I Too Can Blame George W. Bush for Everything

I regret to inform the world that Baby has died.

You might think that I fed him improperly, causing him to choke and develop pneumonia. Or you might think that I simply fed him the wrong sorts of food. Or maybe it had nothing to do with me, but the parents simply rejected him because he was diseased in the first place.

You might think that. But actually it was George W. Bush's fault.

Because George W. Bush blew up my house.

Despite the fact that Bush has been out of office for the last two and a half years...despite the fact that now that Obama holds office and we're supposed to blame him for everything...and despite the fact that I am virtually unknown among the US citizenry, let alone to the US government...despite all this, George W. Bush launched a major airstrike on my place of residence last evening, demolishing the building and killing Baby.

Spokesmen say the attacks are retaliation for my representing Libya in the Model Arab League in 2006 and for time spent in Yemen speaking Arabic in 2007. Spokesmen further cite my involvement in Cambodian expatriate life, as the local Western expat community is composed solely of fugitives, convicts, and pedophiles.

The missiles struck as I sat grading my papers last evening. They tore through my roof and demolished all four floors of the apartment complex in a fiery torrent of doom, leaving a nothing but a pile of smoldering rubble in their wake.

Somehow uninjured, I crawled out from the rubble, crying my horror and despair to whatever gods may be.

I called out to Baby, who had been asleep in his nesting box. But his terrified peeping did not return my frantic cries. For my baby bird, who brought me so much light and joy, lay crushed beneath the rocks.

He was laid to rest in a pot with a dead rose bush morning next.

Spokesmen say no other civilians were injured the attacks, presumably because they were out dealing drugs or in brothels. The landlady could not be reached for comment.

***

*Although this story is fiction, in no way shape or form should that detract from the underlying truth of this narrative.

The Save a Sparrow Campaign

I have very good news today.

News so awesome you will pass out with joy and happiness when I tell you...

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Are you ready?

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Today I am ... A MOMMA!

When I came home from work one afternoon, I found a little pink baby bird lying on my balcony. It looked so sad and dead...I prodded it with a knife, and it began rolling around and peeping.

I have no idea where the nest is, but I suspect it's in the space between the top of the balcony and my corrugated tin roof. No way was I climbing around trying to find out.

I week or two ago, I found an broken sparrow egg lying in the same place. The ants eventually ate it, and they were starting to gather around the baby when I found him lying there. I dusted him off and put him in a toilet-paper nest on the adjacent roof...but no one came for him. Soon the wind came and blew my makeshift nest into the gutter, and he lay there piteously on the blue tin roof with no one to love or care for him.

So I took him inside.

Clearly, Momma and Daddy are unfit to be parents. They built their nest in a bad place (prone to windy conditions that knock out eggs and babies) and don't know how to look after their young. They don't notice when their babies fall to the ground crying for help.

If they're not going to look after him, then I will.

Although I suspect I can't keep Baby alive for very long, I'll set up a page about baby sparrow care if he lives.

I've got a picture of him. You'd think his candid shots were too featherless and ugly if I tried to show you, so I made a sanitized one out of digital paint.

He's the cutest little baby I have ever laid eyes upon, and I love him forever.

Behold! The Dog

I was super-bored this weekend, so I made some pictures on my computer and thought I would share them.

You can look at them under the page "Behold! The Dog". I intend to update the page after I've gotten bored on future days.

Why It's Time to Leave the Neighborhood

To understand this story, you need to know that I live at the dead end of a very long, dark, and winding alleyway. The alleyway connects to a major road, along which lie the neighborhood garbage cans.

You also need to know that I live in a small foreign "ghetto" (read: overpriced island of non-Khmer speakers), and that I have many neighbors, including the British guy who lives on the opposite side of the courtyard from me.

I was coming home one night and was just opening the gate to my stairwell, when I was approached by my neighbor from the opposite side of the courtyard.

It was completely dark, mind you; he appeared out of the shadows and caught me by the shoulder. I turned to face him.

"If anyone asks you," he said, eyes darting, "you didn't see me putting any plastic bags in the garbage." He leaned forward intently, as if daring me to challenge his posture of menace. "Are you cool with that?"

I didn't bother to tell him that it was so dark I didn't even see him by the garbage cans, let alone make any note of it. If you're gonna commit a crime, don't give yourself away by being paranoid about it. Better yet, don't commit a crime in the first place, especially one that your neighbors have to cover up despite their knowing nothing about it.

Eventually, the guy disappeared from the neighborhood, and some new tenants moved into the apartment on the opposite side of the courtyard.

Although I still don't know what to make of this incident, I probably should have demanded a quantity of hush money from him.

The Sexist Airline Rant

When my computer died in April and I was too sick to get it fixed, I spent a lot of time watching CNN, which my TV seems to intercept for some reason. Annoyingly enough, the station runs commercials every ten minutes, and they are all the SAME commercials, too.

Besides CNN's own self-referential advertising, the commercials tend to be either Gulf Arab Oil Money promotions of the Gulf State portrayed, or else they are airline ads. Having listened to these ads in a comatose state (and consequently unable to change the channel) for many weeks in a row, my patience with them has worn thin. This is especially true for the airline ads. There are three airlines that advertise on CNN, and I hate each one.

THEIR ADS ARE SO OBNOXIOUS. For one thing, you are stuck listening to the same 3 airlines each advertise at least five times an hour. For another, they are blatantly sexist. THERE IS ONE AIRLINE IN PARTICULAR I AM THINKING OF. To find out which one, please view the embedded clip below (sorry it's so big. The producers want their airline to be noticed):

Imagine listening to this ad five times an hour for weeks on end. The theme song itself is enough to induce ire at this frequency (it starts off ALL Cathay-Pacific's ads, so I know when they're coming on). Don't even get me started on the psychopathic-looking businessman. And the GIRL: [unnatural pause] "How. Did. You. Know. ?." At least pick an actress who knows basic English and isn't just reciting memorized sounds.

Also annoying is Asiana Airlines' portrayal of "a beautiful journey":

And the word "beautiful" is emphasized by the image of a pretty, giggling Asian flight attendant.

Maybe I'm being overly irascible, but this is the sort of the thing you notice after hearing an ad so many times. I might add that such repetition of obnoxious music is really similar to a technique that's used on Guantanamo Bay detainees in order to extract information.

It also reveals CNN Asia's target audience. As near as I can tell, I'm supposed to be a wanna-be-successful international businessman with Yellow Fever who is in bad need of an ego massage by "subservient" Asian girls, AND whose hobbies include playing with pseudo-James-Bond-style electronics and pretty Asian twenty-something-or-younger call-girls. Am I right?

Like so many things here in South East Asia, it begs the question: Am I welcome on the airlines (or anywhere else) in this region as a highly unsuccessful white female?

Close Encounters of the Cambodian Kind

I have two favorite restaurants in Phnom Penh. By strange coincidence, both of them are blue: The Blue Pumpkin and The Blue Dolphin.

The Blue Dolphin is a family/bar-girl run restaurant with cheap delicious food. It's not air-conditioned, but they have comfy wicker chairs, chocolate shakes, free water, and the girls who work there are really nice. It's really close to my house, too.

The Blue Pumpkin is farther away, but is really chic. You can go in with your laptop and work for hours and hours in the air-conditioned, free-WiFi, comfy-white-couched environment. The problem is that you get charged Western prices for all the food (some of which, like the Pumelo-pork salad, is worth it).

The people at Blue Pumpkin, by the way, hate me. Every time I go in, I always wind up doing something douchey: I break a glass, I leave dirty footprints on the couch, I buy a glass of water and then sit there for seven hours without buying anything else, I start fights over the cost of their food, my friend falls asleep and snores loudly, etc. Sometimes, I annoy them simply because they think they've got me figured out.

Them: "I know! You want cinnamon ice-cream, right? Like how you've ordered for the last 27 days in a row!"

Me: "LOL!!! Today I want PASSION FRUIT ice cream!" And that's annoying of me. I am truly the Blue Pumpkin's problem child.

So, I decided to give them a break from my demanding, contrarian ways and hit up the Blue Dolphin instead. In doing so, I got a lesson on the Cambodian concept of personal space. Or lack thereof.

I came in with a mass of final exams. For some time, I contentedly sat and graded them in the cool, fan-generated breeze.

Suddenly, I became aware of a green-shirted presence.

Looking up, I saw that one of the girls had, like an angel of death, materialized over my left shoulder. She was intently watching me work.

There was nothing left to do but acknowledge her presence.

This made it impossible to work, but. . .okaaay. . .

Then, for reasons still unfathomable to me, she bent down, hugged me, and proceeded to rest her hands more or less permanently on my shoulders. Her eyes were fixed on my exams, and I was trapped like a rat.

Eventually, after I crammed the exams back in their envelope and began pointedly drinking my glass of water, she wandered away. But I didn't dare take the exams back out. Not a chance.

Because grading English exams is the most fascinating thing anyone could possibly do--except when you're the teacher that has to grade them!*

*In front of an adoring audience to boot...

Kind of Bean with A Pod!

Really??