The Lament of Roast Beefy O’Weefy

I am celebrating New Years with my friend Gina. Gina Ndtonic. Also, I am watching Brad Neely’s comic masterpiece, Wizard People Dear Reader. It is the greatest thing that has ever been done in the history of mankind. 

 Thinking back on it, 2007 was definitely a big year for me. I mean what with the moving to Morocco and all. I think the single biggest thing that happened was that, while sitting on a rooftop in Fes drinking a $2 litre of wine and talking to the moon, I came to the conclusion that even if I end up a total failure and the only job I can find is as a cook in some diner, I can still be happy. I don’t need to split the atom. I don’t need to be a leader of men. I can just make pickles at home and shovel snow in the winter.

That being said, I still plan to split the atom and be a leader of men. It’s just nice to know that I don’t need to be powerful or “successful” to be happy.

I have no New Years Resolutions, though I would like to be done with my Thesis proposal before 2009. Instead, I will pray a New Years Prayer: God, deliver me from Swedish Furniture and clever art. Protect me from clear skin and perfect teeth. Grant me the strength to continue wearing this stupid looking beard by which the ladies are disgusted. Grant me filthy clothes and warty skin and a clear conscience. There’s a statute in the Rodin Museum called Balzac Nude. Balzac was a huge, fat, monstrosity of a man, an absolutely disgusting slice of fatloaf, but he holds his hideous naked carcass with such proud defiance that he’s handsome. May I be more like Balzac Nude and less like the Mona Lisa every coming year. Amen.

Happy New Years, everyone!

A Play In One Act

Curtains open. A young man is buying gin at a supermarket.

Teller: (mumbles something.)

Man: What?

Teller: (mumbles something.)

Man: What?

Teller: Don’t you speak French?

Man: (in French) Don’t you speak LOUDER?

Curtains close.

New Apartment

Well! I am settling in to my new place. I met with the landlord and everyone at lunchtime, and we just came over and they gave me some keys. Easy as eating pancakes. However, wednesday we have to go to the government office and get things sorted officially. They were closed today for the holiday.

I’ve figured out why the new apartment feels so familiar. It seems like a house down the Jersey Shore. Like, it’s decorated, but in sort of a ‘just visiting’ way, and everything is good, it’s just sort of old. But I have a TV, and I am currently using an unsecure WiFi signal. I am trying not to use up too much bandwith, so as to not irritate whoever I am getting it from.

Anyway, I think I am going to continue unpacking, and will stop by the supermarket for my first properly decent meal in quite some time!

PS – I think there’s a satellite channel here called Das Reich. I have no idea what it is and cant get it to come in.

The White House

I cannot say that my original trip to Casablanca was a happy one. This one, however, has been much better. Before I left Fes, to which I had returned for Christmas, I looked up a sort of Moroccan version of Craigslist and armed myself with 20 phone numbers of people with apartments.

The bad news is that the listings were not from the landlords themselves; realty agents had posted them. And neglected to mention that until I had chosen an apartment. I think I am getting a little ripped off, but I only have Fes with which to compare prices, so that might not be fair. But the having to pay an extra fee to the realty agents stings a little. But what do I care? All I need now is to find my raw materials and Ive got nothing but smooth sailing ahead.

I move in on Monday. It is well furnished, has a huge  kitchen, and is above an Acima, sort of the Moroccan version of a Genuardis. They sell beer there, and usually youve got to go outside the building and back in through a separate room. Here, theres just a door you enter near the enterance. So thats certainly not a problem, though I saw no lambics or Hoegaardens. But still; its nice to have. I guess I could also buy groceries there.

The only thing that it doesnt ave is internet. The realty guys said that an apartment with internet in it was something Id only be able to find in America, but they later admitted such places existed but were expensive. I think they were just trying to unload a place on me in a hurry. Easiest months wages they ever made, I am sure.Anyway, a few weeks after I get used to the place, I will make such a nuisance of myself theyll be happy to call up the internet provider and getme wired just to shut me up.

Everything is falling together auite well!

EPIC WIN

So, there’s a shindig tonight. Andrew was going to get the booze at the Marjan, sort of the Moroccan Walmart. I’d heard they had good beer there, but I’ve never gotten up the chutzpah to go look. I give Andrew 100 DH and tell him to get me some sort of fancy Christmas beer. You know, something special.

HE COMES BACK WITH A HOEGAARDEN AND A KRIEK LAMBIC.

I put the children of the New Deck’s owner through college by enjoying Hoegaarden. And a Kriek? What could be more Christmasy???

Epic win.

Merry Christmas to All

I’m staying a t a comrades house for a few days to celebrate Christmas. He lives in a 4th floor apartment and has a balcony, and the doors were open last night. So as we were sitting, considering cracking open our Chritsmas presents to ourselves (some tall frosty pints) we hear music drifting up from the street. Someone is singing “Come all ye faithful.”

Now in Morocco, that’s a bit strange to hear. So we went down to check it out. From a distance, you know, just in case. It turns out that there is an international church here, and its members were going around to the homes of foreigners and singing Christmas carols. There were maybe 20 or 30 people and they were singing in French, Arabic, and English. Not simultaneously, I mean. They were actually about 2 blocks away.

It was pretty neat to see and really livened up the Christmas spirit around here.

Later tonight there’s a little get together in the old medina. Then tomorrow, I’m returning to Casablanca to go apartment hunting. This time, though, I’ve put my time in Fes to good use: I’ve used the internet to track down 20 leads on apartments. I don’t think I’ve got a prayer of living near the university, but I’ll cook that bird when I get to it.

So anyway, a Merry Christmas to all! Eat an extra whatever you guys eat at this time of year for me! Pookie, demolish that shrimp plate for me!

Update

My moustache is once again long enough to wax up at the points. Moroccan mothers, hide your Moroccan daughters, lest they be smitten by my 18th century British charms.

Hard times, and they’re getting even harder

So, I am just back from a week in Casablanca! I had a wonderful time, aside from the parts where I starved, pooped my pants, vomited in a dumpster, vomited in a gutter, got locked in an empty hotel, and came down with some crippling illness.

I guess I should start at the beginning. I get to the train station, and tell the taxi driver where I want to go. He spends a half hour assuring me that there’s no hotel down there, and that I should go to a place he knows. Very nice. So we argue for a while, and he calls over a buddy to convince me there’s no hotel down there. The buddy knows where it is though, and he takes me. This set the tone for the whole week.

So I get down to the hotel. It’s built above a gas station. Now let me tell you a little about the geography of Casablanca. In the north, by the ocean, are the nice areas. Very euopean. You can find all the pink golf shirts, skin tight trousers, and giant shiny belt buckles you could ever want. I call it the Jameson district. In the far, far south is the Faculte de Sciences. This neighborhood is like the Los Angeles of the Middle East. Just 5-story apartment blocks as far as the eye can see. In fact,  I can’t even find it on a map of casablanca. Because the only maps I can find are of the tourist areas; so infrequently do europeans go to the southern areas, they don’t even make maps of that part of the city. For some reason, also, near my hotel, there was not a single eatery. I could drink coffee in any of six million cafes, but a hamburger is an elusive treasure. I survived all week on canned tuna fish and hamburger buns.

So the first few days, I wake up around 9 and walk for hours on end looking for apartments. THERE IS NOT A SINGLE APARTMENT FOR RENT IN ALL OF CASABLANCA. If I wanted to BUY an apartment, I’d be ass deep in apartments by now. But rent? I might as well be from the moon for all they can tell. So in one week I found five possible leads, and none panned out. I even went to a realtor, and he looked at me like I was a crazy. Why would I want to rent when I could buy?

So that’s all the apartment hunting I did. Now for the sickness. Sunday I met with a young lady that currently lives in casablanca. She is a lovely young woman with a handsome archetict boyfriend and a nice apartment in the Maarif neighborhood. She loves the Maarif neighborhood. It’s about a two hour walk from the university, so it’s sort of out of my range. I’m considering just getting an apartment there and a bicycle, but bicycles are for hot chicks and vegetarians and dudes with big weird glasses. I am not any of those.

So I meet with her, and we go to a cafe to chat, and about halfway to seeing her apartment, something shakes loose. My insides become totally unglued. I use her restroom, and I thought I was okay, but two blocks after leaving, I fall over in the gutter barfing and pooping. It was an interesting sensation. The taxi driver drops me off who knows where, and it takes me two hours to walk back to the hotel. It was not pleasant.

So, monday and tuesday pass alright. Wednesday is the holiday of 3id, so I decide to just sit around inside all day and read papers. Try and get a leg up on the research, and all. Some dude wrote a 60 page paper rebutting our pyramid argument! It was some impressive hate mail.

So there’s a knock on the door. It’s a cleaning woman, and she says it’s time for me to leave, the hotel is closed for 3id. I tell her I paid for a week, they didn’t say anything about it then, and I’m staying. She says she’ll go check with the manager. And that was the last I heard about it until I ran out of toilet paper and went to the front desk. No one was there and the door to the hotel was locked. I could get out, but if I did, I would be unable to get back in. So there I am, trapped in an empty hotel. I survived on a can of peas and a packet of tang mix. If I had to use the bathroom, I had to hop in the shower afterwords.

So thursday I  wake up and every bone in my body hurts. At first, laying in bed, I think I’m paralyzed, but really it just hurts like hell. So I sit up, and blinded with soreness, and lay back down. Slowly I get in the shower and try and move around a bit, but I feel like I did the day I got back from the camel rides in the sahara. Except, the soreness was not crotch specific. It was whole body specific. And I had a blinding headache.

So Friday, I wake up and I think I’m feeling better. I haven’t eaten much, but I’m in high spirits. I go apartment hunting again. That night, I go to the Acima, the supermarket. The air inside was really stuffy or something, and while I’m at the checkout counter, I start to feel nauseous. Also, a feeling like pins and needles starts to spread from my right shoulder down towards my right hand. I get this feeling sometimes right before I barf. What I didn’t expect, though, was when the tingling got to my hand, all the muscles contracted. My hand just balled itself into a fist, and the fingers were in a really weird position. Like, my thumb was almost touching the back of my pinky, and my fingernails were digging into my wrist. With a lot of concentration, I was able to open my hand for a few seconds before it seized up again. So I just walked slowly down the street, concentrating on how cool and clean the air was, one step at a time, and opening and closing my hand. Eventually it wears away and, back at the hotel, I sink into bed, exhausted.

Now I speculate that all of this was a number of things. A lot of walking (seriously, like 10 kilometers a day in every direction) coupled with lowered nutrition plus maybe I already had a little bit of a cold. All I know is I feel like shit and it scared the crap out of me. Though, apparently, heart attacks are left handed.

Now I am back in Fes for two days to celebrate christmas. More on christmas caroling and 3id in a little while. Suffice it to say I am a little bummed out by all of this. And a little frustrated. And I need to find a washing machine. 

Big Day

So today is my last morning in Fes. In about an hour, I will take my backpack and a grannybag containing a blanket, towel, one pair of shoes, and a water boiling dealie and hop on a train to Casablanca. My advisor there has given me the adress of a cheap hotel near the university, and I will be able to get a cab from the train station to the hotel, and they will have an open room, Insha’allah.

Tomorrow I am meeting a young lady who currently lives in Casablanca. This is super, because I will be able to get an idea from her of what different neighborhoods are like. I’m not sure I will be able to live a 10 minute walk from the university, the way I do in the US. I’m considering just getting a place somewhere nice, then compressing all of the stuff I need to be at the university for into three days, then spending two days at home writing, reading papers, and analyzing data.

Now a lesser man might be nervous about getting on a 5-hour train ride with a load of stuff, finding a hotel in a strange city with fairly rudimentary language skills, and getting everything to work smoothly. When I say a “lesser man”, of course I mean “a lesser man that Superman.” I’m a little worried, but despite that I shall not sing a worried song. However, I won’t be worried long. Anyway, this has the makings of a great adventure! Just like the screen at the beginning of Bubble Bobble. Except I hope I don’t spend 30 hours doing this over the course of new years and then realize that I haven’t really won. Man, bubble bobble was awesome. The end.

PS- Don’t be worried if you don’t hear from me for some odd weeks. I rather suspect hotels in Arab North Africa don’t necessarily have internet connections.

Post Office

So I leave tomorrow. More on that after dinner tonight. Anyway, as I was rounding out my last few things here, I went to mail some postcards. I found that there was a postal slip in the inbox. So what did I do? Well, as I always go when a plan hits even a tiny snag, I panicked. And then I ran to the post office just a few seconds before it closed and got the package.

Handing it to me, the man behind the counter says “Who is your brother?” And I say “I don’t have a… uh, Moses?” That was the correct answer. He was very happy a godless American knew about Aaron and Moses. Actually, I was kind of proud, also.

Anyway, Marci is an awesome. She sent me the Borat! I am still surprised that as a huge, awkward weirdo in Arab North Africa, I’ve never seen it. In her honor, I post these two phrase in arabic that you may need to use:

“Kay-ah-djeb-nee” (I Like!)

“Bshaal?” (How Much?)

I would look up how to demand tears from a gypsy woman, but I have already packed my dictionary.