Carnaval: Git it on ‘till the early mooorn

Have you ever had smoked stingray from a street vendor? Or diarrhea for 8 days? The two questions are unrelated. So I made it on tv in South America again.* Turns out some camara man was watching me dance retardedly by myself, thought it made good tv and put it on every evening newscast as an example of gringos at Carnaval. At least half of my students and both of my bosses didn’t see it. Lucky for me dancing provocatively on tv gets you a promotion in Colombia. I went to an all day outdoor concert one day, the Festival de Orquistas, which is like a battle of the bands. They were charging 500 pesos (like a quarter) to use the bathroom which is reasonable, but all the guys were just lining up on these wood piles to one side of the bathrooms. This was made doubly hilarious because I saw one of the policemen peeing on the wood. Some enterprising young men took it upon themselves to start guarding the wood piles, and charging 500 pesos to pee there. Do kids in New Orleans get out of school to celebrate Mardi Gras? Because it’s awesome that we got out a couple of days (only two this year) to go to Carnaval. What’s not to love about Carnaval? Live bands playing by the cashiers at grocery stores. A fourday festival of madness, spraying strangers in their exposed bum cracks (Stephanie’s specialty last year), throwing flour in people’s ears, then following that up with water making for doughy ear holes, gaudy outfits, scantily clad people of all shapes and sizes, and great bands from all over the country. All this ends in a debaucherous parade where scantily clad women in black pantomime necrophilia with Joselito, the king of Carnivale who has died of overindulgence of his various appetities. Why shouldn’t the kids get out to see that? I have to admit something about me that as far as I can tell kind of makes me a bad person. I would rather not eat a nice meal that someone else cooks if it means I have to help do the dishes. I actually prefer doing the dishes if I’ve cooked, although I intentionally don’t cook very often. Also, when someone cooks for you, you are expected to pay in the currency of appreciation. I often come up lacking in this payment plan. Once when I was a kid my stepfather Gene sat me and my other siblings down to discuss the manner in which we spent our 2 dollar a week allowence. I imagine the allowence had been implemented in order to teach us thrift and fiscal responsibility, but much to the folks’ chagrin, instead fed my rather sizable appetite for candy. In order to show us we were wasting our money, he took out an ashtray and burned a dollar bill. The whole time I was just thinking of how much candy I could buy with that dollar. In the interior they use the word chinito (literally little chinese person) for kid. My only rationalization for this is that so many kids born on earth are Chinese we might as well just call them all chinos. They also have a word manco which means a person with only one arm.** It’s both an adjective and a noun in Spanish (as most adjetives are). I developed the word starmpy for English. It’s a mixture of stumpy and arm. As in, don’t pick him for our paddycake team, he’s a starmpy. Or I when I spoon I wish I were starmpy so I wouldn’t have the second arm dilemma. My favorite quote from Carnaval was an old man selling beer near us telling my friend Chris, “You friend isn’t from here, but he’s having a really good time.” I need to give a shout out, all of the pictures on this and every blog were taken with a camara given to me for free by Joshua Vaughn, and the memory card was donated by my loving little sister. Sorry I haven’t written this in a while, I’ve been hamstrung more than I could have imagined by the lack of internet at home.

Song of the Week: This River is Wild – The Killers
Book of the Week: A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene. He also wrote The Destuctors, of Donnie Darko fame.
Movie of the Week: An Uncomfortable Truth. If you still don’t believe in global warming you are either retarded, a far right Republican, or both, the last of which seems to be pretty common.
Random Presidential Fact of the Week: Hayes had the biggest beard of all the U.S. Presidents.



Grow up Peter Pan, Count Chocoula,
~Tyrone


I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever. ~Dostoyevsky, Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Now folks, here's a nightmare scenario. You're cuddled up in bed, you hear that "step, thump, step, thump" of a pirate coming up your stairs. You'd hide under your covers. But, it's not going to do you any good. He's drank your liquor, number one. Number two... He's looking for treasure. He's a pirate folks, you're DEAD. ~Olly
Surely to a refined nature our present world is distressing enough without bothering ourselves about these miseries to come. We shall not suffer anyhow. Our children may, but what is that to us? ~ When the Sleeper Wakes. ~ HG Wells.

*The first time was during a student protest against bus fare hikes in Brazil.
**El Manco de Lepanto was the nickname given to Miguel de Cervantes due to the fact that he lost an arm at the battle of Lepanto. He did later go on to write Don Quixote with his good arm though.

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