The Hershberger Free Press

Matt Goes Veg. And Then Goes to Skyline.

2010-06-16T22:52:00.002-05:00

Something happened the other day that I never really thought would happen: I understood going vegetarian. Maybe I've just gotten philosophical since my cross-country trip last week, or maybe it's because I spent $40 on a piece of meat in Vegas (it was SUCH a delicious piece of meat), but probably, it's been because of my podcast addiction. The podcast in question is Ethics Bites, which is the sister podcast of Philosophy Bites. They are both shows that discuss philosophical issues with prominent philosophers. Stuff's like crack to me. Anyway, the topic was a discussion on animal rights with Peter Singer, and he convinced me.

Let's be clear: I HATE PETA. Their ads are in typical left-wing style, trying to guilt you into doing the right thing. Look at this carcass! Don't wear this! What Singer did was reason it out for me, and I will summarize here:

Basically, some chimpanzees are sentient beings. They understand that they are the same being as the one they were a few seconds ago and have some degree of self-awareness. Other apes have suggested this as well, but chimpanzees are definitely sentient. Singer calls any sentient being a "person." This means that a human baby is not a "person," and an adult human with no mental functioning is not a "person," but a grown chimpanzee with self-awareness IS a "person." What we also know is that animals - and any non-sentient being, babies and the brain-dead or senile included - CAN feel some measure of pain. Depending on the animal, they can feel certain sensations, and among those sensations are pain. Think of stepping on your dogs tail.

So if some animals can be sentient, and some humans can be not sentient, then the distinction between us is narrower than we expect. So hurting those animals becomes akin to a form of what Singer called "speciesism," which is basically that you count the suffering of your species at any stage - from embryo to brain-dead - as more important than the suffering of more sentient beings, simply on the basis of species.

The simple comparison is to slavery. It was natural among many whites to think that they were somehow superior, and that they, therefore, deserved superior treatment. Imagine applying that to animals. It seems like a stretch for us, but we thought applying rights and human attributes to Africans was preposterous 300 years ago. The stretch isn't a whole lot further.

Now in Singer's argument, this doesn't mean you can't ever eat meat. It just means that you have to weigh the suffering of the animal you are eating against the benefit you get from it. Should a cow spend its entire life in a feed lot wallowing in its own shit for my 5 minutes with a Big Mac? No. Is it fair to catch a fish that has lived its whole life in the sea, as it should, and then eat it? Probably. An even better example would be killing and eating a deer in Ohio, as they would probably die of starvation in the winter thanks to overpopulation. So meat isn't always bad, but raising food specifically so you can eat it probably inflicts more suffering, in a utilitarian sense, than you get from the few minutes of eating it.

I was more or less convinced by this, and then I was like, "well, maybe I should consider going veg." Then I passed a Skyline. And I got a 3-way and 2 cheese coneys. Segue into our next philosophical discussion: I have never had to give up something I truly love for the sake of morality. And I LOVE Skyline. It's all meat there, chili, dogs and all, and I can't really imagine giving it up, not even for a moral reason.

I realize that you could extend the slavery analogy to here, where white southerners may have sympathized with the slaves, but didn't really want to give up their free labor, and that's a particularly harsh analogy to apply. But it's fair.

All of the cliches about doing what's right, what you would have done unto you, I haven't really had to worry about, most of the time, because it is either easy for me to give or easy for me to gloss over. What happens when doing the right thing is something that will actually result in a sense of loss? Am I seriously getting this worked up at the prospect of never having a cheese coney again?

As I said, I'm getting more philosophical these days. That and I watched Battlestar Galactica. Look at all of the "right" things people do every day to the detriment of their own self-interest: give up their car or turn off their TV in the name of environmentalism, let their kids take the car out for the first time, let go of a loved one.

I mean, fuck, what happen when I have to let go of something greater? If I can't get past that pile of pasta with delicious chili and soft cheddar cheese mounted on layer by layer... well then what will I do when it is something that really matters?

The Too-Much-Fun Club, or "Vegas, Man. Vegas."

2010-06-16T00:57:00.003-05:00

A man in an impeccable suit walks into the bathroom of JET Nightclub. A handkerchief is nicely folded in his vest pocket, his shoes and belt perfectly match the rest of the ensemble, and his hair is styled gloriously. In fact, the only thing about him that isn't completely Don Draper is that his eyes can't quite focus, and that he has a bit of a goofy grin on his face. He walks up to the urinal between two other clubbers - dressed in stereotypical Eurotrash/Bro fashion - and grins at the wall. He turns to the man to his left and looks straight into his eyes.

"Hey."

The guy looks up, startled. You do NOT talk in men's bathrooms. The guy meets Drunk Draper's gaze, and gives him a questioning look.

"Hey man. Vegas."

The guy, unnerved, zips up and walks away. Draper slowly turns his head to the guy on the other side.

"Vegas," he says.

The other guy zips up and walks over to wash his hands. Draper turns back to the wall and, still grinning, says, "Fucking Vegas."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes, welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Jake Webb. The real city that never sleeps. The city that doesn't even close. JET is a nightclub that sits in the Mirage Hotel and Casino, which hasn't closed its slot machines, roulette tables, and free drink service for gamblers since it opened in 1989. And it's a young one. The city that plugs you in and takes all of your goddamn money.

Also, Vegas is a rite of passage for the young folk these days. It's the place you go when you finally have money and need to shed all college illusions and really drive home what a Hangover truly is: karmic penance. It's the side effect of joining the Too-Much-Fun Club. And it's a lesson that many of us really needed to learn. Because Las Vegas doesn't just give you a drink hangover - the headache, the nausea, the self-hatred - it gives you a Vegas hangover, which is pretty much full-blown misanthropy. Fear and Self-Loathing.

After college ended, I started getting hangovers, and I started realizing how much I hated them. I even have a rule: no major life decisions after a night of heavy drinking. The anxiety and bouts of hellish introspection were making me do stupid things: go to China, plan a road trip to Seattle then only go halfway, take the GRE, drink more. So I stopped drinking heavily, discovered multi-vitamins, and started having a more consistent good-decision record. I got a shitty but not-food-service-related job and moved out of my parents house and started planning for Grad School or the Peace Corps and started watching Battlestar Galactica - all healthy and essential things that every young man must do.

Then, around March, a few things came to light: That I really wasn't saving much. That the Peace Corps wasn't leaving for another 12 months and Grad school (ah! how could I forget?) cost like $80 grand. That Cincinnati girls didn't seem to go for my charming cocktail of crippling shyness and blistering sarcasm. That I was working in an un-airconditioned shit-hole above a grimy skating rink that was hemorrhaging money and had flies in the goddamn Sun Chips vending machine. And that the really only sensible thing to do, money-wise, was to move back into my parents house.

So I called Gibbs, who had been bullying, lying to, and guilt-tripping our entire group of friends for months towards this trip, and said, "Good news: I'm in."

"Atta boy!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's a dangerous thing when you drive onto the Vegas strip for the first time as the sun sets and you think to yourself, "You know what? Screw my usual travel budget. I'm splurging this trip." This became apparent 4 days later in the back seat of a rental Ford Flex in a McDonald's some 50 yards from the Nevada/Vegas border, in a town that consisted entirely of fast food joints and Wild Bill's Casino & Gambling Hall ("Get Even Before Leavin!"), when my bank called.

"Is this Matthew Hershberger?"

"Yeah, I'm Matt."

"I'm calling for PNC Bank -"

"Oh shit."

"- - -Nothing to worry about sir, just verifying recent charges to your debit card."

"Exactly."

"$350 at the Mirage Hotel and Casino?"

"Yep." He's going backwards. This should be fun.

"$10 at the Carnegie Deli?"

Breakfast there. Cool. "Yep."

"$20 at the Carnegie Deli?"

"Wait... what?"

"At 5 a.m. PST last night?"

"Ah. Um, sure."

"$150 at Blush Night Club?"

"Holy F- was it that much?"

"$30 at the Tao Night Club?"

"Jesus Christ."

"Thank you for your time sir, that's all we needed."

They didn't even get to Friday evening, I thought.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

At least I didn't gamble. I spent a grand total of $22 bucks gambling. The Las Vegas average is $600. The average winnings are somewhat lower. I spent $2 on slots, and $20 on a communal roulette game, a if-one-wins-we-all-split type thing. No, where I spent my money were on the finer things: The Cirque Du Soleil Beatles show, a Kobe Beef dinner, Long Islands, shots, champagne, and a long, blurry list of other drinks that were reasonably priced for Vegas. Ahem.

Actually, I think as a group, we all ended up coming out on top. Gambling-wise. Not really money-wise. Or emotionally. Spiritually. Physically. Legally. The last night - where I spent $150 in a single club - we got table service, which meant we had to spend, as a group of 7, a minimum of $300. We spent $550. And I'm pretty sure that in the end, the girls drank more than me. I don't mean this in a judgmental or ashamed way; I mean it in a holy shit, I don't remember half of these pictures and they STILL outdrank me? type of way.

Monica was calming her stomach over a trash can outside of the club when a guy walked buy with a group of his bro's.

"Wow," he said, "must have been a fun night."

Monica spun around, staggered a bit, gave him the death glare, and said, "Shut up you little bitch. Sucks that your fat." The crowd burst into "OHHHHHHH!"s, and the guy, (who wasn't fat) slinked away. Then she got into a cab, and while sitting at a stop-light, started yelling at the cabbie to slow down.

All I did was lead us down a dark street 4 blocks off the strip, insisting that it was the strip, and that we'd be seeing the lights of the Mirage at any time. Our cabbie gently corrected me, pleaded that we not hurl in his car, and jumped out at every stop light to open the child-proof door so that Paulina could leave her dinner - if not her heart - on the streets of the brightest-lit city in the desert.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The mornings were hell. I managed to stumble down to the Gaming room to bet on USA-England for a 1-1 draw as per my old roommate's advice, but got there 5 minutes late. We ate piles of eggs, toast, and hash browns at the famous Carnegie Deli, situated nicely at the base of our elevator, sat out at the pool and groaned, and dipped into my bag of hangover trail-mix: multivitamins and aspirin. Me and Jake sat on the bed and watched episodes of Archer. Gibbs and Veg darted around and got shit done, as all good Penn Staters with hangovers do. Monica pushed for the pool. Allyn woke up still in her clothes, but realized that she wasn't actually wearing the skirt she wore the night before, making her wonder if she'd drank herself back to Thursday. And Paulina slept until it was night again, punctuated by occasional attempts to keep down water or a smoothie, which inevitably led to a prayer to the porcelain God.

On the last night, Allyn said, "I'm glad I came here and I had a lot of fun, but I hate this place, and I never want to come back."

For the most part, we could sympathize. We had done Vegas, and we'd done it right. No need to ever do it again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next day I drove with Gibbs and Monica to Hermosa Beach, to the South of LA. I walked up to the water, smelled the salty air, and rubbed my toes in the sand. My belly was full of In-N-Out Burger (that's a good burger, dude), and even if it wasn't impressive, I still HAD a bank account. Sure, I was still living with my parents, I was still living in Cincinnati, I was still single, I was still poor, and I still had no journalism job prospects, but I could do some things right, without any serious regrets - not ones that lasted longer than 12 hours, anyway.

Contrary to my gambling record, I'm pretty lucky. I've been fucking everywhere, and I have great friends who will drink to the point that they find me funny. I mean, that's a lot of alcohol. And a hangover in Vegas is... well, we all know what it is. Fear and Self-Loathing. The hipster version of HST. They'd do that for me AND buy me drinks? Well, fuck.

When everything is shitty, empty your bank account and go to Las Vegas, and see how lucky you really are.

Matt Finally Succeeds in Explaining Why he HATES Ayn Rand.

2010-03-21T01:30:00.002-05:00

I've gotten into a number of battles lately, mostly on Facebook, with Randians. My friends generally know that there is no button you can press with me that gets me more pissed off than Ayn Rand, so naturally, I can't help but get into it with libertarians, and while we usually end up arguing the points of an issue, the real problem comes from the central philosophy of Objectivism, and, frankly, how fucking stupid it is (I've written this article 15 times and have failed so far to finish it with out a large amount of profanity, so bear with me. This is less an attempt to convert and more an attempt to state my basic position). So here goes:

The main battle that Ayn Rand fights in her books is the fight of the individual vs. the collective. This is a battle that has been fought politically for the past 200 years, and socially since societies have existed. And the problem, on both sides, is that people tend to champion one side while disregarding the other, and either side of this coin has had disastrous effects on the world as a whole. You take the communists, who essentially end up implementing a system that callously erases all personal identity, and you take the capitalists, who burn the world in the name of personal gain and piss on the ashes.

I'm not arguing for communism (none of the mainstream American left is. For fuck's sake, real communists despise Obama). I'm just saying that there is a place that society can responsibly exist between the two extremes. So: let's get to Ayn Rand.

First of all, let's look at her history: She was born into a Russian family that was aligned with the socialists, but were more or less moderate. This obviously didn't jibe with the Bolsheviks, so they fled, but eventually went back while Lenin was in power, and Rand was kicked out of the university for not being a communist.

This made her somewhat opposed to communism from the start, and one could say with relative certainty that she personally never entertained the ideas that communism was based upon. This is further illustrated in Atlas Shrugged, a book which does less than any other majorly popular novel ever has in attempting to understand the foe it had declared itself against (Sun Tzu would be appalled). To this day, I get unreasonably angry when objectivists and libertarians describe the left as "leeches," "looters," and "thieves." I take the time to understand your desire for personal autonomy and freedom, take the time to understand my (our) desire to help the poor and downcast.

Which is really the crux of the matter. I will personally admit that I loved Anthem, and I understand the personal empowerment that one can get from Ayn Rand. She tells you that the world is yours, and that no one can take it from you but yourself. It's a cool thing to hear, especially when you are young and idealistic. And I also think it's distinctly American. As a culture, we've always loved the loner heroes, the cowboy riding off into the sunset. I've read Into the Wild three times, and seriously considered anarchism after reading Tolstoy, but ultimately I think there's another central tenet running through my basic philosophy on life - one that is ubiquitous in both modern and ancient philosophy, unlike objectivism - and that is ubuntu:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
-John Donne

This seems to always be at the core of the arguments I get in. There is certainly no justification in taking away anyone's freedom to do what they want, and forcing someone to do what they DON'T want, something that is directly contrary to their well-being, is downright wrong. But that is exaggerated by Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand goes so far as to state that altruism, that giving, is inherently WRONG, and that we should not help others, but we should expect them only to help themselves. She says there is no collective, ONLY the individual, and that there is nothing but reason that we should base our decisions off of.

All of which I see as more or less idiotic, or at the very least closed-minded. Human beings have been giving and helping each other since time immemorial, and I'm pretty sure you could sum up the entire Christian, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist religions with the single word COMPASSION, a word that specifically denotes an EMOTION (the so-called opposite of REASON). I - philosophically - am a humanist. And to that extent, I believe that we are best served when we acknowledge the total extent of humanity within ourselves and within others. This means recognizing and accepting both the good and the evil, both the reason and the emotion, both the individual and the collective.

And Rand dismisses half of those things. Individualism is valuable, yes, but it's not where you get meaning in life. You get meaning through relationships, through connections, through love. I've seen family friends and peers consumed by this individualistic desire to be the best, to make the money, to be famous. It's all this quest for glory, which, though gratifying, ultimately is empty if it's not tempered with the truly human emotions that make us happy.

The truth is that collectivism DOES have a value, that we ARE our brother's keeper, and that emotion, compassion, altruism, and love all DO play a very important role in our lives. That's not to say that we should let these things trump our identity or sacrifice our dreams. It's just to say that there's a balance.

Life isn't, as far as I can see, about personal achievements, it's about the gratification of knowing that what we've done is good and right, and that ultimately, our tiny, insignificant world is a better place because of our existence (pardon the avalanche of cliches). The meaning we get from life is NOT from ourselves, and NOT from others, but through a meaningful combination of the two. This pursuit of personal glory is useless in the cosmic sense, and the pursuit of equality and anonymity degrades and dehumanizes us.

Ayn Rand was a fan of Nietzsche. She studied him in St. Petersburg. So I'll borrow a quote from him:

"He who has a WHY to live can bear almost any HOW."

To the Randians, PLEASE. Tell me how you expect to have a meaningful life living for no one but yourself.

(A Side Note: As I said, I've written this note like 15 times, but every other time, it's descended into profanity and incoherent rambling. I'd like a kudos or two for finishing it this time.)

You're Entitled to Your Own Opinion, but it's a Stupid Opinion.

2010-03-05T16:26:00.005-05:00

There's something of a cult of opinion in America. It's this idea that simply because I have an opinion it's valid, and that facts be damned, I'm sticking to it. I - well - no. No. That's not how it works. Opinions are totally valid if you base them on real things. If one of the premises you base your opinion on is faulty or false, it becomes a stupid opinion.

"The earthquake in Haiti is God's retribution for Voodoo!"

You're entitled to that opinion. But you're a moron.

Naturally, I'm talking about the tea party movement here, and how these mongoloid asshats all think that our economic woes are the fault of Obama. No actual economist thinks this is Obama's fault. They all realize that the current recession is the result of literally decades of deregulation of the banking industry, no oversight on Wall Street, and the fatally flawed idea (adopted by ALL Presidents since Reagan) of the "Ownership Society." Obama wasn't in government when this started. Hell, he wasn't even out of SCHOOL when this started.

Take the bank bailout. I mean, it was completely necessary. If Obama hadn't done it (McCain was pushing for it too), we'd be in a full-blown depression right now. No one really argues that. They just resent having paid off the banks for getting us into this mess. How is it, then, that you take your angers out on the government and don't take them out on the system as a whole? Sure, the government was partially to blame, but the government is the part we can control the best. Everyone conveniently forgets "for the people, by the people." They forget that this is their government, and that they can do a lot to hold onto it, they can drown out the special interests by refusing to elect corrupt politicians and by opposing corporate personhood (which the Tea Partiers ironically champion as some sort of capitalistic freedom).

And as far as this specter of socialism we always have hanging over our heads: the cold war is OVER. It's not a big deal anymore. For example: do you believe in education for all children? Are you okay with publicly funded education? If you were to fall on economic hard times, would you be okay with taking your kids out of preschool because you can't pay their preschool tuition? No? Guess what: THEN YOU ARE OKAY WITH SOCIALISM. The public schools are under government control, and for the people who can afford it, there are still private schools that they can pay for! Yay!

So how is it we're okay with the government providing basic services like police and roads and education, but we're not willing to adopt a similar model with health care? Isn't health a much more basic need than education? You can't learn anything if you're dead after all.

Why is this even an issue? I understand the opposition to private businesses, I really do. I get the point of capitalism, and in the right context, I think it does good. But capitalism is brutal, and it clearly favors the rich. Which is why we need a government that favors the poor. It's not "punishing" the rich to tax them. They've benefitted the most off of society, it's natural that they give back. Hell, Adam Fucking Smith even said the rich should pay more in taxes (though he proposed all taxes be levied through sales tax rather than income tax). It's not a PUNISHMENT for you to pay more. You can still eat, you still have a home, you can still support your kids. Taxing the poor more is far more of a punishment for them than any taxes you'll ever experience.

I mean, but all of this is moot. It shouldn't even apply to health care. Our health is one of those things that should take priority over the free market. It's one of those things that should be provided. CNN reported that over 60 percent of bankruptcies - BEFORE the recession - were due to medical bills! 60 percent! And 75% of those already had insurance!

I really don't think people think this through. It's all based off of some Ayn Rand philosophy that every man is an island. It's so, so, so easy to see that that's not the case.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
-John Donne

Drugged Pandas and Keith Richard's Cheekbones

2009-07-27T16:06:00.000-05:00

We spent a day and a half in Chengdu. By this point, Ami had gone back to Japan and Sarim had headed to Guilin, so it was down to me and Caitlin. There's really nothing in Chengdu. It is the most humid, polluted place I've ever been. Shanghai is by the water, so it naturally is a bit cleaner, and Beijing's government made a conscious effort to make the city look clean for the Olympics. They failed miserably, but it IS cleaner than it was before.

Chengdu has no such advantages. You can almost taste the tar as you breathe in, and when you drive down the road with the window down, the breeze air is so thick that it provides no comfort, it's like trying to cool off in a sauna.

My breathing started to fail here, which was unfortunate, because after that I was off to Tibet. My past experience in the Andes told me that I do NOT handle high altitudes like a champ. It was time to take a break. I wouldn't get one for another week.

That break was pandas. Chengdu is the panda capital of the world. We did nothing cultural in Chengdu otherwise. We ate Italian food at a western restaurant and went to Starbucks twice in our 24 hours there. Yes, I know Starbucks is an evil corporation, but most coffee in China is a mix between Instacoffee and piss. I was in the throes of caffeine withdrawals and was borderline comatose after the 40 hour hard-sleeper ride, so back off, okay? I don't mind paying the forces of evil for a good cup of coffee now and then.

Pandas, it turns out, are about the most evolutionarily flawed animals on earth. In habitats of pure green bamboo and gray mountains, they are stark black and white. They have no control over their arms and legs. If they fall down, they flop around for a while, grasping at thin air like turtle that's been turned over on it's shell. I suspect the zoo we were at - a panda's only zoo - keeps them adorable by bathing them in ether at the beginning of each day, and then by letting the drug take it's effect. You imagine they see everything in slow-mo. They hear spectators shouting in bass, "HEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYY PAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNDDDDAAAAA!" And then they picture themselves sprinting towards the sound before they trip over a sprig of bamboo and decide to enter mortal gladiator combat with said sprig. They invariably lose, but who cares when the ground's so SOFT?

They wrestle occasionally, they paw at and chew on bamboo, but their greatest skill is flopping. They can flop down on anything. They can flop down on a grid of logs or flop off a 10 foot concrete moat surrounding their enclosure. They can flop onto thin air, crash to the ground, and then take a nap.

China's most iconic animal doesn't seem to match the local attitudes towards bedding. I can't flop on to anything here. Back home, my bed is softer than a babies ass, if a babies ass was made out of clouds and marshmallows. I can leap my entire 210 pounds 6 feet above it and land in a poof of mattress, pillow, and comforter. I've accidentally done that here with every bed I've slept in, and as a result, I'm probably going to have to fellaysh a chiropractor if I ever want to be able to afford to fix the damage its done. A lot of the time here, a mattress is simply a board with a sheet on it. Sometimes it's less pretentious and is just a board. Even the thick mattresses seem to be made out of material no softer than Keith Richard's cheekbones.

But the Panda's don't care about the Chinese beds. They're gonna flop, goddammit, as soon as they've vanquished this sprig of bamboo.

The Red Star and Stripes Forever

2009-07-27T16:05:00.002-05:00

The last week in Beijing was hellacious. I was pissed off and ready to go. I've already explained the majority of our travails there, so I'll skip them for now. If you've been reading my entries, you know why I left Beijing. Beijing sucked.

We left on the midnight train to Shanghai, which, I'm told, was the original name of the the Gladys Knight song. We got there at about 8 in the morning to a smoggy, foggy Shanghai day (you can never tell in China whether it's smog or fog you're breathing in. Either way, it'll probably hurt your throat), and I went to meet up with Ami, an old SASer who was visiting Shanghai for a few days on leave from JET. Then we did a quick tour of the Bund area, where our hostel was. The Bund looks like it was made in Eastern Europe and then shipped to China. We got western sandwiches, popcorn, and beer at a local restaurant, and then napped for our Fourth of July festivities.

Despite all my traveling, I've never been out of the U.S. on the Fourth. I went to D.C. one year and watched the fireworks explode over the Washington Monument as Hare Krishnas tambored in the background with Kopp occasionally screaming at them to shut up, but that was as exotic an independence day as I've ever had. Usually, it consists of me and Jake Webb blowing stuff up and conducting "experiments" with the hundreds we've just spent at Rozzi's Famous Fireworks. My favorite was when, one year, he discovered a printer in our trashcan and decided to see if he could blow it up while I blasted "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana and attempted to insert an M-80 into an orange. Both of our experiments failed, but in retrospect, this probably is a reason I am still alive.

So I wanted something American in Shanghai. We found a Barbecue at a Mexican restaurant with all you can eat and drink for 150 kwai, and we got to it. As soon as we walked in, a drunk girl screamed "ARE YOU FROM BUFFALO?" and we rattled off our various hometowns, to her disappointment - Philly, Harrisburg, Cincinnati, Virginia (yes, I know Virginia is not a hometown, but does anyone actually KNOW of any cities there?). She invited us to sit with her anyway, her and her comatose boyfriend who spent the entire night chain-smoking and occasionally stating soul-shattering truths to the night before sipping his Corona and going back into his reverie.

There was a buffet with all sorts of delicious American and Mexican foods - I couldn't tell if this was because it was a Mexican restaurant or if they just didn't differentiate between the two countries - and a crowd of drunken expats who were all swilling Margaritas and breaking into patriotic tunes, except for the older British diplomat, colonialist crowd, who looked on with distaste.

Sarim, who by this time had had quite a few drinks, would stand up at random intervals and scream, "IT'S THE FOURTH OF JULY, I'M FUCKING ALLOWED TO BE LOUD, DRUNK AND OBNOXIOUS TODAY!" Then she'd sit back down with the Buffalonian girl, who, she said, was now her BFF.

Ami was deep in conversation with a mildly skeezy looking dude about JET, and Caitlin was trying to keep up with Sarim on the drinks, and not quite succeeding. I went up to the bar to order some margaritas and a British guy about my age said, "Christ you people are loud."

"Usually, I'd apologize," I said, "But it's the Fourth of July, and we're allowed to be proud of America today. Besides, you can always join in the party!"

"I think not," he said, "it's not exactly our day."

"But if it weren't for you, we wouldn't have had anyone to win our country from!"

He snorted, "Yeah, well my house is older than your country."

Around this time, about 20 drunk Americans started belting out the National Anthem, and I went to get some more quesadillas. When I came back, they said, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?" and I told them and then they said, "WHY THE FUCK AREN'T YOU WEARING RED WHITE AND BLUE?"

I raised my beer and shouted "GOD BLESS AMERICA!" and they immediately forgot my offenses and sunk into "I'm Proud to be an American."

After a few hours (and the end of the food and drink deal), we decided to leave. It was less WE decided to leave, and more Sarim standing up and shouting "I WANT SOME FOOD ON A STICK!"

So the Buffalonian and the comatose boyfriend led us around the corner to get some street food, and then we cabbed it back to the hostel. On the roof of the hostel there was a bar overlooking the skyline of Shanghai. God Bress America.

All Those Railroad Men Just Drink Up Your Blood Like Wine

2009-07-27T16:05:00.001-05:00

I did my train trips wrong. There are a number of ways to do train travel in China, and I did it wrong.

Train travel is the most economically practical way of traveling through China, because, unlike most Asian countries, there aren't any cheap airlines. The Chinese government owns all the airlines and prefers people don't really move around anyway. So the slow moving trains go every which way, to every small town and to every megatropolis, to every burgh and bustling hub. This was how we decided to do the last week of traveling.

[As a side note, I will write about those trips later, but they were breathtaking and hard to put in words, and it did not help that for most of my time on the rooftop of the world, I was so oxygen deprived that I was composing a stand-up comedy routine based mostly on my opinion of the status of pornography in China. This, fortunately, will never see the light of day, but a word of warning, should Jake Webb ever get married, I have my best man's speech prepared, and it will likely give some of the elderly in his family heart attacks.]

I did it the wrong way. My three train trips were consecutively increasing in length: 12 hours overnight to Shanghai, 40 hours from Shanghai to Chengdu, and then 48 hours from Lhasa to Beijing.

They were consecutively decreasing in comfort: soft sleeper to Shanghai, hard sleeper to Chengdu, hard seat to Beijing. Anyone who has traveled can tell you that you save the comfort for the end, that time of the trip when you're becoming borderline homicidal and cannot suffer fools. I, however, am a bastion of patience to the rest of the world, so I did fine.

If you believe this, stop reading. I like to keep good impressions up.

For the rest of you: the soft sleeper was great. It's basically a closed off room where you get a mattress and sheets and a pillow and your own personal TV. A little pricier, yeah, but it's traveling in style. Quick and easy.

The hard sleeper is where I began to have my problems. I'd booked this one to save money, figuring one bed is as good as another, and in that sense, I was more or less right. The actual mattress itself in a hard sleeper isn't much worse than the soft sleeper, it's just that they pack three between the floor and ceiling rather than two, and you don't have your own personal compartment. So your luck really depends on the courtesy of the people traveling in your car.

If you have been reading any of my notes about the legendary courtesy of the Han Chinese, you already know that I had an awful trip. But I should specify that it wasn't just any Chinese car, it was a car full of Chinese high school students. So naturally they were sneaking into the bathroom to chain smoke, climbing into each others beds, and using mine and Caitlin's legs as a ladder up to their bunks rather than, you know, the ladder. Then there were the two elderly women underneath us, one of whom spent four hours - no exaggeration, four hours - loudly humming a buddhist mantra, and the other of whom had a voice that could make Gilbert Gottfried's sphincter pucker and, incidentally, apparently had no control over her OWN sphincter, as she spent probably 7 hours emitting sounds usually reserved for crass websites frequented only by teenage boys and my mother.

But I've gotten used to the fact that Asia doesn't fit me. I'm an American-sized man, so I don't do well in the short continent. I get used to my feet sticking over the edge of a bed. I was prepared for this on the train. I was not prepared for 4 emo-wannabe prepubescent fucktards deciding that it'd be funny to tickle my feet as I slept.

Why, why, why would you ever touch a strangers feet? I know I have the typical midwesterner's scruples about personal space, but aren't feet uniformly gross? I know that MINE are, particularly after 2 months in Birkenstocks in this landfill of a country. Another thing: ever heard the saying "Always let a sleeping dog lie"? That's REALLY true for me. Ask Webb. He once shook me awake when we were on vacation, and my first move was to cock my fist. It's a natural reaction from when Rach used to jump on my bed in the morning when I was a little kid. Wake me up in any way I don't like, and I will be grouchy and prone to violence for the rest of the day.

I mean, when I woke up, I tried to kick the little shit that was doing it. And for the rest of the day, I tried to imagine exactly HOW much I could physically hurt them and still get away without assault charges. You should, China, Napoleon once said to never wake China, the sleeping giant. Well you're awake now. Now I'M the sleeping giant. Don't wake me up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The train ride from Lhasa to Beijing wasn't quite as agitating as the trip to Chengdu, but by this time, I was suffering from mild altitude sickness in the form of a pounding headache, a bit of a fever, and the snuffles. I'd been popping all sorts of pills - Excedrin PM, Tylenol Tension headache, oxygen supplements, Vitamin C - for a week at this point, so I think I might've been a bit medicated. As the train pulled out of the station, I was sucked into a strange world inhabited only by the Chinese and Bob Dylan.

See, for the last train ride, I had tried to save some money. I was told that I could get my ticket in Lhasa for cheaper rather than getting it in Beijing, where I'd have to pay a service charge. There aren't any internet tickets in China, the view towards efficiency here is, we have 1.3 billion people, who needs it?

So I waited until I got to Lhasa, and when I tried to book my ticket the first day I was told that all of the soft and hard sleepers were unavailable, so I would have to take a hard seat. Hard seats are where the poorer Chinese sit, it's where you budget travel. It's a lot cheaper, but you don't get to lay down at all. Ever.

When I got on, the car was filled with Tibetans and a few returning Han backpackers.

The Tibetans took a liking to me, calling me there "megwai" which means American and, I'm pretty sure, is slightly derogatory. The leader of the group, an old man, would pontificate something to me, I'd repeat, "I don't speak Tibetan. Or Chinese. Seriously." And then he'd give me a steely glare that could turn Clint Eastwood into a cowering puppy. This man had a face that looked like it was made out of wet leather, and the wrinkles were so deep that it was hard to imagine he was ever a smooth-faced baby. He wore a cowboy hat and looked impressive while sitting, but when he stood, he was hunched over and not quite 5 feet tall.

"Megwai!" he'd shout, and hit me on the knee with the cane, "babblebabblebabblebabbleBARK!" steely glare.

I cowered in my seat.

Across from me was another Tibetan, a woman, who must've been in her 70's or 80's. She carried a bag of hard, lemon-flavored bread rolls that she decided to offer to me. I took one, and she insisted I take another one. After a half-dozen, I tried to turn her down, but she looked offended, so I kept eating until I realized that, if I ate any more, I was going to have to use the toilet. All toilets on Chinese trains are squatters, and I had learned on the Chengdu trip the horrors of eating spicy foods and then being subject to a train squatter. I turned her down, maybe too forcefully, so she shrugged and left the bag of rolls open and pointed towards me, in case I changed my mind.

In the other seat across from me was a Chinese student from Xi'an who was covered in backpacker and biker gear. He'd strapped yak horns onto his backpack, and had a bicycle which he tried to cram under my legs until it was moved to another car. On his belt he wore a fanny pack which would occasionally move, and mew. In it he had a kitten, not more than a few weeks old. If it cried, he'd let it out, feed it, and give it water. But later in the trip, it pissed and crapped in the fanny pack, and not wanting to let the mess out, he kept it zipped up inside. If it mewed, he'd smack the bag. If it cried, he'd smack it harder. If he hit it hard enough, the bag would stop crying, and I would wish I spoke Mandarin, and wonder if I should've shouted some nonsense to him anyway.

I don't know what became of the kitten, but when he let it out the first time, it climbed my leg to my lap, and sat there for a while, since I was the only one who knew how to pet it.

Throughout the rest of the car was a host of strange characters, who would move in and out depending on the stop. A bug-eyed woman who could easily have saved Disney money on hag make-up sat across and stared out at me with the one eye whenever I shifted in my sleep.

A man nearly blind with cataracts was hustled onto the train by his wife or caretaker, and sat down where the kitten man had slept, and made loud yawning noises and fawned with his head up in his wives lap as she cleaned his eye sockets with Q-tips and tissues. Occasionally, she'd sleep instead, with her face buried directly in his crotch. When she woke up, he'd make a childish noise and then they'd switch. He wasn't mentally handicapped, he was wearing business clothes; but either as a result of his condition or the presence of his wife, he'd reverted to a boy of three years.

There were the singers, the homosexuals wearing wife-beaters and muscle-shirts, there were the children that would run down the aisle screaming with glee until they saw me, then they'd stare in awe and run away if I smiled. I stood up a couple times, ran off the train to get cup noodles or help the elderly with their luggage, and I quickly discovered that I preferred the squatters in the sleeper cars. I would walk back to the forbidden zone, where I was allowed since I was a westerner and fit in back there a bit more, and I'd find an empty, unused toilet, and do my business.

With 10 hours left, I was stopped by a chef. He was taking a smoking break - everyone on the train smoked, and usually if you stood up, you were inhaling more nicotine than air - and he knew I wasn't a sleeper passenger. I feigned misunderstanding until he let me go.

"I'll be damned if I go back in the seater bathroom," I thought. I had seen something in there that I will not try to describe.

Sleep was difficult, as I was about 6 inches above the median and couldn't curl up in the aisle of under the tables. I have at least 6 knots and bruises on me now from trying to sleep on the train, and I wore out my iPod batteries trying to block out the sounds of Kenny G and loogie-hocking on all sides. I still had fluid in my lungs from the altitude sickness, so whenever someone began to annoy me, I'd let out a deep, bronchial hack to remind them to back off, I may have swine flu.

When I got off the train, I dragged my stinking bag out into the street in the pouring rain, where I hailed a cab driver. He made me take off my shirt before sitting down, so I sat shirtless in the back of the cab until we arrived, half an hour later, and got out to walk the block more to our place.

"He didn't like you," Caitlin said, "He thought you smelled."

"Your stuff smells like yak shit too," I said, and thought, all the vagabonds and drifters in Dylan's songs never soaked in stank like I have for the past week, and Dylan himself would've ridden on that train for 2 hours before just putting his head down and waiting for this bad acid trip to be over.

Solving the Land of Mystery

2009-07-27T16:03:00.000-05:00

"China," the guidebooks say, "is a land of mystery."

Well, yeah. But they're mysteries I have no interest in solving, like who ate the last piece of pizza, or one of those "WHAT COLOR JUJUBY WOULD YOU BE?" quizzes on Facebook. I don't care who took it, I just want another piece of pizza, and I don't care what color I'd be, no matter what I'm only going to glue some poor kid's jaw shut and percolate in his stomach until he's 22.

All the little Chinese mysteries that I'm confronted with every day (Is that guy talking about me? Did they wash these veggies? What does "Obama" mean in Chinese and why does it sound like they're saying it all the time? Are they actually talking about the president, or does it mean Cheez-Its or something? Why are they talking so much about Cheez-Its?), they're all wearing thin for me, and after last weeks dramas and this weeks hangovers, literal and figurative, I'm ready to be done with this internship.

There are a number of problems, which I've bitched about extensively for the past month, but the one that's rearing it's ugly head is that, right now, I don't care what I'm writing about. That's a serious issue for me, I haven't had to write something I don't want to for years now. Even in classes I was able to tailor it to fit my preferences or mood that day. But here, I don't want to write poof pieces or bar reviews. Not cool, not interesting. You think the American press is too PC? You think the American press sucks at edgy? The Chinese Press makes Mr. Rogers look like a Hell's Angel.

And the guy who's our handler - I've mentioned him before, you know the guy, the amorphous Kermit-the-Frog look-a-like? - is always glaring at us or sending passive aggressive e-mails or doing Chinese insults, which consist of saying something pretty dick and then following it up with a laugh: "You are very inconsiderate! Ha ha ha!"

China: The land of the passive-aggressive.

Ugh. Alex and Sarim, two of the other Penn State interns, are heading to India in a few weeks, and all their talk of the Ganges and the Taj has got me jonesing for that poopish-spice smell of India that I just recently got out of my bookbag. It it not in the cards for me, however, since back home I am the guy that puts bags of a fertilizer called "Chickity Doo-Doo" into old ladies' cars. Though if I'm really missing the smell of the subcontinent, I could always go snort some manure when I get home.

What's the saying? Time rights all wrongs or something? It has something to do with time cleaning up shitty memories in your mind. I am very good at that. I can turn around an awful incident sometimes within a day. 30 seconds after that whore pickpocketed me in Buenos Aires, I thought, "Well, this'll be a fun one to tell."

I've already done that with India. While I was there, I was mostly hot, confused, and exhausted. Now I miss it. I need to do that with China. Put some space between me and the place.

So I'm leaving the internship two weeks early - yeah, it's unprofessional, but I'm unpaid and they suck - and I'm heading to Shanghai to visit Ami, an old SAS friend, and then me and C.J. are high-tailing it to Tibet, where I will chill in Lhasa and then strike out for the Mount Everest base camp. You heard me right: The world's tallest mountain, the fucking widowmaker, possibly in time for my 23rd birthday. Life's so good I can taste it in the air.

Tibet has mysteries that I WANT to have answered: Where did I put that Papa John's number? "ARE YOU GOING TO DIE COLD AND ALONE? TELL US YOUR FAVORITE COLOR AND YOU'LL FIND OUT!"

Oh Tibet! Ever since I saw Brad Pitt's dreamy ass chilling with the young Lama (you know the first part of his title, don't make me say it) in that movie, I've wanted to go. I love mountains. I like the ocean more, but I LOVE mountains. The wind, the cold, the fresh air and clear, startlingly blue skies. Llamas in Peru, Yaks in China. Oh how I love the ill-tempered animals of the mountains! If I catch a yeti, I'll let you know how it tastes.

And I hear they have nice people there. I just need to stay hydrated and try not to die of altitude sickness.

I'll get out of Beijing and will no longer breathe in black air and bad vibes. And all of the answers to all of life's questions will come together in the mountains, and I won't be troubled for the rest of my days. Anything less and I'll be completely let down.

Musings on the American Dream at Midnight from a Beijing Hutong

2009-07-27T16:01:00.002-05:00

It's night time in Beijing, which means it's daytime for you back home. I'm sitting in the computer/laundry room in our new apartment. There's a window directly behind me that looks out onto a typical Beijing site: an under-construction skyscraper. It looks like it's going to be a condominium, and on top of it is a massive yellow crane that has a light shining down onto the rooftop so the workers can continue through the night.

This light shines through our window, and out the door and into the hall, right by the couch where I sleep. And that's what has kept me awake, that's why I am now sitting at my computer rather than trying to select songs on my iPod that'll put me to sleep (Pink Floyd? Radiohead? Gershwin? Too many choices).

This time of night is when I do most of my writing - not necessarily my best writing, but most of it - because as soon as I lay down, all of the thoughts from the day flood back into my head and I wax poetic. I've gotten into the habit of keeping a journal next to wherever I sleep so I can jot down ideas in the night before they seep back into my subconscious, but most of these come to nothing. Because the worst time for writing is the morning time. I am usually comatose for the first two hours of my day, and from then till lunch, I'm usually foul-tempered and gassy. You know, from coffee.

So I forget to read it, and it gets lost until the irregular intervals when I pick it back up and think, "wow, I must've been almost unconscious when I wrote that."

Occasionally, I force myself to get out of bed and put off sleep for that much longer, and write. And now is one of those times.

I've tried to think of something poetic about the construction light behind me, and the best I can do is say it's China's Green Light at the End of the Dock, you know, from the Great Gatsby? Remember when your 10th grade English teacher told you that the Green Light symbolized Old Money, and the part of society Gatsby wanted so desperately to be a part of, and how this was all symbolic of the futile quest for the American dream?

If Americans wanted to live in Gothic Mansions, of course China would choose high-rise apartment buildings in one of the most polluted cities this side of the Yangtze.

I don't want that dream, and I don't want the American Dream. My family has already achieved the American Dream, and I want some extension of it. I can't go from rags-to-riches, because both sides of my family have done that in the last 70 years. I would have to be completely destitute first (maybe take up gambling or drugs) and THEN I'd have to read a Norman Vincent Peale book and turn my life around. That's too much turning for me, I want to go straight ahead.

I forget who said this, but there's a quote: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

I am counting on that.

There's another quote: "Not all who wander are lost."

I like that one. But I am lost. Oh man, am I lost. Decisions are not my strong point. They used to be, I used to be the one who made going out plans, I used to have these grandiose schemes for what I want to do with my life, but now, every time I have the chance to commit to something, I back out in favor of something else.

I look at all my friends back home and can see them all in their roles: Webb the Engineer, Gibbs the Doctor, Paulina the Shrink, Kopp the - well, Kopp. And they seem to fit in these relatively well.

I kick around what I want to do, and I think, okay, what am I good at? I can write relatively well, so that'd be cool, and I'm probably best at pointing out flaws in what other people are doing. So journalist, right?

My passion lies with humanitarian political issues, with stuff like Darfur and Iran and Guantanamo, you know, things you can look at and see this is blatantly wrong, and I want to write about these, I want to be like Nick Kristof, but funnier.

Then I realize that I don't really think the human race is worth saving, so shouldn't I just enjoy myself? To what end does all this travel serve as a means to? An unshakeable sense of justice or a selfish desire to see as much of the world as possible and come home with stories and stories that'll impress my friends and hopefully a few women?

It's probably a little bit of both, but the justice part of this trip ended in ignominious defeat, with me confined and semi-blacklisted to a crappy Chinese cubicle, plotting some sort of early getaway that would redeem the internship.

THAT has only resulted, so far, in a new apartment and a snarky e-mail from my supervisor who suggested that I was being irresponsible for leaving the hotel. So how best to enjoy myself? How does one shake off the Memphis blues, again? I haven't figured that one out. I want to come up with a brilliant plan to publish Swiftian satire on China and then flee the country like the Dalai Lama, or perhaps just cut out of the internship and high-tail it for Tibet, but Jesus God, do you know how hard it is to get a Tibet permit? Do I even have the energy for that?

"Sweet Jesus, I am tired! I'm scared, I'm crazy. This culture has beaten me down. What the fuck am I doing here?"
-Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Thank you, Doctor. Someone knows how I feel. The generations before us spent years chasing the American Dream, it was chronicled by Horatio Alger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and finally the Good Doctor Thompson, and now, with my parents putting me through college and giving me a nice life and Barack Obama overcoming that last (it's the last, right?) racial barrier and becoming President, it seems we've reached it! The American Dream is now the American Reality! Two cars in every garage, a turkey in every oven! It's the happy ending we've all been waiting for!

And now we look back on our 200 years of pursuing the American Dream and we look at the shitstorm of carnage we've left in our wake, and we think, well it's good for us, maybe we should fix it for them.

Aww, Mama, can this really be the end?

Where do you go from here? We're on the other side of the fence, but the grass is still greener over here, so what do we do now? Mow the lawn? How far do I have to extend this metaphor before you're as lost and confused as I am?

To be frank, I'll get back home and work at a grocery shop, and that's the thing (family and friends excluded) that I look forward to returning to most. I want to write, I do! The spirit is willing, but the flesh likes free fresh produce.

As I said before, I can't make heads or tails of Chinese culture. And China doesn't care if I do or not, as long as I don't try to publish anything on Tiananmen. Maybe I should go home first and try to figure out where my country is headed. Maybe I should try to figure out where I'm headed.

Alas! There is still work to be done here in the Far East, behind the bamboo curtain. If nothing else happens over the next month, I WILL do this: I will SEE the Himalayas! I will HUG a panda!

If I get this done, I'll have all done all the selfish story-telling material I need to hold me over for the rest of my existential crisis. As the Bard of the 20th Century said: Only one thing that I did wrong: Stay at China Daily a day too long.

Fear and Loathing in the Yinghua

2009-07-27T16:00:00.000-05:00

"The decision to flee came suddenly. Or maybe not. Maybe I'd planned it all along - subconsciously waiting for the right moment. The bill was a factor, I think. Because I had no money to pay it."
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The night before, I had been sitting in a Beijing back-alley way eating street food and drinking the watered-down Tsingtao beer that passes for an alcoholic drink in this land of Asian tolerance levels with the rest of my fellow interns (sans my roommate, who had to work nights), and getting absolutely plastered with the intention of spending the next day clogging the toilets of the Yinghua hotel with calamari, squid, and Tsingtao.

Earlier in the week we'd discovered a coven of cockroaches (deadly poison!) residing in the walls between our rooms when Sarim, walking barefoot into the restroom during the lunch break, stepped on one. C.J. described is as a high pitched tea-pot whine that got louder and louder until "AHHHHH AAHHHHHHH AAHHHHHHH!" and Sarim struggled with the desire to clean off her foot in the bathtub and get away from room with the still-wriggling half-insect corpse. I was immediately dispatched to flush it down the toilet, and C.J. told me she'd found an apartment four subway stops away.

You can sleep on the couch," she said, so I quickly accepted and went back to work, where I ate my lunch from 7-Eleven and made wagers with myself as to which food item in this meal would be giving me the afternoon's diarrhea.

In the meantime, my editor Xiaodan came over to my cubicle for the first time since I tried to publish the Tiananmen letter and said, "Matt, how're things going? So your friend Katelyn in the features department just wrote a piece on the swine flu quarantine. It's quite good. I suggest you write something on it."

"Is Katelyn's piece going to be published?"

"Yes."

"Would mine be published?"

"No. Why would we publish two personal accounts of swine flu quarantine?"

I paused. "So... you want me to write something that won't be published?"

"I guess what I'm trying to say is maybe you should go for lighter topics. Bars and what you think of the subway and less... ah... political fare."

"I see," I said. "Okay, well I might be able to come up with something."

"Oh, and on Tuesday, I want you to go to a mock negotiation between Chinese foreign affairs students and an American ambassador. Do a piece on it."

"Great!" I said. An assignment! An excuse to leave the China Daily early! I took down the contact information and directly e-mailed the professor and ambassador. I prepared for the story and when I arrived, the ambassador pulled me aside.

"This event is strictly off the record. You can't quote me or anyone in this class. It's against policy."

"Oh," I said, "Well, what can I report on?"

"Well you can't say that I'm an American diplomat. In fact, you really can't mention me at all."

"What if I just call you a diplomat?"

"This is a U.S. Foreign Affairs class, so you can choose between putting the word "diplomat" or the name of the class in the article."

"Oh." I sat at the front and wondered what the hell had just happened. He prattled on about nothing controversial for over three hours, and by the time I got home, the hotel had shut off my internet, and they'd locked me out of my room.

"Can you fix my key?" I asked the lady at the desk.

"You pay for internet."

"I'm checking out tomorrow in like two days, how about I pay for it then?"

"You leave tomorrow by noon."

"What the fuh- NO, I've paid through Saturday, I'm leaving early, you can't kick me out earlier." She shrugged, and fixed the key. That, I thought, is not a good sign. I went into my room and plotted the move. I could live there for two weeks - that would be good - then quit two weeks early and hightail it to Shanghai and then Tibet. I don't have a journalist visa, after all, I should be able to get as far as the Mount Everest base camp.

The day of the move, I awoke with my head throbbing.

"Water!" I thought, and filled my Nalgene, which, for the first time during my entire stay at the Yinghua, appeared brackish and muddy.

"Bastards!" I thought, and went to the China Daily and ordered a large cup of coffee, which I pounded down with the hopes of either chasing my hangover or dehydrating myself enough to lose consciousness. After two hours of attempting to stay awake, I realized there was not a shred of work available for me to do today. Tomorrow, I hoped, my one real accomplishment at the China Daily, a headline to a letter to the editor that read "Hackers are hobos on renegade trains," tomorrow it would be published and I could flee with my dignity intact. But for now, there was nothing to do. No letters on Thursday. I went home in time to catch the girls ordering McDonald's delivery. I got a massive Big Mac and filled my veins with more grease than they'd seen since May, and then soaked in the tub for a few hours.

Around 2, I returned to work to try and feel useful, when I was pulled aside by a worker who offered to buy me more coffee.

"Sure," I said, and followed him back downstairs.

"The China Daily," he told me as he sipped his latte, "is a translation company, not a newspaper. I'm very sorry you have to be here. Also, I really don't like coffee."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That night, Katelyn and Alex left for their apartment early. They'd offered a bed to Brandon, but he was unsure as to whether he was moving in with them yet, so he went along. Sarim and C.J. had already checked out of their room, so rather than chill in my room, filled with dude-stank, they relaxed on Alex and Katelyn's beds. I packed, and debated what I could get away with taking from the room. I settled on a vacuum-packed towel that had been molded into the shape of a bar of soap, a toothbrush, a comb, and around 15 bottles of Yinghua Hair Conditioner.

They inspected the room and charged me for the towel, but I needed it anyway, so I paid up.

Sarim and C.J. came downstairs a half an hour later to catch a cab to our new place, but as they tried to leave, the woman at the front desk called out to them.

"You pay for room!"

They had settled their check at noon that day, so they said, "No, we've already paid."

"You 421! You pay! 200 yuan!"

"No, we're 425. 421 left like two hours ago."

"You in their room!"

"Yeah, but they owe you. You have the China Daily's number and their credit card numbers, call them if you have a bill to settle. Bye."

It was raining outside, and the smoggy haze was so thick that the lobby appeared to be filling up with smoke. I stood by the bags until The girls had hailed two cabs. They threw the bags in the back, and we prepared to leave.

The little woman from the front desk came out, said something to the cab drivers in Chinese, and then started yelling at C.J and Sarim again. "YOU PAY!"

The cab drivers opened the trunks back up and threw our bags into a puddle and sped away. We tried to hail more, but the woman from the desk told them to keep driving.

After much yelling, we realized that Katelyn's and Alex's room had a few things conspicuously missing. They plopped a pile of crap on the counter: an electric adapter, a hair-dryer, the not-complimentary condoms and KY Jelly that sat next to the bed.

"Ah, KY Jelly!" I thought, "And I took the fucking towel."

I stood guard over the bags, while C.J. and Sarim yelled at the hotel woman as a crowd grew in the lobby.

Sarim does not suffer the curse of infinite patience. I heard a loud, "FUCK YOU, FUCK THIS HOTEL!" and she stormed towards the exit. The two doormen blocked her, but she bowled through them. They looked at each other sheepishly and slouched back out into the street. C.J. came out muttering, "This is fucking ridiculous," and I decided to go in and sort this out.

They'll pay me back, I thought, and I went up to the desk. The woman was shouting something into the phone and I got the sick feeling it was the police. I reached into my pocket, and as I pulled out the 200 yuan, three bottles of Hair Conditioner fell out of my pocket onto the ground. "Um..." I said. The manager, desk clerk, and doormen stared at me. I gently laid the money on the counter, slowly started backing out of the hotel - then decided to grab the conditioner - and then sprinted into the waiting cabs and fled to the other side of town.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They published the headline.

China: The Only Place on Earth Where Hips Lie

2009-07-27T15:59:00.002-05:00

A rather Un-P.C. observation of mine: In clubs and bars, I have not seen a single Chinese guy who knows how to dance. The only guy I've seen who can dance was heading in the opposite direction of me down an escalator on the subway. He was listening to his iPod and doing a dance down the stairs that looked like Christopher Walken in the Fatboy Slim "Weapon of Choice" music video.

So my first conclusion is that the Chinese have no rhythm. I mean, I'm not a spectacular dancer - I can hardly imagine what they thought of me in Argentina - but I know how to move to a beat. It's not this cracked-out hyperactive version of doing the hustle when me and my friends go out.

Just for Fun, I've created a Racial Spectrum of Dance, going from "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" to "Please Stop, We've Had Enough" which I present here:

Black
Latin American
Middle Eastern (Israeli)
Saudi (Playboy)
White (Alex Gibberman)
Whitish (Barack Obama)
Indian (Modern and traditional dancers)
White (European)
White (Aussie or Kiwi)
Asian (Just the Guy I saw on the escalator)
Filipino
White (Jewish)
White (Apolitical, non-sorority Women)
White (Sorority Girls WITH Tramp stamp)
White (Line-Dancing Southerner)
White (Sorority Girls WITHOUT Tramp stamp)
White (Suppressed Republican Woman)
White (Liberated Democrat Woman, as long as the song isn't misogynistic)
White (Democratic Male)
Middle Eastern (Arab)
Indian (Caste-era and traditional non-dancers)
White (Republican Male)
White (Hipster - Why dance to the music when you can appreciate it?)
Saudi (Not royal family)
Asian (Japanese)
Asian (Mainland)

Hope you enjoyed. Please submit angry comments about me being racist.

The Sophisticated Chinese Foreign Policy of "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU"

2009-07-27T15:57:00.002-05:00

I think I figured out why my internship sucks. You may recall, from a few notes back, how I tried to get something published on Tiananmen Square. That was my second day of work. That was stupid. There's a rule you should learn before you come to Red China, my friends, and that is this: Don't piss off the Government.

I don't particularly care that I did what I did, I think it was the right thing to do, but their punishment has been far worse than anything I could have ever expected.

They are ignoring me.

Now that I examine their foreign policy a little bit closer, I realize that I should have expected this. I mean, that's what they do. They ignore the Dalai Lama. They are waiting for him to die. When Darfur is brought up, and how they are basically funding the massacres there, they say, hey, we don't wanna know what they do with those fighter jets. We just want the scranch. Rather than excoriating the members of the July 4th movement in 1989, they just ignore them, don't let them into the country, and block all their websites.

China, it seems, can't be bothered. And when they are bothered, expect to get the cold shoulder.

I had, I admit, masochistic fantasies about what would happen if I pressed the square article. I has rather appealing images of being immediately fired, having my visa revoked, and being deported to Fiji, where I would spend the rest of my China funds on Pina Coladas, hammock softener, and suntan lotion.

Then there were the less appealing images of being smacked around a few times first, possibly getting electrocuted (I SO could've brought the quote "Don't tase me, bro!" to mainland Asia), and then emerging from the events a scarred martyr with a steely Guevara-esque determination to eradicate injustice and oppression throughout the world.

Oh, the prizes would've been heaped upon me and my name would be known and feared by dictators everywhere. Alas, no electrodes have yet been attached to my nipples.

Instead, they're giving me the silent treatment. This hasn't seemed unreasonable to me, recently, as my fellow interns really haven't been doing much either. I got my first assignment this week, but it's a bullshit assignment that doesn't have a chance of being published, and the other interns tell me that the hassle of figuring out what these vague assholes WANT is hardly worth getting the mediocre and improperly-edited clip added to the resume.

So I've been happy with my lot of philosophizing on Facebook, e-mailing friends, and forwarding online comic strips to friends who think to themselves, "Oh that poor, poor, idiot." I come up with absurd fantasies for what I could do this weekend, but none of them will happen, I will hide under my covers with an appalling hangover at least one of the days, and the other I will search far and wide for a cheap coffee shop that doesn't taste like it has been sucked out of the coffee filter by the barista and spat back into my cup.

I never thought I was being intentionally avoided, until today.

Most of my office takes lunch from 12-1:30. I went home today to enjoy my American cereal (Frosted Flakes!), which I found in the embassy quarter of Chaoyang (my neighborhood) yesterday, only to realize I had neither a bowl or a spoon. I decided, Ok, I can drink the cereal without the spoon, but the closest thing I could find to drink it out of was an ashtray. So I went back to the China Daily and bought a Snickers and a cup of coffee (sugar high? You bet. I've written this entire entry so far in the last 30 seconds), and went back up to the office. There was only one guy in my section, and when I came in, he came over to my desk.

"Excuse me? Hi, who are you?"

"I'm the intern. I've been here for two weeks now."

"I haven't seen you."

"Really? I sit right here every day. I think I've actually said hi to you a couple times."

"Could we speak in private?"

I looked around the empty office. "Sure," I said, "Let's speak outside."

(This conversation is not a joke, by the way)

So we stepped out into the hall, and he asked me if I would do some revisions for him. I was so excited to be given something to do that I didn't wonder why this was a private conversation.

I finished the entire damn thing in 20 minutes, but that wasn't quick enough. By then, people were back in the office. When I approached his desk to ask him a question, he got a panicked look on his face, glanced at his co-worker three desks away, and said, "Ah, sure, um, would you e-mail the question to me?"

I nodded, and took three steps backwards to my chair, sat down, and sent him an e-mail.

My question was about a front page article, which, in this presentation, was said to have 8300 words. I pointed out that this was about the length of a typical 12-page paper, and that it probably wouldn't fit on the front page. I asked if perhaps it was an 800 word article, or eight 300 word articles?

"Do not change the numbers," he sent back, "That is not your job."

As I went back to my Minesweeper, I started to think this through. My conclusion is this:

What the fuck?

I've gotten used to being ignored. When I sent my e-mails and requests about Tiananmen, I got no response. If I brought it up to an editor, they would pretend they didn't understand my thick Midwestern accent.

I've recently been trying to negotiate a change of housing so I can leave early, and our amorphous Kermit-the-Frog look-a-like handler will not respond to a damn thing I send him.

Even my editor, who is supposed to be giving me assignments, avoids me unless she is giving me mysterious Chinese candies, which invariably lead to explosive diarrhea or were dipped in habanero oil.

In fact, the only person in the office who will speak to me is the shy guy in charge of the letters. And even then, it's just to point out when I've done something wrong; recently, I submitted three letters for the page, each calling for the boycotting of a different country for various offenses to China's pride. The Australia and France letters were approved, but, I was told, we really couldn't run a letter about India saying, "we should just nuke the brown bastards straight to hell."

It was worth a try.

But frankly, after today's exchange, I'm beginning to suspect that the office policy of ignoring me is intentional. The other interns are at least GETTING stories, and while they are certainly disgruntled, they aren't disregarded.

Did my Tiananmen stand screw over the rest of my internship? Or is the Chinese press really this incompetent? I'm kind of rooting for the conspiracy theory, but I suspect it's a bit of both.

It reminds me of the question: "If you could choose between being God's worst enemy or him not even knowing your name, which would you choose?"

I, personally, would want to be the enemy. Big Brother has other plans for me though.

Working for the Weekend

2009-07-27T15:57:00.001-05:00

Have you ever had the slight suspicion that you were being intentionally screwed but couldn't quite find the person to pin it on? Have you ever held on to that feeling almost perpetually for 2 and a half weeks?

I am in an internship from hell. For one thing, I don't speak the language that is spoken around the office - which I find absurd really, as this is an English language newspaper - and that makes communication with my fellow workers difficult. Have you ever butted into a conversation that you don't know much about? You know that awkward pause when they try and figure out what to make of you and then carry on as if you never arrived? Have you ever done that when everyone else is speaking in another language?

For example, my Chinese co-workers are speaking in Mandarin:

Co-worker 1: God, this commute is a killer. Have you BEEN on those subways in the morning?

Co-worker 2: That's why I ride my bike. Yeah, it's more dangerous, but I don't come into the office with crippling claustrophobia.

Co-worker 1: See, I WOULD do that, but I just live too far away. And a car's pretty impractical.

Me (In English): Hey Guys!

(Co-worker's give me an awkward stare)

Me: So, Yao Ming, huh? Guy's tall. Hardly even needs to jump to dunk.

(Pause)

Co-worker 2 (In Mandarin): You could always take the bus.

In the meantime, I scurry back to my corner with my tail between my legs and try to think of something they'll let me write about. When they hired me, I figured, they must've at least glanced at my resume. It's padded with loads of human rights activities, and my clips all speak out about basic human rights and taking a stand against censorship. You know, truth, justice, the American way. They must have thought, I figured, that I would be a worthwhile voice to add to their staff.

I figured wrong. It turns out no one in my department has ever read my resume. No one in my department knew I was coming. They still don't know how long I'm staying. I'm thinking not much longer. I will break down for you a typical day for me:

9:30 a.m. - Arrive. Spend a half an hour reading foreign news sites.

10 a.m. - Look into the "Letters to the Editor" box. There are 10 new letters. 6 are in Chinese. 2 are from the Iranian Embassy. 1 is a press release about the new CEO of a new corporation. The other is a two page long letter from a simpleton that uses ... instead of a regular period in every sentence, which gives the impression that you are speaking to a stoner. Today's is about abortion. The final conclusion is, wait, what if we just gave women a choice?

10:30 a.m. - after waiting in vain for a new, semi-intelligent letter to arrive in the mailbox, I go onto the comments section of the news site. These are where you always see those ignorant ass comments about how black people should just accept their lot as lesser folk in life back in the states. In China, it's about how evil the Dalai Lama is, or how women can start asking for equal rights when they stop being the weaker sex.

"I don't think anyone would even know who he was if he wasn't so anti-China," one writer says.

"Would you say the homeless or crippled are as useful to society as CEOs? No. So why would you say that a woman's as useful as a man?" another muses.

I wade through pages and pages of bullshit and pick out one that doesn't sound too moronic.

11 a.m. - I edit the first letter. I take out all of the lowercase "i's" and all of the "lol's" or the more enigmatic "lulz" and various other lolcats vernacular. It, I reason, is unprofessional for a newspaper to publish a letter to the editor, no matter how intelligent, when it starts out, "Tee hee! I has a seekrit!"

11:30 a.m. - Noon - I go into the single non-squatter toilet in my floor's bathroom and weep.

Noon - 1 p.m. - Lunch. I skip the cafeteria because it looks like prison food and no one will sit next to me. Instead I meet my fellow interns at the noodle shop across the street where I eat spicy noodles with various meats and drink grape soda. As I sip the delicious grapey drink, I have the one moment of the day where I am truly happy. The other interns and I spend most of the lunch hour enumerating the various injustices suffered upon us by the vicissitudes of fate in the first 2 hours of the day. This takes up the first 50 minutes of the meal. The final 10 are spent sulking in silence at the prospect of returning.

1 p.m. - I go back and stretch out as much time as I can at the urinal. Maybe, I think to myself as I stand there post-stream, just maybe I have some more fluid left in me.

2 p.m. I find a second letter and finish it.

2:30 p.m. - Weeping again, this time in a fetal position in a broom closet. The janitor shoos me out when she comes in for her spray-bottle of ammonia.

3 p.m. I start writing e-mails or blogs or I work on a book I kind of want to write. Alex Gibberman is my only friend left online back home at this point, and he lists the amazing things he and my other friends did without me this weekend.

3:30 p.m. Broom closet.

4 p.m. I decide to try and complete another game of Minesweeper on expert. Many a smily face dies with a shocked look and X's for eyes.

4:45 p.m. I search the web for news about places I've been to. The boss says that we stay at work until 5:30, unless we have work. Then we stay longer. If we don't have any work, we can leave early.

5 p.m. I leave.

I never have any work. I've been given one assignment. It is to go to a mock press conference - mock - in a classroom at the local university. Apparently a visiting professor is getting cross-examined. I will write a feature on it, despite not being on the features page. My friend on the features page gets an opinion article to write.

My pitches for stories or columns never get turned down. But they are never responded to. When I ask my editor about it, she offers me a candy from Shanghai which she informs me, after I put it in my mouth, I should be careful with, as it is very spicy. I spend 20 minutes retching over the non-squatter toilet and when I return with a tear-stroked face and a mouth still on fire, I've forgotten what I wanted. If I bring it up again, she will ignore me.

I debate my options:

-I could sink into alcoholism.
-I could tell them, since they don't seem to know why I'm there anyway, that it's a ONE month internship, and I could spend the rest of my money on traveling the country rather than going through this masochistic procedure every day.
-I could go Chinese and submit.

This last option is the least appealing. Mostly because I would actually save money by traveling around. We've discovered that all of the other interns are paid. They are also given free housing. I live in a hotel. With no discount. Laundry costs $40 a load, so I wash my clothes in the sink and try to dry my socks on the windowsill. I don't have any more socks.

When we e-mail our contacts back at Penn State to see if we can get reimbursed, they tell us we're doing a great job. And no, they can't help.

After work, I go outside and wish there was a cafe where I could alternate between coffee and beer, as in Buenos Aires, and lament, in a very European way, about the woes and misfortunes in my life.

But this is Beijing, so I go to the 7-Eleven, buy a Fanta, and, as I walk home, get yelled at by a cab driver who thinks my use of the crosswalk is too liberal while he's waiting at the red light.

When I arrive back in the hotel room, I try and pick a movie out of one of the many pirated DVDs I have purchased, but in the end, I always pick a comedy or a romance thinking, perhaps, that maybe there's a world outside China, a world like the one depicted in the movies where people laugh and not in frustration, where all of the characters fall in love in the end and happiness abounds, a world where people smile and don't hate me on sight, a world where people like me enjoy their jobs, even if it's just rearranging fruit.

Matt, I tell myself, come on. It's time to grow up.

The Tank Stays in the Picture

2009-07-27T15:55:00.000-05:00

The iconic image for most people June 3rd, 1989, is the tank man, the guy who refused to back out of the way of the tanks rolling into Tiananmen Square after the People's Army killed who knows how many people.

For me, it's a very hazy image that I barely remember of sitting on my couch that night when my parents brought my little sister home from the hospital for the first time. This was undoubtedly the more important event in my life, so for the past 20 years, it's the event I've been celebrating each June 3rd. Rach is 20 now, and so are the events in Tiananmen, or, as the People's Republic of China calls them, the "incidents in Spring and Summer of 1989."

But for her 20th birthday, I had to be in Beijing, so the focus, for once, was taken a little bit off of Rach and put a bit more on the massacre.

I took this one to heart, and started reading everything I could find online about Tiananmen. You'd be shocked at how much you can find, despite the supposedly massive Great Firewall of China. None of the main western media sites are shut down, though they're all in English and as such are unavailable to a large number of the Chinese populace. I read god knows how many accounts of the "incident" while sitting in my cubicle, waiting for job assignments that would never come, and then, each day, would scour the China Daily for some mention of the upcoming anniversary.

The policy in China seems to be that you don't even TALK about the incident. It hasn't been spoken about much here, but it's certainly being acknowledged in a strange way. Twitter, Youtube, Blogspot, Hotmail, Flickr, all have been shut down, and the night of June 4th, I went to Tiananmen Square to see the action. My roommate, Brandon, who works at night, had gone during the day while we were at work and discovered that you needed your passport (presumably with a non-journalistic visa) to get onto the Square, so we brought all the proper documentation, and as we climbed the stairs out of the subway station and to the entrance of the Forbidden City, across the street from the Square, we found it packed. But not with protesters, not with tourists. With Police, with Special Forces, with Army. SWAT-like vans circled the square and plainclothes officers, identifiable by their pins and umbrellas (which they used to shield foreign cameras from filming the action), unconvincingly mingled with the few Chinese and Westerners who were legitimately there to see the sights.

I stood there for a few minutes, staring out onto the Square, wondering what happened to the China of 20 years ago. I was hoping to see something - a silent iPod rave, one of those goofy dancing in the streets, mass-coordinated things (wouldn't that be the PERFECT protest in Tiananmen Square now?). But there was nothing. China's recent economic success has opened the country up to the world, but it hasn't opened up politically. Dissidents are still jailed, protesters are still beaten. China jailed two 70-plus-year-old women for asking to protest during the Olympics. That's right: ASKING to protest, not protesting. And Tiananmen Square has never been inquired into. The official stance is that it was an uprising and the government had a right to defend itself.

The shocking thing is, that's swallowed by the people here. You wonder, after hearing stories of rickshaw drivers riding through the square and, despite the governments orders, picking up the dead and wounded and taking them to the hospital, you wonder, after hearing of a bus driver who pulled into the middle of the street to shield the students from the government's bullets, despite their warnings that they would kill him, you wonder where all of these people have gone. If you ask the Chinese about the incident, they tend to shrug it off and say, "As long as China's doing well economically, I don't really care about political freedoms."

You wonder where the Tank Man went.

He's the most searing image of individualism we've ever seen, in a country that is, to be honest, the least individualistic country on the face of the earth. Most officials say he was probably arrested, but refuse to comment on whether he was killed or not. He was probably killed.

China has, by all accounts, gotten slightly better. But it still won't acknowledge the event. On June 4th, I sent my editor an e-mail, suggesting that we do a piece on the incident as a response to the western media. I didn't care WHAT we said about Tiananmen, as long as we said SOMETHING. I didn't mind hearing another government bullshit denial as long as, by talking about it, they acknowledged it happened.

"If we don't say something," I told her, "then the only commemoration of the crackdown will be another crackdown."

She usually responds within 2 hours. I haven't gotten anything back yet.

Tiananmen was in the China Daily yesterday, though. Hillary Clinton called on the Chinese government to openly discuss the events and to try to move past it. The article in the China Daily didn't quote her or say what she'd said, it just said, "Clinton's comments were misleading and ignored the facts." Then it condemned America for meddling in other countries affairs and not focusing on it's own grisly past. The Indian genocide, slavery.

The whole day, I walked through the halls humming, "My President is black, my lambo's blue..."

That old chestnut, that your wrongs are somehow canceled out by the wrongs of others.

Another opportunity was presented to me that day though. I was put in charge of letters to the editor. I selected two lengthy letters on economic matters, which the Chinese just gobble up, and found that they only reached 600 words. I needed 700. So I went onto the online comments section under the Hillary article, and found 40 remarks (a pretty high number). Most were the typical Chinese fare, but I found one that said, "As soon as we start talking about it, we'll be able to get past it." It was exactly 100 words.

I sent the final article to my editor, and I haven't heard back.

Today's China is the less the tank man and more the tank. The old China, imperial China, was one where people slaved away at the whims of the emperor. Cut to: a coup, a war, a revolution, and then we're back to where we started, but the emperor has been replaced by a party. The party, it says, works for the good of the people. And maybe, for the most part it does. But you have to be worried about the country which, in an Orwellian contradiction, all but posts the slogan "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" under the picture of Mao, staring out across Tiananmen Square.

Happy 20th Rach! You were the best thing to happen to June 3rd, even if you are Ayatollah Khomeini's reincarnation.

The Great Wall of Mandarin: Or Why I am Not Even Trying to Learn Chinese

2009-07-27T15:53:00.001-05:00

I've read a few books, mostly biographies, where the subject is described as having a "knack for languages."

What the HELL does that mean? Languages aren't instinctual, they aren't talents. The only things I can think of that I have a knack for are writing and voiding my bowels quicker than the average bear, a talent I did not discover until living with my roommates at Penn State, who were decidedly knack-less.

English is easy, and I say this because I was speaking it at age 2. It's instinctual, so if you say something that sounds grammatically incorrect, I can pinpoint it. I tried to learn Spanish, and when I say "tried," I should clarify that it was not such an active verb. I arrived in Argentina expecting Spanish to be done to me. And to some extent, Spanish did me, because I am now more or less conversant in basic espanol.

Mandarin does not do you. Mandarin doesn't want you. Mandarin wants you to stay in your home country and not bother it with your silly tongue.

I've been here two weeks and have been maintaining an open mind about Chinese perspectives and culture.

I hate Mandarin. Mostly because it's impossible to learn on paper. English has a 26-character alphabet. You can rattle off all of them in under 10 seconds if you know the song. Chinese has 10,000 characters, each representing a different word. Apparently you only really need 3,000, but try rattling that off in 10 seconds. 3,000 is the number of seconds in 50 minutes. Figure it out.

The characters here are based off of calligraphic symbols. The most basic symbols combine to make more complex symbols.

For example, take the following characters. As far as I can tell, the one on the right is Chinese for "Child." As you can see in the character on the left, it combines with ANOTHER character to make a THIRD character. The other character is "woman," and the character it forms is "fondness." It makes sense in a really abstract way, but you could come up with other things by looking at it. Like "Mother." Or "pregnant." Or "matricide."

Then it gets confusing. I don't have the pictures, but "ocean" is a combination of "water" and "sheep." I have never in my life put these two things together. I have not even imagined what a wet sheep looks like. I imagine it looks annoyed.

So reading is impossible here, unless you know the simple, basic, 3,000 beginner characters. I've learned three so far, and they do me no good, as I can now draw "Beijing, China" in calligraphy. If I ever get lost in Beijing, I can ask them to take me to Beijing.

Then there's the pronunciation. For starters, when I got here, I had to learn where I was living. I'm in the Chaoyang district, and the nearest subway station is called Huixinxijienankou. My translation of this has progressed to "Huixinxijiesouthkou."

And I still can't pronounce it. You would think the "i" in "hui" denotes a "hwee" sound, but in fact, it's "hway." X means "sh" and "j" is pronounced softer than the j's of an effeminate Frenchman. The pinyin (anglicized spelling) versions of all words have different accents attached to each syllable, because the inflection you give a word can totally change the meaning.

For example, "buy" and "sell" are the exact same thing.

I have the utmost respect for Chinese culture. But this is stupid. They are exact opposites. It's like a crime boss asking a crony to "take care" of his wife, meaning to keep an eye on her when she's out of town, and having him kill her. It's that kind of stupid miscommunication.

And for me, inflection is everything. When I'm being sarcastic, I'm monotone and deadpan. When I'm animated, I turn Italian and put some passion into my voice. Here, no matter what sentence you say, you sound as if you're annoyed.

So I go into a restaurant and sit down.

The waiter says, in Mandarin, "Hello, sir, it's an absolute pleasure to have you eating with us. Allow me to do ANYTHING to make your meal more comfortable. What can I get you?"

I hear: "HWEN sherrrr SHI SHAO mu SHIIIII?"

And I say, "Fuck you man, if you're gonna be rude, I'll take my business elsewhere!"

But this I ask the Chinese: How am I supposed to display scorn? Deceit? Hatred? Irony? Passion? Tenderness? I can't do what appears to be the key and just adjust the volume. I talk in the same volume unless I'm in an argument or in a church. And I never go to church.

Perhaps I'm missing some of the subtlety. I like to think of myself of a man with nuance and depth, but when it comes down to it, I'm an American. Our countries favorite past-times are watching bubbas hit each other on the gridiron, and watching loud cars go in circles while praying they get into heart-stopping crashes. We eat our steaks BIG and feel emasculated if we order the half-slab of ribs. We don't extend our pinkies when drinking wine.

Perhaps there's inflection in tone in China, but I'm too American to pick up on it, so I'm going to stick to the Roman alphabet and the Latin languages. All the experts are saying that in the future, China will rule the world and we'll all speak Mandarin.

But I won't. I'll sit on my front porch with my cane and shake it at the local kids playing mah-jongg on my sidewalk, cursing them with expletives that will be foreign to their ears. And when my nurse comes outside to ask me in whether I want the spiced beef or the greasy noodles, I'll adjust my glasses and say:

"MATT WANT EAT! BEEF! BIG!" And both me and the nurse will hope my 40-oz steak gives me a heart attack; her to be rid of the old bag, and me hoping that I can die an American death: messy, greasy, and with no nuance or honor. Just a lot of noise.

How Tiananmen Square and I Shut Down Twitter

2009-07-27T15:51:00.000-05:00

I'm two days into my internship and I'm seriously considering making a break for Tibet, where I will live out the next two months bathing in patchouli oil and sipping local beer with expatriates and traveling hippies.

It's not THAT bad, I should say, it's just another day working for the state's English-language propaganda mouthpiece. And boy oh boy, do these Chinese-folk hate the Dalai Lama.

See, one of my jobs is to read the letters that will be published in the "Letters to the Editor" page, and most of what's sent in is a two-page long incoherent screed in Chingrish berating the Dalai Lama or his celebrity supporters in the U.S. or a bi-daily bulletin from the Iranian embassy. The general consensus, among the avid newspaper readers, seems to suggest that Tim Geithner should fornicate himself on a metal rod for trying to convince the Chinese to continue American investments.

Timmy, by the way, is in Beijing, and Caitlin, one of my fellow interns, got to interview him (or, you know, sit in the corner at a press conference). While she was doing that, I was setting the op-ed desk high score for medium level minesweeper.

But I digress. Chinese rhetoric is thick. It's loaded with bullshit communist platitudes that I suspect are just Cold-War residue, and it makes one happy that in a country where the propaganda is so out-right misleading, there is no such thing as universal suffrage. One gets the impression that the cooler heads are the higher ups, and that while the rest of the Chinese people are screaming for the blood of the Lama, the Americans, and the Western media, the Benevolent Chinese head, Hu Jintao (who, unlike his two most prominent predecessors, Mao and Deng Xiaoping, seems more like a ruthless businessman than a ruthless dictator) is letting in slide in the name of what's best for China.

Point being, the letters are ridiculous. I was copy-editing one of them the other day, and it was written almost entirely in the passive voice and was making reference to abstract, lofty concepts that had no place in a legitimate argument. It looked like it had been converted from Mandarin on an online translator. So I approached the guy in charge of letters, to try and dissuade him from publishing the piece.

"Hey, um, so I have a question."

"Yes?"

"Well, this letter doesn't make sense."

"Which part?"

"Ah well, see here - all of it. None of it makes sense."

"Where specifically?"

"Ok, well see where it's referring to the friendship of the U.S. being cherishable and adorable and the U.S. not valuing China? I mean, what does that mean?

"He's talking about the Dalai Lama."

"He doesn't even MENTION the Dalai Lama."

"It's okay, just change it to make it clearer."

"Ah. Ahem. Ok. Well, how about the rest of this?"

"Which part?"

"Um, paragraph 1, then we covered paragraph 2, and then everything after that."

"You know, just sum it up. Make it clearer."

"See, the thing is, I don't see how I can make it clearer without fundamentally changing what he's saying. He's speaking in broad, abstract terms, and I have to translate it into specific, intelligent arguments. So I guess what I'm asking is, at what point does me altering what he's saying constitute libel?"

"We're a newspaper, we don't have to worry about that."

"Come again?"

"If they have a problem, they can contact the authorities, and then they'll deal with them."

"Right."

"I know it's poorly written. I think the guy who wrote it is British."

So I went back to my desk, and prayed that cooler minds would prevail, and that it wouldn't be published. It wasn't. Yet.

My other task has been trying to keep abreast of the opinions of major western newspapers. Each day, I compile a list, and report back to the editors what I've found.

"So what'd you get?"

"Well, I searched 17 news sites, and of the 10 that mentioned China in their op-eds today, 9 were about Tiananmen Square."

"What about Tiananmen Square?"

"You know. The incident. It was 20 years ago this week."

"Oh. Well what are they saying?"

"That China's refusing to acknowledge it, that the government still hasn't apologized or disclosed anything and that the suppression of dissent hasn't improved."

"Well that's ridiculous."

"Yep."

"Well we're not publishing anything on Tiananmen Square. What else you got?"

But that was really all I got. A few hardcore free-traders have very strong opinions on how China's about to open up, but frankly, it's nothing new. So I spent most of today reading the news and surfing the web. I decided to research the Dalai Lama, since he's so hated here. And I decided to become more proactive with my Twitter account.

I posted two things:

"Man, the Chinese hate the Dalai Lama."

and:

(Ok, so the link that I posted on my Twitter site earlier today is no longer accessible to me online. So go to CNN.com and search for "Fareed Zakaria Dalai Lama" and it should come up.)

Which, I think, is a very legitimate and balanced article on the differing opinions on Tibetan independence in the U.S. and in China.

Two hours later, when I got back to the hotel, Caitlin was a bit on edge.

"Matt! I spent all day on Hotmail and Twitter, and then they shut it down! They're watching what we do! They're blocking our sites because we're using them on the work computers!"

"Really? I was just on Twitter, just a bit ago."

"You didn't post anything bad, did you?"

"No, I almost never use it. Oh."

"Oh what?"

"Oh God. I posted an article on the Dalai Lama."

"MATT!"

"Oh God. I just shut down one of the largest websites on earth for one of the largest countries on earth. Oh God."

That's when we started drinking.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Turns out, China shut down LOTS of major sites before the 20th Anniversary of Tiananmen. Among them are Twitter, Hotmail, and Flickr. But not Facebook. Not yet.

Here's more on the crackdown:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8078538.stm
I will keep you updated on life behind the bamboo curtain. Until next time...

Forbidden City vs. The Lama Temple

2009-07-27T15:50:00.000-05:00

This week has been a strange one. As one of the many unemployed in Beijing, I've been spending a lot of my time visiting tourist attractions and completing an unnecessary checklist of places to go before I go home. The only two in the city area remaining are the Great Wall and the Summer Palace. The rest has been seen.

Most of the places I visited were repeats, so they lost some of the grandeur they had the first time, or gave me weird deja vu feelings and had me hoping I'd run into a group of current SASers, even though I know the most recent voyage is already over with.

My lips were chapped at the Temple of Heaven in Spring '07 (you can see a picture of me there on Facebook, and you can kind of tell), and they were chapped this time too. I'm beginning to wonder if Imperial structures have that effect on my body moisture.

When I travel, there are usually one or two moments on each several month-long trip that are the main reason I travel. Moments or clarity or peace that make you happy you're here and not home. I've had one of this trips already, at the Lama temple, which is a walled-off compound of Buddhist shrines and temples. It was the only place I've been so far that wasn't plastered in images of modern China or caricatures of the omnipresent Mao, but I don't think it was that so much as the incense burning in the iron vats they had sprinkled around the compound.

Smell, I've discovered, is why I travel. It's those occasional, totally original smells that hit you at just the right time and place and hold you to that place forever - when I pass a patchouli-scented hippie shop in Clifton, I'll get a whiff of incense and for a tenth of a second, I'll defy time and space and be back at the Lama temple. The smells don't have to be pleasant. For India, they rarely were, but the smells root a certain part of me to that place in the world.

I went to the Forbidden City, too, and I wondered why it didn't strike me like the Lama temple did. The Forbidden City is a massive complex of huge, intricate pagodas and courtyards, with each level of the city walled off from the next and guarded by cast-iron Lions or Dogs that are either crushing monsters or globes underneath their respective feet. The Lions are the only things that really strike me, and the only reason they do is every time I see them, a line of poetry pops up in my head (which NEVER happens to me):

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

And I stare at them for too long, and eventually walk off to what should be the more impressive pagodas and thrones.

But I leave the Forbidden City lukewarm, as I did last time, whereas the high from the Lama temple only disappeared when I went to a restaurant and mistakenly ate what I think was cow elbow and Brandon ordered either cow spine or dog tail, we can't decide which. The only comfort from THAT episode was my scars were only intestinal, whereas his were emotional (cow elbow, for the record, does a very good job at liquidating everything in your stomach).

I've been trying to figure out what rational reasons there are for liking one more than the other, because by almost every standard, I should prefer the Forbidden City, and I've come up with a bunch of ideas - perhaps I prefer Buddhist culture to Confucian or communist culture? Maybe insecure guys everywhere are correct and size doesn't matter? Maybe it was the amount of tourists at the Forbidden City? - but none of them are really satisfying.

So I come back to an argument I've had with my buddy Jake over Bob Dylan. Jake is almost Spock-like in his adherence to rationality and logic, and Dylan, he points out, doesn't play particularly impressive music, his voice is kinda weird, and his lyrics are, 50% of the time, utter nonsense.

But there is really no artist I love more than Bob Dylan, and when asked to defend it, I can't. On paper, Jake wins. But oh how I love his music.

"Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet,
We're sitting here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it,"

Totally makes up for the nonsense of:

"Darkness at the break of noon shadows even the silver spoon,
The handmade blade the child's balloon, eclipses both the sun and moon,
To understand you know too soon, there's no sense in trying."

And some.

As the tiny-ness and claustrophobia of the Lama temple is canceled out by the smells of incense and sandalwood, and those smells stay so firmly in my mind that they can even overshadow Yeat's apocalyptic beasts and the cities they guard.

The Sucker Born My Minute

2009-07-27T15:49:00.000-05:00

At 6:27 a.m. on July 14th, 1986, there should've been something like 60 children born on earth. According to P.T. Barnum, one of them was a sucker.

I don't know how long it would take to figure out exactly which of them was a sucker, and I've never met one of the other 59. I've met a few other Bastille Day 86er's, but they're always a few hours younger than me. Regardless, I'm pretty sure I was the sucker. I'm not a sucker at home really, in fact, most would consider me a fairly cynical and wary person in most situations, but that's according to Midwestern standards, so I'd like to make a proposition that P.T. Barnum's statement is misleading. This isn't because it's not true, it's because it implies that suckerbility is a genetic factor, when I am pretty sure it's cultural.

For one, I look the part of a sucker. I stick out in almost any environment outside of Midwestern cities or suburbs. I look like the German-Scottish-Irish man-child that I am, and I can't pass off for Latin-American or anything darker than my farmer's tan would take me. I stand a good 4 to 6 inches taller than the average Asian, and most would agree that I am generally goofy. I stand out.

Then there's the midwestern-ness. You know how many times I've been scammed, mugged or robbed abroad? Seven. That I can think of off the top of my head. That doesn't count the number of times I've been taken in bargains and cabs, which I can't put a number on. You know how many times anyone has even TRIED to take something from me in the Midwest? In 23 years? Zero. Not a once. Say what you want about the midwest's simmering racial tensions and thousands of square miles of suburban hell, we're trusting and generally believe the best in people, which on the rest of the planet falls under the umbrella of the fatal flaw of stupidity.

The reason I bring this up is not because I've been robbed by another whore or mugged by another man with a banana, but because every transaction here can be bargained. And I just don't have the cut-throat attitude. It's less about the bargaining and more about the price for me.

"Oh, is that all? Man, I'd pay twice that in the States. I'll take it."

My friends stand by and roll their eyes at my gullibility.

"You could've gotten it for a QUARTER of that."

I shrug. It doesn't matter so much to me, I'm not really penny-pinching right now. This internship is a money-suck and thanks to 2 months of almost constant work at a fruit shack, I can afford it. I'll be poor when I get back, but my only expenses in Cincinnati are gas and beer.

It doesn't do much for the self-esteem though. In the back of my paranoid little mind, I see the Chinese shopkeepers meeting at the end of the day, saying, "You won't BELIEVE what I took this gringo for."

(Yes, I know only the Latin Americans call us gringos, but this is the paranoid part of my mind, not the rational part.)

So when I go to the markets now, I go with the intent of not buying a damn thing. You don't NEED a samurai sword, Matt, I tell myself, knowing of course that this is ridiculous, everyone needs a samurai sword, and that wooden Buddha would look fantastic in my bedroom back home, since pretty much the entire room is working on a drab, wooden, Amish-style lifelessness theme that the comatose Buddha fits in an odd sort of way. And when I'm not buying, I'm good at bargaining. It's the Catch-22 of my life. As soon as I start to care about something, I suck at it. As soon as I stop caring, I rake. Look at my poker skills. When I start to win, I lose, and when I start to lose, I either lose all or start to win again.

So I walk through the markets and turn everyone down.

"Sir, would you like a t-shirt?"

"No."

"Shoes?"

"No."

"Statue of Buddha?"

"Psh."

"Would you like to try out this samurai sword?"

"Er."

"Would you like to give a pearl necklace to a pretty girl?"

"Jesus."

And the prices drop. Until I decide to buy.

Locked Up Abroad: Beijing Swine Flu

2009-07-27T15:47:00.002-05:00

A Note: These are blogs that were previously published on Facebook in China. I couldn't get through to Blogspot there.

PRE-QUARANTINE

Upon arriving in the Tokyo Airport, I discovered that my flight was going to be a half hour late, and that the driver who was supposed to pick me up in Beijing did not have my flight number, just my flight arrival time. I tried to pick up the airport wifi with no luck - my credit card wasn't supposed to be used in Japan - so I went to an internet kiosk. Of the two computers, one was being used by a Japanese youth who was playing Pong, and the other was being used by a sweaty 300-pound American who was searching Filipino personal ad webpages. I figured, meh, I'll only be a half an hour late, so I let it go.

Then we got stuck for two hours on the runway.

Upon arriving in Beijing, I found an irate driver who, for the entire half hour drive to the hotel, listed the ways in which I'd failed him. I apologized profusely, but he seemed to not hear it as he explained why I should be better friends with my other interns and how I should have given them my flight number.

"I'm really sorry," I said.

"Yes, but if you'd sent us the flight number ahead of time, we wouldn't have had to wait. What would you have done if we left?"

"I mean, I had the address of the hotel. I would've caught a cab."

"Where would you have gotten the money?"

"I have a ATM card and there are like 10 ATMs and 3 money changers in the airport."

"Oh."

He then informed me, with some relish, that Brandon, my roommate, had shared a plane with a passenger infected with swine flu, and as such, I would be under what he called "voluntary quarantine" for a week. This meant that my 6-week internship had been cut to a 5-week internship, and that I would not be allowed to come into the China Daily until the next Monday. I was allowed to leave the hotel, but really only for food.

DAY ONE OF QUARANTINE

I woke up in the hotel room around 8 in the morning and took the elevator down to the breakfast buffet. Apparently, breakfast is going to be my free meal for the next two months. I will have to get used to noodles before 9.

In the elevator, there is a sign in Chinese that I can't read except for H1N1, which is written about 10 times. I suspect the sheet is telling the other guests to avoid the 20something Americans like the bubonic plague, as they may have the swine, or H1N1 flu.

At breakfast, me and Brandon sat at our own table. The restaurant was fairly crowded and rather small, but no one joined us at our table, and they looked terrified if one of us cleared our throats. I will have to use this to my advantage.

I spent most of the morning listening to podcasts and doing sudokus. Brandon has to take his temperature twice daily, but neither of us can read the thermometer. There is only one distinctive section of the mercury that stands out to us, but I'm quite sure that if this was his temperature, he would have to be dead and floating through the vacuum of space.

I bought some internet for our room, but the password does not work. So I went down to get this fixed, but when I approached the front desk, none of the concierge would approach me. So I placed the sheet of paper with our internet information on it, took four steps back, and explained it in my stunning Mandarin:

"The password doesn't work."

"?"

"Password not working."

"?"

"Password. No."

"?"

"Internet suck. Password no."

Another woman approached the counter. "Go to your room, we'll have someone call you."

"Thanks."

I went to the room. Someone called, and I explained the problem.

"So your roommate, he's sick, right?"

"No ma'am, he's not. He just has to check his temperature a lot."

"But he's sick?"

"No, I mean, the reason I came down wasn't for him, it was because the internet's not working."

"What's wrong with it?"

"The password doesn't work. It's like, I put in all the information, but it doesn't connect me to the internet."

"We'll send someone up to check on your roommate."

Click.

NEXT TIME: "You want me to put the thermometer WHERE?"

The Pig Stays in the Picture

2009-05-03T01:25:00.000-05:00

Today I decided to do make a few investments in my future. I am going to corner the Cincinnati pork market buy using all of my money to start a Ponzi scheme which will fund the purchase of mass amounts of bacon and pork. Once I get this rolling, I'll be able to pay off all my Ponzi investors and become legitimate. It's fool proof.

See, it's a basic rule of economics: buy low, sell high. It's why now's the time to buy houses. But since I can't get a loan on zero credit and I have zero assets with the exception of 20-odd DVDs and a stringless guitar (and since I don't have much of a use for another bedroom anyway), I will be investing in swine futures.

The price is low now, because the cornucopia of douchery that is the American media has made swine flu into the most recent sign of the apocalypse.

Side note: A quick refresher for you, if you've forgotten what the four horsemen are:

PESTILENCE in the form of pigs with the sniffles.

WAR in the form of the Shi'a vs. Sunni (yeah, I don't know the difference, but I know it's inconsequential enough to kill over)

FAMINE in the form of Rush Limbaugh using the $400 million he gets paid for being a fucktard to buy up entire food aid shipments in Africa so they can learn to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

DEATH in the form of not being much of a horseman, as it's not exactly unusual.

Or something like that.

Basically, what I'm saying is you should rush to the hospital and report every minor symptom you have, so as to induce a pig-panic. Then refuse to buy pig meat from your local vendors for at least two months. This will get my foot in the door. If you're achin' for some bacon, sterilize and slaughter your own pig, or steal your neighbors pig.

I'm hoping that Cincinnati will make a quick recovery from the dip in pork prices, being nicknamed porkopolis in all, and I will be richer than a fat man with a radio show.

In the meantime, I encourage all of the hypochondriacs and alarmists to keep up the good work and continue making me rich. I prefer to maintain some semblance of a grip on reality, but I understand why we differ here. 'Twould be like casting pearls before swine.

This is not a joke.

2009-04-26T20:40:00.002-05:00

"Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas. Just roll the roof back and screw it on, grease the face with white tanning butter and move out with the music at top volume, and at least a pint of ether."

-Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I don't have any ether, and I'm not a Vegas fan. But I know what he means. How about driving like a bastard from Darjeeling to Goa in two weeks? On a rickshaw?

Seriously, who does this sound good to? Sign up is April 30th, and I need a partner or two. It's called the rickshaw run, and it's a 4500 km trip in a rickshaw through India. It's two weeks. It's dangerous. It's next winter.

http://rickshawrun.theadventurists.com/index.php

You have nothing else to do. You know it. We need all team members trying to get us signed up, because apparently the positions get filled within 40 seconds. April 30th is four days (less!) away, and I need quick, impulsive decisions. It involves fundraising, traveling, and mucho stupidity. Shoot me a message if you're game.

Liking Ben Linus: A Lost Blog

2009-04-09T22:57:00.001-05:00

[Note: If you aren't a regular watcher of the show Lost, you will probably not get this blog. Also, there are spoilers.]

My favorite Lost character is Ben Linus. After repeating this after every episode week after week, my Dad finally called me on it and pointed out that Ben was a cold, possibly sociopathic murderer, whereas John Locke is likeable and generally a good guy. I hate Locke. He's a blind follower who just happens to be the island's chosen one. Sure, he can throw a knife and hunt boars, but he rarely thinks for himself, and when he does, he hides behind what perceives as the island's endorsement of his decisions.

Ben would've made Machiavelli wet his pants. His crimes include:
-Shooting Locke and leaving him for dead.
-Kidnapping lots of kids.
-Ordering the murder of Sawyer and Jin (which failed, of course)
-Having Juliet's lover killed out of some creepy obsession for her
-Manipulating Sayid into killing for him
-Gassing dozens in the Dharma initiative
-Strangling Locke (and actually killing him)
-Allowing his daughter to die
-Trying to kill Penny
-Shooting Desmond
-Stabbing Keamey, thus blowing up the entire freighter with Michael on it.
-Shooting an unarmed Caesar in the chest with a shotgun for really no better reason than making a point.

And much more. On top of that, he's a compulsive liar and a brilliant manipulator. He can get anyone to do anything he wants, usually while he has a gun to head, and often immediately after being shot or tortured.

And yet I still root for him. Partially because we're supposed to prefer him over Widmore, but partially because, even after five years of him doing unspeakable shit, I still like him, and I still have the sneaking suspicion that whatever he's doing, he's doing for the greater good.

(This, of course, excepts any actions regarding his daughter. He tried to bluff Keamey out of murdering her but failed, and is wracked with guilt. So, of course, he goes and stabs Keamey, whose heart rate monitor was wired to blow up the ship if he died, thus killing Michael and - we thought - Jin. Then he goes to kill Penny, changes his mind - but still shoots Desmond - yada yada yada. Point being, Ben seems to usually have a firm grip on his temper, but when he loses it, he goes ballistic.)

Ben is sure of himself, confident and calculating. Locke, on the other hand, is constantly wrestling with personal demons and crippling (ha!) existential doubt.

But, my Dad pointed out, in real life, you would despise Ben but would probably like Locke. In terms of morality, he said, Ben's about on par with Hitler. Not on the same scale, of course, but Hitler thought he was doing the right thing too and acted ruthlessly to achieve his goals. Ben is no different in his actions, we just don't know his motivations. Is he acting only out of self-concern? Or do his actions on the island have much larger implications for the survivors and possibly the world as a whole?

His commitment to what he's doing, (along with the constant beatings he receives) seem to suggest he's working towards a higher good. And despite all of his many shortcomings, he has shown many moments of compassion, usually towards his daughter, but also to Jack and Locke.

This, of course, is the beauty of art. In movies, books and television, we have the ability to feel compassion and even root for characters we would despise in real life. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but all of my favorite movie characters are villains. Heath Ledger's Joker, Anton Chigurgh, Hannibal Lecter, Gollum. Those characters, not the heroes, are the ones that stuck with me from their respective movies.

We obviously can't do this in real life. We can't look for excuses for a Hitler or an Idi Amin because of the magnitude of their crimes and the example we try to set (though I would argue it's important to understand these figures). Books and movies and sometimes TV shows make it possible, however, for us to have sympathy for the devil without looking like an enabler or an appeaser. Really, how stunted and skewed would our understanding of evil be if we didn't have our stories?

Philosophical points aside, I'm rooting for Ben. And I really hope he turns out to be fighting for a higher cause. It's possible that in another year and a half the series will be over and we'll have found he's nothing more than a sociopath, but man, I hope not.

And I really wouldn't mind if he killed Locke. For good.

Desi Does Palestine

2009-03-26T12:33:00.005-05:00

My life has drifted away from Desmond Tutu's since I interviewed him nearly two years ago on the M/V Explorer. He has, of course, stayed in my life, though I doubt I've stayed in his. We named one of our new puppies Desi, and I even went to a tattoo parlor to have "Ubuntu" tattooed on my wrist, which ended when I realized the tattoo artist was drunk. And of course, I've been keeping up with him in the news. He was on the Late Show with Craig Ferguson, he occasionally writes for the BBC and the New York Times, he's an outspoken critic of Jacob Zuma, the Myanmar junta, the Chinese, etc. He is, I think, one of the world's supreme moral voices, rejecting utilitarianism and rationalized oppression for human rights and the greater love for mankind that all the great prophets talked about.

But I think the issue that always most interested me was Desi on Palestine.

This is a sticky issue for most, since no one seems to be able to regard it with a level eye. Desmond Tutu could. So, in it's raw form, here's what the Archbishop told me when I asked him about Palestine:

MH: All right. Ok, I’ll start. You’ve compared the situation in Israel and Palestine to apartheid in the past, I was wondering if you could elaborate on this.
DT: [laughs], yes. I’m always the first one to do that, the most recent is John Dugard, the special reporter on the Palestinian situation for the, um . . . I speak of course as someone who has been a victim of that political system, apartheid. And the comparison was in regard to the treatment I saw being meted out to Palestinians. It hurt me very deeply, because many of the most engaged stalwarts in our struggle against apartheid had been Jews. One would have assumed that, in a way, that they would almost always, almost naturally be on the side of the downtrodden. But second, that they’re own immediate history, what happened to them in Germany, would have been something that would constantly be making them be aware of how they treat others. And of course third, in the place of their faith, of what their scriptures say, you know they have a great God, a God that is always on the side of the downtrodden. ALWAYS, always, always, always. So what? Why? Why was that I heard a Palestinian say ‘That used to be my home. It is no longer my home. It has been taken over by a Jew.’ And in South Africa, many times you would hear so-called colored people and others say ‘that used to be my home. It was taken away by the apartheid government.’ [...] You were in Cape Town, you heard about District 6 where [...] it happened to be a vibrant community with people of different races. [...] But I also saw for myself the roadblocks where they would stop the Palestinians. [...] And it is not surprising, not surprising, that young soldiers especially were so cruel [...] and for me it was such a replay of the kinds of things that we experienced when . . . I was Bishop of Johannesburg and we would be traveling from Soweto to town and we would be stopped, and they would want to be giving a body search to my wife and children. In public. You saw the same kind of humiliation meted out to Palestinians. And you know there are those, um, the women in black? The Jewish women in black. The women, the holocaust survivors, who were survivors of the holocaust, who would stand at those checkpoints, trying to ensure that the Israeli soldiers behaved. [...] They stopped people trying to go to hospitals, sometimes women have given birth there. [..] It is unbelievable when people with that kind of history could do that. [...] And one is very well aware of the questions of security. And we say, what ought to happen . . . we ought to have . . . what used to be called the Two State solution. Where Israel had it’s sovereignty recognized, and you’d have a viable Palestinian state, and they would exist side by side. I will sometimes say, I wonder how can people forget so quickly. But we’ve found that there are people who have forgotten in South Africa what happened to them only 12 years ago. [...] I hope that answer covers a great number of those things! [Laughs]

(My tape recorder was shitty, so [...] is an area where it tapered off. I reconstructed pretty much all of it though based off of my notes)

Since then, I've written an article on the topic (shameless plug), and tried to develop my own viewpoints on the issue, and as an American, I've mostly seen things from the Israeli side.

I've been most intrigued by the Facebook debate, particularly in the QassamCount status reports, where members dedicate their statuses to a streaming feed that counts out the amount of rockets fired into Israel, which somehow justifies any Israeli action in Gaza. It's a weak form of propaganda. Imagine if the Allies counted bullets, bombs, and mortars fired by the Axis and decried them to the world as Hiroshima and Dresden burned.

This should be weak enough, but the Israel/Palestine situation goes beyond that. How do you objectively cover a conflict where the casualty count is so lopsided?

I understand the Israeli plight. I get the retaliation and security measures. But no matter how many Qassam rockets were ultimately fired into Sderot, this fact remains:

926 Palestinian civilians were killed.
3 Israeli civilians were killed.

Yet this picture was on the front page of the Washington Post:

I'm not one to belittle the trauma done to Israelis, but to the international press, it should be eclipsed by the Palestinian losses. Being even-handed does not mean giving equal coverage to both "sides," it means giving equal coverage to each person. So the Israelis should absolutely have been reported on, but the Palestinians deserve almost ALL of the reporting on suffering.

This isn't a political position, it's an objective journalistic fact. I'm not one to call Israeli's "Zionists." I think Israel DOES have a right to exist, and that this right is dependent, as with all other countries, on its ability to treat its citizens and the citizens of all other countries with basic human dignity and respect. The same conditions must be applied to Hamas. Hamas (and Israel) should realize that military might can only be exercised when all political means are exhausted, and that all objectives will not be achieved at once. Peace and democracy are slow and painful processes, but you work through the pain out of love for your people.

Hopefully the condemnation of Israel on my or Tutu's part is not seen as antisemitism or support for Hamas. Identifying one injustice is not an attempt to cover up another. Evil doesn't cancel out evil, violence doesn't excuse violence.

I think that's what Tutu is getting at. His word is ubuntu: I am because we are. And a world that doesn't accept this as a basic fact of existence cannot survive.

Don't Be Stupid.

2009-01-23T18:04:00.001-05:00

"It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."

-Mark Twain

A few weeks ago, I got into a debate with the rest of my family over my tendency to be flippant or dismissive when it comes to viewpoints other than my own. They said that everyone deserves respect in an argument, and that they should be treated civilly in any discussion, regardless of their beliefs.

I agree. I consider myself a humanist, and believe that everybody should be treated with dignity.

This, however, does not extend to people's opinions. The rise of the internet and Facebook have given the world a forum in which to express their opinions, regardless of how crazy or outlandish and with minimal personal accountability.

Take, for example, Juicycampus.com. Juicycampus is a site that allows anyone to make anonymous posts about on-campus gossip. The intellectuals who visit this site discuss the various issues facing college students today, such as:

-Who is a slut
-Who is best in bed
-Who is the most endowed

And various other similarly classy topics. With no personal accountability (as it's anonymous), it provides a loophole for slander laws, as you can say anything you like with no consequences.

Then you move to Facebook, which is, for the most part, significantly better than Juicycampus, but still gives ignoramuses a soapbox.

Take, for example, the "QassamCount" status feed. For those of you unfamiliar with Facebook, every member is given a "Status" toolbar where they can inform whoever cares about what they are doing. It's a stupid feature, but a fun and heavily utilized one nonetheless; a good place to make jokes or ask questions of your friends.

With the recent war in Gaza, a large number of pro-Israeli members of Facebook allowed the QassamCount website to overtake their status toolbar (this strategy was seen a lot amongst Obama and McCain supporters during the election as well in a "get out the vote" attempt). The QassamCount listed the amount of Qassam rockets Hamas fired into Israeli territory in the status, updating every couple of hours or so.

The problem?

Qassam rockets have killed 29 people since the beginning of the second Intifada in 2000. Israeli forces have killed 1300 Palestinians in the past three weeks. To stickle over number of rockets fired would be like the Nazi's complaining how many bullets the Allies had used during D-Day. It's irrelevant. I think Hamas is one of the worst things to happen to Gaza in God Knows how long (and for Gaza, that's saying something), but no matter how many rockets Hamas fires, they will never do the damage that Israel has done in under a month.

Point being, to list rockets fired is downright moronic.

Another Example:
At a bar recently, I got into a discussion with a conservative about global warming. She said humans did not have an effect on the environment in any serious way, and that the climate change we are experiencing is part of a natural cycle. I pointed out that the vast majority of modern scientists disagreed with her. She said, "Yeah, well, I'm not convinced."

In my mind's eye, I saw myself grabbing her by the shoulders shaking her really hard and saying "Your stupid f***ing opinion doesn't MATTER. You are not a scientist. You have no idea what you are talking about, and therefore, most of what you say is completely inconsequential."

Here's the point: Your opinion, on certain things, is irrelevant. I, for example, know very little about the abortion argument. What I DO know tells me that it is a dangerous and morally sketchy practice, but it is a necessary one that would be more dangerous to get rid of. I will express this if someone asks me my opinion.

BUT, if I meet someone who is better informed than me, I will LISTEN to them, learn from them, and NOT claim to be on even ground because I think my opinion matters as much as theirs.

I'll put it simply:

You can't argue with Stephen Hawking about quantum physics.

You can't argue with General Petraeus on how to run an Army.

You can't argue with Barack Obama on how to be awesome.

These people are more knowledgeable and altogether better than you in their particular fields. Their experience and education in these areas have taught them in ways you haven't been taught.

~~~~~~

I guess my point in writing all of this is please, if you're going to argue something, be informed about it. And if the person you're arguing with is more knowledgeable, instead of shutting them out, LISTEN, then learn, then find a way to integrate the truth of their viewpoints into yours - even if that means restructuring your entire belief system. Take what you know to be true, and find out how to put it together.

Really, I understand why people cling to certain religious beliefs, but I have no patience for people who suspend rational thought because the truth is inconvenient.

2008

2008-12-31T15:47:00.002-05:00

To my faithful blog readers:

I apologize. Since Peru I've been slacking. I've discovered that I do better writing in a notebook, and I've been too lazy to transcribe any of my Peru or last-month-in-B.A. experiences to the blog. Though I must admit, it saves me the embarrassment of accidentally telling the same story twice. But it's the last day in December, and I haven't written a damn thing since leaving Argentina, so if I left this day blank, I'd have the first blog-less month since January 2007, when the blog did not exist. And I can't let that happen.

I feel like I should try to sum up Argentina, but the country has not been on my mind much for the past month. I've been looking more to the future. And I don't mean that in a melodramatic, Barack-Obama-Hope type way, I mean I'm finished with school, I'm jobless, and I'm living with my parents. And before my plane even landed in Cincinnati - I had connections through Houston and Newark, two of my least favorite places - that little voice in the back of my mind was already screaming at me to get out of the country, to start moving again.

This terrifies my mother, but I see a definite appeal to Chris McCandless's Into the Wild style of life, sans the selfishness and the, you know, death. But God, what I'd give to just take off and wander for a while. And for the first time in my life, there's not a whole lot holding me back. I could say my total lack of money is an obstacle, but McCandless gave away the $25,000 to his name and abandoned his car in the desert when he took off on his trip. So really, I have no excuse. I have hopefully 60, 70 years of life ahead of me, and I have NOTHING planned. Lots of free time to kill. Which is an intimidating thought.

So, on this last day of 2008, my mind is less on the past year and more on the upcoming one (advice is welcome!).

But, for the sake of honoring the past year, I'm going to do a quick rewind to a year ago tonight. It seems 2008 has gotten rather little attention on the two New Year's bookending it, as I spent most of that night looking back on 2007, the year of Semester at Sea (okay, to be totally fair, I spent most of that night chugging beer and champagne and shouting from our hotel balcony at passersby on the street, but there was a moment or two when I clammed up and thought back to Vietnam and Brazil and wondered if days like those were in my future).

How, after a year like this, I thought, can you look forward with any hope for the future? How can that be topped?

Now that 2008 is finished, I ask myself, was it topped? I can't be too sure about that... I mean, I saw some crazy shit in 2008. I climbed 3 mountains, saw Machu Picchu, got robbed by a whore, got into a tortilla fight over Barack Obama, and had what was undoubtedly the best summer of my life... looking back through my 22 years of my life, it will definitely have a check mark in the "Years Well Lived" column.

But 2007 was a tough one to beat. I'm sure there will be better times, but you can't expect two years in a row like that. Like I said, karma has already been too good to me.

It seems the more I do, the less certain I am about anything. For example, I knew where I was going with this blog when I started writing it, but now it's devolved into another rambling essay on what I might do with my life...

Oh well. I know what I want from 2009. I want to see the ocean again. I want to travel some more. I want to see all my SAS friends again (I only saw Cory, Corinne, Kelsey, and a few other Penn Staters this year). And I want this to be another check mark in the "Well Lived" column. I'm hoping to do an epic road trip and turn it into my generations On the Road. That'll solve a lot of problems.

You know what? I'm done with this entry. A disjointed, confused entry to end a disjointed, confusing year. The blog will be back folks. I have less to do now, so it will be back...

Last year, I would've toasted to the places you can go, this year, I'll toast to the people who make life worth living. To all of you lovely people.

The Proust Questionnaire

2008-11-22T11:11:00.003-05:00

[In my never ending quest for ways to put off studying, I've come across the Proust Questionnaire, and am now interested in what people's answers would be... Here are mine!]

The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature. Here is the basic Proust Questionnaire.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Traveling with good people and a good soundtrack.

2. What is your greatest fear?

Dying unsatisfied.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Inaction.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

The ability to think of someone as less human than themselves.

5. Which living person do you most admire?

Three way tie: Jon Stewart/Bob Dylan/Desmond Tutu

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

Travel, probably.

7. What is your current state of mind?

Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Consistency.

9. On what occasion do you lie?

When it's necessary (and, in my weaker moments, convenient).

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

I have a REALLY big head.

11. Which living person do you most despise?

Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?

Sense of humor.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Sense of humor.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

"Sweet," "kickass," and "fuck."

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

Don't know yet.

16. When and where were you happiest?

Dinner time at sunset on a warm day on the M/V Explorer.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

I wish I could play piano.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I'd be more willing to do stupid things.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Interviewing Desmond Tutu or finding the location of my Great Uncle's grave in Luxembourg.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

An osprey.

21. Where would you most like to live?

On a beach somewhere.

22. What is your most treasured possession?

My music.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

To be stuck in a place you can't get out of.

24. What is your favorite occupation?

Musician/writer/scuba-dive instructor.

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

Loyalty to my friends and my goofy sense of humor.

26. What do you most value in your friends?

That they're there.

27. Who are your favorite writers?

Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut and Cormac McCarthy.

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

Probably Dumbledore.

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

Mark Twain.

30. Who are your heroes in real life?

My parents, grandparents, and Desmond Tutu.

31. What are your favorite names?

Fernobulax, which is what my older sister named her lobster at a lobster bake and then got bummed she had to eat it,

32. What is it that you most dislike?

Probably Ohio State fans.

33. What is your greatest regret?

I don't really have any big ones. Just lots of small ones.

34. How would you like to die?

Painlessly at an old age with my family and friends and no regrets.

35. What is your motto?

"I wake to sleep and take my waking slow,
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear
I learn by going where I have to go."

The Funniest Daily Show Clip Ever

2008-11-09T02:10:00.002-05:00

Do not watch this if you get offended by mild crassness.

The American

2008-11-05T11:17:00.003-05:00

It's been a difficult week to get work done. Normally that wouldn't matter, because this program is a joke, but this happens to be the one week I need to get work done. My distractions of the minute are senioritis, boredom, and Barack Obama. I got so antsy during Spanish class yesterday that I left in the middle to go talk politics with some friends outside. My teacher caught me and chewed me out like a five-year-old in front of class.

Then I skipped my next class and spent the majority of the rest of the day at bars drinking and watching the election results come in. When Ohio went Obama, around 2 in the morning, I burst out, for the first time in my Ohio State-hating life, into an "O-H-I-O!" chant. I couldn't hear his election speech because some Argentines kept shouting "Who the fuck cares? He'll be dead in two weeks anyway!"

Argentines are understandably politically cynical, but I had been hearing this for months. Every time they mention Barack Obama, they say "I like him, but he's going to die soon." So when they said this last night, I snapped and stood up and started chewing them out. Long story short, a tortilla was thrown, bouncers came over, the fight was avoided and we left after I demanded (and got) an apology from the offending parties.

The thing is: I'm not that guy. I don't get into shouting matches at bars because frankly, I rarely feel as if I have something to defend. I'm not a huge sports guy, I don't have much machismo, I don't like fights and I don't like violence, so it just never happens for me. And I started to wonder, "Why did I do that?"

The answer came quick. I am a cynical guy in a lot of ways, and I do not get inspired easily. I walked into a voting booth for the first time in 2004 and ticked off Kerry's name and walked back to my car and waited for the joy of democracy to sink in, and I felt nothing. Just the usual disgust with Bush and the empty feeling that comes with choosing the lesser of two evils.

The next day, a buddy of mine walked up to me when Kerry conceded and said, "Oh well, Obama '08!"

I had never heard of Obama until that moment, and I went home and looked him up. And I LIKED him. Naturally, a politician like this had no chance of becoming a President. He was far too intelligent, his speech at the '04 DNC was too nuanced and accepting of the other side for him to ever make it ahead (oh yeah, and he was black), and I quickly dismissed any hope of an Obama presidency as a pipe dream in a broken country.

It's a shame that my first patriotic act in years had to be nearly getting into a bar fight, and I in no way want to suggest that this was a justified or righteous act - though it felt that way at the time - but it was nice to love something I was a part of again.

Barack Obama - he's OUR President. An Argentine called him that last night: nuestra presidente. And I'm watching all of these pictures from across the world, people celebrating and cheering and crying and for once, I feel a sense of hope and unity with everyone everywhere. Barack Obama was the underdog, as much as McCain liked to say otherwise, and for all of the tired, poor, hungry and downtrodden, huddled masses yearning to breathe free... well, it's like THEY - WE - won. It's as if some huge wall has been broken down, the wall separating black and white and rich and poor and young and old and -

You know, I know this is really sappy, and I usually get really annoyed with the hopiness and wide-eyed, ga-ga worship of Barack Obama supporters, but today, when I woke up, I couldn't help but feel this. I couldn't feel sarcastic, I couldn't feel angry, I just felt GOOD. For a day - just a day - I don't want to feel cynical, I don't want to be realistic and sensible, I just want to be irrationally happy and irrationally hopeful. I want to love my country and love my state without having to apologize for it.

So I got online and talked to my Mom and we shot each other articles we'd found and eventually a slideshow of reactions from around the world made it onto my computer screen. The first picture is of Martin Luther King's sister finding out Obama had won. I scrolled through each of them, the entire world celebrating and smiling, and when I reached the end of the slideshow, it looped back around to Christine King Farris sitting on a church pew 30 years after her brothers death, hearing that one of the most racially divided countries in the developed world had just elected a black President, and I stared at it for a few seconds.

Then, for the first time in my life excepting cases of pain, frustration or sadness, I cried.

I'm sorry - you'll have to excuse me, the world is just too beautiful today to stay on the computer.

The Argentine

2008-10-31T15:23:00.004-05:00

A set of movies have been released in the United States about the man whom Argentina can claim as her best known son. The two movies are called "Guerrilla" and "The Argentine" and star Benicio del Toro as Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the revolutionary. You know him better as this dude:

Che Guevara was born in Rosario, Argentina, a city maybe 4 hours out of Buenos Aires, but later moved to Buenos Aires for the sake of his asthma (which, as a fellow asthmatic, I can say was a stupid f**king move. As I've said before, "Buenos Aires," which means "Good Airs" is the misnomer to end all misnomers, and has certainly done nothing to help MY ability to breath). It was in this city that he got his medical degree, and it was from this city that he set out on the transcontinental journey that he would immortalize in "The Motorcycle Diaries."

I've only met one woman who had any contact with Che, and her contact with him was fleeting. Mostly, she knew Alberto Granado, Che's companion on the motorcycle trip, as she was best friends with his sister. Alberto, she says, was an ass, and from what I've gathered (and from what I know about young Argentine men), Che was too.

This was the country he grew up in, but he never had any political clout here, so it's ironic that he should be viewed by the world as a symbol of Argentina. The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Evita," about Argentina's OTHER symbolic offspring, depicts Che as speaking with Eva Peron for the people of Argentina, when, in reality, Che's only contact with Eva Peron was a letter in which he asked her for a Jeep.

A few years ago, I read a 900 page biography on Ernesto Guevara covering pretty much every second of his life, and I became obsessed with him. This was during my swing to the political left and naturally, Che was the role model to look to. I respected him so much that I wanted to get a t-shirt or something to align myself with him, but I realized the irony of purchasing an anti-capitalist's image, so I stole a key chain with his face on it, convincing myself that Che would be proud (a side note to my mother: I paid for the Rolling Stones key chain, and this is the only thing I have ever stolen). That was as revolutionary a thing I ever did in the name of Che.

When I came down here, one of my main goals was to discover what the Argentines think of the Argentine, who gets his nickname from their most popular slang word, "Che." "Che" would be the English equivalent of "hey" or "like," or any filler word that we grossly overuse. A common way to get a friends attention is to shout "Che! Boludo!" which means, "Hey, dumbass!" and can be used affectionately or derogatorily. Che, while fighting in Cuba, apparently overused the word "che" so his Cuban counterparts nicknamed him "Che."

It's hard to get a reading on how most feel about Che. Like on most things, the Argentines are pretty divided about the man. Some adore him as a symbol of the people and love him for giving up his bourgeois roots to fight for the poor, others despise him as a communist and a murderer.

I don't think I could conduct an accurate report on what the consensus is of the man. A year ago, they constructed a statue of him in his hometown of Rosario, and the next day, the statues head was cut off.

Here's what I've found:

It's easy to find people in the United States, Argentina, or elsewhere who despise Che. They say he was a murderer and an ideologue who's failure at inciting worldwide Marxist revolutions show how incompetent he was. On the murderer accusation, they have a point. He executed many, many people, often personally, on suspicion of working against the revolution. He once wrote about a puppy he found during the revolution and adopted as his column's mascot. But one day, his column was hiding from Batista's nearby forces, and the puppy wouldn't stop crying. Guevara killed it. You can add "puppy-killer" to his resume. He used this incident as a metaphor for the innocence that would have to be sacrificed in the name of liberating the people, but really, it's still a man killing a puppy. He also claimed that, if he'd had control of the missiles during the Cuban missile crisis, he would have fired them at the U.S.

It's also easy to find people who adore Guevara. In truth, he had a set of uncompromising ideals and was a brilliant intellectual and politician. He fought for what he believed in and the vast majority of what he did was out of selflessness. He's the ultimate idealist, the man who formulates his beliefs then ACTS on them. He's the man who left his life of comfort and ease to fight for people he never met for years, to sacrifice literally everything and eventually be executed by the CIA in a shed in the jungle, all for the sake of the poor.

In this, he's a man to be admired. But I've noticed a disturbing trend in politicians and students and idealists on BOTH sides of the political spectrum:

1) They see a human in need.
2) They identify the injustice or the problem.
3) They analyze the situation and come up with the source of that problem.
4) They attach themselves to an ideology that claims to be able to fix that problem in accordance with how they themselves understand it.
5) They refuse to let go of that ideology, even if it comes down to destroying the very people they saw in need in the first place.

By refusing to listen, by refusing to change their minds, and, most importantly, by refusing to continuously reinforce the humanity of the person in need, they lose sight, and the ideal becomes higher than the human, the human becomes expendable at the hands of the ideal, and you have the creation of al-Qaeda, of Hamas, of the Republican and Democratic parties, of the Peronistas, Chavistas, Sandinistas and of all of these divisive groups that cling to ideals and forget the people they serve.

THAT is what Che Guevara did. He fixed his sight on the horizon rather than what was in front of him, and, despite all the good intentions and all the love and compassion at the root of his life's work, he died an oppressor and became the tragic hero of our day and age.

An icon:

Then an irony:

Then a joke:

Things I Don't Like About Argentina

2008-10-21T23:47:00.002-05:00

I'm really good at complaining about things. It was, I think, the main draw to my Semester at Sea blogs, that I could rant and rave about small trivial things and make it somewhat entertaining. But when I arrived in Argentina, I told myself to reserve my judgment till I had a better grasp on the country and it's culture.

And now, nearly three months in, here are the things that f***ing suck about Argentina.

1) Mullets. It's entertaining at first, but mullets suck. They just don't look good on anyone. And everyone here has mullets. In fact, everyone I know who has gone to the barber in Argentina, except my friend Ryan who has incredibly short hair anyway, has gotten a mullet, regardless of what they ask for. Because of this, my hair is longer than it has ever been, and will continue to grow for the next 6 weeks in freakish mad-scientist locks until I get home and can ask for the usual at Supercuts. Several people have told me that I should just go to the barber, and if they give me a mullet, I should just ask them to take it off or shave my head. It's not like a mullet's irreversible.

And to that I say: yeah, I know. But you know how there are certain things you'd rather never see in your life? Like a dead puppy or a Palin presidency? Well me in a mullet is one of those things. It's not that I'd have to KEEP it, it's just that I never want, not even for one second, to have a mullet. And I certainly don't want to see it. So, to prevent this, I'm a) never going to work in a pound, b) vote for Obama, and c) Not get a haircut in Buenos Aires.

2) Sidewalks. Seriously, you're city planners, right? Why would you design sidewalks that get slippery when it rains? You realize that your country is like 92% old people and that the vast majority of your foreign direct investment comes from octogenarian Nazis-in-hiding, right? So why make slippery sidewalks that this weak-in-the-knees, no-traction-on-his-Birkenstocks-or-cheap-New-Balances young'un can barely walk on? Or are you planning on killing your elderly population and stealing their inheritances? Please. It sounds like a crappy telenovela*.

*Telenovelas are the Latin American version of Soap Operas, but they are lower budget, have worse writing, more outlandish scripts, ridiculous make-up, horrendous soundtracks, and are even MORE impossible to tear your eyes away from should you unwittingly glance into a room bathed in the flickering glow of your T.V.-induced-catatonic homestay mother's "stories."

3) Dog poop. It's everywhere. Clean it up or throw your dog in the Rio de la Plata. They're all Paris Hilton-wannabe pups anyway, the world could use a few billion less of them.

4) Racism. You know it's sad when I actually miss the closeted racism of the U.S. There, at least people have the common sense to know when they're saying something idiotic and bigoted, and will be less likely to say it in mixed company. From my homestay mother calling the largely indigenous poor "the ugly people," to "Bolivian" being a slur, to literally everyone I talk to telling me in a very self-assured voice that Obama will either lose or be shot because he is black and blacks just don't have the right luck, I'm getting a little bit tired of the racism. Which brings me to...

5) European pride. Ok, Buenos Aires is not European. There are favela-like slums surrounding the city, Europeans CLEAN UP THEIR DOG SHIT, and oh, yeah, YOU'RE IN SOUTH AMERICA. Seriously. I understand the immigrant and European influence on this city, which is almost as Parisian and Italian as it is Spanish, but it's time to embrace the melting pot culture rather than dismissing the Latin side of it. The indigenous blood that runs through a LOT of this continent's residents is not something to be ashamed of, it's part of the extremely violent and turbulent heritage. Come to terms with it.

6) Patriotism. I know now why Europeans think patriotic Americans are annoying as hell. And I will fill you in: it's because THEY ARE. Patriotism is incredibly obnoxious, especially in a country which is so divided that the only common thread between factions is the country itself.

7) Icons. Make up your mind! I will fill you in on your countries heroes and what they were REALLY like.
-Peron was a populist, sure, but he was also a fascist.
-Evita, god love her, was a bit of a whore.
-Juan Manuel de Rosas was a murdering thug.
-Jose de San Martin was pretty cool, but you've GOTTA stop naming streets and parks after him. I don't know where a damn thing is because it's all named Plaza San Martin, Calle San Martin, Parque San Martin, Avenida San Martin.
-Che had cool ideas, but ultimately turned into one of the murderers he despised. And his image really shouldn't be associated with Argentina, it should be associated with Cuba.
-Jorge Luis Borges... well, this guy was awesome. Everyone read his short story, "The Gospel According to Mark."

8) Grow a vegetable other than potatoes. God help me I love mashed potatoes, but even something delicious as taters and meat pie gets old after 70 eatings in 3 weeks.

9) Ham and cheese isn't that good of a combination. There, I said it.

10) Stop taking advantage of the tourists. Please, I've lived here for three months, I'm not bogged down because my pockets are stuffed with cash. I don't have a family jet, I had to work moving plants from one lot to another for an entire summer AND had to win a cash prize at school to even be able to afford this trip, so please, stop screwing me in the taxis, stop charging me extra for cover, don't include the tip and then tell me it's not included, and please please please, if I look drunk: don't have one of your whores pickpocket me in the middle of the biggest intersection in my barrio. Really, do you know how awkward it is to say, "I got robbed by a whore," then, realizing your mistake, having to say "No! I wasn't sleeping with her, she just felt me up and robbed me on the street!"

It's pretty damn awkward. And a REALLY good story, but please, don't do it again.

11) How is it a country with a mint can be so short on bloody coins? If I go to a kiosco to buy a Coke, I shouldn't have to buy something extra so you don't have to give me more change. I swear to god, change is not available ANYWHERE in this city, and the only way to use the incredibly cheap bus system is to hoard all of your coins which has, more than once, resulted in someone shouting obscenities at me when I accidentally expose the fact that yes, I DO have coins, and no, I'm not giving them to you. Here's what you do: take a $100 peso bill, burn it, and replace it with 10,000 10 centavo coins. Ta-da! Shouldn't be that tough.

12) Stop smoking. It's bad for you.

I know this makes me sound ungrateful, this list, but I think I've said plenty of nice things about this country. It's a fun, beautiful place. You know, once you get over the minefields of dog shit.

Chill mon, it's coming.

2008-10-21T23:46:00.001-05:00

I know it's been a week and a half since I've returned from Peru and that I have yet to put up any stories or even any broad details about the trip. This isn't because I haven't been writing; it's because I've already written everything I plan to. But I did most of this writing in a notebook since my last two days in Peru I was more or less confined to the hostel thanks to aching knees. And the stories are quite good.

BUT they portray certain members of my trip in somewhat negative lights (deservedly so), and since I've been called out pretty much every time I've written about someone in my blog, I'm gonna go ahead and publish them on a separate blog under my nom de plume. That is, once I take the time to transcribe them. I think they're pretty entertaining, so I'm gonna try and up the quality of writing I usually have on my blogs and make this something of SOME merit, though I do ask that you don't hold your standards too high. I'll post the link here when I get around to it, but for now, just hold on and read my other ramblings and rantings, because the final 6 weeks promises far more free time than my current hobbies of downloading music, contemplating my life and the future, and drawing doodles with colored pencils allows. So they WILL be up, it's just a matter of motivation. In the meantime...

Why you don´t choose hostels.

2008-10-07T17:40:00.002-05:00

I got back from another futile boot search today and rushed to the bathroom. I´d grown used to safe drinking water in Argentina, and had not been careful in Peru. The bathrooms in our hostel are set up like stalls, each stall with a sink, toilet and shower. The one I was in connected to another one, and as I sat down, I realized that the shower in the stall next to me was on. I couldn´t do what I was about to do in good conscience when someone was in such close smelling range.

Then, amongst the pitter-patter of water on tile, I heard two distinct voices whispering what sounded like German dirty-talk.

I didn´t feel bad anymore.

Oh yeah. They´re twelves.

2008-10-07T16:25:00.003-05:00

When we landed in Cuzco, the first thing I did was catch a cab to the hostel and go to bed. I slept for about 5 hours (this will make more sense when I write about the day that preceded it later, but first things first). I´ve never agreed with the saying "You can sleep when you´re dead." Why wouldn´t I want to sleep now? I love sleep, especially on cold nights with warm covers and good dreams. Dreams (or sueños in Spanish: lesson for the day done) can set me on the right path for the day. For example, during this particular nap, I fell in love twice and got to chew out Dick Cheney during a Daily Show Q&A. Jon applauded me. Point is, when I woke up, I was rested and psyched for the rest of the day. Thank you, sleep!

(Concession: Ok, so sleep and travel don´t jibe well. There´s nothing particularly cultural about sleep in another country. Your dreams aren´t Peruvian, you don´t think in Quechua - really, the only cultural part is the bed. The sheets may be made of straw or alpaca fur, maybe you wake up to the sound of hyenas laughing or, better yet, incorporate the sound into your dream. No, sleep is a selfish, uncultural past-time, and maybe that´s why I appreciate it so much.)

So I woke up faced with a few alarming facts:
-The bed was dangerously comfortable.
-They told us that the best way to adjust to the altitude was coca tea, which is made from the same plant as cocaine. Turns out, I´m allergic! Guess I´ll never be getting into coke.
-I had $10 worth of Peruvian soles and $600 worth of Argentine pesos and no check card, thanks to my recent robbery. NO ONE in Cuzco exchanges Argentine pesos, so the only way to get it was to go to the illegal street money changers, who gave me an 80% exchange rate. So everything I was paying for cost a full fifth more than it should at its already inflated tourist prices. After changing a bunch of cash, I found myself praying for another Argentine banking crisis beginning in the next 10 minutes with such mind-blowing hyperinflation that the vendors who´d just fleeced me wouldn´t be able to get 10 cents for 100 pesos, making them fall to their knees and WEEP for their lost soles.
-I was woefully underprepared for my Inca Trail trek. I lacked boots and a decent sized backpack, as I´d left my hiking pack back in the States when cramming it into my luggage became impractical), so I would have to buy them in soles.

So I exchanged my money and went to the travel shop and badgered them into letting me put the entire trek on a credit card, thus saving me the ghastly exchange rate. They then gave me the name of the local black market where I could buy affordable boots. And yes: the black market is an actual market.

When I got there, I walked around for a bit and found a long row of kiosks selling shoes and boots and sandals. I found a pair for the equivalent of $17, and said, "Ok, I´ll take them. Do you have any in a larger size?"

"Yeah," the vendor said. He jumped on a ladder on the side wall and disappeared into a hole on the ceiling and didn´t come back for 10 minutes. He came down with a pair of 10.5s. I wear a 12.

I asked him, "Got any twelves?" and he burst out laughing. I gave an awkward smile and shrugged. I held the 10.5´s up to the shoes I was wearing and he realized I wasn´t joking.

"See?" I said, "Twelves." He let out a little gasp of delight and called the vendor across the aisle to check out the gringo´s huge feet. I said, "Thanks anyway" and walked off to find another vendor.

"Twelves?" he said. "Well, no. I could cut your toes off though." I laughed. He didn´t.

"Nevermind."

After a half an hour and every vendor, it became clear that I had the largest feet in Peru. The vendors would giggle and stare at my feet every time I walked by. I was feeling a little annoyed, so I went and bought a "yogui" which is a hot dog wrapped in mozzorella cheese wrapped in a waffle on a stick. As I sat savoring this truly delightful regional snack, I remembered something my dad had once said while making fun of my cousin Stephen who, with size 17 feet, would´ve been a legend here. Dad said, "You know what they say about big feet?" - here he paused to let you think about what they say - "Big socks."

This made me feel a little bit better, so I walked back down the shoe-selling row filled with laughing, gawking, pint-sized, baby-footed Peruvians, and, when they pointed to my feet, I said, "Oh yeah. They´re twelves."

Breaking HFP News!: McCain not to Let Politics Get in the Way of Election

2008-09-25T13:25:00.002-05:00

The Hershberger Free Press has come across some of its very own breaking news on the 2008 Presidential Election!

In an interview with John McCain over coffee (The Maverick Senator from Arizona made an emergency trip to Buenos Aires in light of the recent economic troubles to meet a "problem-solver named Manuel," and had time to grab a cuppajoe with yours truly at the Newport Bar & Brothel in Recoleta), he told me, "When the countries economy is in this dire of straits, we can't be distracted by petty partisan politics. This is a time for action, so should the economy not be fixed by election day this November 4th, I will be boycotting it. Naturally, I expect election day to be delayed until the economy IS fixed, and there are no longer other important events to distract us. Waitress, would you make this coffee Irish?"

"You don't want the waitresses here handling anything you'll eventually be touching any more than is necessary, Senator,"

"Oh, okay, never mind then."

"Can you do that? Delay election day? I mean, it's based on 225 years of historical precedent."

He smirked, "This isn't a time to get old, Matt. Of COURSE I can do that. I'm going to be president. And history will absolve me."

"How do you think Senator Obama will respond to this?"

"Well Senator Obama has shown time and time again that he cares more about his own personal political agenda than the people of this country. So I assume he'll have the media attack me as a fraud who's delaying the election for political purposes while my campaign is headed south. But that is ridiculous, I PREFER to be the underdog, as I have said many times. I'd rather the polls show me as lagging far, far behind him. Gives me a challenge."

"But... if the polls have you far behind on election day, you lose."

"I don't trust the polls, Matt. It's just people giving opinions. And I don't believe in opinions. I believe in America."

"So you think Senator Obama won't go for this?"

"Why would he? He's inching back ahead in the polls and probably will be the frontrunner on election day. He'll want to keep election day on for selfish reasons: So he can win."

"But isn't that just standard procedure?"

"No, it's a lack of care for America. He's already shown that he doesn't care about women by choosing a male running mate. I was willing to MAKE that sacrifice. For women, not for me. He's already shown, by his choice of Joe Biden, that he's just another pro-white male, regular-business Washington politician."

"But you've been in Washington longer than he has. And you've kinda sided with the establishment a LOT."

"If you say the 90% with Bush thing, I will break your face. I'm a MAVERICK."

"Sorry."

Sarah Palin, who was sitting quietly next to us, bust in: "Wait... so they don't speak English here? There are places that don't speak English? THAT'S why when they come to America and can't get my Burger King order right? Huh. Who knew?"

"Everyone, Mrs. Palin. Everyone."

"Quiet, Sarah," McCain said, "Men are talking. Where was I? Oh, right, Senator Obama. Look Matt, who are you going to trust? A guy who SAYS he's a maverick because he's changing up the way politics are done? Or the maverick who actually WAS a maverick once, but got so Maverick that he decided it was more maverick to go with the establishment?"

"I'm not sure, you said 'Maverick' a lot."

"You pick ME Matt. I'm the one who cares. Look at what I sacrificed for my country!"

"Yeah, but Senator Kerry was a Vietnam veteran too..."

"He was a hippy. We don't want hippies in the White House. The tie-dye house does not give off an aura of majesty and patriotism."

"What if they tie-dyed it in red, white and blue?"

"It's... actually, that would look pretty cool."

"Ok, back to the election: What if they decide to keep it going?"

"I'll boycott it."

"Then you'll lose."

"Eff a bunch of that. You can't have an election with only one viable candidate! That's a dictatorship, Matt. What are you, a communist?"

"No, Senator, I'm just saying that if one of the two possible candidates voluntarily drops out, it's still a democracy, it's just less of a choice."

"How do you know if was voluntary? How do you know he didn't coerce me out?"

"Then wouldn't it behoove you more, politically, to out his coercion and ride into office on a wave of sympathy? Also, when has a candidate who isn't part of the establishment-"

"HE IS!"

"-EVER coerced the establishment out of power?"

"It's called a coup, Matt. Barack Obama is attempting a coup. Or would be, hypothetically, if he decided not to reach across the aisle and work with me to postpone the election."

"That makes absolutely no sense."

"America was built on the idea, Matt, that ANYONE could run for President -"

"Except women and blacks."

"- And that the absolute cream of the crop, the best two, would go head to head and the best one would come out on top -"

"Actually George Washington warned against the divisive destructiveness of political parties on his way out."

"- and that THAT person would then be charged with the responsibility of upholding the basic rights and freedoms of the American people."

"Like the right to vote?"

"When necessary, Matt. When necessary. This just isn't the time to let the democratic process get in the way of what's best for America."

"And who decides what's best for America?"

He smirked, "Matt, a tip for you: don't go into politics. You know where I can get a good burger around here?"

"Everywhere."

"Ok, Sarah, let's hit up a McDonald's and then blow this continent."

A Gift to My Mother

2008-09-22T23:08:00.002-05:00

The explanation behind this video is that I know this has been a long and stressful week for my mother and my Aunt Janice. There's not much I can do for them abroad, but I know that there is one thing that is absolutely guaranteed to make the Flood sisters smile, so this video goes out to Mom, Aunt Janice, and Aunt Bev.

Getting Shafted Abroad

2008-09-21T23:32:00.002-05:00

After looking over my most recent blog, I've decided that not enough time and detail was devoted to what exactly happened last night, and I think I owe it a little more than that. So I'm going to go a little further into detail into what will probably be one of the main nights I think of when I look back on Buenos Aires for a number of reasons (not just the pickpocketing). I think I'm writing this mostly as penance, a cautionary tale, if you will.

I have a history of being robbed abroad. I've had a number of run-ins with various criminals on all 5 continents I've visited, and, with a few exceptions, they have come out on top. When they do, I can safely place the blame on myself. Yeah, they did the pickpocketing or scamming or robbing, but I usually put myself in a situation in which they COULD do that, and last night was no exception. When you're abroad, you have to stay on your guard at all times. You have to constantly check your pockets to make sure it's all still there, when a child or a sketchy-looking dude bump into you on the street, you want to quickly make sure they didn't grab anything. Really, though, the key to prevention is never putting yourself in the situation in the first place. Don't walk through the bad neighborhood. Don't draw attention to yourself. Don't look lost.

ENGLAND - 2002 - $60 LOST
The first time I was hit abroad was in England in 2002. I was in Piccadilly Circus with my school group, and a guy came over and offered to sell me weed. I said no, but it didn't matter, because he probably didn't have weed. He did have the contents of my pocket, so he left, and I didn't realize it until three days later.

SPAIN - 2004 - CAMERA & CAMCORDER WORTH $700 LOST
The next time was the worst. I had my camera and recently purchased camcorder, which I'd bought with the intention of developing a portfolio for film school, in my bag at my feet at an outdoor cafe in Valencia, Spain. My family was eating, and a guy came over and asked us something in Spanish. We tried to decipher what he said, but it didn't matter, because he left quickly, and 15 minutes later I realized he'd been distracting us while his partner stole my camera bag. I'm kind of glad I didn't do film school though, so cheers, Spanish thief!

MONTREAL - 2006 - NOTHING LOST
Jake and Gibbs and I were walking out of a bar when Jake decided to get some money out of the ATM. As he came down the stairs, an alcoholic bum who we later learned goes by the name "Hollywood" walked up behind him and said, "Wassup my brotha from anotha motha?" Jake ignored him, but me and Gibbs thought this was kind of funny. So we looked back and realized he was holding a banana like a gun in his hand, and was about to put it to Jake's back. Then he said, "Gimme your money niggah!" and Jake turned around to him and said, "Hey man, be polite." Hollywood must've realized me and Gibbs were with Jake or that the banana wasn't intimidating enough, so he said, "You're right man, I'm sorry," and left. Halfway down the block, me and Gibbs told Jake, "Dude... you just got mugged."

PUERTO RICO - 2007 - $1 LOST
I was walking back to the ship on Semester at Sea with a girl through a sketchier neighborhood. This was unavoidable, as the ship was docked right next to the neighborhood, but what can you do? An American approached us, his face covered in cuts and bruises, and gave us a sob story about getting beaten up by some thugs in a bad part of town earlier and how his father was in the hospital and he needed some money for a cab because the police wouldn't give him a ride there. I knew he was lying, partially because he was a bad actor, partially because it was a flimsy story, and partially because the cuts on his face were more than a day old. But I didn't know what his angle was, and that made me nervous. He COULD be about to rob us, I thought, and didn't like the prospect of that, so I gave him a dollar and got out as quickly as I could.

BRAZIL - 2007 - A COMPLIMENTARY CARNAVAL CONDOM AND A HANKIE LOST
Everyone got pickpocketed at Carnaval. I kept my money in my shoe though, so all I lost was a Nova Schin beer hankie and a condom that they were passing out on every corner. Say what you want about Brazil, they know how to promote safe sex. And as a disclaimer, I didn't have the condom because I was trying to get laid. I kept it (well, not the one that got pickpocketed, another one) for a souvenir. I kid you not, I still have it. I gave the third one to Gibbs.

VIETNAM - 2007 - $5 LOST
We were headed to Janet's birthday party at a hotel in downtown Saigon. We'd gotten into an unmarked cab, which is always a mistake, and were talking for a bit until I, in the front seat, realized that the cost of the cab was incredibly high. Around 100,000 Vietnamese Dong (yes, dong is the monetary unit there), which is maybe $10, which is maybe ten times more than the average cab ride there. I had heard a clicking sound while we were talking, and I'd thought it was the turn signal. It was actually a tiny button underneath the steering wheel that the driver was clicking when we weren't paying attention, jacking up the price. So I spent the rest of the ride looking at the meter, and he didn't click it again.

Looking back on this, I can't help but feel really annoyed. It means nearly every major trip I've made out of the country has been marred by some sort of robbery or pickpocketing or some other petty crime. I always tell myself "At least they didn't put a gun to you," or "at least you weren't hurt," but that's small consolation when you're penniless in a large, hostile city. There are a few stages you go through when you get robbed, depending on the severity. They don't come in any order, usually, but they almost always come. First, there's the realization. This is what I call the "pissed off" stage. You're pissed at a number of things, partially at the person who took it (this fades as you get robbed more. You can't blame a faceless criminal. Yeah, it wouldn't have happened if they hadn't made it happen, but they're hard to stay mad at), yourself, the country you're in, big cities, all sorts of stuff. This stage is marked by action. Searching for whatever was lost, doing what you can, canceling cards making sure you're safe. After that, the stages come in and out. The strongest is homesickness. When you get screwed, you just wish you were home, where stuff like this doesn't happen. You want security, you want comfort. Travel is rarely either of these things, and it's great for a while, but gets exhausting. There is no time during travel where your level of helplessness and insecurity are so obvious as when you get robbed. Then there's frustration, acceptance, and, eventually, amusement at what happened.

BUENOS AIRES - 2008 - $130 IN CASH, A CELL PHONE, PROOF OF ORDINATION IN THE UNIVERSAL LIFE CHURCH, BLOCKBUSTER CARD, AND CHECK CARD LOST

Ok, I explained it in my last blog, but that was written incompletely and in very little detail, and it's actually a much longer story.

Last night, I finally went out for some sushi. I love sushi, but it tends to be a little expensive, so the plan was to spend my money there and then end the night. But we decided to go get a few drinks and then head back. This was at 10 p.m., which is extremely early in Buenos Aires time. We sat down at the bar and ordered drinks, and started talking. An older guy next to us overheard us speaking English and introduced himself as Greg. He had just broken up with his girlfriend, who was 20 years younger than him, and had decided to do some business abroad. He said he focused on corporate acquisitions and mergers. We started recommending clubs and areas to him, and when we mentioned price he kept saying, "I don't need to really worry about money," and then went on about how younger girls were his favorite, and he wondered what EXACTLY was the definition of pedophile.

He wanted to do shots though, so we ordered some mezcal. Mezcal comes from the Mescal plant, best known for producing tequila and mescaline. Mezcal is like a stronger form of tequila. Even without the beers, three shots of it should have ended my night (I apologize for anyone reading who might not want to hear about me drinking, but I'm going to try and be totally honest about what happened, and hopefully it'll come across more as a cautionary tale than anything else), but it didn't, and the night continued.

Greg told me that if I wanted a big scoop for my journalism major, I should meet two of these friends who he had. They were mercenaries, he said. Guys who would kill you at the drop of a hat, no problem. He'd met them while sailing a yacht around the south Pacific. Seedy bars on obscure islands, he said, are a good place to find mercs.

A group of older men walked into the bar and began talking loudly. Greg walked over and started talking to them, and it became quickly apparent that he knew them. I asked him when he came back how he knew them if he'd only been in town for a day, and he said, "They're mafia. I know them through work."

He may have been lying, but he seemed like more of a braggart than a liar.

So Greg was paying for all these drinks, and eventually we decided to head over to Sahara, a nearby club. Greg didn't feel like waiting in line, so he walked up to the bouncer and pulled out a roll of hundreds. He peeled a few off and we went in, and then pulled the same thing to get us into the VIP section. To be totally honest, normally, this night would have ended hours earlier, but I had made a conscious decision to try and milk Greg for a little bit of money. Normally, when someone is as big a douche as Greg, I take great pains not to suffer them, but when someone flaunts their money like that, you try and use it as a rationalization to leech off of them. "Well, he's an asshole," I said, "so I might as well take advantage of him for his money. A fool and his money are soon parted." I would learn at the end of the night that this was completely true.

I went and danced with some Argentine girls for a while, and after a bit, I realized that Greg, Daniel, Ryan, and Charlie were ALL gone. I looked at my cell phone: 5 in the morning. Time to head back home.

The walk from Sahara to my place is about seven blocks, so a cab really isn't necessary. I have to deal with over-aggressive advertisers for strip clubs and the occasional whore (if you've been reading my blog, you'll notice a lot of prostitute stories: this is because I live right next to the red light district), so it came as no surprise that, four blocks from my place, I was approached by a whore. It's an easy drill, you say no, look ahead and keep walking. They'll usually come up and hold your arm or something, but you can shrug them off.

This one was not as easy to lose. She was grabbing my arm, so I tried walking faster. She kept up and pushed me into a doorway and lifted her shirt and grabbed me - well, you know where. Usually this would have had me running down the street, but as drunk as I was, I was stupefied. I had no idea what to do. So I just said no and kept trying to edge around her, but she kept grabbing me (it's somewhat difficult to get away from someone when they have that kind of grip on that area). Then she abruptly pulled her shirt back down, swung around, and jumped into a cab sitting right next to us on the sidewalk. Someone else was already in the cab. The second the door slammed, I knew my wallet was gone. The cab sped away. I felt my pockets: yup. Cell gone. Wallet gone. I staggered back home, went online, and canceled my debit card. Then I curled up in a ball and slept.

When I woke up, the first thing I thought of was the wallet. I've used that wallet for ten years now. It was falling apart, but i really liked it. It fit me. It had pictures of my sisters in it and one of me, my sisters and my cousins doing a stupid pose at Christmas time. It had a business card for Holzman's Deli & Meats, and one for my former boss. My Reverend card, from when I got ordained online freshman year while bored one rainy day, was in it. So was my driver's license. I had emptied my Social Security card and gift cards and library cards before the trip.

Then the wave of homesickness hit me. This NEVER happens in Cincinnati (not true: our house was just recently broken into back home), I shouldn't have to WORRY about being able to safely walk home. I was penniless and alone in a big city where it felt like damn near everyone was squeezing me for every penny. What Cane said in his guest blog is true: they do try and hose you here at every turn. Even the people you think you like. I just wanted my comfortable bed back home, I wanted a day in the hot tub or a bonfire, I wanted Skyline Chili and sunsets over I-275 as I drove to Webb's house to spend a full night doing nothing but puttering. It hit me hard, and then my homestay mother knocked on my door. She brought me down the street, bought me a cup of coffee, and lent me money to cover the next few days. I thanked her and then crawled back into my room to work on projects, watch "How I Met Your Mother," and mope. An hour later, she knocked on my door again. I opened it and saw that she had made me dinner. Our homestay mothers aren't supposed to feed us on the weekend. But she did.

It's been a shitty day. I got robbed and in a pretty humiliating way. It put a kink into a lot of plans for me, and may keep me from doing a trip I've really been looking forward to. I spent a good deal of the day wallowing in self-pity. But, you know, shit situations bring out the best in people. In Spain, when I was inconsolable over the loss of my camera, which I'd saved for months to buy, the waiter came out and put his arm on my shoulder and said, "I am very sorry. But life goes on, yes?"

It did. In England, when I realized I was going to be short on money for the trip, a buddy offered to pay for whatever I wanted, no problem, I could take my time paying him back. I ended up just trimming my budget, but what motive does someone have for being that generous? He wouldn't get anything out of it. Some people, I think - hell, even MOST people - are GOOD people. My homestay mother is, that waiter was, that friend was.

It's times like these when you care less about the material items you lost, and care more about the people you have.

Looking back over this blog, I realize it looks like I'm a careless traveler. And I think I might be doing SOMEthing wrong, for sure, to have had so much of this happen to me so many times, but in my defense, I'm a very careful traveler. I'm constantly on alert, figuring out what's going on, keeping an eye on my pockets, watching for suspicious people. There are very few moments that I am off my guard. It seems, however, that a disturbingly large percentage of these moments end in me getting taken though. Maybe I'm a natural target; maybe I'm too obviously American; maybe there's something in my demeanor that makes them want to go after me. Or maybe I'm just unlucky. Maybe I just need to reduce the amount of time spent off my guard to zero.

One more note in my defense: I have never been the victim of any crime of this sort in any city within the U.S. That includes New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Vegas, Boston, and D.C. Not once.

I've learned many things from this experience, but there's one certainty:

I will never ever ever ever touch mezcal again.

How to Milk a Sugar Daddy... and then Get Robbed

2008-09-21T03:48:00.002-05:00

Me and Daniel went to a sushi bar tonight, and that was wonderful, so naturally we decided to meet Ryan at a bar to get some drinks and finish the night off in a respectable way. So we went to a bar in Recoleta. We were sitting there, chilling, when the guy next to us asked us where we were from, we said "Estados Unidos" and things went from there.

He was from Florida, was around 40 years old, and was loaded to bejesus. We figured this out when he said, for the fifth time, "I'm financially secure." Also, he was a bit of a tool. So we decided, hey, if this guy's willing to throw his money everywhere, we might as well take advantage of it. So we ordered LOTS of rounds and eventually, he paid for most of our drinks. I don't THINK he paid for all of them, because my wallet was a bit emptier than I had planned.

On a perfect night, I would've headed straight home, no incidences, and would still have my wallet and cell phone. I do not still have these things.

But instead, me and my sugar daddy went to a club I knew of - it was his first day in B.A. and needed a guide - and I ended up dancing with a few Argentine girls before realizing that all of my friends were gone, and it was probably time to leave.

So I made my way out of the bar and began the walk home, and was barely out of Recoleta when a whore approached me.

This is a usual drill for me; it's something I've grown used to. A block or two is spend convincing them hey, I DON'T want to pay you for sex, and they eventually leave you alone as the American who got away.

This whore, however, realized that my leather jacket was home to my cell phone and wallet, and managed to grab both before jumping into a cab and driving away. Fortunately, she left me my keys, so I had time to run up to my apartment, cancel my debit card, and begin the search for a new phone. Sadly, she escaped with $500 pesos, the most money in my wallet at any given time during the trip, and slightly less than $200.

THIS, my friends, is why you don't go abroad, and if you DO, it's why you don't get inebriated to the point of not holding onto your wallet.

The thing that pisses me off the most is they got my Reverend Card. Son of a bitch.

Don't Trash da Nati. (And please don't call it "da Nati.")

2008-09-18T20:40:00.003-05:00

Don't make me defend Cincinnati. Don't make me defend the Midwest, or suburbia. Please. I don't like doing it. It gives me hives, it's physically painful for me. Because when I'm back home, I spend a LOT of time bitching about the place I've spent about 20 years of my life. There's so much to bitch about! The materialism! The single-mindedness! The conformity!

I've found myself defending my hometown on more than one occasion here. You just can't escape American politics, and people are getting into heated debates about Obama & McCain every five minutes, and I don't have a problem with this, because I have some knowledge of politics and really enjoy debating people. But shockingly, the people who have been annoying me most are the Democrats. Not because of their political beliefs - incidentally, I'm NOT a democrat, but a lot of my social political beliefs line up with theirs - but because of their attitude towards conservatives. They are condescending as hell.

Disclaimer: This isn't to say that conservatives aren't just as bad. Go back a few blog posts and watch the Daily Show clip I posted (This post, the clip on top), THAT'S how ridiculous some of these double standards can get.

But I was raised in a politically conservative environment, in school and at home, and I don't consider this a BAD thing. I have several close family members who are lifelong Republicans, and I've debated with them many, many times, and while I still disagree with a lot of their viewpoints, I think they are at the very least theoretically valid. I personally don't agree with Free Trade (I'm not a communist, but I AM a Fair Trade guy), but I can see how it could theoretically work, and I see how it could be construed as having been a success in the past (NAFTA, for example, indubitably increased Mexico's GDP, but most of that money ended up in the hands of the upper class, and trickle down has yet to take effect). Point being, since I grew up in a conservative household and recognize that conservatives are not all idiots, I make an attempt to understand their viewpoints and see some sort of value in them.

Most of the leftists here are not from the Midwest however, and view "small town America" with unmitigated scorn. A side note: Cincinnati is NOT small town America. The Greater Cincinnati area has 2 million people. If you think that's a small town, you're clearly comparing it to Tokyo or Mumbai or Buenos Aires. You're an idiot, so shut up. Moving on...

We in the Midwest are not necessarily "narrow-minded." We aren't necessarily "uncultured," I would say the vast majority of us aren't "hicks," we aren't, for the most part, "bible-thumpers," or "gun-toting yahoos." I have heard all of these terms used to describe my hometown during this trip, and I, not being a patient man, have nonetheless restrained myself from bitchslapping the utterer of these words so hard that I end up in an overcrowded Argentine prison.

Maybe it's the "yo momma" effect, where you can make fun of your mother (not that I ever do that, Mom), but if anyone else does, you have full permission to administer a beat-down, but I think I'm right in saying it's absolutely ridiculous to simplify an entire region according to which direction it voted in past two elections. How does that serve anyone's argument? How does dismissing and belittling the other side help you win an election?

Barack Obama was spot on when he mentioned small-town people "clinging to guns and religion," but his mistake here was that he only served to reinforce an accurate stereotype held by Midwesterners that liberals can be snobbish and condescending at times. You're right, Barack, but you gotta watch how you frame these things (incidentally, I agree with Jon Stewart, who said, "He's running for PRESIDENT. He thinks he's the best man in the entire country to lead it. Of COURSE he's f***ing elitist. They ALL are."), and you've GOT to show some respect for the rest of the country.

The Midwest is narrow-minded. Okay, maybe that stereotype is deserved, but so is the stereotype that New Yorkers are selfish and rude. Or that Bostonians are the most obnoxious sports fans that can be found outside of a Manchester United football game. Or that Los Angeles is the shallowest city in the country. The stereotypes are deserved, yeah, but that doesn't mean that your area is BETTER than any of the others. I mean hell, you would be hard pressed to find a person who sees more flaws in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Midwest as a whole. But I LOVE the place. I love the food, I love the river, I love every house I ever lived in there, I love the friendly people, and, come to think of it, with the exception of a few Penn Staters and a few SASers, every single person I've ever known and loved has been from or lived in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I know you love your hometown too. So I'm not going to knock it. There may be other places I prefer, other places I would rather go or rather live, but it's your home, and you have every right to love it. But what's the point of hating the other place? Why hate Kansas? Or Texas? Or the Midwest? Or the West Coast? Or the East Coast? What purpose does that have?

It doesn't win anyone over to your point of view. It just makes you feel secure about the superiority of your own beliefs by convincing yourself that all of the others are stupid. It makes you think - KNOW - that you are right. But foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and if you can't listen to a Republican or a Democrat speak without getting your ire worked up and panties in a bunch and spend the whole damn time thinking about your response, then YOU, my friend, have a little mind.

So please. Just shut up and listen. Learn. And DON'T knock Cincinnati, because I'll take a trip to Skyline Chili over a trip to Brooklyn any day.

Politics in South America!

2008-09-16T23:16:00.003-05:00

So if you've been paying attention to the news recently, you'll know nothing about what is going on in Bolivia. Because it seems the Sarah Palin's sex appeal is more important than a potential civil war in South America's poorest country, when the woman's total lack of significance in the country's and world's political stage should have created some sort of media black hole that would have sucked her and her septuagenarian sell-out of a running mate into a permanent political oblivion that neither should have nor would have ever escaped from. BUT I digress/have too high of standards for the media and my fellow countrymen's intelligence.

I'm here to talk about Bolivia though. Bolivia is one of only two landlocked Latin American countries (the other, Paraguay, has access to the Paraná River, which continues down along the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay and into the Rio de la Plata out into the Atlantic Ocean, whereas Bolivia has no access to either Ocean), making it more or less dependent on its neighbors for the sake of import/export shiznit. Anywho, Bolivia is incredibly rich in natural resources, but fails to capitalize off of these in any real sense partially because of the government and partially because of the country's stark social divide.

Over half of Bolivia's population is indigenous, and the indigenous in Latin America are considered by most to be second-class citizens. My homestay mother (an upper-class Argentine) calls the poor indigenous "la gente fea," or "the ugly people," which is reflective of the attitude of the rich towards the poor in South America. Recently, the divide between the rich and the poor has gotten extreme in Latin American countries, and since the wealth has become more concentrated in the hands of few, the size of the impoverished working class has grown. This has led to the elections of far-left leaning Latin American presidents, notably Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, and Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva of Brazil. And, of course, Evo Morales of Bolivia. Morales is the first ever indigenous president of Bolivia, and rode into office promising reform and redistribution of wealth to the extremely poor.

Normally, these sort of promises are seen as a little extreme in a potential president, but Bolivia has been hit more than once by the nasty side of capitalism. An example:

Bolivia was recovering, like most South American countries, from a slew of military dictatorships that left the country in tatters in the 1980's. They were not doing well, and ended up having to depend on the World Bank for aid. The World Bank refused to renew a massive loan unless Bolivia privatized its water supplies. Bolivia was not in a position to refuse, so they allowed a consortium of private corporations, led by Bechtel Enterprise Holdings, to take over the maintenance of the water supplies for the Bolivian state of Cochabamba. They were required by the deal to improve the poor water supplies and pay down a $30 million debt in exchange for their ownership of the water supplies.

Ideally, this would have worked. It did not. The consortium raised water prices 35% to where the average water bill was $20 a month. Minimum wage in Bolivia ends up being around $70 a month, so this cost was higher than that of food. The consortium also tried to enforce a law that came with the deal that prohibited anyone other than the consortium from collecting rainwater.

Needless to say, this didn't go over well.

Because of the high levels of poverty and the lack of a safety net such as welfare in many of these Latin American countries, capitalism is not seen as an appealing option to many of the poor. Trickle-down economics hasn't really worked here, as the multinational corporations usually have the upper-end when bargaining with the government and tend to squeeze the countries for whatever they've got. This isn't a judgment on capitalism, it's just how it's viewed by the poor down here. So naturally they tend to elect more Socialist leaders like Morales and Chavez. The only government in power right now that could be called "conservative" in South America is Alvaro Uribe's, of Colombia, and this is mostly because the country needed a more autocratic president to crush the massive Marxist/drug lord rebellion led by FARC. He's been pretty successful, so he's doing well.

Politics in Latin America is a lot different than it is in the United States. If you watch Hugo Chavez speak, you'll notice that he's a self-important windbag most of the time (such as his referring to George W. Bush as "the devil" in the United Nations or telling the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela to "go to hell 100 times."). He is very image-conscious and uses his anti-American rhetoric largely for the sake of his own popularity. Making sweeping broad statements about leading a socialist revolution in Latin America are usually for his own sake, much like the Bush clan broadly painting all opponents as "evildoers" or "enemies of freedom" who are directly opposed to American autonomy, or, to be fair, like Barack Obama's riding into the Democratic nomination largely off of vague promises of "change," "hope." But Chavez tends to be more bark than bite, and has been known to admit he takes things "too far" occasionally. Nonetheless, relations between the U.S. and the left-leaning South American countries are at an all-time low, a lot of the time because of the U.S.'s pushing of free trade agreements (some of the leftist governments aren't opposed to free trade per se, but the U.S. has been known to cheat by providing huge agricultural subsidies to its farmers, while hypocritically enforcing the free trade agreements that forbid the other countries to do the same), and a lot of the time because of Chavez's insistence on buddying up with sworn U.S. enemies like Fidel Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Vladimir Putin.

If you were to look at Latin American views of American politics, they usually like Barack Obama. Pretty much no one likes George Bush. Down here most opinions of Obama are largely based off of his race. If they don't like him, as some upper-class Argentine's have expressed, it's because he is black (If you ever want to see a place that could be described as "fascist friendly," come to Buenos Aires), or because they fully expect him to be assassinated BECAUSE of his race. If they DO like him, it's because he's a Morales-like figure of the racially-disadvantaged underdog taking on the status quo and making promises of actually considering them in his policies. But this is based less off of what they've heard about him and more on his race.

These are pretty sweeping statements, obviously, but it's interesting to see McCain frame himself as a maverick underdog back home, where HERE the possibility of seeing the old white male Republican as an underdog is absolutely inconceivable.

One interesting part of Latin American politics is the lack of uniformity between administrations. Here in Argentina, the common practice is to totally scrap every policy set into place by the previous, usually opposition government. This makes things pretty unstable from administration to administration, and if you look at the economic history of Argentina, it's pretty checkered. It's a good bet that serious economic problems will be hitting once every ten years or so, such as the economic crisis of 2001, which saw massive hyperinflation and political unrest that pushed Argentina through five successive presidents in two weeks. My Argentina and Globalization professor explains this as "every President in Argentina thinks he or she is the messiah, here to save us all."

When you look at the political divide in America, in contrast to Latin America, it's pretty small. Republicans and Democrats hate each other a lot of the time, but usually, they agree that Free Trade capitalism is the way to go, and they don't junk every policy of the preceding administration (as wise as that may be in 2009, cough cough).

The problem with a lot of these Latin American governments is that they're divided between two extremes. The one extreme, which borders on fascism, supports ONLY the upper class. This side tends to totally disregard all of the rights and needs of the poor and focuses solely on rising the GDP (which it should be noted, is NOT the same as GDP per capita). Sometimes, they succeeded, but usually the results were only short term successes that led to future economic collapses. The upper class in Latin America is extremely rich, and, from my experience, tends to be pretty elitist and/or racist.

On the other hand, you have Evo Morales or Chavez (or, in Argentina, the ghosts of Juan and Evita Peron), who focus solely on the lower class, and tend to completely screw over the upper and middle class. Sometimes this takes the form of forceful land and wealth redistribution or nationalization of gas and oil industries. Morales has to different degrees done all of these things. Arguably, this is fair, as the people that are meant to benefit from it have been oppressed for centuries, but this is almost always disastrous for the economy. A lot of South and Central American countries depend on foreign investment, and when a new president starts nationalizing industries and seizing assets, the investors understandably pull their money out, which leads to an economic crisis, and then probably a change of government, which then starts the whole cycle again.

There really isn't much of a sense of unity. All sides in Argentina are totally committed to their homeland, but no one seems to agree on what the homeland IS. To my homestay mother, Juan Peron was a Nazi, but the military junta that ruled from 1976-1983 and "disappeared" 30,000 people, including high schoolers and innocent academics, was just doing it's job. To a Peronist living in La Boca, the junta was the sworn enemy of all humankind, but Peron can be forgiven for looking to Hitler and Mussolini for inspiration (and acting as such). This double standard seems to exist everywhere, and it seems like its roots are embedded in race, ethnicity, class, favorite soccer team, etc., etc. But the rich won't recognize that the rights of the working class, and the working class won't recognize the rights of the rich. And you need both sides to effectively run an economy. At least, you know, until someone figures the whole Marxism thing out.

Hell, I've written a lot. This is my perception of what it's like down here, as I see it now, and as far as I can tell, all of my facts are correct. Feel free to point out any mistakes I've made. I'm not going to prescribe any solution to South America's massive problems, because I'm not that good, not that self-righteous, and feel like I've written too much already. As far as I can tell, though, the problems they face here have the same root as those I faced trying to get people interested in Amnesty back at Penn State: a basic apathy towards or a willful denial of the humanity of anyone different than themselves. Ubuntu, man, ubuntu.

El Tur

2008-09-15T22:50:00.002-05:00

The big event of the trip was our tour on the second day. We shelled out a hundred bucks each, so it ended up being the majority of the cost of the tip, so it better have been the highlight. We woke up at 6:30 and drank some coffee before our van came to pick us up. Our guide, Gonzalo, was pretty cool, and had a lot to say about the landscape. I liked Gonzalo, but had difficulty communicating with him, as my Spanish has reached a plateau. I can understand relatively well, but I still can't speak worth a damn.

The first thing we did was leave the city of Salta to make our way into the mountains. I don't know exactly what mountain range it was, but I think it had "Sierras" in it. It was pretty. We watched the sunrise over the mountains and then went to the a train bridge over a canyon to take pictures. The train was the famous "Train through the Clouds," which we could've done at a slightly higher price. It's known for being one of the most scenic routes in South America.

Here's the bridge.

We walked out onto the bridge to take pictures, and I started thinking "Aw, this is such a Stand By Me moment!" and then thought it would only be better if we were being chased to the end of the bridge by an oncoming train. I began walking back to solid ground when an emergency car wheeled around the nearest corner, honking like mad. I thought he must've been warning whoever was around the corner - the roads were very windy and were on guard-rail-free mountainsides, so it wasn't a stupid idea - until I heard Celine, one of our group members, screaming behind me. I was already back off the bridge and off the tracks, so I turned and looked back. There was the train, coming around the bend and onto the bridge. With the other six members of my group still halfway across.

I thought this was amusing and pulled out my camera for a few snapshots, when I realized that the train was moving pretty fast.

Daniel was out on the bridge at the time. They were running in a single file, and couldn't safely pass. Caitlin had misjudged the speed of the train and was walking - "What? It's not going that fast. Why are you screaming?" - and Daniel was second to last in line. The woman behind him was holding onto his shirt saying "Don't go faster, don't go faster, I'm scared!"

"Oh, that's great," he said to me later, "So if I ditch her, that makes ME the dick."

They all made it off alive, and with a decent amount of room to spare. Suck it, River Phoenix.

After that, we went further into the mountains to where the sun finally broke through. There was a small town, secluded from all else, sitting in a valley. It was mostly indigenous. We ate lunch there and then walked around. Here's all I've got from there:

After this, we drove through the desert for about an hour before coming upon a pack of llamas, which we jumped out to take pictures with (getting a llama to stand still is hard, and this took really long). Then we went to the Salt Flats. I don't know how I can describe them better than their name, so here are some pictures:

Despues, we went to Jujuy and the mountain of Seven Colors. It's what it sounds like. We puttered around the market, bought souvenirs for the family, and then drove for two and a half hours through the fog to Salta. For the last half hour, the road got bumpy, and by the end, I had to pee worse than I ever have before. This was like, couldn't-stand had to pee. I didn't embarrass myself, though. I found a bathroom. That's all I'll say about that.

Salta!

2008-09-15T22:37:00.005-05:00

This weekend I went to Salta, which is in the Northwest of Argentina. It's a much drier place, and for the most part, is surrounded by desert. Here's what it looks like:

Yeah, I know. Pretty city-ish, huh?

It's a very colonial town, and has a much different feel than Buenos Aires. The hardcore Christianity present in most Latin American countries is much more noticeable (it seemed like the churches outnumbered the kioscos), and the men are a little bit less subtle than the porteños when it comes to checking out the ladies. As if that were possible. Since i went on a trip with one other guy and five girls, I once again had that lovely old feeling from Brazil and South Africa on SAS: If shit goes down, I'm gonna have to protect these girls. If shit goes down, I'm gonna die.

Fortunately, that didn't happen. The first day we went to a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant for lunch where the men at the two tables behind us turned their chairs around to check out the girls. As we were leaving, I accidentally broke a plate. It felt like that scene in the western where the stranger walks into the saloon and everyone gets quiet. But that was probably the closest I came to a Jet/Shark style knife fight, (though to be fair, I wasn't close at all, and a fellow traveler had a MUCH closer call which I have not been permitted to share here), so overall, the trip was wonderful.

That afternoon, we attempted to go paragliding. When you paraglide, you go to a windy mountain top, get your parachute in the air, and then jump off the mountain.

(A small side note: In Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums he has this revelation that he keeps running through his head: "You can't fall off a mountain!" This is not true Jack. This is not true at all. Keep popping those bennies.)

Then you go up into the air, spin around a bunch, look in terror at the city miles below, land back on the mountains, and go relieve the contents of your bowels in a nearby bush that you soon find to be typically reserved for goats. The wind is strong enough to blow you up higher than the mountain, so it's no problem landing where you started. Usually.

On the first day, it was REALLY windy. So windy that it was actually impossible for one of our group members to land. We figured it was because she was blonde and the guy controlling the chute wanted to give her a special Yanqui ride. This was (probably) not the case. They ended up not being able to land on the mountain, and instead landed in the city below. In a slum. The chute was gone, so we got our money back, and then drove down the mountain to pick them up.

Two days later, the rest of my group had gone out for a jungle tour, but I, in the interest of conserving money for my planned trip to Iguazzu Falls, instead decided to try paragliding again. On the way up the mountain, our Jeep stopped. Our driver got out, and said, "Yeah, the road collapsed. They say they'll have it cleaned up in two hours."

So we sat there for two hours. And then drove to the top. This day, it was not windy at all. So I got my money back again. It seems some force on heaven or earth does not want me to jump of a cliff. Que lastima.

I don't have any other stories about the town itself, just the tour on the second day. Oh, it took 21 hours by bus to get there. Did I mention that? That's a lot of bus time. That's a lot of ANYTHING time. I spend it reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I'll post a review of that later. But the thought that stuck with me throughout the book was "Wow, this woman must've been an unbearable shrew in real life." I'm sure she'd take that as a compliment.

Anywho, what else? Oh yeah, the last night, we went to dinner at a nice restaurant where we got all-you-can-drink champagne for 4 pesos each ($1.33) and a delicious parilla for $22 pesos ($7). A parilla is basically a sampler plate of all the parts of a cow. I have now had cow intestine, cow stomach, cow tongue, blood sausage (which actually is just straight-up, mushy coagulated blood wrapped in a sausage skin), cow kidney, chorizo, ribs, steak, and what could've been an innocent sausage, but also possibly a cow testicle. I'm told I was short-changed and should also have been given an udder.

Here are some pictures of downtown Salta:

That last church was having a service at the time, and the President of Paraguay was there. We saw him. It was marginally cool.

Cool Picture I Took in Salta

2008-09-15T19:09:00.001-05:00

Meet the Candidates

2008-09-09T19:34:00.000-05:00

Jon Stewart is THE Greatest Man in America. I am Not in Any Way Joking

2008-09-08T23:39:00.003-05:00

Oh, it warms the cockles of my heart.

Pictures!

2008-09-07T19:52:00.006-05:00

I realize I've been kind of lax about posting pictures of B.A. I just don't ever think to grab my camera when I walk out the door. I promise to change this habit eventually and take some pictures of Recoleta (the part of town I live in), because it's gorgeous. But until then, for those of you without facebook, I'm going to load some pictures my friends have posted that prove that I've been here at least.

Er... um, yeah, actually, that's not proof of me in Argentina. It's just proof that Megan Monahan (of SAS fame) has far too much free time. That would've been a good look for me, no?

That's me on the SECOND horse, not the infamous gaucho. Very Clint Eastwood, no?

This is me at the wine-tasting with Celine (center) and Yukari (right).

Hm. Thought there were more than that. Anyway, I'll keep posting as they come.

Comida en Argentina

2008-09-07T19:03:00.005-05:00

Comida means "food" in Spanish, and since I haven't written anything in a while, I've received a request from Allyn to talk about the food here:

It's delicious. That's all I've got.

No, but seriously, it's pretty good. Argentines are meat eaters. I don't know how you could survive as a vegetarian down here, and fortunately, I have no reason to try. The red meat here is about as cheap as chicken, usually cheaper, so there's no reason not to order it with nearly every meal until you're three weeks in and realize that you can actually FEEL the difference in your blood pressure and suffer two or three minor heart attacks. Then you start looking for alternatives.

Most of the red meat is organic, so it's safer to eat, and infinitely more delicious than the average U.S. steak. In my first two weeks here, I'd already topped the former record holders for "Best Steak" and "Best Ribs" I had ever had. Most of the meat they eat here is beef (surprisingly, their burgers aren't that good), but they also serve pork and chicken and chorizo (a type of blood sausage) asada-style, which means they bring it out on a big metal spike and slice it off right there for you. They don't do a TON of seasoning, so the taste relies almost entirely on the meat, which I think has something to do with why it's so good.

Salads are hard to come by. Or, more accurately, salads WITHOUT meat in them. Usually they toss an egg or some ham and cheese or some chicken in there with it, so you still can feel the kidney stones forming as you eat. The dressing is usually just olive oil and vinegar, which I prefer. So you don't get the ranch fattyness, you get that from the two pounds of meat you eat.

Then there's the pasta. They eat pasta here, but more often than not they eat Gnocchi instead. It seems that the two staples of Argentine cooking are cows and potatoes. I think I've had some variety of these two things in every meal I've had since being here.

The pizza here is pretty mediocre as well. They tend to go too light on the tomato sauce and too heavy on the cheese. There's no equivalent to Papa John's or LaRosa's, so you normally end up feeling incredibly greasy after a single slice. Actually, it's probably like that for LaRosa's or Papa John's, but here it's that disturbing familiar feeling-your-arteries-clogging type of greasy. So I've gotten into the habit of avoiding the pizza.

No, where the real awesomeness of Argentine food lies is in the snack foods. Particularly:

Empanadas. Empanadas are rolled up pastries with ground beef, ham and cheese, vegetables, corn pudding, or whatever else they decide to put inside. Personally, I'm a beef man. They're more of a snack food than anything else, something to hold you over, but it's really hard to only have one, particularly since they're one of the cheaper foods in the city, at an average of $1 each or less. They're also the one food you can find in absolutely every restaurant in the city. That and ham and cheese.

The two most popular dessert foods are dulce de leche and alfajores. Dulce de leche is essentially caramel, but slightly creamier, like a spread. You can put it on anything - they have dulce de leche Oreo's here - or you can just eat it straight up with a spoon.

Then there are alfajores, which is a layer of dulce de leche sandwiched between cookie-sized bits of cake, all covered in either white or dark chocolate.

They're 1 peso, or about 30 cents, a pop, and they're ridiculously good. And they're sold at the maxikioscos, which are small convenience shops for buying drinks or candy or sandwiches on about every block of the city. So a lot of the time, when I need a treat or change for the colectivo (the buses that run throughout the city), I go buy an alfajor.

Then there are the drinks. With the exception of mate, they are all the same, for the most part. Most of the local beer sucks. They usually only drink light beer here, and I'm into the beers that have a bit more flavor. The wine, however, makes up for it in cheapness and quality. I bought a bottle of wine last night for as much as it would've cost me to get a liter of beer from the same bar. Good deal.

The other drink thing I had to get used to was the no-free-refills on Coke thing. We Americans drink soft drinks quite fast, so when I got tired of paying for three Cokes a meal, I decided to drink slower. Water's a pain here too, because they don't automatically provide it with the meals. If you order it, unless you make it clear you don't want mineral water and don't want it carbonated, you will likely be getting expensive sparkling bottled water. You have to specifically ask for "una copa de agua, NO mineral," and then they usually give you tap water. Which is safe down here, but not that refreshing.

Then, of course, there's mate. I think I've already written about mate (pronounced "MAH-tay"), so I won't go too far into what it is, but I've come up with a new way to describe it. It's basically tea (with different herbs). To drink it, you put the leaves in the gourd (you drink it out of a gourd) without a bag, then stick a special straw with a filter on the drink end into the leaves, then pour warm water in. This makes it stronger, and I would imagine it's a similar taste to sucking tea straight out of the teabag. Also, it's supposed to HELP your digestive system rather than destroy it. That's cool.

Overall, I grade Argentine food thusly:

MEAT: A+
DESSERT: A
VARIETY: D
SNACKS: A
SALADS: C
FRUITS: C+
VEGGIES: B

Derechos Humanos!

2008-09-03T23:47:00.003-05:00

Last week as part of my Human Rights class, we went down to Plaza de Mayo and visited the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. This is a group of mothers of the disappeared from the Dirty War in Argentina from 1976-1983.

We got to sit there while one of the founding members of the Madres described how her son and daughter were taken from her house in the middle of the night at gunpoint and were never heard from again. Her daughter was a sociologist. Her son was a student at Universidad de Buenos Aires.

After a few months of frantically trying to get word on her children, she joined a newly formed group of mothers of the disappeared which would become Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a group which would spearhead the campaign to end disappearances and, once the Dirty War was over, to hold those responsible accountable for their actions. The Generals (who, I should add, were ignored by the Carter White House and actively supported by the Reagan White House. It should also be noted that two of the Generals who ruled Argentina during this era were graduates of the School of the America's, the terrorist training school your tax dollars pay for in Fort Benning, Georgia) who ran the junta issued a widespread amnesty upon leaving power to all involved in the disappearances, and it wasn't until recently (in the past 10 years) that the amnesty was lifted and the Generals began to be tried by the Argentine courts, thanks in large part to the Mothers.

Then THIS week we went to the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. The Abuelas, or Grandmothers, have an entirely different mission. When people were disappeared, it wasn't uncommon for the government to take their children with them. So if a young child was taken, or if a pregnant mother was taken, the child would be "appropriated" to pro-government families or members of the military. Problem was, their grandparents knew they still existed. So when word came that their children were dead, the grandmothers diverted their energies to finding the grandchildren through investigatory processes and DNA tests. Around 50 children have been reunited with their real family and have resumed their identity.

It should be noted that when we talked to all these people, all of their Spanish was being translated through Patrick Rice, our professor, who himself was one of the disappeared (though, as a foreigner, he was deported, rather than killed, after they tortured him).

Most of the disappeared were not rebels or extremists. Most were student activists. They say that most of the students taken were activists between the ages of 15 and 22. This means, had this happened in OUR country, I would have been disappeared, all of my Amnesty Officers would have been disappeared, all of the United Students Against Sweatshops members, the Students for Justice in Palestine members, the Eco-Action members, the Invisible Children folks, and pretty much anyone else with a leftist slant or anything that could be construed as anti-establishment (which includes many of my fellow journalists at the Daily Collegian), would have been disappeared.

While listening to all this, my mind went back to an argument I remember my parents having over dinner once about the Holocaust. My mother made a comment along the lines "It could happen anywhere," and my father disagreed. I see both their points and am unsure who I agree with still. Dad was saying that the United States is not in a situation in which it could conduct a genocide to the extent of the Holocaust. My mother was saying that we are CAPABLE of allowing it, and after being here, I have to agree. Dad's right: The United States is blessed with a relatively effective form of government. It may have its flaws, but by and large, it is extremely effective. And this government is designed in such a way that prevents any one person to ever gain the power to have total say over everything. When we watched the coup in Thailand 2 years ago, it seemed inconceivable that a military could overthrow a government (with two tanks, no less!). It's just something we don't have to worry about, so long as George Bush (and more importantly, Dick Cheney, who has done more to consolidate presidential power than anyone else ever) leaves in January.

But Mom is right too. Not that it could happen in the U.S. right now, but that we are capable of allowing it. Look at Guantanamo. In fact, we have ALLOWED our government to arrest civilians, take them to secret detention centers, and torture them under the vague excuse that they are working with the terrorists. This is the common defense of the Dirty War in Argentina. That all 30,000 disappeared were terrorists. At home, it's more believable that we've only taken guilty people. But take the case of Sami al Hajj, the cameraman for the legitimate (and actually quite good) news source al-Jazeera, who was abducted and imprisoned for 6 years in Guantanamo. Or the 9 Uighur Muslims from western China who the Bush Administration admitted had been detained by mistake, yet have not yet been released after 5 years in Gitmo.

Then look at our silence on Darfur. It's incredible how long it takes people to figure this out. I'll put it in college student terms. When you go home to live with your parents, how do you keep them from driving you crazy? You be PLEASANT to them. You do nice things, you take care of them, and in turn, they will take care of you and respect you. This extends to your friends. You backstab a friend, they'll backstab you. If you litter and pollute in your town or city, it will become a less pleasant place to live. If you ignore the inner city schools in favor of your upper-class suburban ones, then you can expect their to be social decay in the inner cities: increased crime, increased drug trafficking. If you don't contribute to your country in a constructive way, it will add - just a little bit - to the fall of the economy, to the loss of rights. If you don't hold your representatives accountable for meaningless pork-barrel, your taxes will get hiked. And if you don't take care of the countries around you, it'll come back to bite your country in the ass.

I am not a person to place blame on the United States for the mistakes made around the world by other countries, and the responsibility of 9/11 can only be placed on those who organized it and carried it out. But look at this: al-Qaeda was based in the Sudan in the 90's. During this time, the government in Khartoum was executing policies in Southern Sudan similar to those being done in Darfur today. The Sudanese were also, at the same time, going through a horrendous famine. But they were ignored by the west. Had we - and ALL the countries of the world, responsibility for everything doesn't fall solely on U.S. shoulders - paid attention to what was going on there and put it to an end, there's a good chance we would have disrupted al-Qaeda's operations in doing so. You do good and good comes back to you. It's not a matter of responsibility, it's a matter of self-preservation, on a personal level, a family level, a nationwide level, a species level, and a planetary level. We can't exist without one another, and if we continue to ignore each other, we'll keep seeing dirty wars and massacres and genocides and we'll shake our heads at the end of each one and say "Never again," as the world crumbles beneath our feet.

The Last Blog Was Not Mine

2008-09-03T17:49:00.002-05:00

Hey All,

So I didn't almost get robbed, my roommate Cane did. His computer broke last week, so he's been using mine till he gets it fixed and/or goes home. So he got onto blogspot to post on HIS blog and forgot that it wasn't signed into his and posted it to MY blog. He told me about it and I came back to delete it, but then I read it and thought it was pretty good story, so if he doesn't object, I'm keeping it on. But for the record it was written by and happened to Cane West, so there that is.

Matt

People are nice but this society sometimes brings out the worst in people. at least as far as it seems.

2008-09-03T14:27:00.002-05:00

There is a term here called "viveza criolla". I guess it means creol cleverness or something. Anyway, it is the actual name of the way of life here in which people take advantage of others, particularly foreigners, to the extent that they take what they can within what is within the furthest stretch of the law. From inflated prices, to not saying everything, to not including some things that will have to be paid for later. This is an entry based on my frustrations with this way of living.

Alright, so last night I might have been assualted on the street. I was walking back from class alone, in a sketchy neighborhood, trying to get to my bus stop when a guy came up on the street. I was in the 50 yard long area in which there was very little light. At first there wasnt anything amiss, but then he was about 10 feet away and I felt him angle towards me. I moved closer to the building, which I think, ironically, was a sex hotel for prostitutes. Anyway, he pushed me against the wall and said ¨da me tu bolsa" (give me your bag). All I could think to say was "no lo tengo." (I dont have it.) So he kept on saying that and that and that he wanted my money. All I could think to say was that I didnt have it. Then he asked me for money and I said I had none, and then he asked "hablas ingles" and I just kept on talking in spanish. Then he motioned forward with his other arm and I looked down, and he was pointing his pocket at me as if he had a gun. I had a split second where I thought he might actually have one. I really thought I might get shot but I kept on looking and it just seemed to me like he had a fist and nothing else. So I took a chance, and kept on refusing. Then I shouted and moved away from him "no lo tengo, por favor!" and since I was about to make a scene, he said "da me el bolso, puto" and then kicked me and jogged away. Well I was shaken up, and I thought I saw him get in a car, so I was scared because I didnt know if he actually had a gun in there and would come back. so I walked quickly towards the light, and then was hoping I might make it to my stop. Well, I heard a car come up, and I was thinking it was him and he was going to shoot me from his car. Well, it was a cabby, but I was still unsure, and I thought that he might somehow be involved in the whole deal. But the guy asked me what happened, I stumbled around saying that the guy had tried to rob me and pretended he had a gun. I just took the cab for home, but I was really nervous, because it is a very sketchy part of town, I didnt trust anyone in that moment, and he didnt take the left for my house. I finally asked him to take a left and not take me away from my house. But I was very shaken. The cabby was the first truly nice person Ive met here because he was the first person not to try to get money out of me. I paid 10 pesos, which is about half the price of the trip, and just thanked him alot. So I woke up this morning just so frustrated with the country and how it treats people. I mean, individuals are nice and very friendly, but the society just pisses me off sometimes. I mean, within 10 minutes of arriving in the country, I got in a taxi, from a very nice guy, for which he didnt put on his meter, i didnt know to ask, and I paid 60 pesos more than I should have. When Im hungry, my host mom tells me to buy more at lunch, which is when I pay, cuz I think she doesnt want to spend as much money. The guy at the tango store who gave me the "foreigner price" of 30% more than locals pay. The waitress who took her tip when she gave back change by just keeping some of it. The organizacion that tries to get a little more from some of the programs that they set up. And, finally, of course this guy that tried to rob me. Im a little disenchanted right now.

Argentina at Night

2008-09-01T22:08:00.000-05:00

I realize I haven’t spent much time on the nightlife here, and the reason for that is that I haven’t spent much time IN the nightlife here... apparently, it’s one of the defining characteristics of Buenos Aires, but I’ve been having some trouble adjusting to it for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is that it’s really late. At Penn State, we’ve started our night by 9 or 10 o’clock, the craziness happens after midnight, and by 2 or 3, we’re making our way back for pizza or Fat Bitches (Fat Bitches, for those who don’t know, are a delicious 10,000 calorie sandwich served at two different places late in the night at Penn State).

In Buenos Aires, the clubs start going at 2 a.m. This means that you pretty much have to take a nap from 8-10, eat dinner till midnight, drink some mate for the caffeine, and then head out. I haven’t been able to go past 4 in the morning yet, and the typical end of the night in B.A. is... well, the end of the night. So most people make it back around 6 or 7 a.m.

I have never been this crazy, and my way of partying differs from the Argentine way. Argentines are much healthier than Americans in their alcohol consumption. They don’t get hammered (most of the time), they MAY have a drink or two, but they really don’t get anything beyond buzz. This undoubtedly helps with their ability to stay awake later into the night, and it is probably partially a result of the high cost of alcohol, which, though not especially expensive, is certainly no cheaper than in the United States.

I have no problem with this, but the Argentines LOVE to dance. And they dance like you’re supposed to dance, arm around waist, other hand holding the girls, doing steps and stuff, whereas I’m used to the popular form of dancing among the American youth, which is to say grinding. Grinding requires a sense of rhythm and really nothing else, whereas DANCING requires some sort of confidence and a basic knowledge of how to move your feet. I do not have either of these. Or, I should say, I DO have the confidence and can fake the knowledge if I’ve had enough to drink. But, ironically, that amount of alcohol makes me sleepy, and thus prevents me from spending a significant amount of time “out,” thus sending me home at 3 or 4 a.m.

Another problem is this: Argentine guys are aggressive. They basically go up to a girl and start dancing with her before she has a choice as to whether or not she WANTS to dance with them, and they take a similar approach to making a move (have I mentioned that B.A. has a TON of P.D.A.?). So the girls are in the habit of making absolutely no move at all, and just waiting to be hit on.

I do not “hit” well. My area of expertise is in the realm of conversation, where I can actually get to know someone and, if I’m lucky, make them laugh. The sense of humor has always been my best attribute in terms of my ability to pick up girls, and it’s impossible to make clever jokes over the sound of a reggaeton baseline. So going up to girls and just dancing with them – and dancing WELL – is not something I’m particularly keen to do.

Back home my strategy for dancing has always been to never start dancing until you have someone to dance with. This past summer, that was never a problem, as there were usually as many or more girls than guys, and I was comfortable dancing with them, since they’d all gone through the trouble to boost my confidence with the white lie that I was a good dancer. AND they were willing to have fun with the dancing: One night, Gibbs took the trouble to try and bring a shy, non-dancing girl out her shell and was subsequently told by a black girl that “DAMN, you got moves!” which he took as the greatest compliment ever, and another night, while trying to show off, I “dipped” Paulina, smacking her head into a banister. Point being, for me to be able to dance with a girl I have to be comfortable enough with her to know that she’ll still dance with me after I’ve made a total fool out of myself and/or done bodily harm to her.

So the dance scene here might not entirely be my thing (though I WILL go out dancing should the club girls decide to come visit). So I’ve decided to focus more on music, which fortunately, there’s an abundance of here. Just the other night, while trying to find the Buenos Aires Pub Crawl and failing, we came across a sketchy loft apartment with a few porteños loitering at a ticket table outside. They offered us free admission to a rock show. We had no other plans so we went up, took advantage of the cheap beer and empanadas, and waited for the band, who we naturally assumed would suck. They did not. They were great. Then on Monday nights here there’s a Brazilian drumming concert which I have missed depsite numerous attempts to go, and on Thursdays, apparently there’s a pretty sick hip-hop club. So I’ll be back later with a more thorough report on the night-life of the Argentines.

Palin From Abroad!

2008-08-30T11:41:00.003-05:00

On Thursday night I went to a bar where the Expatriates in Buenos Aires were hosting a Democrats Abroad party for the final day of the Democratic National Convention. It was fun, partly because it was all Americans and the language of choice in the bar was English, partly because I met teachers in the B.A. American International school, and education is a field I've been toying with going into, and partly because Barack Obama, as is his routine, delivered an epic speech that more or less deflated every argument against him, if only for a few hours. It was cool being in the American political atmosphere for a few hours - without the attack ads or usual bullshit rhetoric.

The next morning I woke up to the announcement that Sarah Palin was John McCain's pick for VP, and I thought I would add my voice to the millions about how I feel about this.

First off, this is a landmark, in that all four of the candidates of the 2008 Presidential Campaign are actually likeable people. They all seem to have integrity and they all seem to care about what they do. So three cheers to that.

As for Palin, I'll start off with what I like about her. She's cracked down on corruption, even being willing to alienate members of her own party to crack down on corrupt practices, and she's obviously willing to strike down useless pork-barrel spending, and is clearly the type of person Washington desperately needs to clean things up.

That said, she is a truly horrific choice for Vice President. This isn't because of her beliefs or where she stands but because of her experience, or lack thereof. I know, many people will find this ironic coming from a Barack Obama supporter, but Obama has demonstrated that he has extensive knowledge of foreign policy, particularly in his prolonged opposition to the Iraq war. Furthermore, Obama has demonstrated that he is willing to enact an enlightened foreign policy of dialogue with America's friends AND enemies, which, though criticized by some, is the clear alternative to Bush's "We don't need your permission, screw off," approach to foreign policy.

He has also personally divested in Sudan-related stock and has called for divestment from Iranian stock (not the "soft" approach many suggest), and he's spoken out against the increase in our debt, and thus our dependence, to China. He's also a proponent for recognition of the Armenian genocide, something the U.S. has long ignored, and wants to step up the American presence - militarily and diplomatically - in Afghanistan, which, it should be pointed out, is the REAL source of our terrorism problems. In fact, the only part of his foreign policy that I consider particularly weak is his reactionary attitude towards the Israel-Palestine conflict. He's expressed some sympathy to the Palestinian people, but for the most part, he's hardcore pro-Israel. Which isn't a problem in itself, it's simply a denial of one-half of the problem. He's condemned Jimmy Carter for speaking with Hamas, saying "Hamas is not a state, it's a terrorist organization." It IS a state, Barack, Gaza democratically elected Hamas to power. I mean, it's a terrorist organization too, but keep in mind that, according to U.S. standards, it's a legitimate government.

Anywho, point being, I've been searching the internet for the past two days trying to find some sort of foreign policy positions of Sarah Palin's, and all I've got is that a) she wants a long term strategy in Iraq, and b) She wants to pursue energy independence by doing off-shore drilling. If someone else can find more information on this, I'd be grateful, because Google's search results are clogged up with a Fox commentator saying she has foreign policy experience because "Alaska is close to Russia." I'm not blaming this on her though, it just makes it hard to find any real policy positions of hers when I search. Though, according to Time, a LexisNexis search yields no results of Sarah Palin's foreign policy, and OnTheIssues.org, a site that lists all candidates POVs on the important issues, shows nothing for her under foreign policy.

The reason this is a huge problem is mostly because of John McCain. Until now, I haven't regarded the age argument a valid excuse for not wanting John McCain, as long as he had a capable VP, there would be no problem. And until now, foreign policy experience has not been a weakness of the McCain campaign (though his foreign policy positions are very much debatable). Now it is. McCain, at 72, is exactly 3.15 years away from reaching the average life expectancy of a U.S. male. And, while McCain is said to be in excellent health, he HAS had skin cancer in the past, and it has to be admitted that there is a risk that he could die of health problems sometime within his presidential term. Should this happen, it would place a profoundly inexperienced VP into the Presidential seat, and frankly, I do not think the U.S. or the world can take such a huge risk right now.

So why did John McCain choose Sarah Palin? The cynic in me says that a large part of the choice was because she is a woman. Her image as a pro-life crusader, while accurate, is not necessarily a kicker, because Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty would have had stronger pull with evangelical Christians. Her energy beliefs are shared by most Republicans, so that's not the kicker, and her image as an enemy of corruption, while impressive, wasn't really the focus of the McCain campaign up till now. The truth is, there are a bunch of angry Hillary Clinton fans who have ignored her support of Barack Obama and are looking for an excuse to vote for McCain. The problem here, of course, is that Hillary, regardless of what you think about her, worked her way to the top. She spent 8 very active years in the Clinton White House working on social programs and health care, and for the past 7 years, has accumulated an impressive record within the Senate. The fact that she's a woman has very little to do with her Presidential run itself. She was running because she was one of the most viable Democratic candidates.

Any deluded pseudo-feminist notions that it is "furthering the cause" to vote for McCain because he has a woman with him on the ticket is just as sexist as not voting for someone because she is a woman. Also, the pro-life stance isn't particularly in line with the feminist movement. It's a landmark that the United States needs to pass, yes, but it's not a landmark we should pass for the sole purpose of passing it.

No, what's disturbing about the choice of Palin is that she was almost certainly added to the ticket so McCain could pick up a few women and evangelical votes, rather than for her merits as a potential successor to the most important office in the world. They say the first important choice a President makes is his VP, and Obama's was a relatively safe, pretty impressive choice. Biden's got the experience and know-how to at least keep the country together for the remainder of a term should, God Forbid (and I can't express how upset I'd be if, as a LOT of the British, French, and Argentine down here seem to expect, Obama was assassinated. It would literally be soul-crushing), something were to happen to Obama. McCain's choice has shown that he's willing to risk the future of the country for the sake of picking up some extra votes.

I like John McCain as a person. I think he's a good guy who, outside of election season, stands by what he believes in and what's right. I particularly admire his willingness to buck the party and stand up against torture. But his VP decision suggests that, at least for this campaign, he does NOT, as his posters suggest, put "Country First."

Al Green Builds Up My Buttercup (Give Me Your Top 10 Songs!)

2008-08-27T19:04:00.003-05:00

I'm about to post a serious blog, one on activism and whatnot, but before I do that, I want to just make a quick mention of Al Green: He is the ultimate painkiller. I've had a massive headache for the past few days thanks to a lovely wintertime cold that congested my head to the point that, after blowing my nose, I couldn't depressurize my ears, which I fully believe would have resulted in my head blowing up if it had not been for "Let's Stay Together" and my subsequent downloading of the Album "Al Green's Greatest Hits."

I don't critique music on this blog because, when it comes to music, I'm a total Philistine. I mean, I love just about everything. I will shamelessly admit that I enjoy Miley Cyrus's "See You Again," and I don't mind pointing out that I have an extensive collection of Disney and Show Tunes Music (including the entire Moulin Rouge Soundtrack and "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" from Cinderella. Actually, I take back the "shamelessly" part, but I will admit it.), and that maybe 50% of the moments of my life that I would describe as "perfect" have come from Rolling Stones songs and occasionally Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's version of "Over the Rainbow/What A Wonderful World." Incidentally, I have 23 versions of "Over the Rainbow" on my computer. The best, aside from Iz's version, is Oliver Jones and Skip Bey's piano/acoustic bass rendition. Effin' sweet.

I understand musical elitism, I guess, it's cool to consider yourself a connoisseur of something and to be able to lecture people on the importance of the Altamont Free concert on the future of Rock 'n' Roll (hint: American Pie), but I haven't gotten snobby enough to refuse to listen to crap, and I've never had the enthusiasm to focus entirely on one genre. I go through phases, more or less. I've had Frank Sinatra phases (Best Song: "You Make Me Feel So Young") and Rage Against the Machine phases (Best Song: "Sleep Now in the Fire"), and have recently gotten into hip-hop (Ok, I know you really shouldn't give an entire genre a best song, but I'm gonna throw it to a tie between Common's "Be (Intro)" and M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes"). And it's tough to become an expert with such broad tastes.

The music taste, I believe, comes from a number of places. My dad's into classic rock and blues, so I heard lots of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Creedence growing up (one of my best iTunes playlists is made up solely of songs my dad introduced me to), and I consider one of the most important nights of my life to be the night when, while my mom and sisters were out of town, Dad and I drove to the movie rental store and, in the car, I listened to the Beatles for the first time, and then we got back and watched Terminator 2. It was an important night. Also, there was pizza. And probably tater tots.

Then, my second biggest music influence probably comes from my Aunt Rob (sorry Mom, you gave me CSN and the show tunes, which I still very much enjoy), who has pretty much every rock album ever released lining the walls of her basement. So she pushed the rock thing a little bit further - The Doors, The Stones, Elvis Costello, Duane Allman - until I, thoroughly obsessed with rock, realized that I was the only person my age listening to music from our parents generation.

The past couple of years I've been catching up on rap, punk, and 90's alt-grunge. If anyone ever tells you that there's no good music nowadays, they are either lying through their teeth, totally ignorant, or without taste. Listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Muse, Radiohead, the Foo Fighters and Ben Harper, then we'll talk.

Hmm... why am I still on what music I like? Sorry. Bit of a digression. Point is, Al Green's Greatest Hits is one of the best pain relievers I've ever experienced (especially when coupled with two Tylenol), and if you are short on good, funky-chill music, you should get it. Ok, onto the more serious blog...

(I just read High Fidelity, so I can't resist but put in my Top Five Songs of All Time, in no particular order:

1) "Gimme Shelter" by the Rolling Stones
2) "Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)" by the Hollies
3) "There There" by Radiohead
4) "Stuck Inside of Mobile (With the Memphis Blues Again)" by Bob Dylan
5) "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning" by The Smashing Pumpkins

This is TODAY'S top five of all time, it could change, and I threw on the last one because it's recent. I'll give honorable mentions to another five because I feel guilty not putting them on there: "Paper Planes" by M.I.A., "Butterflies and Hurricanes" by Muse, "Sparks" by Coldplay, "Elias" by Dispatch, and "Lola" by the Kinks. Christ, now I've got another five. I won't burden you though. I didn't put any double-artists on here because that'd be unfair, but I have a couple of Stones and Dylan songs in my top ten. Hey, fun thing for anyone who's read this far: Comment on my blog! What are your top 10 favorite songs of all time? You can put whatever you want, but ONLY 10 songs. And make sure you sign who you are, I don't want a bitchin' list by anonymous. And don't feel ashamed about whatever you write. Just remember that I put "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" on the world-wide-web. Go!)

Classes

2008-08-25T16:28:00.002-05:00

Ok, so by this point on my SAS I'd be in South Africa right now. How effing weird is that? Pretty effing weird.

Point being, time moves slower on this trip (I feel like I've been here for quite a long time, but it still seems to be moving rather fast), particularly because I'm not jetting off to some new remote location every weekend or sharing dining rooms with Nobel Laureates. No, this is the typical abroad experience, the one where you actually get to know a culture rather than being thrown into it and plucked out before really sinking into it.

So free time is significantly more abundant here; about in as high supply as back at Penn State, though free time is less free here (there's no HUB or top deck for me to chill on as of yet, I'm still looking) since I seem to be spending much more than I would've thought.

If you've been reading the blog for this entire time, you might be surprised to hear that I am just now entering my second week of classes. IES (our program) thought it would be a good idea to give us a full two weeks of orientation rather than just throwing us in and forcing us to adjust or die, like in SAS. I have to say I prefer the hit-the-ground-running technique, the time I spend the least wisely is the time I have to myself. I've read three books in the past three weeks, written lots and lots, downloaded TONS of music, and have slowly learned exactly to what extent I could arrange my room to my own liking (the answer: not at all. If I leave the apartment for five minutes to go buy a sandwich, my room is immediately and completely cleaned and reorganized. While it's comforting to live in such a clean environment, it's wreaking havoc on my ability to psychologically cope with setting a book down for three seconds. I can pretty much guarantee it will not be there when I get back, and for the love of god, I don't even have a bookmark! And Mom, take a chill pill, I'm not being a complete slob. For the love of god, I'm actually making my bed for the first time in 5 years).

But classes: I'm only taking four, 15 credits to finish off my college career. They shouldn't be too tough, but they all seem kind of interesting, so I'll go through them. And yes, I know this is boring for you, but suck it up, this is just a sacrifice you make by reading my blog.

1) Cultural Icons... This is basically about Argentine cultural icons and how the rest of the world perceives them. Think Evita and Che Guevara. This should be a fun class, mostly because the professor is... uh, I don't know what he is really. When he came in last week, I got the impression that he was feeling REALLY good. Like I-just-took-ecstasy-and-can't-stop-rubbing-myself good. He started explaining why Argentine's like P.D.A. so much ("It's not really because we don't have anywhere else to do it... it's just that we kind of get a kick out of doing it in public. Having people watch is awesome.").

Then he went on to talk about the economy crash in 2001.
"Yes, it was a very bad time for us... but it was also pretty cool."
Someone raised their hand. "Um, cool? How was it cool?"
"Well," he said, "have YOU ever found a better place to pick up woman than a protest? I mean, god, there's an entire generation turning 7 this year because their parents hooked up in Plaza de Mayo."

Should be a fun class.

2) Globalization and its Impact on Latin America. I don't think I need to explain this much beyond the title. But it will interest me, though I'll have to sit in the second row or further back every class. The professor is the sweatiest man on earth.

3) Human Rights. This class should be awesome. The professor is a former Irish Catholic Priest missionary (to be clear, he's formerly a priest, not formerly Irish) who was captured, tortured, and deported by the Argentine government during the Dirty War. He's a big human rights activist and a bunch of the stuff we're doing in class is field trips, which should be sick.

4) Spanish. Obviously. Though it's one of the main reasons for my being here, I'm pretty sure this class is gonna suck. They're teaching us the alphabet which, bad as my Spanish is, is a bit below my current level of speaking. Oh well.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna eat dinner and then go watch the Democratic National Convention at a bar. Because I'm cool like that.

Olympic Football in Sketchy Places

2008-08-24T12:39:00.004-05:00

Argentines love their football (and by football I mean soccer, but when in Rome). Their fans have been known to be violent at times, especially against Brazil or Britain, so naturally, when the Argentine Olympic team made it into the Gold Medal match against Nigeria, we all decided to head out to a sports bar to watch the game at 1 in the morning.

Everyone suggested the bar "Locos por Futbol" (Crazy for Soccer), so we went there two hours early to grab a table, but a bouncer in a turtleneck told us it was reservation only, so we set off in search of a bar with a TV playing the game. This was not hard. Two blocks away, we found a bar lit exclusively by black lights playing 80's-style techno with about 5 TVs turned to the Olympic Channel. This seemed as good as any other bar, so we went in and grabbed a table.

We sat at our table and Daniel pointed to a woman at the bar and said, "THAT'S a working girl." It was a woman dressed in rather skimpy sluttish clothes, and as if to confirm our suspicions, she walked over to a group of foreign businessmen and began flirting.

It was around then that we realized there were lots of girls in the bar - and pretty much all of them were dressed like the working girl. And pretty much all of them were hitting on the foreign businessmen.

"Christ," I thought, "I'm not paying for more champagne."

As the bar began to fill up, more and more prostitutes filtered in of varying levels of attractiveness until finally OUR prostitute - the one from my whores article came in, spotted us, and gave us big kisses on the cheek, asking us how we were liking Buenos Aires. I, once again, was not much able to keep up with her Spanish (though I now blame part of it on the bassline), so I didn't really talk, and eventually she left and thankfully told her fellow workers that we were not a profitable venture. Another tip for those of you who find it in your interest to avoid the attentions of whores: travel with groups of girls.

Around 12:30, three woman got up on stage and put on an elaborate show singing, in perfect English, Celine Dion and mid-90's pop songs. Such perfect English, in fact, that after a few minutes we realized they were lip-syncing ever last bit of it.

By the time the game started, the bar was packed with mostly older men, a few couples, and lots of whores.

The last particularly sketchy part of the night for me was using the restroom. It's not uncommon for restrooms to have condom dispensers in them here, so that didn't surprise me, but to get to it, you had to walk up two flights of stairs. At the top, there were three places for you to go: the men's room, the women's room, and a sketchy hallway that appeared to be lined with bedroom doors, guarded by a make-up-caked septuagenarian at what appeared to be a cover charge table. I used the restroom, made sure not to touch ANYTHING, and walked back downstairs.

Football, as it turns out, is largely a game of building up excitement until a goal seems inevitable, and then a stunning letdown when the other team stops the goal, takes the ball away, or does something equally anticlimactic. Argentina won 1-0, and that one goal was easily the best part of the evening. People shouting, singing the national anthem, whistling, giving fives, for about 5 minutes, until we realized that with 15 minutes left, there was still plenty of time to be bored.

Argentina, as I said, won, but when I finally walked outside hacking my lungs out from second-hand smoke inhalation, I did not find the expected riots, screams of joy, nd tipping over of cars that one expects out of huge non-U.S. soccer games or OSU-UM football games. Instead, there were 200 couples leaning against the cemetery walls in fantastic displays of P.D.A., and 500 less lucky drunken guys making a beeline for the only restaurant around that was still open: McDonalds.

With that, our group parted ways, me and Daniel grabbed some empanadas, and headed home, slightly disappointed in the Argentine football fervor, but happy, nonetheless, that our viewing venue had certainly been the most unique of our friends.

Last Day in Mendoza

2008-08-23T18:55:00.001-05:00

I'm realizing a week later that I haven't written a conclusion to my Mendoza trip. The reason isn't because I'm lazy, more that nothing really happened the last day. But for the sake of creating the illusion of a narrative, I'll explain how we got back: We wandered around the city a little bit, had some lunch, and then took another 14 hour bus ride back to Buenos Aires. We watched "Shrek 3" and "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" in dubbed Spanish on the bus. Then we got back to B.A. and immediately went to the first day of class.

Argentine Dogs Make BBC News!

2008-08-22T11:39:00.000-05:00

Argentine Dog Saves Abandoned Baby

Then, immediately afterward, poops on the sidewalk.

Back in the Saddle Again

2008-08-21T23:50:00.002-05:00

I am not a horseman. I don't think any of the Hershberger men are horsemen. My dad told me, "I don't blame the horses. If I had a 220 pound dude on my back, I'd be a little upset too."

I do blame the horses. Gaucho was a little bitch.

Let's Tarantino this and go back to the beginning:
The second day in Mendoza, we signed up to go horseback riding through the Andes. It was gorgeous and we weren't much in the mood for more wine tastings, so we hopped in a van at 9 in the morning and took an hour and a half car drive out of town and up into the mountains. Here's a link to some of my pictures:

Andes and Wine Tasting

We were eventually brought to a small ranch in a small town where they had about 30 horses tethered underneath a shed. It was cold up in the mountains, which means the ground beneath our feet was more or less steaming from all the excrement. No one has ever said, "I love the smell of horse in the morning."

So we stood back while they pulled out each horse and assigned them to various riders and gave instructions. I was one of the last to hop on. I was given a large black stallion named Gaucho. Gaucho, as I have already said, was a little bitch.

He was a beautiful horse. He had a tiny scar right about his left eye and didn't much like any movement of the reins. He'd buck his head back and grunt at me when I tried to get him to turn, and if I tried to kick him to speed him up, he'd grudgingly run a few feet and then he'd slow down again.

I didn't particularly mind this. I'm not a horseman, and I know it. Gaucho knew it too, I'm sure, I certainly don't expect to gain his trust after 20 minutes on him. He was doing this because the REAL Gaucho (Gaucho's are Argentine cowboys) with the whip was standing 20 yards behind us whistling and cracking the suede flap at the holding end of his whip at any horse who moved too slow.

My problems with Gaucho started early on, and in a manner I didn't much mind. I later learned that Gaucho and Ryan's horse were friends. This was cool with me, because that way me and Ryan could talk while riding up into the mountains. But then Daniel tried to come up and join in on the conversation. Any time another horse other than Ryan's would approach Gaucho from behind, Gaucho would get annoyed. He'd buck his head to the side, and then if they kept getting closer, he'd buck me a bit and kick whatever horse was dumb enough to approach him.

Unfortunately, he missed the horse and kicked Daniel in the foot. Most people who have been through similar situations will agree: being kicked by a horse is not fun.

So I had to keep Gaucho away from Daniel's horse (Tormenta), AND try and keep him from being too slavish to Ryan's horse. This was impossible, because Ryan's horse, though less violent, had similar affections for Gaucho and would not let the two of them get more than 20 feet apart.

About halfway up the mountain, we stopped to give everyone time to catch up. Gaucho decided he was thirsty. So he ate lots of snow. I thought, hey, I'm you're buddy man, you can drink all you want. I thought this would be a common ground between us. Then he went to a bush and started eating it. Cool with me. Then the group started to leave. Gaucho did not. So I tightened up the reins, pulled him away, and tried to get moving. He snorted, swung his head around, and bit my leg. Fortunately, all he got were my jeans and a little sliver of skin - no more than a pinch - but after that, I decided the best approach to Gaucho was to be openly hostile and assert myself as boss.

We got back to the ranch and had an asada - an Argentine barbecue with Argentine meat - and drank some wine, and passed out on the lawn. Then it was time for the second ride.

I walked up to the Gaucho with the whip. "Sorry," I said in Spanish, "But can I have another horse?"

"You don't like your horse?"

"No. It's a little bit crazy."

He snorted and said, "It's not crazy. It's a horse."

Spill the Wine, Take that Pearl

2008-08-19T20:39:00.002-05:00

Mendoza is the Argentine wine capital. And we were stuck there for three days. We had a reservation at a hostel from one of our guidebooks which was a "haven for young international travelers." We pulled up to the Damajuana Hostel around 10 in the morning and walked in to put our bags down before exploring the city. We put our names into the ledger and the desk clerk said, "We'll have your rooms ready in 15 minutes... is that okay?"

"Yeah, sure," we said, and started to turn to wait outside when a haggard-looking Brit with a Liverpudlian accent ran up to us and said, "It'll be ready sooner than that... uh... I just need to get my stuff, splash some water on my face, and we'll be outta here."

A red-headed girl who looked equally hung-over walked up next to him and gave us a look that I recognized as the same as those of strangely overdressed girls on the sidewalks of State College at 9 on weekend mornings.

The Brit turned back to the woman at the desk and said, "Right... um, it seems that two of our beds were unused this weekend, ah, that doesn't mean we weren't there... well we weren't, I mean, last night, no..." The girl smiled, blushed, and buried her face in her hands, "That is, we'll be out of the room in a few minutes... uh, will you be changing the sheets?"

He glanced at us. I decided I liked this place.

We threw down our bags, watched some football with the Brits in the common room, and then hopped on a bus for a wine tour.

Wine, it seems, is least appreciated by those who appreciate it most. At wine tastings, they provide tiny little buckets for you to spit the wine into to protect yourself from being drunk, and thus being able to better savor the flavors. I say this is poppycock. Yeah. I said poppycock. Wine can be sophisticated and delicious, sure, I'm okay with this. I can even see where all the flavors come from, I think it's cool that the type of wood of the barrel it's stored in influences its flavor, and I think it's incredible that the taste of wine changes with food pairings. But let's be honest. The best part of the wine is the wine buzz. I'm not saying wine should be drank solely to get drunk, I just think that those who drink wine with the intention of only tasting it and nothing else are missing out on one of the best parts of the drink. It's like chewing a steak and spitting it out rather than swallowing. (I'm trying to think of a metaphor that departs a little more from the literal meaning of what I'm getting at, but all I'm coming up with are more food analogies or really, really vulgar stuff that I don't even feel comfortable posting on the internet)

Point is, they didn't give us enough wine on our wine tour. The first place we got a single glass of white wine. White wine sucks. It doesn't even have the built in "oh, I'm drinking it for the antioxidants" excuse. Seriously. Just drink white grape juice and take a shot of vodka (side note: champagne is delicious).

Then the second place we went to turned out to be an olive oil factory. Which, despite the delicious bread, olive oil, and fantastic scented oils that delightfully softened and scented my hands, was not a winery, and was therefore not what we signed up for.

The third winery was a bit better. Our tour guide spoke English well, but sounded like an automaton ("These pipes carry the wine away from the seeds and skins. Do you see the pipes?"). We did the exact same tour we'd done for olive oil and the previous winery (interesting side note: olive oil is made damn near the exact same way as wine, as far as I could tell. And, further, both production facilities would make excellent settings for horror films, what with all the cutting and grinding machinery and all), but then got asked the best question of the day: "After we look at the barrels, we shall go to the cave. Would you like to see the cave?"

A tip for life: If anyone EVER asks you if you want to see the cave, say yes. The cave is always a wonderful, magical place, or, at the very least, is super dark and you can do funny things to freak out your friends. I have never had a bad cave experience.

Turns out, this cave was kind of lame. It was a basement with wine in it. And the ceiling was coated in what looked a bit like asbestos. All caves can't be great.

Then we went to the next wine tasting, where we drank Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec. I prefer the Malbec, but I can't give you any winy-ish reason why. I don't even remember what the difference is, but I remember the Sauvignon was sweeter.

After this, we went to a local restaurant and I ordered the Bife de Chorizo, which I thought would be a sausage or something but was actually a two-pound steak, and afterwards, I drank a decent amount of wine before heading out with the rest of my group to a bar. On the way there, a plump stray dog decided to follow us to the bar, chasing off other strays that came near. I named him Chorizo. That's really the last notable thing to happen of the night.

The Plan and How it Fell Through

2008-08-19T14:16:00.003-05:00

So I know I promised an epic blog today about my unrevealed weekend exploits, but unfortunately(ish) things did not go according to plan. I have found that this is usually the case in travel.

The plan was this: Hop on the overnight Friday bus to Mendoza. 14 hours later, arrive in Mendoza, the capital city of Argentine wine country, and check out the city, go on a wine tasting, crash at a hostel, and continue our journey the next morning.

Some quick geographical background: First, find Buenos Aires, nestled back in the Rio de la Plata across from Uruguay. With your finger, move west until you get to the Andes and the Chilean border. The closest city is Mendoza. That´s where we were.

You can probably figure out where we were headed to next. The idea was to take an additional seven hour bus ride through the semi-dangerous Andes mountain pass to Santiago, the capital of Chile. We would spend a night there, then, the next morning, we would catch another 7 hour bus back to Mendoza before 6 p.m., when we would leave Mendoza and travel another 14 hours back to Buenos Aires.

It would´ve been a lot of time on the bus, but the last three hours through the Andes is supposedly like a roller coaster ride down into Santiago, and there would´ve been some bitchin´ views. So the full week, we kept an eye on the pass to Chile online, checking to make sure it was open, and then, when Friday rolled around, we left.

After the first 14 hours bus ride, we staggered off the bus and into the terminal, where we began to look for bus rides to Santiago. Maybe 5 minutes later we were told that there had been a snow storm the night before and that the pass to Chile was closed. So we were stuck in wine country until Monday night. Such a pity.

Hey Babe, Take a Walk on the Mild Side: Settling In

2008-08-14T22:45:00.002-05:00

The blog has been conspicuously dead for most of this weekend, and I apologize for this. But truth is, this isn't Semester at Sea, and events such as the Great Wall of China and bungee jumping into the mouth of a cave are not daily occurrences. So I apologize for that, but can promise juicier stories next Tuesday. I will refrain from adding anything here for the sake of building suspense, but it should be an epic weekend.

The problem, of course, is that I don't WANT things to be uber-exciting right now. I'm trying to settle in and conserve money for the several major trips I have planned, and I'm beginning to realize that, while the exchange rate here is bitchin' (three Argentine pesos for a U.S. dollar), it's still not that much less expensive than home. So my days have mostly consisted of waking up, going to my Spanish placement class, then walking around the city, buying empanadas, coffee or wine, and enjoying them at a sidewalk cafe until the mood strikes me to go back to the apartment, where I putter around/read/blog/e-mail for a few hours before eating dinner and then either repeating, or going out for wine, beer, or cigars. Speaking of cigars, I haven't seen a place here yet that sells NOT Cubans. Everywhere you go, Habanos.

That said, it's a pretty freaking chill life. The coffee here is delicious, the wine here is spectacular, and empanadas are a regional food ranking up there with Skyline Chili, Bell's Greek Pizza, or RU Hungry?'s Fat Bitch sandwiches. Oh, and the meat here is better than God. If I had to choose between eternal ecstasy in paradise and a piece of flank steak from Argentina, I would choose the meat. And it's ALL grass-fed and organic here. So you can rationalize to yourself that the 30 oz. piece of heifer meat on your plate is good for you, because it wasn't hormonalized and chemistrated. Dee-lish.

I'm trying to get to know the city a bit, so I walk around a bit each day, take in my surroundings, get to know the touristy places, look for cheaper food, and other orientating things. My current mission is to find a bookstore that sells English books. I've found a few, but they all sell pulp fiction and crappy romance. I'm not knocking James Patterson as a writer, but frankly, if I'm trying to improve myself as a writer, I'm gonna read "For Whom the Bell Tolls," not "The Disappearing Law Clerk" or whatever it is he calls his books. I swear, I can't find Hemingway anywhere here. I mean come on, if you're a native Spanish speaker and want to learn English by reading a classic, who better than Hemingway? He's such a simple writer, but he's SO GOOD. Sigh. I'll find it.

I've realized that I haven't talked much about the language barrier. It's a pain in the ass. Spanish isn't a difficult language, but I would imagine the Argentine accent is one of the more difficult ones to learn. It's a bit thick and doesn't sound like the Central American and Spain Spanish we learned in high school and college. It can get pretty exhausting trying to understand everything that's said to you, processing it, and then responding in a matter of time that isn't a hassle to whoever spoke to you in the first place. I've been getting better, but frankly, not quickly enough for me. I just want to know Spanish so I can understand it without having to strain my brain.

Well, this will likely be the last blog till Tuesday. Tune in then for a whole new series of shenanigans.

Amazing Article on Zimbabwe

2008-08-11T21:50:00.004-05:00

If you don't know what's going on in Zimbabwe, I suggest reading this article, it gives a really good background and is just brilliantly done in general. Even if you don't like Vanity Fair, chill, this doesn't have a liberal bent, it's on foreign affairs.

Day of the Crocodile

Enjoy.

Fear the Mullet! And Other Cultural Observations

2008-08-10T15:19:00.010-05:00

We went on a tour of the city yesterday as part of our orientation, and it's becoming clearer why this city is called the "Paris of South America," what with all the Europeanness and such... I thought that made no sense last week when I first got here, but I'm beginning to catch on. The upper and middle class here are very much European, while the lower class is very much South American. Which is to be expected.

The architecture in the richer parts of town - one of which I live in - tends to be Frenchish, Spanish, Romanish, or something like that. And apparently, if it's cool in Paris, it is by proxy cool here. Which leaves one thing very much unexplained:

Apologies to whoever I stole that from.

There are mullets everywhere. Like, I'm not kidding. EVERYWHERE. It's more the rule than the exception on young men. I don't know why. These people are incredibly fashion conscious, they stare at me when I wear my wrinkled shirts, and I want to say, hey man, don't judge, at least I don't have what appears to be the greasy, roadkilled corpse of a woodland rodent on my head. Perhaps Argentines are prone to cold necks. I must research this...

Honestly, that's distracted from any other acute observations I could have made on the Argentine youth. All I know is I can usually tell an Argentine from a non-Argentine based almost solely on their hairstyle, which is frightening.

I HAVE noticed that they tend to be somewhat oversexed. I mean, that's an observation coming from a United States Midwesterner, the World Capital of Prude (we aren't counting the Middle East, as the Midwest typically acknowledges the existence of women, which makes things more difficult for us. It's a joke, don't make comments on it, please), but it seems to me that they're pretty into doin' it. I mentioned those wannabe motels in a previous blog, they're called telos by the way, and it turns out they actually are totally acceptable here, and they come in all different forms: from the upscale classy to the may-not-have-changed-the-sheets. I mean, what do you expect though, from the city that gave us the tango, a dance that originated in the streets as men waited in lines for the brothels?

But I've already commented on that. Another thing is how late the nights start here. The idea is to eat around 10:30 or 11, then go to the bars around 12:30ish, then maybe get to the clubs around 1 or 2. Then you party until 6 or 8 in the morning. I haven't been able to pull this off yet. I can make it till 3 or 4, then I have to crash. Clubbing really isn't my thing anyway, but man, you feel lame for going home at 2. I'm trying to decide if I should adapt to the city or make it adapt to me.

A cross-cultural note: I was told that McDonald's was better here because of the high-quality beef (it's all grass fed, and believe me, it SHOWS. Meat is delicious here), so I went today. At least that's the reason I told myself I went, I probably was just missing a good old-fashioned American burger and wanted to go someplace where I wouldn't have to order in Spanish - Big Mac is one of the few universal words. So it really wasn't a study in globalization. But turns out, the McDonald's burgers here aren't as good. Less grease, kind of stringier. That's what happens when you introduce health and quality to a fast-food chain. I went and saw Morgan Spurlock (of "Super-Size Me" fame) at Penn State, and he said McDonald's burgers in the U.S. contain the meat from around 1000 cows. This burger had one or two cows TOPS. Not worth it. Other things about food here: Powerade is sugarier and not good, and peanut butter is, I've heard from second-hand sources, either not here or not good, I forget which. Oh well.

Another interesting cross-cultural note: I got into a cab the other night, and while he was driving me home in typical porteno-fashion (200 miles an hour around curbs), he almost hit another car, and slammed on his horn, which played the "Dukes of Hazzard" style "Dixie" tune. "Oh I wish I were in the land of cotton," blaring through the 3 in the morning South American streets. The South will rise again.

I haven't taken pictures, but this city is GORGEOUS, I can't wait to see it in summertime. Since my descriptions seem to suck today, I'm going to steal some pictures of cool places, and you can enjoy them at your leisure. There will be more later on, but not now, as I keep forgetting to bring out my camera.

Here's the one picture that is proof of me being in Argentina so far:

Yeah, I know that could've been taken anywhere, but it's me drinking yerba mate out of the customary gourd. It's the international drink, and it's kind of like coffee. What you do is put the mate in a gourd, then pour hot water into it, and then stick a special straw, called a bombillo in the mate. The bombillo has a bottom made of a spring or metal that is perforated with tiny holes that filters the water out of the mate leaves. Basically, it would be the equivalent to drinking tea straight out of the tea bag. Which makes it stronger. It's uber-caffeinated. For example, I had two gourds of it before writing this blog. That was 53 seconds ago. I am wired to bejesus.

Okay, but some pictures of the city:

That's El Caminito, the colorful road that goes through Barrio La Boca on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. La Boca is a poorer part of town, but is the home to the Boca Football team (Futbol, not Football), which is supposedly quite good. The area tends to be really colorful, too. El Caminito is the most touristy part. It's extraordinarily colorful, is full of artisans and tango dancers and street performers, and is a cool place to be.

Maybe five minutes from La Boca is Puerto Madero, the richest part of town. This is where all the swanky clubs, parks and restaurants are - all totally out of my price range. This is where Paris Hilton would hang out if she had a mullet.

This is from the Recoleta Cemetery, maybe 5 blocks from where I live. I suggest you look up more pictures (or wait for me to post them), because this one really catches the vibe of the Cemetery, but doesn't quite show how packed it is. It takes up about two city blocks, and is crammed with the towering, ornate tombs of the rich porteno families. Evita is buried here. Her tomb has flowers crammed into every crack and crevice. Incidentally, I found out Evita died maybe two blocks from my place. Weird, huh? Maybe her ghost will come to me and I'll be inspired to lead a revolution for the workers. It's a shame El Che isn't buried here, but I suspect this would be too bourgeois a resting place for his remains.

That is the Plaza de Mayo, the home to the Argentine Government. It is well known for being the place to protest in the city - though I've seen protests at the Obelisk as well - and is well known to human rights fans such as myself through the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo or Mothers of the Disappeared. From 1976-1983 the military junta in control had a policy of "disappearing" anyone who showed any form of dissent. They ended up killing around 30,000 people, and the biggest group to stand up to them were the mothers of the disappeared, who formed the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. I've heard dissenting opinions on the Madres de Plaza de Mayo since being here though, my homestay mother is not a fan. Apparently they have received large contributions from the local communist party, and the woman in charge didn't even lose her son to the junta - he fled to Paris.

And, of course, Avenida 9 de Julio and the Obelisk itself. It usually takes two or three red lights to cross this street. It's flippin' huge.

Well there are some fotos for y'all, I'm gonna read or something... and a strong recommendation to everyone to try out mate... I'm hyper as hell, but I'm not jittery and don't seem to be having the intestinal problems that come with coffee. So try that. Toodles.

Don't Even Know What to Title this One; Or, "That's When the Whores Come in"

2008-08-06T23:08:00.000-05:00

Around 10 tonight I got a text from Daniel, a kid in IES I'd met earlier in the day, asking me if I wanted to grab a beer in Recoleta, the area of Buenos Aires we live in. I was kind of tired, getting over a cold, and I was about to say no, when I decided hey, you're in the second largest city in the world, might as well see what it's all about.

So we walked around for about 10 minutes before finding a cool little mall right next to the Recoleta Cemetery. We sat down at a bar and had a few beers, talking about life here and in the States, when I noticed two older women, maybe in their thirties, eyeing us across the bar. A few minutes later, our waiter came up to us and said in Spanish, "Do you mind if two ladies join you?"

"No," we said, and the waiters brought over two more chairs for the women. They came over and sat down next to us, the brunette next to me, the blonde next to Daniel. The brunette laid down a silver cigarette case with a scantily clad woman on top, and I my mood shifted from nervous to uneasy.

"Hola," Daniel said, "Como estas?"

They smiled and said they were fine, and I decided to make it clear early on, "Lo siento, pero yo hablo poquito espanol." (Sorry, but I don't speak much Spanish). They smiled and the brunette leaned towards me.

"It's fine," she said in Spanish, "I don't speak much English."

"Oh?" I said, "What do you know?"

She smiled, clearly expecting this question, and said, "I like sex."

Oh geez, I thought, these are whores.

Me and Daniel laughed and he began to ask them about themselves. Where were they from? Paraguay and Buenos Aires. Then they launched off into a long conversation in Spanish that I, frankly, couldn't understand, but the brunette kept grabbing my hand and placing it just a LITTLE too far up the thigh for my liking, and I began to scoot away. Didn't work. They ordered champagne, and the waiter popped a bottle and laid it on the table.

"Well," Daniel said after about 10 minutes, "What do you do for a living?"

"I already told you," she said in Spanish, and, switching to English, "I like sex."

After another five minutes of talking which I couldn't pick up, I turned to Daniel and said, "What the HELL did I just miss?"

"Well," he said, "Apparently she," he said, nodding to the brunette, "wants to have sex with you, and she," he said, nodding to the blonde, "wants to have sex with me. I'm not clear on whether there's a price or not."

"I'm pretty sure there is," I said.

"Yeah, that's the vibe I've gotten," he said. He turned to them and said in Spanish, "Hey, we're just poor students, we can't afford anything like that. Sorry. But out of curiosity, how much?"

"Dos ciento." Two hundred.

"Oh, wow. Dollars or pesos?"

"Dollars."

"Yikes."

After about 45 minutes of conversation, learning that the brunette had a daughter who lived in the center of B.A. and that the blonde was originally from Asuncion, Paraguay, we finally hinted strongly enough for them to leave.

"Oh, before you go," Daniel said, "What's a good thing to do in Buenos Aires?"

The brunette smiled and said, "Study hard."

They left, and Daniel turned to me.

I sighed. "We're paying for the champagne, aren't we?"

Paris Hilton: Um, Wow

2008-08-05T22:26:00.001-05:00

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Adfunny videosFunnyOrDie.com

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Do... do... do I feel RESPECT for Paris Hilton? Ugh... I feel so dirty.

Special thanks to Cory for this one.

The Program

2008-08-05T22:04:00.003-05:00

I was a little nervous about the program going in. Semester at Sea was organized so that you HAD to make friends. It was impossible not to. You were living in too close quarters to be a loner, so making friends was inevitable. The program also catered to two groups, the rich and the travel-hungry, and I truly enjoyed the company of the latter. The chance of me not making quick friends felt pretty small beforehand, and by the time I’d been in the Bahamas for a half an hour, I’d met Tom, Corinne and Holly, who I still count as good friends.

This program is much more spread out, and I don’t know what type of person comes to Buenos Aires. It is the party capital of South America, so that could attract the type of person I usually don’t enjoy, but at the same time, it IS an unusual location, and would hopefully attract unusual people.

At orientation this morning, I arrived 8-days unshaved, hoping this balanced out the fact that I look like a Young Republican frat boy, and I quickly met people who were slightly unusual (I apologize for the inside reference, but definite possible Buenos Aires club members! No word from Shakira yet.), but normal enough to not be pretentious assholes. Turns out most of the people in the program are pretty cool. No doubt, there are some complete assholes, but even most of the party kids seem to be likeable.

So after eating 5 empanadas for lunch (empanadas are like gourmet hot pockets, but good. And sans-diarrhea), I roamed around the city with some other students for a while before returning to play hacky-sack. Hacky-sack is the ultimate getting-to-know-you game. Nothing helps you remember someone’s name like accidentally kicking them in the face.

Then we had orientation, where they told us how long we could expect to be in jail if caught with weed, what to do if robbed, and what to do if us and our significant others wanted some privacy. The last is actually pretty amusing: In Argentina, due to the high cost of living alone, it’s not unusual for people to live with their families into their late 20’s, so if they have a boyfriend or girlfriend, there are special hotels set up all over the place for private time – at a cheap hourly or nightly fee. When we all laughed at this basically being like renting a cheap motel in the U.S., our orientation leaders were a bit surprised, seeing as it’s a fairly common practice, and is typically cleaner than our image of motels. Gotta love those cultural exchanges.

Afterward orientation, I went out to get some coffee with Kane (Cain?), my homestay-mate, and a couple of Penn State girls. This semester shouldn’t be too shabby.

The Homestay

2008-08-05T22:04:00.001-05:00

So after that gigantic debacle, I was more than happy to crash at my new place, where I’ll be living for the next 4 months, assuming I don’t end up in an Argentine prison or worse, deported back to you all (ha! Too mean? I’m sorry. Incidentally, I apologize if my writing has gotten worse since the heyday of SAS blogging, but I’ve gotten lazy and out of shape.).

Anywho, my host mother, Maritina, is fluent in English but refuses to speak it unless I don’t know a Spanish word. Which at first is exhausting, but eventually you realize that feeling energized is not necessary in such a slow moving city. But I suppose when I finish my semester and can hold a decent conversation in Spanish, I’ll have mostly her to thank.

Other than that, she’s awesome. I can’t pin down her age exactly, and out of respect to her, I won’t try, but I will say that she’s likely up there in years, but she doesn’t reflect it in her manner at all. I may be wrong – again, my Spanish sucks – but from what I’ve gleaned, she’s a teacher (or a former teacher), and she is very expressive. Also, she’s a damn good cook. So that’s cool. I haven’t picked up much about her past, but I know that she’s had somewhere around 30 IES students in the past, which makes me feel slightly more secure around her. She clearly loves the experience and her past homestay students clearly loved her.

Originally, I was supposed to stay in Retiro, which is the upscale part of Buenos Aires right next to Avenida 9 de Julio, the main drag. Now, I’m living in Recoleta, more to the north and a little bit out of the way of the schools I’ll be studying at. But god, it is gorgeous. Now that I’m living in this part of the city, I can see more where the “European” vibe that everyone talks about comes from. I’m about 5 blocks away from the Recoleta Cemetery, where most of the prominent Argentines (Including Evita Peron) are buried, and the streets are filled with cafes and shops and suicidal porteno drivers.

Side note: Portenos (with a tilde over the n that I’m too lazy to figure out on my computer’s symbol thingamajig, thus making it pronounced Por-TAYN-yohs) is what Buenos Aires residents are called. I’m going to try and avoid using lots of Spanish words in my blogs this semester, because I think it sounds pretentious, but in this case, it’s better than saying Buenos Aryans. Also, they may slip in sometimes if I want to add some flavor.

The more I see of the center of the city, the more I like it. It is a beautiful city, but the hostel I was staying in in San Telmo was on the cusp of the sketchiness that is the outer city. At nights in San Telmo, huge piles of trash accumulated in the streets that people would then sift through, looking for anything valuable. Buenos Aires is not a clean city by most standards. There is a lot of air pollution, a lot of smokers, a lot of trash on the sidewalks (no more, however, than I saw on the streets of Montreal in the wintertime, and cleaner, I think, than Rome), and most conspicuously, piles and piles of dogshit. Many people employ dogwalking services that walk a dozen dogs at a time, and the dogs just drop trou and let loose pretty much everywhere. Walking down the street one must keep one’s eyes up so they know where they are going and avoid becoming the hunched, eyes-to-the-ground targets that pickpockets and other petty criminals prey upon, but at the same time, they have to glance down every ten seconds to make sure they aren’t about to pooify their sneakers.

But the city makes up for it in its charm. There are tons of parks and statues and many of the main drags have huge trees forming a tunnel through the streets, and it’s a place I can see myself becoming comfortable with.

I’m one of the few homestay students who has a fellow homestayer. I assume Maritina volunteered for two because of my situation, but I’m not sure. I have my own room, with a desk, a bed, and drawers (and by the time I publish this tomorrow, wifi!), which is cool, as it is one of the perks that drew me to the homestay option (students could also choose to live in dorms). It also gives me the ability to listen to my own music in private. In my hostel in San Telmo, I was afraid to turn on the sound of my laptop in case a potential robber/hostelmate overheard, realized I had one, and decided to break into my room upon my leaving. But my fellow homestayer seems cool enough, and I can’t say I mind having another person to talk to Maritina while I try and catch what she’s saying and my breath.

Maritina is a music fan though. Yesterday, to make us feel at home, she was playing a radio station that played solely American music. You’ll notice how broad that is. In the span of three hours, I heard Frank Sinatra, the Notorious B.I.G., The Doors, and Rage Against the Machine. The Summer Wind and Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems. Just like home.

Adventures in Homelessness

2008-08-05T22:03:00.001-05:00

So I woke up this morning at 9, hoping to use the time to pack up and move out of my hostel, and get in touch with my host mother, but of course I hit the snooze button and woke up at 10. This wasn’t really a problem, but I ended up doing everything I needed to do in like 5 minutes, as the woman in charge of the hostel had taken a disliking to me when I walked into her bedroom to pay, believing it was her office.

Anyways, I was basically thrown out on the street at 10, where I lugged everything I own half a block to hail a cab. I pulled out the address of my homestay, took a deep breath, and told the cabbie in awful Spanish where to take me. He nodded and took me to the address I’d given in a nice part of town, right by the IES center, where I’ll be taking a bunch of my classes. I got my stuff out, hit the buzzer, and an older woman answered.

“Alo?”
“Hola, Senora Ribas? Soy Matt Hershberger, de IES.”
“Jenna?”
“Ah... no, Matt, I’m supposed to be here for my homestay?”
“Jenna?”

The doorman nodded at me to go inside and up to her floor. The elevator, one of those old ones you have to open manually, stopped, and before I could get the door open, I heard a woman say, “Jenna?”

“No, this is Matt.”

“Ah, lo siento.” With that the woman disappeared and I heard the door shut. I got out of the elevator and knocked on the door. The woman answered, and I said, “Senora Ribas? I’m supposed to live here.”

“I told them I didn’t want a boy. I have a girl.”

“Um, I don’t know, this is the address they told me to come to...”

“Well come in, you can call and ask where you’re supposed to go.”

“Ok.”

So I went in, called IES, and got a guy on the phone who spoke very little English and seemed insistent on that I should just chill at her place and come to the orientation tomorrow. I did not agree. Imagine a long conversation with lots of “whats?” and “No, I can’t STAY here’s,” I’ll spare you the full thing.

So I walked 4 blocks – once again, through the middle of the city, with everything I own – to the IES Center, where I lugged all my baggage up the elevator to the 13th floor, walked in and said, “Where am I supposed to be?”

The woman in charge said that apparently they had changed my housing arrangements like a week or two before, and somewhere along the line, someone had forgotten to inform me.

So I lugged all my luggage (is that where the word luggage comes from? Lug?) back downstairs where I grabbed a cab to Palermo, where I am now living. Thus endeth my brief taste of homelessness in a third world country.

Lost in Translation

2008-08-03T14:17:00.001-05:00

Man, my Spanish sucks. I took Spanish for 5 years and remember a decent amount of it, but once people start speaking down here, maybe 5 words in, I lose what they’re saying. WAY too fast. And I sound like a douchebag continuously asking “mas despacio, por favor” (slower, please). But speaking zero espanol can be fun when the people you’re talking to get excited about it.

I went into a pizza shop yesterday afternoon because it advertised 10 peso pizzas, which is a little over $3 for a full pie. The guy behind the counter started talking to me very quickly, and after about three words, I lost him. I said, “No hablo mucho espanol,” and he got all excited. Here is the translated conversation:

Him: Where are you from?
Me: Huh?
Him: Where are you from?
Me: Uh, the United States.
Him: Ah! Which state?
Me: What?
Him: Which state?
Me: I’m sorry, I don’t follow.
Guy next to the counter: California, New York, Arizona...
Me: Ah! Ohio.
Him: Ohio! [really, really long story about a guy he once met who was about my height and had brown hair too who was also from Ohio and didn’t speak much Spanish. I nod during the story when I pick up words I recognize, he takes this as not only me understanding, but me KNOWING the guy he’s talking about.] So he’s your brother, right?
Me: Sorry?
Him: He’s your brother?
Me: Um, no.
Him: Well then who is he?
Me: What?
Him: Who is he?
Me: Oh... um, he goes to my school with me in Ohio.
Him: Ahh, of course.
Me: Um, thanks for the pizza.

One of the other amusing things to see is the translation of various American things into Spanish. Take movies for example. “The Dark Knight” is called “Batman: Caballero de la Noche” here, which, as far as I can tell, directly translated, means “Batman: Gentleman of the Night.” I don’t know if this captures the vibe they’re going for (“Did one of you ladies order the Batarang?”), but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make ME want to see it.

Kung Fu Panda is still Kung Fu Panda.

Then you have all the lovely globalization. Coca-Cola has a massive neon sign on the Avenida 9 de Julio, which is the main drag, right next to the Obelisk (Side note: every guidebook I’ve read insists on describing the Obelisk, which is a main B.A. landmark, as “phallic.” Is this really necessary? I mean, it’s an obelisk. I know that Argentines insist on being portrayed as macho, but I think we can figure out what kind of innuendo we’re supposed to get out of a massive, um, point, in the dead center of the city without you calling it “phallic.” I’ve heard them describe the Eiffel Tower that way too, but never the Washington Monument. Do we, as Americans, come across as so asexual that even a large, shaft-shaped edifice in the middle of our capital named after our first, very manly President, doesn’t arouse the word “Phallic” in the planet’s guidebook writers?), and (note the flawless segue after the huge digression) there are McDonald’s everywhere. They have this thing called the “McCafe” which serves pretty decent coffee. The restaurants are downright swanky here. In the U.S. McDonald’s found its niche by serving crappy food in crappy restaurants for low prices, but here it seems like they’re trying to establish themselves as upscale. I actually saw two people on a romantic date last night in a McDonalds. I kind of wish I spoke better Spanish so I could go up to the guy and ask him how he spun that one to the girl.

Another amusing note: There’s a lot of graffiti here, but some of it’s pretty good. When I was driving in from the airport, there were like 15 walls that had elaborate graffiti paintings on them, and there was one in between them that said, painted in large black letters, “NO PAINTING” (in Spanish of course). The irony made me giggle. Also, I thought it was funny, because no one HAD painted anything else there.

Flashback: While I was in the Houston Airport, I saw an iPod vending machine. I wonder how much they’ve sold? I think it’d be amusing if, when you bought it, it popped out of its little slot, fell to the bottom, and immediately broke. But I can understand wanting to spend $300 on one in the Houston Airport, if there’s one place I would want to block out all the sound around me, that’d be it. I was torn between sitting next to the guy in the 10 gallon hat talking about how the Democratic National Convention should just be used as an opportunity to arrest all the “baby-killer” pro-choicers in the audience and on the stage, listening to the two wannabe-bohemian guys talk about the highs and lows in the careers of U2, the White Stripes, and Neil Young (“I love him, but I feel he’s gotten too mainstream,”) and various concerts they went to (“I’ve never much been a fan of Dave Matthews... I find he’s much too cheesy”), OR listening to the loudspeaker person advising that the Homeland Security level is currently at orange and as such, I shouldn’t allow people to plant bombs in my backpack. I had not been aware that anyone still used that ridiculous system. But yes, I can understand buying an iPod.

Um... I think I’ve started rambling too much, I have no idea where I’m going with this blog anymore...

Well, more stories to come. Things pick up a bit tomorrow, so I’ll hopefully be getting more material, and still enough time to write about it.

First Impressions

2008-08-02T14:28:00.000-05:00

One of the habits I’ve tried to get into with traveling is making note of my thoughts about the place I’m going ahead of time and then comparing it to the reality of the place later on. Since I spent most of the plane ride trying to sleep or watching “Leatherheads,” I need to try and remember what it was I thought while it’s still fresh in my head...

All of the guidebooks said that Buenos Aires was more of a European city than a South American city, so most of my images were of cobblestone streets, tango dancers, and night clubs. While none of these are inaccurate, it kind of leaves out a big thing: Buenos Aires IS in South America. And the city is huge, there’s no way they could have possibly laid down enough cobblestone to cover all of these streets in a mere 300 years.

On the way in from the airport, we passed shanty towns which I couldn’t help but compare to the Brazilian favelas. They didn’t look QUITE as poor, but it was still a bit of a shock when I was expecting a “European” city. Once in the city, you could see more where they were getting the European thing. The people dress and act European for the most part, though it’s impossible to deny that they have a very South American look to them – which is to say they have, in general, darker hair and skin and obvious indigenous or Creole blood in them.

The city itself – with its statues and streets – reminds me of a less clean Barcelona. Oh yeah, that’s another thing. Buenos Aires my ass. Buenos Aires means “good airs” literally translated, and that’s completely false, this town is covered in cars and smokers, there’s barely a clean breath of air to be found.

That said, it has a lot of charm. It’s a bit crowded, which, for someone who has never lived in a city, may take some getting used to, but after visiting the part of town that I’ll be living in last night, I think I’ll be fine.

My experience so far has been pretty tame. I think a slight mistake was made in choosing the day to come here... what I figured was that more people would be coming early to explore the city and just get a feel for the place they’d be living, and while this isn’t untrue – there are a few other kids on IES (the program I’m with) – most of them are on the honors program, which has already started orientation.

So I’m kind of left with very little to do except wander around and sightsee. Not that this is a problem, but it’s kind of a slow way to kill three days, especially when you don’t have someone to do it with.

Last night I went out with the honors students to dinner and then to a party hosted by the Buenos Aires Pub Crawl that was made for all B.A. study abroad students this fall, which was cool. The nightlife in B.A. is supposed to be a highlight, and as far as I can tell, that’s true. I was running on empty with 5 hours of solid sleep over the past 72 hours, so I headed out around 1 in the morning, which seemed like a very early night for how that party was going. I’ll stick around for a few of them later on...

My program starts on Monday. I move in with my homestay family, who I have yet to meet, and then I chill with them for the entire day, then the next morning, orientation begins. The next two weeks will all be orientation. THAT is why coming early was a stupid idea: I have two weeks to “get a feel” for the city before classes start. Classes start up the 19th, and by then, things will be in full swing.

My hope for the semester is to make it to Patagonia, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay all at some point. SO, start keeping track, we’ll see which ones I can get done.

The Return of the Travel Blog: Summer Recap or: Give Me a Ship Anyday

2008-07-31T16:47:00.002-05:00

God, I hate air travel. I would rather ride in the cargo hold of a rusty ocean tanker transporting randy, rabid babboons for two weeks than take a 9 hour plane ride (Actually, if you take out the rusty part, that's pretty close to what SAS was... given the temperament of some of my fellow passengers).

But unfortunately, I have 18 hours of travel I've gotta get through today. I woke up about an hour ago, 2 hours into my connecting flight from Cincinnati to Houston, and remembered how much plane travel sucks for anyone taller than 5'3''. The good news on the flight: the flight attendant was attractive. The bad news: She shattered my elbow with the beverage cart. And the guy in front of me decided to lean all the way back in his chair, which I believe has dislocated my knee.

And, of course, I am now in the Houston airport. If you have ever been to the Houston Airport, I really don't need to say anything else, and if you haven't, I don't even have the stomach to tell you about it. It sucks. Its official name is the George Bush International Airport. I really don't need to say anything beyond that.

The tone of this blog, I realize, isn't that of one of my usual eager-to-go blogs, and there are a few reasons behind this, some of which I just gave you (I spent a total of 20 hours on a plane for all of SAS. I'll almost be matching that today), but the main one is this summer made it hard to want to leave Cincinnati. Not so hard that I still didn't WANT to at the end, but harder than expected.

I've been working at a garden shop and living at home for the past three months after finishing up at Penn State, and unfortunately, most of my usual friends at home decided to take jobs elsewhere for the majority of the summer, so it was down to 5 of us, give or take 2 depending on the week.

Regardless, it was probably the best summer I've ever had. I think this may be partly because it was my first summer of drinking age, and Cincinnati has a whole lot more options when you can go to bars and clubs, but I think it was mostly the friends I've been hanging out with, and I've promised myself that this blog wouldn't be full of inside jokes or references, but sadly, I can't tell many stories about the summer that are both inside-joke-free and blog appropriate. So I'll try and set a scene if I can.

I was working 40 hours a week mostly watering plants and digging holes. It didn't suck as much as I thought it would, but it was pretty dull. A summer job, nothing else. Any time I didn't kill messing around with the people I worked with was killed talking on the phone with my PSU roommate, Gibbs, about his latest State College antics, reading Cory's (of SAS fame) text messages (a sampling: "Dude! Pot is a topping on Cambodian pizza!" "What the hell! My grandpa just mailed me a piece of his toe!" and my personal favorite: "Once again I made you open your phone for nothing. It's great having your ass in check. Who's my bitch? You're my bitch. Now close your phone.") I usually kept busy enough on the nights, however, to make up for the dullness of the day and knock enough energy out of me to keep me from blogging pretty much at all over the past few months.

The nights themselves were by most standards pretty tame. We went to a hookah bar about once every other week and then went to a nearby bar where we listened to horrible karaoke singers and drank obscure beers suggested by the bartender who me and my buddy Jake had borderline man-crushes on (kidding, Dad, kidding). Then on the weekends the guys would put on suits and the girls would put on dresses and we'd go to the swankier parts of town (yes, there are swanky areas in Cincinnati) and then go out dancing afterwards at seedy clubs where we were the best dressed and least creepy - which, you should know, is a bold statement.

The next morning, it was relatively likely that I would wake up in a full suit on Paulina's couch, which is the most disorienting feeling on the face of the earth, and then I'd take off the suit and tie and put on my grimy t-shirt and shorts and head off to work.

Okay, I might as well tell some of the better stories:

One night, Paulina decided to be lame and head home early, and after watching a few too many episodes of The Office, I decided it'd be fun if our group of friends was the type that played amusing pranks on each other. So (I might as well just list the people I hung out with now, to save me from having to introduce them all one-by-one in the middle of my stories. The guys were Me, Jake, occasionally Kopp, who abandoned us for summer camp, and occasionally Gibbs, who abandoned us for science, and the girls were Paulina, Allyn, and occasionally Sara, who abandoned us for Arkansas. And yes: Allyn IS a girl. Anyway, onward with the story:) we sat around the bar for a while spit-balling prank ideas, when I came up with the potato prank. The idea behind the potato prank was to strategically place potatoes in various spots so that the prankee would come across them at different points in the day. The idea was to do it just enough to make them think "Wow, there are a lot of potatoes in my life today," rather than thinking "I'm being stalked/pranked."

The planning went well. We were able to get a hold of some potatoes and pick a few places to drop them around Paulina's path, but unfortunately, Sara got a little carried away and decided to gore a tater on a fence post spike, which looked more menacing than anything else. Long story short, Paulina almost called the cops, and they decided to turn the prank on me and try and convince me that I was going to arrested for stalking, which didn't really work out. That was the end of our pranking careers. I'm just glad we didn't listen to Kopp, who wanted to follow Paulina around wearing a hood and holding a potato peeler all day.

I know my family members read this, so I'm not going to go in extensive detail about many of the other stories, but between playing suburban tennis-ball golf, trying to cram water bombs into water balloons, trying and failing to get out on the river three consecutive times, and playing drinking games on a walking bridge next to the junior high over the Ronald Reagan highway, it was a blast.

So that made leaving Cincinnati a bit difficult, but the least pleasant truth about travel, even worse than the fact that you may, one day, end up in the Houston airport, is that there will always be people you miss.

So when two of them make the extra effort to get back to Cincinnati to say goodbye to you the night before you leave, you pop open a bottle of champagne, toast them, and the next morning you get on the plane slightly happier at the fact that this time, you'll have something to come back to.

Sweet Jesus, This has me excited:

2008-07-24T14:38:00.001-05:00

Why So Serious?: Why the Joker is on to Something

2008-07-24T13:04:00.002-05:00

I know this usually isn't the subject of my blog, but I've seen it twice now, and I have to write about The Dark Knight.

A warning however: This post will contain spoilers, and, if you have not seen this absolutely fantabulous movie, shame on you, and do not read this.

Also, please pardon how pretentious I'm going to sound trying to glean social meaning from a blockbuster movie villain. I'm doing it for fun more than anything else and am sure you can punch plenty of holes in my reasoning, so feel free to do so. The movie is really really good and that's the main reason I'm writing about it, I'm sure you could come up with 5 billion social interpretations of why the Joker is awesome and is the best movie villain of all time.

Now I'm providing you a last chance to leave this site and not read this article. Once you scroll past this picture, I will be talking about certain plot elements that someone who hasn't seen it wouldn't know about. Do not complain to me about ruining it. It's your own fault.

Seriously. Stop reading.

"Do I really look like a man with a plan, Harvey? I don't have a plan. The mob has plans, the cops have plans. You know what I am, Harvey? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. I just DO things. I'm a wrench in the gears. I HATE plans. Yours, theirs, everyone's. Maroni has plans. Gordon has plans. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I am not a schemer. I show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are. So when I say that what happened to you and your girlfriend wasn't personal, you know I'M telling the truth. It's a schemer who put you where you are. You were a schemer. You had plans. Look where it got you. I just did what I do best-I took your plan and turned it on itself. Look what I have done to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple bullets. Nobody panics when the expected people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plans are horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will get blown up, nobody panics. It's all part of the plan. But when I say one little old mayor will die, everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I am an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? It's fair."

I think what's scary about the Joker is that a lot of the time, the things he is doing make perfect sense when you hear him explain them. At heart, he's just an anarchist. How do we explain our indifference to the genocide in Darfur or Rwanda? It's just the "way things are." I've heard plenty of people say this. It's the way things are supposed to happen, and there's nothing we can do about it.

It's incredible how comfortable we can get in a terrifying world if what we expect to happen happens. Maybe, in this twisted sense, the Joker is a hero. Maybe he really is doing us a favor by showing us how twisted our world view is.

So he forces people to make horrible choices. He makes Batman choose between saving the man who could save Gotham (Harvey Dent) and the girl who could save Batman (Rachel Dawes).

The Joker: You have nothing to threaten me with, with all of your strength, all of your rules.
Batman: I have only one rule.
The Joker: Then that's the one you'll have to break to save them.

Batman, of course, makes the selfish decision to save Rachel, but the Joker switched the locations on him, thus killing Rachel and saving Dent. Grotesque? Yes. But what I think it interesting about this is the Joker's commitment to breaking rules that are slavishly followed. So he manipulates those rules to force us into making these grotesque choices: Kill a lawyer or I blow up a hospital. Blow up another boat or I blow up yours.

I was sitting at a red light the other night. It was 1 in the morning, and I was exhausted and really had to pee. The intersection was clear, no one around for miles, no cops, no cameras, nothing. But I sat at the intersection, waiting for the light to change green. Why? I know WHY traffic lights are there. They protect us from getting into an accident. They are there to keep me safe. So during the day, it is in my best interest to sit at them and wait for them to turn green. But at night, and at this intersection, why do I wait for the light?

I was obeying the law for the sake of the law. Not because of the law's purpose, but for the sake of obeying. And this, when you extend it beyond things as trivial as traffic lights, becomes dangerous. The Joker is right: rules can be dangerous. Granted, I don't think killing thousands of people is worth making the point, but he's right. Perhaps we should look at every rule we follow, every law we refuse to break, and examine WHY it is we do that. Which isn't to say we should break every rule, it's just to say that we should know why we do the things we do. And in this way, the Joker is more enlightened than we are.

I'm not quite an anarchist, as I think rules are required for an organized society to function, but I dislike the rules for the sake of rules mentality and the complacency that comes with them.

I think we can only follow rules and make decisions on a situation by situation basis. To try and come up with a system of staunch rules for governing your universe is stupid, because you will have to break the rules at some point. For example: "Killing is always unacceptable" is a credo that, if adopted by America in the 40's, would not have boded well for Europe.

"Abortion is always wrong," is also a difficult one. What about when the mother has been raped by her father, is 16, and would die giving birth? Also, if you're going to call abortion murder, then technically wouldn't killing anything that existed on a multicellular level be murder as well? If your argument is that a fetus has potential for becoming a human being, are you saying that some life is more precious than others, thus making your "Life is sacred," slogans hypocritical? Also, if we're going to get crass, would every masturbating teenage guy technically be a mass murderer?

You have to make damn near every decision on a situational basis. The rules guide us along, but when they become rigid, they become dangerous.

Ugh, I think I'm getting too abstract. The point is, the Joker character is awesome in that there is some logic and some depth in that sociopathic mass-murdering brain of his.

Also, the "magic pencil" scene was friggin' awesome.

Getting Out of the Bubble

2008-07-23T19:10:00.002-05:00

For the first time today, I thought about what exactly I was going to do when I arrived in Argentina at 9 in the morning a week from Friday. I don't have any solid plans and didn't come up with anything, but it was the "Oh shit, I'm leaving again!" moment that I had been waiting for all summer.

Which is cool. My favorite thing about travel (ha! like I could possibly pinpoint one favorite thing about travel) is leaving the stupid American political bubble. I was able to stay outside of it for most of this past school year, but then I got drawn into the Hillary-Obama race and got stuck in the idiotic Democrat vs. Republican mentality that all of the U.S. is mired in.

So now I'm trying to think of reasons to hate McCain and love Obama, and I'm really only succeeding at one (you can guess which. I like Obama, but he IS a politician, and as my older sister says, "Well, they're all liars," so there's that... and McCain... I just see as more Bush. And if you've been reading my blog, you know what I think about Bush. Though I do think he has succeeded tremendously in his environmental policies. Eliminating an entire country of carbon-exhaling humans in Iraq... genius. Just genius.).

But I'll be voting absentee in 2008, which means if it's a close race, if '00 Florida is any indication, I won't be voting, and I'll be in a totally different political environment. Argentina is not incredibly stable, but as far as South American governments go, it's pretty solid. I don't know much about Argentine politics, and I haven't done a ton of research on it. I know the president is Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the wife of the former president, and I know she's probably the most attractive world leader out there. And I know they've been having a lot of strikes and issues about agriculture reform recently, but I don't know much about it or which side I'm on.

So yay for leaving all the political crap during election season! No matter what happens, when I get back, Bush will be on the way out. In his defense, I've decided I like his sense of humor. Something's got to shield him from reality:

But American politics are boring me. Everyone is too angry and doesn't making any concessions. And everyone is totally up their own ass. Fox News catches all the crap for being the worst TV News station in the country - and, take it from me, after 3 years of media studies, they are in terms of accuracy, objectivity and corporate bullshit - but really, all U.S. news is awful. The guy at the Daily Collegian who's in charge of sifting through the AP articles that come in over the wire says there are more for the 2008 election on politics than on policy, but this doesn't surprise me. Which is sad. So yeah, if you want good coverage, check out the BBC or NPR or some other non-corporate news source. Al-Jazeera is surprisingly good. No, they aren't the terrorists news network. Look them up.

Ugh, I'd write more, but I'm gonna go see Batman again. I'll have an article on that when I get back, hopefully.

People I like that you don't know.

2008-07-22T00:10:00.005-05:00

There are a lot of people that you just never hear of that are way too interesting to be anonymous. I've just recently been discovering some of them and feel the world would be a richer place if more people knew about them, so here are a couple people you should look into...

1) Banksy

Banksy just recently came to my attention from a article on BBC News: Paper 'reveals Banksy's identity'

Basically, he's a guerrilla graffiti artist. But he's good. Damn good. Here's his website:
Banksy

He does pretty subversive stuff. Like he drew a picture on the wall in the West Bank that looked like a hole in the wall that depicted a tropical paradise on the other side. Then he placed a lifesize dummy of a Guantanamo detainee in Disneyland last year. It's kind of twisted, but it's brilliant stuff. And he's kept his identity on the down low which may just be a publicity stunt, but I think shows a tremendous amount of self control over his ego. Which brings me to numero dos:

2) Subcomandante Marcos

Marcos is the spokesperson/leader of the EZLN, The Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion Nacional, translated into the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. No one really knows who Marcos is originally, as he has always kept his identity a secret. It is known that he originally was from Mexico City, where he was probably a Marxist scholar. Then, in the early 1980's, he moved into the jungles of Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico, with the intention of beginning a revolution with the help of Chiapas' oppressed indigenous population. It should be noted that the indigenous in the area have almost no rights and are mistreated by the government and pretty much everyone else.

Marxism didn't catch on with the indigenous though. So rather than pushing their (and by they I mean the EZLN) idea of what the revolution should be, they surrendered to the indigenous way of life and spent several years trying to understand the indigenous and becoming more in sync with their needs and desires.

In 1992, George Bush Sr. signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, into effect. It became law on January 1st, 1994. This is when the revolution started.

Now let's look at what NAFTA did really quick: ideally, it was meant to take down all trade barriers between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico so that all industries in this area would be on an even playing field. Correct me if I'm wrong. But these barriers include import taxes, export taxes and the like.

The problem for the indigenous in Chiapas was that they made their living off of selling corn. But there was no way for them to compete with American corn, as it was subsidized by the American government (which was technically against NAFTA), and they didn't have the technology that the American farmers had, technology which saved time and lowered production costs. So the Americans flooded the market with cheap corn, which further drove down the price of corn to the point where selling their corn was no longer a sustainable business for the indigenous, through no fault of their own. Please feel free to tell me how wrong I am on this, I'm always up for a debate.

So the EZLN and the people of Chiapas started an armed revolution and took over several cities in the state. Marcos' first appearances were on the morning of January 1st, when he showed up in his trademark ski mask at a local hotel and told the tourists, "I'm sorry for the interruption, but this is a revolution."

Naturally, the rebels were no match for the Mexican Army, and were quickly forced out of the cities and back into the jungle. This should have been the end. But the EZLN put down their weapons and decided instead to launch a campaign consisting mostly of words and rhetoric. It is almost solely on the charisma and genius of Marcos that this revolution has continued with growing popularity over the past 14 years. Marcos is also a philosopher, poet, and public speaker, and is known for his sense of humor and brilliant manipulation of the media (he usually makes them wait for long periods of time giving vague reasons like, "They know why I won't speak to them," until just before they plan on leaving, and then showing up, as he once did, in the middle of the night by hopping on the top bunk, lighting his pipe, and beginning to talk as the groggy journalists woke up, realized who he was, and scrambled for pens and pencils). These stunts have brought the EZLN into the international spotlight, where they are a leader in the fight against globalization (or more accurately, westernization), capitalism, and neoliberalism, all of which have more or less destroyed the indigenous of Southern Mexico - and everywhere else.

Now let's be clear on something here: I am not a communist. I DO think communism is a little too stigmatized in the U.S., but that's for another blog. What I respect is someone who can put their people before their ideals, can alter their beliefs to fit reality, and then can push forth that reality with compelling rhetoric. Also, the EZLN is not a communist organization. That should be clear too. Research them, they'll interest you. But for someone to essentially dissolve their personality and become something new, something symbolic... well, let's face it. Marcos is a modern-day Batman, a superhero without the power or resources. He has only his intelligence. And by using this intelligence, he has convinced the Mexican government to begin to cooperate and make concessions to the Zapatistas. AND he's sworn off violence. He's truly a guerrilla for the 21st century.

3) Matt

Matt is my hero. Where the Hell is Matt? is a website run by Matt (don't know his last name and don't care enough to find out) which tracks his voyages around the world in Youtube videos. He worked for a video game company for a while, got sick of it, and decided to travel around the world using the money he'd saved up. As a souvenir for him and his family, he filmed himself doing a stupid goofy dance in front of all these famous placed and then put it on Youtube, where it became a hit. THEN, Stride gum approached him, and as a part of an advertising stunt, offered to pay his way on another trip around the world to do a similar video, with the only catch being that he put a card that said, "Brought to you by Stride Gum" at the end. So he did it. And then did it again.

Here's the most recent one:

And here's his website:
Where the Hell is Matt?

Matt is my hero.

4) d.a. levy

d.a. levy was a poet in the 60's. He eventually killed himself or was murdered or something like that - still a little sketchy - but I put him on this list because of one poem he wrote, which I think is my favorite poem, which I now present to you here:

from Tombstone as a Lonely Charm (Part 3)
by d.a. levy

if you want a revolution
return to your childhood
and kick out the bottom

dont mistake changing
headlines for changes

if you want freedom
dont mistake circles
for revolutions

think in terms of living
and know
you are dying
& wonder why

if you want a revolution
learn to grow in spirals
always being able to return
to your childhood
and kick out the bottom

This is what ive been
trying to say—if you
attack the structure—
the system—the establishment
you attack yourself
KNOW THIS!
& attack if you must
challenge yourself externally

but if you want a revolution
return to your childhood
& kick out the bottom

be able to change
yr own internal chemistry

walk down the street
& flash lights in yr head
at children

this is not a game
your childhood
is the foundation
of the system

walk down the street
flash lights in yr head
at children but be wary
of anyone old enough to kill

learn how to disappear

before they can find you

(that is, if you want to
stay alive)

if you want a revolution
do it "together"
but dont get trapped in
words or systems

people are people
no matter what politics
color or words they use
& they all have children
buried in their head

if you want a revolution
grow a new mind
& do it quietly
if you can

return to your childhood
and kick out the bottom
then become a being
not dependent on words
for seeing

whenever you get bored
change headlines
colors politics words
change women

but if you really want
a revolution
learn how to change
your internal chemistry
then go beyond that

walk down the streets
& flash light at
yourself

~~~~~~~~

I'll add more of these people later when they come to me.

A Brief History of Argentina

2008-07-21T15:31:00.003-05:00

Before Semester at Sea, on my original blog, which immediately stopped working the second I got on the ship and internet costs went sky high, I wrote brief history lessons on each of the countries I was going to visit. The main reason behind doing this was to kill time while I was covering the telephones at the law firm where I worked (it was too much energy to move all the work on my desk the 40 feet to the phones).

So they were pretty boring. Copied and pasted from Wikipedia, really.

Anyway, I'm gonna try it again, because I've realized that nobody I know has the slightest clue where Argentina is or what it is like.

Let's start with that: The where. Argentina makes up the majority of the southern cone of South America:

Now, if you look at that closely, you'll see that Argentina is NEVER ABOVE THE EQUATOR. It's not a tropical island. I will not be spending all of my time at the beach with girls in coconut bras and grass skirts drinking Pina Coladas. Also, if you remember 7th grade geography, you'll recall that the seasons are reversed when you cross the equator. Find Buenos Aires on the map: it's about the same distance from the Equator as Cincinnati is. And I'm getting there August 1st. Which is the dead of winter. The weather in B.A. is supposed to be pretty mild, however, so I won't be seeing much snow, unless I venture further south into Patagonia or Tierra Del Fuego.

Whenever I mention to someone that I'm going to Argentina, I tend to get pretty blank looks. Most people hear a Latin American country name and naturally think of sombreros and drug cartels (Mexico and Colombia, respectively).

This is stupid. Latin America spans over a continent and a half, borders both the Pacific and the Atlantic and into the Caribbean Sea. So I'm just going to get rid of a few misconceptions right now:

-Kidnapping is not a huge risk for me. If I were wealthy and was living in Mexico City, 1980's-90's era Bogota (Colombia), or on the fringes of the Colombian Amazon, this may be a worry. But most kidnappings that occur in these countries are political, and, given the recent rescuing of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages from the hands of FARC, probably the most dangerous rebel group in S.A., they seem to be on the decline.
-I won't be beaten for being an American. A qualifier I should add to this is, "unless I deserve it." Anti-American sentiment has grown around the world recently, and the trend in South America seems to be towards electing left-leaning governments (a side note: Do not call Hugo Chavez a "dictator." He's a bit of an asshole, and definitely enjoys rubbing his oil money in America's face, but he is a democratically elected President), but for the most part, people aren't going to despise me for being a Yanqui. For further proof, see every single one of my Semester at Sea blogs.
-I probably won't be propositioned to be a drug mule. Once again, that would be Colombia, it would have to be 20 years ago, and I'd probably have to be Colombian.

So let's get into the history.

Argentina was not very populated before the arrival of the Europeans. It was on the fringe of the Incan Empire and had a few tribes that operated independent of the Incas. A notable one is the Mapuche, who still have some presence in Argentina, mostly (in this blog) because they are the source of the Argentine word "Che," a slang word meaning something similar to "man" as in, "How's it going man?" and made famous by Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna, the Argentine who was third in command in the Cuban revolution behind Fidel and Raul Castro.

I'll get more into Che later.

The genocide of the indigenous in South and Central America was not as effective as it was in North America (for those who fill with pride everytime they hear "from sea to shining sea," they should remember that between our arrival on one coast to our conquest of the other was one of the most brutal and effective genocides in history), and as such, the indigenous still have a presence, if a small one. They tend to be marginalized and treated as second class citizens, and it's not unusual for them to be shunted aside in the name of progress or globalization. Once again, we'll get into that later...

Anywho, until the early 1800's, Argentina was dominated by the Spaniards. The British tried to invade at Buenos Aires a couple of times, but the colonists held them off, contributing to a nationalist vibe amongst the Argentines.

In 1814-1817, the Argentine legend Jose de san Martin led a successful independence campaign from Spain. He then went on to help liberate Chile and Peru, and is considered the Southern South America counterpart to the legendary Simon Bolivar. He is the national hero of Argentina.

After independence was achieved, there was a long period of military dictatorships and infighting between the centralist and federalist factions. This ended with the creation of the 1853 constitution, and some semblance of a unified country began to form.

Digression: Have you seen the new Batman? It's effing awesome.

The next 70 years or so would be relatively stable, with Argentina establishing unity from Buenos Aires down through the pampas and into Patagonia, and building itself up as an economic power.

Eventually, a leftist government known as the "Radicals" came into power, pushing the spread of democracy and workers rights, but then the depression hit, and a military coup put a corrupt right-wing government into power. Tensions grew between the right wing government, which favored the fascists in WWII (officially Argentina was neutral, though a not untrue stereotype of Argentina is one as a sanctuary for fleeing Nazis such as Josef Mengele and Adolph Eichmann), and the left wingers, who favored the Allies. Toward the end of the war, Argentina fought on the Allied side.

In 1943, a coup overthrew the current government and implemented a new military regime, of a more centrist bent. The Secretary of War and Labor under this government was Juan Peron. Peron eventually formed alliances with Labor Unions and socialists, and as a result, began to gain power within the government. The military, threatened by him, arrested him, but mass demonstrations demanded his release. He rode this wave of popularity to a win in the Presidential election in 1946.

Peron and his second wife, Eva (better known as Evita), built support among the working class tightened their grip on the country, until Evita died of cancer in 1952 at the age of 33.

Peron began to decline over the next few years and was overthrown in a military coup in 1955. The Antiperonist government that took his place spent the next 15 years in conflict with the Peronists, and eventually, in 1971, when general elections were finally held, a Peronist candidate, Hector Campora, won. Campora then allowed Peron to come back in 1973 and resigned, basically giving the presidency to Peron, who quickly won the election. Peron died in 1974, giving the presidency to his wife and vice-president, Isabel Peron. She quickly lost power thanks to inflation and anti-Peron insurgencies in Argentina. A 1976 military coup replaced her and began the period that is now known as "La Guerra Sucia" or "The Dirty War."

During this period, the military government resorted to crushing all opposition, which "disappeared" 30,000 people who may have sympathized with leftist groups at the time.

When Ronald Reagan came to power, he reversed the U.S.'s policy of condemnation of the military's human rights practices, and praised the Argentine government which (if you didn't read the sentence before this) killed 30,000 people, many of whom were probably totally innocent. Reagan instead praised the government as being "anticommunist" and allowed the CIA to work with the government in their fight against the Red Menace.

The government began to crumble in the early 80's, and self-destructed after the failed attempt to invade the Falkland Islands in 1982. In '83, elections were held, political parties were no longer banned, and a legitimate government was elected.

In the late 80's and 90's, Argentina tried to build up its economy, but in 2001, had a major economic crisis which they are only now recovering from.

Phew. Kudos if you read that whole thing. I'm sure that was none too exciting, but I wanted to give a bit of a background on what's happening there before I start making a bunch of political comments about the country. Feel free to look up more if you care.

Presto

2008-07-07T17:03:00.001-05:00

They showed this before Wall-E, I thought it was quite funny:

the lesson of the moth

2008-06-08T22:24:00.001-05:00

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then to cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is to come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy

by Don Marquis (archy was a cockroach who typed this out by jumping from key to key on a typewriter, hence, the lack of capitalization).