Camping - NYC style

I spent this weekend camping/river rafting and I must say that it was one of the most ridiculous experiences in my life. It might just be that I'm used to doing outdoor activities with other people that do them often, or it might be the fact that all the people I went with are Manhattan residents by choice and would have it no other way.
First off, none of us have a cars so we all go to rent cars in Manhattan in order to get to the camp site. We head out to the camp site at the Delaware River Gap 2 hours from the city and arrive in a Lincoln Continental, a Buick old person car, and a Mercedes. Then we discover that the each of the cars had decided to buy beer for the entire group of 10 people, which put us over 150 beers not including the wine and hard alcohol. We grill some food, drink a bunch of beers, and go to sleep in the giant 10 person tent with a hinged screen door.
The next morning I realized how ridiculous my companions auctually were. The first one to wake up was Jeff. He gets out of the tent and walks straight to the bathrooms. He comes back showered and with his hair done up, gel and all. The next two to get up are the girls. They need to go to the bathroom too but the 2 minute/500 foot walk is to far for them so they proceed to drive to the bathroom. After this, everyone discovers that you can drive to the bathroom instead of walking and for the rest of the trip everyone proceeds to do this . (one guy Doug was auctually too lazy to walk to the bathroom so he ended up taking a shit in the river instead) After everyone is up we sit around for a while, we pass around a couple of issues of US Weekly and we pack the lunch cooler for the day of river rafting. About 20 minutes is spent mixing pineapple vodkas, 5 minutes is spent packing lunch food, and another 10 is spent filling the rest of the space with beer.
After getting safety instruction from a 10 year old boy we launch off in our two boats ready for an adventure. We hit the one and only set of rapids, they last about 10 seconds and we are still completely dry. For the rest of the day we float/sunbathe down the river at just under 1 mile/hour. Throughout the course of the day we finish an entire handle of vodka and probably about 2 cases of beer between 10 people. During the entire river trip everyone kept on throwing their trash into the rive and I would keep on picking it up and putting it in our raft. When my boat mates found a pile of wet lunch food at the bottom of our boat, they were disgusted and didn't know what to do except to sit on the other side of the boat in order not to touch probably 1/2 loaf of bread they had chucked into the river, but was now in our boat.
Once on shore we piled in the first van we saw thinking it was the raft company's. Turns out it wasn't theirs and we had just put 10 people in a strangers car and used their a/c for 15 minutes. We manage to get back to our campsite in and discover that we have new neighbors. On one side we had a group of Romanian ladies that sang drinking songs till 2 in the morning, and on the other we had a bunch of white guys who had amazing base in their Toyota Camery from which they blasted rap for hours on end. Actually the entire campsite was filled with people just like if not worse than our neighbors.
Being tired from a long day of drinking we went to bed early, around 12, only to be woken up a couple of hours later by firecrackers set off by our neighbors and more Romanian singing. I think some other people around the way tried to rap/karaoke at some point too.
We got up again and did the morning ritual of driving to the bathroom 500 feet away. Packing was easy, we threw the food we had opened away and then packed the 70% we hadn't touched into the car along with all our stuff and left. We finish up the trip with a stop at Chili's and head home. The guys went straight back to their apartments while the girls made a stop at the beauty parlor for a manicure.

what we eat

we are what we eat and it's kind of scary but my diet often times closely resembles what's in the American family picture.
food that people in other countries eat
maybe i should take a note from dead prez

Lentil soup is mental fruit
And ginger root is good for the yout
Fresh veg-e-table with the mayatl stew
Sweet yam fries with the green calalloo
Careful how you season and prepare your foods
Cause you dont wanna lose vitamins and miner-ules
And thats the jewel
Life brings life, its valuable, so I eat what comes
From the ground, its natural
Let your food be your medicine (uh huh)
No excederin (uh uh)
Strictly herb, generate in the sun, cause I got melanin
And drink water, eight glasses a day
Cause thats what they say

They say you are what you eat, so I strive to be healthy
My goal in life is not to be rich or wealthy
Cause true wealth comes from good health, and wise ways
We got to start taking better care of ourselves

This is a quote from a pastor in New York that I really like

"About every other week, I confront popular pluralist notions that have become a large part of the way Americans think. For example, pluralists contend that no one religion can know the fullness of spiritual truth, therefore all religions are valid. But while it is good to acknowledge our limitations, this statemement is itself a strong assertion about the nature of spiritual truth. A common analogy is often cited to get the point across which I am sure you have heard — several blind men trying to describe an elephant. One feels the tail and reports that an elephant is thin like a snake. Another feels a leg and claims it is thick like a tree. Another touches its side and reports the elephant is a wall. This is supposed to represent how the various religions only understand part of God, while no one can truly see the whole picture. To claim full knowledge of God, pluralists contend, is arrogance. When I occasionally describe this parable, and I can almost see the people nodding their heads in agreement.

But then I remind the hearers that the only way this parable makes any sense, however, is if the person telling the story has seen the whole elephant. Therefore, the minute one says, 'All religions only see part of the truth,' you are claiming the very knowledge you say no one else has. And they are demonstrating the same spiritual arrogance they so often accuse Christians of. In other words, to say all is relative, is itself a truth statement but dangerous because it uses smoke and mirrors to make itself sound more tolerant than the rest. Most folks who hold this view think they are more enlightened than those who hold to absolutes when in fact they are really just as strong in their belief system as everyone else. I do not think most of these folks are purposefully using trickery or bad motives. This is because they seem to have even convinced themselves of the "truth" of their position, even though they claim "truth" does not exist or at least can't be known. Ironic isn't it? The position is intellectually inconsistent. "
- Tim Keller

diarrhea is some nasty shit

that's right if you've had it lately it sucks. and it sucks even more if you've gotten it in a foreign country. i'm studying infectious diseases right now and pretty much everything we've looked at in the past 2 weeks causes diarrhea. there's even some bacteria that you don't even need to swallow that can cause projectile vomiting and watery explosive diarrhea at the same time literally (normally known as the stomach flu and if you've ever had it is a horrible experience).
there are 4 types of E. coli that cause 4 different types of diarrhea

-Enterotoxigenic - watery traveler's diarrhea
-Enteropathogenic - the runs in infants and young children by erosion of the small intestine
-Enteroinvasive - destroys the large intestine and causes bloody feces w/fever and inflammation
-Enterohemorrhagic - this is by far the worst. first it causes bloody diarrhea but it can also cause destruction of blood vessels leading to bleeding all over your body and also destruction of your kidney which leads to renal failure and eventually death.

solid poo is good and everything else is scary. what's worse is that E. coli only live in the gut of humans and animals, this means that if you ever get one of these forms of loose stool, your food/water was contaminated with someone's or some guy's dog's poo. Worse, it might mean that you weren't too careful/hygienic with the last rim job you gave.
Moral of the story = solid is good.

don't ask me how i found this

Alpha male searching for you - 35 (Upper West Side)

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Reply to: pers-534174649@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-01-09, 11:04PM EST


Hello and welcome,

Perhaps you are familiar with the qualities of an alpha male and perhaps you are not. Any woman who has ever been drawn to the strength and fortitude of a man will begin to understand. Arrogance is not a quality of an alpha male. Immaturity or insecurity is not a personality trait of an alpha male.

If you are unfamiliar with how things work in the world then you will never understand where I will fit in to your life. As an intelligent male with dominant traits, I am accustomed to a woman following my lead.

Perhaps you have heard about how men complain that women in the US simply are not quality life partners. Selfishness, individualism, feminine equality/superiority, etc. have no place in a relationship. A woman simply follows her man on a path that takes them forward and upward. The dynamics of the relationship will vary with each couple, however, the fundamentals are the same. I lead and you will follow. I want children and you will provide my heir. You will work with me in whatever dynamic I choose for our personal and professional relationships.

It thrills you to be taken under the wing of strength, wisdom, and progression. You are very open minded and will not fault a man for being who and what he is. Know that the animal resides within the animated flesh and that there is an everlasting melding of mind and beast.

Send photos and let's talk. Be sincere, emotionally ready and available. I will have what I seek.

Floppy Baby

Caused by the same bacteria that makes botox.

in response to flirting w/ gay men

"when it's ok for you to tease a fat girl by flirting with her, then you can flirt with gay men just to tease them."
- my friend joe