An Expat Interview and a Mini-Rant About Ghosting People

An Expat Interview and a Mini-Rant About Ghosting People

When you have a blog, you throw your website address up in all kinds of dark corners of the internet. When you're an expat with a blog, you register your blog site with various expat sites. It's just a thing you do. Late last year, the content editor from one of those sites contacted me out of the blue asking me to contribute to their series of expat interviews. In essence, she'd send me a questionnaire and I'd take time off from banging around in my own wordsmithy to write her something for free in addition to sending some of my photos so as to provide content for her website.Truthfully, I don't mind doing things like this. I like doing things like this. However, Content Editor ghosted after I'd sent her the completed interview. That seemed pretty rude, but I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt. People lose track of things, they get overwhelmed with life, or...
Read More
French Haters: Your Ignorance is Showing

French Haters: Your Ignorance is Showing

So... a Frenchman walks into a bar. No, wait... how many Frenchmen does it take to... wait, no. Have you heard the one about the French guy who -Seriously... shut the fuck up.It's no secret that I've got a lot of pet peeves. People are constantly grating on my nerves. I simply do not have a lot of patience where people are concerned.  Usually, the stupid things they say & do are mildly irritating, easily ignored. Some may piss me off... then there are the other acts of stupidity & running off at the mouth that I absolutely cannot abide.Racist & sexist jokes are a good example.I'm not talking about politically incorrect humor. I'm not referring to friendly jabs & charicatures.  I'm talking about cruel & malicious jokes that are not even intended to be funny. Ignorant & historically inaccurate babble designed to be rude & bigoted without even trace amounts of humor.What's worse is to tell these asinine "jokes"...
Read More
Why I Didn’t Read Your Email

Why I Didn’t Read Your Email

I used to like receiving email.  Back in the day when I had an email account on AOL & the chipper robot voice would exclaim, "You've got mail!", it was a happy occasion. Now, here it is more than a decade later, I've got email accounts on Yahoo!, Google & some other shitty site that I never remember to check more than once a month. I've got widgets on my desktop to notify me of new mail - they're more silent than the robot voice.  (He really got annoying after a while, didn't he?) Of course, I only bother to take a gander at those widgets after I've taken the time to respond to my Facebook messages & Twitter responses.  I think I've still got a Myspace account floating around out there & I respond to the comments on this blog via email, too. When I finally do take a look at my inbox, I might have anywhere between 5 - 50 emails.  Of...
Read More