Archive for category Blog
The Europe Game
Posted by Damien Galeone in Blog on November 5, 2015
Sing it, brother
One night a week, Lee and I get our Europe on. We go to a local swimming pool, and have a swim, steam, sauna, and cold dip. Then we go drink wine like we’re bringing Caligula on his bachelor party and think in metric terms.
If you’ve never done this steam and sauna deal, it goes like this: You sit in a room that as steamy as the Congo in August, then you sit in a room (on purpose) that someone set to 96 degrees (Fahrenheit), then, after showering briefly, you step into the coldest pool of water you have ever been in. Again, on purpose. Oh, and you’re naked.
Ah, Monday.
How did this warrant the term ‘getting my Europe on’ you ask? You might sneer. You might go on to mention that you have done a sauna and steam room dozens of times on the Upper West Side or on your holiday in Santa Barbara. Well, that might be true, but since I never once even understood the concept of these things while living in the U.S., I completely attribute them to Europe. Also, while the history of the sauna is not relegated simply to Scandinavia and the Baltic area, it is a deeply rooted tradition in Europe.
But more importantly, calling things “European” is a dual purpose term. First, it’s a way to explain things so that people leave me alone. I have used the “Europe card” to explain my man purse, an inappropriately small bathing suit, three beers at lunch, and the age discrepancy between myself and a girlfriend. It’s also how I can trick my mind into being comfortable with things that are outside of my comfort zone. This includes eating pig brains in scrambled eggs and peeing in public.
Today I am using the “Europe” card to deal with several things I don’t love. Sitting on wood in the heat, sweating profusely in front of others, and being naked with other men.
I know. I know.
Confessions of a Cat Guy
Posted by Damien Galeone in Blog on November 1, 2015
The B Monster
All of the evidence points to the fact that I am a Cat Guy. I carry around cat treats in my pockets, talk to my cat as though she were a small human, and read an interactive blog on cat care.
Moreover, I send pictures of cats, post pictures of my cat, and have watched enough cat gifs to fill a Plutonian year. When considering the things that are wrong with adults on the internet, I am so that guy.
People think that Cat People are naturals, raised to be Cat People. They imagine us as toddlers, our tiny legs wrapped in a patterned quilt, rocking back and forth on a rocking chair and feeding a platoon of felines tuna treats from our cardigan pockets.
This isn’t true, so while I might be a Cat Guy now, I wasn’t always.
Don’t get me wrong, I always liked cats. It’s just that they were always a little wary of me. And they weren’t wrong to be, either. Oh, I wasn’t one of those bad kids who hurt or tortured cats and then went on to eat humans or seek the GOP nomination. I always respected their agility and speed, their lack of morality in the face of fear and their peculiar brand of horrified self confidence. It’s just that they never seemed to trust me as a reasonable owner figure.
In fact, at a very early age it became clear that the animal world and I were not simpatico. Animals around me were forever dying or attacking. Frogs committed suicide by jumping out of my hand into nearby campfires; a hive of bees once set upon me in an unwarranted attack, forcing me to run home amid my own high-pitched wails. The clash of man and beast is not a new story.
Even the animal world that tried to stay out of my way had a rough time. I once tried to nurse a bird back to health, only to accidentally step on it. I once ran over a duck with my bicycle and, though it survived, he glared at me anytime I passed that particular pond. In what was clearly an act of aggression meant to result in physical harm, he once chased me into traffic. I called him Limpy.
Wild Vampire Chase
Posted by Damien Galeone in Blog on October 29, 2015
The plan started off simple enough: Go to the town of Čelákovice, find the 11th century vampire burial site, try out a good pub apparently right across the road, come back to Prague.
Easy.
Wrong.
The first glitch in our plan becomes evident when we walk out of the train station: we don’t know where to go. There are no signs, but now I don’t know what I was really expecting. Did I expect a sign with vampires on it and an arrow?
We walk a bit aimlessly through the quaint city center. There’s a park, a fountain, a statue of soldiers, and a lot of old official buildings. No vampires. The city center quickly becomes a residential back road. We are soon scanning the buildings around us, realizing that we have no map. Six minutes after stepping off of the train in a tiny town, we are lost.
We blame Gerald.
Hard Lesson
Posted by Damien Galeone in Blog on October 26, 2015
The woman who walks through the door is little. Very little. She is wearing no expression.
“Hi,” I say. I want to apologize for being in my underwear; I never know how to greet strangers while I’m in underwear. Today it’s a polka-dotted boxer affair which I am only now rethinking on the mat in this Thai massage house. Before I can move my lips again, the woman barks a quiet order at me:
Stand up.
I do. Slowly. I grunt involuntarily, but it has the dual purpose of letting her know how badly my back hurts and conveying the idea that, boy oh boy, she’d better give me a damned good massage. Because I need it. She fixes the sheet, orders me back on the mat, and washes my feet. And with that, at minute 2, ends the calm and soothing portion of the 60-minute massage.
For the last two days my neck and back have been in severe pain. The origin of this pain is surely a night of swimming three days ago. Evidently, during the drunken karate kid flailing that I call ‘the breaststroke’ I created a knot in my upper back so large that it could be used to cross the River Kwai.
The pain is impressive. The kind of impressive when you begin to realize how much you’ve been taking things for granted, like walking, sitting, and the ability to turn your head. I never appreciate parts of my body more than when they are under attack by spasm, ulcer, or rupture. When I have a mouth ulcer, I can’t imagine life without it. A bad headache sends me into nostalgic reminiscence for a time when brain trolls weren’t poking the backs of my eyes with hot pokers.
It’s been a day and a half of muscle relaxers and ibuprofen. It’s been Youtubing Yoga poses for the upper back in a desperate attempt to return to a realm of life without excruciating pain. Turning my entire upper body to look both ways for traffic, I resemble that too-built no-necked linebacker from every high school. (All that’s missing is the muscles!)
The Vending Machine God
Posted by Damien Galeone in Blog on October 22, 2015
Herman: The Vending Machine God
It’s lunchtime on Thursday. The place is abuzz. Students milling about, others on the way to class. Faculty walking to classes or offices. Administration rushing around in an attempt to keep the whole operation from crashing. I weave through them with determination. I have a meeting with a vending machine.
When I arrive, the machine is unoccupied. Despite the activity buzzing around it, nobody is peering through the window at the sandwiches in their cubbies.
I take out my 50 Koruna and approach.
The last two days I have put 50 Koruna into this machine and selected a ham and Dijon sandwich (code 52, 47 Kc). And both days I have received both my ham and Dijon sandwich and all of my money back. Day one I figured it was a fluke, but when it happened again yesterday, I realized that the Vending Machine God was showing his face. Today is day three.
If the Vending Machine God (Herman) pulls the same trick, I think it’s safe to say that he is showing me favor.
Selassie’s Revenge
Posted by Damien Galeone in Blog on October 19, 2015
Is your life boring and uneventful? Are you sludging through your day with nothing to keep you on your toes? If so, I have the key to adding excitement and uncertainty to your life:
Selassie’s Revenge!
Like you, I used to have a boring life. A three-mile jog was just thirty minutes and eight seconds of exercise. A date was simply getting to know someone for two hours in a pub. A lesson was a ninety minute snoozefest, marked only by occasional attained language.
But that all changed after coming back from Ethiopia with a persistent stomach bug. Selassie’s Revenge is like other popular intestinal-based Revenges, such as Montezuma’s and Pharoah’s, and encompasses all the fun of shitting out your soul while praying to a God you no longer believe in to mercifully take your life. Now my days are dotted with occasional bouts of excitement and horror.
Adult Sick Day
Posted by Damien Galeone in Blog on October 15, 2015
Tuesday: self portrait
Childhood leaves marks on us. Whether it’s the positive Pavlovian response to Friday afternoon at 3 o’clock, or the negative reaction to getting called into your boss’s office. There are certain things which trigger certain responses.
Yesterday, I shamelessly needed my mommy. I stumbled through my day with a chest cold, wheezing in such a painful manner that Darth Vader would have winced and sent me home early from the Death Star.
After a brief discussion with my boss – who is far lovelier than Mr. Vader – she told me to take the next day off.
I literally gasped. Not because I was about to hack up a portion of my spleen, though, in fact, I did just that. Rather, I was sort of torn. See, I have long been programmed to see sick days as a fun-filled day of Ferris Bueller antics. But my adult self knew things to be quite different.
Basically, I knew what was immediately ahead. The two sick days I have taken in the last five years (and every adult sick day) have been the same roller coaster of emotions and issues. So as I pack my bag and leave with the knowledge that I am staying in bed the following morning, I foresee myself wearing pajamas, eating carbs, drinking hot beverages, and watching bad daytime television.
When I leave the office, I cry a little.
That evening at the market it is clear to any perceptive human that I plan on spending the following day in a matching sweatsuit on my couch. I buy four kinds of broth-based soups, two boxes of crackers, a bag of oranges, oatmeal, a bottle of ginger ale, two Snickers bars, hot dogs and baked beans.
The walk home is long and cold and my chest hurts. I am in the throes of a self pity churro by the time I sneak in my door. I strip off everything and slip into the armor of the forlorn, then I plant my ass on the couch and sip hot toddies in front of sitcoms.
This is it. This is as good as having a sick day gets. There’s the day off tomorrow, the fully acceptable woe is me period tonight, and the encouraged donning of grungy attire and comfort eating. I enjoy it as much as I can, for tomorrow is a fast decline into reality.
Don’t Count Your Curses
Posted by Damien Galeone in Blog on October 12, 2015
Hack.
Sneeze.
If I were locked away in solitary confinement, with no connection to the outside world, I would always know when it was my birthday. It would be the one time a year I either became terribly ill or my body fell apart in a disconcerting manner.
Every year, just before my birthday, my body stages a minor revolt in the form of some physical issue or illness. There have been pulled backs, flus, chicken pox, ear infections, and any number of colds and stomach bugs. It’s like a yearly biblical plague.
This year it’s a cold, and it’s going to be a bad one. I feel it begin manifesting itself on Friday, two days before my birthday. It’s gearing up as I head out to the airport to pick up a visiting friend. A pain is rising up my neck like a snake. This is accompanied by a tickle in the back of my throat that I can’t seem to placate. No good. The clincher comes when I cough up a small woodland animal after leaving the pub that evening. Nothing green coming out of the back of your throat can be good.
And, as we head up the hill to my flat, I let out a big woe is me.
Weird Things that Happen to you in Autumn
Posted by Damien Galeone in Blog on October 8, 2015
There’s really something about autumn. The crisp cool air. Cobalt blue skies bleeding into a spooky dusk. The smell of wet leaves.
It’s no secret that other things change in the fall. Moods. Outlooks. I always feel more nostalgic and reminiscent. I crave different foods. Stews. Soups. Bread. Roasts. I want different comforts than I did in the summer. Sweaters. Movie marathons. Rainy days reading in bed.
Everyone who goes through the autumnal season change can commiserate with the switches that happen within them during September and October.
And while a trillion words have been written waxing nostalgic and poetic about autumn, nobody ever seems to pinpoint why we feel different in this time of year. Perhaps it’s a job for science.
After four cups of coffee and a morning of internet research, here are some weird things that happen to you during autumn.
5 Weird Museums That Actually Exist
Posted by Damien Galeone in Blog on October 5, 2015
Today, I am walking through Podskalska in Prague’s New Town. New Town is wonderful; it is often overlooked by tourists and yet it’s lined with charming buildings which mark Prague’s varied architectural history.
Moreover, the back streets are often home to hidden gems. I’ve stumbled upon a bust of Winston Churchill, a pub with an archery range in it, and a church with a severed arm behind the altar. There’s always something weird just waiting to be discovered in those cobbled streets.
And better yet, there’s always a good pub near that something weird.
Today’s surprise turns out to be a museum of toilets and kid’s potties. The sign was in linoleum – what else – and the large front window is stuffed with the historical representation of The John. We take a picture of it and then swiftly move to the pub across the street. But I am already obsessed with this idea of the toilet museum.
The toilet museum exists. Someone thought that a museum to toilets should exist and they built it here in Prague 4 and then filled it with appropriate objects. Once I start thinking about it, the idea doesn’t seem all that crazy.
Surely, there are other weird museums out there and then I start remembering others I’ve been to – the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, the Sex Museum in Amsterdam, the Museum of Medieval Torture Devices in Prague.
What else is out there? I sip my beer in content, because my internet surfing time for later is set with purpose. Here are five other weird museums that actually exist in the world.
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