**You Are Reading This 2 Weeks Ago**

Gone to the Galapagos, see you in two weeks!

Hm? Oh, the asteriks didn't actually transport you back in time? That's odd.

So hey! I went to Ecuador for 2 weeks and spent half of that time in the Galapagos! I didn't tell you then because I was too busy frantically packing and you're just the internet. I can't tell you now because I've been up for 48 hours. Even with my massive influx of equatorial vitamin D I just don't have the energy to give you proper freakout. I've told my stories many times today.

Pictures will all go onto Photobucket and then Facebook and they will be mind-boggling. I also want to give on official poo-poo to Flickr for making me sign up for another Yahoo account after I'd just dropped my old one and THEN only letting me upload 100MB and 2 videos worth. I have almost 1,000 high-quality (i.e. 1 MB or more each) pics and videos to get off this lappy before it dies, man! Plus one of my friends backed up her stuff so she could delete and re-fill a memory card. Bo. Gus.

Goodnight, Internet, I love you!!!

Tedano, Ryukyu, Ohio, Oh My!

I can add to my list of marketable skills: being sole run crew for a show with 5 hours practice time and a non-English speaking stage manager.
This weekend I made upwards of $90 pulling curtains for the Tedano Kai dance troupe from Okinawa. "Living Legend" dancers were part of this group man, and they were coming to where, Buttsquat, Ohio? I guess the Ohio-Okinawa Association was having their 15th anniversary or something and they got THESE GUYS. What an honor... for, you know, the people it meant something to.
The dances were, like techno music, all the exact same tempo and key. Unlike techno, however, the dances were [sometimes painfully] slow and often had many scenes.
What WAS cool were the elaborate costumes and makeup. It was incredibly theatrical and I was glad to be backstage for it. The quick-change from a princess to a demon? Bad. Ass. There was also a really neat dragon puppet who had basically a box for a head and ribbons for a body. I don't know much else of what was going on.

So, they brought their own stage manager and he's used to a.) having total control and b.) keying in a time and having the curtains fly in/out with the push of a button. I am not a button! And what with him changing his mind a lot there was, I think, no smooth runs of the show. In my original notes the instructions were to slowly close the curtain until the last dancer was off, or slowly raise the curtain to set the pace of the music. Well, that's all well and good until you're getting the small circles to speed it up EVERY time and eventually there was no point in doing it anything but full speed every time. *shrug*
The translator was a really nice guy, but he admitted to not speaking the Okinawan dialect and in terms of stagecraft he got in the way sometimes. I got pretty used to Mr. Stage Manager pointing at me and saying something equivalent to "go." Jim (translator) gave a lot of "wait" fingers that looked like "raise the curtains now" and thumbs-ups that meant, alternately, "you're fine" and "okay, go now." He also stood in my sight line more than once which is irksome. He gave me a hug when I left though so it's cool.
At the end of these meticulous, traditional, artistic dances, they did a free dance to "Hang On Sloopy" and all the people on headset died a little inside. Personally, it's like reason #4 that I didn't go to OSU. Why are you doing this to me, Grand Masters Chie Tamagusuku and Shizue Matayoshi? Why? Why are you allowing this to go on in your presence?
It was also one of those uncomfortably long jokes too. By which I mean the whole song. Songs are a joke for maybe the first chorus. Then people start to think you're insulting their intelligence. At least I did.


All in all they were very polite people. They bought us lunch, and gave me $10 to mostly sit around after paying their own way to get here. Hope they had a good time stateside!

Also, this is a curtain experience in which my hand were not ripped to bloody shreds. All in all I don't think it could have gotten much better.

Reviiiiiiieeeeeeew.

Becky's Shisha Kitchen!
Recipies of Delicious Smoking

Much like the last time we met in this kitchen, I made a good-faith effort to use up all the flavors that I'd originally slapped on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and said "No! Bad shisha! You are not licorice! Bad!" and shoved to the back of the drawer where all the rest of my broken dreams are held. Last time was a great repossession/success! This time was too. And it proved once and for all that

I am a better flavor tester than anyone currently working
for the Hookah-Hookah corporation.

Pomegranate, Really

Things I was keeping in mind: 7-Spice lost incredible degrees of anise with just time and air, I need a way to combat anise besides coolness (mint), FIE UPON YOU, ANISE.
The Mix: 1/2 Pomegranate, 1/2 Margarita
The Result: Oh man. Oh man oh man. This stuff is seriously delicious, y'all. It's flavorful, fruity, and somewhat sour. It's full bodied and a little sweet, but not candy sweet. You'd know this is a tobacco product, but it's so clearly a nice pomegranate taste too. Not overbearing, I mean to say. It's a rich flavor that speaks its flavor and its plant biology very eloquently. I held this smoke in for quite some time and wound up with a nice nicotine/O2-deprivation buzz. Whee!
Margarita, you and me are like this now, buddy. You're fruit's best friend. Here's to taking on Orange next.

Now get outta my kitchen.

TTFN, world!

Legend of Becky's Aneurysm

Okay, listen. I have already written a mile-long post about how Legend of the Seeker is an awful awful show, but I can't stop watching because, I dunno, I like rage. BUT NOW THEY ARE JUST TOYING WITH ME. I feel sorry for the sold-out soulless writer that has to come into pitch meetings (er whatever) and have some 5-Hour-Energy-upped producer tell them who has been well established as many years dead and will be making an appearance this episode.

I have completed 2 writing workshops and I have a grasp of what a storyline means and someone over there at the WB does NOT. Someone somewhere is writing for LotS and crying themselves to sleep every night after it's aired. Someone somewhere is coughing while they say who they write for. Every minutely interesting character they introduce gets killed before the end credits, and every seemingly challenging plot twist gets unwound for them happenstancially and any remotely difficult choice they have make gets, again totally without their input, almost instantly made for them THANK GOODNESS. There is no character development among the main characters for these reasons. None. Even my favorite character, Cara, who is for all intents and purposes the voice of The Viewing Audience makes her points of contention several episodes after America has been wondering the same thing and goes along with whatever Richard, or Zed, or Kahlan who she doesn't even like says anyway.

Empty threat warning: if the next episode is as bad as this one, Seeker will have finally lost me and that means that even the ironic viewers will have abandoned them before the season finale. On my half-pipe of awfulness, it will have cruised past "So Bad It's Good" and gone straight for "I Honestly Can No Longer Bring Myself to Spend My Time This Way.

The whole world is drunkytown right now. Blackout Thursday and all. Last day of classes. *sigh* I have work tomorrow though. $10/hour to pull curtains. Not too shabby.
Speaking of work, I did NOT sort screws today, I instead added a marketable skill to my repertoire and that is staining wood like nobody's business. Score.

SHISHA. WE DO THAT HERE.

Al Fakher - Grape With Mint Flavor

In the box: Smells very sweet. Very sticky. Cut is virtually H-H caliber but the molasses is so abundant and so sticky that it's prone to clumping and could be an uneven burning hazard if you don't aerate it at any time.
In the bowl: Buh! Delicious! Deeeliiiiciooouus. Very sweet, kind of sour, smell stays intense through smoking. I did not think mint would go with grape at all, but it does and it has a cool flavor that really compliments the fruityness. It's not a mild or possibly fermented grape like White Grape is, it's very intense. Well, it's candy-ish frankly and that's bound to turn off some die-hard, in-it-for-the-tobacco people. Fair enough. But if your shisha drawer reminds you of Gumdrop Pass like mine does, Grape with Mint Flavor will feel right at home, and your hookah will be a happy one. I make another advisement to turn or aerate your bowl after your coals have made a pass around. There is viable shisha under there, y'all! I'm never in it for no 45-minute session. My hookah nights are 2 hours or more. Coals I'll go through a million of, but I'm pretty stingy with my tobacco. I take it as far as it will go, to say the least.

star star star star star
Al Fakher Grape with Mint Flavor: 4.75/5 stars.
If you want to be smoking a cigarette and all you have is a hookah, this is not what you pack. But I'll be damned if it's not one of the tastiest ones I've had.

Good job, self

I've been a pretty decent absentee blogger lately. When I logged in today I even found a half-finished draft titled "Straight-to-the-Internet Post." HILARIOUS IRONY. Hilarirony.

I
am
done
with
classes
and I will be spending exponentially more time on the internet starting tonight after my dance show. That will be a video I can hopefully post!

Meanwhile, my foster dogs, who are totally lesbionic for each other, have stopped wrestling and are now currently on top of each other/the couch and silently biting at each others' open mouths. I didn't even think animals without lips could make out. I'm third-wheeling the hell out of this living room right now.

See you all tonight with the first actual shisha review in, what, months?
I have to go sort screws or something equivalently mundane at my drama dept. job, where I'm normally put to use playing with saws and telling other people how they are building it wrong. *gasp* A DOWNSIDE to the end of the academic year! Oh, Pessimism, I knew I could count on you.

Also, I applied to be a contributor to the website of the previously-extolled nerd, bloggist, and purveyor of sexytimes Chris Hardwick. Nerdist.com was once just a blog and will now soon be a blogging empire, the likes of which I would happily build pyramids for until the end of my malnourished, overworked days.
Wish me luck! Or, quite possibly, HI CHRIS.

Things That Mike Has Googled

Here's to them showing up next time, honey.
A LIST OF THINGS MY BOYFRIEND HAS PUT ON MY SEARCH HISTORY:

• Battletits Galactibutt
• Legend of the Buttdick
• Poostallion
• Wangstallion
• TiggleDickles
• Becky hates fun, wah wah wah
• UPDATE: "chunky butter crab nipple angular rotary tesseract sword buttstick"
• UPDATE: "kronk-donkulous"
  

Have a good day. I've been having several, here on spring break. As a matter of awesome, my 21-ness allowed me to take advantage of a liter of Bailey's on sale for $9.99. The price was cut by more than I spent on it. *silent fist pump of victory*

As a matter of not much awesome, no real hookah news. Win some lose some.

Laaayla.... er, Laaaya.... Layna? Lanya?

Oh. Well, I forgot that I reviewed my Layalina flavor already and so the title of this post was going to refer to it. But now I see that I've done Cappuccino already, but I like the title so darn much that I'm keeping it!
HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES, INTERBLAG?

Okay, plan B, *shuffle rifle shuffle* AHA! Here we go! A nice disappointing flavor to share with you all as a warning.

HookaH-HookaH - Orange

In the box: Really stuck my snoot in and got some mellow citrus. Orange citrus? I suppose sooo...
In the bowl: OH COME ON. This flavor was WEAK. I shouldn't use caps there because yelling is not what this flavor has anything to do with. I think the only distinct orange I was getting was the bit of orange juice I put in the vase (too many variables for a first try, I know, but whatevs). On the whole, it seems as though the tobacco content could be noticeably greater, but the flavor is so unforgivably less, and it burns to harshness pretty fast. Of course, that last qualm could have been because the smoke was so poor that I lit a whole other coal before the first one had burned down any.
I don't know what this flavor's problem is. Hookah-Hookah is clearly one of the most flavorful brands on the market, even sacrificing tobacco leaf cuts with any tobacco in them for cuts that are so neutral in flavor they can completely transform them into any magical concoction they can, well, concoct. Even in my limited yet rapidly growing experience I understand and have been led to believe that the fruits of H-H are the most rambunctious, true, and lip-smacking flavors on the market. So here we are faced with one of the most classic and traditional fruit flavors there is, and Hookah-Hookah's submission is a nonexistant, non-smoking, non-pleasing fluke of an embarrassment bowl? What gives, says I. What. Gives.
I guess I've been keeping in mind how mortified I was to sample 7-Spice right out of the bowl, and how enlivened I was to revisit it later and find that by some alchemy it had transformed into the shisha I thought I was buying. I've been keeping it in mind, but what I'm also keeping in mind is that fact that I opened up my Orange and mixed it with things quite a while ago. It's been exposed to air or whatever other transformative variable would have been working on 7-Spice and it's this drivel! And that's not to say "exposed to air" as in like "I lost the lid and it's been drying out for months," I just mean I broke the seal. I'm confused. Confused and sad. Blastula. (That's a developmental bio term, but it's also me making a curse word longer than it currently exists in common usage.)

Hookah-Hookah Orange: star star star star star
3/4 of a star for, I guess, the only buzz that one hit of H-H shisha has ever given me?
Chocolate + Orange = Slammer!
1/2 Orange + 1/4 Acai Berry + 1/4 Margarita = The Everything Fruit!

Actually Lazy Sunday

I feel, dear readers, that I have not been making good on the part of my tagline what says "whatever else I have to say." Verily, posts have been few and far between, and compared to ow I normally talk they've been downright curt when they do come around.

If your one of those 4 people that reads this blog and just doesn't comment, I apologize to you. It has been this way because all of the interesting and colorful stuff I've had to say lately has been, well, a total downer. I've been having a shitty semester. Really shitty. For a number of reasons. Are my problems complex and therefore kind of interesting? I guess. Are the ways in which I'd go about relating them colorful? Most yes. But is this a freaking Livejournal where half the people that come across would think that I'm positively flooding my keyboard with wristblood while I write these rants and cut myself? Probably. And I don't want to present/propagate that image, and I don't want to bore or get you down, so online I try to keep it upbeat. And if upbeatedness is not to be had that day then I won't write much of anything.

WHICH brings me around to saying that this weekend has been pretty damn good, and very relaxing, and super freakin' snowy so I'm in the mood to charm the pants off you with a couple blend reviews.

Becky's Shisha Kitchen!
Recipies of Delicious Smoking

Had this one in the book for a while, actually. I'm starting my good-faith effort to use up flavors that I bought because they sounded like not-licorice and they turned out to be straight up licorice. Starting with the 7-Spice which may I make you aware, has changed drastically in smell from the first time I opened it, and it shows in these blends.

(a la Aladdin introducer [voiced by Robin Williams I bet you didn't know])
Arabian Iiiiice....

I mixed 1/4 Nakhla mint, 1/4 Hookah-Hookah Spearmint, and 1/2 extremely non-anise smelling H-H 7-Spice to synthesize what I hope will be the most exotic Popsicle ever.
THE RESULT: This mix is simultaneously cold and smoky. Dare I say it is perfect? I may darest. There's something so balanced and non-creepy crawly I get about the 7-Spice this time... do you know what I mean when I say creepy crawly? How licorice in any considerable amount just oozes over your tongue like asphalt on a hot day? Yeah, well, it's not there. Mint is, I suppose, the perfect foil for anise, though I may use a little less in the future. It's a powerful ally, you know?

1/4 Mint + 1/4 Spearmint + 1/2 7-Spice = Arabian Iiiice! (Like Arabian daaays...
more often than not, are hotter than hot, in a lot of good waaaaaaaays...) *sigh*

The Everything Fruit

You know how fruitcake is called fruitcake, and it kind of tastes like there's some fruit present, but if you're munching on a store bought one (god knows why) you realize that the only fruity thing about it are these Gummy Bear looking bits that don't even taste like fruit themselves but are closer to Spice Drops? Yeah, I guess this mix is like that. I wanted something fruity when I mixed 1/2 H-H orange, 1/4 Acai Berry, and 1/4 Margarita, and I can't say I didn't get it.
THE RESULT: It is well balanced if nondescript. I thought that the sour Margarita would actually be too much and it's not at all. It's a different kind of nondescript than the Slammer I wrote about a ways back, but this wishy-washiness is far superior. The likeness does bring me about to an observation, though, as I am a scientist, and that conclusion is: ORANGE IS A NOTHING FLAVOR. I haven't tried it alone, but I guess I should, because in a company so well versed in fruit flavors, I went on trust that H-H's Orange would knock me out of the park, but it's fairly nonexistant in both of these mixes. Nothing says, let alone screams, "orange" and it was half of the bowl, you know? The sour gets even a bit lost for my taste, but I'm kind of okay with that because I added Margarita in the hopes that it would be an assimilated accent. I'm getting mostly Acai Berry but that's fine, because I love that flavor.
I do really like this mix though. I mean, A LOT. But I couldn't say why I like it since typically I criticize blandiness. But I guess when you compare blandy fruit and blandy sour you get inexplicable good. *shrug*

1/2 Orange + 1/4 Acai Berry + 1/4 Margarita = The Everything Fruit!

Now get outta my kitchen.