It wins opening!

Okay! So I said I got two new crown caps. They come from a pair of Mexican sodas I purchased for cheap at a nearby Food Maxx. I've only opened one thus far, so here it is:

I used Yahoo!'s Babel Fish translator to figure out what "gana destapando" means. I had the feeling that ganar is the infinitive for "to win" (so much for those three years of high school Spanish, right?), but other than that, I was lost. Yahoo! gave me, and I quote, "It wins opening". Wow. Thank you? I know that not everything translates from language to language all that well, but translating a phrase so literally (or just poorly) that the English phrase loses all meaning is kind of appalling, really. I tried Google Translate and got, "uncovering wins", which makes about a kajillion times more sense.

Anyway, I kind of dislike purchasing drinks in order to obtain interesting caps, because as I mentioned, I don't drink soda or alcohol, so I'm not actually interested in what's inside the bottle. That ultimately becomes a pretty wasteful habit. Plus, it takes all of the adventure and excitement of finding a cap at random on say, a park bench, or a college library carpet.

In case you were wondering, I did drink some of the soda inside, because I can't bring myself to waste the whole thing, even though I don't like soda. No matter how cheap they are (they were around sixty-something cents each), I just can't pour them right out.. They are both supposed to be apple flavored. This Topo Sabores bottle didn't taste like apple in any way, shape, or form. It tasted and smelled more like cream soda. That's delicious and all, but it's not apple. It still tasted about a million times better than the "orange" soda I purchased in order to get my first Topo Sabores cap.

I'll talk about the other one when I drink it, ha.

Empty Bottle Blues

Happy Father's Day, all! Love you, Dad.

I actually planned for Sundays to be Fiction Update days (or other regularly scheduled stuff) and Thursdays to be random, but darn if being all off schedule with my posting hasn't screwed around with the order of stuff. My last entry was a FicUp, and since I've still made no progress, another one would be redundant and boring. I would talk about Father's Day, but aside from the fact that this Father's Day has been very low-key, I generally don't have much to say about it this year. So instead I will talk about an obsession, because obsessing about things is what I do best.

Bottle caps.

Question: How do you collect beer bottle caps if you don’t drink alcohol?

Small Obsessions...

I love bottle caps.

There’s something so alluring about them. They’re like little metal gems. So varied, and often so artistic. I don’t think any two collections could be exactly alike. Some people collect paintings. I would, if I had the money, I guess. I’ll always collect bottle caps. Somewhere out there, a graphic artist put her or his time and brainpower into designing that cap. I appreciate that. We spend a lot of our time surrounded by art that we don’t even think about. Some people downplay it because it’s commercial art, intended to visually buttonhole us and ultimately weasel us out of our hard-earned dollars. I don’t think that’s completely fair.

It’s one thing if you bought the drink with the cap, but when you find one out on the street or in the grass, or best yet, someplace completely unexpected, then you start thinking about the story behind it. Where’d it come from? Who threw it away? Every bottle cap, whether you bought it or not, has a story, as hokey as that sounds.

I considered collecting them seriously once when I was ten or so. Maybe younger, maybe older, I honestly don’t remember how old I was. I had a gigantic brown shoebox in the hall closet filled with maybe thirty or forty old beer caps from brands my father drank. My father has always been an adventurous beer aficionado— every so often he likes trying small breweries for interesting flavors.

Most of the caps I collected were typical, ubiquitous brands you can find at the grocery store—Heineken, Miller, Michelob. Dad rarely had American beer, though. He never did, and still doesn’t buy Budweiser—can’t stand the stuff, ha. Yeah, there were a lot of typical caps there, but a few of them were real finds—stuff from tiny labels my dad purchased on a whim and would probably never try again.

One evening I looked inside the closet and opened up the shoebox only to find it empty. I scurried into the living room and called out into the house at no one in particular. “What happened to all the caps in that shoebox?”

Topics of Interest

I mentioned in my first post that this blog would cover my long-term goals, my interests and hobbies, my thoughts, dreams, and other things. I figured that I should be more specific. To be included in the aforementioned topics:

Writing! I am a writer. At least, this is what I tell myself. At the top of my Writing-Related Things To Do List is, of course, to finish my contribution to the legend of the Great American Novel, (which I always thought was both funny and appropriate because I’m Nigerian American, and what’s more American than our nation’s whole “melting pot” identity, and the idea of a person from humble or foreign (or both) roots attaining her or his goals through hard work?). I’ve been trying to finish the same novel since I was seventeen, but trust me, you’ll hear enough of that story later on. In addition to my novel, I also write fanfiction and tv and movie screenplays (I’m a mass communications major, and writing for tv is my career goal). I’m also planning a documentary (the subject of which I will divulge at a later time).

Guitar. I’ve been trying to learn the guitar since I was fourteen. My parents got me one for my fifteenth birthday—it was a total surprise. I fell in love with it-- a little Yamaha beginner’s guitar for $100 at Guitar Center. I still love the little guy, even though at the moment it’s sitting in its case, still waiting for me to learn how to harness its incredible, beautiful powers. I figure talking about learning might actually get me to keep practicing.

Bottle caps. Yeah. Like the little metal ones on the top of glass bottles. I’ve been sort of subconsciously collecting them since I was twelve. This year, I decided to pursue it more seriously again.

Photos. I took a photography class in both high school and the beginning of college, and I’ve always wanted to continue, even though photography is kind of expensive. I bought a fantastic film camera for my college class, but now I want to give digital photography a try. At the very least, I’m interested in taking pictures of my everyday life. I wish I had a better digital camera.

Gardening. I started a container garden last May, for Mother’s Day. After a while it kind of turned into my own personal project, heh, although both of my parents have shown interest in it. Unfortunately, I took a trip out of the country in July and came back in August. It’s amazing how quickly a perfectly healthy container of basil, rosemary, and cilantro can become a brown, weed-ravaged pot of “what the hell?”

Food. Seeing as I eat a lot, and spend a lot of time cooking for myself, there’s no way I won’t talk about what I’m eating or cooking or baking at least a few times. After roughly a couple years of vegetarianism, I became a vegan around the beginning of this year, so food is important to me—it’s a reflection of my lifestyle. Relax, omnis; while I encourage people to consider the impact of any of their actions on other beings and the planet, I’m not one to proselytize. Just sit back and enjoy the food piccies, yeah?

Well, that’s a good enough snippet for now. Until later!