PBR Street Gang

Lawrence Wenngroddhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

2006-10-10T18:14:00.000-07:00

I wonder. Let's put the name Lawrence Wenngrodd right here and see how many folks come over from this Newsweek article.

Hey! Maybe leave a comment if you're a Lawrence Wenngrodd seeker...

(via Roger) Sponge from my apartment in BsAs

2006-08-02T13:05:00.000-07:00

from january

2006-04-25T23:35:00.000-07:00

a post i never published here when the actual time was for it but which i feel like somewhat today or at least this moment anyway

Trent Call painted Nina in her purple dress petting a cat.

2006-04-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

15x18 - Oil on Board - 2004

heavenly father (by leaux)

2006-04-18T10:23:00.000-07:00

yeah--so my heavenly father is my dad who can make cous cous taste thai in the bottom of a canyon even though it's raining and can tell you all about the comings and goings of the tarantula wasps and peregrine falcons. PFs, in case you don't have your own personal lawson, mate for life. when mr. falcon is feeling like he needs a shag, he catches some kind of swallow or bunny and in mid-air, in the mid-fucking-air, he talons it over to mrs. falcon as a gift. then, she kisses him with her cloaca and together they make a nest in the crack of some desperately tall cliff-face. There are only 162 pairs in Utah. We slept in an alcove underneath some and could hear their babies.

Tarantula wasps, in case you were wondering, prey only on tarantulas. they dive down and sting the unsuspecting arachnid. but the spider does not die. instead it is paralysed, at which point the wasp drags it back to its burrow and lays a single egg on it's furry little paralysed back. when the wasp larva hatches, it raises itself on nice fresh live tarantula meat. mmm mmm good.

my time was full of all kinds of observations--large and small. i'm pretty cool!

Buncha Pinkos

2006-04-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

Expeshully for Oston

2006-03-31T19:17:00.000-07:00

"Let's all work together, you can't win on your own. No, no-oh."

Lobsters. Blonde, Furry.

2006-03-19T17:03:00.000-07:00

Actually, scientists are calling their new discovery "Yeti Crabs."
Sounds like the kind of communicable problem you'd contract at Burning Man...

Od

2006-03-16T11:34:00.000-07:00

Wedding Pics

2006-03-03T15:58:00.000-07:00

Becratchylayshuns to the lovers/thanks to Joe for the photos awlrayt!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flimshaw/sets/1673276/

suffled how it gush...

2006-02-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

It is very important to be respected as a man, Bill Klinton!

2006-02-15T18:05:00.000-07:00

A recent dream:

2006-01-16T00:26:00.000-07:00

Oston and I are in the grocery store "doing a Sweep." He gets all the stuff off the shelves and pops his head around corners and appears, overall, to be very jazzed about the shopping. I am naked and extremely pregnant and I push the cart. It may be that we are getting groceries to take to the hospital for when I have the baby, which event is unambiguously imminent. We leave the store; Oston takes the groceries somewhere to wait for me, as we will be meeting up there later.

I take a walk. The walk turns out to be a trek of many miles. I am still naked, hugely pregnant, and now notice that I am barefoot also as my feet touch down on sharp stones and needly scrubbles. I cross fields, clamber over boulders and carefully make my way down steep cliff faces, where I have to lean out to peer over my belly just so to see where my feet should fall. The cliffs are rather precarious.

It seems like it should be a difficult journey, being such a long way and taking even longer because I have to take measures with regard to my expanded state and bare-feetliness; but it's actually no problem for me. I feel exposed, but not vulnerable. I am healthy and capable and strong. It is suggested that I may be Extra Strong or have bonus power/vitality owing to my impregnated state. Anyway I feel very safe and confident in the desert and I have plenty of time to get there before dark, so I trek on steadily.

By the time I reach the highway my dog Lucy has joined me on my walk. The car is parked at the side of the road, as expected, and we merge into traffic to begin driving back. I am talking toOston on the cell phone to let him know we are on our way, but I have to hang up because of trying to hang on to Lucy who gets afraid riding in the car and keeps shifting around sketchily making me worried that she'll blow away as the auto is a convertible one. She makes herself too stiff to be moved, but I manage to get a grip on her collar and we both feel more secure from that point. I look down and see how white my skin is under the sun, the expanse of the skin of my breasts and my mammoth belly fitting barely snugly behind the steering wheel. I can see a little bit of my legs below the belly, not much, but there they are whiteglowing. I am so fair and luminous that I have to put on my sunglasses. I feel just the right temperature, am astonishingly comfortable in fact, and I hang on to Lucy and drive on with my hair blowing.

2005-12-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

I just took down the recent nastiness… And some older bit of my more vicious self. And I hope to see everyone at my wedding next Monday. I don’t think there is any need for explanation or elaboration on my past misdeeds in or digital drop box… It was a petty act and equal to painting “Pam & Steve Forever” on an over pass… Oh well… That is a half assed apology but its going to do.

Cheers
Simon

Literature for dating

2005-12-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

For a look at some brilliant Web blog writing and some literature of the Slavic sort that you might not be familiar with, check out Idle Words. His trope of the 'sexually transmitted novel' slams straight home. And who knew that Pushkin was still melting panties?

Curtis.

The miserable French language and its inadequacies

2005-11-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

Can't resist this, from Geoff Pullum at Language Log:

I am really more than a bit disgusted that a speaker of French — of all languages — should have the nerve to criticize the English language (if the woolly verbiage of Professor Sergeant can really be called criticism). Let's be clear (since so many people seem to think the French always have a word for everything): this is a language used by people who are supposed to be the big experts in love and kissing and sexy weekends of ooh-la-la, and they don't have words for "boy", "girl", "warm", "love", "kiss", or "weekend".

No they don't! Don't contradict me. I'm a Senior Researcher and Vice President for Diplomacy at Language Log.

Boy-meets-girl stories cannot really be told in French, because there is no word for "boy" — garçon means "waiter", as everybody who has ever seen a movie with a scene in a French restaurant knows — and fille means either "daughter" or "whore" depending on whether you sneer in a certain way when you use it. (French speakers struggle by with the phrase jeune fille as a work-around to refer to a girl.)

Boy may long for girl to hold him in her warm embrace, but he won't be able to tell her that in French, because they don't have a word for "warm". They have tiède, which means "tepid", but boy doesn't long for girl to hold him in her tepid embrace. So what they use is chaud, which is the word on the hot water tap, the one that isn't froid. A language of love that was minimally functional would be able to distinguish between a warm friendship (enthusiastic discussion of topics of common interest; amicable farewell handshakes with promises to do lunch real soon) and a hot friendship (passion, heavy breathing, sudden uncontrolled couplings in shadowy doorways and on moving trains, returning home having lost underwear, midnight calls to say I have to have you right now). If boy cannot distinguish lexically between these, boy is going to be in real trouble with his relationship with girl.

Now consider love. Aimer is not a word for "love"; it is completely vague between loving and liking; you use it both for the way you are devoted to your spouse and the way you prefer to have your coffee. How do you really feel about me? Je t'aime. How's your fish? Je l'aime. Lover, haddock, whatever; it's all the same. These people do not have a word for love.

Baiser does not mean "kiss". It apparently did once, but today it is not a word you should try to use for a peck on auntie's cheek — it now means "fuck". And embrasser does not mean "kiss" either; people use it for that, but it clearly means "embrace" — bras means "arm". Although the French are widely thought to have invented at least one variety of kissing, they have no word that specifically denotes the activity.

And finally, if, despite all the above lexical difficulties, boy ever gets along with girl well enough to invite her away from Paris for a weekend of ooh-la-la in Dieppe, he will once again find himself completely stuck to express the notion of this crucial time period. What speakers do (to the disgust of the French Academy, which is charged with trying to prevent the miserable French tongue from completely falling apart) is to talk about le weekend. A borrowing from the very English that these linguistic cripples have the temerity to condemn.

So where do they get off, criticizing the language in which fine writers like William Shakespeare and Dan Brown created their literary masterpieces, huh? It makes me so mad.

I know, I'm going to get a whole flood of stupid email defending the beautiful French language and its expressivité: "La langue française, elle est si belle", they'll say, referring to their language as if it were a girl (not that they can say "girl"); Le français, they will say (inexplicably switching their gender decision from feminine to masculine), "est une langue" (O.K., so we're back to feminine again) magnifique, la langue de Racine et de Molière et de Balzac et de Rimbaud... All this from people who think a uvular scraping sound like a cat bringing up a hairball is a perfectly reasonable noise to use instead of an honest "r". From people who simply cannot make their minds up about whether an attributive adjective should precede the modified noun (sensible!) or follow it (silly!): the ever-indecisive French say un bon vin blanc ("a good wine white"), with one before the noun and one after. Get a grip! Pick one or the other!

Anyway, I don't care if the francophones bombard me with hate mail. Let them sue me for 500,000 yen for defaming their linguistic patrimony. I'm not buying the idea that this is a language fit to hold its head high and participate in world diplomacy and lovemaking. This is a language to be tossed the scrap-heap of human communicative failures.

And if it seems to you that I'm being a bit tough on the French, let me just point out that they started it.

Posted by Geoffrey K. Pullum at September 30, 2005 05:03 PM

Curtis.

Genius Behind the Stupidity

2005-10-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

Yes!

From the Onion

2005-10-13T12:14:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the Onion gets it just right.

Curtis.

Frog spelling redux: definitely worse than ours

2005-10-12T09:27:00.000-07:00

I found this on Language Log, sent to someone there anonymously a long time ago:

"One of the many engaging peculiarities of the French is their conviction that their language - if they could only keep it pure of Anglicisms - is one of singular beauty and nobility. Nothing could be further from the truth. French is nothing but Latin (a gawky language to start with) in an advanced stage of putresence. The words, at any rate, nearly all derive from Latin, though their sense has sometimes been so perverted that, for example, the mangled husks of the Latin persona person and rem thing now signify no one and nothing.

"If Caesar could arise from his tomb and revisit that land of three parts upon which his conquests imposed his language, he would have sore difficulty in recognizing a word of it. Many of the imperial consonants have fallen silent; some of the vowels have done likewise, while others have reduced themselves to strangulated peeps, or sought concealment in the nasal passages. The syllables scurry past with their heads down, except that every now and then one of them will pop up on its hind legs like a stoat, making them all pause for a moment before they scuttle on.

"Many a proud vocable has been filleted and shrunk almost to nothing; for instance, the summer month that once bore the majestic name of Augustus has in the mouth of the French been reduced to the sound oo. In an effort to counter this vanishing effect, and to prevent their sentences from becoming too short to be noticed, they throw in all the extra words they can find, to serve as ballast, which results in the creation of such convolvular periphrases as 'qu'est-c que c'est que ça?' A logical tongue, they would have us believe; and indeed we find no want of rationality in the arrangement by which 100 being 'cent', 200 is 'deux cents'. Except that 300 is not 'trois cents' but 'trois cent'. A singular plural, in very truth; fruit of a language wonderous indeed in its notions of orderliness.

"English may fairly be criticized for the vagaries of its orthography, only the criticism comes ill from the speakers of a dialect in which, where eaux is written, no e is sounded, no a, no u, and least of all an x, but only o. It might as well be spelled aquas, which is what it comes from. There are two sorts of h: one of them is silent, and might as well not exist at all; the other, dignified by the name h aspiré, is not (as the level-headed student might suppose) aspirated, but is as silent as the other, only people refrain from eliding vowels before it in case it should be offended - strange homage to a puff of breath long extinct."

Curtis.

2005-10-09T13:50:00.000-07:00

James Yee, an American in chains

this is horrifying.

Frog spelling: worse than ours?

2005-09-20T12:07:00.000-07:00

Don't know if you know Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science. It's worth perusing, and I especially liked this, from 30 Stories in 30 Days, about working in a chain bookstore:

6. A woman comes up to me. "R?" she asks.
I type it in: "R".
"R?" I ask helpfully, inviting the next letter.
She looks at the screen. "No no no no no. Rrrrrr," she says.
"Rrrrr," I type in.
"No no no no."
I give up. I hand her a pen and piece of paper. She writes, "Art." She's French.
I point to the Art section.

(The whole thing is available here.)

Curtis.

Give Me Too Much

2005-09-08T11:17:00.000-07:00

Zero to cooking in 3 seconds, twice as fast as gas, more efficient than electric, cool to the touch, even when on, turns off automatically when the cooking vessel is removed from the induction zone... I WANT this:

For Henri, mostly

2005-08-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

I was browsing around Language Log today, wasting time at work, when I found this. Demented fun for Francophones. I also found out that this site (PBR Street Gang) is really dedicated to the pontiff's blue ribbon. Seems fitting, since Benedict XVI is apparently a bier-swiller himself.

Curtis.

Turns out this guy also used to be able to remove his entire set of top teeth

2005-08-19T16:23:00.000-07:00

Check out Frog's Collages.

(Evan & Rog may also want to have a look at his ideas)

-m

Hello Goodbye

2005-08-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

Hello Goodbye
Originally uploaded by matthewzollinger.

Today two of these four people left Buenos Aires on their return trip to the states. We drank wine, sang songs, hugged, kissed, moaned and wailed (everybody but the girl in green there).

Goodbye Booth and Haley.

adieu

2005-08-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

adieu
Originally uploaded by matthewzollinger.

A final view. . .

The Hotel Brisas Del Mar was where, about a year ago, these two began their adventure in Buenos Aires.

Vespa

2005-08-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

Vespa
Originally uploaded by matthewzollinger.

Vespa 1

2005-08-02T12:48:00.001-07:00

Vespa 1
Originally uploaded by matthewzollinger.

Vespa 2

2005-08-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

Vespa 2
Originally uploaded by matthewzollinger.

My new Bike... I'll Put Good pics up soon...

2005-07-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

ABK134118
Originally uploaded by matthewzollinger.

2005-07-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

As though Junior's were just a name ...

what the hell is Greg thinking?

I'll show you a liquor license!

2005-07-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

Prelude

(a post by roger)

Buenos Aires. July, 2005

We take enormous walks through bird-plenty parks.
We pretend not to confuse ourselves in language. We teach eachother. We compete. We hike the crooked sooty canyons of Congreso and Once and rumble through old underground rollercoasters. We drink. We attempt to adapt.

This city pulls people to it like it draws water, it breathes electricity, it exhales diesel clouds.

It is a whirlpool. Those who try to climb out of it are devoured by its center.
We walk the turbulent rings. We genuflect. We proccess.
Whoever contemplates the city too much loses it. Who maps it does not enjoy it.

Like throwing water at water.

The city tortures people with its almost visible faces.
The people torture eachother, unmasked.

A woman screams.
A woman scratches at the unswept skin of the city.
She wants everyone to scratch, "for honesty!" she cries.

But it is only the noise of a bird-plenty park.
Nothing is revealed.

*

The city at night is older.

Fallen, warring gods inhabit the bodies of stray mutts. Some exhale fire from their snouts.
Others seep blood.

Their wars are our wars. Who sees it?

A large dark dog finds clean water and drinks his fill. Later, strengthened, he drags in the sorrowful corpses of rotting companions to sour the spring.

A fallen angel lowers her whiskers to the bloody pool.
Pawing the rust-colored water she sees reflected the no-longer brilliant blanket of stars.

Her ribs rise weakly. She sighs.
With a glance upward she willfully drinks the water.
We here a whimper.

A stark shadow greedily runs off stage, into the clouded night.

*

Poor Pirate Dog sees a different city. He travels by rooftop, descending only to sabotage his foes.

He senses history in everyone and everything. This is his gift.
His foes are marked by their past actions. He has many, many foes.

With the strong breath of the inspired poor and the vigorously pirate-like, poordog sniffs out greed faster than a scream can become a birdsong.

And he smells it everywhere.

Greed, to this dog, is a negative complacency. A horrible sin.

Still, greed is taught by the greedier -- and though they too have learned the greed they teach, their sin is worse.
They are the "worst perpetuators."

He calls them such when he sees them:

"thou, worst perpetuator..."

But poordog can't read minds, he only has the past to work from. To him, action is law. All religious conversions and spiritual awakenings, all great intentions - are null.

You could just have promised to yourself and God to do only Good for the rest of your life. And maybe you even mean it.

But if, when Poor Pirate Dog finds you, you haven't acted on your intentions, you will be extinguished.
~

With the same foreordination that makes Poor Pirate Dog move via rooftop -- occupy a different space, he is blind in one eye.

This eye, if it could see, would allow poordog empathy - and empathy would prohibit him from vanquishing his foes.

His empathetic eye was dismissed by his stray-bitch mother in her last act of creation.

An Andean cur of pirate descent (though she never knew it) the forces of breeding collaborated within her and she acted.

She tore into her own pup's eye to make him see.

Poor Pirate Dog is a creature of fortune.
~

Most often, when you look at poordog, you don't see a dog, you see a statue.
It is a form he can always take and has always taken.

Late one recent night, a delirious begger fed a one-eyed dog-statue a strong Coca-leaf broth,

and poordog awakened.

He licked the man, winked and then returned to statueesque.

The man placed his hand on the hard metal body of the magical canine with reverence.

Inside his iron cast, poordog felt a prescience.
He had found his partner, finally.

And finally, for the first time in the annals of our history, a man and Poor Pirate Dog had united. A link had been established between two worlds.

It was one of those fortuitous and neccessary steps. For without that alliance, there would be no one left to tell poordog's sad and savage tale.

And now, hesitantly, I reveal it. I am that begger. . .

The Dirty River

2005-07-18T16:42:00.000-07:00

A strange truth of Buenos Aires is this: every day, thousands upon thousands of propagandas - tiny leaflet advertisements - are distributed by hand on every street.

Collectively they are horrifying.

Gathered together, they would occupy a mountain of space. They must. They do.
It is a holocaust of paper.

Everyday, armies of people take to the middle of the mad metropolis to hand you flyers.

Everyday armies. They are paid to do this. The more leaflets you hand out the more your worth as a human being. There is even desperation in the action. "Take my pamphlet pero hijo de puta tomálo!"

But who is keeping tabs? How does the strip-club owner, or the parrilla-man, or the massage-parlour madam or the university dean or the internet-cafe pimp know that the everyday armies don't just dump the whole lot of the pamphlets into the Riachuelo, the most contaminated river in South America?

Anyway, the paper would probably just dissolve like so many disappeared corpses.

Recently I read this headline in LA NACION, Argentina's oldest newspaper:

"El Riachuelo, sucio desde 1811."

That was the year that humankind began to put everything into this one river.
Everything.

Animal carcasses and blood and all of the shitty shit from the soon-to-follow industrialization. Real shit too. And Piss. Loads of it. Daily. From a dozen colonies along the "sweet water" banks.

Secrets oozed into the water. Politicians would walk up to the banks and dump in their dirty deeds. The pope would come to pour in the world's sins. The moon's reflection drowned in the hideous thick scum. Do you remember the moon's reflection? I know where it went.

Boats enter the soupy water from the Rio de la Plata and simply evaporate. Some evaporate up to 300 miles from the coast, where the river cuts its wound through the Atlantic, like tar on lungs.

No one is quite sure what to do. But the inhabitants of La Boca say a Chinese company practiced in the modernized medieval art of "River cleaning" is supposed to come and fix the situation.

Can anyone tell me what this would involve?
Shiny, plastic white hardhats I am sure.
But enormous filters? Electric rays?
The introduction of a foreign "scrubbing" species?

On the subway there are posters that say: "protect our environment" with glossy pictures of garbage cans and "recycle" logos. Contact your local agency to learn more.
Contact my local agency?

The effort screams "Look, we too subscribe to the luxury of environmentalism."

And it is dismaying to return to the understanding that, just perhaps, my environmentalism is the byproduct of my super-industrialized society. My aim as an environmentalist, it may turn out, is to prevent you from ever achieving the luxury of becoming an environmentalist.

It's sad because I still mean it. I still want you to want self sufficiency and sustainability, even though you want sneakers and knickknacks and everything that comes with it. Hell, you think of it as your "right."

Do as I say, not as I earn my living. . .

But how do we eat, then?
Eat paper.

I don't know how to estimate the weight of the tiny slips of paper handed out on a daily basis. Evan has begun to accept every single slip pushed in front of him. "A project," he says. Easily he ends up with a pound of paper every two days. A pound a day if we're walking a lot. And really at some point he has to stop accepting the leaflets because he's too weighted down; out of space.

I think if we wanted to we could collect 20 or 30 pounds of paper each, daily, without making the slightest dent in the volume distributed. We could build houses of papers; a more than literal house of leaves.

Four hundred and fifty-seven thousand six hundred and twenty-two pounds of paper every day. That's my guess.

It could be more.

~ roger

You say its your birthday

2005-07-11T08:08:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday to you...

G. A. Haley, 27 years gone.

Train stories

2005-07-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

Has everyone checked out Jake Bailey's sister lately? Do. She's righteous.

For Golub

2005-06-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

Bs.As. June 29.

Tight grey streets hold healthy dogs. Everybody, but everybody (todos pero todos) smoke. Sometimes a man holding a bag that must hold at least 300 moths walks by. The bag floats and trembles with the hum of dusted wings.

Montevideo gave the city a statue. “Eternal Friendship.” A tall iron woman extends a hand. Behind her, a tall conical what. A serious what is it. Maybe the most intriguing what is it in Parque Lezama. The signs of the zodiak carress the conical what.
We wonder.

The colectivo holds the darkest woman on earth. She wears a cap. A tiny brimmed red cap. Why is the brim of your hat so tiny? One by one she hands us crumpled notes. una moneda por favor.
Does the bus driver know?

Scarves are everywhere. This is a scarf town. A lusty-eyes scarf town. A tilt your head upwards in mysterious contemplation, virgin of the sacred rose, educated, cinematic, lusty eyes scarf town. From the future and the past.

Futbol. Chomsky. Its all the same.
Heroin, Art. “Everything is a drug.”
When does someone loose control?
Why do movies moralize so much?
This is the way my Brazilian friend speaks.
He has no soul. He lost it playing video games with the devil.
So he says.

The fecal covered streets.
Its not as bad when its from another animal, not your own. But how can you be sure? Dogs are everywhere. They are walked by tall, gruff, out-or-work extras from Robert Dinero-plays-another-cop movies. The economy is all agriculture. Somebody should scrape the shit off the cobblestones and sell it as fertilizer.

Yaya says that this is just like Naples. She even calls it NAP/les, - as in not having napped. This is how it would be said in Castellano and we are in Buenos Aires. She refuses to say Napoli. She is Italian. She has gastritis. “I can’t eat anything acidic.” Pobre de Yaya, Buenos Aires is tomato-based. So is Naples. She is outcast.

Sometimes the schoolchildren here wrap various government buildings in symbolic hugs. No shit.
It makes me want to vomit.

A girl goes into a bank and changes Euros. Euros are the hot shit right now. New for Fall, Euros. Oh dear, that word. Fall.
A girl goes in and she changes shloads of Euros to pay off her new apartment. Everything is in cash here, nobody trusts anything else. I would prefer that we all paid with pure orbs of glowing energy – but the exchange rate is terrible. She goes in and the teller touches his nose or his ass or something and a man watching from the phone booth gets the point that this girl has got a lot of money to exchange and he goes outside and waits. Soon, en route from the bank a gun is pointed, maybe at a pit-stop cafe or a maxikiosco. All is lost.
The bills didn’t glow.

A dead cat. That is all. A dead cat with noodle-like intestines. A poor dead cat, watched by its kittens. Romulus and Remus are their names. They are the new people; those who would have been raised by cats.

~Roger

An ancient Chinese classification system for animals is:

2005-06-28T18:02:00.000-07:00

1. Those that belong to the Emperor
2. Those that have four legs
3. Wild dogs
4. Those that are likely to break a jar
5. Those that resemble flies, at least from a distance
6. Those that behave in a crazy way
7. Embalmed animals
8. Tame animals
9. Uncountables
10. Those that are drawn with a very fine brush, made of camel hair
11. Mythical beasts
12. Piglets, nursed on milk
13. Et cetera

"Mabel is unstable..."

2005-06-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

... and other vintage drugs ads for Methadone, Quaaludes, Thorazine and more!

If she gets stuck,

2005-06-28T16:33:00.000-07:00

just nudge her along with your mouse.

Andrew Haley - SFSG

2005-06-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

SFSG Sabes que yo comprendo la carne minima del mundo.

June 22.
Yesterday was the shortest day of the year. Up at dawn from tea and
cold medicine I saw the clouds in the pale sky over the smoke stacks
and abandonned projects of the industrial strip that spreads below our
balcony along the edge of Boca to the river. Now, at the end of the
first longest day of the year, I'm listening to Carla Bruni, sipping
brandy with the window open, having superheated the apartment in
preparation of a wicked apple cobbler I will take to a dinner party at
Klaus and Peck's. Klaus is pursuing a PhD in economics at Princeton
(dissertation: Why is Argentina so fucked up?) and is town for a month
to visit his wife, Peck, a sweet chipmunk-cheeked Argie in The
Program, the Georgetown masters program in international development
that all our weiguo friends are in.
I divide my life between San Telmo and Palermo and love the exchange.
Arriving in San Telmo I climb the stairs into the vaulted station and
cross through the human debris (stray dogs, stolen watches, leppers,
one peso sandwiches, calls of trains) that litter the amazing central
archway. There's a duck and a swagger past the traffic, under the
freeway, rain coming down on the greyscale of abandonned hotels and
dirty slate steeples. Then I go down Calle Brasil past the
revolutionary headquarters and the Chinese hotel, past the two dollar
diners and junkies sleeping in the dry spaces overhanging rooves
provide. The orange neon HOTEL sign of the Three Magi Hotel appears
through the rain and I duck under a scaffold with a bottle of cana
from the corner wine shop and trudge down the hill along the edge of
the park where the city was founded.
In Palermo, I wake in the afternoons and watch the evening sunlight
slanting in the willows outside the window and we have coffee and go
out to buy apples or eggs from the fruit shop on the corner and then
we go up Thames to the Genovese noodle shop where the old man cranks
sheets of pasta from an old machine and slices them by hand and we
stop at the market for tomato sauce and wine and the windows fill up
with steam when the water boils. The leaves are down and swept from
the gutter and in the middle of the night the garbage truck comes down
the cobbled street with the two guys running beside, swinging the bags
into the back and again we wake up in the afternoon even though we
promised each other to get up early so we could read. In the evenings
I get upset reading case studies from the dirty war and we talk about
Menem and Fujimori. Without distraction the time slips by until it's
five again and we crawl off to bed.

- - - -

Le Ciel Dans Une Chambre

Quand tu es près de moi,
Cette chambre n'a plus de parois,
Mais des arbres oui, des arbres infinis,
Et quand tu es tellement près de moi,
C'est comme si ce plafond-là,
Il n'existait plus, je vois le ciel penché sur nous... qui restons
ainsi,
Abandonnés tout comme si,
Il n'y avait plus rien, non plus rien d'autre au monde,
J'entends l'harmonica... mais on dirait un orgue,
Qui chante pour toi et pour moi,
Là-haut dans le ciel infini,
Et pour toi, et pour moi
Quando sei qui con me
Questa stanza non ha piu pareti
Ma alberi, alberi infiniti
E quando tu sei vicino a me
Questo soffitto, viola, no
Non esiste più, e vedo il cielo sopra a noi
Che restiamo quì, abbandonati come se
Non ci fosse più niente più niente al mondo,
Suona l'armonica, mi sembra un organo
Che canta per te e per me
Su nell'immensità del cielo
E per te e per me.

-Carla Bruni

Oh. Mah. GAWD.

2005-06-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

Roger, this one is most especially for you:

"But Ann Coulter is the only celebrity I’ve ever spotted at Farmer’s Market
that I wound up fucking in the ass, hard. "

i wrote this for my brother and then i sent it to the world

2005-06-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

Upon waking up Karl felt a small discomfort on the inside of his thigh. Before getting up he decided to examine the cause of the sensation while on his back in bed. Throwing off his covers he exposed two tan, hairy, old legs. The legs had scars from childhood and college days and a long gash that was still slightly pink that he earned just six months ago pulling a piece of net from the ocean which broke and sent him hurtling back onto a broken bottle sticking straight up out of the sand. The discomfort he felt upon waking up revealed itself. It was a rather large pimple on the inside of his thigh just a few inches away from his testicles. He was about to shrug it off when he saw a small black spider crawling over the edge of his bed. Karl instantly guessed that he had been bitten by the spider. His mother had died of a spider bite to the lip and Karl was secretly arachnophobic ever sense. The spider sensed that it had been discovered and tried to make a break for it as fast as possible. but Karl in his furry grabbed one of the slippers at the foot of his bed and came down with all his fear and wrath upon the small black creatures cuticle. the spider let out a small squeek and passed the ghost from its body. Karl having done this deed regreted it instantly. First because the sheets were now smeared with a viscous green substance, second because he really hated killing, and thirdly because he did not really know if the spider was really the culprit. His panick had made him act but now he doubted his own intuition. Just then his wife came in with breakfast. It was Karls birthday and although she hated cooking she always made him breakfast in bed on his birthday. Karl had turned 65. Upon seeing his wife he moaned and fell back into bed feeling the burning from the spider bite. for it was indeed a spider bite my friends and by the end of the day Karl's thigh will have swollen to the size of a water melon. THe next day he will be paralyzed from the waist down. He will be taken to the hospital and given injections. His balls will be the size of large chicken eggs. when they bring him in his eyes will be full of tears from the pain and he will be mumbling some prayer directed to the virgin mary. although she will not hear him and he will know it. He will come home though and be taken care of by this wife and daughters who love him dearly. they will sing him songs and bring him jugs of wine. he will slowly convalesce. and a month after the bite he will walk again to pull nets from the sea.

Creep

2005-06-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

Who loves Tom York? WE love Tom York!

Who loves Flash?

. . .

. . .

. . .

Ok.
Well.

Maybe we would love it if more of it were always this well done and featured Radiohead more often. Check it out.

P.S. Thanks, Josh Holyoak!

Ancient Semen-Sweetening Secrets Discovered!

2005-06-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

"A pre-Sumerian formulation of certain reputed semen-sweetening ingredients... concentrated for even greater effect, and finally patented for use in the Modern Age. "

Thank you, gay boys everywhere, for being always handy with such tips as,
"One word folks: Semenex! Semenex! Semenex!"

Female Orgasm: Proof of God

2005-05-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

Have you seen a wild female orgasm lately?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/05/27/notes052705.DTL&nl=fix

Lola. Sola.

2005-05-29T23:35:00.000-07:00

Date: Sunday, May 29, 2005
Sender: Leauxleaux
Subject: villa general belgrano, cordoba, argentina

hi everyone i find worth writing to and have an address for.

i am in an internet cafe amid the noise of 10 various computer games and 10 various argentine country kids. i really have to pee, so this won´t be the longest message. the internet cafe wherein i sit now typing is on the main street of the small mountain town of villa general belgrano, about 12 hours south of buenos aires in what might be called in the us, cordoba county. there are autumnescent (oak-like with pine) hills as far as the eye can see and the light today when i climbed out of my bus was low and smoky yellow--very much like in the foothills of the other sierras i know.

i will sleep tonight in a hostel-inn of sorts where there are big sheep dogs and woodstoves and swings swinging from the changing trees. i spent the weekend with fellow folks from my school in a town not worth mentioning, but did enjoy myself making new friends (my favorite was half french, but mostly english paschal, a large and loud man who had me laughing all the way down the mountain with stories about his travels in the u.s and his take on americans) . yesterday, we hired a van and rode out of the town i said before is not worth mentioning, drove up, up, up into the dry hills to the base of a granite mountain called ¨gigante¨ and then climbed to the top and saw for miles and miles and miles.

this morning, tired of being one of many, i left the group at the bus station and found a bus for this place and i am glad i did. it´s low season and the town is quiet and local-seeming. there are chocolate stores and beer gardens. (villa general belgrano is a town founded by germans in the 1930´s). i heard german in the supermercado come out of three mouths and spanish come only out of one, por ejemplo. the air has that autumn snap to it, but in general, the tourist office friend i made, (griselda) told me that it has been generally making calor. she also personally arranged for the mountain guide agency man to walk personally to the tourist office to talk personally to me about going on tuesday to climb champaqui--the highest mountain in this low range. i think it´s about 7000 feet if my metric and spanish conversions are correct. but, i am sola and if others don´t arrive who also need a ride to the mountain, they cannot afford to take me. perhaps, tonight, i will try to find some climbing buddies, but i really haven´t seen other tourist-types (people who are wearing synthetic coats and sunglasses). i was planning on climbing champaqui tomorrow and leaving tuesday morning for buenos aires. but, because i can´t climb the mountain until tuesday, if at all, i won´t leave until tuesday night and hopefully tiny teaspoon will forgive me! i´m just really enjoying the tranquilidad.

anyhoooooooooo...i just wanted to shout out to the masses and let those of you who might be worried about me know that i´m just fine and safe, just a little thought-ridden and very much enjoying being a stranger. i appreciate you and your love.
suerte!

lolo

Roger Serves Up Seconds

2005-05-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

Date: Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Sender: Roger McD
Subject: Uruguay

And here I thought Argentina to be the queen of the Latin American graces. I don't want to offend the Porteños in the audience. You are champions of mankind.

But. . .
A two-hour ferry ride across the River Plate brings you to theboundaries of the 19th century.

Montevideo is slower-paced than its hyperactive sister to the south.But it harbors no ill will; exhibits no inferiority complex. It is aclean, studious and refreshingly laid back city.
But it is the Uruguayan countryside that overwhelms a traveler's edenic desires. Here argyle-wearing mustachioed gypsies ridehorse-drawn buggy carts out of the near highlands. Yawning, deep-waterarroyos divide mountainous sand dunes from verdant forests while awarm, green South Atlantic completes an unlikely ecological triangle.

It's a little bit of everything.

* * *

Everyone has this moment traveling. You find a place. You are its discoverer. It is a place that almost causes you pain to experience because you know that it is fragilely placed in the world, at this time, for you.

My God aren't you selfish!

"Here is sanctuary," you think.

But at the same time you are conscious that when you leave it, you are abandoning this place to ruin. It will change indelibly. Others will discover it too - and bleed it of its soul, you think. Such is the transient nature of tourism. A complimentary idea is this: you arrive in a location. It sufficiently bends your perception to itself … and you want to stay forever. You want to join-up in the ideal mirage you see before you –to help preserve it. It occurs to you that the only way for you to accomplish so perplexing a goal is to truly excise yourself from yourself, to "leave it all behind," and "start anew."

I get this kind of feeling in Ireland's rolling countryside and inrural Mexican villages. It is a feeling that I can usually dismiss as"sentimental." Usually.

But there is this certain part of Uruguay . . .

Last summer I went to the Aran Islands off the coast of Connemara inwestern Ireland. Aran is one of those places renowned for its apart-ness. But therein lies the problem. It is a small, mostly Gaelic-speaking triad of isles that is RENOWNED. Absolutely everybody knows about it. On Inishmore, chic cafes border tackle shops and "international language" institutes. You can take tours of "authentic cottages" and learn Island history from glad-handing guides. Jesus what a travesty.

In Aran you think, "I shouldn't be here."

Jumping forward in time to Uruguay, I find myself in what I can only describe as the "unknown Aran of South America." In this village(which for now I won't name), most of the residents are descended from shipwreck survivors. Polish, German, English, Spanish and yes, even the Irish found their way here.

You walk down silty roads and people hoeing their front yards say absolutely ridiculous things to you such as: "do you need any water?" "are you hungry?" "can I help you find anything?" They don tweed hats and ride in wooden chariots. They grin heartily.

Its as though we've walked into a town hell-bent on selling its charm.

Except that this is just the way things are. We've arrived in the past.

* * *

Alberto is a thick-jawed boat man. A strong-limbed fisherman. A farmer with a strong back. He speaks only in truths and shares everything he has.

And here he came to rescue us.

Walking across a wide expanse of pampas ranch territory outside thevillage, on our way to nowhere, we found ourselves on the wrong side of a river. Our intentions were to find a place to camp – which is ludicrous to the locals because its winter down here.

"No, no its too windy," they say. "Too cold."

In the frigid 60°+ day we forged out into the wilds. Soon, we discovered that everything in the low Uruguayan swamplands is wet -and our intentions then became to find a dry place to camp. In the distance, maybe 3 miles off, we could see a high forest, which bordered enormous sand dunes.

"Perfect!" was the consensus.

But there was this damned river. Wide and meandering with no obvious path, the river sprung up at us like a trap at every turn. Soon we got desperate and thought about trekking back (god knows how far) to town. It was a puzzle. Andrew considered swimming the river to steal an unattended canoe on the opposite bank.

But then Arturo sprang up out of the mudbucket-shrubs, a figure out of mythology. In twos, he ferried us across the thick, blackberry-colored river in his oar-powered vessel. Insultingly, we offered him money. He merely grasped our shoulders and said wise things.
You couldn't even paint the scene.

We were off.

* * *

Today, in 19th century sub-tropical Ireland, there are 70-something permaculture-farming, béchamel sauce-creating hostesses who invite you into their living rooms to talk about history, pirates, the hidden secrets of the coast, the countryside. Knit-sweatered, jaunty-cap-wearing fisherman gladly ferry you across the ocean tide, refusing any payment, while talking in small pleasantries. Weathered men and old matrons smoke pipes together beneath the broad night sky. Children approach you with fresh caught fresh cooked crab legs. "Eat"they say.

This hospitality can only be described as absurd. A cornucopia of giving. For over a century the Irish were content to know that they were the most hospitable people on the globe. It was one of those hackneyed "island characteristics" you'd read about in in-flight magazines. But a "tourism industry" changed all of that. Hesitantly I reveal it: in secret parts of Uruguay, that Ireland still exists. The economy is still agrarian. The people are made for eachother. The traveler is respected as a comrade.

But I am weary of its ability to last. While right now I am an unusual wintertime backpacker and a fellow human being - soon, I, or my development-minded counterpart will become a nuisance. An invading army.

But I like to imagine that it all depends upon you. Please, if you don't mind - burn this email.

Evan and I are going to start a blog soon where we post pictures. At the moment I send you just the one.

~roger

Rog- if you're not puttin' em up, I'm puttin' em for ye.

2005-05-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Sender: Roger McD
Subject: Porteños, Maté, Night

Dear all, How do I begin? For those who don't know, Im living in Argentina. Myfriend Evan and I have a relatively nice place in San Telmo, the oldest neighborhood in Buenos Aires. We'll be here for the next 5months. Here are some quick impressions: Buenos Aires has a large soundscape. I don't think it's ever quiet. There are certain lulls throughout the day where the city seems todiminish into itself, when the ever-constant, faint barking of dogs becomes its own chorus. But these periods are few.There is no dead of night. "Night shouldn't be dead," my friend Andrew says. "But back home somebody killed it."By "back home" Andrew means all of America. I hate being the critical "ex-pat," who from a great distance takes cheap shots at "American Culture," but Andrew's right. Night here doesn't occur from when the sun goes down until bedtime at,say, 11 (or even 3). Instead, night is the dark canyon of time between yesterday evening and this morning. Here, people walk dogs at 2:30 A.M.. There are probably dentists and hairdressers with appointments at this time. I don't know when else they could do it, people have to sleep sometime . . . right? Some less appreciative person might say something like "no wonder their economy tanked - everyone stays out 'til sun-up." And its true. They do it every night – before going to work. But the first thought that came to my mind was: are Argentines androids? Books, authority figures, teachers, and would-be travel experts saythings like "In Latin America, you have to watch your back; especially at night." But over my 7 years of travel experience in this part ofthe southern hemisphere I have reached a conclusion: these experts are simply applying their own latent fear of darkness to a twisted and outdated notion of "foreign lands."Don't get me wrong. It is imperative that as a traveler you use common sense, that you aren't naïve. But as far as I'm concerned Argentines have proven that fear of the night is irrational. Wanted: sociologically-minded people to study crime-patterns in Buenos Aires. Qualifications: must be android-oriented. No one here fears the night. They don't feel a need to. Night seems as devoid of hoodlums as the day does. (Quickly, while I'm on the topic,"hoodlumism," especially that raucous brand of British Soccerhoodlumism that Manchester United brings wherever it goes is looked onwith extreme disdain.) At night in every neighborhood in Buenos Aires, from the dark, historic tango district of San Telmo to ultra-posh and colorful Recoletta, stylish revelers of every genus take to the streets. It is common for the Porteños ("port folk," the moniker for residentsof this capitol) to eat at 11:30. Then you might get a beer at 2:30with friends or a café cortado, or the ever-fashionable green, bitterblast of Yerba Maté. Sometime around 3:15 somebody suggests something more; a party, a disco, a bike ride. A long quixotic (not confused, idealized) night passes and then you go home to dust yourself off witha two-hour nap. You wake up. More maté. Rinse and repeat.

* * *

Proud and intellectual, these people inhabit the other half of the metronome-click to my American home; to what from a distance seems like a compulsively consuming, selfish and now comparatively ~scary society. The meter here is just the opposite of what I am accustomed to. It is not self-absorbed. It is self-appreciative. It is not amatrix-like staccato of automatonism. It is a downpour of sentiment and of meaning. Here sentiment and meaning, the intended and the implied seem indivisible. Its nice to have a refresher course in "cultura mundial." In Argentina I don't sense a double-speak. The Japanese notion of"face" is pleasantly absent. No one seems to be treating me disingenuously. No one. How is this possible? How is it possible that a race of supermodels (I really believe I'm being objective here) can be so staggeringly nice? "How is it possible that people are treating each other civilly and respectfully?" Andrew asks. And once again he's right. Good God, I think to myself, my expectations will never be the same. How will I ever go back? It's an outlook I've seen expressed by a lot of foreigners here – not just Americans – who have come to experience this enduring, wonderful metropolis. And while I have left out a small quantity of ugly insights and gloomy imagery (for example some people would say Argentines are proud to afault – to their own detriment – that even in the face of recent financial hardships they hold too fastidiously to their self respect) I believe that I am too stunned by the positives to be capable of passing any negative judgements. There is good and bad in every society. But, though I feel like a hippy saying it, there are a lot of good vibes down here in SouthAmerica - where people are watching out for each other because its something they were taught to do. Because its woven deeply into their social fabric.

* * *

You wake up in the mid morning. You get a coffee. Someone hears your accent, smiles and says "so what do you think of Buenos Aires?" They're even like this during the day?

The Bean's Back from Uruguay

2005-05-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

Belle I assume this is only the first installment? Please, give me too much!

Sender: Leauxleaux
Date: May 24
Subject: something to read

In uruguay there are unicorns: Part One
We were an entire day on ferry boats and busses and then slowly, the roads were dirt roads and then the roads were mud roads and then the last bus made its last stop in the last town (and it wasn´t even OUR town where we wanted to ultimately be, but close enough). and the five of us with our five backpacks stepped out into the lunlit Barre de las Valizas (or something like that—perhaps Roger and Haley Bop will spell it differently and more correctly when they type their respective accounts) and made our way amid unicorns, foraging dogs and clinking bottle frog songs.
We mananged to find a small market where I bought potato chips and an apple which took me all of 30 seconds to consume, having not eaten more than a chocolate bar the entire day and where the boys bought some kind of honey booze and drank of it in honor of ¨dead homies¨.
Then we wandered past the lonely schoolhouse for a light on where we might find a lady to make us dinner and we wandered solemnly because there´s something solemn, you see, something solemn about a small town sleeping and everyone thought so, except for each of the three dogs in every yard, who of course have a job to do which is to warn the dogs at the next house about the creeping people whispering down the muddy drag. Then, suddenly, very distinctly was heard the washing washing washing roar of ocean, can you believe it¿ And soon there was a light on and a sign read, ¨restaurante¨ and to our delight the softest, pinkest toungued blackest little lab of a puppy dog wagging on a porch.
we were welcomed into maria-elena´s by maria-elena herself (right name, guys¿) and we ate bechamel pasta with fresh shrimpies and beefy lentil stew and drank wine all together under her thatched roof while she spoke of shipwrecks and floods and organic produce. we gave maria-elena a lot of our money and then we wandered out again into the moolight, this time not toward light, but toward sound—the Atlantic sound.
The beach was strewn with foamy ruffles and as we walked we noticed still at our sides two kicks of the four-legged variety i had earlier named tyler and chad. I must admit that had i even the slightest premonition that chad and tyler would prove loyal companions and heroes, i might have enobled them with enobling names, like Duke and Champ. But, alas, they were STILL called tyler and chad, even when later chad saved evan from the lurking sea monster and when tyler, the unassuming 15 pound chihuahua-terrier, held his ground unflinchingly as the 200 pound andrewman charged him without notice or provocation.
We slept soundly, after many bog crossings and fence-hoppings in a man´s pine grove (he wasn´t home) in the sand with the ocean not far off and the bottle frogs clinking still.

Argentina

2005-05-25T07:42:00.000-07:00

May 25th

Revolution day commemorates the revolt against Spanish rule in 1810...

And I Dance, Dance, Dance

2005-05-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

A little dancing music to lighten the mood of this soggy blog…

Meow, Meow, Meow

Revenge of the Nerds

2005-05-19T08:16:00.000-07:00

My nerdery knows no bounds…
It lingers and stirs around every aspect of young Matty Z.
My sister called my last night while I was standing in line with this message of hope

“I find your lack of faith disturbing…”

Revenge of the Nerds

Laurel's Latest - Friday the 13th

2005-05-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

Date: Friday, May 13, 2005
Sender: Leaux
Subject: moved

me. i moved. i used to live in swanky paris looking Palermo with augustine and boppers. now i live in the seedier, somehow more authentic san telmo, the italian looking neighborhood. this morning i woke up in a new room in a high rise apartment building across the street from the very place where the city of buenos aires was founded. i walked ten mintues to the subte which is in an enormous echo chamber of an old school train station--you know the kind--perfect for sad long goodbyes and men in fancy hats. this morning there were thousands of us all at once in the grand station and i liked that feeling i ´ve only ever had a few times (because i´m a small city gal)--that feeling of being just one hair on the bigger animal that is humanidad (a word¿).

i live with two new boyfriends. their names are roger and evan. i broke up with haley and austin but they can still see me if they´re nice. i chose evan and roger because i like their neighborhood and i also like their apartment which has things i missed like lights. i am borrowning my ex-boyfriend austin´s thermarest and sleeping in a backroom. the good news is i have my own bathroom and pretty much wing. my bathroom is a bathroom and then when you close the door and turn a faucet, it is a shower. ingenious! our kitchen is clean and inspires in me the strangest sensation--how do you say it--i would like to cook something?
my spanish progresses rapidly. next week is my last week of classes and i am going to miss two days to go camping in yur a guay. so, i was actually thinking in enrolling in an extra week and ¨graduating¨ on the 27th instead of on the 20th. Tania comes around the 30th, no¿ that way i will be free to travel when she arrives if she so desires.

one thing i did recently was go to some fellow expatriates´apartment to play Texas Hold-ém, or in my case, fold em. i lost money but boy howdy we had fun. austin almost won, but ended up losing to the sharks in the room. roger evan and i were all new to the phenomenon and i daresay we played quite well. evelyn was one of the last to go down!
last night to commemorate our move to san telmo, boppers showed us his favorite eatery, a high ceilinged place with an old oak bar and well-worn floors owned by an italian-origened familia where the pasta is made every day and the little mama, when you say the food is rico, tells you that the fact gives her personal great pleasure. her sons are the mozos and they love the work they do, you can see it. i ate caneloni a la rossini which is a cheesy concoction wrapped up in a pancake of sorts. of course there was wine and then i asked one of my boyfriends to buy me icecream and that they DID!

i am looking forward to doing some traveling and sleeping someplace where i can´t hear cars all night long and where the air is pure and the people siesta. i love you all very much.

lolo v.

Message from Laurel - May 4th

2005-05-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

(Belle I hope it is okay for me to post this for you. Folks be wondering who will look here but who weren't on the email list. Say the word and I'll take it down.)

Date: Wednesday, May 4, 2005
Sender: Leauxleaux

hi folks en mi vida
i am just writing to say helloe. i am staying up late every night talking to my buddies. i am going on long walks to all quarters of the city taking crappy photos with a crappy camera. i am reading a lot and hablaing some spanish here and there and sometimes french comes out instead and sometimes even russian which is bizzarre. my profesora is a doll and she is called eugenia--A-OO-HEN-EE-UH. i had to give a presentation in class today about anything i wanted and i did one on jump off joe creek and what i do when i´m there and everyone was very enchanted and they wished they could see pictures of such a special place. one man from england extolled for 10 minutos on the virtues of tony blair and so i had to argue with him and in spanish that´s not easy for me to do, but it was fun to be political in another tongue.
i am going with the school to uruguay this weekend and maybe it will be fun but it´s kind of annoying to be with a big group of foreigners--not a very authentic experience i fear, but if it´s with instructors hopefully they´ll make everybody speak spanish and not let us speak and be english speakers. i was thinking about making haley come because maybe he could talk to some pretty german girls--he is lonely he tells me and wants badly to talk to pretty german girls and i know just the ones. who knows if they´ll let me bring an amigo, though. i just hate leaving him alone because he sulks and becomes depressed when he has too much time alone. i don´t know how he´s managed all these months just sitting in his apartment. apparently, he´s almost finished with his novel but told me last night that he thinks it´s crap, but he can be a little melodramatic, don´t we think¿
i have been diverting myself well and enjoying the simple kind of simples that are fun in another country like going to the grocery store and noticing the main brand of garden burgers is called ¨¨BARFY¨¨ and there is a lemonade drink called ¨¨CLIGHT¨¨ and something that´s a brown food called ¨¨BUGARES¨¨. i am a strange yellow sight here and many people like to stare at me and make me feel a little as if the sidewalk and the grocery store and the internet cafe are just movie sets and i am an actress or more like a mime because often that´s how i get my point across.
i write to my kids at granite park and april reads them my letters. they write back quizzing my spanish. i love when i hear from you and except for YOU JOHN, i have heard from you all. much love all around.
lolo

Ground Control to PBR Voyager... Come in PBR Voyager

2005-05-09T16:37:00.000-07:00

BOYZ- ARE YOU THERE? WHAT IS YOUR STATUS? (Are you being nice to Roller?)

EVAN we painted your room. It's not THIS COLOR, nor THIS COLOR, but some type of color in that vein.

ROGER I'm painting your room THIS COLOR today.

Here are the headlines:
ROOF LEAKS INTO CLOSET
DOG FEATURES NEW MAN HEAD
VEINS NOT TYPICALLY GREEN
SEE IF YOU CAN DECODE THIS MESSAGE

Love,
Gals, Ira and Em

2005-05-05T02:24:00.000-07:00

"With you always" ~ love, Jesus

2005-05-05T01:32:00.000-07:00

Primarily, check out the Cherohonkees (and their affiliates).

Next, When the President Talks to God.

The Connection?

~ r

2005-04-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

Google Maps has pretty great satellite images of just about every major city, not to mention driving directions and maps that put MapQuest to shame. Type in an address, click the "satellite view" link in the upper right-hand corner of your browser, and then move through neighborhoods by dragging the image. Yes, this is what I spend my time on when I should be writing about Habermas. //Tom

2005-04-25T17:41:00.000-07:00

Especially for Tom

Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg (.mov) from the Scopitone (1960's French video-jukebox) collection found here.

more on scopitones.

~ roger

The Auditor

2005-04-14T16:01:00.000-07:00

auditor
Originally uploaded by matthewzollinger.

Mongrel calls Berkeley Pit home for 16 years

2005-04-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

They Fight Crime! [click try again]

Uhmeruhcuh-huh

2005-04-11T16:08:00.000-07:00

Emmy D. you showed me this and now to make up for it you totally owe me payment in goods or services.

-em

2005-04-11T09:33:00.000-07:00

AMNESTY?

I want to get a dialogue started here (in the comments section or whatever). What do y'all think about the "exceptions" to this proposed Iraqi amnesty - that insurgents using "non-traditional" methods of warfare would be excluded?

Isn't this the "Improvised Explosive Devices" insurgency?

And I know that we're all 21st century pacificists, but is there really a distinguishable ethical difference between types of warfare? Pros and cons please.

From the moment you step in the nursery, you will notice these directly!

2005-04-09T15:53:00.000-07:00

I read in the brochure that they are a happy big one family and it looks they really are! I seen this one in the nursery too and the mother tiger is feed the piglets along with the tiger cubs!

And surprisingly, saw very cutie tiger cubs and the small ones are sipping milk to the mother pig! And Mother tiger has a piglets sipping milks too! It really is cutie!

I was surprisingly awed by this one! A pig and a tiger cubs. The pig can feed her milk to tiger cubs along with the piglets.

They're just a cutepie..

You can take pictures with the tiger cubs and you will be the one to hold the milk for him! But you have to pay for 150 baht/shot! There are 2 types either you will put your face in the t-shirt or in a mug with their camera of course or you can have a picture with your camera! The staff knows how to take a picture with all those new digi gadgets maybe because there are too many visitors they already have with a camera in their own!

They really do this shit to animals at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Chon Buri, Thailand (about an hour outside Bankok). - em

2005-04-09T09:26:00.000-07:00

A REALISTIC
ASSESSMENT OF
HOW MANY 12-YEAR-OLDS
I COULD BEAT UP BEFORE
THEY OVERTOOK ME.

2005-04-07T21:08:00.000-07:00

Especially for Emily:
THIS IS FUN TO MAKE A BLOG ON THE COMPUTER WEBSITE

Dietrich and Cowgirl to Wed!

2005-04-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard yet, Wynne and I are getting MARRIED this summer.

The date is set for MONDAY, AUGUST 8TH, at the Wasatch Mountain Club Lodge near Brighton. My dad's a minister and he'll be performing the ceremony. My lil' brother and sister, Nick and Hannah, will be providing music for the service. After the ceremony, we're throwing an old-timey, country square dance with a real folk band and a "caller."

Hokey? Of course. Freakin' awesome? You better believe it.

All family and friends are invited. If you want a formal invitation, email a "howdy" and your home address to: dietrich.e@gmail.com

2005-04-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

Born again? Looking for oil?
Use your bible.
(and get the bretheren to invest)

2005-04-06T22:22:00.000-07:00

Live in Florida? Feel threatened by somebody?
Shoot them.

2005-04-05T16:09:00.000-07:00

Democrats push for Fetus Powered Cars

"Ralph Nader was on hand at the sneak peak to discuss the exciting possibilities with this new environment saving technology. 'Not only will you be able to drive from New York to San Francisco on two tanks of fetuses, but you will be able to do so knowing that no woodland creatures were harmed' claimed Nader, 'We will also see an end to the Exxon Valdez type disasters, and will no longer be forced to see those poor oily sea creatures.'"

Testing...testing..testes?

2005-04-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

So this is my first post...and alas I have nothing to say. Nice to be here, if for no other purpose than to counter Roger's lies.

2005-04-01T18:26:00.000-07:00

when
Pope dies

bears everywhere shit in woods.

The SHOCKING truth!

2005-03-31T13:39:00.000-07:00

Can you believe there were no WMD's???

Robert Creeley, May 26, 1926 - March 30, 2005

2005-03-30T17:27:00.000-07:00

Shit

Creeley
Died
Today

2005-03-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

Monkey vs. Tiger (cubs). This shit is absurd. Can someone tell me if this is set up in captivity or something? ~ Roger

2005-03-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

The Ponce de Leon/Russian Oligarch connection.

"...Vladimir Bryntsalov, the pharmaceutical king of Russia plans to spend $2 million on setting up a personal rejuvenation laboratory. He has had a course of stem cell injections and feels no older than 20, though his biological age is about 60.

'My cheeks were deeply lined - now they are smooth as baby's,' said Bryntsalov stroking his cheeks. 'There were terrible scars on my body since childhood - they have smoothed over, vanished.'

This expensive treatment will cost you $10,000-20,000 in Moscow, depending on the length of the course. But members of the financial elite and ranking state officials are lining up at medical centers.

In many Western countries, such clinics would not even get the opportunity to open their doors. During a recent speech, President Bush denounced stem cell therapy as 'godless.'"

kissingerpinochet

2005-02-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

kissingerpinochet, originally uploaded by matthewzollinger.

History revised, again.

"It is, at bottom, a debate about history and the battle to define it. It is about power -- its uses, its abuses. "

2005-02-24T15:20:00.000-07:00

Scientists develop drug to prolong drunkenness? Somebody tell me this isn't true.

The H.S. Thompson

2005-02-21T16:05:00.000-07:00

huntersthompson, originally uploaded by matthewzollinger.

There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy - then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece. Probably the rarest form of life in American politics is the man who can turn on a crowd & still keep his head straight - assuming it was straight in the first place.

_____________________________________________________________________________

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."

Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005

2005-02-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

I did not have relations with that spliff. President Bush admits to smoking Marijuana on tape. (CBS News). Uh-oh, CBS NEWS?

2005-02-17T21:32:00.002-07:00

As stated by Goggledog, only the governor of California can save us now!

National Death-Squad Chief

2005-02-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

This Guy might as well be Pinochet. . .

Camp X-Ray Reality Show.

2005-02-09T23:46:00.000-07:00

Groups of contestants are locked in cages and sexually humiliated for the show Guantanamo Guidebook - which explores torture techniques allegedly used against terrorist suspects held at the American base in Cuba.

THE TEN WORST FILMS OF ALL TIME

2005-02-03T12:25:00.000-07:00

AS REVIEWED BY EZRA POUND OVER ITALIAN RADIO
(Greg Purcell)

Bambi
-Filth.

Casablanca-This movie is filth.

Cat People-A race may civilize itself by LANGUAGE, not
film. Cat People is filth.

Gentleman Jim-To the Animals who made this usurious film: god
damn you.

The Magnificent Ambersons-This movie is indistinguishable from the
filth-rustlings of swine in a sty.

The Man Who Came to Dinner
-May you choke on it, bacilli.

Yankee Doodle Dandy
-I sort of liked James Cagney's filthy Irish
energy in this one.

The Palm Beach Story
-Bless: The Italian Dolcestilnovisti, the "sweet
new style" current in the time of the papish
Guelphs and the imperial Ghibellines. One will
particularly take heed of its foremost
practitioner, Guido Cavalcanti.
Blast: Preston Sturges and the Jewish
moneylenders who helped him to make this film.

Now, Voyager
-Two boils for the director's infected liver.

This Gun for Hire
-This film reeks of syphilis. Filth.

--Emily

SFSG The Adventures of Baron von Mirbach and Andre Fotzenknecht

2005-01-29T23:49:00.000-07:00

Hola,

Back in Buenos Aires two days. Happy to be back in the hot, summer streets of Palermo. Rained hard this morning and the day has a nice, rusty quality to it that reminds me of Kaohsiung. Just took a stroll to pick up my film and follow a cute girl with hoop earings. The cafe patios are crowded with people in loose white clothes. In the plaza, sleepy artesans idle beside baskets of incense and knitting. I couldnt bear to point out to the old woman knitting that it is ninety degrees.

Constantin and I had a wonderful three week adventure in the Siete Lagos region of Argentine Patagonia. I really needed to get out of Buenos Aires after the excesses of booze, heat and holidays. Three weeks of sunshine, sleeping on my back under the stars to the horror of the Argentines, eating fire roasted meat, sticking my face into streams to drink glacial runoff, getting sunburnt again and again, roaring down two lane highways chatting about Constantin´s days in the Alpenkorps, blasting the Magic Flute, meeting Argies young and old from the various quadraints of this wonderful country, learning to play rugby on a lake beach, hiking 30 km round trip to a black lagoon, and driving, just driving, restored me.

I wrote the last SFSG at one in the morning after spending four hours at the bus station desperately trying to get on a bus to San Juan, where Constantin spent the holidays with the family of an ex-President whose daughter lived with his family in Bonn for two years, years ago. Unable to get on a bus, I bought a ticket to Mendoza, the capital of the neighboring region, on the six am bus the following morning. After two hours of sleep, I went to the station an hour early, had a leissurely coffee, and planted myself in the departure zone with half an hour to kill. Six came and went. I was assured not to worry. Six thirty rolled around. I explained my plight to various other passengers who all replied the same, You bought a ticket on TAC, they are the worst, the worst, there will be no bus. So I ended up jumping on a departing bus, run by another company, that was heading to San Juan. Midway through the Pampas, I called Constantin from a village and told him to stay put.

It was a fun trip in its way. The Pampas are a flat, arid grass land dotted with poplar and eucalyptus trees, filled with beautiful black cattle and cut by two lane highways frequently washed out by flash floods. I rode in the very back of the second storey of a double decker bus and with the poor quality of the roads and the tendency of the driver to swerve to avoid debris the bus rocked back and forth, side to side, and up and down, which felt like riding a boat across the Pampas. In the afternoon, the AC broke. In record heat, with no windows, the top floor of our red bus got quite hot. The kids all stripped down naked and the adults took to pouring water all over themselves. We stopped in BFE and the drivers tried to fix the AC pump via cellphone. We convinced them to keep going and finally got to San Juan after 17 hours.

The family Constantin stayed with are a wonderful gaggle of women. The father of the house died some years ago and now the place, a sprawling hive of a house dotted with wide hearths and wider patios, is filled with small dogs and runaway birds. I was greated with a tray of delicious, homemade empanadas and went over the maps with Constantin on the patio. San Juan is in the desert and the hot night felt familiar.

The next day we left in Constantin´s red 98 Peugot 504, a veritable myth of a car. We drove straight nearly 800 miles south on Ruta Nacional 40, a highway imbued with legend in this country, sort of the Route 66 of Argentina. We passed Mendoza without stopping, continued downwards past San Rafael, stopped for a cute hitchhiker from Madrid whose boyfriend was hiding in the bushes, drove them both to the next town, bought road beers, and continued into the desert dusk. Towards the bottom of Mendoza province, the highway turned to dirt and we made slow time heading into the sun on a road filled with dust. We crossed the Rio Grande and followed the dry hills above its flat, green plain. Just after dark the spedometer and odometer broke, the front left tire burst and we discovered that the jack in the trunk didn´t work. We managed to flag down a truck despite the fear of bandits that permeates the rural portions of the country and got the tire changed. We continued over 100 km of brutal, flinty road I would cautiously drive in a four by four, all of it marked paved highway on our 2005 maps. At last we arrived in a small village where the road was supposed to turn really bad. Constantin decided we should press on and get it over with and to our surprise, the 30 km marked dirt road on the maps was newly paved. We drove on, stopping at police checkpoints to be sprayed with insecticide, stopped outside a prison where two young cops were throwing rocks at a mouse, and finally crashed out in the sagebrush on the side of the highway. In the morning I thought I was in Utah.

The next day we continued through the desert to Junin de los Andes. The landscape looked like Battle Mountain, with 12000 foot, snow-clad volcanoes in the distance. In Junin we bought flies and fishing permits and inquired about local conditions and headed into Parque Nacional Lanin, which takes its name from a beautifully symetrical 4000 meter cone volcano that rises over an enormous crystaline lake with a Mapuche name thirty letters long. We camped our first night midway up the lake on a pretty grass-sloped cove, blasted Constantin´s selection of Overtures, got drunk around the fire and had an emotional discussion about Germany. The next day we explored farther up the lake and found, purely by accident, Camping Piedra Mala, the last campgroud accessible by road, on the shore of Lago Paimun, a tributary lake of Lago Huachuahchuahcuahuchauahcuhua, right beneath the stunning Volcan Lanin.

We spent a week at Piedra Mala. We fished, swam in the crystaline waters, hiked 20 km to a trout stream where we caught no trout, spent the evenings gathering firewood with the powers of our size, reason and fearlessness. We caught no trout, but five perch and ate them all. They are ugly bastards, and fight like Italians, but wrapped in foil with some garlic, lemon and oil and tossed into the coals of a wood fire and eaten in the dark with mediocre wine when you are 26 and travelling in Patagonia with a 6 foot 8 Prussian lawyer named Constantin Job Wegner Herbert von Mirbach are quite delicious. We discovered that Piedra Mala was totally the In place to camp this summer and enjoyed the social scene that devolved each evening. The Argentines take summer vacation very seriously. This, combined with the weakness of the peso, means the Argentines hit the road in the summer to discover their amazingly diverse country. Half go to the beaches. The other half hitchhike around the country, camping. One of the most popular hitchhiking routes is the Siete Lagos route, which we were pursuing accidently. I got the impression during the following weeks that we not only stumbled into the totally cool camp ground, but we stumbled into it the totally coolest week.

The first three nights, scouts would wander from camp to camp inviting people to come to their bonfires later in the evening. Strangers from different provinces would wander into other camps, sit down, pick up a guitar, share some wine and become instant friends. The Argentines began to refer to each other by hometown, not by name. The Cordobadenses would have friendly, heated discussions with the La Platenses about each other´s respective identity. I got the impression that the summer hitchhiking tradition was a way for the Argies, who derive incredibly strong senses of identity from neighborhoods, soccer teams, even streets, to discover their national self. Despite the friendly rivalry and open competitiveness of the exchange, there was not one fight, one ill-meant word, one act of vandalism, theft or extreme beligerence. It once again made me wonder what it is the Brits, Yanks, Aussies, Russians, Germans and Irish have that makes them such violent fuckers.

So we passed the nights around bonfires passing around bottles of wine and lemoncello, listening to horrible Argie rock songs that sounded quite nice sung in chorus to an out of tune guitar. In the days we wandered to the beach and watched the college girls in their bikinis. I know I mention this a lot, but from a strictly scientific point of view, it is staggering how beautiful the average Argentine is. We met a quartet of girls from La Plata, a college town near BsAs and had dinner with them. In the interum, we enjoyed the rural beauty of the camp. Tents and odd vehicles were scattered throughout the wooded slope of the camp with elaborate, Argentine camping tricks, like lamps hoisted on bamboo poles and hung from high branches, giving the place a Mad Max autmosphere. Volcan Lanin rose above us and in every direction were the jagged, rocky slopes of the Andes. Sheep grazed on the thick grass that grew higher up from the beach, across from the babbling stream and behind the white bath houses where wood-fired boilers heated the water from a two-storey wooden cistern. Each afternoon two Mapuche guys in soft, white shirts and black berets lead a team of oxen across the stream and came back with a wagon full of wood. The woman who ran the provenduria, where we bought wine, local wild-strawberry jam, and bread baked daily in a domed outdoor oven, had a cute 7 year old daughter who worked the counter when mom was busy. This presented me with the strange experience of asking a seven year old girl how much the different bottles of whiskey cost.

The La Plata quartet left on Friday morning with most of the other Argies who had inside information, and were replaced by the weekend crowd of local hicks from Neuquen province. The Cinco Saltos rugby team, a bunch of yocals who work in the famed pear and apple orchards nearby, camped next to us and after joining a game of rugby with them on the beach, I spent an afternoon with them down by the gendarmerie, a beautiful white barracks and white steepled church at the neck of Lago Paimun, where you can take a ferry across pulled along by a cable. I swam across Lago Paimun just to say I had and we visited an old cemetary where the names on the graves were the same as the names on the houses scattered across the meadowed valley. We had mate and stopped for beers and I quickly became Limon, because my hair is yellow. That night Constantin and I partied with them and Constantin became Pomello, grapefruit, because he is nine feet tall. For the rest of their stay, the Cinco Saltos guys called us Los Citricos.

The next day they prepared a traditional asado, the gaucho barbeque that is sacred to Argentine identity. The process is this. In the early afternoon light a campfire and start drinking. Next to the camp fire arrange a large, low grill protected from the wind. Shovel a few coals under the grill and put meat on the grill. The cuts here are completely different and generally involve parts of what we consider individual cuts with a sheathing of fat. The idea of parilla is to slowly melt the fat off the meat, basting it in the process. For several hours, keep adding small scoops of coals as they appear in the fire. The guys provided a large, splayed rooster, kidneys, sausages and a huge slab of beef. Constantin and I went to the provenduria and bought the hind leg of a recently killed animal that arroused a serious discussion but proved to be one of the finest pieces of meat I have ever eaten. Eventually, the rugby guys agreed that the thing was a young, male goat. So I am going to enter it into the record as a leg of kid. So while the chefs cooked, I taught the rules of American football to Constantin, a young Argie kid and several of the rugby guys. Afterwards, Constantin said, I can see how you can like this game. It would be so fun to smash people. I assured him it was one of life´s delights. Then we ate kid, sausage, chicken, beef, put the kidney on someone else´s plate, drank loads of wine, bitter Italian digestives, Argentine whiskey, stood around the fire and had fun.

The Cinco Saltos guys left on Sunday along with the redheaded local kid who drove a F 250 deisel and let the engine run in the morning after proclaiming, listen to this. They were replaced by the second string reserves of college kids who came looking for what they heard about in San Martin. There was mala onda, people were snooty and self-conscious and it was obvious Piedra Mala was so last week so Big C and I left for San Martin.

The drive from Junin to San Martin takes you out of the desert into the mountains. The Seven Lakes route passes through steep, rugged peaks that rise out of bright glacial lakes. Comparisons to Jackson, Bampf, Yosemite can be made. The road is two lane, with many curves, and Constantin used to be a chaufeur on the Autobahn so I can assure you the drive was good fun.

We arrived in San Martin, a hipster moutain artists retreat that looks like it was transplated from Colorado, found the town absolutely packed, stopped at the beach where droves of stunning beauties sunned themselves as the old ferry arrived across the bright waters to dock at the old pier, drove out of town at sundown into the Lord of the Rings, found a crappy camp, got wasted on Clan MacGreggor, ate steaks and passed out, C into his tent, me on the beach. Next day we left early, had a great cup of coffee in town, and drove along the north shore to a place marked as a village called Hua Hum on the map. In fact, Hua Hum is a restaurant with a pier where boats from San Martin drop off tourists for lunch. It is a mile from the Chilean border and a small barracks houses the troops who live in the Alpine paradise waiting for the Chilean invasion. We drove up to the border and watched the birds fly back and forth across the border and the trees sway across the border and I really, really wanted to accidently step across the border but Constantin assured me I would be shot. We had a delicious lunch of pasta slathered in a sauce of locally picked mushrooms, had several beers and took turns jumping off the back of a marooned barge into the frigid, ice-clear water.

Afternoon came on and the trout started jumping so we rented a row boat and spent the next five hours along the back sides of the willows working the cadis hatch. Constantin caught a beautiful jaguar of a trout, a fat 16 incher that fought for six minutes. I took the fly rod next and promptly lost the only cadis fly in the reeds. We tried several other flies, but had no luck. It was a lot like the dating scene in Argentina. Constantin, who rowed in college, parked the boat perfectly, I dropped the fly right in the clearing where, literally, dozens of trout jumped clear out of the water, sometimes even, no shit, right over my line. But as they say, a bad day fishing...

We found a beautiful camp site a few kilometers away on the other side of two bridges, one of which was about thirty yards long, made entirely of crude wooden planks, and had no sides. We cooked the trout with carrots and potatoes and spent the night around the fire. The next day we swam in the lake, dove from the pier near our camp, went for lunch and discovered, heading back from Hua Hum, that the other bridge, the bridge with sides, was perfect for jumping. Beneath the center of the bridge, beside a huge fallen tree, was deep sandy hole. Constantin tried to persuade me against it but I jumped, didn´t touch bottom and floated down the strong current to the shallows where the beautiful, stupified Argies were yet again sunning themselves in their string bikinis. Constanin went, didn´t touch bottom, and we continued several times until the twelve year old boys couldnt resist. Soon the tom boy sister was jumping. And eventually dad came and did a cannonball.

We were standing on the bridge, dripping dry in the evening sun when a pickuptruck bounced across with the four girls from Piedra Mala on board. We convinced one of them to jump and decided to meet for dinner that night at their camp, which they shared with the four boys to whom the pickup belonged. We went back to camp, fished a bit, made a couple liters of gin and juice and drove like bats out of hell down the winding mountain road to their camp. There was a lot of chatting, the two prettiest girls went off with the two cutest guys and we laughed when the breaklights in the truck came on sporadically. They said they were heading south to Pichi Traful, which henceforth shall be known as Pincha Awful, and Constantin and I in a surrender of judgement to our glandular impulses agreed to drive the two of them to Pincha Awful in the morning. There was a delightful autmosphere of mutual attraction in the air and we felt abandoning our trout filled paradise was worth it.

In the morning the two girls were edgy and grumpy. We squeezed them into the car and drove down through San Martin, back through the Lord of the Rings, along a stretch of dirt road, to a terrible campground packed with loud brats and old people who blasted their blown speakers while they ran their engines. The girls ditched us with that amazingly curt heartlessness girls are taught in kindergarten and Constantin and I had a bitter but delicious meal of fire roasted beef. Constantin finally slept outside his tent, though due more to the wine than the stars. I sat up around the fire waiting for the coals to die when one of the girls showed up and redeemed her kind with a half hour of friendly conversation.

In the morning, I woke in the rain, moved to the car, unable to budge C. When he finally woke up, we packed the car and left without saying goodbye. We drove over the bad roads to Angostura, a touristy town where watches and sweaters are sold from faux Swiss chalets, stopped en route for coffees and gourmet crepes at a swank lake-side lodge filled with witch paraphenalia. There were no rooms in Angostura so we did what works best when there is no room in the inn, we opened a bottle of wine and continued. The drive from Angostura to Bariloche was stunning. Steep mountains tumbled into the bright-blue, white-capped waters of the biggest of the Seven Lakes.

We spent one night in a dim hotel, taking numerous hot showers to heat our bones. The next night we moved to a cozy hostel called La Bolsa and spent two nights there in the rucous of a hot, crowded kitchen, chatting with Irish and Aussies, Israelis and Argentines. We went out on the town with our international crew, discovering the insane nightlife of Bariloche. The Irish danced on tables and broke glasses. The capricious college girls bumped and ground. We went to a five storey disco shaped like a tree. We went to Roket, where I looked down from the third floor at the mayhem of Latin dancing. In the days we drove around the region, walked around the town, looked at sweaters and sampled chocolates, stopped along the road for beers. The Peugot got broken into but nothing was taken. One day driving along the winding, lakeside road the steering went out and we spent several hours tracking down a tow truck. Finally, we agreed to go on a 30 km round trip hike to la Laguna Negra and did.

That was with Alban the French Irish counsin of Rossa, an Irish kid I thought was retarded until I learned he was an astrophysicist, Yael the cute Israeli girl, Daniela the pretty architect from San Telmo, Constantin and me. The hike was beautiful and hard. We camped on a windy rocky slope beneath jagged peaks, between the black lagoon and the 900 meter waterfall that tumbled down to the forrest canyon below. We went to the Refugio Italia, a two storey building that looked like the droid selling vehicle from Star Wars. Inside two iron stoves blazed and the twelve tables of the first floor were packed with bearded, tanned, sweatered, pretty, rugged, smiling Argentine mountaineers huddled over card games and glasses of wine in the light from the candles stuffed into bottles. A backboard hung from the ceiling beside a guitar and a tambourine. We stood by the stove and warmed our hands. I finally relented and slept in the tent and I was lucky because the zipper on my bag broke and I got to sleep between Daniela and Yael but I was unlucky because I snored. In the morning we had steaks and packed up camp and hiked down. We went out one last time to the nuthouse faux Irish pub Wilkenny and were invited to the VIP section because we had broken so many glasses the last time we were there. We broke more glasses and got very drunk and on the way home had street hamburgers and stopped at the whorehouse to chat with the prostitutes because the gigantic Argentine wrangler named Max told us he never leaves a town without visiting the whiskeria.

The next morning Constantin drove me to the airport. I was sad to leave the beautiful mountain desert with its clean clear water and air but it was fun to be on a plane again and when we came in low over Buenos Aires the city looked like a motherboard, beautiful and strange in the polluted light and when the cab pulled up on my street I was happy to get out and look around Palermo with its sycamores and fashionable buildings and feel at home.

Nos Vemos,

Andrew

Got a secret?

2005-01-25T18:36:00.000-07:00

Mail it in on a postcard to these guys...

Um, here's some interesting shit.

2005-01-24T22:15:00.000-07:00

Égalité

2005-01-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

Hello Matty Z. We, the undersigned plead with you - in the spirit of open dialogue - to give us the privilege of posting at PBR. We understand that this is your site, your baby, your project; but damnit, we want in! These infrequent posts by you and your henchman are making us sick. We want to be scrutinized for our every public comment. We want to make asses of ourselves here, for you to enjoy. Or you can tell us to get our own damn blog. The choice rests with you. But be aware that you face wholesale abandonment if our demands are not met.

Sincerely,

Alex
Alexa
Andrews
Austin
Danae
Emily
Evan
Laurel
Nina
Tania
Tom Y

Anyone want to cry?

2005-01-14T23:42:00.000-07:00

"Even the most pessimistic forecasts of global warming may now have to be drastically revised upwards.
That means a temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on the cards, giving the UK a climate like that of North Africa, and rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable."

Chiggity check yo'self before you wreck yo'self.

2005-01-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

Warning: This post may seem really strange to those unfamiliar with Ali G.
Borat from Da Ali G Show strikes again. "And may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq."

Also see, Ali G addressing Harvard University.
And this piece too. (um, the actor who plays Ali/Borat/Bruno is Jewish).

Yes, I took this from metafilter.

~Roger

Fiona Apple, 1997 MTV Video Awards (interpreted)

2005-01-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

Strangest of the web, part 2

2005-01-10T23:44:00.000-07:00

Make sure to hang on till the end. . .(and watch "Strangest. . ." below first)
~Roger

Smells like fresh . . .

2005-01-10T16:57:00.000-07:00

This post requires sound and you have to watch the whole thing.
~roger

SFSG Oops I did it again

2005-01-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

Today Buenos Aires reached the insuportable temperature of 42 centigrade. This, combined with sporadic rain, has lead the locals to speculate about the subtropical future of their little Milan by the sea. I will blame the heat for my having, in the words of the philosopher professor kim sterelny, fucked the dog at the bus station. I was meant to catch the 19 30 bus to Mendoza but confused 1900 with 9 oclock and when I arrived early, my slim, light pack on my shoulders, bottle of water in hand, I entered that place of desperation and depravity that is a metropolitan bus station in the heighth of the tourist season. Everyone is fleeing the city for the scorching desert or the scorching gravel strips of beach at Mar de Plata and the station reminded me of the Wuhan Airport. Twenty thousand people trying to get a seat on the last buses to leave on friday night in sweltering heat, chanting protest songs to persuade the bus companies to spontaneously provide more buses, standing the humps of life that pass for lines in Argentina, shouting at indifferent, underpaid clerks with broken computers. At last I settled for a seat on the six am bus and happily just got off the phone with Constantine who decided to drive his spunky red instrument of speed down to Mendoza which saves me from taking the extra bus ride to San Juan. I look forward to 14 hours crossing the desert at midday in record heat watching interracial comedies and latin american ninja movies at full volume. But at the end of it, like Dantes Beatrice, the Saxon giant hovers in a cloud of exhaust.

I am happy to have dropped the last shovelful of dirt into the grave of 2004. 2004 can rot in hell. I greated 2005 in a very jolly manner, having gone to dinner party on the roof of a hostel since all the nightclubs and bars here were closed after the fire under the pretext of making Latin American discoteques safe places to while away ones youth. They will remain closed until the proper authorities have been bribed and the calls for the end to corruption have been silenced. For a city that derives its existential meaning from staying out until the sun rises, closing the nightclubs dealt a heavy blow. The 30 percent of the population who dont work and are under 40 now crowd the parks and plazas where mariachi bands compete with brazilian kungfu vodoo music and scantilly clad men find satisfaction in whirling pieces of fabric around and around. The hostels have turned into party venues and many people who have apartments go to parties at hostels.

New Years Eve, we were invited by Bobek the Destroyer to a dinner party at the hostel where he has lived for eight months in pursuit of the worst spanish i have ever heard. Several Spaniards staying at the hotel prepared a vat of sangria and saucers of dozensful of grapes. There was a smorgasbrod of light foods and copious wine. It was a fun time. Thousands of enormous missles exploded overhead at the stroke of twelve when we ate our twelve grapes in a frency to the dongs a Basque made with a wooden spoon on the side of the sangria cauldron. I fired a missle into the neighboring balcony and blinded several children and stood near the English girls who expressed their grave dislike of the irresponsibility of private firework displays and fired bottlerockets out of my bare hands. Towards seven or so, when the birds realized the sun would just keep rising and chose to rest their weary warbles and the two fifty year old women decided to go home and the morning staff woke up from their hour rest, I started a conversation with one of the Spaniards that lasted, despite Bobeks annecdotes about Jews, martians, Brazils secret hydrogen bomb, the war that is still raging in Bolivia and other facts he learned on the internet, until about ten thirty. By then the sun began to burn the film off my vampire skin and I retreated home, stopping along the way to buy juice for the three bottles of champagne waiting at home. Austin and I had a lovely afternoon sipping mimosas with Maria Frondizi, the beautiful grand niece of the ex president of Argentina who grew up an exile in Southern europe because her father is a prominent communist and the Argentine military assassinated her uncle. It was a wonderful first day of a welcome new year.

Otherwise, Austin has been busy working other peoples shifts and my new book is starting to reveal its larger dimensions. We got Oracle Night in the mail. After weeks without anything fresh to read Paul Auster was a treat. Unfortunately I read it in one sitting. Last night we went to a party at Alex and Melissas apartment in the hyper delux part of Recoleta. We talked with Drew and Kristen who told me about Atlanta. Strangely, Greg, who is from there, has no southern accent, whereas Kristen, who is from Chicago, does. Alex works as an intern for the Buenos Aires Herald puliing stories off the wires and he invited his boss, a twenty year old, half Brit half Corsican named Nick who is the guy Princess Dianas nephew calls when he wants to score horse tranquillizers. Nick got in trouble at Oxford for hosting DMT fueld orgies that led to squabbles over girlfriends among the various Viscounts and Earls that ply their trade in the dorms of Christs College. Austin and I went to Nicks at about four and had vermouths listened to British electronic music and talked about 19th century paris. Nick, who is a bit of a tweaker and has a bit of a problem with white powders is the first person I ever spoke with, besides perhaps Don Revell, familiar with the effect Napolean IIIs construction of sidewalks had on the rise of Modernism in Baudelaires newspaper reviews of Degas and Manet. I tried to get him onto Whitman, but how do you convince a Corsican drug addict who reads the complete works of Baudelaire in the bathtub to get jiggy with Walts shuffle and breakdown.

On the way home we stopped in the park and I was told by a very old woman to be careful because Austin was dangerous. That made me grin. Anyways, it is one thirty and I want to catch a few winks before I go back down to the Thunderdome and burn hecatombs to the gods of the omnibus. Until next time...
andrew

Future of Libraries?

2005-01-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

Project Gutenberg

2005-01-08T02:40:00.000-07:00

Strangest of the web

2005-01-06T16:21:00.000-07:00

For those who like Garcia Marquez's News of a Kidnapping

Killing Pablo

Anyone for a vacation?

2005-01-04T17:12:00.000-07:00

The Enima Within

"When photographer Anthony Cullen heard the clank of glass on porcelain, he didn't need to examine the contents of the toilet bowl between his legs. He instinctively knew he had just passed the marble he had swallowed as a five-year-old; the small coloured sphere - "I think it was a bluey" - had lodged in his colon for 22 years."
. . .
"By lunch - sorry, by the second dose of herbal laxatives - on day five, my nose, eyes and ears had cleared, and I had more energy. Remarkably, without nibbling a single shred of food for 120 hours, the irrigation still washed out huge amounts of gunk. I passed six-inch strips of gristle and what appeared to be large chunks of fillet steak."
~Roger

British House Gymnastics

2004-12-29T21:10:00.000-07:00

By far my favorite: "the Mop-Tripod" in the Move of the month section.

Wikipedia Indian Ocean earthquake coverage

2004-12-29T17:55:00.000-07:00

Pretty amazing shit here. Photos, video footage, graphics, aid societies etc.
~ Roger