective neurons together to create the phenomenon we call Economics. Um, not really. I´m a cynical bitch and a sociologist that can´t fucking figure society out. For instance, I´m slightly puzzled by the fact that when we all put our heads together the only thing we can manage to do is take a steaming dump of stupidity on ourselves.

Then, we expect the President Of Whatever Freaking Country You Live In to solve the problem we ourselves created in our own greed and imbecility. That´s like going to see your general practitioner and expecting him to cure AIDS while you´re sitting in the waiting room about to get your colon fingered.

Enough of my rant. I´m in a bad mood and need someone to make me laugh. Or to buy me a house.

I leave you with a funny anecdote that I found originally here (specific to Spain but is applicable everywhere I think) that I posted before, but in Spanish, and maybe some of my readers would be able to laugh at it a little if I translated it (it´s probably a sucky translation but whatever). It made me laugh. I promise, those are tears of laughter. Maybe.


“Well, no, housing prices never drop. Here is what a time traveller from the future explains:

I decided to take a ride in my time machine and explain to all of you how things are going in the future:

Fortunately, the predictions of so many Bubble Theorists have never come to pass regarding the housing market in Spain and housing prices have continued to rise annually at 17% for the last 50 years. As such, we have become the richest country in the world, because for example, an Attic on the Castellana in Madrid costs more than the state of California and the Tokyo Imperial Palace together. Sure, no one lives on the Castellana anymore or in any other place in Madrid, because those houses are for investing, not for living.

Although I, for example, work in Madrid, I bought an awesome 430 square foot flat, just 150 miles away, that with the highway is just a quick trip. In order to pay the mortgage we have brought together three families; a notary public married to a university professor, an IRS inspector married to a public attorney and a federal judge married to an architect. So, we put five of the salaries toward the mortgage and one to live on. We´re so happy with the purchase because although in the beginning it was difficult to make ends meet, I´m sure that further down the line we won´t even notice it. Besides, since the purchase a year ago, the flat has gone up in value 17%, and if that weren´t enough, the notary public´s wife is hot as shit.

Although professionally things are going well (I´m the CEO of a multinational corporation), the truth is that the inflation we are suffering in this country due to the fact that we are the richest in the world is making it so we have to tighten our belts a little. But it´s just a matter of getting used to being frugal. When we first started having to eat Spam made out of lizards, we complained a bit, but now it´s just two quick flips on the grill and it´s tasty as can be. In any case, we´ll take advantage of the fact that labor laws have changed and now children that are 10 years old can work, so I think I´ll pull the little one out of school and put him to work. The extra income will help to go towards the mortgage.

My salary is 2.000 net Tochos. The Tocho is the currency that substituted the Euro when they drop-kicked us out of the EU (envy can be so ugly), and it is equivalent to one euro cent. In the safety deposit boxes of the Central Bank of Spain, they don´t keep gold slabs anymore, they keep bricks. Because bricks have shown themselves to be a much safer and more profitable investment than gold.

After the Atomic Wars brought on by the owners of the government funded housing projects in Southern Spain, the population has been reduced to 5 million Spanish people and 50 million Ecuadorians working their asses off, constructing 800.000 houses annually (Construction is 98% of the GDP). So it looks as though there are 20 houses per inhabitant (they are almost all empty because as I said before, houses are meant for investing, not for living in).
90% of the land has been developed and now we are thinking of developing under the sea (you can´t live under the sea, so these housing developments will be just for investment).

This is what is known in the world and admired as the “Spanish miracle” and it is the subject of numerous studies and doctoral theses in the field of Psychiatry. Every year thousands of scholars of the human mind visit from all over the world. I wouldn´t be surprised if many of those scholars stayed here to live, because you can´t live anywhere in the world like you live in Spain.

Well, that´s all I can tell you about what is awaiting you in the future. I´ve got to run so I can hunt some lizards for dinner.”

-Time Traveler."


Hope you laughed a little.

-Bluestreak

Piecing together my Habitus

It is strange how my experience here in Spain changes over time. Initially the challenge of language trumped every other cultural challenge and kept my mind so occupied and entertained that I was completely blind to the cultural inconsistencies between myself and Spanish people that I would come to realize later.

I may be grossly overestimating myself here, but I think that at this point, I probably understand 95% of spoken Spanish. The problem is that within that 5% that is lost to me, it seems like 60% of Spanish humor and potential cultural connectedness is contained.

This can make it difficult to not be a total vacant, absent bitch at a party with Spanish people.

So, I go to a party, like Friday night. I do the normal thing I do when I´m in the company of all Spanish people. I sit in a chair smoking, being the quiet weird wife of my Spanish husband. And I think about how far that is from who I am, from what anyone who has ever known me well knows. I´m the furthest thing from quiet. I´ll talk to you until your ears feel like I´ve chewed them up and passed them through my digestive track. And I´ll listen to you if you have an ounce of humor in you.

That´s the normal me.

But here, among them I watch the people around me with bored indifference and feel such a disconnect with them on the deepest human level, that it pains me to try to make conversation. I see them laughing. I understand what they are saying. I smile to be polite, but in every moment I know how out of place I am and how brutally laborious it is to have a genuine connection with them. I know how goddamn difficult it is to say anything of interest to them and how difficult it is to find anything they have to say a diversion from the prototype that I have in my mind of them.

And I come across as a bitch. And I know it. And I can´t do anything to stop it. And I probably am one.

But then I go home to the states. I sit in a room full of Americans and I am completely and utterly entertained by how my language flows out of their mouths and they say things like "ass monkey", or "give me a pound, dog" and I tear up with laughter at expressions, poise and behavior that I had forgotten about. It just feels so effortless. And everyone amuses me greatly.

And I realize that those measly two weeks of happy, effortless understanding and cultural connection isn´t enough for me. So I try to find the pieces of my habitus here somewhere. Here in Spain. Here online.

But the pieces are lost.

I have my fellow expats who understand me better than anyone here or there possibly could. But I hate sometimes that their habitus are as altered as mine and I long to be in the company of people that are just American, the unaltered ones. Without this addiction called Spain in them.

And this is probably what I´m doing in the blogosphere. Looking for those pieces of my habitus and looking for the people whose dispositions I envy and miss.



Going home again this week. Back and forth never ceases to fuck with my head. Grandpa´s 100th birthday and reunion of cousins and brothers and sisters and all the people that can say things like "it´s hotter than crotch" and make me stare at them with glee and amusement at their effortlessness without all the nonsense and confusion in their brain that I have.

-Bluestreak

American Cultural Soup by MotherPie from Flickr

Ministry of Home Absorption by excauboi from Flickr

Keep it in your pants old man

You may recall how I told you about how everyone around this place does everything at the same damn time? It´s like Spain has one collective herd mentality mind and they get together each morning and vote on whether they should scratch their balls first or put their slippers on before getting out of bed.

So it´s August, and if you live in this city, that means "NOT EVEN GOD" IS WALKING THE STREETS, as the Spaniards say. This city is a ghost town.


Ghost town= chances of some dirty old man with plaid shorts and sandals whipping out his dick at you manifold exponentially.

So I walk these lonesome streets, you know, because I have to fucking work in August like a schmuck (and yes, I´m bitter), unlike every other person that lives in this place, who is currently at the beach right now eating an ice cream cone (I swear they are all eating an ice cream cone right now, it´s clockwork around here). This means that if you are unfortunate enough to have to walk the streets in August, everyone that passes you is a potential pervert prepared to whip out his chorizo surprise for your benefit.

It hasn´t happened yet (maybe I´m not as old-man-dick-whip-outable as I´d like to think). Although I did see a man peeing in a bush and when he saw that I could see his exposed genitalia, he didn´t seem to mind a bit. But admittedly he didn´t whip it out for my sake, so he doesn´t count. He´s just an asshole that pisses in the street (the street pissing epidemic in Spain is deserving of it´s own post so I´ll save it). But the potential for whip-outage is always there and I see it in their perverted eyes.

It´s like they are pissed cause they aren´t at the beach either and so whoever they pass is going to either see their dick or fear they might.

-Bluestreak, avoiding old man wiener for a few more days.


p.s. if you didn´t vote for Ghost of Keywork yesterday as Hottest Blogger, do so now here. He has reconsidered his hot-awareness strategy by posting a military picture of himself, which might not be for you, but it´s better than old man dick, so vote. But it´s still the house-arrest-anklets that get me.

"La sombra quebrada de una farola" by González-Alba from flickr
"Barrio Sta Cruz" by Jose OHM from flickr

Who am I and why do you care?

who am i?

I am culture clash incarnate.

I am Bluestreak, thirty-something, American desert rat that ended up in Southern Spain by a series of random events (crushing fist of fate). Living in Spain used to seem like a big deal, but now it is just la vida. Besides the fact that everyone can tell I´m a guiri (i.e. gringo), I mix well and this feels like home. But a big part of me is never at home here (or anywhere, I´m discovering). I started this blog because my mind is usually in a million places and none of them are in the present moment that is this sad, smelly, dark, lifeless, messy, shit hole of a cave I sometimes refer to as "my office", where I usually write from.

One of the main reasons why I live here in Spain is because my husband Luigi is Spanish. We met while I was a study abroad student in 1997. He is wonderful and clumsy and kind and beautiful and sweet and messy and everything he touches turns to gold and wherever my home is, it´s with him. We speak a weird sort of Spanglish and his accent in English makes me purrrr like a kitten.

what do i write about?
Spain sometimes deserves a big kick in the cojones that I am honored to deliver when provoked. But this blog is not about Spain itself, but rather how I deal with the accumulation/rejection of a foreign culture. But there are no hard fast rules here, so sometimes this blog is about whatever life brings my way. It is, however, almost always about me, as if I were the most important human to grace the face of the planet, and as if you cared. What else am I gonna write about?

why do i cuss so much?
When I write, I curse as if my afterlife had been decided when I stole that piece of candy from 7-11. Why? Because I find it fucking funny, and when I need an adjective, noun, or verb, I find them very easily from my list of favorite swear words, and they are the words that are always on the tip of my tongue. I guess you can say it is because of laziness as a writer. Whatever. If you think I curse too much, I´ll have you know that before each post I publish I have to go back through and edit at least half of the swearing out, so I am already making an effort to please the puritan a-holes (edited) that might mistakenly end up here.

readers that know me
If you are related to me via kinship or marital ties I must have given you my blog address during a severe lapse of judgement that probably involved alcohol. Either that or someone else in our family opened their big-ass mouth. In either case, I suggest you re-think your visit here or get ready to be disappointed in me.

If you know me in real life, please have mercy and never mention my blog at any gathering (not like you would), but if you do, I might poison you while you´re in the bathroom to protect my shame.



So that´s me.



-Bluestreak



p.s. if you´ve read this far and you don´t hate me yet, leave a comment, lest I disappear into the vast graveyard of abandoned blogs.

This Blog Post Cancels itself Out.

Ok I only have two nouns in my head right now. One is “drag” and the other is the Spanish equivalent, “coñazo”, so I guess I will use arithmetic to get my point across:

Lack of Inspiration +Homesickness +thirty something crisis + identity crisis - living arrangements I am happy with - a job I like = a blog that is a drag to read.

So, nothing has come to me lately to blog about that does not sound like me whining and feeling sorry for myself, and while trying to think of a topic that would be fun to write about, I started thinking about the fact that I blog and it is making me feel anti-blog. It all just irks me somewhat, it just feels so narcissistic. I feel like it is on par with gathering a group of people in a room and orating a speech to them and then waiting for them to comment on my brilliance or at the very least not stone me to death. I would never do that (wait, what am I saying? I did that all through grad school and considered it to be the closest thing to torture I have ever felt).

So why do I blog? I guess it is more for my sake than others. Hey, maybe I like to hear myself talk and am interested in subjects that I would bring up. Come on, do I really think I have something valuable to say to you, the consumer of information about my fucking boring life? Some people blog as an escape from their normal lives. I suspect that such is the case of THIS GUY, probably THIS GUY, and most definitely THIS GUY. Other people I know blog to keep family and friends informed about their lives abroad, posting pictures and updates, which I think is great, but I feel like facebook and my picasa web albums get that job done for me. Besides, I do not need my family members having their suspicions confirmed about how disturbed I am, which is why I like to be at least somewhat anonymous here (ok, so my siblings are allowed here, but if they do not already know that I am somewhat disturbed they must not have been paying attention since, say, birth).

Weirdly enough in light of all of this, I think about ways I can get more traffic to my blog. Why on earth I would do such a thing? Once I had to give an hour and a half lecture on the Sociology of Religion to a SOC 101 class of about 150 college kids, the memories of which are mostly suppressed and the rest are filed away under “Most Terrifying Experience Ever”. So, why would I possibly want a lot of readers? Don´t know, I´m stumped.

Ok, so there it is, a blog post about blog posts. My e-world is going to implode in on itself any second now. I promise next time, dear avid readers, to post on something only slightly more interesting than a pile of rocks but probably slightly less interesting that picking your nose.



I just can´t blog about Spain right now, I can´t even complain about it. Because right now I just want to kick it in the cojones. Sorry.

Artwork from Flickr by scarlet_rose77