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The Animals of St. Martin

Have you ever walked into a bar where the bartender says, “Hey, we don’t serve convicted felons,” and you open your mouth to protest only to follow his pointing finger to a dusty wall with a giant WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE poster with your ugly mug on it?

Oh my God – me too!!! We should be Facebook friends!

So anyway, I went to St. Martin the other day to wind down, calm down, and lie down. And I don’t know if this is an island thing, a French thing, or a backgammon thing, but there were animals all over the place, whether it was an iguana on the road…

iguana, st martin

 

a rooster in the graveyard…

rootser, graveyard

or goats in the French Quarter…

goats, st martin

but we were inundated. And no more so than where my travel buddy and I were staying. Our villa was littered with kitties and puppies. It was raining cats and dogs. We were….we were….I can’t think of any more bad puns, so let me just show you, okay?

Here kitty kitty…

kitten, st martin

The fluff ball was just hanging out in the bushes. No mom. No brothers and sisters. How does THAT happen?

And then this guy showed up on our doorstep and never left except to go to the bathroom…

van gogh, st martin

His ear was mangled and he often laid (lie? lay? lied? line?) around with his tongue positioned in varying degrees of “hanging out”.

cat, sleeping, mangled ear, st martin

Yes, his ear was mangled and his tail was broken…

cat broken tail

And no matter how much fine French cuisine leftovers and milk we fed him, he wouldn’t go away.

cat, tongue, sleeping

You know we named him Van Gogh, right?

Coincidentally, I happened to be reading Christopher Moore’s Sacre Bleu, a novel set in Paris which kicks off with the kicking off of Van Gogh. As in “muhhduhh”. It’s hysterical and I highly recommend it. Nearly every famous painter hanging out in Paris at that time is in there, and Moore, as usual, is a genius.

So anyway Van Gogh –the cat, not the murdered painter– wouldn’t leave. Not even when this dog showed up…

cat, dog, st martin

Or this dog…

dog, beach, st martin

I’m telling you, it was a zoo over there.

Anyway, I don’t expect you to sit through 15 minutes of my vacation (yes I do), but in the highly unlikely event you want to see my attempt at a St. Martin slideshow/movie/humorous caption sequence, it’s all here:

Here’s the link to my vacation movie, in case the above embedded video doesn’t appear.

So, what are your plans for the Summer? And does it involve goat butts, er, I mean, derrieres?

goats, st martin, french quarter

goat butts, er, derrieres, French Quarter, St. Martin.

 


St Martin, St Maarten and Plane Landings

So, while Junk Drawer Kathy was off gallavanting around Paris “showing her wares”, I was getting my “Bon Jour” on in the French Caribbean. On a little island known as St. Martin. Or as some weirdos call it, St. Maarten.

About that. In case you didn’t already know, there are actually two countries on this 8 mile-wide tropical paradise. The northern French side, where I stayed, is called St. Martin, while the southern Dutch side is called St Maarten. The island so nice, they named it twice.

This is the place with those famous plane landings, where stupid people stand on the beach and get exhausted on when the planes land and blown away when the planes take off.

It’s like going to Venice, Italy, asking the nearest pigeon where the trendiest statue is, and then standing underneath it all day, just to see what it’s like.

It’s not as if St. Maarten doesn’t warn you about these gargantuan pigeons:

st maarten, st martin, plane landing, danger sign

Here’s a close up:

st maarten, st martin, plane landing, danger sign

And yet, there’s always a crowd standing out there. It’s a major tourist attraction.  Bars flank each end of the beach catering to the slightly saner ones who wish to take pictures from a distance.

The plane arrival schedule is posted on a surf board at the Sunset Bar and Grill.

st maarten, st martin, plane landings, sunset bar, surfboard, arrival schedule

I captured some of the insanity, so sit back, relax, and enjoy these flights:

 

5 Mother’s Day Gift Ideas That Cost You Virtually Nothing

When are you going to get it through your thick skull that spending a lot of money on your mom for Mother’s Day is completely missing the point? There is a reason why she puts your crappy stick figure art, or the crayon outline of your hand turned into a turkey on the refrigerator, rather than installing museum pieces in the parlor. On Mother’s Day you want to make her feel special. And how do you do that? Easy. Just employ any or all of the following low-cost hyper-thoughtful Mother’s Day gift ideas and you’re golden for at least another 365 days.

1. Listen to her.

All day. Look her in the eye and pay attention to what she is saying and nod your head and acknowledge her and put your phone down and listen to her and stop texting your friends and pay the hell attention already. You have no idea what a gift this is, listening to your mother. I will be bringing this theme up again later.

2. Leave her alone.

For some moms, removing all children (and anyone else who occupies the house) is the best gift one can provide. Leave the house – in fact, leave town — so she can relax in the knowledge that you will not be coming back any time soon and bothering her with your inane instant gratification-driven questions and comments about YOU and YOUR PROBLEMS and YOUR DESIRES at that moment.

vintage mom doing dishes3. You be the Mommy.

Do her job. Or better said, don’t make her job harder by not doing your job. This means do all the chores that she normally has to do because she’s sick and tired of nagging you to do it. Like cleaning your room and picking up your socks and putting them in the hamper (you too, kids, not just Dad), and doing the dishes. And the laundry. And the cat box. And the bed. For God’s sake, make your bed. Make her bed (AFTER you have served Her Majesty breakfast in it, that is). And the diapers. Whatever 42 pain-in-the-ass-things she does every day, YOU do it.

4. Don’t buy her a “thing”; buy her an EXPERIENCE she’ll never forget. listen to your mother, ann imig

Here’s a unique Mother’s Day idea. Remember back in item #1 when I told you to listen to your mother? There is an actual show with that very name. A real live performance called Listen to Your Mother playing in 24 different cities across the U.S. on or around Mother’s Day where local performers go on stage and read their amazing, personal, funny, moving, and inspiring stories about motherhood. These stories will move you, surprise you, but most importantly, entertain you. Your mother would love it. Your wife would love it. Your Mommy girlfriends would love it.

People who go to this show are so incredibly inspired, validated and empowered, that they will invariably walk up to a cast member or two that they don’t even know and say, “me too.”  It will be one of the most unforgettable twenty-dollar bills you ever spent on the mom in your life. Go to the Listen to Your Mother website and click on “Local Shows” to see if your city is participating in this unique Mother’s Day experience. (Disclosure: I am co-producer of the Sacramento show.)

5. Unless she’s a shrew, diamonds are almost never a bad idea.

Oh I’m sorry, this is on the wrong list. Who put this here? This should have gone on the “5 Lazy (But Effective) Ways to Buy Her Love on Mother’s Day”.

 

Email from Lekki Lagos a Scam? Pshaw!

scam emails

image: earthlink

I was going to tell you about Harold, my new pet tse tse fly, and how I came to be mayor of a small town in West Dakota, but then I got this very important email:

 

spam email, cancer, assignment

I know! I’m totally going to be a spy, y’all!

Oh, I hear your silly cries of warning, that this might be a scam, but I did my research and it’s totally legit. I Googled “ventgloballogistics.net” and everything.

You see, according to one of those WHOIS pages, their domain is registered in the Netherlands and Luxembourg, sooo European. And it’s barely a month old, so it’s a brand new entity, which of course means, I’m on the cutting edge of becoming a big famous international spy. Talk about your ground opportunities!

ventgloballogistics

And then if you scroll down some more you can see the registrant’s name…

whois ventgloballogistics nigeria

I’m not sure where Lekki, Lagos, is, but it’s just one more stop on my very important international spying tour – woo hoo!

And so what if Anna Soto’s email address is from Viet Nam? I’m sure that’s just an outsourcing thing. And her domain, zin.vn? Undoubtedly having to do with Zinfandel Wine in Viet Nam. How exotic is that!

Also? When I lookup their IP Address on the real WHOIS website, it comes up with some dude named Andrey in Russia, so this is a real big international conglomeration they’ve got going on.

So, I’m probably going to be a spy for a Vietnamese Winery in Luxembourg. Or the Netherlands. Or Russia. Or Lekki, Lagos. I’ll keep you posted here on what is undoubtedly going to be a Top Secret assignment overseas for awhile. And since it’s Top Secret, you might not want to tell anyone until I”m back here safe in the United States.

So do you want me to pick you up anything while I’m there, wherever it is?

Getting Back at Spammers

Exacting true and just revenge on spammers is impossible. And while I desire to maim them swiftly and severly, it’s mostly illegal in this country. They are pesky flies that won’t die and you swat and flail and miss. And exhaust yourself to endless frustration.

That’s why I like to mock the ever-lovin’ snot out of them whenever and however I can.

Take for example this comment I got recently which got in my craw, so rather than deleting the comment, I responded…

spam comment kate upton

And then I removed the link to their bogus “make money online” scammy spammy ugly icky seedy website, because that’s why these jerkwads comment in the first place. For that insidious back link. Not on my blog, you bozo.

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