Bitter Kas

I've been looking for root beer for a while, hoping to make a root beer float. Dan & Poonam, remembering this, saw an unknown soda in the grocery store and decided to take a chance on a can, thinking it might be root beer, and if not, we could try something new.

Well, if you're ever in Spain, and curious about the soda called Bitter Kas, let me save you the trouble. This stuff is terrible.


"Based on how pretty it is, and red, I thought it would taste like strawberries," Poonam said. "It tasted like the aftertaste of cough syrup mixed with Windex."

"Bitter. Earthy. Definitely like biting into a gross root of something," was Dan's take. He later compared it to the taste of a new and green tree branch.

Ian said it was "kind of like mashed-up dandelions, but not as sweet as you'd expect it to be."

Before tossing it down the sink, I took another sip, just to make sure it was really that bad.
My reaction? Blech. Too gross for words.

2010 Goals

I was making a list of goals for 2010, and aside from the obvious ones that I make every year (procrastinate less, floss daily, get in a little better shape, write a page of fiction a day), I've got three new big ones. Four, I guess, if you count improving Spanish. But this year, I want to get better at guitar. "Good" may be out of reach, but perhaps "mediocre" or "decent" could be achieved. I've made a couple of stabs at it in the past, figuring it would be a somewhat natural step up from the bass, but never made it to the point where I'd acquired callouses that would allow me to practice regularly. I'd play a bunch, then my fingers would blister, and after the requisite couple of days off, I would forget about the guitar. This time, I've had two advantages - a quality roommate with a quality guitar (a tip of my cheapo hipster hat to Ian!) and loads of free time. Not much money, friends, or general entertainment options to distract me here! Once I got to the point where I could play regularly, I found that I rather enjoyed it. Make no mistake, I am still pretty bad, but improvement is coming slowly.

So my goals for 2010 include practicing an average of half an hour a day - 3.5 hours per week. Then I saw something online that reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell's rule of thumb for the amount of time needed to become an "expert" at something (from Outliers, I think. I haven't read it). At this rate, I'll only need 55 years to become a master (i.e., the Beatles at the start of their breakout period)! I've ramped up my goal to an hour a day, so that I can shred like a master at the tender young at of 52.

But hey, Christopher Lee is recording a "symphonic metal" concept album about the life of Charlemagne and he's 87.

The second new(ish) goal this year is to get my motorcycle license. It's been on my list of Things to Do by the Time I'm 25 for a while, so it's date is coming due. The only other real holdover was Write A Book, which I did, sort of, this year when I finished a 70-page poetry collection for a submission to a competition for never-published Latino poets. You can read some excerpts in my poetry/fiction blog! (Also, big thanks to Dorcinda, for posting it for me). I've included the goal of buying a motorcycle, but given the fact that I'll like arrive back stateside with $500 and no job, that may not be realistic. But I've been researching motorcycles (and how to ride/maintain them) online, and I'm encouraged to find several well-reviewed brand-new models for under $5,000, and three around $3,000. Still, since my car went kaput while I was in Spain, I'll need some form of transportation.

The third new goal is also something of a budget problem, but I want to attend a fairly prestigious writing workshop with the goal of getting a good teacher recommendation. I'm on the fence about applying to grad school for an MFA in Fiction, but I'd like to have the option open. I know that, money-wise, it's not a good investment, but I feel stuck in my lack of career given the economic collapse in general and the newspaper crash in particular. My plan, if you can even call it that at this point, is to research the prestigious programs that are free or include tuition-canceling teaching positions and apply only to those. Of course, those are really hard to get into, and even with a good recommendation, I might strike out on all of them. And even if I get it, it probably won't magically get me a book deal, but it will open up doors for teaching, give me some contacts, and some new friends to make up for the steady stream of the ones who move away. Plus I'll be forced to write more regularly.

But who knows, maybe the NYPD thing will work out and I'll be patrolling the streets of New York in a year.

Happy New(ish) Year! And Ireland, part I

Much catching up to do.

Most fun I've had in 2010: learning the Misfits' One Last Caress on acoustic guitar, using full chords rather than power chords. Hilarity! It sounds so much brighter with full major chords, with is an even more fun contrast with the words (ex: "I raped your mother today, and it didn't matter much to me as long as she spread").

Least fun I've had in 2010: The rain and the cold, especially cold apartment and cold showers. And the constant fuse-blowing despite using very little electricity. Also, not having been paid since Dec. 2, and a bank account running on empty since getting to Ireland (many thanks to Becky, D & P, and mom for the help this past month!). Seriously, the cold is more of a presence than it ever was in New York, because even though it was colder, there was always a warm place to go back to. This apartment, with gas-heated water and puny spacer heaters that have recently been tripping fuses left and right, can be really uncomfortable.

In December, I visited Ireland for the first time, along with Becky, the other American teacher who lives in Martos (other, as in aside from my three roommates).
It had its ups and downs, (I missed my friends and family) but overall a blast.

First up was Belfast, were we took a black cab tour of the neighborhoods around the "Peace Wall" which was erected 40 years ago to separate the warring Catholic (and pro-Irish independence) and Protestant (and pro-British unity) factions. Lots of info and notes from there, but I'm not quite sure what to do with them, I think I may do more research on the Troubles before writing more. The people at our hostel were pretty cool, and we saw some good live Irish music at the pub recommended by the hostel manager.

(This mural, in the Protestant neighborhood of Shankill, had a neat visual trick, where the gunman seemed to be aiming for you wherever you walked).


From Belfast we took a bus tour to see a ruined castle and then the Giant's Causeway, one of the most famous places to visit in Ireland. The Causeway is a rocky beach formed by hexagonal stones and columns. There are supposedly 40,000 columns, formed ages ago when molten basalt cooled after coming into contact with the ocean.




It gets its name from a legend in which Irish giant Finn McCool built a bridge to Scotland in order to fight the Scottish giant Benandonner. Benandonner accepted McCool's challenge and began to walk across. But when Finn McCool saw how enormous his enemy was, he realized he couldn't beat him, and ran to his wife, Oonagh, for help. Oonagh disguised her husband as a baby and built a crib for him near the shore. When Benandonner reach the Irish shore, he asked Oonagh where he might find McCool. Oonagh told him that he was out hunting to get food for his wife and baby, but would return soon. Seeing the size of the infant, and fearing to face the father of such an enormous baby, Benandonner fled back to Scotland, tearing up the bridge behind him. All that remains are the parts on either end - a similar, though smaller rock formation occurs on the southwest Scottish coast. There are other variations of the story, but this one is simplest and has all the most commonly used elements.