people are strange, when you're a stranger...

I need a better camera than the iPhone.  Because then I could show you photos of the people I saw today at the Luxor pool.  Sure, that's a creepy invasion of their privacy and it would upset me if someone sneakily took my picture by the pool and put it on the internet.  Let's ignore that for the moment since I DON'T have a camera and DIDN'T sneakily take pictures of people and therefore HAVEN'T put them on my blog. 

At Sasquatch Festival last year Stepto did a great blog post on the specialized types of people at an outdoor music festival.  It was hysterical.  I am quite sure my day today has that sort of potential, if only I were as witty and inspired as he.  Plus he had pictures!  So you'll have to bear with me.  I'm going to work my way through in the order I saw them. 

The Silverback.  In gorillas, an old male will go silver-gray on his back (thus the name, duh).  The human variation takes into account the typical evolutionary hair placement patterns on humanoid males which favor the chest over the back.  The creature I saw poolside appeared healthy, in his 50th decade, exhibitng dark hair on the head, chest and legs, with the exception of a triangular patch on his chest spanning the collarbones and tapering to the solar plexus which was silver-gray.  He appeared to be a fairly young silverback traveling with just one mate.

The Perpetual Sweater.  I don't mean someone who sweats a lot.  I mean someone who really needs to make friends with an esthetician who specializes in waxing or laser hair removal.  This man was so unpleasantly hairy he is in my top 5 all time worst body hair list.  If he were non-humanoid his hair would still be awful - too much for a human, not enough for any other mammal.  The quantity of his body hair would be a huge turn off for many women, yet he had one with him.  He must compensate somehow.  I ceased my field research immediately.  Some things I just don't want to know about.  Like backstage Disney.  It is better just to leave a little mystery.

Sun Worshippers.  Unlike their distant relative the Sun God or Sun Goddess, these individuals have taken their tanning too far.  Their skin is the color of crispy bacon, but with none of the firmness.  You can see the resiliancy of their skin breaking down under the onslaught of solar radiation.  They don't look healthy, they look tight and saggy all at once, a dark brownish orange with sun spots and wrinkles...  so sad.  In their quest for MORE SUN they often wear swimsuits that are WAY TOO SMALL for their bodies which are rarely in peak physical condition.  Which is sad for everyone else. 

Sun Gods and Sun Goddesses.  These individuals have mastered the right amount of tan.  They look healthy both in physical fitness and skin color.  They are the beautiful people everyone wants to watch at the pool, and I got to watch a fair number of them today.  Sadly, I will never be one of these people because I am one of...

The Cave Dwellers. To be fair, not all people with milk white skin that reflects the sun like a hanes tshirt live in caves.  Some of them simply live in sun-deprived locations like Alaska, Minnesota, or Washington.  Some even live in Arizona, but have European genetics working against them.  These people go out in the sun with their SPF 50 and turn bright red in 2 hours.  Sometimes their burn will develop in entertaining patterns depending on the direction they laid in relation to the sun in the sky.  As they try to get a 'base tan' they just get redder.  Later they will peel and freckle.  They will be left with annoying tan lines that will only show they got sun when they are naked; without the contrast of their natural alabaster state to show they were in the sun you would never know.

Pool Toys.  Not all eye candy at the pool is a Sun God/Goddess.  There are good looking people who haven't acquired the perfect tan yet.  Like the girl I met in the pool today.  Her swimsuit was so cute I went to ask where she got it.  She seemed embarrassed to admit it was from a Hustler store.  When I didn't seem shocked by that and continued talking to her, she shared that she is a go-go dancer.  She is actually the nicest and most interesting person I've met so far on this trip.

The...  I don't know what this is.  The woman in her late 30's/early 40's two chairs away with her two kids took off her shirt to wear a beige strapless bra and shorts.  Uh, that's just kind of weird.   

Sharks.  These packs of hunters come in male and female pods, typically of Pool Toys, and cruise the pool looking for other Pool Toys or Sun Gods/Goddesses to assimilate.  Unfortunately while their numbers give them confidence, it also makes them intimidating when approaching smaller groups.  The ideal situation is when Shark Pods of similar numbers intermingle.

ok, enough blogging for now, maybe I'll write more later about some of the other people I saw or things I did today, but I reallly have to get some aloe on my sunburn before the itching drives me insane.  :(