The Mexican jail in which the author was unjustly confined was like nothing any American would expect. Co-ed with young children running about, shops selling all manner of goods including drugs, condos for the privileged and others sleeping on the out in the open, It would strike anyone as bizarre as the bar in the first Star Wars movie. Inside the 20 foot concrete and barbed wire high walls, the large block in eastern Tijuana was truly a little city and each inmate there had his or her own fascinating story to tell about their encounter with the system in Mexico.
The ‘Travel Tales Collection, Toilet Stories,’ No. 8, March 2015, is part of Michael Brein’s ‘Collections’ travel tales series and contains among the best travel stories from Michael’s huge collection of travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world. ‘Travel Tales Collections’ are groups of very interesting similar travel stories of a kind on a variety of very specific travel subjects, themes, or countries, such as close calls, great escapes, pickpocketing, scams, safety and security in travel, Paris, Morocco, Mexico, and so on. Eventually, several hundred ‘Collections’ on all sorts of specific travel subjects, themes, and countries will be available on all the major eReaders. In the previous issue of ‘Travel Tales Collections,’ No 7 Feb 2015, I included a selection of food and drink experiences that you can have in your travels. Therefore, it is only fitting, after covering food and drink travel stories, that we now turn our attention to what inevitably comes next or later, namely, the subject of toilets in travel. After all, toilet experiences are an unfortunate but essential aspect of living that, like it or no, we all must come to terms with, whether on the home front or in strange exotic foreign lands. Being often beset with culture shock issues almost at every turn, especially in third-world countries, the necessity of dealing with toilets: where to find them, what to do about them, and how to use them even, elicits from many travelers nothing less than abject terror. Thus, for instance, when ‘nature calls,’ and you have barely a clue as to what to do about it or where to go . . . well, for many, it is in the least, horribly anxiety-provoking, and for others nothing less than horrifying and debilitating. For, in the best of all possible worlds—namely, in your home—where you have your bathroom all set up just as you like it, with an ample supply of paper toilet tissue rolls, a great functioning sink, fresh, safe water, nearby reading matter—in a word—you have conveniently all the first-world accouterments for dealing with the art and science of defecation fit for a king or queen, no less, at least in your own private castle, on your own private throne! But what if you find yourself in a third-world outback where you are bluntly faced with nothing but a bare hole in the ground and with NO paper of any kind anywhere in sight? And what if there are piles of human feces and hordes of flies at just about nearly every turn and in every corner? You have the stark realization that you are not in Kansas anymore. Are you of the proper mindset to deal with all of this? Be it as it may, there is, of course, much humor surrounding the subject of toilets in travel and considerable disgust as well. In this issue we pull no punches and deal with the subject of toilets overseas head on! (Pun intended!) They say, that in travel, people often ask the same basic sorts of questions over and over again when they meet for the first time. “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “Where are you going?” and on and on. It should not be at all surprising, therefore, that one of the typical morning topics of conversation among travelers in the third-world often is—however disgusting and revolting this may be—and maybe the number one or number two (pun intended) things travelers talk about together during their early mornings (I swear this is true!)—whether they've had a good dump or not. Or, “Did, you have diarrhea again?” Or, “Did you drink the water?” It is about all this crap, literally and figuratively; there is no escaping it. Call it all TMI (too much information), but it's about what starts you off on a good or a bad day! And it IS, after all, what you really do talk about! Some of the toilet stories I've gathered are truly hilarious, and some, sad to say, are not! It's a third-world out there, and if you are not prepared for it—BEWARE! The pages in this ebook will make you much more aware! But be forewarned: this ebook is not for the faint of heart. Oh yeah, you will laugh your “okole” (Hawaiian for ‘butt’) off, and, if you're not quite ready for it, it just might dissuade you from really, truly roughing it. However, discouraging you from third-world travel is not my purpose; rather, it is to inform you, enlighten you, and prepare you, somewhat, for the inevitable consequences of drinking the ice or water, eating unpeeled fruits or veggies, eating some street food, or crossing that stream with an open sore, any of which may have some unpleasant and unintended consequences in store for you! My advice to you is this: if you are squeamish about toilets in the third-world, perhaps you should think about making alternate travel plans! In any event, the travel tales of toilets, which follow, should help prepare you for such adventures! When nature calls you and you have NO-where to go or not much of an idea of what you can do about it, well, you will have earned yourself a place in these very pages!
San Diego and Tijuana are the site of a national border enforcement spectacle, but they are also neighboring cities with deeply intertwined histories, cultures, and economies. In Unequal Neighbors, Kristen Hill Maher and David Carruthers shift attention from the national border to a local one, examining the role of place stigma in reinforcing actual and imagined inequalities between these cities. Widespread "bordered imaginaries" in San Diego represent it as a place of economic vitality, safety, and order, while stigmatizing Tijuana as a zone of poverty, crime, and corruption. These dualisms misrepresent complex realities on the ground, but they also have real material effects: the vision of a local border benefits some actors in the region while undermining others. Based on a wide range of original empirical materials, the book examines how asymmetries between these cities have been produced and reinforced through stigmatizing representations of Tijuana in media, everyday talk, economic relations, and local tourism discourse and practices. However, both place stigma and borders are subject to contestation, and the book also examines "debordering" practices and counter-narratives about Tijuana's image. While the details of the book are particular to this corner of the world, the kinds of processes it documents offer a window into the making of unequal neighbors more broadly. The dynamics at the Tijuana border present a framework for understanding how inequalities that manifest in cultural practices produce asymmetric borders between places.
In this semi-biographical work, R. D. McCord uses fifty-two loosely connected stories that document leaving a 1957 Northeast Alabama sharecropper farm for duty with the US Naval Security Group on the island of Oahu. The coming-of-age vignettes center on Hawaii’s last year as a territory and first as a state. Passing through the pages is a hodgepodge of twenty-odd characters that manned Bravo watch at radio station Wahiawa. For the better part of four years, the young sailors brought humor, camaraderie, romance, and adventure to the island, making the Navy and Hawaii a better place. The publication coincides closely with the sixty-second statehood anniversary of the paradisiacal islands. 96
Enjoy the softer side of Uncle John! Filled with hundreds of pages of extraordinary, uplifting, and motivational stories, this is the ultimate ‘feel good’ book. Down in the dumps? Maybe you need a little inspiration, courtesy of Uncle John. Your friends at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute have been working hard to assemble the most uplifting collection of humor interest stories to date. Read about extraordinary moments in ordinary lives and be awed by affecting tales. So if your heart needs some warming, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Tales to Inspire is a truly unique celebration of the human spirit that is guaranteed to lift your mood. - Louis Braille's Amazing Gift - The True Story of Pay It Forward - Margaret Knight, the Female "Edison" - The Inspiring Origin of the Boy Scouts - Happy Accidents - And much much more
Steve Monzelli came of age in the 1970s, an era now considered the Silver Age of Hollywood. He loved movies and was the consummate film buff. He collected movie stills, comic books, 16mm films and posters (including an original one for “Casablanca” worth thousands of dollars). He dressed like the characters he admired in his favorite films, and hung around film sets with the hope of becoming an actor. He also had a great love for good vodka and prostitutes, which caused more than just a few problems. Monzelli met and became friends with many of the cinema icons of the era, including Steve McQueen, Richard Burton, Sam Peckinpah, Bette Davis and many others; and he appeared as an extra in a handful of big-budget Hollywood films, more often than not because he would sneak onto the sets. These tales offer many hilarious and a few sad stories of a life built around one fan’s obsessive love of movies. John Gloske is a former film critic for The Hollywood Times. His previous book was the well-received Tough Kid: The Life and Films of Frankie Darro. He is a long-time small business owner in Los Angeles, California.
Throughout America cocktail parties sparkled defiantly through the dreaded first minutes of January 20, 1920. With morning would come the official start of Prohibition. It was easy, however, to keep the party going in Long Beach, California. Though Long Beach had been "dry" throughout most of its history, illegal liquor distribution throughout the city was already perfected by the time the 18th Amendment, banning the sale of most alcoholic beverages, became law. Already in place were underground booze operations, secretive speakeasies and bootlegging, the perfect staging ground for crime, corruption AND murder. READ ABOUT: Oil - The one discovery that made Long Beach different from the rest of 1920's and 30's America and would change the life of the city in many unforeseen ways. Good vs. Evil - Murders, gun battles, lawlessness ...the city was a battleground between the influences of good and evil. Involved in the battle was the Ku Klux Klan, Communists, rum runners, bootleggers, gangsters, and corrupt politicians. MEET: Hollywood celebrities William Desmond Taylor, Fatty Arbuckle and other well-known figures who ended up dead, or their careers ruined, because of rampant corruption and illicit booze. Gangsters such as Al Capone's henchman Ralph Sheldon, who gunned down Long Beach policeman William Waggoner, and got away with it. Bootleggers like Thomas Johnstone, murdered by his wife when he refused to give up his nefarious profession. Oil swindlers, many influenced by C.C. Julian and his Ponzi scheme that bilked thousands out of their life savings. Murderers such as Bluebeard Watson, who killed most of his 15 wives until one of them became suspicious. These are just a few of the individuals and matters discussed in this eye opening account of Long Beach and Southern California during the 1920's and 30's.
