Killing Batteries

I’m back in my Village of Solitude on the coast of western Sardinia – the place that timely bus service forgot – still shell-shocked and woozy from my trip to Umbria.

As I reported previously, my Umbria research trip was gearing up to be an exhausting week of racing after public buses, sleeping on a friend’s couch and shyly studying menus to report on restaurants that I could not afford to dine in. However, three days before departure, it transformed quite suddenly into a week of chauffeured cars, junior suites, lavish dinners, tours, meetings with a cornucopia of very important people and being force fed expensive wine anywhere from two to five times a day. As of now, the article’s working title is “The 144 Hour Hangover”.

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It’s awards season again.  And this time I’m actually a finalist for one.   The 2007 Travvies are run by Upgrade: Travel Better and an as yet unrevealed series of events has landed me in the category of Best Single-Author Travel Blog.

Regular readers know that I’m not opposed to popularity contests, especially if it means that I become even more popular, which as far as I’m concerned is the ultimate revenge on everyone that went to my junior high.  So please, please, please, please, pretty please with wine on top, go vote.  Preferably for me.

Oh, and there’s some very interesting reading among the other finalists, but you can look into that after you vote for me or next month or whenever is convenient.

In closing, please vote.

For me.

Ideally right now.

I just tested it.  It takes exactly three seconds to vote for me.  If you decide to investigate and vote for other finalists, well you’re doing that on your own time, buddy.

 UPDATE:  Voting is over and I didn’t win.  You’d know if I won, because there’d be pictures of me dancing naked on the streets of Oristano floating around the AP Wire.  I suppose I should have made that clear during voting to get the edge.  Some guy calling himself the “Cranky Flier” stole my thunder.  Cranky my ass.  I got your cranky right here, jackhole.  Seriously, it’s a good blog (so I hear, I’m still too consumed with work to give it a proper read) and I congratulate him, even if I’m funnier, better looking and more likely to dance nekkid in public than he is (according to my agent).

Dear gentle, devoted, morbidly curious readers (and everyone who’s reading this because they Googled ‘Paris Hilton’, ‘nubile students’, ‘Swedish virgins’ and/or ‘Caligula’ and found this post), 

I’m writing to you from a bed the size of a trampoline, having just returned from soaking in a Jacuzzi, inspired by Caligula (or whoever his Etruscan cousin was), permeating with the aroma of four top-shelf bath, shower and lotion products, wearing a robe woven from the hair of 12 Swedish virgins, in the sickeningly opulent surroundings of a junior suite in a five star, luxury hotel on top of an achingly scenic hill in Perugia, Italy.    (more…)

I’ve somehow managed to form a genial relationship with a group of folks that acquire material/reviews/articles for a series of high profile web sites. They are friendly, organized and they pay well and promptly. However, the people they acquire for – I’ll call them the “end-clients” – are scattered, indecisive and, as we solemnly say in professional writer circles, “stupid heads”.

The first project I contributed to, which involved about two dozen other writers (in other words, a huge outlay in content cash) was meant for a “branded entertainment and experience” style web site. I did my work – spectacularly well, I might add – and sent it in. About a week later, I received my sizable check. Not three to six months, a week!! Seriously, working with these guys was just pure joy from start to finish.

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Once again, I find myself gyrating through the Free Crap Dance and my moves, which have never been all that groovy, are looking especially graceless and unrhythmic.

I’m leaving for a magazine assignment in less than two weeks to write about a region in a country that shall remain nameless, because I’m about to trash them a little, so I’ll just refer to them here as “Pitaly”.

So, I’m balls deep in emails, asking the Pitalians for free crap.  The upshot this time around, as opposed to my last attempt at getting free crap out of the Ukrainians – or “Pukrainians”, if you will – is that Pitalian tourism officials are plentiful and they’re all delightfully fluent in English, ostensibly making my job considerably easier.  The down side – and I’m trying to put this kindly as the Pitalian tourism officials may find my blog and decode the complex, pseudonym naming convention that I’ve developed – a large number of Pitalians have a certain, erm, “affection” for sustained repose that’s agreeable if you’re Pitalian (or a homeless travel writer living in Pitaly), but is a massive liability when one is in need of quick, decisive action, while a number of personal and professional deadlines loom.

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