Moo Cow

DISCLAIMER

If you notice that I am writing about something that has been previously written, it is not because I am a senile old person who likes to babble about shit they have already babbled about. Not at all. It is to reiterate it to show you what's currently going through my head as well as to help catch up all of the new readers - of which I'm sure there must be at least one - on previous issues. Not the babbling thing at all. If I had a secretary, proof reader, publicist, editor and such, you might get a better product. Since I don't, you get this crap instead.



TV SHOW REVIEW - FOLLOW UP

"Long Way Round". Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on motorcycles go around the world. OK - these guys are pretty crazy. Lot of respect for their stamina and such. Pretty crazy motorcycling stuff. Physical injuries, motorcycle breakdowns, impassable terrain. I'm personally not a huge fan of motorcycles but it was pretty interesting. It does make me very grateful that I don't have to worry about roads in Mongolia or Russia. At times, they were making 2 miles an hour if they are lucky. It really brought home to me just how bad the roads are in other parts of the world. On IMDB, this gets a 9.1 rating. I'd put it at about 7 out of 10.

One thing they did mention that was interesting is that the camera gear they brought was it was valued at $100,000. So, figure for $100,000 we can get the gear to film a documentary. Makes me wonder how much it costs for these different documentaries they do. They don't have listed how much it cost to make this documentary. Kind of sad - I wish they did.

Last note - there is a rumor that they may be doing 'Long Way Up' at some point. Speculation is that it is from South America up. Not sure on that but we'll see what happens. Rumor on the internet said that it was suppose to happen in 2011 but Ewan McGregor has done 4 movies in that year. Not sure if it's happening.



SEDLEC OSSUARY

This is something I'd like to see in the Czech Republic. Apparently, the people wanted to all be burred on holy ground. The bones stacked up and stacked up until someone had this idea - why not use the human bones as interior decorations? And it's not all that far away from Prague. Sedlec Ossuary is one place I'd like very much to see.



RENT SITUATION

Back when I was still working on getting disability, I had gone to my landlord (who goes by the name of "Candle") and told him that I might need to be late on a couple payments. After some consideration, he said that was OK. This didn't end up happening but in order to show some gratitude, I began to pay rent several months in advance. No good deed goes unpunished. I had made the mistake of pre-paying my rent through till April. Later, I discovered that I'd be out - and not returning - at the end of March. A couple months ago, I asked if I could get the month of rent I had prepaid back. He said, no, it would make him come up short.

I'm thinking that if it went to small claims court, he'd not only have to refund the $400 but pay legal fees and such as well.

I'm not sure what I should do about this.

Consultation with Bert to seek his advice might be a good thing.

Going to court and such with so little time left seems like it might not happen. Perhaps that's what he's counting on.

But I ask you - why would you want to severely agitate someone who lives in your house, has keys to your house and an evil imagination? It seems like the amount of destruction that could be wrought by someone who is planning on leaving the country and maybe never coming back would be far in excess of $400.

I'd sublet it if I could... To rowdy bikers...

We'll see what Bert has to say when I eventually get to see him. [Note, the Bert cloning project has not yet reached it's one trillion dollar mark so we can start the project. Please - give generously.]



WELLS FARGO

Bert recently drew my attention to an interesting news story in which the customer was (shock) getting screwed by his home insurance people. He has gotten it around to 'all of their stuff is going to get sold off from their office to pay him off'. Well, at least $50 he should get and maybe an answer to his 'why are you trying to double my insurance rates' question that was never answered. I say good for him. Crappy companies that seek only to make a profit off of the consumers backs should be killed and eaten.

36 DAYS TO GO

MOROCCO

Well, fuck. I was really hoping that would stay stable long enough for me to get in there. Yeah, I realize it is a totally self serving reason for not wanting them to go through a revolution but I really would like to see it and the rest of Northern Africa soon.



GERMANS AND THE HOFF

Apparently, the great love the Germans have for 'the Hoff' isn't made up. This is so strange. The article linked is in 'Der Spiegel', a German newspaper. Apparently, it's not just Eurotrip that believes Germans are obsessed with 'the Hoff'.



MONEY

One of the things I'd like to do is to write up how much things cost. I've been watching a lot of travel documentaries and they usually don't mention the cost of things unless it is amazingly cheap or outrageously expensive. I'm going to try to get the cost of things more into my blog to give people an idea of what they'd actually spend.

We'll see how that plan works out once I get on the road.

I think it would be nice if I had a film crew following me around but I'm not really seeing that happen. I've noticed that most of the people are much better looking than I am who do these things. And in better shape, the bastards. For some reason, a fat, cripply guy wandering around I just don't think is going to make it onto the TV.



LONELY PLANET AKA GLOBE TREKKER

The show gets worse and worse the longer you go on. You can pretty much watch the first couple seasons and be done with it. Not only do they show the same exact journeys over and over in later seasons (like nobody will notice) but then they start splicing together two you've already seen before into a single episode. It's not a really good value. Given the talent they've got and the amount of places that they haven't explored, I'm thinking it was purely a money decision and is a good explanation of why the show got cancelled. I'm thinking that even the people who only watched it as it came out caught on to the fact 'hey, this is the same shit as before'.



MOVIE REVIEW

Gulliver's Travels. This movie gets this award:

On my movie scale, 3 stars out of a possible 10. IMDB gives it 4.7, I think that's way too generous.



SLEEP NOISE

One thing I can't do well is sleep without some sort of constant background noise. I've got a device that makes it rain but lately I've been working on instead using my MP3 player. There are two reasons for this - first, I don't think everyone else would like me playing my 'rain machine' in the room (well, I don't know that for sure) and second, I don't want to carry it.

So, I'm working on instead using my MP3 player.

The big problem with this is that I normally sleep on my side. This is because if I fall asleep, I will make a snore sound and wake myself up. Frightening. So, I've got to sleep on my side. Which doesn't go well with headphones.

So, I'm experimenting right now. It's looking like the 'one head phone in, the other not' is what I'm going for currently. We'll see how that works out. I figure I've got a month.



TV SHOW REVIEW

"Long Way Round". Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on motorcycles go around the world. I'm two episodes into it thus far and it seems pretty interesting. Surprise, surprise - they had/are having a lot of trouble getting visas to go through Russia. I like that they are showing all of the preparation they have to go through. It appears that they are going to be camping out rather than staying in hotels and such at this point. I'm thinking that's just crazy - they may switch it up later. Thus far, the show is entertaining. I'll do a follow up review when I'm done watching all 11 episodes (10+special feature).



PACKING NEWS

Well, unfortunately, the razor my dad gave me is absolute shit. It seems to cut every other hair and makes me look a bit weirder (if that's possible) than normal. My plan is to use my other electric razor I normally do my head with to shave off my beard every week. My hair grows faster than a bears so within a week, I'll have a full beard. My current plan is to keep it shaved so that I look somewhat like my passport photo. When I get abroad, I'm going to stop by local barbers and stuff to get it shaved off every so often, as well as getting my head shaved. So, that's a bit less weight I get to carry about with me.

Now, I'm thinking that if someone just started reading this they're probably thinking 'What the fuck is he going on about an electric razor for?' Well, I'm wanting to show the entire preparation and thinking on it. When I chuck out other stuff from the pack later (it probably will happen), I'll write about that too.

Due to my current headphones getting a bit scratchy - I think the cord may be coming loose or something - I went an purchased two more $10 headphones. The bubble cases they're in are NOT waterproof. I'm thinking I'll be sticking them in a plastic bag somewhere later. Might put them with my extra glasses in a crush proof case or something, not really sure on that.

After the campaign ends I'm going to do another repack; lie everything out on the tables and try to figure out clever ways to put it in, maybe photograph it for people, stuff like that. Guessing that's probably 3 weeks off.