Category Archives: No-where-istan

Where in the world is No-Where-istan?

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I am searching the map for a place for my country.  I have determined that an upper east side townhouse is too expensive even if I avoid the mortgage payments under a theory of sovereign immunity.  So, I want a place that looks like this:

San Torini

Ok, so we have a flag, a motto — Relaxo. Exsisto gauisus.  (Relax.  Be Happy.) — stamp, a national anthem: Nowhere Man, national singer/saxophonist, Minister of Love.  We have an official position on welcoming all (except those in high heels since the country is still in my gray matter).  We officially deny health care to everyone.  We do not give out tsuris visas (see prior blog entry).

All suggestions and offers of vacant, verdant land are welcome.

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Tsuris Visas

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The final frontier in our society is our individual limits of acceptable aggravation — or willingness to be aggravated.

We must find it and name it and protect ourselves from people coming close to the boundary.  Let’s take the woman on the subway senselessly cracking her gum so loud that an entire car full of people were disgusted and searched for the culprit.

But for those we love, we must give them an allowance of indulgences for aggravation.  In Yiddish, the word is tsuris.  So we must give our friends and loved ones free passes for aggravation.  There must be a way to capture this in a phrase . . . .

tsuris visa.

Here is how it works in practice: When my father complains about his aches and pains, which are relatively minor, I grant him a tsuris visa, so he can cross my boundary of tolerable aggravation without my reacting badly (or with my at least feeling bad about reacting badly).  Sometimes, as happened this summer, he was really having problems, so no visa is required because the tsuris was necessary and appropriate.

POB (partner of blogger) NEVER gives me tsuris of any kind, so she has most favored person status.  My son gives me tsuris occasionally that needs to stop at the border of my aggravation boundary, so sometimes I must deny a visa, followed by some amount of stern talk.

So my bottom line is: that if you are going to give me unnecessary tsuris, you need a visa.

And since No-Where-istan is in my head — L’etat, c’est moi (as said Louis XIV) — visas are required because I want to keep my head and my country un-tsuris-y.

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How come . . .

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there are so many people reading the Bible (especially on New York City subways) and there is so much violence in the world.  Do you think they are reading the passages about how the Israelites slaughtered the Jebusites, the Hittites and some other tribes in Canaan?  Should we publish the Peaceful Bible that only has passages about communal laws, and lands flowing with milk and honey, and end it with the words to Kumbaya?  We can publish it in the University Press of No-Where-istan.

Just another deep thought on my commute on a typical day on my personal road to Utopia.

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No-Where-istan gets a national anthem

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We No-Where-istanis need an anthem, something to rally around.  I was worried about how to choose the right song — a song to capture the mood, the state of mind (or whatever) and the gestalt of No-Where-istan.

On Friday, I was mulling this on my way into the subway.  The 42nd Street-Times Square Station often gives me inspiration.  Into the bowels of New York I descended.  I saw this woman getting ready to play her saxophone:

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She did not ask for money,  just business cards.  She was just learning how to play, as in she would not make the B squad of the high school band.  Maybe she was an out-of-work Wall Streeter, trying to find her inner Marsalis.

Anyway, she started playing, of all things, No Where Man by the Beatles.  For all I know, she was trying to play On the Good Ship Lollipop, but No Where Man came out in fits and starts from her saxophone.  I was the only one who stopped.  More accurately, I was the only one not running away from the noise. 

Then I thought, “No Where Man.  No-Where-istan.  THAT’S IT!!!  It is a real No-Where-istan. . . .”

Another inspirational moment in the subway.

This nation-building thing is really coming together, eh?

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No-Where-istan is getting crowded

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A friend emailed that she wants a senior position in government AND the townhouse must be in Tribeca.  Then again, she thought, the townhouse wasn’t a good idea because there is no staff to help if there is a leak or something.  Ok, so she is sensible, but . . . . .

I need to tell you more about this sensible friend.  We saw her last evening at a function and she was wearing Jimmy Choo, insanely high-heeled shoes.  She is not a short woman and already has a presence about her without being 5 inches higher as a result of lovely but insane shoes.  (By the way, back-breaking shoes are NOT allowed in No-Where-istan.) 

Of COURSE, it was an I-am-40-and-over-and-I-needed-these-shoes crisis.  For those of you not yet in your 40s, don’t think that we are exaggerating the phenomenon.  Save up just for your impulse buys for the 40s decade.  Trust me.  Or ask a female financial planner.  Really.

On the plus side, our friend’s calves looked fabulous (for the real confirmation, she couldn’t ask straight women, so she made sure she asked POB (partner of blogger) and me about how hot her calves looked).

But she is not going to be senior health advisor (high heels knocked her out of the running) and we don’t have health care in No-Where-istan anyway. 

But, we will have a senior official with killer calves. 

She’ll have to take off the shoes when trying to enter the country that is still in my head.

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Principality of Sealand

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Principality of Sealand is a nutty kind of place:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand.

Commenter Chuck mentioned it in a comment.  This is not how I envision No-where-istan.  Also, fighting and power grabs are not allowed.  I will use my powers for good.  And no in-breeding in No-where-istan because it is gross and we have no health care plan so anomalies cannot be treated without bankrupting the in-breeders. 

We are “carnivoratarians,” a word my son made up which means “eaters of chicken fingers, french fries, hamburgers and ketchup”; however, we are not exclusively, carnivoratarians. Vegans and vegetarians are welcome as long as I don’t have to eat that Tempeh stuff.

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No-where-istan is a country, too (just in my head)

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Our President gave an excellent speech today at the UN.  If only words could make wishes come true.

Libya’s leader’s, Qaddafi’s, speech was, well, nuts.  I know maniacs have been leaders of countries, but his speech made me think that anyone could be a head of state whether or not there is electricity firing in your brain. 

So, I could run a country.  I have always wanted to.  That’s it!!

I hereby establish a sovereign nation run by me. 

I think I would be quite good at it until I deposed myself. Hey, sometimes a person changes her mind and MY country is a free country where change is always possible.

Of course, given the logistical constraints of owning a box in the sky in New York City, this newly-formed nation must exist for now in my brain, until I can buy a townhouse on the East Side for my embassy and then renounce the debt under the theory of sovereign immunity. 

Since the nation (until I buy the townhouse) is not easily depicted on a world map, it will be called:

No-where-istan. 

We will have a constitution.  I will be all three branches of government.  We will have debates over issues, but only when I don’t take my meds.

We will have three-day weekends, naptime everyday and one hour daily of singing and dancing to music from the 1960s to the 1980s.  Cell phones must be turned off in restaurants and other places of assembly.  We live in luxury homes, with really nice bathrooms, because life is short — see below for my health care mandate.  (How about that tent for Qaddafi? Nice tent, but I would have gone for living in the house already on the grounds of the estate in Bedford.  So much easier than schlepping your summer home to another country.)

So I need a new name as leader of a new sovereign nation.  How about, “Her Eccentricity, the Blogger Formerly Known as 40andover”. 

Transfats will be permitted because no health care system can afford people living to their tenth decade.  So, for the good of the nation and the economic futures of our children, we will live less than 100 years.  But if, try as he or she might, a person still lives to 100 and beyond, we will still love him or her because we No-where-istanis are tolerant and loving people. 

I haven’t figured out the prickly issues of immigration in, and emigration out, of my head.  There are so many logistical problems. 

But, Glenn Beck, you are hereby denied a visa to my country. 

Anderson Cooper, you can come for short times but no “digging deeper,” or else you’ll give me an unintended root canal.

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