Of Bad Brands, Bad Trips, and Bad Moods

Amelia Earhart luggage?  Really?  Isn't that something like trying to sell Sonny Bono ski-poles or Marie Prevost pet treats?

Treat Her Rough... Please.

One of the joys of returning to the U.S. of A. is, without question, access to real, live Turner Classic Movies.

And Now, A Word from our Sponsor

Poor Mrs. Thaxter here was in such a bad state that she didn't even have the heart to put on her beads.  Aren't you glad Deprol was there?  This new miracle cure reduced her resemblance to Frances Bavier by more than 40%, even as it cured her troublesome rumination habit.  That it seems to have done something faintly alarming to her left eyebrow is a small price to pay.

Actually, kids, I don't know about you, but right about now I could use a good shot of that stuff - hell, I might even go for a good old fashioned sedative-hypnotic.  Or at least a good Old Fashioned...

An Update from the Invalid

Honestly, kids, I looked and looked for something racier than this, Cherry bidding a merry adieu to an elderly gentleman who's presumably now all rested, as it were, thanks to her ministrations, but, a few standard medical-themed pinups aside, things rapidly get too racy, it turns out, when you Google things like "hot male nurses."  Go ahead - see for yourself.  Lose an hour or two of your life...

In any case, here's a quick update from the sick bay.  We made our way to Prestigious University Hospital this morning, where for what I'm guessing is going to be something like the national debt of Latvia, I was poked and prodded with some sort of gizmo that gave off the most alarming noises (shades of The Machine That Goes "Ping!" in The Meaning of Life) - alternately clacking and gurgling and whirring - thereby allowing the technician (a very well set up gentleman called Clint - if only he were slathering me with chilly gel for better reasons!) to look around inside. 

Then it was a nice cozy wait for our long-awaited opportunity to See the Doctor.

Which we did.  The cardiologist turns out to be a lovely matronly Indian lady ("Oh! I have ma-any cousins who live there!" she exclaimed when she learned of our Sandlandian home, and I'm sure she does), who passed on news good - nothing showing up in the tests yet  - and not so.  Not so, at this point, only because that means more, and apparently moderately less pleasant, tests.

Which means not traveling yet, which is a great bore.  Too much longer in borrowed rooms and we'll start to feel like refugees, not least because one of our last acts before first hitting the ER was shipping home the vast majority of our stuff, from souvenirs to extra underpants, and so here we sit with travel clothes and not much more.  Whinge, whinge, whinge, I know, especially when the bottom line, at the moment at least, is that it appears there's nothing about to blow imminently, which means we can at least go out and do something amusing (the appeal of American TV has definitely waned over the past four days of doing nothing at all).

At least in the evenings.  On top of everything else, you see, it's now become Ramadan, so Mr. Muscato is fasting and therefore rather nocturnal.  Aside from not drinking and Avoiding Undue Excitement (both doctor's orders), I'm sure we'll have a blast...

Souvenirs, Etc.

So, where were we?  Oh, right, travel.  Well, we're still on the road, Mr. Muscato and me, albeit it now not entirely of our own design. 

Before we dive in, behold our haul for the trip.  Joining the aforementioned Solar Queen and accompanying corgi (who it appears are on offer not only in chic PTown gifteries, but also, if our dear Jason is to be believed, in at least one Gulf Coast emporium) are a fetching Cunard bear (we couldn't resist the sweater, and bears are Mr. M.'s weakness.  In more ways than one.).  Joining them is as our latest 11-1/2 inch temptress, who looks like a striking combo of Lynda Carter, Rita Hayworth, and a chopstick (she's from Mattel's new especially body-dysmorphic "Fashionista" line).  We call her Desirée.  We always get travel toys, but this strikes me as an especially fine haul.  Yes, they're posed against a tee-shirt.  It was the best I could think of at the time, and I firmly deny that any Boatslip planter's punch was involved. Firmly.

So Provincetown continued to be a great joy.  We saw shows (Randy Roberts says hi, Bill and Ed!) and can confirm that Miss Coco Peru is, hard as this may be to believe, even better, by a longshot, in person than she is in Trick.  Her show, There Comes a Time, is more a Lily Tomlin-style monologue than a scattershot drag or standup act, and its funny, affecting, and, wherever needed, sharp as glass.  Miss Coco even sports a daring new look, which replaces her signature flip with a worldly little bob that's half punk, half executive secretary.  It works, and so does she.

We met up with friends, we went out, we stayed in, enjoying long afternoons on the deck and lovely lazy mornings.  And sadly, all too soon, it was time to go.  We bundled the bags and the Queen and the corgi and Desirée into the rented motor and headed for Boston and a couple of restful days chez ma soeur, who lives in lesbo-Brahmin splendor therein.

And I got sick.

And I ignored it.

Which, it seems, was a mistake.

We were scheduled to spend the final week of this year's voyage in glamorous Wasington, DC, at the home office of Golden Handcuffs Consulting Amalgamated, which pays the bills, meeting people and generally trying to act official and convince the Powers What Am that we do strategically imperative and dynamically innovative and generally buzzword-worthy things out there in the Sandlands.

Which I did, for a couple of days, after a mildly fraught trip south in which I did my best not to admit that I was Increasingly Unwell.  Mr. Muscato is smarter than me, so he knew it, so it all got rather difficult ("I'm fine, dammit.  Really I am..." [gasp, collapse] "....just fine!").

In brief:  trip to the hospital (my first-ever on my own behalf to an American ER.  Fascinating.), multiple late-night tests, stern warning not to travel for the moment. 

And now the fun begins, because apparently the follow-ups I need aren't immediately available ("It's July," office after office explains, as if people were either foolish or actively selfish to consider taking up invalidism after Memorial Day).  Fortunately, the good people at Golden Handcuffs have wasta (as we say out East - meaning influence), and so rather than sitting very still and hoping for the best until, say, the last week of August, a good doctor has agreed to look in greater detail at my heart early next week.  We shall see.

Mr. Muscato can't help but contrast this with the system back in Egypt, where, if you have the wherewithal, you can see any doctor in the country within something like 18 hours, unless you want to pony up a little, in which case they'll come to your house right now.  Previously, he thought I was making it up when I described how American health care works.  Now he knows better.

To add insult to injury, today we have to move hotels, going from impractical office-sponsored semi-luxe to one of those free-breakfast/kitchenetted business-traveler suite places.  Me, who came over on the Queen!  Well, it's sensible, and it actually will be nice to have a fridge.  We may be here for a few days - or we may be here a lot longer.

As I lay on the gurney two nights ago, overhearing an older lady being talked into a semi-voluntary commitment ("No, Mrs. Cooney, it's for your own good.  And besides, the gamma rays can't get you in here.  You remember that Dr. Sinclair told you that, don't you?  You'll be safer here, really..."), I thought about a lot of things.  How lucky I was to have Mr. Muscato waiting outside, how much I miss the dogs, and how very much I dislike needles (one of which was currently firmly in place in one arm), mostly, but also how quickly things change.

One minute you're dancing on an ocean liner racing across the dark Atlantic; the next you're eating lobster, staring out at Cape Cod Bay; but the next you're sitting in a backless gown (and not the fun kind) having people address you in the first person plural ("let's just lie down for moment, okay?") and leave you in a hallway.  There's a lesson there, although probably a trite one, but right now I'm too mad to learn it.

So wish us well, in this new and unexpected phase of our adventure.  We're off this morning to check into the Olde Gardene Courte Suitotel, after which we sit around until the next time Big Health Care deigns to look our way.  In the meantime, Mr. Muscato keeps trying to stop me from standing up, I'm plotting how to get to at least one museum, and back out there in the Sandlands, Mrs. Galapatty-da Silva is girding herself for a little while longer on her own with the hounds from hell.

AA Milne said it best:  Bother.

Mamaji Knows Best

I don't know about you, but I just hate it when a sudden tension headache renders me unable to appear in an Indian-temple-dance-tribute-number.

Actually, we're having a rather Anacin kind of week at the Café, darlings, for which apologies. I'm sure things will look brighter by the weekend, which after all in this part of the world is practically moments away...

Drive Me Crazy

I hope you don't mind if I take a moment out of the current seasonally themed blogathon to air one of my major current grievances; pardon, too, any language not usually seen in these genteel premises.

In short, driving in Our Fair Sultanate is going to hell in a handbasket, and if something isn't done about the absolute fuckwits who make up what seems to be an ever-increasing proportion of local drivers, the already insane national traffic-fatality statistics (I've heard estimates that they are up to forty times most developed countries) are going to continue to skyrocket.

When we arrived here some years ago, aside from a plague of idiotic young men driving ridiculous cars bought for them with daddy's money, it was actually possible to get around from place to place without risking, at best, a heart attack, or, at worst, a grisly, gory death. No more. A simple run to the supermarket can allow you to witness a veritable catalogue of motorized assholery - not just your garden variety speeding, unexpected U-turns, or tailgating (although all of those are commonplace). Oh, no - I'm talking things like people deciding to pass into oncoming traffic just to prove, apparently, that theirs is bigger than yours; or family cars, loaded down with a dozen small children milling about in the backseat, roaring along at top speed on the shoulder of a packed highway; or death-wish driven shitheads inching into traffic to execute what turns into a fish-tailing left turn with brakes and horns squealing as a dozen other drivers have to slam on the brakes, and...

I mean, what gives? This is a placid, almost chokingly polite place, one in which voices are rarely raised, tidiness reigns supreme, and most people - local nationals and expatriates alike - seem to have bought into the kind of public demeanor that can make it feel like living in Stepfordistan. But put these very same people behind the wheel, and they turn into rejects from The Wacky Races, only without the cartoonish immortality.

When it reached the point that the Big Man himself, His Majesty, had to give a sharp scolding to the general public earlier this year, I thought things might improve. That was followed by the putting up of large and prominently placed billboards, with his smiling face accompanied by boldfaced declarations of the people's obedience to his wise advice. I'd like to meet those people, 'cause they're sure not on the roads.

When it Rains...

Sorry about that, kids - we got safely back from our little Red Sea jaunt to find that all hell had generally broken loose. The worst of it all is that absolutely none of it was of any real interest even in the slightest. Much has been resolved to most people's satisfaction, some remains to be dealt with, but after much smoothing of Dreary Office Politics and Soothing of Bores, life is again on something approaching an even keel.

I should have listened to the divine Miss Anita O'Day, seen and heard here live in Berlin, 1970, reminding us that when it rains, it pours.

That's something, improbably enough, we've been discovering right here on the edge of the great Arabian desert, we've been finding out. Nightly downpours for the past three nights have cleaned the air rather marvelously, giving rise to even-more-than-usually dramatic views and clear horizons. Now the air has something of the crisp, cool feeling of late April back home, which is really rather refreshing.

Unlike anything having to do with the sordid business of making a living. Why can't we all live on capital, like the good people of Tilling? A much more sensible way of passing one's days if you ask me, and such bad planning of our forebears not to have socked it all away.

But we'll always have Sharm...

We're Deprived...

Not, sadly, on account of we're depraved (there's that Bernstein thing again), but much less amusingly, by fiat. We've got the Ramadan Blues. It's illegal, you see, to be seen eating, drinking, or otherwise consuming (chewing gum and smoking included) in public in these parts between sunrise and sunset. No lunches or brunches for us, for something like four more weeks...

Oh, yes, the best hotels keep open a bolthole for infidels, but it feels rather sordid. Those of us who work in mixed-faith workplaces and have the advantage of an office-with-door spend considerably more time than usual in "private meetings" or "just getting some writing done," all the time trying silently to guzzle coffee or wolf down provisions brought in in discreetly bagged packages.

We'll soldier through, I know - and at least we're spared having to totally invert all our eating habits, as our Muslim colleagues do. Local bloggers have come up with several diverting accounts of what havoc this can wreak, although I do warn that neither of these two are especially recommended for weak stomachs.

And then there's the whole more-or-less teetotalling thing, but that will doubtless be the subject for a future moan...

File Under "Parade, Rained Upon"

So, you remember that way I've been feeling lately?

At this point, all I can figure is that (and you should pardon the language) the gods must be fucking with me.

Barbra, new album of standards, tiny invitation/lottery-only concert at the Vanguard, right down the street from my old place and exactly but exactly the kind of thing I used to be genius at getting myself into. And here I sit at the edge of the desert, dreading the start of Ramadan.

I know it's not a problem in the scheme of things in the great wide world, but geez...

Je Suis Malade

As usual, the divine Dalida nails it. Je suis en fait malade - complètement, parfaitement. Bugger.

A Fabulous Invalid

Sorry, darlings; your Auntie Muscato is feeling a tad under the weather - crummy, actually - and is retiring to the Land of Counterpane.

Where's Ben Casey when I need him? Or even Dr. Kildare? Hell, I'd settle for Dr. Bombay right about now. Or maybe just some Bombay. On ice, sweetheart, with just a hint of tonic...

Back on the Chain Gang

The face of a criminal

I generally find that fury isn't a good place to write from, and so to date have refrained from commentary on the latest local idiocy. If you would like all the details, Undercover Dragon has provided as usual a highly cogent rundown of the situation, as well as providing a platform for spirited discussion.

What it boils down to, however, is that the local Powers That Be have determined that animals - apparently in all forms, based on the vague wordings issued to date - are menaces to the public health that can only be tolerated between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.

That's right: in a place where the midday temperature can climb above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, no dog-walking at dawn or dusk; no long strolls in the still-cool afternoons for us; no topping up of the local economy with leisurely stops at the local cafés. Not for that hideous miscreant we see here. In the works, it seems, are penalties including fines and even jail time (!).

Well, to paraphrase the fightin' words of the old adage, "When dogs are outlawed, only outlaws will have dogs." Both Koko and I are feeling edgier, more dangerous. We're ready to take on the world, Thelma and Louise style (although I do hope it ends better). Yesterday we stayed out at lunch with him until a truly rebellious 3:30.

No adverse consequences to report yet, but we'll keep you posted. If things fall suddenly quiet around here, it may because I've become a guest of His Majesty's Government.

Mood Check

So how's your day going?

Babesploitation

Well, that crazy-lady-8-babies story isn't getting any prettier. It's bizarre to think that something has come along that makes the whole Dionne Quint phenomenon seem like a model of sensible child-rearing.

No Ringie-Dingies...

Well, darlings, you may have noticed that things are moving rather more slowly even than usual here at the Café. Profound apologies, but blame the phone company.

You see, here in out little Sultanate-on-Sea, we are firmly in the hands of the Eastern cousins of that fabled tyrant, Miss Ernestine Tomlin ("We're the Phone Company: we don't care, we don't have to"). Sometime in the last two days, the little blinking lights on our Mysterious Internet Device went quiet, and the familiar hum of the dial tone faded away.

So now we're waiting, huddled in the corner, for a serviceman to call. Repeated phone calls (thank God for mobiles) in a range of languages have evinced nothing but increasingly hollow assertions that "You're on the list, sir" (not to mention one highly annoying "You're on the list, madam". I mean really!).

In the meantime, it's catch as catch can. While I'll be doing what I can, courtesy of the kindness (and wireless) of strangers and the occasional coffee bar, perhaps you could consider this an opportunity to catch up on the Archives, or go hang out with TJB or Donna or any other of the marvelous hosts over there in the right-hand column, or perhaps even chat with your loved ones. Read a good book. I'll be back...

Eight is Too Much

Octuplets? I'm sorry. I know I'm starting from behind, what with the whole not-liking-most-children-at-all thing, but that's just not right. When I lived in West Africa, I was always interested in how local culture even found twins a little off-putting - but eight? Outside of Springfield, it's all too borderline creepy for my taste...

Turning Japanese

I really think so...

Yes, it's Zsa Zsa. Yes, she's dressed as Madame Chiang Kai-shek dressed as Eva Perón. Better not to wonder why; simply marvel at her utter Gaborness.

P.S.: I don't believe for a minute that that thieving, tacky final husband of hers lost her money to Madoff. If there still is any money, he knows exactly where it is. Delusional, dreadful climber. End of rant.

Seasonal Discomforts and Discomfiture

No matter how long you live overseas, some things you never get used to. For me, those things include days of the week (repeat after me: Saturday is Monday, Wednesday is Friday, and Friday is Sunday. I've lived it for three years, and it still makes no sense, and I still leave people standing around when I say I'll see them Tuesday and what I meant was Sunday).

Also on the list of the International Incomprehensible, though, is temperature. I'm a Fahrenheit boy, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. All these years outside the U.S. of A. and I still have no idea what those infernal degrees actually mean. Oh, I know that water freezes at 0 and boils at 100, but anything in between? A more or less complete mystery.

Without my familiar frame of reference, I'm now reaching the point where I'm floating free of common sense, as well, when it comes to temperature. These last two weeks or so have been, by local standards, fairly non-balmy. I've been running around in sweaters and scarves, burying myself under afghans when home and piles of quilts when sleeping, all the while bemoaning the total lack of heating hereabouts.

And throughout, I've been moaning, to anyone who would listen, "My God, what are we supposed to do? It's eighteen degrees!" as if I could hear the wolves approaching over the ice floes.

Today I finally had the bright idea of finding an online converter to find out just exactly how bitterly icy it really was.

I stand before you now, somewhat shamefaced, in the realization that that the dread 18 degrees is in fact just shy of 65 real degrees, or just about exactly what we used to think of as beach weather back in my northern home town.

I think my blood must have thinned after a decade in the Southern Hemisphere.

Most Frustrating

I'm not ignoring you, darlings - I'm home safely and all's well...

EXCEPT...

The idiots that run this place - I'm sorry, I'm mean the Glorious Authorities of This Blessed Sultanate - have managed to do something, none of us know quite what, yet, that has disabled almost all Blogger functions. That means that those of us living here can't post or otherwise manage our blogs OR post to other peoples' blogs, unless we are working with one of the various workarounds to the Magic Filter that keeps the Big Bad Internet away from us.

So I'm taking this brief moment of access to an open machine (which doesn't, alas, have access to the bandwidth to allow a devastating graphic - and believe me, they're piling up) to let you know that we shall see what we shall see, but it looks like pickings will be slim at the Café for the near future, at least.

Harrumph! My inner dowager fingers her pearls in dudgeon. High Dudgeon.