random learning

I found my current homepage on some site a couple of months ago, and I've really taken to it: the Wikipedia Randompage function. It simply directs you to, well, a random Wikipedia page every time you open your brower. Sometimes you get things like information on the town of Ober-Ramstadt in Germany (there are a lot of places in Wikipedia) or the list of the Best Debut Awards given at the Filmfare Festival for Hindi films, but sometimes you get really interesting stuff. And sometimes it's just a little weird.

Today was Armenian Mythology. Sounds kind of cool, but when you read the story summaries, you realize they were most definitely not written by a native English speaker. They confuse me.

He had an old woman bring his ring to Zoulvisia. She told the woman to tell the king that she had come to her sense and would marry him, and to tell the man who gave the ring to await her in a garden in three days.

They love the pronouns in the Story of Zoulvisia.

Anyway, give it a whirl - just enter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage in as your homepage. You might even learn something useful, like British Rail departmental multiple unit classes!

welcome to the chaos of carnaval

Well, that was what we expected after hearing so much about Carnival in South America. "It's a huge party! Lots of water and dancing and partying!" Having much the same roots as New Orleans' Mardi Gras festival (though producing fewer Girls-Gone-Wild-style boobumentaries), it was officially celebrated February 19th and 20th. Government workers even get the days off in Buenos Aires - nice deal! Apparently parties are held all throughout January and February, though. I heard talk of it in other countries (Peru, Bolivia) and witnessed a few early celebrations myself.

Chris and I went out to a weekend block-party type of celebration that consisted of a few groups of dancers and a large group of people all sweating under sulphur lights. It was cool, with the dancers dancing their hearts out, big grills out in the middle of the street with chorizo sausages for sale, and stores along the road open, despite the fact that it was close to midnight, but it was still a block party. I can't say it got my blood boiling much.

A couple of weeks later, whilst en route to a class, I happened by the Plaza de Mayo (the main town plaza) and stumbled upon loads of people getting ready for a parade! As it turns out, it was Fat Tuesday, and all of the murgas (dance groups) were holding the annual parade that night. I wandered around snapping photos as everyone posed (nothing like a celebration to make people into wonderful photographic subjects!) and got ready for the evening. Unfortunately, I had to teach shortly after and missed the parade, but I certainly heard them, being only a block or so away from the street. Drums and whistles and cheers galore! I'm sorry I missed it.

Lastly, and most certainly not least, we finally got to leave the city - to Gualeguaychú, three hours north and the home of the second largest Carnival celebration outside of Brazil (from what we've heard. The largest is supposed to be Montevideo, though I recently heard of one in Bolivia that starts at 8 in the morning and goes until after midnight. Wow.) We had a little confusion at the bus station, as our 7:05 bus didn't pull into the station until 7:20, but got underway in a wonderfully comfortable bus (compared to Asian standards, that is. Even, really, compared to some North American standards). I finally got to see the Argentine prairies, and I was blissfully reminded of home. So flat, pampas grass stretching out as far as the eye could see. Wonderful. After a blisteringly hot day (I think nearly forty degrees of Centigradual heat were beating down on me) passed by consuming cold beers and sleeping in the park, we were finally ready for some celebrations.

Three sections of parade went by us over the course of five hours, each lasting about an hour and a half. The chairs in front of us morphed from a group of quiet white plastic seats into the recipients of a good stomping by way too many drunken (and friendly) 20-somethings who, using them to stand on while drinking a lot of beer, would inevitably fall and blame their fall on the chair. (The group was pretty friendly, chatting with us when they found out where we were from and offering us free beer to boot!) Due to the fact that one of our clients is a member of one of the clubs that gets preferential seating, we managed to snag some pretty sweet seats - close to the middle where the judges sit and down near the 'runway', a great place for taking photos.

Feathers of every conceivable colour, gargantuan floats flawlessly built, and more flesh than a night out in Las Vegas danced past us. As it is supposed to be the last big party before Lent, flesh was definitely present in all forms. Women wearing not much more than a thong and some stickers danced with men in underpants. Of course, there were groups who were entirely covered - such as the French Renaissance group or the aliens/spacepeople - but in general, everyone was about as desnudos as they could be. There was so much sparkle that Chris commented later that it seemed to have been roller-painted on.

The floats - with such themes as the Incans, Renaissance France, the jungle, a number including birds or insects, outer space, and Peter Pan for starters - were huge, sometimes topping 10 metres, and were intricately done up. I think they start preparation a year ago and spend inordinate amounts of money.

Everyone was having fun, though - there was an electrical energy flowing through the air, the dancers, though sweating with the effort of constant dancing for at least an hour (the parade moved at a crawl) called to the audience to sing louder. Oh, and the music? They generally played one song for each section, which was cleverly looped. However, that meant the same song over and over and over for over an hour. You just phased it out after a bit, really, and felt it more than heard it.

Politics even made its appearance, as across the river (and border, in Uruguay) from the town, a new pulp mill is supposed to be moving in. There has been protesting going on from the Argentinians for months, as it's believed that this violates an environmental agreement the two countries have (the mill will be dumping a lot of chemicals into the river), and it didn't rest at Carnival. Before each section started, a group went through with signs reading No a las papaleras (No to the pulp mills) to the delight and cheers of the audience.

One thing that made me sad was the amount of garbage/waste/crap, which, at a festival celebration like this is inevitable, I guess. Before the parade started, companies went through and passed out long thin plastic bags with their logo on them, the sole use of which was to be inflated and thrown around. These lasted for all of fifteen minutes, and they handed out hundreds of them. I know more than a few plastic chairs were destroyed in our section, and of course, there were plastic cups strewn everywhere. Large amounts of senseless garbage always bring me down a bit.

In the end, however, I was so glad that we came out for the show. Everyone expressed wonder, surprise, envy, and/or a knowing nod when we returned with stories and pictures. Everyone in the city knows of the celebrations there, though a lot of people I've talked to hadn't ever been. Funny how that is, something so big only three hours away and never been. Same story all over.

Of course there were more pictures than necessary, but a good photographer is a great editor. Check out pictures of the three celebrations on my flickr site.

UPDATE: I forgot the videos! Made by Chris.

Giant Hung Peter Pan (24MB .avi) - missing his giant hungneess, though.

Look at that ass shake! (28MB .avi) - that was my comment right as she finished filming.

Astronaut drum corps (voted best drum corps of the carnaval) and the queen of the carnaval (72MB .avi)

Enjoy!

telling

I really like the War Room articles on Salon. Tim Grieve really nails the US administration to the wall and doesn't pull any punches. From today:

The best-ever one-sentence explanation of Bush domestic policy

From today's Wall Street Journal: "President Bush said he intends to nominate Michael Baroody, a lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers, to be chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission."

(you may have to click through a sponsor ad)

porn parodies -always good for a laugh

Of course, it's pretty safe to say that this isn't the safest thing for work or children, but damn, it's funny. My favourites include:

• Shake My Spear, I'm In Love
  
• Yank My Doodle, It's a Dandy
  
• The Texas Dildo Masquerade
  
• Oklahomo!
  
• E-3: The Extra Testicle
  
• Doing John Malkovich
  
• Armaget-it-on
  
• And last, but certainly not least, one that goes out to Jenny after a special student's speech: An Officer and a Genitalman.
  

They really seem to like Driving Miss Daisy and the Harry Potter movies, too. See more at Pimp Daddy Swank's World of Comedy Porn Titles!

carnaval videos

Oops!

I completely forgot three videos of Carnaval when I wrote about it a few days ago that Christine recorded with her camera. Watch and enjoy!

Giant Hung Peter Pan (24MB .avi) - missing his giant hungneess, though.

Look at that ass shake! (28MB .avi) - that was my comment right as she finished filming.

Astronaut drum corps (voted best drum corps of the carnaval) and the queen of the carnaval (72MB .avi)

Enjoy!

UPDATED. Oops again, I forgot the links. Thanks Dave!

not all that surprising

When you allow the government to know everything about you and you block anybody out of your country that could cause problems, odds are it's going to happen to you, too.

Going to Canada? Check your past [sfgate.com]

lucky number 13

This week certainly is a portentous one in some ways (not so in others). It's A Word A Day's tridecennary (13th anniversary) - hats off to them! To celebrate, their theme this week is words to do with the number 13. This also fits in nicely with today, Tuesday the 13th, which is the Spanish and Greek equivalent of Friday the 13th (read more about it here). The word of the day? Triskaidekaphobia - fear of the number 13, a word I learned to enjoy many moons ago.

This week also sees the celebration of Pi Day (3.14, of course. Many will be celebrating at 1:59 to boot) tomorrow for all the nerds. Wrapping up the week is the birthday celebration of one of the most wonderful, thoughtful, talented people on the planet, me my most excellent friend Jenny. Happy birthday, babe!

Oh yeah, and those pesky Ides on the same day. How fitting.

the thong's the thing

Living in a society where sex, passion, and displays of affection are so widely accepted, one could say almost encouraged, is a shock after living in such a quiet - one could say repressed - society like Taiwan. Here, people make out freely in the street, the park, the...well, everywhere. Not churches, that's about it. Compare this with our trip around SE Asia and time in Taiwan, where holding hands was about the limit - a kiss on the cheek was possibly acceptable, but doing more meant receiving stares and looks intended to snuff out that smut. Of course, young couples there would also go to parks (though not make out and caress as freely as in Argentina) to escape the eternal eyes of parents.

(Funny, in both places, they have 'love motels', often frequented by men on affairs and also by young couples looking for a place that isn't their parents' house. There, as you can't leave your parents' home before you're married (tradition, changing), here, as you can't afford it (economic, not changing all that fast))

I've also seen free breastfeeding everywhere - on the subway, in restaurants, waiting in line for the bank to open in the morning. I walked by a woman today who was walking down the street and breastfeeding at the same time, and Chris walked by a woman on the street in the suburbs one day whose child had stopped eating and the woman had just left her boob hanging out as she continued down the street with her two other kids toddling along behind her. Yay to that - I'm definitely in the it's natural camp, but again, very different than what I've experienced in puritanical North America or asexual Eastern Asia.

What does get me, however (and maybe this is a trend that has come out of the MTVs and the Britney Spears and such that I missed?) is the plethora of thongs here. Now, first off, like any red-blooded man, I like thongs. Good things. Show off the goods, and so forth. However, every single woman here wears them seemingly every day, day in, day out - they can be bought literally on the street (laid out across a sheet in front of a closed shop on a busy street), in a plethora of lingerie shops on the street (like Taiwan all over again! Repression finds its way out!), or in the high-class malls.

How do I know women's underwear habits? To be honest, it's not hard. Plenty of T-bars pulled high across backsides that really should have a belt, as the pants are way to baggy. Also, women here, at least this summer, love very, very thin pants. Walking behind a pair of almost see-through white pants up the stairs out of the subway, it's hard not to see the white outline of a thong underneath.

While the idea of a society of thong-wearing women (and yes, that includes women up into their 50s and 60s) may sound appealing - and at times it is - in reality, it's underwear. As with anything else, when it's overdone, or worse, done in a really tacky way, it loses all appeal. I've definitely had my fill of terrible thongs and am, honestly, ready for a cooler winter with thicker pants. Well, pants that I can't see through, anyway.

"Meow" means "no"

Of course you couldn’t even have Pepe Le Pew without the poor cat who plays “Ned Beatty” to Pepe’s “hillbilly with a banjo”.

Sometimes he's way off, but at other times, this guy can make me laugh out loud.

"The car was completely quiet yet there seemed to be a certain tension among all the women"

Impressions of a woman-only subway car in Japan from a friend of a friend. I had heard about these and wondered what they were like. I like the fact that some foreign dude wandered on and didn't seem distressed by it. Oh, those foreigners!