Listen, I know I am a website expert and all, but don't bother telling me that my blog has formatting problems, because it's on TYPEPAD and TYPEPAD IS WEIRD and yet I can't fix it because it's five years old and the links are so entrenched in the search engines that I would have to redirect every single one of them by hand if I switched over to the WordPress backend I would like to switch over to, so that's just not happening. I barely even have time to transfer the posts from the notebook, ok? A whole platform switch with a bunch of reformatting? Not going to happen. So, get used to the big type/ small type/ entries being repeated problem, because in fact, the cobblers children have no shoes.
So– the other day I was watching an episode of that show "Locked Up Abroad," even though I swore to myself that I would never do that, because YIKES. I am always a nervous-type traveler anyway, like I'm going to be at a bazaar in a foreign country, and I'll be buying some beads or a stylish knick-knack, and suddenly I'll be in the slammer with no recourse because the beads actually had cocaine on them or something, or those were the sacred beads of their leader and I bought them without knowing, and then the joke will be on me. Actually, I kind of always think this is going to happen, whether I'm traveling or not.
Right now, my husband is shaking his head like "Do you see the crazy I have to live with?" Yes, this is his life.
Anyhow, Locked Up Abroad– not at ALL what I thought. Turns out, it should be called "Locked Up for Being a Bonehead," because the guy they interviewed was caught trying to smuggle 2,400 grams of cocaine out of ECUADOR. Yes, yes, it involved a nefarious scheme and a hotel room and his having to just take a bag of something to the airport for a local stranger, but COME ON. If you are in Ecuador, and someone talks to you about a situation involving drugs, seriously– RUN TO THE EMBASSY, because you are going to end up on Locked Up Abroad. This is not going to work out for you, ok? And then what happened to this guy will happen to you– namely, you will go to prison, IN ECUADOR, for being a bonehead. And they're interviewing the guy, and I'm thinking "how did you even get to Ecuador? You are a bonehead." He's in ECUADORIAN PRISON for three years, and God only knows what kinds of inhumane things happened to him there, and they finally let him out and he's back in the United States being interviewed for this show, and do you know what he's been doing since he got out?
He's been trying to stay sober, that's what. Because the typical "touch a hot plate and get burned" teaching method didn't work on him (getting burned being the "going to prison in Ecuador" part of the story), he KEPT DOING DRUGS when he got out. And, I don't even care if he's trying to dull the memories of what happened to him in Ecuadorian prison by taking drugs now, because guess what? If I got caught with 2,400 grams of coke and then went to prison in Ecuador, YOU COULDN'T PAY ME TO TOUCH ANOTHER DRUG. Why aren't the drugs giving him prison flashbacks? WHY?
Because he's a bonehead, that's why. And now I'm writing about him.