To Whom It May Concern in Washington, DC

It has come to my attention that the embassy in Khartoum is subject to excessively harsh mail sending restrictions, much more than the other posts around the world. I would like to bring this issue to your attention because I believe that there may have been some sort of mistake - that you could not have possibly meant to restrict the size of the outgoing mail to be smaller than a VHS box as the oh so friendly mail clerk here at post informed me. For example, instructed me that my T-shirt was "oversized" and would not be allowed in the outgoing mail from Khartoum.

At first I got all affronted because I was trying to mail an US Embassy, Khartoum T-shirt to this freak - I mean, my friend Otin - although God only knows why because I have recently found out that he likes those one "Chunky" candy bars. Remember that?? THAT SHIT HAD RAISINS IN IT! Grapes nobody wanted that were just left laying around until someone was like, "hmmm...I bet if we threw that into a candy bar, nobody would notice." and then realized it had to be a chocolate one because you'd totally spot that shit otherwise. When nobody -- except Otin apparently - liked that, they ended up throwing them in a fruit cake because they knew that nobody would ever eat that shit and its not like the Raisins are going to go bad - they're already dead grapes. What the hell were you thinking Otin??

However, because I tolerate all kinds of freaks and "respect" your right to eat all the shit I don't want - I was still going to send him the shirt because, Whatever! I don't judge! (OMG!! I couldn't even say that last sentence with a straight face!!!)

Then the monster pointed out that it was not the size of the shirt he was discriminating against, it was the size of the box - and he pointed out a VHS case (which I believe might have once held "Tootsie" in it) and told me that I was not going to send anything out of his office larger than that.

HE IS NOT THE MAIL FAIRY!!!

ANYWAY, I am sending this letter to simply highlight to you that (a) nobody uses VHS any longer and I'm not sure where in the hell we are supposed to get a box that will fit your specifications; (b) I have recently gathered a bunch of Africrap from around here that I was PLANNING on sending to people in order to buy their friendship. (*Why you gotta ruin my flavah!?); and (c) What the hell kinda training course do you send these mailmen to? WHY THE HELL ARE YOU TRAINING THEM TO BE "POSTAL" in Sudan as well??

I don't think you understand what you have done here. You made them into a mailman and now these "mailmen" are starving themselves during daylight hours for Ramadan, essentially turning themselves into rabid beasts by 3 pm.

As such, I would appreciate your assistance to rectify this situation. Poor Otin will be sitting in tears awaiting his shirt. Little Blognut won't get her bracelet made of real, genuine "product" as the man told me as he lovingly pulled it out for me to see...(oooh. Ahhh...product!) Do you have any idea how rare materials made of "product" are these days??

In the interim while I assume you create your study groups and they draft their 30 page findings, I would appreciate it if you would send me some Kevlar. I'm no longer Afraid Sudan is going to get me, I'm now having nightmares about the mailman.

Thank you for your anticipated cooperation in this regard.

Sincerely,

Michel

Dear Starbucks,

I know you don't know me - well, maybe you might recall that I was in your store approximately 2,432 times over the course of my stay in the WDC area, demanding random things (and for the record those dark chocolate almonds dusted with sea salt ROCK. Well done my friends!!) However, that is not the purpose of my letter.

I am writing you a letter on behalf of my friend Blognut. She was recently the victim of identity theft. (I KNOW, scary right?! You can totally sympathize, right??) Imagine her horror when she realizes that someone masquerading as her wrote you a letter telling you that she wanted to break up for some silly, nonsensical reason. I wanted to ensure that you understood that she is the victim in this case, none of that was true, and she has since taken legal action to rectify her loss of identity.

She is horrified that you may have thought that it really was her who broke up with you guys and that she would do so for such a silly, petty, reason. I mean, its not like you DISCONTINUED the pumpkin spice latte or those fabulous frosted holiday sugar cookies you make (because that, my friends, would mean war). No, the letter was obviously fraudulent.

In the interim, I just wanted to send you a letter to ensure that you didn't happen to take offense at any of the silly statements in that letter, and if you did, to know that it was NOT in fact Blognut. I know that a kind and environmentally responsible company such as yourself would never deny Blognut the Pumpkin Spice Latte or other tasty holiday beverages. Of course not! That would be petty and small minded.

Starbucks you're just better than that.

Therefore, I would appreciate it if you could remove her photo from your barista's most hated list of those who should not be served, and allow her to return to your stores. In times like this, when someone has clearly been a victim to a crime, we should all bond together and build strong support networks.

As I know you will undoubtedly feel very bad for her plight, I just know that she would be amazed and humbled if you not only allowed her to return to your stores, but also gave her a free Grande Pumpkin Spice Latte (not the non-fat one, I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is NOT GOOD! Apparently, the fat is a necessary ingredient. Please make a note of that for my future ordering because I may be on one of my "kicks" where I think I will be healthy and want to lose weight - that's ridiculous. I'll just be miserable and take it out on your store. It's safer for all around if you just nod and give me the real deal....)

Your most loyal customer,
Michel

PS I, too, would appreciate a pumpkin spice latte. Please open a starbucks in the US Embassy in Khartoum -- well, I'd wait until the new Embassy they are building is finished. The old one smells funny. It would be hard to work under those conditions. I assume, however, that you will send out someone from Seattle to make my coffee until such time as you can open your store in the new Embassy???

Just Thinking About it Makes Me Bummed!

It is officially mid-September. Why is this significant you ask?? Because!! That means it is now officially Fall!!! Fall is my most favorite season...ever! (Right behind Spring, Summer and Christmas.) Fall is the season where you can start layering your clothing, which means that you can finally disguise the muffin-top with a bunch of alternating waistlines created by clothing! Is it there? No...maybe there? Is that a lump or just another layer!? (SEE!! We NEED that kinda uncertainty when it comes to dressing - if you HAVE a muffin top, you understand me!)

Fall is also the season when all the great USG holidays start. Granted, they are all kinda lumped in there together which totally SEEMS like a great idea while you're getting them, but then you hit March and you're all WTF?! Not till the end of MAY!? My GOD man! Can the USG get ANYTHING right??

Fall is when Halloween - the most holiest of all holidays (because it involves free candy) comes around. Naturally, not wanting to be caught without something to give the kiddies (because I'm just naturally good around children) I will normally begin to stock up on said candy in September.

And then I proceed to hide it around the house.

Unhidden, it will call to me to test it for safety reasons. You never really can be too safe with our kids these days. Why what if it were POISONED!? You don't know - which is why I selflessly throw myself in front of the bag of chocolate bars - but not the Mr. Goodbar. That shit is yucky. No self-respecting kid wants that shit. (Interesting fun fact: I adore the Mounds bars, but not really the Almond Joy. I mean, I would totally eat an Almond Joy - don't get me wrong - but if it had to choose...I would choose Mounds. -- I'm just throwing it out there Mom and/or Mel....just throwing it out there.)

HOWEVER, the best candy bar ever - in the history of the world....is the 100 Grand Bar! Remember those?? They only seem to be available at Halloween. Liz and I used to buy bags of that shit and then hide it from our families (I was just pretending. Josh won't eat candy - but he would judge me if I were to say...eat a whole bag of those candy bars and then wake up on the basement floor surrounded by distinct red wrappers and the boys, who have red wrappers stuck to their fur. -- Kernel had a wrapper stuck to the side of his head. The little shit totally dimed me out by running up the stairs to greet him from his return from a camping trip with Jake. Et tu, Brute? I bought you a cheeseburger with no pickles or onions!! HOW COULD YOU!?)

However, the worst part of missing fall in the US of A is that fall is Pumpkin Spice Latte Season at Starbucks!!! Believe me! The Gingerbread or the Egg Nog Latte cannot even compare!! It is like drinking a little cup of heaven - although, if I'm going in, I totally get the biggest cup of heaven they have to offer! Everybody knows that my most favorite thing in the whole wide world is to get a huge cup of piping hot liquid pie, disguised as a tasty breakfast beverage! "What's that Josh?? Oh? This? Just coffee. Of course I got you a cup too! Cream, no sugar, right??" SUCKAH.

So right now I envy most of you guys - EVEN you guys in Canada because you also have access to tasty Starbucks beverages. So if you guys care for me - even just a little - you will go hold up a starbucks and then send me the pumpkin spice latte mix.

I'm just sayin... a true friend would do it!

I Shit You Not... (maybe)

So I am sitting in the car, minding my own business, right?? Paul and I are driving around Khartoum discussing very importanty Embassy stuff like the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the lack of a Starbucks at the Embassy (guess which was mine??) and we're all seriously debating whether there could EVER REALLY be peace in Sudan without a pumpkin spice latte (I submit to you there could NOT) and Paul totally slams on the breaks...the armored vehicle travels approximately 1 more mile while it stops...and he goes, "Is that a fucking MONKEY?" I shit you not! He totally said the F-word! (AND, in front of me...a LADY! How RUDE!)

However, in his defense, it totally was an effin monkey! AND, it was totally right outside my house! I can only assume the little guy was there to throw some poo (I'm not actually sure what it is that monkeys say they DO). So anyway, we sit there for a while and stare at the monkey and then I realize I should probably take a picture of said monkey - so you would believe that I now have a monkey - but then Paul moved the car and he shocked the monkey, and then the monkey totally made a run for it and I could only get a picture of his ass as he ran away. (Shit! That was some kind of run-on sentence there.)

So this is the only picture I could get of my new monkey (whom I have now named Mortimer). He is the grey lump with monkey balls in the photo below...


(Yes, he's a boy! Don't stare at his butt! It embarrasses him.)

So anyway, I was telling Josh that I intended to start leaving out some fruit for Mortimer - so he doesn't have to rummage through the trash --DOOY! and Josh was all, "No! if you do that then Mortimer (he refuses to call him Mortimer though, he calls him IT) will get all pissed if you don't have something to feed him. Remember JOE in Costa Rica??



(Joe's so cute....)

Remember how you decided to feed him, and then you ran out of granola bars and then Joe was all pissed so he totally jacked our mini-bar?? Remember the bill for Joe's snacks? This is what is going to happen...




(WTF JOE!?)

So then he starts lecturing me on how Mortimer is all unsanitary and shit...CHAA! Like I'm really going to let a monkey into the house -- well, not into the bedroom! I mean, my GOD! that is Gross. (Only the living room and kitchen!)

But then he managed to convince me; he said, "Fine. Feed him along with the 5 homeless dingos you've already moved into the housing compound. Start your own damn zoo for all I care. . . (yes, we all know it is not ending there). . . I just have one thing to say to you about this: What do you know about Africa and Monkeys???

Well, SHIT! Now I probably gots the Ebola!

Quick! Somebody google the symptoms!! All I know is that my mouth tastes like pennies and I have to use the restroom. (Although, to be fair those were my symptoms when I had mesothelioma and also the Lassa Fever too. Shit! I'm a trooper. It's an effin miracle I'm still alive!)

The big question now for everyone is: Whom can I sue for this??

Memories.....

Okay, so I thought I would share yet another story from my time in Pakistan. Pakistan was my first real overseas travel. (Canada does not count.) It was just me and Howard. At that time, Howard was the only man in my life. . . Howard was my kitty. It pains me to admit it, but I was a walking stereotype: single, bitchy, headed toward 30, and then (naturally) I adopted a cat that I swore thought it was people.

It is somewhat difficult to describe Peshawar, Pakistan to you guys. I'm pretty sure the smell is technically considered a form of WMD, only it's the kind that kills you slowly. (Seriously, that shit can go through walls!! Nobody was safe!) I was given a huge house - even though it was just me and Howie - the thing had 6 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms (I know, don't ask.....I'll just leave it at, you need them).

So anyway, we settle in okay (it was touch and go there for a while. I walked out on my balcony to see the view: It overlooked a family of 'Fugees. They used to keep chickens in their "house" of mud and wash their laundry in a bowl then hang the clothes on the mud fence. I was really tempted to offer them my washer, but then the smell wafted up, and my short-lived jaunt into caring about others and cultural sensitivity quickly ended. ) and then not long after I arrived, we had my first 'Eid. Due to the timing of my arrival it was the dreaded "little Eid" where they slaughter the goat or sheep for the feast.

It was like living in hell.

Picture what you believe to be what the end of the world would look like, aka Judgement Day (although frankly, with me, every day is a judgey day), but with the added joy of the smells of dead animals. Pesh had open sewers that ran alongside the roads and they were FILLED with entrails. There were these HUGE (and I do mean HUGE) crows that had big-ass gray heads...naturally, they would pick up said entrails. So you'd be driving along the road and pieces of dead animal would hit your windshield. EVERYONE found religion on this holiday!!

We were all praying for it to end.

So anyway, I was not ready to face anything that would have been attached to those entrails. So I had this gardener, Ali. He kinda looked like a scary, skinny version of Santa (only not so much jolly, more like crabby) - so I asked him where I could buy some chicken - you know, get the recommendation from the locals - it's what all the travel books recommend!! Ever-so-helpful, my gardener offered to get the chicken for me. Ever-so-lazy, I totally took him up on it. Later that night, my doorbell rings and it is the gardener holding a LIVE CHICKEN upside down by the feet.

me: *GASP!*

Ali: Memsahib (gesturing toward me with the chicken)

me: WHAT'S THAT??

Ali: Chicken, Memsahib.

me: I know it is a chicken, but WHY?

Ali: Chicken..you say you want fresh chicken?? Here is chicken.

Me: Not THAT fresh!

Ali: (annoyed, gestures with chicken)

Me: I....what.....I...

Ali: (sighs in annoyance) You want me to kill for you? I pluck.

So remember how I mentioned that I seriously hate birds?? Honestly, can't stand them..flying rodents! They freak me out - and I totally hated our chickens when I lived on the farm growing up. They used to peck at me when I went to collect the eggs. So I quickly learned that if I brought an egg with me, and threw it on the ground, they would all leave their nests to eat it and you could grab the eggs if you moved quickly! -- Oh yes, you heard me...the chickens would eat their own. It was like Silence of the Chickens! -- So anyway, I SWEAR TO YOU - at this point, the chicken stopped flapping and just looked at me...

I named him Fred.

Fred lived in my yard for a few weeks until I couldn't take it anymore - Fred was not potty trained. I told the gardener to take him home. I never heard from Fred again. I can only assume he is living happily as a free range chicken in Ali's yard...Kinda like the farm where Wilbur and Charlotte lived. I'm sure he's happy.

A little while after that, Ali came back with some chicken wrapped in butcher paper....just like I asked for in the first place!!!

What?

Greatest Google Results EVER!

I shit you not - I gots my own Wikipedia page! Have you guys googled yourself lately? Seriously. Do it!

My favorite part (and I think we all knew this was coming):

See also

• Saint-Michel

Although I am a bit concerned that they highlight that the name is "usually given to Spanish footballers" and that:

Gone in Michel, popular expression which can be used, in computer science, to describe a system that is going crazy and totally out of control

WTF Wikipedia?!

Deutscher Michel, personification of the German nation, usually depicted wearing a nightcap and nightgown

I probably should admit, though, that I do tend to wear my jammies on weekends if I gots nowhere to go and nothing to do. Getting dressed just seems like a whole lotta extra steps frankly. Why bother? I really don't see the point?!



========================================

Michel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michel may refer to:

People

• Michel (name), people with the given name or surname
• Míchel (nickname), people with the given nickname (mainly Spanish footballers)

Places

• Bob Michel Bridge, Illinois, USA

Fictional characters

• • Deutscher Michel, personification of the German nation, usually depicted wearing a nightcap and nightgown
  • Michel Gerard, a character from American TV series Gilmore Girls
  • Michel Vaillant, French comic book character
  • Michel Volban de Cabelle, a character from the anime Glass Fleet

Other

• Gone in Michel, popular expression which can be used, in computer science, to describe a system that is going crazy and totally out of control.^{[citation needed]}
• Michel, popular nickname for St. Michaelis church, Hamburg's signature icon
• Michel, German auxiliary cruiser
• Michel catalog (MICHEL-Briefmarken-Katalog), the largest and best-known stamp catalog in the German-speaking world
• Michel parameters in particle physics

See also

• Saint-Michel

• The Korean Michel alias GFP (Gros Faux Propre) and his Gas factory (TB)dooda

Dear Effin New Guy/Girl aka FNG,

It has come to my attention that new arrivals to Khartoum may in fact need concierge-type service in order to facilitate a smooth transition into country. As a result, I would like take this time to make you feel at home, and to ensure that you do not (under any circumstances) continue to annoy me with your actions as you live in the same housing compound and work in the same building as me (and I have -- for no apparent reason, taken a strong disliking to you and declared you my new "arch nemesis.") As such, I have compiled a few Rules of the Road for you to use in this (and any subsequent) foreign postings where I might actually also reside:

- Most people at post do not send emails to ALL AMERICANS and ALL LOCAL HIRES in Khartoum inviting them to a party at your residence (especially when it happens to be in the same vicinity as my house). What you may not realize is that the email address "all Americans" refers to every. single. American. in. Sudan. I realize this may shock you, but there are actually a LOT of Americans in country - much more than will comfortably fit into our housing compound, and much, MUCH more than the single bottle of Rum you have to offer your guests. Equally important, most diplomats usually do not include the phrase "bring your own meat" in any invitation. In my experience, this can, in fact, be misconstrued.

-- You may not want to advertise that you purchase the milk from the local guy who rides by on his cart with the double barrels of "fresh, frothy milk" in the morning. Yes, I am sure it is warm, fresh and frothy. I am also equally sure it is not sanitary. Trust me, I grew up in Montana. We used to get that gallon jar of cow's milk, where we would let it sit for a day or two and let the cream rise to the surface THEN we would scoop it off, and then pasturize the rest of it before we fed it to the chickens...As my British friends like to say, "it's just not done."

-- "Making cheese" - although I am sure it is a wonderful pastime if you are Amish or from Wisconsin, it is not "technically" a hobby per se in America, and probably should not be trotted out in your first encounter with people - both American and foreign -- upon arrival. I mean, you can make beer as a hobby; although unless your name is actually "Sam Adams," many (and when I say "many" I mean, Minoy, myself and Liz) will not really buy into your "hobby." What I am trying to say is that although they may drink your "beer," it should be caveated that if you host a party for 67 people and only provide one bottle of Rum, they're going to (in theory), drink your beer and anything else fermented in your residence. Case in point, I do believe you were complaining that they drank your cheese juice. I think they probably thought it was booze. It is always important to keep in mind that we have desperate people here in Sudan; and desperate people drink unGodly things. However, you should also know that these same desperate people will probably not eat your cheese. (Especially after the whole "frothy milk" incident above gets out. I'm just saying, some people are not known for their discretion in these types of situations. It is really difficult to find good help these days.)

-- And finally, you should also know that your name (in Arabic) means something really REALLY UNappropriate. Further, a good rule of thumb, for when you introduce yourself to the locals, and their eyes bulge out and they seem to get that uncomfortable, won't look at you posture - it means that maybe (just maybe) you should google your name and Arabic. In fact, it gives life to the stereotype here. Further, it kinda makes your inappropriately overconfident manner seem crude and almost disgusting. I'm just saying -- google it and/or ask someone. You might also want to call yourself "Pat" from now on.

I hope that my suggestions for navigating living in Sudan have helped you in some small way. Granted, I am inappropriately bitchy for a diplomat living overseas; however, in my case, we prefer to call it "seasoned" in the foreign service.

I would also like to inform you that although I am currently not accepting applications for new friends at this time, I will keep your application on file and will immediately contact you should an opening surface in the future. Should you need anything further, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best Regards,
Michel