mayumara

We went and saw an amazing dance group last month (yeah, I'm a bit behind) called Mayuamara. They're from Israel, and they're like Stomp, only better. OK, first, to qualify, I haven't seen Stomp, but Chris has. And second, not better in the sense of technically better, but a more well-rounded show. Stomp is very, very good at what they do, and I don't think that anyone can catch the level of expertise that they exhibit - throwing balls to hit each other in the air at the right time and also bounce back in the right direction. That, frankly, is amazing. I can barely throw a ball and get it to the right person in the first place. Muyamara was very, very good technically, but they had a wonderful combination that still amazed the audience, but also involved them and made them laugh, two elements of a really successful show, in my experience.

The members of the group - there were 14 in all, I think - were all dancers that decided to do something more. They are all wonderfully graceful, some obviously doing yoga or something to keep them incredibly flexible (I saw some bends that I had never seen before), but had a lot of comedic edges on the show. Unfortunately, the 'characters' developed throughout the show were (almost exclusively) the male parts, which was a bit of a disappointment. The fool made numerous appearances doing his schtick, along with the troublemaker, the cool guy, etc.

What really got me was the number of ways they managed to create sound and how it was mixed. Some were similar to Stomp, or so I would guess - garbage cans, oil drums, body parts, bouncing balls (done in the dark with glow in the dark balls, for added visual fun), and various metal implements - cannisters, pipes, and so on. They had a couple which I would never have thought of - using a short glass tube, for instance, in water, and 'pulling' the water up, using the sound of the water falling back down and the dunking of the tube to create a really different rhythm), the sounds of hookas being smoked, and didjeridoo-like wooden tubes of differing length that the 'player' would 'hit' (covering the end) to create different tones. My favourite was definitely the use of language in one piece (reminiscent of Bulbous Bouffant by Radio Free Vestibule a.k.a. The Vestibules (link to mp3 file)), using different local words and phrases and playing off each other to create a story, a song, and convulsive laughter in the audience. They also played with light (and lights, including flashlights) both to create differing atmospheres and in also directly incorporating lightplay into a few routines. And, of course, the dancing was fabulous. The show ended with many ovations and an encore that seemed to include pieces of each of the sections they had done, one of the best encores I've seen in a long time. I walked out knowing the money I had spent on the ticket had been more than well worth it.

keeping the change

A unique problem (in my experience, at least) that's hit here recently is a severe [fixed, thanks Dad] lack of coins here in the capital. All of the major forms of mass transit - train, bus, and subway - all charge less than a peso for one trip, necessitating change. They have recently complained (google translation, the original article in Spanish is here. Oh, and for some reason, it translates 'coins' as 'currencies' in English) that the national bank won't give them the coins that they require to provide this change.

The problem is really caused by hoarding. The article states, and it's totally true, that the average inhabitant in the city has 100 coins. When considering the active population, that grows to 200 coins per person, which adds up to a lot of coins in a city of 13 million. As no one wants to get caught on the bus without change (they simply don't accept bills) or not get their change at the subway booths, everyone will continue to hoard and the problem will continue to grow.

It spreads, too. Every business you go into asks for change to make up the dollar on a sale, and small businesses will generally refuse to break higher bills (the highest bill here is the 100 peso bill, worth about $30US. Side note: US dollars are usually given a much better exchange rate in the stores than in the banks, as they are like gold here. If you have them, you store them under your pillow in case of another collapse). Forget trying to break anything that's 5x higher than your fare in a taxi - a friend was once even told that the taxi driver didn't have change for the 20 peso note he was offered for a 6 peso fare (the friend just left the cab, as that was all he had).

I guess it all falls back to the fear here. With inflation rates rising with numbers that are unheard of in North America (and here, too, until five years ago), they sometimes affect prices from week to week. One friend tells of delivery charges for a meal jumping 25% and blamed on inflation, another relates that the cost of engraving a plaque has gone up 30% in six months. People are afraid, as things are a little artificial around here, still. Sure, the magazines say Argentina's coming back, and the government pats itself on the back for bringing unemployment down from 22% to 10%, but realistically, it could go either way.

Hoarding change may sound like a simple problem, but it also reflects a sharp, double-edged reality - the money can be spent, but everyone's afraid to. And yet, they want to, because things are worth much more than paper money in an economic crisis. Throw that together with the fact that the average rate of pay here is about $2-3/hour for many jobs (policemen earn about $300US a month, leading to corruption problems being commonplace), and it's easy to see why so many are still on edge here in Argentina.

i am a man of linguistic convenience

Having lived in Taiwan and learned a bit of the language, there are a few expressions I got accustomed to using. Like all languages, Chinese sometimes has a way of expressing a long thought in English in a few simple syllables. Other times (and this can also be extremely confusing when learning), one word can be used in dozens of places where we would have different phrases or words in English. Here are a few that I miss.

• meiyou. This has so many uses. It literally means 'don't have', but it can be used for all situations in which something is lacking. A wonderful word.

• meiyou banfa. Literally, there is no way to do it. A whole sentence wrapped up in four syllables. Quite the useful/frustrating little phrase (depending on which side of it you are).

• you meiyou. Questions are asked in two ways in Chinese: by adding 'ma' to the end, or by using both the positive and the negative forms of the verb together. This simple little phrase could mean, "Do you have any _____?" or "Is there a _____?".

• jiayou. "Add oil!" in literal terms, it can be used in any fashion in which you wish someone to, well, add a little oil to their action. Your friend is looking for something and you're in a hurry to go. Your favourite dragon boat team needs a little more oomph to finish the race. Your student is taking their time with their work. Very useful.

• keyi. Used for saying anything from "this is fine" to "may i" to "fine, great, OK", with plenty of uses in between. So easy to use, and incredibly useful for getting around.

• do keyi. (both or all) are alright. Incredibly useful. It's not too hard in Spanish, but, like English, it changes with the verb. Much easier to not think.

Those are a few that I miss being able to use here. Of course there are ways to say them here, but, being a language with TENSES, you have to think of how to conjugate the verb and what the subject is and blah blah blah. On the flip side, Spanish has some great words that say a mouthful in less than a mouthful. Stay tuned.

Jude Anarion Thomas

I want to send out a very belated congratulations to my very good friends Thomas and Dawnelle on the birth of their first child not promised to any other organization or evil force. From the sounds of it, he was a troublemaker from the start, but mother and baby are doing good now. Born on the autumnal equinox, I think that this child is in for a great childhood, or at least an interesting one - with parents who practice and teach kung fu and scuba diving, a sci-fi nerd for a father, and a mother who has more interesting stories that I had time to hear in the year and half I knew here before leaving, how could he not? Anyhoo, felicitations to both of you and the little guy.

visions of the future

Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, spped up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.

...

Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference.

...

Politics? One column two sentences, a headline! Then in midair, all vanishes! Whirl man's mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!

I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451. Combined with listening to 1984 this summer in audio book form, it's been a chilling review. If you haven't read them in the last dozen years (or at all), I recommend it.

Two recent thoughts from this. First, which is scarier to you: a society which is led, through its leaders and their lies and obfuscations and historical rewrites and newspeak, into war and societal oblivion, or a society that voluntary gives up its ability to reason, its resources, its literature and references and history? They're both pretty bleak.

Second, and more relevant, I stumbled across a story on NPR about Politicians and their love of 'buzzwords' - the reduction of an idea beyond the sound bite of old. Our attention spans have been reduced to almost nothing from the effect of a hundred grabs at our attention at all times, pop-ups, messaging, the TV, texting, and all that. Talking heads need to grab what little attention we have for the brief time they can get it and implant something that will stay with the public - flip-flop or zippergate or whatever. Reduce an argument to a simple word.

On a side note, I realized that 1984 was where the wonderful archive site known as The Memory Hole got its name, for the purpose of preserving knowledge that others (mainly the government) have tried to repress and destroy (preventing what the memory hole in the book does).

toot toot

There's a local paper called The Argentimes that just started up this year that was the brainchild of a couple of English journalists who came here and realized that something was missing - an English paper reaching out to the growing foreigner population that covered the stories and events that the stalwart English publication here, the Buenos Aires Herald (which just celebrated its 130th anniversary), doesn't. They're only on their sixth issue (printed every two weeks), but are getting known by foreigners here. A month ago, they had a photo contest, in part to see what people had, and in part to build a photo library for themselves (smart idea). I tossed in a couple, including this one, the eventual winner. (click to embiggen)

I didn't hear anything (despite promises) until today when I picked up the latest issue. They (the judges, consisting of the paper's photographer, a local artist, and a local studio photographer) had such nice things to say, though:

Ryan Bird's winning shot of a model soldier taken in a museum started as an outsider, but where many other photos began to seem tired after the third or fourth viewing, this one's humour and quirkiness kept us amused. We also felt it had a lot to say about Argentina. After all, think about the importance of war for Argentine history and national identity...

I've just been floating on cloud nine all day. I've had wonderful compliments from friends, family, and even strangers on my photos for some time, but there's something else about having a photo judged and published. The largest local Spanish paper has just opened their annual photo contest, and I think I'll have a peek at that. You never know until you try...

merry catmas!

Many years ago, I stumbled across the site of the self-titled Accordion Guy, Joey DeVilla. A fabulous writer and programmer living in Toronto and living life to its fullest (including the internet-infamous Worst Date Story, very much worth reading), he introduced me to many things, including the beginning of Catmas, the international date to post a picture of your cat on the blog (from the joke that everyone tends to post a picture of their cat on their blog). Posting pictures of cats is an annual tradition I can get into. However, not having cats of my own, I'll have to make do with the strays that live in the Recoleta cemetery, home to Eva Peron, amongst other famous Argentine bodies. Without further ado, Merry Catmas!

(click to embiggen)

rhymes with fun

The Saskatchewan Roughriders, widely acknowledged to have the best fans in the Canadian Football League, recently benefitted from a visit by Canada's number one political satirist, Rick Mercer. I hightly recommend visiting the Mercer Report site and checking out the Rider clip to see how to attend a Rider game, for future reference, or to see some Saskatchewanians in their true native environment.

anonymity in our weblogs

While visiting one of my favourite bastions of absolute creativity on the web, Girls Are Pretty, a site devoted to abstract, obtuse holidays for every day. Two recent favourites include Dirty Psychic Day! and The Abortion King Day!. Now, I've been out of touch with blogs for the last while, having been traveling and just out of the loop in general, so maybe it was announced or something sometime in the past, but today he linked to his book's myspace page, the first mention I'd heard of it. Oops, except, apparently, the link on his page. Well, regardless, first for me.

I am all about bloggers writing books and making money from their writing. I also like meeting people through their blogs, even getting to meet them now and then. However, there are times when I like the anonymity of the blogs I read. I liked knowing this unknown entity called Girls Are Pretty was churning out complex holiday ideas, all with little stories to accompany them. It could be a he, it could be a she, it could be some kind of amorphous blob of very funny Jell-o. Knowing it's a 33-year-old guy from New York takes away a little of the mystique, that's all. I'll still howl out loud at his entries, but now I know they're his entries, you know?

I guess I'll just have to get my unknown fix from the Cardhouse ro-bot now. (Every time I see ro-bot spelled that way on that site, it brings to mind Zoidberg's pronounciation of robot (ro-but) from Futurama. They are inexorably linked.)

types of jams i've seen for sale here

More than I've ever seen in my life. (The ones with a * I have tried, here or ever.)

• raspberry*
• strawberry*
• grape jelly*
• mixed berries*
• orange marmalade* (everything is marmalade here - that's the Spanish word for jam)
• peach*
• apple
• cherry
• grapefruit
• lemon
• banana
• plum
• fig* (it tastes a little like the middle of fig newtons. Go figure)
• quince
• kiwi
• tomato
• pumpkin (which may also be a type of squash, the picture had a pumpkin on it, but they use the same word for pumpkin and some kinds of squash here)
• carrot and orange marmalade
• pear
• apricot

  Of course, there's also dulce de leche, which is heaven in my mouth. It's like caramel, though that's like saying the CN Tower is pretty tall. It's a super-rich concoction of milk and sugar, boiled down into a rich brown bunch of deliciousness that goes so well with anything. If you come visit me, I promise you will have as much as you can take of it. Read more about in its Wikipedia article - one legend has that it came from here, in Argentina! They eat it enough that you'd think so, anyway. Also, here's a delicious-looking recipe for something called Banoffee Cake that's supposed to taste like dulce de leche. Mmmmm.

  Posted by ambiguo at 10:53 PM | Comments (2)

wrong definitions

Currently in town is a Human Rights Film Festival by DerHumALC, a local human rights group. I've been to a few films, and between the few I've seen and the ones coming up I want to see, they run a fair gauntlet. Thursday night were two short films, one about a building in town designated as a safe living area for transsexuals, their life here in Buenos Aires, and their struggle to with local prostitution laws (it was pretty slangy, so I didn't get a lot, but I got bits and pieces) and the other about Orthodox Jewish lesbians and their many tribulations.

Today I went to a horrifying piece that had everyone in the theatre in tears made by HBO on the Rwandan genocide called Sometimes in April, which I can't recommend enough. It is not a happy movie, but it covers an issue that was basically a blip in the lives of most North Americans. Most people, myself included, remember mentions in the news at the time and giant refugee camps, but as to what exactly happened, not enough. One line sums up Western knowledge of the crimes as they happened. A reporter is asking a White House official about what is happening and asks about the "Tutus and Hutsis". The official corrects him that it's the Hutus and Tutsis, and he simply asks, "Well, who are the good guys?" It'd be so much easier if every war had a good side and a bad side, wouldn't it?

The one that struck me in different was called The Final Solution. It's a film about the genocide of Muslims in the Indian province of Gujarat, where, after 58 Hindus were burnt by Muslims protesting the destruction of a 450-year-old mosque, right-wing politicians adopted the cause of eliminating Muslims from the country. In a province close to Pakistan, this cause turned into genocide. More than 2500 Muslims have died, women have been raped, people have lost livelihoods....all the stories of a region torn by war.

The film was by a Spanish director who was Indian, and therefore the film was all in Indian with Spanish subtitles. I tried to follow through the subtitles and did OK (yay Spanish lessons), but due to my mass incomprehension, I had a hard time distinguishing who was who at times, except when it was obvious. Sadly, those times were either when the local Hindus were discussing about getting rid of the Muslims or when the Muslims were discussing what they had suffered at the hands of their former neighbours and friends. Leaving the theatre, I realized that the distinguishing characteristic for me had been hatred and suffering of the two groups. I can't imagine a worse thing than being defined for my hatred, although being defined by my suffering would be close.

This reminded me of coming home after traveling through Asia. While I counted how lucky I was not to be in a country during times of conflict (I had friends who were in Nepal during the curfews, they got out fine, though), I was very aware of the tensions and history in the region. Returning to Canada, I rediscovered the antipathy held by some, especially in Western Canada for the Quebecois. While it does not even come close to the hatred held in parts of the world that leads to murder and worse, it seems so useless. It may sound trite, but damn, we've got so much to be thankful for that bickering over something so simple-sounding seems retarded. Absolutely retarded. Here in Argentina I'm not asked if I'm from the East or West of Canada, but from the English or French part. No one has asked about the situation between English and French, but I'd be absolutely loathe to have my country defined by hatred in it - boring, quiet and law-abiding would be preferable to that anytime.

What can be done about it? I don't know. Actually, I do - accept others. Don't make stereotypes. Find out for yourself, don't rely on the opinions of others. It's much easier than you think, but it takes though, time, compassion, and a desire to change something, which, these days, though it's easier to do than at any other time than in human history, seems to be the hardest thing imaginable for some.

These movies have made me so incredibly sad that each time I walk out of the theatre, I want to go home and have a good cry. They've also opened up my eyes even wider as to what can happen. I don't have a solid plan for how to make things better (except as outlined above), but I do know that what I am doing now is helping me develop one. Everything has got to start somewhere.

why there should be no question of how wrong military tribunals are

Now, I know that conservatives get upset when libertarians bring up Adolf Hitler in the context of the post-9/11 U.S. government assaults on civil liberties (Have you ever noticed that they never get upset when U.S. officials compare recalcitrant foreign rulers to Hitler?), but as I pointed out in my article “A Democratic Dictatorship,” when the U.S. government is doing something that Hitler did, while that doesn’t automatically make it bad, it at least should raise some red flags.

As I pointed out in my article “How Hitler Became a Dictator,” after the terrorist strike on the Reichstag, which enabled Hitler to secure the Enabling Act that temporarily suspended civil liberties in Germany, a German judge, while convicting one of the defendants, acquitted others, much to Hitler’s chagrin and disapproval. After all, they were obviously “terrorists.” How dare that German judge find them not guilty?

So, Hitler decided to implement a new “independent” judicial system within Germany to try terrorists and traitors. Known as the “People’s Court,” it became nothing more than a judicial lapdog to carry out prosecutions, convictions, and punishments in accordance with Hitler’s will. In fact, it was the infamous People’s Court that convicted German college students Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends in the White Rose organization and quickly tried and executed them (3 days after their arrest) for treason for distributing antiwar and anti-government pamphlets.

The military tribunals that Bush and the Congress are setting up will supposedly be used only on foreigners, not on Americans accused of terrorism. The reason for that differentiation in treatment is political – the feds know that Americans are less likely to object to this new judicial system if Americans think that will be applied only to “other people,” not to them.

From Decimating the Constitution with Military Tribunals on lewrockwell.com.

Chris did her final paper in uni on how the Patriotism Act violates the U.S. Consitution. She studied one small section on how it dealt with foreigners and had enough to write a large paper.

mardi gras: made in china

Went and saw this movie tonight (Google Video has the trailer). Wow. Very well done. If nothing else, it shows how blindly we all forage on, whichever side we're on. The director traveled to a factory in China that produced large amounts of beads for Mardis Gras to interview workers and the factory owner and see how they live and work. Then he went to Mardis Gras and asked people if they knew where the beads came from and, after they admitted they didn't (most said they didn't care), proceeded to tell them.

The back and forth juxtaposition was very well done. The kids (and they are kids, mostly under 20, many around 16, mostly female) talk about their days (14-16 hours, six days a week), their dreams (making their families' lives better, mostly, having given up on education for themselves), the conditions (high quotas, strict punishments) and the pay (at most $75 a month - at one point they say it's one cent per necklace they produce). The boss talks about how the movie will show China is different, the workers like being there, that all the workers care about is how much they make, and about his factory. There are a few boobs, a brief but hilarious interview with a Catholic priest, plenty of people who don't give two thoughts about the origins of the beads, and a woman who has been around Mardi Gras for year, likening it to a religion. The director also visits the homes of the factory owner and one of the workers at Chinese New Year, providing another huge contrast between the burning poverty of the worker's family and the opulence of the boss's house (a room filled with toys!).

At the beginning of the film, neither is aware of the others' situation. Near the end, however, the director shows the other group video and/or pictures of the others. The kids are amazed that people treat the beads like this (crazy! A favourite Chinese adjective, from my experience) - they think the beads made ugly necklaces - but what really got them was the price. They estimated that they make about one cent per necklace they make, and a dozen regular necklaces cost about $4-10. A big handful of bead necklaces equal what they make in a month. The people who saw the footage of the children working in the factories felt dirty.

The illusion is perforated. You can't enjoy something made once you know whose backs its been made on. The "Mardi Gras religion" woman sums it up perfectly at the end by telling a story of a figurine she had as a kid that turned out to be an ugly metal rod with a couple of knobs on it. "A butterfly is beautiful, but when you rub the stuff off its wings, it ain't gonna fly no more," she said, echoing the girls who had given up dreams of being doctors and dancers. One guy at Mardi Gras tried to defend himself, saying, "It's all relative...ten cents is a lot of money over there. It's better than, like, someone making eight cents." It's easy to strike out at someone saying this (and well-deserved), but it's a defense mechanism. It's really hard to deal with others' suffering in the world. I noticed it a lot when I'd try to tell some people about what I've seen - they just don't want to hear.

Movies like this accomplish just that. Education is the key to making conditions like this. Even the kids didn't want people to stop buying (they'd have no work), they just wanted fair conditions. I don't know how to accomplish this yet, but making others aware is half the battle. Sometimes a lot more than that.

a job for all

I am "working" as a "writer" on a designy type television show. It's the kind of soothing program that shows you what fabric to put on your couch or where to place musty, unread books for maximum "wow." I call it "TV to vacuum by."

People dishing on their work. What a great idea. I like to just sit and browse. Some are thoughtful, others are gut-busting fun.

wrong wrong wrong

Welcome to the other side of the line. Or, as Cardhouse called it, FreedomPlus. Oy.

Habeus Corpus, in case you didn't know, is the basis of freedom and rights within our culture. It goes waaay back to England, and is supposedly enshrined in the Constitution and/or Bill of Rights in the USA - the idea that someone taken into custody by the government is entitled to know what they are in custody for and fight it if they choose to. Not any more. With the signing of the Military Commision bill Tuesday morning, Bush has signed that right. Now, an enemy combatant is

“a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a combatant status review tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the president or the secretary of defense.”

Wow, hey, that's basically saying that anyone the president wants to be is an enemy combatant. Even if you give material support to a group that the government says supports enemy combatants, you're an enemy combatant. Wow, that makes me feel free. Also, no one, not even the US Supreme Court, is allowed to challenge the tribunals - it's just simply not allowed, according to the act. It gives the president despotic power, in a nutshell. It sanctions torture of any form up to the point where it could cause "serious physical or mental harm". I don't quite understand how that can be defined, but "[o]utrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment" is too ambiguous. James Madison wrote that the checks were in place to stop even devils in government, that people shouldn't have to depend on the good mood of the president to keep them out of jail.

It only gets worse. There's a clause to make Bush and his team free from potential prosecution for war crimes for everything they've done retroactively. As a friend pointed out, why would you do this - it would be like admitting war crimes. The thing is, who's going to take you to task over it? Not the US, it's in the law books that you can't be charged (good luck changing that anytime soon). The US doesn't recognize the International Criminal Court, and like anyone's going to go in and take him. So he wins. Again. (One article I found notes that retroactive laws are prohibited in the Constitution (at the bottom).

Lastly, news comes in from a leak that the US government is considering two potential courses of action in Iraq to try and quiet things down: dividing it up into three areas based on ethnicity/faith, and installing a dictator while officially looking the other way. Yes, you read that right. They came in to get rid of a despot and install democracy, and since that hasn't worked so well, they'll try putting it back the way it was, with an America brand Dictatorship.

It's impossible to say now to hope maybe it will stop. Maybe they'll come to their senses. As Keith Olbermann* on MSNBC said, if you don't think it could happen to you, talk to the newspaper editors jailed by John Adams using the Alien and Sedition Acts, the peace protesters jailed by Woodrow Wilson using the Espionage Acts, or the Japanese interred by FDR (which the US government even admitted were wrong 30 years later).

South America being close to North America and Buenos Aires being the closest city, culturally, to North America, there are a lot of Americans here (I've only met and handful of Canadians). Thusly, when someone first meets me, I'm asked if I'm American. Even when I clarify my origins, I'm still asked what the differences are between Canadians and Americans, and sometimes asked why the US does the things they do. When things like this happen, I have to say I'm only too happy to say I'm Canadian (though I look at the mess that Stephen Harper is making these days with such things as his environmental bill which essentially leaves the problem for the next generation to deal with), but as I've found, to most of the world, we're lumped in with America, whether we like it or not. And really, considering the case of Maher Arar, it's our problem. Plus there's the whole, you know, global citizen thing. We can't look the other way anymore, as the problem is there, too. It's all around us, and I don't quite know how we'll break out of this web.

*A lot of information for this article was discovered through reading Uncommon Thought, especially Habeas Corpus to Habeas Corpse. I highly recommend checking out the three commentaries by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on this issue Rowan links to. They are from Oct. 9th, Oct. 17th, and Oct. 18. Living afraid of the wrong thing is exactly right.

**Here's the text of the Military Commisions Act, if you're interested.

published!

About a month and a half ago, someone left a comment on my flickr photos that I had some great pictures of China. They also said they were putting together a coffee table book called Legends of the Dragon containing pictures of Asia (mostly of China) and needed submissions. Unfortunately, it wasn't a paid gig (it never is. Not yet, anyway), but it would be published with credit and participants would get a free copy (maybe three? There's a little confusion around that issue for me right now). Good exposure.

Anyhoo, I submitted a few pictures after looking over what they still needed and promptly forgot about it. On Friday, I found out they had accepted five of my pictures! (this, this, this, this, and this)

I'm going to be published!

I am rather excited, to say the least. The release will be in December. I'll let you know more as I discover it. Yay!

has the world gone completely nuts?

A good friend, J, just emailed me a totally off-his-rocker defense of Peter MacKay's calling his ex-girlfriend a dog in Parliament last week. Not only does he say that being called a dog is hardly an insult, but he turns the tables and says she could learn something from the 'doggy set'. J also included a rightly-outraged response from (presumably) today's paper, asking how one could possibly say something like this and proceeding to christen the editorial department and Mr. MacKay as common, hard-working asses.

One point I've belaboured with friends many times over the past few years is that we seem to be suffering from a dearth of leaders that are afraid to stand by anything anymore. However, I seem to be countered lately more and more, except that people seem to stand by the wrong things - insults, comments made in the vein of "well, I call 'em as I see 'em", and a simple refusal to back down and apologize, even when your actions have killed thousands. And you know what? It's happening more and more. People are getting so tired of politicians not saying anything (or, in my generation's case, politicians who have never said anything) that they'll latch onto someone who puts out a strong opinion and stands by it, even when it's so wrong. Why? Why does hate attract us so?

The more I see, the less I understand.

yes, lord vader...i mean chad

So, in case you didn't know, wasting time on YouTube is fun. I have watched SO MUCH Daily Show and Colbert Report that it's not...well, actually, it's quite funny, to tell you the truth. Anyhoo, one clip that kept coming up on the related bar was this Chad Vader. I finally watched it, and now, I believe is the time that you also must do so. So far, there is Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, and Episode 4, with the promise of more to come after a cliffhanger ending! Also, here's Steve Carrell doing his babble bit in Bruce Almighty. That clip cracks me up every time I see it. I just can't get enough. I lika. do. da cha cha.

What's your favourite YouTube clip?

a wedding!

This past weekend, Chris and I attended the wedding of a friend here (friend of a good friend back home) to her wonderful man. Sandra is a wonderful woman, and her and her husband, Alan, have a terrific band down here that plays regularly in their town. In place of a wedding reception, they held a giant afternoon of music at the local arts centre, inviting friends from all over the country to come out and play some music, have a bite and a drink and a blast. There were bands from the most northernmost province, Salta, gracing us with music that was different from all else there, not surprising considering they are culturally closer to Bolivia than most of Argentina. Alan is originally from Patagonia in the south, and his old bandmates were there, recombining to bring forth the gorgeous chords that floated through the hall. There were also a couple of troops of teenage (and younger!) dancers who also put on a show doing traditional foclorique dancing.

Not knowing what to give in this situation (I'd only met her once before being invited to her wedding!), I offered to take pictures of her wedding party for her. Nothing special, just me and my flash wandering around, trying to capture the performers, the attendees, and bit of the feeling of the day. I did get a few good shots (they're coming. I took a lot of pictures. Surprise, surprise), but I really wanted to share this video clip that Chris took showing Sandra and Alan's band with the dancers out front. Make sure you check it out.

The kids were my favourite part of the day. One could easily tell the practice that they had put into this performance, but two things struck me even more strongly than the considerable skill in front of me: one, these kids were preserving a wonderful cultural treasure and would continue carrying it with them, and two, they were enjoying every minute of it. Most of them came out and danced before their 'performance' with huge smiles breaking out when their brows weren't knotted up with concentration, and continued dancing after their performance, despite the 30 degree (probably hotter inside) heat permeating everything (they were thoroughly soaked by the end of the day). I knew that I was in the presence of something really special, and I may never have seen it.

This is why I love living over traveling.

yes, no, and silver

Tooling around today, I found a quirky, generally nerdy little site called DailyWTF. Mainly a collection for software developers and their tales of horror in the profession (there are some doozies there for the technically-minded or just darn curious), there are also some side-splittingly funny collections of screen captures sent in by readers of various errors they've received or seen involving programs, technology, and the Net. I think they have one each month, and link to the previous month's at the beginning of each post. Here's the most recent one to start you off. Enjoy!

pumping himself up

Reddit is a great site for random news items, such as this great (and quite long, be ready to spend a while staring at your monitor) article about steroid use. It isn't another article about how bad steriods are, but rather, a guy who kept in shape and decided he wanted to know why people took steroids. What it gave them. And it's true - you hear about when they get caught in the Olympics or Tour de France, stripped of their medals, and that's about it. The article is really an eye-opener simply because of its nature - what would happen to you or I if we took the various drugs out there? There's also a little history of drugs in sport tossed in, which is mighty interesting - testing wasn't started at the Olympics until 1968, and continues to plague the Olympics and other sports today.

He finishes by saying that there is always the dangerous argument of 'Why not make it legal and then everyone's on the same playing field?' And he replies with the perfect answer - then, it's the chemicals competing, not the athletes. I have a friend who does competitive weight-lifting and is very much against the drugs. He refuses to take anything of the sort, even though he's lost many times to people he knows have been taking steriods, or have gotten to where they are by taking them at some point. It's hard sometimes, he's told me, but if you're not doing it yourself you can't be truly proud of the victory when you get it. Plus, in the end, it's saving the athletes themselves. It isn't a huge feat of imagination to conceive just how desperate people get when then want to win.

dressin' up

With all the cheap vegetables available here (all grown in Argentina, nice and local!), we've been having salads almost daily. I'm definitely not complaining. Deliciously fresh veggies, yum! We've also been experimenting with making different dressings. One of my favourite so far came from a recipe for a Grapefruit and Avacado salad with Plum Mayo Dressing (it looks great, though I've only used the dressing. It's a simple cream dressing using jam (we tried fig jam with it and was delicious, but you could really use any jam you wanted) for the fruit flavour.

1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 Tbsp plum jam, or strawberry or other berry jam
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Mix together, and voila! Using low-fat mayo would keep the calorie count down, if you concerned about that. Jam is also really cheap here, so it makes trying different flavours. Up next - raspberry.