T Minus 3.5 Days 'Til Jamaica

Going into high gear for Jamaica, which means accessing my Google Doc list and checking it twice. General version can be found here. You'll note the slight contradiction in that I am bringing both birth control and feminine hygiene products, particularly since I try to time the arrival of the crimson tide to occur while enduring the deprivations of Regular Non-Travel Life, and not while on "vacay."

But a girl can never be too careful, and why purchase readily accessible and cheap drugstore items when you could potentially bask in your own prescience should Aunt Flo drop in for an unannounced visit?

See also: inclusion of condoms on list. I added those as an afterthought for those who 1) have sex, 2) travel for purposes of sex tourism, 3) cling to the hope that they might have sex, or 4) want others to perceive them as having sex. I fall under none of these categories, but everything I do, I do it for you, dear reader.

In addition to furiously annotating and highlighting my Jamaica LP, I have also begun listening to Bob Marley (going direct from airport to Bob Marley Museum), who sounds to me like a Jamaican Bob Dylan (presumably it is the reverse), and while I am aware I should have listened to him more extensively in college, I will just blame the fact that I am not white for my ignorance.

I can't get over the fact that my deepest associations for "One Love" is a particular tourism commercial--I think for Barbados, actually--that was on all the time when I was a teenager. Does anyone remember it? Cave? Diving into water? I know that narrows things down quite a bit...

(I can't find any YouTube evidence of it. And we all know what that means--if it ain't on YouTube, it ain't happened.)

It's a pretty dope song, but all I can think of when I listen to it is a bikini'd white lady diving into water, and that makes me feel dirty. As does the following commercial that I did find:

Jamaica, where black people will happily cornrow your blonde hair--because you are like sisters, and not because you represent tourist dollars--which will demonstrate to everyone that you are an exotic white lady (like Bo Derek) and that you are not racist; Jamaica, where happy, non-threatening black men give piggyback rides to white toddlers; Jamaica, where you can hold a black baby--again, to show that you are not racist. Call your travel agent!