When I was first given access to this blog I was commanded to 'start posting at will... 1 or 2 a week'. You see I watch Smallville, and part of me believes that some alt. media buffs might, in fact, be super heroes... But with all these secret identities we carry around, I will probably never know for sure. One thing is certain, I will never take an extra class on top of the required Master's curriculum. Very, very bad idea, and thus, despite my will to carry forward with the dictates of trippist.com, I failed and kneel humbly before the scales.

However, the upside is when that was all finished. The moans and the groans of labor. I found myself without a crumb in the house unless I wanted to spoon sambal straight into my mouth. So I went to Barney's on the Haarlemmerstraat to celebrate the end of the moaning and get some breakfast, because not only are they a coffeeshop with an obnoxiously good (and expensive) weed, 'Willie Nelson', but it is a Brit-expat place and crazy multi-culti hangout. This means I can go there, speak loose lipped English and be a Yank.

The first thing you need to learn as an American (or at least a Midwesterner, [or maybe just me]) is not to be shy about plopping yourself down at any table, no matter how many people are there already. Just ask if the seat is free and sit. If you forget to wait for the person to move their bag, that is okay because the Dutch forget all the time. (jk!!).

Now, I had both the blessing and misfortune of occupying the only open seat and getting myself started on some weighty-a** literature before I found out the kitchen was closed. This was no big deal. All I had to do was go next door. The kitchen in the coffeeshop, it seems, is more for the wake-and-bakers, and given my nocturnal schedule some three weeks ago, I was lucky to be up by 15:00. It did not matter. I was committed to my seat, and my book. My hunger I could contain. Willie Nelson contained me. I did not go next door.

I ordered coffee and was engaged by a French farmer named Francois. I wish I were making that up, but I am glad I am not. He talked to me about Shamanism, and how according to Shamanism all the fingers connect at the palm. He turned that into a metaphor for how differently cultured people can get on and insisted that Morrocco and France were the same country. We talked about class hierarchy and class struggle, and how the French like to revolt -they are 'revolting'. He was very sincere. So sincere, in fact, that I forgot I was borrowing the book in which he wrote his contact information.

Then there was the loud bourgeois in the corner. Some VP transnational capitalist class character wearing expensive and non-descript black clothing. He is from Texas and is taking the year off, and I feel really horrible for the couple that sat at that table, because boy was he loud. Loud people annoy me in general, which is ironic since I am prone to rather boisterous behavior at times -but ANYWAY, if you have some subdued Freudian guilt complex about the fact you come to Amsterdam to be a phantom for a year you do not need to broadcast it across the room by making the same "we're smoking dope! we're going to hell!! ha ha ha" joke every 5-10 minutes for an entire hour.

The kitchen was closed, but I could still get a milkshake. I could not decide if I wanted banana or chocolate. I asked the cute server her advice and she offered to make me a banana-chocolate. And it was probably the tastiest thing I've consumed in months...though as Eddie Murphy rightly points out in "Raw", 'if a man is starving and you throw him a cracker, he'll think that's the best damn cracker he's ever had in his life'. In other words. It is a good shake, but I might be exaggerating. Objectivity in 'news' is bunk.

The bourgeois man leaves just as my milkshake comes, and then, some many pages later comes Josef, a travelling carpenter from Germany. He is half Kenyan and half German, and though my arrow points the other way, he was really hot -though it might have been those traditional carpenter's clothes he was wearing -some old guild thing. Ha ha. Guilds. Dungeons & Dragons... Anyway, we had a weird conversation. It is not that what we talked about was so weird, but more how he spoke to me in German and I to him in English. That went on for a lot longer than it should have... two hours and my head hurt.

I left. The grocery store was closed. And I still had not a crumb in the home... Good times ladies and gents, good times. Til' next time as I resume my trippist charge.