| thoughts |
[Oct. 27th, 2008|11:44 am] |
I was watching the Saturday Night Live skit yesterday with Will Farrel and Tina Fey, and i was rather struck by the difference in the type of satire evident in the two portrayals. Will Farrel's bush is almost apolitical, its a caricature, produced by over exaggerating the personal tendencies of our beloved (almost non-existent these days) current president. It struck a unique chord with me, a pining for our pastoral past when the comic prancing of an overgrown frat-boy (see Old School) were all it took to make us laugh at our leaders. Remember how funny it was when bush almost got taken out by a pretzel, or when Cheney shot that guy (in the face!)?
Tina Fey is a much more nuanced and intellegent actor, and Sarah Palin is... well its been said. The point is, it was easier to laugh at bush because it was all you could do. After the stolen elections, the inane and openly supurior way that the bush boys handled the press and the pesky majority of the country that was sickened by his administration, laughing at his inability to pronounce words or eat solid food was the next best thing to being thrown in jail for being a dissident.
I suppose im a little disheartened by this country moving from Farrel to Fey. Weve lost the innocence that allowed the neoconservative movement to gan so much power. After going through so much shock and dismay at the dismantling of our democracy, we need a more serious class of actors to parody our prospective leaders. The old style simply wont do. The fact that palin exhibits a kooky grasp of her native toungue is funny, but its the utter lack of respect, domination by pithy talking points, stagecraft as a substitute for qualification and total breakdown of the barrier between serving the public and serving your own interests that really gets our goat nowadays, something that Farrel is incapable of riffing off of.
When the satarization of our elected officials get serious, what the hell are the rest of us supposed to do? |
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| Pirate watch |
[Sep. 4th, 2008|09:35 am] |
Apparently, pirating aint all fun and games, there's a bit of orginization involved. and now, the most important question of the day, do i download chrome and kick the fox to the curb, or does my google life have limits? Them boys at google have a checkered history, maintaining some comitment right action, but privacy concerns tend to really curtail the usefulness of google's appraoch. so, we have to ask the very simple question, how much do i trust google? well, they do have a comic book, which is a fairly interesting read, but are they creating a virtual police state?
Ive had a rash of people ask me if i watched the republican convention, which i havent. I really find spin more interesting than actual political content, and the spin flying of this convention is something to see. in any case www.fivethirtyeight.com is a pretty interesting poll aggregation site, with specific wieghts for each poll and a complex methodology. after this week, the general election is officially on. Remeber the good old days when we would only pay attention to the last, like, four months of the election? Ah the innocence of not knowing what a caucus was... (Ill show you my caucus if you show me your pirimary....) Greg Mankew seems to showing some of the downsides of McCains tax policy today, which is interesting cause hes been complaining about Obama for awhile.
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| last day in Ecuador. |
[Aug. 20th, 2008|09:36 am] |
Yesterday August ran into some North Americans in an internet cafe, who apparently told him the breadth of thefts and muggings thier group has gone through here. Ive never really been afraid in South America, not of the people anyway, but this town, Quito, is chock full of tourists, and the constant warnings about being careful and not going to certain places definitely makes for a more threatening environment. Additionally, everyone else got on a plane this morning at 430, leaving me here with nothing to do until my plane tonight at seven. I was gonna go a- walkabout for a couple of hours, but its kind of a miserable day, i dont have a camera, and the whole place seems to be sort of... down. Additionally, i get to have a pretty wierd night tonight, i have to find a way to get from Miami international Airport to Ft. Lauderdale Airport sometime between 1:00 and 6:00 in the morning. Whoo. Anyways, i might just go back to the hotel, pack, and watch a movie for a while.
Whats been wierd about this trip is that weve spent most of it having achieved our goal for coming down here. we climbed the mountian a week ago and since then its just been.... well, not basking in the glow exactly, but maybe a little lost. We caught the weather almost perfectly, but it still might have made things go a little easier to climb the mountian later, and the one thing that really hurt us was not acclimatizing.
We went up and saw the monument to the eqautor yesterday, with a cool taxi driver who took us to a bunch of places. the funny thing is, the monument is several hundred feet away from the actual eqautor, which is a bit of a disconnect. its kind of a cool picture to stand with one foot on either side of the eqautor, and frankly if i hadnt have known that it was not the real line, id have been fine, totally trusting. last night we went to what i feel was the best restaurant so far, drank wine, and the rest got packed up. Mudge has been down with some stomach thing for a day or so, which sucks. Something pretty bad too, worse than anything ive had down here. So thats gonna be a fun plane ride. My regular life is starting to seep into things, starting to think about school and finding a job and soccer again. (It´s really herd for tourists to play sports, so this continent is frustrating because they play soccer everywhere... without you...) Turns out ive got a bunch of stuff to do.
So, the challenge of the mountain was not really skills, although if were gonna keep doing this stuff im gonna have to keep certain habits up, but the altitude, which took all my strength. the beach was less than youd want from a resort, and more than you get in the third world, the city is actually kind of dull, unless you like expensive bars and the threat of mugging, bluefooted boobies have a superiority complex, whales dont like boats very much, people with cameras should always carry them, and i need to learn spanish. |
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| Whales, Boobies, Mojitos on the beach in hammocks. |
[Aug. 17th, 2008|01:21 pm] |
After completing the mountain, we split into two groups. August and Forrest attempted the second tallest mountain in Ecuador, Cotopaxi, while Mudge, Sarah, Orion and myself went west to a town called Salinas, and then north to a resort-esque town called Puerto Lopez (unfourtunately i did not get to post from Puerto Lopez.) The coast of Ecuador caters to lots of national tourism, so while there were many other tourists, Gringos were not as pervasive as you would expect. The main attraction of this town is seasonal Whale watching, which we hit right on the head, and an island called Isla la Plata, where there are several species of Boobies... the birds that is. One thing they did have down pretty well were the bars, mostly just shacks on the beach with hammocks in back and a blender up front. You could literally lie in a hammock and have drinks brought to you. This is kind like living inside of a cliche, but it was very relaxing. The first night we got into the town, we got a hotel down the strip which resembled a concrete bunker, this is in fact how we reffered to the place. In general, though, despite a few bug bites, it was generally a good, and easy time. We took a tour to the Island, got to see whales, blue-footed Boobies, Masked Boobies, and French People. The Island there fell off the continent, so the ecosystem is alot more hardy than the Galapagos. (apparently theres a tortoiuse there that is the last of its species. Call me what you will, but that is damn depressing.) The bus ride back to Quito took twelve hours, in which my Ipod got stolen, we ate nothing, and one of the brakes (we think it was the brake, it was hard to tell) had to be hammered off one of the wheels, so pretty miserable. Today we toured the Quito Botanical Gardens, saw some cool Orchids and a bunch of endangered species (optimistically, were supposed to lose one in five species before the end of the century) and we are planning on getting dinner in the old town, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. should be cool. we leave on wednesday, so weve got a couple of options for how to spend our last days here. For the record, the Boy´s mountian bid was foiled by sickness, although they had a good time. We met them in the hotel last night, watching a Kevin Bacon movie.
Sometimes i read the news from back home and just sigh. Anyways, i think the plan from here is to go have siesta time at the hotel, maybe watch a bad movie, drink some cerveca and try and fend of whatever sickness im starting to feel. I start school, uh, in eight days, so ill prolly be on the internet a bit taking care of business, although apparently this netcafe sells beer, so.... |
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| Success! |
[Aug. 14th, 2008|10:38 am] |
We climbed the mountain on the first night in the refugia, which was problematic as that entailed around 10,300ft of elevation gain in a day. High altitude sickness sets in after around ten thousand feet in a day, so we were all really sucking air for the top 1000ft of the climb. its hard to overstate how much the altitude caused us pain. I could take maybe six steps before i had to stop and catch my breath. At the summit, theres a maybe half mile jog over to the real peak, which took Forrest, Orion and myself around half an hour to complete, but that puts us at the fifteenth tallest peak in the world, the highest point in Ecuador, and the farthest point from the center of the earth, so quite a few accomplishments for a day of climbing. We had perfect weather, clear skies all morning. Began the climb at 1100 in the night (after 2 and a half hours of sleep) reached the first summit at around 730, and the real summit at 8, got back to the refugia at around 200 in the afternoon. Which makes us about usual on the ascent and like two hours behind schedual on the descent. Unfourtunately, having clear skies made it colder, and the peak is fairly well above 20,000 feet (the dead zone) so we couldnt get enough oxygen to keep ourselves warm, no matter how much we tried to move. we had moonlight for the first three hours or sao, until the moon went down, making everything dark and depressing for about five hours until the sun came up. This period of time entailed a seemingly endless trudge up a slightly crevassed snowfield.
(heck yes! Refugia in the foreground)
After getting back to the refugia, we decided to catch a ride in the back of a truck back to RIobamba, as most of us were completely exhausted, with a fair amount of altitude sickness going around. Alot of us had to take our boots off and check for frostbite. Considering the size of our group, we made pretty good time, keeping up with the guided groups for the most part. One causualty: my glasses broke as we were gearing up for the climb, vis a vis me putting on my baliclava. now i can wear either my sunglasses, which is wierd when its dark, or my regular glasses as long i wear my skullcap as well, which makes me look like a thug. Just bought superglue, so fingers crossed.
(Orions Hero shot approaching the Refugia)
After we got back to Riobamaba, August and Forrest decided to go climb a mountain called Cotopaxi, the second tallest in Ecuador, while the rest of us went o the beach (Hello, Malaria medication! like morning sickness for the non child-bearing....) About a seven hour bus ride, dropping 9000ft of elevation. So far Salinas is an expensive but not very appealing tourist ghetto, with old decrepid colonial hotels with cold showers. but there should be whales. |
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| about to head up the mountain |
[Aug. 10th, 2008|07:14 am] |
Chimborazo is big, big in the way that volcanoes are big, which is to say that the earth was forced out of the path of a terrible, smoky hot monster thousands of years ago, laying waste to all around it. The principle aspect of volcanoes, as opposed to the mountains in Colorado, 
to which we are all so wonderfully accustomed, is the fact that they dont have any context. There are no other mountains nearby, and so they stand out. The picture above is from yesterday, with a bit more haze than today, i just came down from the balcony on our hotel, where the first views of the glacier have materialized just below the cloud cover. It is somewhat unfourtunate that we have such a looming, impressive goal for this trip, as Ecuador is among the coutries that are really interesting to me. It is the only other country, aside from Bolivia, that has a majority indigenous population. The graffiti here is as entertaining as the stuff in Bolivia, although it centers around neo-nazism, anarchy, mickey mouse, and Columbia. I just finished a book, by Franklin Foer, entitled How Soccer Explains the World, which is ultimately a fairly cluttered way to look at how globalization affects institutions, (it monetizes them) but it has provided me with alot of stuff to think about down here, vis a vis the whole rich kid in a poor country thing. Ecuador has dollarized, meaning that they´ve given up the considerable benefits of printing their own money in favor of the stabilizing effect of using the mighty (but falling) dollar. Things are still pretty cheap, and the act of being a tourist (there really should be a word for this, other than touristing) is actually alot easier, as we dont have to convert money. Anyways, i find that my spanish is not better, but easier to use, and alot more comfortable, which is positive as i start a spanish class three days after we get back. the group of six has fairly well established itself socially, which is easy as this group has been doing things together for, like six years now. Oh, i was just reminded, for anybody who found this looking for Ecuador, there is no real coffee here just sweet mother Nescafe. sigh. Anyways, were quickly running low on time, so we head up the mountain tomorrow, and stay at the refigia until we bag the peak. There is no real plan after that, although we might faction into some seperate groups (the "beachers," the "other mountainers," the "federalists") and do other things, although thats kind of a lame way to do this stuff. anyways, ill be back with a good story soon enough. |
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| first week, or so... |
[Aug. 9th, 2008|05:28 pm] |
Given the fact that i found out that i was going to Ecuador about 48 hours before i left, things have gone surprisingly complication free. I had two airlines to get to Quito, the first was an economy line that took me to Atlanta, and stuck me there for an extara hour, and the second was a south American company that was full of, well, south Americans. My limited spanish skills served me to some degree. My seven hour layover in Miami was just as disorienting as i remembered, although it was easier because i no longer felt any qualms about sleeping on the seats. Got into Quito with a splitting headache, which toned down the being in a foriegn country alone where i dont speak the language terror/excitement. Got ripped off by some guy in a van charging me ten dollars to drive to the center of town, but i managed to find a hostel that was only six dollars a night, which is about as cheap as it gets.
Quito has a trolley running up and down its major arteries. To be more specific, it is an electric bus which loads in the median as opposed to on the side of the road, like a bus rapid transit system. I got to explore the travellers ghetto before i went to meet the others at the airport. (The airport is in the center of the city. there is a highway on either side and a golf course next to it. This makes for a particulairly nail biter of a landing, but it makes it eaiser to find the airport, you just follow the noises of planes taking off and landing, which can be heard from miles away.)
After meeting August, Forrest, Sarah and Orion at the airport, which only took two hours longer than i expected, we went out for drinks and some food at an upscale joint in the heart of the ghetto. This meal, and the accompanying three bottles of wine and shots of, unfourtunately, jeagermiester, is by far the single largest expense so far, outside of the tickets. One f the really strange moments in Quito involved Forrest and I stumbling up to the liquer store after dinner, where we hung out with some local youths who, after giving us some of whatever they were drinking (some sort of schnapps under the brand name Crystal), repeatedly warned us against talking to strangers... Anyway, we basicalll made acted like scum of the earth travellers, waking up the woman who ran the hotel at like one in the morning drunk, and interupted the Istreali´s watching Friends.
The next day we got some food from the market and set out for Muichachi, a town south of Quito with three large mountains next to it, where we were intending to acclimate and try out some skills. We stayed at the hacienda San Jose in El Chaupi, run by a guy named Rodrigo, and one of the better places ive stayed south mexico. (think warm showers, free breakfast, clean beds and beer) The comfort of the haciendo contrasted starkly with the general decrepidness of the Refugio Ilizanas, the oldest mountain hut in Ecuador. It was freezing cold, and soaking wet, with old stained mattreses and the tart smell of abundant mold. The mountain was extremely windy and foggy the first day, and extremely cold, windy and intermittently foggy in the morning, when we made a peak bid, which ended shortly, without success.
We spent the day after our failed bid back at the hacienda, eating Rodrigo´s excellent dinner. We are currently in Riobamba, near the main mountain of interest, Chimborazo. The idea is to spend as long as we have to to get good weather to tag the peak, and then we can slack off for the rest of the trip. anyways, tomorrow is sunday, so well be marooned in´Riobamba for a day, so i was gonna post something a bit more philisophical, as opposed to chronological.
so yeah, toodles |
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| woke up after the party and.... |
[Aug. 3rd, 2008|02:23 pm] |
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had a ticket to Ecuador, c/o my friends. woot. looks like ill have some new posts here pretty soon. I'm a little daunted by the size of the climb and the fact that i have done zero planning for it, but im not really worried about it. sounds like i wont be able to get very deep into the culture of things down there, this being largely a climbing trip, but there will be enough time to see a little bit of the area. Monetary concerns continue unabated, but it'll work out. ill have to engage in a great deal of remote business, as i need to register for various classes and tweek my schedual a bit, but it'll all be for the best. Th crazy thing is that ill have about two days of flying and sitting around at airports both ways, with an as yet unplanned trip between airports in Florida, but who likes being well rested anyway? |
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| snowy monday |
[Apr. 7th, 2008|02:22 pm] |
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i was trying to find a reason why there has been so much cold weather around these parts recently, and viola. |
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| my god man |
[Dec. 12th, 2007|12:23 am] |
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Ive been really bored lately. i came to this conclusion when i realized that i was excited about having gotten a job. a job where ill be wearing crocs. im gonna say that again; crocs.actually it should be pretty doable. i met and liked the owner and the woman whom i'm assuming is going to be the foh (front of house if you've never worked in a restaurant) manager. theyll have good iced tea. in other news im still resolving some issues with cu regarding going on the hut trip. i haven't ruled out going on a hunger strike, but i think ill know by next week. |
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