3.21.2004

First Couple Days


I took a bus from Las Vegas to El Paso and then from there to Chihuahua. Both buses where packed full of people, and the person in front of me had to put their seat back. I have long legs, and they´re just not built to be packed into a bus. I´ve never had a good bus ride since around High School. I tried to play Gameboy on the rides but couldn´t concentrate. Same with reading, and sleeping was out of the question. I left at 7pm Vegas time and arrived in Chihuahua at 3 local time. That´s about 19 hrs of hell.

hell & boredom: 2 cultural: 0 fun : 0


Once here, my cousin Ali picked me up and we were of to make all the obligatory hello´s to family members.

hell & boredom: 3 cultural: 0 fun : 0


We then went to his workplace so he could finish some things up for the day. He works on computers and had some repairs or installations he had to do. This is also boring shit for me. I´m on vacation, the last thing I want to see is someone installing Windows XP in Spanish, not that English is any more exciting. After this we had some great tortas from a street vendor and a Coke which I made sure was in a glass bottle. It´s getting harder and harder to fing glass bottles in Mexico as plastic is quickly becoming the number one choice. I enjoy drinking from the glass bottle for some reason. Always have. At dinner, as a child, everyone would pour their Coke into a glass, but not me. I could barely hold the bottle but I still would use it. Bottle, can, plastic is the order I prefer for Coke.

hell & boredom: 5 cultural: 1 fun : 1


By this time I was so tired from the bus ride I decided I would take a nap before going out. I laid down for about 10 minutes and Ali came in and said he´d just talked to some girls and we had to meet them in an hour. Great. So I showered and got dressed and drank a couple Red Bulls. I felt better but had a small headache. We picked up the girls and went to my cousins´old house which is empty while they remodel. We drank beer and sat around and chatted. I got in an argument with one girl about what the capital of Guanajuato is. She says it´s the City of Guanajuato and I said it was Leon. I swear I´d read somewhere that Leon was but I was wrong. Still had fun though. It was also raining so hard. Just running from the house to the car we were soaked. In Vegas it would have been a definate flood.

hell & boredom: 5 cultural: 2 fun : 5


Today Ali had some more work to finish up. This should be the last of it so we can get down to the business of slacking and vacationing. We drove the the city of Camargo about 2 hours from here. The countryside was nice but it really isn´t that great of a drive. I saw a huge sculpture calle La Puerta de Chihuahua, at the outskirts of Chihuahua. It was cool looking but I wasn´t overly impressed.

hell & boredom: 6 cultural: 3 fun : 6




3.19.2004


I've been reading through James D Macdonald's posts over at Absolute Write Water Cooler. He has a lot of great tips and information on how to get your ass into the chair and write. In the following post he talks about how grammar and that reminded me of how weak I am in that department. I read a lot, so any good grammar I come up with is probably my brain just putting things where they seem familiar. More out of habit than actual grammar skills. I really do think I skipped these classes. I remember the teacher writing sentences on the board and students going up and fixing them. I remember verbs, and nouns. That's about it. I think I was 'left behind' in this department.

I took Spanish in High School. I originally tried French since I already spoke Spanish, but I didn't like it, plus Spanish was supposed to be an easy A for me. The teacher started talking about conjugating verbs and blah blah blah. I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. The only reason I did good on the worksheets was because I knew what it was supposed to sound like. I knew the rules of the language but I didn't know the mechanics.

When I got to college, I had a high enough SAT score to skip English 101, so maybe that was a mistake. But then again, I got an A in English 102 and 239 (world lit 1600 - present, i think), so I can't be that bad off. Either way I should invest in a good book, it couldn't hurt.

English is a frightfully difficult language. The grammar consists of exceptions papered over with idioms, the pronunciation makes you wish we'd just stuck to ideograms instead of pretending that we're in a phonetic system (The tough coughed as he ploughed the dough ... I ask you!), and depending on how you look at it English either has just two tenses, or thirty-three. The line between nouns and verbs is porous. English is graced with a vocabulary larger than that of the next two languages combined: As James Nichols put it, "We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary."

Speaking English badly is easy. Speaking it well ... brother, you have a lifetime's work cut out for you.

If you slept through high school English, now's the time to make up those classes. Get a study book, work through the exercises. At the same time, read lots of novels by acknowledged master stylists. Some of it will rub off.

Oh, yes, and Fowler's Modern English Usage Dictionary (get the 2nd edition -- do not get any of the abominable recent editions) is a wonder and a delight. Read it, learn it, love it, live it.

3.18.2004

All Packed Up



I originaly planned to leave for Mexico a week ago, but I ended up staying to hang out during Neon's Spring Break. But now I have a bus ticket and I'm all packed and ready to leave tomorrow evening. I'm hoping this trip clears my mind and lets me get back on track. I don't know what track that is but hopefully it's a track. Being trackless makes you feel like the last kid picked for kickball. You can't know where you are going if you forget where you are from. Well where the fuck am I from? Maybe this trip will give me the answer. It's all just in my head, I know where I grew up, but it doesn't feel right. Something is missing. Like I said, I'm looking for my track. Or I'm just looking to get drunk. Either way it better be fun.

3.14.2004

Happy Birthday To Me



Well my 23rd birthday is just over. I had a great day. Took it nice and slow. I slept in, hung out with my best friend, she took me out to lunch and then cooked me dinner (excellent). We also smoked a couple cigars after dinner. She also baked an excellent cocunut cake for me. Thank you. All the important people who were supposed to remember did and called me. It's good to be remembered by the people you love.

This year I asked for donations to my 'Send My Ass To Mexico' fund instead of presents. It worked and I leave later this week. Neon did by me a linen shirt to wear while I lay on the beach with a pina colada in one hand and a Cuban cigar in the other. I'll talk more about my trip before I leave and my plan is to blog from the road as well.

Wow 23! Damn.

3.11.2004

Estas en mi corazon



3.10.2004

CGI Titties



Last night while surfing the channels on my television, I landed on the SciFi Channel and caught the last five minutes of their new show, Tripping the Rift. I quickly ran to the computer and (once again) surfed over to Suprnova to download the episode. I also checked around and found out it's based on a computer short done by Chuck Austen and Chris Moeller. The original six minute clip can be found at PocketMovies. It's a lot more sexual than the SciFi incarnation, but just as funny if not more. The captain's name is Chode, there's a sex bot named Six (voiced by the lovely Gina Gershon) who wants to have sex with God so when she moans 'oh God, oh God' she can really mean it, and Gus the robot buys a penis attachment to have 'hot metal on metal action'. This is my new favorite show at the moment.

Tonight I'm going to check out Game Over, another CGI show but this time on network television. They already caved, and cut out an ass shot of the main character. I guess cartoon ass will hurt the children. It looks very well done and sounds like a cool premise. It's about what video game characters do when they aren't working in the game. I'll let you know what I think.

And don't forget Stripperella.



Update: Just finished watching Game Over and it's cool. It's no Simpsons but enjoyable.

3.02.2004

What Country Are You


I came across this and said why the hell not. It's mostly yes or no questions which suck because my favorite answer is sometimes, or maybe, or kind of. I was surprised by the result. I guess it's kind of accurate.



You're Afghanistan!

In the words of Bob Dylan, you "haven't known peace and quiet
in so long [you] don't remember what it's like!"  Sad but true.  Boss
after boss has led you around, using you for their nefarious purposes, and dumping you
when the time was right.  You've hurt and been hurt and now you're just sick and tired.
 When will people leave you alone and let you do your own thing?  But you
don't really even know what you want anymore.

Take the Country Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid