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Your Friendly Guide To White People, Who Ironically Are Often Not That Friendly

In today’s racially-charged political climate, much discussion of white people has come up. However, white folk are not a monolithic group, but rather come in many different categories and varieties. As a white person and observer of white people, I have developed the following handy guide so that you’ll be able to distinguish what variety of white folk you are dealing with. In no particular order.

1. Hippies: Can be distinguished by looking generally dirty with lots of beads. Definite Bernie supporters, unless they’ve given up entirely on “The System” and are voting for Jill Stein, in which case, you’re allowed to kick them in the shins.

2. Hipsters: Somehow different from hippies, but also probably Bernie supporters. Sporting whatever the current dominant-yet-countercultural-fashion-of-the-moment is, no matter how stupid–neck-beards, Normcore, Man-buns, hair-dyed grey, boat shoes. They’re insufferable and will spend hours trying to get you try juicing if you don’t watch yourself. Owns cats. Many cats. Or pitbulls and will also spend hours trying to convince you that “pitties” are great pets, it’s their owners that are the problem.

3. White Trash: Just awful. I’d recommend kicking them in the shins too, but they’re all armed. All of them. They can live anywhere but are more frequently found in rural, desert, or urban sprawl areas. Have all tried meth. They’re the basis of Donald Trump’s support. They’re why country music is a thing, but might also love hip hop while secretly hating black people. Hence, Trump supporters.

4. Feminist Hillary Supporters: Highly likable, until you actually discuss Hillary with them. And then they refuse to make any concessions as to her faults as a candidate. Also, will try to get you to eat kale and will not let you bring anything peanut butter to their parties, as they or their daughter Madison is allergic.

5. Coastal Liberals: Insufferably superior. Voting Hillary or Bernie, fervently. Will tell you about their college degree and also will blog, particularly about other types of white people.

6. Christians: Extremely nice people who will pump you full of mayonnaise and jello-molds and tuna fish sandwiches, but hate gay people buying cakes. They might claim to like gay people in general, but are viciously opposed to gays who want cakes at their weddings. At best, they’re quiet Cruz supporters. At worst, Trump.

7. Conspiracy theorists: often overlap with Christians and white trash. More likely to be male. Annoying and potentially dangerous, but come in gradations: the more literate ones will yell at you about how “The system is rigged against Trump!” to fringey, backwoods, RV-living ones who’ll go on and on about Reptilians. Don’t kick, because they’re all armed and ready to shoot you while quoting Patrick Henry.

8. Corporate White People: These are the ones that trick you into eating high-fructose corn syrup, but then blame you for the resulting diabetes. Probably still crying over the implosion of Jeb’s campaign.

I’m probably missing a few, but these are the predominant types. Approach with caution, and don’t ever bring up Ferguson, because they’ll just end up yelling at you, no matter which side they’re on.

Your Friendly Guide To White People, Who Ironically Are Often Not That Friendly

2. Hipsters: Somehow different from hippies, but also probably Bernie supporters. Sporting whatever the current dominant-yet-countercultural-fashion-of-the-moment is, no matter how stupid--neck-beards, Normcore, Man-buns, hair-dyed grey, boat shoes. They’re insufferable and will spend hours trying to get you try juicing if you don’t watch yourself. Owns cats. Many cats. Or pitbulls and will also spend hours trying to convince you that “pitties” are great pets, it’s their owners that are the problem.

5. Coastal Liberals: Insufferably superior. Voting Hillary or Bernie, fervently. Will tell you about their college degree and also will blog, particularly about other types of white people.

#politics Bernie Trump Cruz Hillary whitepeople

You can tell a man’s level of maturity by how many types of cleaning papers he has in his home.

4: Tissues, napkins, paper towels, and toilet paper. This is the complete man, and marriage material. He recognizes that everything has its place, and that there should be no overlap. The napkins signify that he’s accustomed to having dinner guests, that paper towels will not suffice. Furthermore, the tissues indicate that he was well-raised, and is prepared to accommodate a lady (womens seem to use tissues. Guys don’t). Everything is probably clean and neat and color-coordinated at this house, and all ready for a lady or another gentleman to move in. He was well-raised and has kept it up. (PS. tissues by his bed are for one purpose alone, are show that he’s been alone far too long. Gross. Hide that in the bathroom.)

3: Tissues, paper towels, and toilet paper. A step down from the Marrying Man above, but mostly respectable. The absence of napkins signify that he’s not really prepared to entertain dinner guests, but recognizes that if nothing else, toilet paper hurts your nose when substituting it for tissues. He’s a work in progress, but not a total degenerate.

2: Paper towels and toilet paper. Toilet paper for bathroom stuff, paper towels for everything else. This is the bare minimum. This guy does enough cleaning to necessitate paper towels, but is totally unprepared for visitors. Or at least visitors who are sober and arrive before midnight. Not the grossest, but I’d still probably shower after stopping by. With anti-bacterial soap.

1: Paper towels or toilet paper. Sad. Just sad. This man has truly let himself go. Probably alone for a while, and still suffering from a past break-up where the other party was in charge of housekeeping. Be wary of pizza boxes with surprise insects inside. Eh, best not to visit at all.

1. Paper napkins from McDonald’s. The lowest of the low. Refuses to paper for cleaning supplies, and just hoards from fast food. And eats fast food. The only visitors he’ll receive are friends to play Madden, stoned and uncaring. Eventually they’ll leave him too, and he’ll be all alone with his McNuggets.

And what type of man am I? Let’s just say that I’m pleased with myself when I get around to putting the toilet paper on the toilet paper roll. Ladies, who wants some?

Passed over, once again

Hot chick at Starbucks has opted to talk to the weirdo, overly-talkative guy on the other side of her instead of me. He talks about people’s energy, which makes me wonder why she hasn’t stabbed him in the neck, let alone wants to talk to him. Then again, she’s going on and on about sociology, so maybe they’re a match made in heaven. Either that, or she noticed me staring at her boobs. Whoops.

Today in Stupid

Did you know that Masonic Zionism is a thing? I mean, it’s not really a thing, as in it’s not actually a real thing in that Jew-Masons control the world, but there are conspiracy theorists out there who believe in it. Basically, the Zionists (note: not all Jews are bad, just Zionists) control the Freemasons who control the bankers who fund the settlements and the Islamophobia. Makes total sense. Why have two separate conspiracies to believe in--Jews control the world! No, the Masons control the world!--when you can combine the two and make an uber-shadow group.

I’m actually not sure how I stumbled across this nutjob, but somehow got into a flame war on twitter with one @smeggypants, a big proponent of the Masonic Zionism conspiracy. Eventually he conceded that he cannot prove that the Zionists control the Masons, blah blah blah, which is sad because I always like reading sci-fi. Alas.

All conspiracy theories is just a belief that the world is much more complicated than it is, that’s there some shadowy cabal behind the scenes controlling everything. It’s comforting to people, for now they someone to blame their lot in life upon, and if everything could be exposed, then the shackles could come off. Furthermore, those who believe in religious or supernatural conspiracies--Nibiru! the Anunaki! Luciferians!--can now live in the sci-fi world of their dreams, where magic is real and possibilities are endless.

Unfortunately, the world really isn’t that interesting of a place. It’s just a bunch of monkeys fumbling into the future, slowly getting better with time. There is no wizard behind the screen. For example, in the 90′s, a favorite worry of these people was of FEMA camps, where Americans who disagree with the government (or the One World Government!?!??) would be rounded up and forced to live. And then in 2005 Hurricane Katrina came around and FEMA dropped the ball. They were unprepared to deal with a catastrophe in one city, let alone take over an entire country.

Humans just aren’t that well put-together. We’re too messy to pull off giant conspiracies. In fact, nowadays, thanks to the internet and technology, secrets are much less likely to be kept. Organizations cannot have total control. Servers can be hacked, files can be stolen. And yet, even with wikileaks and other such events, where’s the undeniable proof of aliens at Area 51? Or the Masons controlling everything, for that matter? There is none.

What’s especially sad about these types is that if there passion was directed more positively, they could help to engender change. For instance, in 2015 America, money has an outsized role in politics, with a few wealthy people funding PACs and Super PACs and even individual candidates (looking at you, Sheldon Adelson.) But conspiracy theorists are so busy HOPING that there boogeyman is far scarier than he is that they will fail to make any difference.

Undeserved Tropical Vacation, Epilogue

I’m home now, from Kauai, but the internet doesn’t fully recognize that, so every once in a while I get an ad for an amazing Kauai adventure! “Come hang-gliding! Have you thought about hiking the Na Pali coast?! Beachside dining!” Gee thanks, internet, for reminding me that I’m no longer on a tropical island and taunting me with it. I bet that if you have a relative dying of cancer, you google it, and then for weeks later all your ads are about cancer, even after that person died.

“You want to know about about lung cancer?”

“No thanks, stupid hospital, cuz that person is dead!”

There’s probably refugees who searched how to flee a war zone, and even after they die, their computer is flooded with “Wanna get out of Syria? Have you thought of Germany?” They did, internet, and it got them killed.

So no, I don’t need to know about a hiking trip up Waimea Canyon. I don’t need more regrets of what I haven’t done.

#kauai

Undeserved Tropical Vacation, Day 4, Entry 4: The Land

When one considers a tropical vacation, the transportation that comes to mind is swimming, maybe hiking and kayaking if you’re adventurous, maybe helicoptering if you’re rich. But on Kauai, to do all of the above, you must drive. You must drive, and because the speed limit seems to be 8 miles per hour, you must drive very slowly. (There’s a stretch of freeway that is 50mph, but most of the island is much much slower.)

Hence, one plods along, to island time. And if you’re not the one driving, you have plenty of time to contemplate the scenery. It’s beautiful, but seemingly untouched. Perhaps some of the land used to be sugar or later pineapple plantations, but now, it’s just wild. The trees along the side of the road often overhang, always threatening to regain lost territory.

After the immediate brush often come what would be fields in more populated areas, but here are just wild grasslands that end in the sea or the mountains. The mountains rise, miles away, steeply and foreboding. Sometimes there’s an antenna on top, or an old mill house in the distance, but for the most part, man has not made much of an impression upon the island. There is construction, yes, but always in previously settled areas, as if we’re huddling together, scared of the woods.

Perhaps if Hawaii wasn’t so far away, it would be settled like California. There’d be no wild desolate stretches, just housing developments and shopping malls. But it’s just an island, poking out of the Pacific, too far even for many to consider vacation homes. Instead, it feels like there’s just a few people around, beating back the bush. A good hard storm, and Kauai would be all natural again, with all signs of man washed away.

Undeserved Tropical Vacation, Day 4, Entry 3: The Beach at the End of the World

After pondering at the gigantic Waimea Gorge (seriously, this is a deceptively large island) we trekked to Palihale Beach. And I mean trekked. First we ended up at a gate for a US Military Arms Depot, which is always a fun place to nearly trespass on. “Did we miss the turn? KABOOM!” We’d ended up there at the end of the “highway” because the sign we saw for the beach led to a dirt path. No way that that was the right way. Yet, there was no other road in, and according to Waze (was this costing me a fortune in roaming fees?), the dirt path was the way to go. We doubled back, took a right, and hoped for the best.

To call it a dirt path is something of an insult. I think it was paved. Once. A long time ago. Probably during WWII due to some strategic importance. But now? Just a whole bunch of bumps on a beaten-down sandy path that may or may not lead to a beach. Did I mention my niece, still almost a baby was in the car? A dirt path, full of rocks, a baby, no repair trucks for miles...what could go wrong?

The local flora was even more foreboding. After about a mile (I have no sense of distance, even when not getting jostled) a field? appeared off the right side of the “road.” It looked like it might have been plowed once, a long time ago, although any crops grown there would spend days in transport before hitting the market. So no crops showed, but adding to the possible existence as a field were the presence, and I mean presence, of plants at the end of what might once have been rows. The plants were evenly spaced, which was odd, out here at the end of nowhere. More alarming, though, was that they looked like some sort of Lovecraftian version of a poinsettia. There were some white leaves, and maybe red ones, but everything was bulbous. The leaves were bulbous and lumpy, like someone had planted their leftover Christmas plants but then they’d been nuked full-on to evil. (Did I mention the shelling range nearby?) The road was treacherous so that cars would break down and then the plants would eat the humans!

Thankfully, none of that happened. After maybe half an hour (it felt like much longer) we found the “parking lot” for the beach. We disembarked, trekked up a sandy path, and found The Beach at the End of the World.

It was gigantic. White sand hundreds of feet wide and miles long, possibly ending in the mountains of the Na Pali Coast. The waves were high, cresting white. A couple lounged in the sand, and far off in the distance, an entire Pacific Islander clan played in the water. Dunes rose back the way we came, giving way to tropical trees and overhang. I can imagine that this is how the islands first appeared to white travelers--beautiful, but vaguely foreboding.

My brother, sister-in-law and niece played in the sand. I waded into the water. The current was strong, and I made note to let my brother know it probably was unsafe for a toddler. In fact, there were multiple currents--the waves criss-crossed as the crashed to the shore, and underwater similar battles brewed.

The whole area gave forth a sense of “you can visit, but you’re just an interloper here. Things might go wrong.” The treacherous path, the desolate beach, even that the other visitors were Filipino? and spoke no English gave a sense of being at the brink of the known world. The Filipinos and we met here, at where there was an overlap, but that they’d been there first reinforced the sense of intrusion. Staring off to sea, I realized there was nothing else out there but the uncaring sea for thousands of miles. This was as far west as one could go.

We didn’t stay too long on the beach--dinner called, and one vacations with a toddler at her schedule. My family walked ahead. Lying just by the beach, near the path to the car, a woman lounged in the sand seductively. Her breasts came tantalizingly close to falling out of her bikini. I stared. And I swear, she stared back, temptingly. “Come and stay here with me on this beach. This is the end. Look how peaceful it is. Stay.” Had I been alone, I might have stayed.

We ate sandwiches by the car, and made our way back civilization. We'd been to the end, and came back. The end of the world is pretty, but while welcoming, not very friendly. “You can stay as long as you want, but you can never leave.”

Undeserved Tropical Vacation, Day 4, Entry 2: Floor Mangoes For The Win!

I don’t know how your OCD manifests, but I stare at trees. Fruit trees. And sometimes food trucks. Let me explain.

Years ago, when we first visited Kauai, my brother and I took a kayak-hike thingy (not a tour, since we missed out on the tour guide somehow.) And walking along in the forest, I realized that the green oblong thingies bursting at their seams and exposing yellow flesh were mangoes. Delicious mangoes. And once you brush off the ants, those mangoes were some of the best food finds ever.

So on Thursday, my last day in Kauai, I was determined to find free mangoes once again. Obsessed, really. Thanks to the internet, I figured out what a mango tree looked like, and suddenly as we drove along from mini-town to mini-town, I tried to will each tree into mango-hood. Were those leaves pointy enough? What was dangling--were they mangoes? Were they ripe? All I could focus on was finding mangoes once again, and no, even roadside stand mangoes wouldn’t do.

As we pulled out of Hanapepe, a likely candidate appeared. Those leaves were good and pointy! Those were dangly mangoes! They were reddish! But alas, there was a “No trespassing” sign. Did LA rules of “if the first is overhanging the sidewalk, it’s public property” apply? And this was semi-rural Hawaii--what if they had a gun? So I scampered over and found a nice, a little bit squishy mango on the ground by the tree and fled back to the car with my treasure. No use risking getting shot for a little fruit.

The rest of the day I couldn’t help but check out all the trees for the telltale signs of mangohood. Do mangoes grow at 4000 ft? That’s a tree over there! Oh, we don’t have to stop, there’ll be others. Or we can get it coming back. All trees became possibilities.

Finally, back in Hanapepe at the end of the day picking up souvenirs (not really, since everything closes at 6), I spotted another mango tree, plein de fruits (full of fruit.) I scampered over to this one (scampering is the only way to move for fruit thievery), checked the ground, and finding no fruit on the floor, pulled a ripe-looking specimen off the tree. And another came with it! I now had three mangoes! (and only a few hours to eat them.)

We trekked back to the hotel, but thanks to OCD, I kept manifesting each tree into mangohood. It didn’t matter that I had three; I’d once stolen 15 grapefruit from a tree in the Valley because they were there.

Back at the hotel, I cut the floor mango first, and it was perfect--juicy and sweet and a bit tart. Next up, tree mangoes. Alas, their red-coloring was a faux ami--a false friend, as they were unripe smelled a bit industrially chemical. Oh well, only would mango to be consumed. (I made a nice salad with the mango and some passionfruit and avocado--all island fresh.)

I don’t think there’s really a lesson here. Well, maybe that OCD can be delicous (but can lead you to wandering all over St. Thomas looking for rib trucks, much to the consternation of your family.) Oh, and floor mangoes win again!

Undeserved Tropical Vacation, Day 4, Entry 1: “We’re foodies, goddammit!”

On Thursday we went to the top of Waimea Canyon, this amazing tropical gorge cut into the island. (Kauai is a deceptively large island.) IT was green and full of chasms and waterfalls and some of the waterfalls were so high that the water turned into mist before it hit the bottom.

In the parking lot, in addition to the obligatory chickens (”Chichens!” according to my niece), there was a truck selling local fruit--mangoes and bananas and yellow passionfruit and fresh coconut, which are gross but white people buy them because they’re local. Oooh, and lychees! One Pacific Islander lady’s job was to skin the lychees, and she had all sorts of flies and bees swarming around her. Poor lady.

And I’d laugh really hard if the ladies who run the truck just go to the local Safeway to source their fruit, freshly flown in from California and Mexico.

“I want local fruit from the trees!” everyone’s thinking. I sure hope some dad doesn’t find a leftover sticker before he gets out of the parking lot and is like, “I could’ve this back home at Kroger’s! I didn’t fly my wife and bratty kids to Hawaii to eat some goddamn California pineapple. This stupid fruit was 15 bucks! I could’ve gotten it for $4.50 back home! We’re foodies, goddammit!”

I would give anything to hear a white person yell, “We’re foodies, goddammit!” Living in LA, it’s only a matter of time.

Undeserved Tropical Vacation, Day 3, Entry 5: Sand and regrets

A long time ago, a recent ex-girlfriend and I visited her uncle in the hospital. He was dying of heart failure, and we’d gone to say goodbye. And I still remember walking into his room, seeing him on the bed, and then because of the way the sheets and his gown were splayed, seeing the tip of his wiener. And then I swear that he saw me looking. But I wasn’t looking! It just was in my field of vision! And there was no way to address this “I’m sorry you’re in pain, but could you cover up a little bit? Thanks!” But this poor old guy had to deal with me looking at his schlong in his last hours on earth, even if it was accidental.

Checking out that seal’s underside made me think of that awkward relic from my past. Even if one was unintentional and one wasn’t, I still feel gross. After all these years, I feel gross.

That same girlfriend and I had spent a New Year’s Eve together on a beach, though it was before we were dating. And then a few years later, I got us a hotel on the beach in New Jersey. I should’ve proposed on that beach in New Jersey. Or on the Duck Boat ride we’d taken a year before. Or on the Pont des Arts a year later. But I didn’t, and so here I was on the beach alone with my family.

No trip now is not without nostalgia. And regret. Even the rock jetties with their fighty crabs come with packed with sad reminders. The friends I used to go to Rhode Island with where I first learned of crabbing, eventually we fell out. Which is to be expected, but they didn’t fall out with each other. What’s more, at some point in our 20′s, thanks to Facebook, I found out that the other three guys had all trekked across Honduras together. It’s never fun looking at pictures of an adventure you could’ve had, if you’d played your cards differently.

Next year, we’ll probably go on the 2016 edition of Undeserved Tropical Vacation. I’ll probably go alone then too. And I’ll probably skip my 20 year high school reunion, also in 2016, because I just don’t talk to those people anymore. But I could have.

Undeserved tropical vacation, Day 3, Entry 4: More crabbies!

There were rock jetties at Wednesday’s beach, and true to form, there were crabs in/on those jetties--evil-looking black ones, all angular and angry. In addition, there were blue ones, who seemed quicker, as I never got a good view of them. Those silly black ones, though, wanted me to know their menace. Lucky for both, there were no mussels or fishing twine, so no one got flung into the sea.

I had hoped to find a hermit crab, small and harmless, to bring back to my niece. Alas, the small shells on the rocks contained snails, though. I decided against bringing her one of their sliminess back to her; let her live a few more years before knowing how gross nature can be. (What if she likes snails? I’m not sure if I can be in the same family as a snail-lover.)

And there was a seal! A giant, lazy sunning brown mass on the beach, with 20 or so humans at any given moment crowding around and gawking. Thankfully, the lifeguard had placed a rope around its area, lest someone...poke it? Get bitten?

She seemed happy to lounge in the sand, first on her stomach, and then, when a strong wave moved her, onto her back. (I say she because I couldn’t see wiener, but then, who knows if they’re retractable?)

Aside from blinking, she might as well have been dead much of the time. Alas, by the time my niece et al had gone to see her, she had waddled off to sea. There’ll be other seals. (Oh no, are seals endangered? What have we done!?!?)

It’s surreal to see nature that big, though. And that exotic. Seals are only on Nova programs and maybe the zoo, not just hanging out where you swim. I don’t know if it’s really a statement upon urbanization, or maybe just how mundane our lives are, but it’s odd to see giant nature just hanging out. I guess it’s the aquatic version of seeing a lion on safari, but with less biting. But then, one back flipper had been previously tagged, so nature isn’t that wild anymore after all.

Oh, and I feel bad about checking to see what kind of junk it had. I mean, I’m sure it didn’t mind, but it felt inappropriate. If someone had seen where I was looking, they probably would’ve called me out on it. But they’d probably checked too.

Undeserved tropical vacation, Day 3, Entry 3: Crabbies, part 1

Two formative experiences cemented my love of crabs. Not for eating, just the animals themselves. First, when I was young, my aunt and uncle had a house on a languid corner of the Chesapeake Bay, called Langford Creek. Here I learned about sailboats, and virgin daiquiris, and how to waterski. And especially, I learned about crabs--about how to catch them (with raw chicken necks!), how to sex them, and how to eat them. But I never could bring myself to eat them since I’d already made friends with them.

Several times a day I’d trek down their sloping backyard (the front yard, my aunt would correct me, since the water is the front of a house bordering water), past the flagpole, and down the dock smelling deliciously of wet tar. I’d look across the small waves, lapping at the beach, and then down to the gross green barnacles clinging to the wood. And to the right were two crab traps, baited with the raw chicken. Almost always there’d be a new catch, and I’d name them, often Daniel or Andrew, variations on my name of David Alan, and imagine we were friends. (I wonder if I was a particularly lonely kid, or did everyone “befriend” critters they’d run across?) As a result, I’d be horrified that my watery, snappy friend from earlier in the day would be dinner that night, and could never really happily eat them, no matter how delicious my aunt’s crab soup was.

Later, in my teens, I’d go to a friend’s beach house in Rhode Island. Between treks to the beachside arcade to fish for quarters to play Addams Family Pinball (the best game ever) and boogie-boarding in the cold Atlantic, we’d venture onto the rock jetties to catch crabs. And fling them into the ocean! (Crabs like flying. They just haven’t developed wings yet.)

The satisfaction stemmed from it being a combination of a puzzle mixed with a scavenger hunt mixed with a feat of patience. The key to catching crabs were mussels--black, shiny mussels that had to be smashed to reveal their gross goodness to attract the angry, grabby crabs.

Finding a pool between the rocks with crabs inside and mussels clinging to the sides was easy. Even prying off the mussel wasn’t so hard, and extraordinarily satisfying when accomplished. The real hassle was finding fishing twine long enough to wrap around the shattered mussel and then dangle it to its doom into the tidal pool. Surprisingly, jetty fishermen must go through lots of twine in their pursuit of their catch, for with enough scrounging and worries about stubbed toes, enough twine could be found. Then, ignoring the squishy pale mussel dying in our fingers, a couple of knots had to be tied before the goopy mass would be dropped into the pool.

Eventually, a crab, maybe three, four inches across, would “bite.” The new struggle would be gradually pulling the crab upwards, but not so fast that he’d fall back into the pool to safety. And then--a swing a twenty feet through the air! He was going on an adventure, seeing a whole new part of the sea!

It was a mischievous and slightly evil pursuit, but not full young serial killer-esque. (We always held off from actually committing the much discussed and far more nefarious “feed alka-seltzer to the seagulls and watch them explode. I never could’ve dealt with the guilt. Or with the seagull guts and slime splashing upon me.) And honestly, mussels are there for crabs to eat; we were just speeding up the circle of life into overdrive.

I guess there’s a third, more ridiculous reason: with their belligerent cowardice and diminutive size, I’ve always thought of crabs as the guinea pigs of the sea. With their claws poised in the air and their look of stupid anger, they remind me of a guinea pig standing on its hind legs, begging for food. They hugs aren’t the same, though.

Undeserved tropical vacation, Day 3, Entry 3: Braaaaaaaains

I have had my first negative influence on my niece! When carrying her, I like to shake my head really fast and say, “Bububububububububu!” Because I’m a grown-up. And she LOVES it. Now when I pick her up she shakes her head and says “Bubububububub!” We’re like one and the same.

This has caused some consternation to her parents, lest, I dunno, her brains fall out. I don’t know how firmly attached baby brains are, so I guess it’s a reasonable concern. It’ll be great in 10 years when she’s tested at school and a teacher says, “Maya would be really smart, but it seems that large portions of her brain seem to have leaked out her head at an early age.”

Anyways, for now, I’m proud. Next up: burping. And then----beer!

Undeserved Tropical vacation, Day 3, Entry 2: Life lessons

My niece is now playing with a balloon. This can only end well. Loud trauma in 3...2...1...

Undeserved family vacation, Day 3, Entry 1: ARE YOU VACATIONING HARD ENOUGH?!?!

I never can get over the worry, while on vacation, that I’m not experiencing enough. I’m torn between going with the flow and whatever everyone else wants to do, and worrying about seeing and doing and eating enough of Kauai. Vacations always make me worry that at the end I’ll have to tally my activities to some taskmaster who demands, “How many goddamn birds did you see? Did you kayak?? How about sea kayak? Did you eat enough poke? And passionfruit? TELL ME ALL ABOUT THE SEA TURTLES OR YOU WASTED YOUR TIME!!!”

Thankfully, I’m here with my niece, who’s 1.5. So we’re basically moving according to her schedule--naps and eatings and boredom and more naps. Where we go and what we do and when we do it is entirely dependent upon her needs, which means I don’t have to fret about making plans. So, I might not kayak up a river, but babies can’t really do that, so it’s ok. Although, I did sleep through a bike ride this morning, but it was early. I guess I’m not totally on baby-time after all.

Undeserved tropical vacation: Day 2, Entry 3: The Green Bubble

Kauai is an odd place. It’s rather undeveloped, except for occasional bouts of housing, many hotels, and golf courses. But oftentimes those areas won’t connect and there’ll be unused land between, full of flowering trees and vines (all vines look evil after reading The Ruins) and what looks like corn but is really just tall grass.

But just next to the resort lies red desolation. There’s a golf course in the distance, but between here and there is just a reddish dirty expanse with some gray weeds weakly lingering on. Nothing taller than six inches grows, and even the chickens seem to avoid this section of land. On the grounds of the Marriott, everything is green and lush (and full of lizards and snails), but just after the last building, the grass ends and the redness begins, almost immediately. It’s like living in a very small hospitable section of Mars, just without the oxygen bubble.

All of this gives the sense of intrusion onto the island, as if Kauai is saying, “You are the unnatural ones here. This is what I’d look like without you.” Even the greener sections of land without human influence, of which there is much, threatens to overcrowd the small patches that we’ve cleared out for our recreation. Every vine creeping almost onto the street is Kauai’s way of saying, “You are only temporary. Someday, all this will be wild once again.” It’s a nice place, but we’re only holding back nature’s inevitability. It’s just biding its time.

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