Last weekend, I may have taken 'stupid' to a new level. I cannot be completely sure as I am rarely certain what I am saying or what other people are saying to me, but I think I may have come out in favor of Neo-Nazis last Saturday night. Although there is some chance that this odious affirmation was interpreted as a product of linguistic limitations rather than personal orientation, you never can tell. Of course, by the time I was enlightened to what I had said, the conversation had hurtled by, and I was left in the Neo-nazi camp. hurray! [View Full Entry]

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Before scribbling the bit about Patagonia, I began with the intention of writing about something that I am perhaps uniquely qualified to comment on: robbery. For those of you who don’t know, I have the dubious distinction of being liberated from my material possessions on nearly all corners of the globe. Now my percentages (71.4% vs. 85.7%) do depend on whether you were raised in a country that believes there are seven continents or six. At Thomas Alva Edison Elementary, home of the eagles, we were taught that Edison invented the light bulb, George Washington Carver did something [View Full Entry]

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Patagonia. One of those myth places like Mu, Argarttha, Atlantis, Avalon, or Shambala that exist somewhere between the real and the irrational refuge of magic and mystery. Down there, where the southern continent buckles, splinters, fragments and becomes something less that solid, are the Chilean states of Magallanes and Ultima Esperanza (last hope). Nearby is Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego. A few hundred years ago, this was where the world simply ended. If you kept going, you fell off. The place was reputedly populated by giants. Seemed like a nice place to go for a holiday. T [View Full Entry]

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Disclaimer Although rather boring, Carly insists I cannot delete it. Who knows why. She will concede, however, that there could be a little bit more, or any, character development. Presumably people are more interesting than grandiose slabs of rock covered in snow and the redundancy of nature: trees, green stuff, flowers, trail, a couple of woodpeckers, a hundred thousand penguins, some glaciersm and a long long list of adjectives. Lacking characters, the danger is that it will be imbued with what Mr. Christopher Hayes so eloquently referred to as “River Runs Through It Bullshit&rd [View Full Entry]

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Today Its October. A Monday. I think the date is in the teens, but I can’t really be sure. I woke up today with a long list of things needed, but it’s a holiday, so nothing is open. I think the holiday may be commemorating the coming of Columbus, but again, I can’t really be sure. No TV. No newspaper and an erratic internet connection. As this day marked the beginning of the end, the Mapoche were marching down the Alameda coming from Plaza Italia. The Mapoche are the largest indigenous group left in Chile. They managed to resist foreign incursion [View Full Entry]

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The word panuelo should have a tilde; a wavy line above the ‘n’ that tells you that it needs to reverberate in your nasal cavity in an entirely foreign way. Panuelo, which means handkerchief, certainly isn’t one of those words vital to the daily business of living such as comer (eat), beber (drink) or cerveca (beer). It is an inconsequential noun that really has no business being linguistically important. Nevertheless, after a month in Santiago, the simple panuelo’s emblematic status has surpassed the more internationally known Chilean wine, fruit, and Pantagonia. T [View Full Entry]

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Spaces We are in the centro Santiago. The centro is roughly a triangle with points to the north, south and east. Parque Forestal runs along the northern leg of the triangle following the Rio Mapocho, an ugly angry brown river, that tears down from the mountains to the east. Barrio Belavista is sandwiched between the Rio Mapocho and the enormous hill Cerro San Cristobal. Atop the hill is the ubiquitous South American testament to the lasting legacy of Loyola and his band of religious zealots. Whereas Christ the Redemptor with his arms outstretched towers over Rio, Santiago got fourteen [View Full Entry]

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