Leaving the Nest: An Expatriate's Survival Guide

Happy Happy, Joye Joye!!

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:20:00 +0000

I know that I usually reserve Wednesdays for my weekly update and how my online income project is going, but I decided to share one of my fruits of that labor with you instead. And any of you who are smokers, and would like to get that little "you are probably going to die" annoyance you have in the back of your head whenever you light up, out of your head; you may want to read this post!

I have been a pack to a pack and a half a day smoker for about 20 years now. I know, it's stupid. It got to the point where I was waking up every morning and coughing up horrifying black material in the shower. This was my personal wake-up call that I needed to get rid of these smelly, dirty, and deadly little torches I was carrying between my fingers all day. The birth of my twin girls solidified this to the point where action was made in the form of trying to quit cold turkey in the beginning of this May. I was a prick. 20 years of nicotine infused blood was something that my body didn't really want to say goodbye to with any comfort. I found myself snapping at people close to me as well as clients I was working for. And I am not the kind of person snaps that anyone, in fact my laid-back personality is something that is always endeared me to others.

So after about a day, I found myself running to the market for another maliciously underpriced (about one dollar US) pack of Marlboro reds. I apologized to everyone around me who I threatened to stab the day prior, and tried to come up with another way to kill this smoking habit. Patty and I went into San Jose that weekend, and I decided to give the nicotine patch a try. I thought that maybe if I came up with a hybrid rehabilitation method by using the patch smoking a bit more herb for the oral fixation, I would see more success. Nope. My first hole in that plan was supplementing more herb. Trying to code a complex point-of-sale database while stoned did lead to some pretty hilarious results, but there was too fine a line between something funny and something I could lose my job over for me to continue this way. That, and the patch just made me itch and didn't really reduce my cravings at all. So I was back to the drawing board with my Marlboro reds yet again...

So I did some research, and I found out about the new phenomenon called electronic cigarettes. These are little devices that consist of a battery, and atomizer, and a mouthpiece that contains nicotine infused liquid. They were invented in China during the first half of the last decade, and they are now beginning to see some worldwide use. They really intrigued me because they utilized water vapor as opposed to smoke as both a medium and the only exhaled byproduct. I scoured all over YouTube and the Internet for information on them, and eventually found a forum maintained by people who really enjoy and swear by them. There were literally hundreds of posts from people who were lifelong smokers who completely kicked the habit by using these devices. And there were also an abundant amount of threads dedicated to modding and reviewing them in a way that this was obviously becoming one of these people's favorite pastimes.

So I lurked for a little bit, and watched all the reviews on YouTube that I could for the various models (and there are several), and I eventually settled on the Joye 510. The biggest challenge for me in ordering anything online is my location. Costa Rican customs enforcement is world famous for its corruption and frequent ability to "lose" incoming packages that are addressed to people from English-speaking countries. So I bought my new stogie from a US-based vendor, and had the package sent to my mother's house where she would repackage it to make it look like a child's birthday present. I was amazed at the insane variety of flavors and nicotine strengths that you could choose from when ordering these puppies. I decided to get a sample of about 20 different flavors at the highest nicotine level, with the plan being to eventually wean myself down to the zero nicotine level strength liquid over the course of a couple years.

So my package took about a month altogether to get here, but opening it up was like Christmas day for me. I charged up the battery, loaded the cartridge with some Dr Pepper flavored e-liquid, pressed the button and took a long drag.

Absolutely brilliant...

It feels like what smoking should feel like, and with the strength of the e-liquid that I use, five or six puffs still gives me that goofy head spinning nicotine rush that you get when you go several hours without a cigarette. The flavors come out so beautifully, and the vapor leaves absolutely no smell whatsoever. In the short time that I've been using these, I have not had a single craving for an analog cigarette the entire time. The Joye 510 is famous for hitting more like a bong than a cigarette, and I can definitely attest to that. So my new habit comes with a lot more advantages than my old one such as:

1.) I can and have smoked in a movie theater during a movie as well as on a bus and my favorite bookstore. And yeah...I can smoke WHILE taking a shower in the morning.
2.) I feel all of the benefits of quitting smoking like the return of my sense of smell and taste, and my physical endurance has risen sharply as well.
3.) I can pick a flavor according to my mood or occasion. Cappuccino in the morning, Dr. Pepper when I am out and about, and jasmine when Dr. Girlfriend and I are watching TV in bed together...(yes I can smoke in bed now too!)
4.) It just looks frikkin cool when the green LED lights up whenever I take a drag.
5.) I can smell my baby girls and I don't smell like an ashtray anymore.
6.) I am thinking of starting an entirely new blog based on the crazy ass lucid dreams I have when I smoke these things before going to sleep.

I can't say enough good things about this little gizmo. I believe that it has literally saved both my health, and possibly my life. It is a way more enjoyable habit than smoking cigarettes, and I can't recommend it enough to anyone I know who is still chained to those stinky coffin nails. If this gadget is something which you can use, I already did all the research as far as prices and websites that sell them. If you live in the United States or Canada, I highly recommend these guys. They have the lowest prices outside of ordering from China directly, and they have a huge variety of models and flavors of e-liquid to chose from. If you live in the UK or parts of Western Europe, rumor has it that these are the guys to turn to. But no matter where you go to order these things, I urge you to do so. It's nice to wake up in the morning and not feel like you are dying....

And to wrap it up, here is a video of Katherine Heigl sharing her e-cig with David Letterman just to show you that I am not making this up!

Thank You So Much, Nicked-Out Chinese Inventors!!

Tuesday Travel With Vice Magazine: Filipino Feed Lot / Soup No. 5

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 11:20:00 +0000

I think one of the biggest challenges facing anyone who wants to travel the world is wrestling with the reluctance of one's own appetite. If you really think about it, a lot of the culinary staples in American and other Western diets are pretty disgusting. Cheese for example is something you never see many people from Asian countries eating because the thought of leaving cow's milk to rot for months is pretty damn gross. And the thought of taking the most undesirable meaty portions of an animal that you normally would feed a dog with, and making a red tubular concoction out of it isn't very appetizing when you put your mind to it either.

One of the features of this blog is still "international eats" even though my lazy ass has skipped it for quite a few months. And in that feature we will explore more specific examples of where cultures digress when it comes to food. But for those who are curious, you can check out my first (and only) installment of this feature here.

Luckily for me Costa Rican food is actually more like a milder version of Mexican cuisine, so my spoiled American palate wasn't too traumatized when I started eating like a local here. It's mostly beans and rice, some kind of grilled animal, and garlic and lemon seasoned slaw with lots of corn tortillas. However, ex-pats and other world travelers in places like Asia and Africa have a little bit more internal wrestling to do with themselves when they sit down for a locally prepared meal.

In this week's episode, Vice correspondent Ivar Berglin travels to the Philippines and decides to sample some of the local delicacies from one of the more "authentic" restaurants in Manila. Filipino cuisine, much like other cultures and Asia, prize freshness and beauty of presentation above most other aspects of food preparation. Ivar finds that out himself when he is asked to go retrieve and have butchered his own chicken for one of the restaurant's specialties. Despite the unique way it was prepared, one cannot deny that the chicken will be very fresh....

Mind you this video is not for the squeamish or culinarily closed minded

Mother's Day in Costa Rica

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:21:00 +0000

Well I hope everybody had a great weekend, mine was a bit too busy to actually have time to sit down and enjoy it, but I'm looking down the barrel of this next workday with a little bit more confidence. This week is gonna be a little bit more active than most because I felt the itch to get some writing done finally. Kudos all you fellow bloggers who manage to do this seven days a week, 365 days a year, I don't think most readers realize how exhausting it can be to come up with something original to write about every single day. My hat is definitely off to you!

Today is Mother's Day in Costa Rica, and my fiancée Paty ( a.k.a. Dr. Girlfriend) gets to celebrate her second one of the year. One drawback of being the alpha male in a multicultural household is that the incorporation of two different cultures' holidays means you better keep one eye on the calendar at all times lest you get the dreaded "how could you forget?!" conversation no man ever wants to have. And it also sucks that they don't have Halloween down here, and I really wish the gringo population here would get together and market it a little better. After all we do celebrate Cinco de Mayo in the United States, why not Halloween in Costa Rica? But I digress...

They celebrated a little differently down here in that Mother's Day is actually a national holiday that everybody gets off from work. It's a day when you see entire families in the parks and plazas just walking around together, enjoying the weather while greeting friends. I couldn't help but fall in love with the way, Tico culture puts family in such an important place in their national identity, from the time I first started walking around and exploring down here. Whenever you see a family in the park, it's almost always the entire family right up to the most elderly in their wheelchairs.

The way we treat our old people in the United States is abhorrent, bordering upon a human rights violation in my opinion. If you don't believe me, take a day trip to a nursing home. So one of the things that I love about this place is the fact that the elderly have the right to die at home surrounded by family, and aren't left in institutionalized human dustbins once they become a "burden". I am actually comforted by the notion that if I am unfortunate enough to live past my bladder's shelf life, I will most likely be in one of my children's houses, playing video games and trying to stay as intoxicated as possible.

And the mother of my children (80% of them anyway) is who I have to thank for this. She gave me four gifts that I will always be grateful for in the form of our ridiculously gorgeous kids, and the way she has kept her beautiful heart the same the entire five years she and I have been together. This is a person who gets up at 4:30 AM every day, wakes and bathes and dresses four human beings, then walks with all of them to the local bakery because she likes that the kids eat their bread and tortillas just as they come out of the oven. She then comes back, feeds all four aforementioned humans, cleans up after them, and then wakes up her man with a kiss as he mutters and swears all the way to the shower. Mind you I'm not swearing or muttering at her, it's actually the impending work day that I am voicing my hostility towards. At least she finds it funny...

Throughout the day, she reads, plays, entertains, spends all of her time with the kids. She never takes a break. She never busts into my office demanding help. And she actually comes in and rubs MY shoulders when my own work day is getting a bit stressful. There is no possible way that I can ever be more grateful for a woman in my life than this one. And I am also thankful that I was given the foresight and the experience to truly appreciate her as much as she deserves to be appreciated. I will treat her like a queen until my last breath in this world. I try my absolute best to give her rest whenever she needs it as well as to help with the four very active kids in our lives. Time alone is definitely at a premium, but every once in a while circumstance or necessity permits us to take a little trip together into San Jose without the kids, and we always make sure to enjoy to the fullest. This is probably for the best, because our Pisces/Scorpio natures and her Catholic upbringing usually means that time spent alone we've each other can very easily result in more children. We are kind of wanting to hold off on that for the next 20 or so years until the current kids can start picking up that slack.

But I absolutely love this woman. Even though we are 13 years apart in age, I often times feel as though I've met a kindred spirit in her. She is just as curious about the natural world and just as passionate about her ideals as I am about mine. It is to her that I dedicate this blog post on my fifth Costa Rican Mother's Day, it is to her that I dedicate every single noble action I can make in this life as well.

I'm wondering if I should call and wish my own mother a happy Costa Rican Mother's Day.... Yeah I probably should. Maybe the allure of having two mothers days a year will be too much for her to resist, and she can finally move down here permanently....

An Open Letter To America

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 11:20:00 +0000

Our country was kicked in the balls last Friday by Standard and Poor's downgrade of our credit status as a country. Were still at AA plus which isn't too bad (seems to work okay for New Zealand), and the other international credit agencies still have us at a AAA status. So no, it's not an instant thunderous crash to national bankruptcy. But it is a slap in the mouth that the United States cannot afford to ignore, and it signals the need to stop our idiotic family feud that has made us the laughingstock of the international community. This stupid liberal versus conservative nonsense will literally destroy us as a nation if we keep going down this fool’s path. No more fighting over the wheel while we are around so many icebergs.

I will confess to being guilty of adding my own fuel to the fire in the form of things that I've written in the past and the times when my mood and sensibilities make me feel compelled to add my opinion to the mix. I have very close and deep-seated beliefs politically, and in the last 15 or so years I felt the need to take sides against what I saw as a movement to turn the United States into a fascist theocracy. But on the other side of the fence, there was no doubt conservative counterparts to myself who felt the same way. They saw my side of the argument as being for some kind of Marxist/Communist takeover of our beloved democracy. Well I am here to tell you my friends, the egg has been on both of our faces because neither argument bears out the true facts.

And those diehard, like it or not facts are this: both of our sides are right, and both of our sides are wrong. And they're a lot of places of agreement that we have that never seem to make the airwaves that are full of the hot air that keep both of us at each other's throats. We are being divided and conquered by our very selves. Never before in the history of nations has there been a time when a country willfully destroyed itself from the inside out as we seem fixated upon doing. The only way to find ourselves out of this and back to where we belong is the hurry up and find out where we agree and go from there. Through talking and research, I myself find quite a few points that I'd like to share right now, and I'm sure other thinking people could come up with even more.

Both of us love this country immensely, and both are dedicated to its original ideals of liberty and equality.
Neither of us want the legitimately needy should be completely without a social safety net to catch them when there's no one else to turn to.
Both of us believe in the freedom of the individual, and the notion that through hard work and perseverance, they can make their life better through their own means.
Your real-life typical conservative would be the first person in the room to knock a man's teeth out should he suggest the United States follow the path anywhere close to that of Nazi Germany.
Your real-life typical liberal would be the first person in the room to tell a Leninist or Maoist to sit down and shut up should they start spouting off red communist nonsense.
The wing nuts on both sides, the extremist freaks that is, make up a small percentage of either side’s overall camp. But just as the crazy yelling homeless man sitting in the back of a city bus, they somehow get all of the attention and are labeled the "typical conservative” or "typical liberal/progressive”.
In our own families, there are people we love with all our hearts who are of opposite political affiliation, and it doesn't matter one bit to us.
Neither side wants to watch the beauty of nature destroyed.
Both of our sides listen to Led Zeppelin and Johnny Cash.
Both of our camps were devastated at the loss of life during the September 11 attacks that seem to be the catalyst for our new mindset as a nation.

And these are just 10 that I could pull out of my head right now. As far apart as our ideologies may seem sometimes, they are just different roads to the same destination that both sides want. A peaceful and secure place to raise our kids where freedom of the individual and the freedom to navigate one's life as they see fit is the kind of country we all want for ourselves and each other. I don't think we ever needed to be a superpower, and should that status ever go away, our innermost values as Americans won't permit us to miss it very much. Sure we are competitive as a culture, but we are also disarmingly laid-back when the situation allows for it.

Digging ourselves out of this hole that we fought ourselves and to won't be easy. But the first step would be to turn off that damn noise and start talking to each other as people and communities. This is how our country started. Ideas were shared, compromises were made, and a unified 13 colonies rose up against an apparent juggernaut and sent it packing across the Atlantic. In 2011, another wolf is at the gate, and we ourselves put it there. The noise put it there. The noise I'm talking about is from the mouths of people who profit in our conflict with each other. Media figures like Limbaugh, Maddow, Beck, Olbermann, Hannity, and Maher have told us what to think about the other side and have warned us of the danger in their ultimate victory. All of them are full of shit. Because there is no ultimate victory, we live in a republic. The founders of this country set it up to where one side doesn't really have enough time at the helm to screw things up so badly that they can't be fixed. Our history shows this time and time again.

The next step would be to go back to our roots as a democratic republic and give the states more of the authority that has seemed to slip away from them over time, more so since the Great Depression. Let "red states" be red states, and let "blue states" be blue states. If it's not in the Constitution, then it goes to the states, period. I have my own feelings on abortion that I won't share here, but it is not mentioned in the Constitution. That means it should be a state issue, and if the residents of that state disagree, then there are plenty of other states who feel the same way they do where they can move. This is just one example of a single issue that both sides seem to have a disconnect on that can be completely nullified by just giving the authority to the individual states. Sure this might result in a mass migration to and from the different states that seem to jibe within individuals own value system, but in the long run it would be for the best. Because I feel that we could better come to mutual agreement a lot easier if everyone felt they were permitted to live the way they saw fit to live.

The third step would be to end both of these idiotic useless wars that we have entangled ourselves in and have not made us any bit safer than we were on 10 September 2001. 10 years, guys. Time’s up. These operations are money pits that are making us broker by the day to the tune of about $1 billion a week. We went about this stupidly in that we did not raise taxes to accommodate a 10 year war, and in fact we lowered taxes for the highest income brackets during a time when we apparently needed more laser guided smart bombs than usual. This was a dumb move. Both sides need to acknowledge this as it is a major contributor to both our deficits and our debts.

The fourth step has to be a combination of both real spending cuts and real tax increases. We need to find every able-bodied person that is on the welfare rolls unneededly and cut them off. Our recent actions against illegal immigrants means that there are a lot of fruit picking jobs out there. From here on out, anyone caught trying to get federal funds as a source of workless income should be charged with a crime. Then they can go to jail and pick fruit. At the same time, the upper income brackets need to start paying their fair share in the form of taxes and realize that the tax break they got from Bush came with a heavy price that they need to help repay. Their luxury came at all of our expense, but we should withhold our anger and trust them to do the right thing for the sake of the country that gave them the freedom to be so successful.

The fifth, final, and most difficult step would be for the United States to completely purge its government of every single last sitting congressperson, senator, and president that is currently holding office right now. They are responsible for fanning this flame we have found ourselves in with their snake oil salesman promises every few years that none of them ever keep. To my conservative friends I pose this question: for eight years you had the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of our government in your control. Why is abortion still legal? To my liberal friends I ask this question: we had both houses of Congress and shiny bright new young president for two years. Why is our concentration camp in Guantánamo Bay still open? All of them need to go. And they need to be replaced with people who have proven track records of making a difference for the better in their communities. Whether they be respected deacons of the church in the more conservative districts, or a devoted activist and progressive thinker in the more liberal ones, we have to start electing people who we can believe in by their actions and not just their words from now on.

I know that I am just a blogger with a modest audience in my own little corner of the Internet, but being outside of my country looking in, my heart aches sometimes. And it is ached for a long time. The pain started when I saw people jumping for their lives out of the windows of the World Trade Center, it started to hurt worse when I saw our clumsy and misdirected response, and the knowledge that we violated our own treaties by utilizing torture on prisoners was what made me too angry to stay on American soil anymore. But most of the people I love are still there, as is my deepest ingrained cultural identity. I will always be an American, no matter where I decide to hang my hat. I believe in freedom and a hand of friendship extended to all who will shake it. But the mother country really needs to get it's shit together....

Bastard Costa Rican Wildlife: All These Damn Ants!!

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:20:00 +0000

Living in the tropics has its ups and downs. Sure you get nice weather year-round, gorgeous scenery, beautifully exotic locals, and cheap produce. But the downfalls can be many as well and they can range from moderately annoying to out right infuriating. Mother nature hasn't really been subjugated in these parts of the world, nor is she likely to be any time soon. So we denizens of the tropics have to put up with things like freakishly powerful hurricanes, volcanoes, predatory animals that take cues from stories like Jaws and Jurassic Park, and the bugs... The fucking bugs...

A few weeks ago I wrote about a friend of mine named Geoff who lives somewhere in my work desk. He and I never really hang out that much, but he shows up every once in a while to make sure that the insect population isn't completely overrunning my office. Well I haven't seen Geoff in about two weeks, and I am beginning to fear the worst. And as a result of his unexpected absence, I once again find myself competing for my own food with these dickhead little ants that are damn near close to making me want to blow up my own house.

Here's a typical lunch scene from the last two weeks: Dr. Girlfriend walks in with a great big beautiful plate of "arroz con bistek" (fried rice with strips of sirloin) and all the delicious Latin trimmings like fried plantain and yucca. Basically rib sticking deliciousness. I thank her profusely for her kindness while I fire up a freshly downloaded TV show or movie. She sets the plate on the table behind me and I take a moment to visually savor every single step she takes back into the house (my office is outside). In the short time that elapsed between her beginning the walk, and the abrupt cutoff of the angel chorus and white beam of light from the sky that was shining on her rear end when she closed the door, my plate of food is crawling with these teeny tiny little black fuckfaced ants.

there are so many of them that you would think that she had set the plate down in the middle of the freaking nest of them, but she didn't. There wasn't a single ant on that table 2 min. prior. It took only 2 min. for my food, utensils, and glass of fruit juice to be completely covered by these teeny tiny little ants. I don't know what kind they are, but they are about the size of a grain of beach sand and apparently 1 billion of them live in my house and office. And yet, as many as they are, you never see them anywhere until you place some kind of food on a surface that they can get to. And it doesn't matter what it is, the little fuckers will literally eat anything.

I have small children in my house, so I'm reluctant to go on a good old American style killing spree with a can of bug spray. In the environmental laws down here are such that what passes for exterminators are little more than herbal advisors. Very few insecticide chemicals are available without a hugely expensive permit, if even available at all. Being the tree hugger at heart that I am, I guess part of me sees the value in this. Except of course during breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late-night munchy time. I literally have to hold whatever plate I am eating out of in my lap, and keep whatever beverage I'm drinking placed in a random location on my desk every few minutes.

Geoff needs to get his ass back here...

Something From Nothing: Amazon Rocks!

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:20:00 +0000

Hi everyone, it's time for another installment of something from nothing where I explore the realistic ways of making money online that don't involve you investing anything from yourself other than time. I am by no means a "guru", and I am pretty much stumbling along at this as a skeptical n00b still. Whatever I find that works, I will be posting it here so you can be shared by everyone!

I have decided to finally apply legitimate and sustaining effort at Amazon Mechanical Turk program since the last time I reported on it, and so far my Christmas budget has increased to another US$123.00! even though this is not the holy grail method that we're all looking for that could see that we replace a day job, it makes for one heck of a Christmas money project because everything you make as far as income with this program can be used directly towards any purchases at Amazon.com. Being that I live overseas and the majority of my family, companies like this that deliver (and maybe gift wrap during the holiday season, I don't know) are my method of choice for sending gifts to family.

The tasks themselves are fairly simple, and some of them have been pretty challenging like English and math aptitude tests that you can take for two dollars a piece. The only pitfalls that a user can really fall into is not completing a task on time or incorrectly, and having their "hit" ratio fall below a certain point. Having this ratio fall can preclude you from some of the higher dollar tasks, and make it so that you have to do the 20 and $.30 tasks until you can build it back up. But the good thing there for new users is the fact that Amazon does start you out at 100%, so there is no initial struggle to get the ratio of up to the point where you are making decent money.

I can't say enough good things about this program because it is so easy to do and it is hosted by one of the most reliable companies on the planet. It's free to join, and the tasks are available 24 hours a day while constantly updating with new ones. The only way you could make a sustainable and livable income off of this would be if you are living in a country like Bangladesh or Zaire, but if I could make $123 in two weeks and continue to sustain the effort on it (roughly 3 hours a day), by Christmas time I should have some serious Yuletide digital ammo to blast at the people I love.

I have abandoned all 60 of my bux sites, save for four who have an impeccable reputation that I have researched. Clicking spam links was starting to hurt my brain, and I couldn't help but feel a little dirty while doing it. And that's pretty weird considering all of the nasty smut that exists on yon Interwebz...

This week I'm going to be exploring the different freelance writing opportunities, and reporting back with the results next Wednesday. Until then make sure you hit up Amazon for this program, because in my experience something that works this well eventually gets closed off for free registration after a while.

Tuesday Travel With Vice Magazine: The Holy Thugs of Venezuela

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:20:00 +0000

Okay so the multi-month bender of drunken American history is now over, and were gonna focus elsewhere now to the rarely seen parts of faraway places in our world. Caracas, Venezuela is the most violent capital city of any country in the world. I was actually surprised to hear this myself as I have never been to Venezuela, but I thought that because they had such an iron fist dictator the crime rate would at least the relatively low. But apparently not because last year alone, 14,000 murders were committed in Venezuela with a majority of them happening in the capital city.

As a result of this ever present violent atmosphere, their society has evolved to the point where criminals and thugs have actually joined the ranks of their normally well behaved Catholic saints. The use of a plethora of saints in some Catholic countries satisfies the leftover itch from the people's original conversion from pagan and animistic traditions. This is very clearly seen in the religions of Voodoo and Santeria, and other different takes of the Catholic religion that exist in predominantly lesser developed areas of the world. Venezuela has its own rich and colorful take on the traditional Catholic faith as well by incorporating gangsters and murderers amongst its several "courts" of sainthood.

This episode, the vice crew travels to Caracas and interviews both worshipers and local sociologists to get a really good picture of how deep this unusual tradition has become in the short time it has existed. I think you'll really enjoy this is much as I have, because it is absolutely fascinating....

Even though comparisons to Robin Hood have been made, one can't help but wonder if this practice will change in upcoming generations an end to its thus far endless violence....

Monday Post for Norway, and a New Poll!

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:20:00 +0000

Well I made it through that bitter week with my sanity intact and my tear ducts completely exercised for the year. And that's all I really want to write about that...

I am righteously pissed off about what happened the beautiful country of Norway this weekend. Being of Norwegian descent myself, I feel especially punched in the gut knowing that the perpetrator was Norwegian himself. Angry young man can do stupid things when they get enough of ideological hot air pumps between their ears by people who talk out of their asses for a living. As more information from Oslo comes in, it becomes more and more apparent that he did this out of some need to satisfy his far right wing conservative Christian view of the world.

But what he didn't know (and all dipshit extremist sociopaths seem to miss out on this one) was that whatever position he may have had on things, nobody cares. He shot innocent children who were spending a day in camp on one of the most beautiful islands in Scandinavia. His sociological and political views could solve every single problem humanity has, but now because he's a murdering lowlife cockroach, humanity could give two shits what his views are. Societal change has never, is never, and will never be enacted because some dickhead decides to get violent one day. Nobody looks at the rubble and the mangled bodies and says to themselves "WOW….well, you know this here bomber has a pretty good point, we ARE a bit too liberal in our ways…”. Because that would just be stupid…

Oh wait….

One of the most debated and repeated quotes since the 9/11 Attacks™ has been one from Benjamin Franklin who said:

"Those who would exchange their liberty for security, deserve neither, and will lose both”.

And I really hope that the Norwegian people take this quote to heart in the upcoming weeks and months. We Americans didn't heed Franklin's warning, and now the noose of the police state is slipping ever tighter around the neck of the average American citizen. Norway has been one of the most peaceful and truly free nations since the end of World War II. In fact, nowhere in Norway has seen violence like this since World War II. I really hope they don't throw it away because some religious freak decided to butcher a bunch of innocents in order to get some harebrained political message across.

And speaking of harebrained political messages… I have been thinking about restarting my other political blog more and more lately. More for an outlet to be able to vent on some of the stupidity (like this Norwegian tragedy) than anything else. My only concern is offending those who might not share my particular leanings and views as some of them could be viewed as extreme as well. But I don't think violence is the answer to any problem, especially when humor and sarcasm works so much better in the big picture anyway. For those of never seen it, it has been mothballed since 2009 when I came to the conclusion that neither Democrat nor Republican in the American political system represent the needs of its people. It's a shell game, a puppet show, WWE Smackdown performed by people in suits. And I think the new material for the blog would represent this. If you're interested in reading some of my ravings they can be viewed here. And if you think the blog is worth saving or needs to be deleted for the greater good, go ahead and place your vote at the poll I just posted today!

Looking forward to a great week!

Backstory Postponed...

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:20:00 +0000

I have been trying for the better part of the night to conjure up the humor to continue with part 12 of my back story. Unfortunately however even though the story is from memory, I cannot really find my sense of humor very easily tonight. Not enough to make a silly mistake in my life seem funny at any rate. This isn't a very good week for me, and it's been a July tradition of mine since 2007. My oldest son Joshua turned 12 on Wednesday, and he also shares his birthday with my mother who I did at least get to see this year. But I haven't seen my oldest boy and five years, and it makes the days from July 15 to sometime in the late 20s pretty hard to deal with.

Because of bureaucratic snafus on both the US and Costa Rican ends of the immigration spectrum, my residency here has been in a state of limbo. Even though I have three children here with my fiancée (my youngest son and my twin girls), I have technically overstayed my tourist visa to the tune of about four years. In late 2007 just before my youngest boy was born, a new law was passed that stated anyone who stayed past the 90 day tourist visa would have to pay $100 per day that they have overstayed as well as be banned from reentering the country for 5-10 years. This was focused mostly towards American ex-pats out of anger for Bush inflicting the new CAFTA treaty upon them despite their declared neutral status.

At the time I was taking care of a pregnant fiancée and her three-year-old son (the greatest stepson a man could ever want) and I obviously didn't have 5000+ dollars and five years to be away from my new family. So I got what I thought at the time was a decent lawyer and we worked out the details for my residency and eventual citizenship here. But I was not to leave the country until that was squared away, otherwise I would face a fine and the deportation without any way of defending myself. Here in Latin America, they don't follow the English common law like most English-speaking nations do. They follow the Napoleonic code, and that usually means guilty until presumed innocent if you tick them off bad enough. So I didn't have a choice, I had to wait out whatever bureaucratic process was laid before me before I could ever think of leaving and being able to return again.

It has been four years since we hired that incompetent lawyer. And in that four years I've seen the man maybe six times and have had to sign three papers. The last time I saw him was about two weeks ago when Paty and I went into San Jose, and as always, he claimed progress but that we still had time to wait for the courts to work there snail paced magic.

I missed everything from HERE..

During this time, I have tried to stay as close to my son as possible through the Internet and over the phone. But five years is a long time. And I have listened to his voice go from sweet innocent little child, to a crackly voiced alpha male preteen but have never had the chance to hug him in that entire time. I have lost five of the most magical years of my child's life and I will never get them back. Because he is already an amazing person, he tells me all the time that he forgives me and that he understands why I have had to stay. He knows that to leave would be essentially abandoning people who depend on me, and that's not what a man does.

to HERE

I take comfort in knowing that he has a very happy life with his mother, stepfather, and four brothers. And you never catch him in a bad mood, and he is just plain naturally happy. That takes away from the sting a little bit, but during this week as with the last for July's everything just piles on emotionally.

So I can't comfortably tell a funny story about my life this Friday. Because this week, as far as I'm concerned, any event that happened to me here, was just time that I should've been spending with Joshua... I'll be better next week, and I thank you all for your patience,

Something From Nothing: "Bux" Sites Blues

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:20:00 +0000

So the quest continues, and in the last month I have explored several different methods of making an online income for yourself starting out with nothing at all. Some of these methods have actually borne fruit for me, or at least they appear to as up to now, nothing at all has hit my PayPal or bank accounts from any of these companies. One of the avenues that I've been exploring have been websites called "bux" sites, and these are paid to click websites that offer the user anywhere from a fraction of a cent to a penny for clicking advertising links that they have displayed. The main purpose of these sites is to provide search engine optimization for advertisers as well is a steady flow of traffic that they can place bets upon like a roulette wheel for their affiliate sales.

Well, about a month in and 60 of these sites on my handy dandy spreadsheet that I use everyday, I am up to about $200 in theoretical revenue. Not bad on the surface, but I am finding more and more that many of these are also scams in that they have several flaming hoops that users have to jump through in order to receive their payments. One of these sites has me clocked in at about $20 in revenue, but in order to receive that via PayPal, I have to make an "investment" in the site itself first. You read that correctly, I have to pay them in order to receive my payment. Herp derp!

As there are so many of them, and each with their own individual policies, I can't make any recommendations for any particular site at this time until at least one of them actually places currency where it belongs....

BUT! These little Ponzi scheme websites might actually prove useful in the future when I have built enough revenue to actually start affiliate marketing in earnest. Despite the stinginess they show to the poor sods who log in and click spam links all day with the hope of making a few extra dollars a month, they treat the advertisers who pay them like gold and can guarantee up to 100,000 individual hits on your affiliate page for prices as ridiculous as $20. The problem is that those 100,000 hits that you get are most likely coming from people in less developed countries who are sitting in Internet cafés hoping to score enough money through paid to click sites to be able to afford a bag of rice that month. So in essence advertising your Forex and stock investment affiliate programs would pretty much be like pissing in the wind. But I have some ideas... More on that later.

Another outlet that I've discovered through the help of my good friend, the brilliant Astronomy Pirate was the Amazon Mechanical Turk program. This is a program hosted by Amazon that pays users anywhere from a penny to $4.00 for completing simple tasks posted by various companies. These run the gambit from filling out surveys, taking digital pictures, participating in online focus groups, or writing an article for submission to their directories. So far in the two weeks I've used it, I am up to $17.80. Amazon lets you transfer your earnings to either your own personal checking account (not a savings account) or towards purchases at Amazon.com. This is by no means any kind of get rich program, but if I had approached this with some more ferocity, I'm sure my earnings would be a lot higher than what they are. I highly recommend this program for people who may be one of make some extra cash for Christmas presents this year, and the fact that your earnings can go towards purchases at Amazon make it perfect for that scenario.

The Varolo program that I recommended in my last installment of this feature isn't really panning out for me because I don't like to bug my friends and family. Sure, the only thing they have to do is watch some video commercials, but it's still smells too much like Amway to me for me to put any kind of huge efforts into building my "village". The purpose of this venture is to make something from nothing without being a pain in the ass to the people I love. Multilevel marketing is just that, a pain in the ass. Except of course if you are one of the people who came up with your individual product or service that you decide to market this way. No, I am going to do this with my bare hands and without trying to convince my grandmother that watching a 30 second Snickers commercial could lead to wealth and prosperity...

Next week I will keep you posted on my fight to start actually receiving the money owed to me by these bux sites. And as soon as I get payment from one of them, I will recommend them as a way to start the chain reaction that may very well lead to our mutual financial independence! Because if/when the train comes in....everybody rides!

Tuesday with VBS.tv: Drunk History: Ben Franklin Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:20:00 +0000

As I said yesterday, this will be the final installment of Drunk History that I make for a while. The purpose of teaming up with VBS.tv and its content was to explore lesser seen and lesser-known parts of our world. But I couldn't help but get carried away with this hilarious series as every single episode cracked me up like the first time I ever watched a Trailer Park Boys episode. That said, I have most certainly save the best for last with this episode.

Benjamin Franklin is one of the most beloved and eccentric of the American founding fathers. But like most of the other founders of the United States, he was a complete weirdo. Sure he invented things that we still use today and was one of the more brilliant voices behind the American Revolution, but he was also a complete letch. It has been said that his years long presence in the French court as a diplomat resulted in more illegitimate children than Blackbeard and Ramses II combined. Were he alive today, he would be scandalized to the point of obscurity before he could invent something like zip codes. There would be literally hundreds of "I'm sorry" speeches to press conferences with Mrs. Franklin looking on with a disgusted face next to him. But we didn't have such a sensationalist media back then, and things like this weren't discussed all in polite company.

So in this episode of drunk history, Jack Black returns as Ben Franklin, and writer and amateur historian Eric Falconer returns with yet another drunken attempt at recanting a tale and Franklin's life. Enjoy!!

I had to use the YouTube link for this one due to the VBS.tv site being momentarily down, but this one allows you to at least buffer the video a bit to prevent that irritating stop/start phenomenon inherent to VBS's media player.

My Take on the News Corp Scandal

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:20:00 +0000

Now normally I would reserve most of my political rants to my other blog, but I've since somewhat let that go to the wayside in the interest of not appearing too rabid for friends and family who follow me. I will admit that my political compass tends to lean towards Left Libertarianism (yes it does exist…read your Chomsky), but this story should affect everyone of all political persuasions because regardless of where your political pendulum swings, we all hate corruption and dirty tricks. At least I do.

For the last 30 or so years, the top 1% of the most rich and powerful have amassed resources and companies, and have influenced governments with complete impunity and pretty much no consequences. Companies like BP can completely destroy an ecosystem and then turn around and get an apology from the elected officials of that country. Union Carbide can kill 8,000 people with bug spray due to gross negligence (and no regulations) and only have seven of it’s middle managers serve two-year sentences almost 30 years after the crime. I know that the US and the rest of the civilized world is still obsessed with terrorism, but I would submit to you that the bigger threat to freedom and well-being is the multinational corporation. There are more terrorists wearing Armani than turbans in this world, and they are capable of doing far much more damage.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is one of those organizations. And they have systematically worked their tentacles into the governments and policies of almost all English-speaking countries in the world through their media. In the United States, we have an organization called Fox News that has completely muddied our political waters through blatant misinformation campaigns and underhanded tactics. Fox News is run by the very same man who was in charge of Richard Nixon's presidential campaign, Roger Ailes. And he is the perfect man for the job. Now because of he and Murdoch's influence, we have a huge swath of our population that literally has no idea what is going on in the world. And what they think they know is based solely through the prism of hard right wing conservative ideology. Thanks, dicks…

I have family members and friends who still believe there were weapons of mass distraction in Iraq, and that Obama is a communist-fascist-Islamic terrorist sleeper agent who hates God but strangely also wants to impose sharia law on the American population. This is why nothing is getting done in my country. Ideology and a hyper-inflated narcissistic version of patriotism has to come into play with every decision that government makes. And yes, it is the individual Fox viewer who is to blame for not checking facts on their own, or opening their minds to the possibility that they could be drinking ideological Kool-Aid. But as guilty as the your average Fox viewer is for neglecting to research things on their own, I place more blame on the purveyors of BS themselves and the talking heads in their employ.

So I've been giggling with every arrest over in Britain, and I really hope that our brain dead Department of Justice seriously looks into the activities of news Corp. in the United States as well. The arty have their fingers dug way too deep in our political process as it was George W. Bush's own cousin working for Fox who announced his victory in Florida long before truckloads of Gore votes suddenly "disappeared". I have a feeling that if they actually do their job, the FBI will uncover things about Fox news that will make the British phone hacking scandal look like an episode of Punk’d. And when/if that happens, I can't wait to see the white washing and accusations of "liberal persecution" coming from their biological hot air factories. It's about time for this comic book villain-esque media conglomerate to get called out and exposed for what it is. We'll see though….

So this week I am making up for lost time yet again, and I'd like to thank the patience of all my readers. The tooth is doing much better, and I can focus a little better now that I am not medicated anymore. I missed my 20 year high school reunion this weekend, but thankfully have already reunited with most of the people that I miss from those days through Facebook. I am really digging this 21st century quite a bit, because even from a steamy jungle and Central America, I can still peek in on the world and the people I love so much.

Tomorrow will be my final installment of VBS.tv "Drunk History" as I feel that I have run that into the dirt and that we should really move on. But I have saved the funniest for last, and I'm sure you'll agree with me on that when you see it! Also, my back story will continue as with the other features of this blog that I have grown to love so much. Here's hoping that you are looking forward to as cool week as I am!

Kickass Costa Rican Wildlife: Gorilla Bugs

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 06:42:00 +0000

Tucked away in the Eastern cusp of Costa Rica's central valley, is the only known habitat of the rare and beautiful Costa Rican Gorilla Bug. Local legend says they were created on a windy night when a thunderstorm fought for attention in the sky with the full moon, and they sprouted up from a sugarcane field the next morning. Who knows? What science does know is that they always come in pairs, they are some kind of mammal, and they have a strange psionic attack that enslaves whatever household they are living in.

And yes, Dr. Girlfriend and I happen to be the lucky residents of said household, but it's not a bad deal. As it turns out, their inability to move around really works in our favor for now. But upon doing a little research I found out that he's little critters are actually only in their larval stage right now. And one day, they eventually grow into beautiful Tica / Gringo hybrids that will be able to rob men of their hearts with either a smile or a quick flick of the katana. It's amazing thinking of that, because in this stage when they're only little Gorilla Bugs, all they pretty much do is cry, fart, eat, and engage in low impact biological warfare.

I guess what ranks them amongst the more kick ass wildlife is the fact that their cheeks are really kissable and they can perform an amazing array of sounds that try as I may, I cannot duplicate. They also smell really nice ( when not committing the aforementioned low-impact biological warfare). And that's my story and I'm sticking to it!!!

In all truth, I am reeling from an incident Tuesday night where my son and I were gleefully eating peanuts together and I somehow managed to rip off an old filling and half of my molar along with it. I can't have anything done about it, because of work, until Saturday. So senor dentista gave me a prescription for what is apparently the Costa Rican version of pure morphine until then. So I would just count on my posts for the week being just a little bit on the daffy side...

Tuesday with VBS.tv: Drunk History: Ona Judge

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 05:35:00 +0000

Yeah, I couldn't resist it. I really dig this series alot, so I decided to post the whole darn thing. We will eventually get back to the more idealistic and human interest aspects of the Vice library, but for now, why not have some chuckles? This week's installment covers one of the more controversial sides of the first US President, George Tiberius Washington. No, I don't think "Tiberius" was his real middle name, but you have to admit that the sound has a nice ring to it. I digress...

It has often been noted that there was a special irony amongst some of the Founding Fathers™ and their decision to keep slaves. These were people who were supposedly creating the world's first truly free nation, and yet they held ownership to human beings. Even my personal favorite, Thomas Jefferson had slaves working his land, and this was the guy who got drunk one night and wrote the greatest "Dear John" letter to a monarch since the Magna Carta. That of course was the Declaration of Independence.

This week's installment centers around a clever and passionate young slave owned by Washington named Ona Judge. She had the courage to escape to the more liberal states and away from Ol' Wooden Teeth's servitude. This caused a bit of a scandal to unfold as Ona remained defiant despite threats and public admonishment. The story is told by a historian who has consumed one and a half bottles of wine before making the attempt...enjoy!!

5 Common Expat Headaches

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 06:56:00 +0000

So, you finally took that leap and moved your life from one side of the world to the other. Maybe it was the ancient and mysterious sands of the Middle East, the majestic fjords of Scandinavia, or the mellow tropics that called to you with a loud enough voice to get you away from the TV and into the world. But however you got there, congratulations, you took a brave step forward in making your life a more intriguing story. But now that you are here, it's time to take a realistic look at your new life situation and realize that as with everything in life, there is good and there is bad. And how we deal with the bad is determined by how much we love the good.

Costa Rica: Better Than Iran

In my five years here in Costa Rica, I can say that the good has outweighed the bed by a factor of about 10. But that's not to say it's all been effortless and without stress that usually comes out of left field. If you're following my back story, I have not yet even come to the part where real white knuckle stress became an actual and huge factor in my life. But today's post will give you a preview of some of the things I had to deal with, and I've narrowed down all of the possible headaches to five big ones that tend to give people the most hardship. Oh sure, there are a lot more than five. For example, I'm sure being an ex-pat American in Iran carries different issues than hanging out in a Costa Rican rainforest like me. I can say the president here has a mother who's a hamster and a father who smells of elderberries and not be legitimately worried about being shot. That said, here are the five most common headaches I found to be the most pervasive amongst the ex-pat community down here.

1.) Not Knowing the Language

Okay, now this one is pretty much your own fault and the one of the five that you have the most control over. I came down here with somewhat of a working knowledge of Spanish, but as I quickly found out, it wasn't near enough to be useful in an emergency situation. I worked on it immediately though, and in about six months I got to the point where I was fluent enough that my brain wasn't translating everything into English anymore, it was like carrying on a conversation in my own language. Immersion training at its best. However, I do know either ex-pats down here who after 10 or more years still have not picked up any Spanish. This is as ridiculous as it is disrespectful to the people of your host country. In the case of Americans, doubly so because of all the flak we tend to give Latin American immigrants in our country who refuse to learn a working knowledge of English. This was painfully illustrated to me one time as I took a complaint call in the Geek Squad from a woman who claimed that her husband had fought in Vietnam and shouldn't have had to hear someone say "para espanol,. marque numero dos" when he called our support line. Yes, this actually happened, but don't analyze it too much as it will eventually hurt the back of your head.

2.) Unreliable Infrastructure

This is one that I am dealing with a lot lately, and it can be absolutely infuriating. I work online, I am not a farmer or shoemaker. My livelihood, reputation, and professional effectiveness are all dependent on my Internet connection. Here in Costa Rica, the Internet is provided to the entire country via one small undersea cable that stretches from Panama City to San Jose. If a pod of particularly flatulent dolphins were to swim by at just a certain angle, the entire country could potentially lose Internet for weeks. But as it is, it cuts out randomly and for hours on end throughout the course of the day. In a 24-hour day, I am out for at least an average of one of them. Some days it's more, some days it's less. And now that the rainy season is here, the electricity now enjoys the same amount of reliability.

My Saturday Night

In the United States, if there is a blackout, there had better be a natural disaster involved, or people are gonna start shooting at the power company. Down here, the power goes out completely at random for hours on end and no one is in the slightest way angry. Except for me. Last night, while feeding one of my daughters the power went out for two hours, and I had no way to reheat her bottles. As the average MTV raised American, my usual reaction is to throw my head back and let out a mighty "FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU....." while everyone else around me just kind of chuckles and shrugs. But I had a one-month-old gorilla bugg in my arms and couldn't. So I sat there in the dark, with her bottles under each armpit, feeling so happy that I decided to live in a place where nobody gives a damn if they have a stable power grid or not.

3.) Prejudice

This is going to happen no matter what you try to do to stop it. And let's not confuse prejudice with bigotry, which is one of the most loathsome of human traits that many have not yet been able to grow out of. Prejudice is judging a person or a situation before one completely knows anything about them. If you have moved to a country that can be classified as Third World, then it will be presumed by most of your neighbors, acquaintances, and business contacts that you are somewhat well-off. Many people in these countries grew up hearing stories of how rich Americans and Europeans are, and how they throw their shoes away when they get holes in them instead of taking them to be repaired.

Again this is not bigotry on their part as they do not believe themselves to be superior to you. But they will see you as a possible source of revenue in some very imaginative ways. No less than four times have I gone househunting down here and had some kind of variation of this conversation....

Me: "Wow this is a really nice house, and I think it's really perfect for the price! Gimmie a lease now you crazy house renting sum'bitch!!"

Slimy Tico Realtor: "Jes, it eez very nice Senior Gipson, how much did the ad say eet whaz per month again?"

Me: "$500 US a month, why?"

Slimy Tico Realtor: "Ah! Jes, that ad was a mistake, eetz actually $2500 a month. We had a new girl that week, eend she was a confuz-ed....and....where joo go-eeng?"

My Tactical Nuke in the War on Tico Price Gouging

No kidding, four times. Four different realtor companies had a new girl in the office that week who typed up the rental prices wrong. This was obviously an institutionalized scam and probably taught at Costa Rican Realty college in the first freshman semester. When the fourth potential realtor started the story, I finished it for him and just walked out. So from now on when I go house hunting, I just have Dr. Girlfriend go in my place and report back. Her looks usually give her a discount anyway... But that is just one example of the prejudice you could run into. You just have to learn to accept it, and work around it by becoming engaged to one of the more attractive natives in your host country.

4.) Status of Residency

Depending on your host countries relationship with your native one, this could be more or less stressful than it should be, but it always will be. Costa Rica is a neutral country like Sweden and Switzerland, so their immigration laws tend to be a little bit more stringent. And their Parliament recently passed a law that states anyone who overstays their tourist visa can be find up to US$100 per day that they stay over, as well is be deported to either Panama or Nicaragua and not be allowed back in for a minimum of five years. Luckily I was grandfathered out of that due to my relationship and my Costa Rican children. But at the time that that law had passed, I had overstayed my tourist visa by two years...

The point is, don't overstay your tourist visa and don't do anything that would risk you getting any illegal status. In some countries that comes with jail time, unreasonable fines, forcible deportation, or in real paradises like North Korea, shot in the face. You should just figure on taking a miniature vacation every 90 days or however long the visa lasts. There are only a few countries that won't renew a tourist visa, be sure to check with your Embassy before you decide your entire life there and you should be fine. Most of the ex-pat community here in Costa Rica just factor in their three-day trip to Panama City every three months as a part of the schedule of their lives.

If you are seeking permanent residency or citizenship, be sure to jump through every single hoop they put in front of you, when they put it there. It will no doubt be a long, clunky bureaucratic process that will eat a little bit of your sanity along the way as I demonstrated in a post from four years ago. But just think of the pleasure you will know when it's all said and done and you write that letter to your IRS (or equivalent) that simply says "Bite Me" like I did.

5.) Culture Shock and Difficulty Assimilating

This is going to be more or less impact if a person depending on their ability to adapt and their mental fortitude. There was something that Bruce Lee once said to his good friend and student Dan Inosanto when Inosanto first came to train with him. Bruce Lee's unique methods of fighting and unarmed tactics that eventually became known as Jeet Kune Do was hard to swallow for Inosanto at first because of the traditional methods he learned from childhood. The quote was "empty your cup so that you may drink my tea". This meant that he had to let go of all the preconceived notions that he built up based on his experiences and traditional methods training. This same thought holds true for anyone who wishes to assimilate into a society that is not their own. A simpler, more familiar quote that applies just as well is, "when in Rome, do as the Romans do".

When I first moved here, I would be awoken with furious anger at a noisy parade that would be winding itself through the labyrinth of my neighborhood. Another Saint's birthday. I would throw open my window and shriek curses that would make a Brooklyn Teamster blush at the passersby, and those curses would usually be drowned out by the 30 piece horn ensemble that was walking along with the parade. I eventually learned to just chalk it up to Ticos being Ticos, and then look forward to the raucous house parties that would be all over the barrio when the parade itself finally ended.

I adapted, but many people don't. You hear stories all the time about Americans or Canadians who moved down here and never leave their house. They are imprisoned in Paradise, and the more time they spend indoors, the crazier and more paranoid they get. But I will admit to it being funny sometimes when I turn on the news and see a story of yet another gringo loco on the roof of his house with a shotgun screaming about how his banana trees are trying to rob him. This actually happened.

So in my experience, those are the biggest five headaches I've had to deal with since living down here. No doubt your mileage will vary, in some places will be easier to assimilate to than others. I'm sure Americans who go to live in Canada are at lesser risk of numbers one and five on this list, for example. But wherever you are, you will always have this blog to come to for quick advice, and a chilled rum drink served in a hollowed out coconut tipped in salutation....

Part 11: The Night the UN Got Drunk

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 08:53:00 +0000

This is part eleven in my ongoing Friday feature to regale the story of how I came to live here and why I decided to stay. If you've just joined us, I've posted ten links to the previous ten parts below if you'd like to catch up. I have been asked if this is a true story or if there've been any embellishments, and I'd like to make it very clear that every part of this story is in fact true with the exception of some of the names.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten

I still had some time off from work to get my bearings and gather some supplies, so I decided to take advantage of that time the next morning when I woke up completely on my own. The phone call from the night before still had me a little spooked, the voice on the other end sounded so shaken and so desperate as if she were surrounded by ghosts. I surmised that it was either a wrong number or intended for the previous tenant of my apartment because nobody would've been able to anticipate my first day there, right? Either way, I tried to put it to the back of my mind is much as possible.

There was no food in the house other than a bag of coffee and the leftovers from the previous morning, so I decided to take a walk to the little open air market that I saw the day before with Katya. It wasn't very busy, and I was able to communicate with what little Spanish Mrs. Domino had managed to nail into my head in the 10th and 11th grades. At least the Spanish spoken here in Costa Rica is the actual Spanish Spanish, and not the Latin American dialect. So what little I had was pretty functional along with lucid hand gestures to procure a couple of pineapples, some enormous blackberries that they call "moras" down here, a chicken that was killed plucked and dressed for me as I watched, some onions and garlic (critical), a stack of corn tortillas, and some citrus.

I really wanted to get that still warm chicken into refrigerator as quick as possible, but I stopped by the local convenience store before I got there. It was called "Super Manfred", and it was run by a very pleasant Chinese family that lived in the apartment up above it. I would eventually become friends with the owner who was a very soft-spoken and gentle hearted guy who always had something nice to say whatever you came in. I introduced myself and told him that I was living in the third-floor apartment of the building next door while I scoped around for something to drink. I didn't want something familiar, but growing up in South Florida you see all kinds of beverages from Latin America anyway so I didn't think I was going to be too surprised. I settled on some Cokes in glass bottles along with a sixpack of beer with a black eagle emblazoned on it and the simple name "Imperial" written on it in Gothic letters. Sounds cool...

I still only had dollars on me, and I would later learn just how badly I was fleeced at the market 20 min. prior. I didn't really know anything about the exchange rate and I ended up paying about twice what I should have. I knew those people were too friendly... I paid for my drinks and hung around for a while while talking to Manfred, the owner. He and his family had just moved there from Guangzhou, spoke perfect English, and were willing to exchange my dollars for colones at a fair rate. I thought it was adorable how they had a crib set up behind the counter where their one-year-old baby was sitting and playing with a calculator. We shook hands, and I took off back to my apartment to try my hand at a feast.

I decided to roast the chicken with some orange juice and garlic, then shred it up and make tacos with the tortillas. Sure as hell didn't turn out bad at all. I had cable TV, so I decided to check out what Costa Rican television was like while I cooked. Each channel was weirder than the next and ran the range from bullfighting that wasn't bullfighting inasmuch as it was crowding around and teasing an enraged bull in a huge group, and hoping you're not the one he takes his frustration out on. Other channels followed pretty much the same business model as the Hispanic channels in Florida, mostly music videos and dance shows hosted by a ridiculously curvy woman accompanied by a dirty middle-aged clown. As I got higher in the channel list, American cable channels with Spanish subtitles appeared which was a cool thing. I brushed up on my Spanish that night by watching Blade 3 and Revenge of the Sith with Spanish subtitles.

I was amazed at how good the Coke tasted, and I looked down at the label and saw that it was made with sugar and not the high fructose corn syrup that seems to have ruined every taste from my American childhood. It actually tasted like something and not just bubbly-burney sweetness. Then I tried the beer... Costa Rica has some of the strictest food laws in the world. Nothing artificial can go into anything that is sold on Tico soil. This means high fructose corn syrup, monosodium glutamate, and all the literally tens of thousands of other preservatives that make up such a big part of the average American's diet. And the beer was no exception. It had a malty taste that you can actually pick out fermented grain with. And it went down smoother than a root beer.

That's where I made my mistake...

In the amazement of how good, light, and brilliant this beer was, I had "sampled" the entire sixpack in the span of about an hour and a half. Anakin Skywalker being burned alive in lava at the end of Revenge of the Sith was a lot funnier than it should've been, and my screaming laughing fit resulted in a knock at my door by my neighbor. I opened the door see a small unassuming man in round eyeglasses and a ridiculously loud tropical print shirt. He introduced himself as Gordon, and he had moved there from Canada about three years prior. He was an accountant who was able to work remotely from his apartment here, and he had fully surrendered to the laid-back lifestyle of gringo-hood.

"Are you all right in there, bud?", he asked after shaking my hand. "I thought I heard a woman screaming!"

"No, dude that was me laughing, getting to watch Hayden Christiansen get three limbs chopped off and then set on fire was the best possible way to end the prequel trilogy. I think it was George Lucas's way of saying 'sorry' to all of us he made wait for 16 years." I explained. That brought on a chuckle of agreement as he was about my age as well, and was just as resentful for being greeted with Jar Jar Binks after Return of the Jedi as I was.

"Yeah, I saw that was on, but I'm heading to the bar down the street here in a little bit." he said. The hotel about three blocks down was run by an American, and was a popular hangout for foreigners and residents who were too leery to hang out in the more third world drinking establishments frequented by the locals. He invited me to come along, and I agreed as I was kind of eager to get out of the cocoon of my cushy apartment for a bit anyway.

It was about a five-minute walk from the complex to the hotel. It was decorated with somewhat of a Castilian Spanish motif with multiple balconies and vines of lilies covering the entire façade. Upon walking into the open air bar behind the building, the sound of a flamenco style guitar solo greeted our ears. There were about 20 or so people there, all laughing and engaged in lively conversation. Gordon told me that this was the "Cheers" of the Rhormoser embassy district, and that most of its patrons were either ex-pats or staff from the various European and Asian embassies. Not many tourists knew about this place, nor did they usually come to Costa Rica for a tour of the Embassy district.

Behind the bar was a pretty Tica with curly blonde hair and a smile that extracted tips from older patrons like the gravitational pull of a black hole. Gordon and I sat down at the bar next to a middle-aged German man who was trying to sing along with the guitar player in an effort to impress the barmaid. I'm sure if he had attempted to form actual words, he would've fared better. I ordered another cold Imperial, and Gordon congratulated me on finding the national beer on my first night, and ordered the same.

As the night progressed, we got somehow ensnared into a group conversation with a Brit, an Australian, and a Japanese man about China's emergence as a world power. For some reason, every Western and industrial nation has a nagging fear about China. Apparently the Japanese were the most afraid because they were closest to them as I learned from my new friend, Akira. The Australian guy who went by his last name, Cooper, was quick to assess what would be the most likely scenario should China invade Japan.

"Well you know those Yanks would probably ass fuck them with a nuclear strike before they even reached Osaka, they have been dying to use those things for years." He proclaimed while looking at me as though I would nod in approval.

The Brit, Walter, interjected. "Well it's not like they're likely to invade Japan for no reason, are they? I mean all of their manufacturing is in China, and that would mean the Chinese were killing off their best customers.

"Well I think my country are their best customers, let me tell you guys about a magical little place called Walmart...." I added.

So we spent the next 45 min. or so debating the best way to deal with 1 billion people should they decide to become militant. Then as we pretty much came to the conclusion of giving peace a chance, the sound of glass breaking on ceramic tile broke us out of our little debate. The blonde barmaid was trying to pick up the pieces of a mug that had just shattered while a slovenly drunken bald man with a Super Mario mustache was hanging over her and yelling. "When I'm talking to you, I want to see your tits forward and your mouth shut!!" he bellowed while kicking pieces of the broken mug all over the bar. She was crouched down picking up glass shards and chasing the ones that he had just kicked.

"Aw, hell no!" I said as I got out of my chair, walked over to Super Mario, and put him in an arm bar that is known in military and martial arts circles as a "chicken wing". This arm lock restrains the opponent by twisting their wrist a certain way behind their back that resembles the wing of a plucked rooster. I then walked him up to the bar and pinned him against it.

"What the hell is your problem, ass hole? You think just because you are on vacation from Dicktown Pennsylvania to a foreign country you have the right to stop being a human being? Now say you're sorry to this girl before I take more time to think about how pissed off I am that we come from the same place." I calmly said in his ear. My oldest and most debilitating weaknesses in this life are babies, and damsels in distress. One will make me sit in a room making goofy faces and sounds for hours on end, and the other I can't resist stepping in to help...and usually getting myself in trouble.

I looked over at the table I was just at, and all four guys were looking at me, mouths agape in shock. I had gotten over there pretty quickly, and apparently nobody expected an American with a belly full of cerveza would act so impulsively. It would appear that the world has much to learn about us as well... You don't think we came up with the idea of walking on the moon while sober, do you? JFK's dad was a moonshine runner for crissakes. The barmaid had a face as white as a ghost and was looking at me with the same amount of shock as my friends, seemingly too petrified to even rise up from her kneeling position.

I felt something metallic bump against the back of my head with just enough force to hurt, and I turned my head to see the barrel of a shotgun about an inch and a half from my face. On the other end of that shotgun was a large Latin man with a scowl on his face that told me that I might have not judged the situation very correctly at all. Coming out of the door of the hotel were three other men with 12 gauge shotguns drawn and pointed at me as well.

"Let go of me, you piece of shit! My guys are going to blow your fucking head off!" the mustachioed man hissed with spit flying out of his mouth at every consonant.

I realized that I made a serious mistake, this was the owner of the hotel. And I had just made him look like a complete idiot in front of his entire staff. Would I have done this while sober? Well I certainly would've said something, but probably not had taken physical action like this. I knew that I was screwed. The second I let this guy out of this hold, I would most likely be killed. Even as drunk as I was, that thought was scary enough to send adrenaline into every corner of my nervous system. I knew I had to talk my way out of this, or my family back in the States were going to get a very sad letter whenever the CR bureaucracy got around to sending it. I had to think fast.

"Well I'm not sure how familiar you are on modern armaments, but your average shotgun is powerful enough to take out a pretty big area of people. How sure are you that 'your guys' won't end up hitting you? Are you as nice to them as you are to her?" I asked, still maintaining the compliance hold.

"Oh shit! Stop! Detante!! Basta!!" he screamed, and the men lowered their shotguns.

Gordon and Cooper both intervened as well by telling Ron, the owner that I had no idea who he was and that I was just coming to the recuse of a woman I had thought was in trouble. Things cooled down from that point and I released my hold on the guy's arm. He gathered what dignity he had left and actually apologized to Helena, the barmaid, for being such a dick. He then made a note to arm his security personnel with pistols instead of shotguns. The night was still young, but I had make it awkward for everyone and it was clear that sitting there carrying on as normal just didn't feel right. So Akira suggested that we go someplace else, and Cooper said he had just the place in mind.

So we all half-stumbled out of the hotel courtyard bar, and made our way to a line of taxis in front of the building. Just before I got out however, I was stopped by Helena who grabbed my face and gave me one of the most skillful and passionate kisses I had ever received up to that day. She then smiled, turned, and walked back into the bar where she had just revived her first apology from that pig of a man since she started working there. All five of us piled into the taxi, and Cooper rambled off an address to the taxista who looked back at him with a questioning stare.

We then sped off into the tropical night with Cooper reassuring us all in that confident Aussie way of his that this new place we were going was "ten times more fun."

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!

Bastard Costa Rican Wildlife: The Candiru

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:42:00 +0000

Before I start this post, I'd like to place a little friendly wager. I'm willing to bet 1000 internets that any male reader of this post will have crossed their legs at some point during it. It's that bad...

This is an animal is an abomination. In fact, for years, zoologists denied the existence of this prick based completely on the fact that they automatically presumed the people telling the stories of it were either high or just reciting folklore. In other words, scientists could not believe that any animal on the face of the planet could go this far at being this evil and loathsome. As cruel as nature was, there was always the balance, right? Not with this little fuck face, no...

Punch them. Punch them in their little eyes...

The Candiru (Vandellia cirrhosa) is a small parasitic catfish that seems to have originated in the Amazon basin and crept its way up as far north as Guatemala. And though no one is sure how the hell they got there, reports from the Queensland government in Australia show that it has made its way there as well. No one is sure why this species is spreading at such an alarming rate, maybe it's a sign of the apocalypse, who knows? But it is spreading, and certain lakes and rivers here in Costa Rica have become breeding grounds for them. And this species is the very same species that carries the odious nickname of "the dick fish".

It's normal prey are fish which they stock from the bottom. It has evolved a very accurate method of targeting its prey by the nitrogen and uric acid discharges that come natural for creatures that use gills. Though normally slender and wormlike in appearance, it has a set of retractable spikes along its back and on its head that it uses to latch on to the gills of prey and/them open until they begin to bleed. The little fucker then gulps down as much blood as it can and jets back down to the bottom were it brags to all of its friends about how much it just messed up a random fish that was just minding its own business.

However every once in a while, a creature will enter its environment that has the amazing ability to send a concentrated and sustained flood of the chemicals the candiru can't resist. And that creature is a human being foolish enough to take a leak in any freshwater environment south of Mexico. The candiru, thinking a fish the size of the Sears Tower is slipping by charges fullbore at the source of those yummy chemicals and burrows its way inside of the human urethra. Fortunately, there have been no reported attacks on females, and it seems that the construction of the male anatomy and our preconceived notion that we can piss wherever we please make says ripe for the pickings to this little asshole.

Though it is possible to have this fish surgically removed, from the instant it enters the urethra, the victim is in unimaginable and inconceivable amounts of pain. Not really needing to, but just to be a dick, the candiru extends its spines from its fins, head, and back and begins to feed on every piece of soft tissue within its reach. Infection is almost immediate, and loss of that particular body part is often times unavoidable.

The moral of the story is not "don't piss while you swim in freshwater in the tropics", the moral is "don't go within 100 feet of the body of freshwater in the tropics because man..... It just ain't worth it".

I hate this fucker, here's a video of the man who had once successfully removed....

That's just.... that's just unreal... Mother Earth why have you forsaken us?

Something From Nothing: Week One

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:56:00 +0000

Well I have been out this for about nine days now using only PTC sites, and I have managed to generate $60 in PayPal revenue. The work however is very tedious, and out of the 60 sites that I have registered with, about four have either disappeared completely or have had their domains seized with a very nasty message plastered to the home page about fraud. Signed the whole law for one more week in recommending any of these sites for you guys, I just don't want walk anybody into a scam or waste anyone's time.

Going through all these paid to click sites every day has made me see other possible income potentials as well. They claim to be able to give website owners or bloggers anywhere from 1000 to 10,000 hits a day using the very same method that is paying me one penny per click. However, if you are using Google's AdSense program, you run the risk of losing your account as this goes against their terms of service. But it does hold quite a bit of potential for those not running AdSense, and wanted to focus on an individual post with maybe some Clickbank links or Commission Junction ads. The initial investment is small for what they claim to be able to do. But if you are clever enough writer and know how to grab the attention of your reader for at least 35 seconds, you would have the opportunity to grab some affiliate revenue this way.

You another program that I've been looking at is Varolo, in interesting and free take on the old concept of network marketing. What it basically does is make you watch 10 min. of advertisements a day, and try to get is many of your friends to do the same thing with the hope that they repeat the same action. I have looked around on YouTube and searched on Google, but haven't really found any complaints about it being any kind of scam. And considering the fact that there is no investment involved, it might be something worth looking at. Here is the introductory video and the company itself....

One of the things that really sticks out about this company is the nature the advertisements themselves. There is no spam. The videos I watched were the trailer to the new Green Lantern movie, the trailer to the new Cars movie, Pepsi, and BMW. That lends a lot of credence to this project and my opinion. I have been surfing these PTC sites getting pennies per click while looking at some of the most odious spam you could ever wish not to see. But in Varolo's case, these are all multi-national and respected companies and movie studios....something to think about.

This next video is about 10 minutes long, and it shows the earning potential of using the system. The clincher is, you have to get other people underneath you to view the ads as well. However, I have found a pro tip that makes it alot easier. If sitting though 10 minutes of commercials is a pain in the ass, the option of turning down the volume and minimizing the browser window is always open to you...

Now of course I am skeptical, and that's how I promised myself I would go into this project. But the investment is a total of $0.00, and if the math presented here is correct, it could have some real potential. You WILL need a PayPal account however as currently this is their only method of money transfer. So if you would like to engage in this little experiment with me, go ahead and fill out the free registration right here.

Next week, I will update you all on the status of the PayPal account and if this Varolo thing is working out at all. If I find that one of these shady PTC sites is really panning out, I will post the link to them as well. See you all tomorrow with the newest Bastard Wildlife of Costa Rica!

Tuesday with VBS.tv: Drunk History; The Duel of Hamilton and Burr

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 06:09:00 +0000

I have to admit that this series cracks me up more than any other in the Vice lineup right now. There are several more, and I will be posting them throughout the weeks. Of course we will eventually go back to traveling the crazy parts of the world no one else sees, but for a little while let's take a good hard look at American history through rose colored shot glasses.

This week's episode focuses on the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr that took place on the morning of July 11, 1804. Hamilton publicly denounced Burr's intentions and motivations for running for president, and apparently when a little too over-the-top for Burr to just let the insults slide. For those of you not too familiar with the details the story, I am going to let the tale unfold as it was meant to be this week....drunk as shiite. Alexander Hamilton is played by Michael Cera, enjoy!

Post Father's Day Monday Post

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:24:00 +0000

Another Father's Day has come and gone, and I sincerely hope that this one will be the last one to feel so bittersweet. I am minus one child who I have not seen in way, way too long. He and I stay in contact the best we can, and have for these almost 5 years. But it's just not the same. That and I didn't actually know my biological father my entire life, so consequently I've never really celebrated it anyway. But my stepson, my youngest boy, and my twin lovebuggs were with me, and that sure means a lot. My Father's Day gift was to be able to sleep and actually get more than a four-hour stretch this time around. In general my work schedule starts at 6:30 AM and doesn't usually and until midnight, after which I need at least an hour to "decompress" before I try to get some sleep and start the process over.

But yesterday I did something amazing. I closed my eyes stopped moving for about 10 hours. It was absolutely luxurious, and I had even spoiled myself a little bit the night before by playing a bit of new Vegas before I passed out. I woke up to my two boys thrusting beautifully homemade cards with chocolate bars taped to them in my half asleep face. Believe me when I say that it was alot more adorable than it sounds...

But as I said before, I never knew my real father. But I still managed to learn honor, integrity, and a good value system from other male role models in my life. In fact, I even made a collage of them that I was going to post on my Facebook profile but decided against it.

Happy Father's Day Guys!! (Click for more detail)

Yeah, so these are my "Dads". some real, some fictitious, but all had a hand in making who I am today. I didn't turn out so bad...

But on a less tragic note, Happy Birthday to Gillian of A Daft Scots Lass, one of the absolute favorite blogs that I currently follow. Stop in and wish her a happy birthday and let her know Aaron sent ya! And this week will bring another addition of "Drunken History" by VBS.tv, a new "Bastard Wildlife", my successes and failures at "Making Something From Nothing", and a new installment of my backstory. I'm looking forward to a great week, and hoping you all are as well!

Saturday Music Club: Songs for the Blogosphere

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 07:05:00 +0000

Well I have to say that it feels good to be back in full swing after my hiatus. Writing this blog has been such an amazing outlet for me. And the other bloggers that I follow have opened up the world and made it seem like living down here in the middle of the rain forest at the end of a dirt road doesn't necessarily equate solitude. We all have amazing stories to tell, and our stories give us all a richer perspective of the world we share.

I have laughed and cheered at the exploits of Irish and British wargamers who are true generals in their own right, I have helped to fight pitched battles between two completely unrelated things based on the first letter of their name, I have heard other "stranger in a strange land" stories like my own from a good man who has gone from California to Idaho, I get to sit in complete amazement at the staggering genius of a young Filipina woman coming into her own, I have learned the ins and outs of hunting for the paranormal from a sassy author who legitimizes the field in ways that needed to be done, I have been able to relive the best "bad/good" movies in cinematic history, I've been able to learn from an accomplished astronomer the secrets of our cosmos, I now have a better understanding of the deep and complex world of the different vampire clans, I have laughed and blushed at the in-your-face charm and wit of a woman who's gone from Scotland to South Africa, I've seen a young man explore his world in the same smartass way I did I was his age, I have learned something new every day from a woman who wields obscure facts the same way a Jedi wields a lightsaber, I have been privy to the artistic brilliance and romantic strategizing, of very clever young man, I have learned the brutal honesty of a confident woman who takes care of our veterans (US) when they come home, I have got to peek in on the adventures of a beautiful world traveler who pretty much considers the entire earth her home, I have seen the difference between simple culinary tricks and actual acts of love in the kitchen, I get to play a daily guessing game with one of the sweetest Canadian women who's ever lived, I have learned how to survive a zombie apocalypse, I have met a girl in England who surrenders herself completely to the whim of the Internet every week by way of freeform poll, I am friends with a woman who gives completely of herself artistically and then gives this fruits away for free, and I have made friends with people who have such beautiful hearts that the entire world is a better place just for having them in it.

And I get to do this every day...

So this musical post will not be in any way focused on me or my exploits, but to the other bloggers who made this hobby of mine so much more worthwhile than what it could've been. For all of your encouragement, support, comments, and friendship I dedicate each song each and every word to each and every one of you wherever you are. Thank you for opening up the world to me in ways that I didn't think were ever possible...

And when you are feeling down....

And as the lyrical pickled ginger to clean the palette of that last oh-so-sappy song...this is us.

Love you guys....

Part 10: All Your Skeletons Are Belong to Us

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:19:00 +0000

This is part ten in my ongoing Friday feature to regale the story of how I came to live here and why I decided to stay. If you've just joined us, I've posted nine links to the previous nine parts below if you'd like to catch up. I have been asked if this is a true story or if there've been any embellishments, and I'd like to make it very clear that every part of this story is in fact true with the exception of some of the names.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine

WARNING!

The following chapter in this story contains very mature subject matter that may offend or appall certain readers. It was my plan from the beginning to to tell this tale as truthfully as I can, so there'll be very little censorship on my part for the sake of the more sensitive. If you are a family member or friend coming in from Facebook and you have a certain fixed opinion of me, it may very well change after reading this. If you are one of my closer friends, very little of what you are about to read will come as any shock or surprise. That said, you have been warned....

MOM, DON'T READ THIS!

The office downstairs took up the entire first floor of the complex, and it was a labyrinth of cubicles and rooms with nothing in them. Gary had someone assemble the server, but the operating system had not yet been loaded, nor had any of the networking been set up. All of the workstations were connected to the Internet via a wireless connection attached to a cable modem. So consequently the cubicles were arranged as close as possible to the concrete pillar in the middle of the lobby area by the main entrance. I was still trying to make sense of the chain of events that took place from my waking up to then. And as Katya gave me the quick tour, I noticed how all of my new coworkers were dressed in shorts and T-shirts and some even had their feet up on the desks of their cubicles. Welcome to Costa Rica, I thought to myself.

Katya then called everyone's attention by snapping her fingers and yelling something I didn't yet understand in Spanish. "Everyone, this is Aaron Gipson, he is good personal friend of Gary and the company's lead technical engineer. He will be in charge of all things related to IT so be sure to behave yourselves on your computers."

I didn't really like to be put on the spot like that, but I smiled at everyone and waved and said something to the effect of "Great to be working with all of you, my door is always open, bear with me on my Spanish." I'm not really one for making speeches to people I've just met, so I kept it short. Gary wasn't going to be in that day, and from what Katya told me, he only really showed up at the office once or twice a week. Mostly he just stayed at his huge house and hung out by his pool while monitoring everyone in the office via his laptop. We were going to meet him for lunch at a Lebanese restaurant later that day, and we were going to discuss the office set up as well as vet some employees based on their technical knowledge to be my assistants.

Katya then showed me to what was going to be my office, and it was just as ridiculously nice as my apartment. The desk was enormous and I had a dual PC workstation already set up and connected to the wireless with two huge flat screen monitors. And I also had a big picture window to my right that had a very nice view of the mountains to the east. I had only arrived there last night, and couldn't see much of the scenery in the dark. But I was absolutely floored by the bright green mountains that were covered with coconut palms and vines of flowers that you can make out from miles away. I sat down in my new chair, and Katya walked around from the front of my desk to right in front of me, between my chair and the desk itself. She leaned back and rested her hands and her butt on the top of it.

"So what do you think?" she asked with one eyebrow arched.

What I wanted to say was "I never thought there would ever be any point in my life where I was concerned about there being a Russian ass-print on my new oak desk." But what I said instead was, "I like it a lot, this looks more like a gamer's set up then an IT manager's..."

"The girls in the office are going to be fighting over you, you know that right?" Katya asked with a mischievous smile.

I chuckled a little bit. "Well that's sweet of you to say, but I just got out of a relationship and I'm not really looking for anything right now. Besides, that sort of thing should never be in a work environment anyway. Best to keep things professional." I made it a point to lock eyes with hers when I uttered the last two sentences of that statement. I'm not a fool. Her body language, mannerisms, and tone when she spoke with me were going in a very unprofessional direction to say the least. Best to nip that in the bud on the first day then have to deal with it for the rest of the time I worked here.

She smiled a little bigger, and said "Ya prinimayu tvoi vyzov" before sliding off of my desk and gliding across the room towards the door. "Come with me, there is more to show you."

After seeing the rest of the office complex which consisted mostly of empty space and future plans, she and I got into her SUV and took off for the local market so she could show me where I was going to do all of my grocery shopping. Everything was sold out doors by different vendors and looked more like a flea market than anything that resembled the grocery store in the United States. This market was within walking distance of my apartment, and the nearest American-style grocery store was about 5 miles away. Luckily though, there was a convenience store right next to my apartment building if I ever wanted to just grab a snack or something to drink on a whim. I actually really liked the idea of shopping this way. For some reason it just seemed more "honest" than a big link on a corporate juggernaut's chain. Most of the people selling the produce had grown it on their own properties, and all the butchers had probably killed their animals themselves.

Katya and I walked around for a bit and headed back to her car so we could meet up with Gary in San Jose. Downtown San Jose was about 15 miles from my apartment and seemed to just spring out from nowhere after leaving the trees and cherry blossoms of its embassy district. Even though it is the capital of the country, downtown San Jose looked like a more weathered version of Orlando, Florida but without any of the buildings going higher than 10 stories. The effects of a six-month rainy season were easily seen in the permanent staining of most of the buildings. And almost every city block had a park with a fountain or statue commemorating some national hero.

The Lebanese restaurant we were going to was near San Jose Centro, and we got there pretty quickly considering the fact that this chick drove like a freaking maniac. Apparently, red lights are taken more as "suggestions" then actual points of law down here.

We walked through the double doors of the restaurant, and suddenly it was as if I was transported to a theme restaurant at Epcot. The restaurant consisted of around room with individual tables partitioned off with semi transparent silk curtains that hung from the ceiling. The tables themselves were only about a foot and a half off the ground and were surrounded by enormous pillows. In the center of each table was a large hookah with about six hoses attached to it. And in fact, the whole restaurant took on a cloudy and smoky appearance from all of the aromatic tobacco being smoked by the patrons from these things. In the center of the room was a line of belly dancers doing their thing to the sounds of live drummers and flute players.

Gary was waiting for us there in one of the tent-like dining spaces, and it was quite obvious that he was making the most of his experience there. He was puffing away on a hookah while reclined on a stack of pillows like a makeshift beach chair. The host, dressed in a long white Middle Eastern shirt that went down to his knees, brought Katya and I more pillows so we could construct our own personalized sitting arrangements. I chuckled a little bit at Katya while I watched her try to negotiate a bunch of pillows while wearing a short skirt. I bet she wished she wore the pantsuit that day.

"So how was your first night in paradise, man? You like the new place?" Gary asked while doing his best impression of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, blowing smoke rings up at the ceiling.

"I still can't believe it's mine, dude. And it's right above the office where I work, I don't think I could've imagined anything better!" I was glad to be around somebody familiar because hanging out Katya all morning was beginning to wear on me. "How did you find this place? I feel like I am in an Indiana Jones movie."

"The owner is a buddy of mine, he just moved here a few months ago after Israel bombed Beirut. The food is excellent, and you sure can't argue with the live entertainment." He seemed quite fixated on the line of dancers who were moving the bottom halves of their bodies in ways that should've been anatomically impossible.

He then reminded me that I was still technically on vacation and insisted that I drink with him to celebrate our plans for the future. So I ordered a mojito and was floored when it came with actual mint leaves and tasted more decadent than anything I had ever drink up to that point that contain alcohol. After a couple plates of stuffed grape leaves, falafel, lamb shish kebab, and about three more mojitos, all three of us were laughing it up and feeling like drunken sultans. Gary passed me a hose from the hookah, and I asked him if there was anything illegal in it. He responded to my question with a smile, and said "nothing that's illegal here."

I laughed at him and said "oh yeah, I'm not in America anymore!" I grabbed the hose and took a long pull from it, as did Katya and Gary. I was a little tipsy from the mojitos, and I really thought that we were all just joking around about what was in it. But even in my semi-drunken state, I recognized the taste almost immediately as soon as it hit lungs. This was some kind of crazy Middle Eastern tobacco mixed with equal parts marijuana. A huge cough exploded out from me, and continued for about 3 min. before I could catch my breath again. Both of them were laughing their asses off at me, and the hilarity of the situation resulted in a half laugh/half coughing fit on my part that lasted for a good long time.

The surreality of getting stoned with my boss at his own insistence aside, I was beginning to really enjoy the moment. Up to that point, there was a huge stretch of "clean" living that started at the end of college and maintained itself all the way up through my professional life. But as the music began to sound more interesting, a familiar sense of relaxation and philosophic thought began to take hold again after a long absence. I settled back into my pillows and began to really take in my surroundings. I couldn't shake the thought that this was somehow some crazy dream or that maybe Megan stabbed me in my sleep, and this was some surreal version of an afterlife.

After a while of pondering whether this existence was real or not, Gary roused me from my thoughts. "I'm really glad you weren't uptight about this, I wasn't sure how you were going to react."

"Am I doing anything illegal?" I asked.

"Nope. Herb was decriminalized here about three years ago." he responded."It's not endorsed though, I mean it's not like Amsterdam, they don't have coffee shops here, and this place requires you to bring your own. Hey, is she asleep?"

I looked over at Katya, and yes indeed, she was even snoring. I started laughing, "yeah man, she's out like a light! What's with this chick anyways? Did you know she just let herself and her little friend in my apartment this morning while I was still in bed? And all while she was giving me a tour the office today she was trying to act all "Russian spy seductress" with me.

"Yeah that might be my fault." Gary looked at me a bit sheepishly. "I didn't know what the hell was going on when the store was raided. It seemed kind of funny that it happened on the first day you had the place to yourself. So.... I had her do a pretty thorough background check on you, in fact, I paid quite a bit of money for it to be done properly."

I wasn't sure if I liked how this conversation suddenly turned like this, but he had an apologetic wince on his face that told me he didn't find anything that would lead him to believe I was some kind of FBI plant. But I wasn't sure how this had anything to do with how she was acting around me. Unless....

"Dude, no..."

"Yeah man...I am sorry, I am so, so sorry." Gary said softly as he nervously scratched the back of his head. "But hey, there are worse things to dig up about a guy, right?"

"How the hell did you find out? It was just a few times, and I don't think you can even find the videos anymore." My mood had gone from ecstatically relaxed, to a mix of anger and embarrassment in the span of about three minutes. I felt my face flushed red with both emotions as I struggled to figure out what loose end I didn't tie up back then.

Gary answered the question for me. "You got a paycheck from them, and banks tend not to cash checks written to a stage name." he said. "Like I told you, I paid a lot of money for it to be done right. I'm sorry that fact got out, but I'm pretty sure she's the only one who knows about it..."

"You're pretty sure... Awesome." I quipped sarcastically. "With my luck, the whole fucking office knows!"

"Well again, Aaron, there are alot worse things for a guy to have a reputation for", he offered. "I'd love it if some hot blonde chick was pining over me for that!"

"I don't like blondes!! And I sure as hell don't like the fact that every time I try and be professional with her or God knows whom else who knows, I'm going to be viewed as something I did so many years ago and that's it." I didn't want to be this pissed, but the more I thought about it, the more pissed I became. I was seriously considering just hopping on the next return flight to Florida, but I knew I would regret that decision if I made it. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and this little breach of privacy was apologized for. I made him swear that he would not let any of this information get past him or Katya, and further make her swear the same thing. He agreed, and we shook hands chalking it up as water under the bridge. If I were in his position and the guy had I just hired was the subject of a curiously timed FBI raid on his first day with the store, I would want to know everything about him too.

I took a cab home as something told me that riding in a car driven an inebriated Russian woman might be a bad idea. I made sure to deadbolt my lock when I got in, and plopped down on my sofa to review the events of the day. I was still a little tipsy, but somehow even after having a secret laid bare like that, I was in a pretty good mood again. This was MY place where I was going to being MY new life. Events of the past be damned. Besides, I don't regret a damn thing I have ever done. I'm just wary of other peoples' reactions I guess.

As I was floating into a delicious nap, my phone rang. I thought it a bit odd because I didn't even know my own number, so I couldn't have given it out. Probably Katya again....dammit. I got up and answered it, but the voice on the other end didn't have a Russian accent. She sounded quite Hispanic and quite frantic, in fact I couldn't even finish saying hello before the panicked voice half-whispered to me.

"You need to get out of there!" the voice said.

"Huh? Who is this?" I asked.

"He is going to kill you!" she then abruptly hung up.

Continue to Part 11

Kickass Costa Rican Wildlife: Geoff the Desk Gecko

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 07:41:00 +0000

Actual tarantula photographed in my first apartment here.

Thankfully I am not very frightened of critters. Considering where I live, I would be a nervous wreck if I had any kind of insect or arachnid-based phobia. Especially now during the rainy season when all the tarantula holes are being flooded out by the constant storms we have that seem to only let up for a few hours at a time. I was also raised by a wild injun mother who always impressed on us that killing a spider in your own house is incredibly bad luck. I have carried that belief with me into adulthood more out of respect than superstition, but this has hamstrung me on more than one occasion. It would be so much easier to simply crush the dinner plate sized bird-eating spider that decides to just walk casually into your children's room. But I always opt for the trap and release method which results in a lot of screaming, climbing up on tables, and smacks from a broom wielded by a terrified Tica.

Luckily my office/man cave is offset from the rest of the house, and it is basically an enclosed portion of the back porch. I keep the door to the outside open the entire time I am here because few things are as intoxicating as the breezes here. That and during the day, I would roast like a chicken if it weren't open. But having this outdoorsy feel to my workspace comes with a very steep and often times terrifying price. On more than one occasion I have been enjoying some music and a videogame late at night with only the PC monitor for illumination, only to look down at my feet or glance somewhere on my desk and spot a multi-legged intruder. I can't express in words how awesome it is to be playing a game like Resident Evil or Alien vs. Predator, and then glance just a little bit to the side and see a real face full of fangs and beady eyes... Good times...

I first met Geoff on a rainy night about three weeks ago. I was up late playing Civ5 while listening to Free Thought Radio and sipping on some locally made sugarcane-based distilled goodness. Just happy as a clam. I was playing as the Mesopotamians, and I was well on my way to dominating the earth via scientific research victory. I was trying to find a way to get the Japanese to surrender a town to me when I felt something crawling on my mouse hand. I jerked it back and looked down to see a cockroach much larger than my thumb scuttling across the top of my desk. It had just walked across my fingers on its way to a corner without showing any fear or hesitation at all.

I respect spiders but I hate cockroaches, especially ones that make me spill my Cuba libre and interrupt my strategizing. I immediately looked around for something to righteously smite this little prick, but the trick would be not to destroy any of my equipment in the process. I realized that being buzzed and pissed off at the same time was a combination that tends to wreak havoc on expensive computer gear, so I sat back down and looked around for the thing to maybe figure out a smarter way of going about my revenge.

House Gecko macking on a spider

He eventually emerged from under my keyboard, and I saw him try to make his way towards my monitor. But he only got about halfway there before a head sprang out from behind it, also under the keyboard, grabbed it, and started crunching it down. As it was trying to work the huge bug down it's gullet, it creeped out from under the keyboard and I got to take a good look at my new found friend and officemate. Geoff is a House Gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus) about 4 1/2 inches long, and ever since that night, he has made random appearances either on my desk or the wall of my office. I literally cheered for him as he crunched down that cockroach and gave me the satisfaction of watching it happen. It wasn't a quick death.

He ate the bastard ass-end first, and it took a while to get it down. In fact, you could still see the thing's antennae twitching around as it disappeared. Unfortunately though, Geoff didn't want to stick around after his meal. As soon as I raise my glass to toast him, he darted behind my desk and shimmied up the wall into a corner. But I did see him again a couple nights ago on my desk again, chomping on a spider that probably would've mysteriously ended up on my head had he not dispatched it. And also, Paty (my fiancé) saw him walking up the wall in the twins' bedroom the night before last, just being his kick ass self.

He always ends up disappearing before I can grab the camera, but one day I'm gonna snap a shot at him while he's in action post it for you guys.I've owned dogs, cats, snakes, and even a hamster. But no other nonhuman resident of my house has ever been more welcome than this little guy. I would never want to put him in a cage as he performs a very valuable service for me and my family, but I wanted to show you a little video that demonstrates incredible quickness and acrobatics these little guys have...

So it's been communicated to me that maybe you guys would like to see more bastard wildlife as well? Let me know, and I'll mix them up a bit!

Something From Nothing: An Intro

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 06:01:00 +0000

Ever since the Internet first came into fruition, I have been on the thing. I have been in the IT field long enough to remember worrying about 1.44 MB disks being erased by stray magnets. And being that I work remotely from my home via voice over IP and remote connection software, one could legitimately say that I basically live on the Internet. Also living so far from civilization, the Internet's been crucial in keeping me in contact with the outside world and up-to-date on my various shows and movies. I won't say specifically how on that last part, but I'm sure you all get the gist.

But up until now, I've never really considered trying to make money off of it with any kind of determination. Three things always held me back when it came to that. The first being that I always saw the Internet as something that should always be free and open and not subject to commercial exploitation. Yeah I know that sounds dumb considering the fact that companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Google are not only raking in the money but performing a valuable service to humanity in the process.

The second thing that really kept me from hitting the web like a rabid digital version of a 19th-century gold prospector was the fact that I am one of the most anti-materialistic people anyone around me has ever known. I have never and will never own or wear anything made of gold or silver, I find it repugnant that people kill each other over sparkly rocks that are just the result of old carbon under too much pressure, and people who refer to any of their possessions as "bling" immediately lose 40 to 50 IQ points in my eyes. I understand the necessity in providing for one's self and one's family along with saving resources for vacations and emergencies, and I always work hard to make sure that happens. But I have no desire to ever be rich or have a cup so full that I can't savor the flavor of life when others' cups are empty of anything at all.

And thirdly, I have also been in the IT field long enough to have a special black place in my heart for spammers. If you are to go into your spam folder right now you will see a billion and one "special offers" from some supposed Internet guru who founded the secret for quick and easy cash. I have had to repair the results of people fool heartedly clicking those embedded links on more than one occasion. But those are the worst-case scenarios, most of them are usually just a picture of some douchebag laying back on a chair at the beach with a laptop saying "This Could Be You!". Or they are posing in front of a Ferrari or some other crap like that. They rarely tell you that their big classified secret is to get you to send them money while getting your friends to send you money, that's basically what they all boil down to.

But recent events in my life, notably the birth of my daughters, is filled me with a new sense of responsibility and desire to strengthen the foundations of my economic outlook. So I have decided to perform this great experiment and keep you all posted as to my results. I want to literally make something out of nothing, and I believe that if I pursue it with the same determination I had last year to track down all of the audio recordings of all the Phish concerts I attended in college, I should be able to make it work. I may very well fall on my face, and I look forward to all the laughter and ridicule that will be well deserved. But if I do make it work, you all will have this feature to read at your leisure and see exactly how I did it. So let's look at the parameters of this experiment and start off with these simple rules....

RULE #1

I will not invest a single penny from my own bank account or pocket for any program or method that I try out. Any investment that will be needed must be made from funds that I have already procured from previous projects.

RULE #2

I won't take part in any strategy, program, or method that serves to exploit or lie to anyone in any way. This includes anything to do with pornography, drugs, mail order brides, or anything else that would prevent me from answering the question "Daddy, what are you doing?" with honesty.

RULE #3

Share everything good I find, and warn of any scams I see. If I find a way for us all to be financially independent though, I want a tin of cookies sent down here to the jungle.

So those are the rules. The point of this venture is to make something from nothing and create enough of a passive income to where if something should ever happen with my 9 to 5 job, I won't be dead in the water. It could be argued that this very blog is one such venture, but anyone who loves blogging will tell you that they do it more for the love of writing than the 30 or 40 cents a day they might get from AdSense. I couldn't spam out this blog anymore than I could have my daughters ever do the child beauty pageant circuit.

So thus far, my approach to this will be to find truly legitimate sources of nickel and dime income at first just to build funds to work with. Right now that includes some freelance article writing along with a paid to click campaign with multiple bux sites. And this beginning stage is going to be very slow going. But I am in for the long haul, and I am already beginning to see some results. I've created an Excel spreadsheet chock full of formulas that are keeping track of my results on a real-time basis. And so far I have made a total of $35.26 that theoretically should be going into my PayPal account soon. I say "theoretically" because I have joined 60 pay to click bux sites and I am not certain at this point which ones are scams and which ones will actually pay out.

For those of you who don't know what a bux site is, they are essentially web-based businesses that pay you to look at advertisements. You log onto the site, check your account for how many advertisements are available for you to view, and then click their corresponding links and keep them open for anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. The pay per click ranges from a fraction of a penny to two cents on some sites. They also have different levels of membership that allow for either more links or more money per link depending on individual site. Like I said, I joined 60 of them. I have a technique using Firefox that saves a boatload of time and allows me to get credit for each advertisement presented to me. All 60 sites take me about an hour and a half uninterrupted, or three hours with a few breaks to do. I usually put on some good music and get a good rhythm to cut through the tedium of looking at all that spam. The $35.26 that I made so far took me about five days to do. But like I said, in the beginning this is going to be very slow going.

As soon as I am sure which ones are legit and which ones are just online ponzi schemes, I will post the links to them here. I am not going to lead anyone into something like this until I scout ahead for a little bit. The goal for me is to make at least $5 per site before I cash out, which is about the average minimum for them to release funds anyway. I will then take that money and begin investing in other ventures that I have spotted in my initial sniffing around.

So I am going to give it a week, and next Wednesday I am going to post the results of my efforts and give honest recommendations where they are deserved. I will show you also how to track your results as I have, along with showing you how to perform the actions the most ergonomic way possible. Who knows? Maybe we can all figure this thing out together as we go along! Either way, the point is to have fun with it and go into the thing with a skeptical outlook to prevent as much disappointment as possible. So I will talk to you guys Wednesday when I have my first week's results!

Tuesday Travel With Vice Magazine: Drunk History; Ben Franklin

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron M. Gipson) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 07:43:00 +0000

So usually I use this feature to shed light on some of the darker places in our world. But I decided to lighten things up this week with something I personally can't stop laughing at. I have always been a history buff and have probably had conversations like this on numerous occasions after whatever escape was made from a noisy bar. I have never really been into the bar or clubbing scene anyway, if I wanted to yell in order to be heard, I'd go visit my grandma. She usually has better liquor anyway...

But getting back to the subject at hand, this micro series in the VBS archives is one of the most genius ideas I have ever seen fo a show. They take a knowledgeable person on the subject of American history, get them as fit shaced as possible, and then ask them about a certain event. This is then dramatized by actors who follow the narration of the inebriated expert perfectly. The episode I am posting this week is the subject of that famous lightning storm experiment performed by Ben Franklin. Jack Black plays a hilarious, yet strangely convincing Franklin.

All under the narration of eight (yikes!) vodka and cranberries...Enjoy!!