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Published: December 19th 2006
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My friend Ed
Teaches 5th grade, who I travel with mostly these days. Thing about windy season is, man is it windy. Like -can’t open the front door if the back door is open- windy. The pool whitecaps out of the it’s constraints, windows break all over the building, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria. I think I’m going to change my thesis topic to how Colombian Movie theaters are a reflection of all that is wrong with Latin America. In the Spanish dubbed version of the A-Team, B.A. Baracus is named M. A. Barracus, the "M. A." for "Mala Actitud" (Bad Attitude). It’s high season officially, meaning cabbies feel more justified than ever trying to rip me off arming themselves with
temporada alta.* It’s nice though, my town is usually pretty quiet, but it goes nuts this time of year, with every hotel and apartment building bursting at the seems as people spend their yearly savings visiting me. Sand sculptures and street performers appear, the hooker bus drives around trying to drum up business, and my favorite shwarma place sets up a food cart, all very entertaining. They barricade the streets so the throngs can walk in the middle of the street more than they normally do. My month long break is
finally here, and to that I can only quote Thoreau’s Life Without Principle to express my feelings about constant work, even though I like my job. “I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.” One thing I really like about Colombia is all the people who look like Richard Pryor.* A lot of them even wear Yankees hats like he did in a few films. I went back into the eco-park for the last 3 days. I didn’t get enough of sitting on the beach doing nothing last weekend. This weekend was more fun actually, if only for the jungle wildlife. A six-foot boa constrictor crept up on me as I sat on the beach after dark one night. I’m not overly scared of snakes but when it’s dark and they are huge and you aren’t super familiar with the characteristics of the local reptile population, it’s a bit off putting. I saw about 20 monkeys who appeared to be in some sort of monkey gang war for turf, yelling, jumping back and forth and occasionally attempting to assassinate me by shaking coconuts loose so
Beautiful me
I think it's funny that when I went to Brazil like a year and a half ago, I brought like 7 shirts, and I still wear the same 7 shirts everyday since I haven't bought any new ones. they clock me on my headpiece. I think the Jets were winning, but the Sharks were tenacious. One difference between leaf cutter ants* and mailmen; when it starts raining (in this instance pee) the ants quit their appointed rounds, drop their leaves and head for the hills.* Saw a man with one leg riding a bike who could beat me in a race any day of the week. He had an uncanny ability to get his one foot under the petal on the upstroke and then back on top for the down stroke, it was amazing. The place where I stayed uses donkeys to bring things in, as there’s no road, and who shuttles the donkey back and forth on the two-hour hike? A freakin’ dog. It’s crazy. They load up the donkeys, then the dog takes them to the entrance, where people unload the trash, reload it with foodstuffs or whatever, then the dog takes them back. This’ll be my last entry until after Christmas, so merry Christmas all, enjoy the family and friends, I feel the lack down here.
Movie I’ve never seen: The Crow 4: Wicked Prayer starring Eddie Furlong as the crow
Wicked Prayer
I always wondered what happened to Eddie Furlong after the Terminator series. Now I know. and Tara Reid.
Books I’ve never read: James Michener’s entire catalog
Thing I’ve never done but often lie and say I did Skydive
Thing I did that I lie and say Garcia did Yell at an old lady in Tempe, AZ.
Spanish phrase that I don’t understand Que Vaina, it means… well I don’t know what it means.
~The Dude Abides
Well, I guess that we all learned a lesson today. That it's what's inside a person that counts. And that on the inside, midgets are thieving little bastards. ~Conan O’Brien
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe. ~Epitaph of Kilgore Trout
The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it, you’ll never know what justice is. ~Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the World.
*high season
**Not to be mistaken with the ones who look like Lionel Richie.
***Leafcutter ants are social insects found in warmer regions of Central and South America. These unique ants have evolved an advanced agricultural system based on ant-fungus mutualism. They feed on a specialized fungus
that grows only in the underground chambers of the ants' nest. The ants actively cultivate their fungus, feeding it with freshly cut plant material and maintaining it free from pests and molds. This symbiotic relationship is further augmented by another symbiotic partner, a bacterium that grows on the ants and secretes chemicals, or secondary metabolites, which protect the fungus from molds that would feed on the fungus - essentially the ants use portable antimicrobials. When the ants happen to bring back toxic leaves, the fungus secretes a chemical that warns the ant not to collect any more of that type of leaf.
**** The famous verse from Herodotus, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds," is often quoted as the official motto of the USPS.
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