h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For me to post a random journal entry detailing the weirdness that is my life and times in the fabulous wonderland that is my apartment in Griffin, Ga.!

Thrilling, isn't it?

To be fair, I haven't spent all of my time since the last posting here in front of my computer and babbling on the internet. I went to Niagara Falls, and the Thousand Islands, spent some time with my sister, Valerie; her husband, Tony, and my nephew, Justin. I had a very good time, except for a bout of severe diarrhea. Much worse than when I went down to visit my dad, in Nicaragua.

I went to Nicaragua in March, I believe, and spent most of the month there. My father lives in the mountains, in a good-sized little city, Esteli. It's very nice there. The weather is almost always in the mid-to-upper seventies- sometimes rising above that, but not too often, according to my dad. It didn't get above that range, and dropped down into the lower 70's and mid-to-upper 60's at night. Pleasant climate. There's a lot of cigar factories (very nice cigars, if you smoke- which I don't anymore, but I tried the Nicaraguan cigars before I quit. They also make a couple of very good rums in the region. One is "Flor de Cana", and comes in both a dark (cured in old jack daniel's barrels) variety, and a white variety aged in non-charred barrels. I like rum. I like "pina colatas". I also like teqquila and margaritas, but they don't make that in Nicaragua.

I did, however, get very drunk at my old man's "fiesta", drinking Jose Cuervo gold, mixed with just enough margarita mix to make the drink look like apple-juice (consider, if you will, that Jose Cuervo is a golden tequila). I have pictures of all of this, and more on my farcebook page. I wonder if the new management will let us post photographs and such directly to our H2G2 accounts?

Enquiring minds want to know! (the "National Enquirer" is a tabloid in the US which used that phrase as a slogan, once upon a time. I don't read it, beyond laughing at the covers in the supermarket check-out line, but the reference makes me giggle. So there.

To get back to Nicaragua, I got very drunk numerous times there. And many days I spent sober. I filmed lovely girls dancing to steel drums at some Sandinista song-and-dance in the "Parko Centrale". There was also a local metal band who played a few songs.

The hotdogs are great. They use a smoked sausage for the weiner in "Hamburloca", the local burger joint. The hamburgers suck, though. If you want edible beef, you must needs go to the most expensive restaurant in town to get it. It doesn't cost much more that a steak meal here, but most meals cost two or three dollars, tops. I'm talking huge bowls of pork-fried rice, sweet & sour pork; just about everything is great except the beef- which is typically stringy, and tough.

They don't put tomato sauce on their pizza down there. It's baffling to me.

In the area of New York where sis lives, she says they don't even know about hash browns. You can have french-fries, or "home fries", which, to be fair, is cooked like hash-browns made of very large chunks. They also use something that tastes like provalone on their cheese and eggs- at least at "Mimi's", the only restaurant I ate breakfast at while up there, and my sister claims it is the custom for all the roles American or cheddar cheese plays in every other part of the country. Except maybe in some states on the Mexican border. Queso Quesidilla and Queso Fresco are mighty tasty cheeses. In fact, if I had to choose between one of those quesos and provalone for my omlette, I'd have to go with the queso.

I've been losing weight, despite my culinary ramblings. I've not gone hungry at all, either. I simply cut the high-fructose corn syrup, and heavy carbs like potatoes and rice and grain beyond the whole-fiber bread I eat through the day- though I no longer eat bread at every meal.

I've been doing exactly the opposite of what my heart doctor told me to do long ago (which blimped me up like a balloon!) and I've lost over 70 lbs, and my blood pressure usually is in the 120 - 130 range, tending towards the middle of it. My bad cholesterol is down, and my "good" cholesterol is up. I feel much better, as well. And I eat as much bacon as I want. Just candy or sweet things once in a blue moon.

I also discovered that I had ABSOLUTELY NO CAVITIES while in Nicaragua. The dentist who cleaned my teeth told me. I thought I was going to spend a bunch of money, and spend a lot of time in the dentist's chair getting fillings and whatnot, as I was sure my teeth were just rotting out. I haven't seen a dentist for preventive maintenance since I was 17! But no cavities. Wonderful! Oddly enough, the only teeth I'm missing are teeth drilled and filled back when I was 17, which the fillings dropped out of. Ce la vie!

Yes, I'm planning on living for another 50-some-odd years, just to annoy the people who don't like me. It gives me great pleasure to think of thwarting them. ;-P

I've also got 2 music CD's albums officially released and available on iTunes, Amazon, and every other retailer worth their salt as a retailer. One album was released as "Wylde Bill and his Imaginary Friends: "Dirges for the New Millenium" (yes, I misspelled "millennium", and I know it. Nobody's perfect.) which has finally become available on iTunes after a 2-year wait. I hope it doesn't take as long for my new release (as "Wylde Bill and the Melancholy Spacemen") "The Melancholy Spacemen" to show up there. I used Catapult Digital Distribution for the first album, but I decided to use Reverb Nation for the second. The royalties aren't as good, really, but I decided I wanted to see if they could get it to market faster. Only it doesn't seem like it... hehehehe. Oh, well. We'll see what we'll see. I just know that within a few weeks of release through Catapult, my stuff was on Amazon, E-music, Rhapsody, etc. I don't think the new album is anywhere except the Reverb Nation site. Another reason I dealt with RN- though I really didn't have to use their digital distribution to use them- was the fact that I can sell on-demand created CD's, T-shirts, and other merchandise through them.

I'm currently working on my next album. You can hear stuff from released and in-progress albums at my YouTube site: http://www.youtube.com/dablackbaron or listen at my soundcloud site- http://www.soundcloud.com/themelancholyspacemen ...

What else? I discovered I have pereprial nuropathy, which appears to be responding to vitamins, as my doctor suggested. My fingers and feet had been growing numb- a bummer when it comes to trying to play guitar & whatnot- and I thought I had pereprial artery disease, but the doctor said my circulation was fine. That's comforting. Hopefully, I won't get gangrene from a stubbed toe and lose my foot anytime soon! And the vitamins work.

Of course my dad also has pereprial neuropathy, his is so bad he stumbles when he tries to walk around nowadays. I hope I'm able to avoid this fate.

Fair warning to Europeans, as I might not get back around for a year or so (or maybe I will, since I want to make sure all my crap goes over to the new site- it amuses me to look on the past every once in awhile): I'm invading (God willing), next July. I'm flying into Berlin, then goofing around to the Rivera, maybe Amsterdam, Paris, all the usual crap.

It should be fun.

I also intend to go to Rio sometime in the coming year, and I'm going back down to Nicaragua before Christmas- maybe stay until my dad comes up for the Chrimmus partay & stuff. We usually have a big, extended-family feed and drunk fest sometime immediately before the grand day of the Suns rebirth- I'm pretty sure old Constantine, whom we can thank for Sunday, Easter, Christmas, and a few other things brought over into the state Christianity which he practiced, and which has typically been practiced by all the various sects and schisms of Christianity since(with a few notable exceptions, of course), considered his original god, Sol Invictus (who's holy days most Christian embrace as the holidays under discussion) was the same entity as Jesus Christ known under another name. Virgin birth, death and resurrection, they symbol of the cross, etc). Which is all a huge digression, but who cares anyway? My whole page here is a huge digression.

Anyway, that's about all the flow-of-consciousness things about personal health and experiences I can (or care) to consider at the moment, so until next time, I bid you all adieu! And Happy Trails, to you... Until we meet again! Happy trails, to you... keep smiling until then!

l83r, carbon-units!