Stuff

TelMex saw fit to block the internet tubes to our house yesterday, hence today´s early morning location. It’s always when you’ve got lots of work on that the interwebs stop. Hey ho, it means that yesterday I got to finish a novel for the first time in ages, Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down, which was alright as a novel but a tad grating due to his (characters’) overuse of similes. It’s like when you’re watching a daytime Antiques program on BBC 1. And all they do is use puns. But in the long run, it’s like you appreciate it. But sometimes, puns are like a comfortable cushion. Etc. that kind of thing. On the plus side it means I can finally start The Hummingbird’s Daughter, which after 10 pages looks like just my kind of thing. Atticus * also got more quality time than usual. And I spent a while strumming away at the gee-tar. So every cloud etc… And I love Starbucks’ burnt coffee too. So swings and roundabouts are the order of the day.

Ever wondered how to count to 1023 on your fingers? Cesar’s put his vast intellect into creating a demo. My fingers aren’t quite that flexible… The real challenge would be combining counting to 1023 while performing this Daft Punk track (it gets good at about 1 minute in).

Alrighty, back to my research y chamba.

* ‘Cus looked starving at 5.30 yesterday and Sita wasn’t back from the gym yet so I made him a gourmet meal with leftovers from Sita’s steak on Sat night. A couple of hours later and i remarked to Sita that the dog looked chubbier than usual, then I asked her if she’d fed him and she said “Of course, with the leftovers from Saturday mixed in”. So he’d had two huge meals. Anyway, several miles of running up and down the garden later and he puked like a good’un in the living room. There’s a lesson in there somewhere… We need some kind of “Dog has been fed” system in the kitchen. He’s full of beans today though. Not literally.

Recovering still from yesterday’s trip to the equipal making centre of the world and PocilgaFest 2007. Back soon.

Photos here and here.

but that’s not stopped us chilling with Olga and co. and being treated to a slap up meal at Sacromonte last night, and breakfast at cafe Azteca this morning. Ronaldo and me had a wander round the centre and Chapultepec this morning I snapped a few shots of the centre then went chasing bouncing cheques. again. A nice morning all in all, though I was knackered by the end of it and had a meeting about the jewellery site this avo. I’m wondering if I’m in a secure enough mental state to watch 28 weeks later/ Exterminio 2 later on…

I’ve almost finished on the cirugia plastica site and Dr. Hector gave me a bottle of San Matias Anejo Reserva tequila to celebrate which was a very nice gesture. A smoother tequila I’ve not tasted and much better than free liposuction. Though, come to think of it, maybe there’s surgery they can do to help you pronounce RRs better in español. I’ll ask me dentist.

Thanks to Monica, Annelise, Kristen, Mike, Vanessa and anyone else I’m playing scrabble with on FaceBook. It’s well entertaining. I promise I’m not cheating, I’ve just been very lucky with the tiles. Except in the game I’m about to lose to Claire… where it’s been raining vowels for the last 10 moves… Mustn’t grumble.

Grumble.

…that we´re leaving at the end of October. That´s basically 8 weeks away, a veritable bummer. Still, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. Anyone interested in renting a very nice house, in sleepy Colonia Ladrón de Guevara? We´ll be back. Oh yes. I´m going to subscribe to Orbitz´s price alerts and any time a return flight from Oakland, California dips below a hundred bucks each way I´m coming back for tacos al pastor and a Pueblo Viejo…

Lots going on this week… meetings galore, restauranting tonight with one of Sita´s dissertation advisors, Wednesday possibly the cinema- 2 x 1 night, Paris Je T´aime, Thursday catching up with Aldo who´s back from Brazil, Friday not sure, and Saturday it´s the 4th annual Pocilgafest, invite only… If today´s cheque clears okay, I´ll also be booking myself in for as much dentistry as me teeth can handle before crossing the border back to the land of perfect smiles…

Have a video from the ´tube of one of me favourite bands, Black Box Recorder. All these years and I´d never seen one of their videos. I´ve made up for that now.

Also, new bits on me blog: A link to google translate which is probably going away very soon since it can’t handle me English. Also, below my recently commented photos there’s links to photos I’ve commented on. All very exciting I’m sure you’ll agree. That’s all for now. Cheers!

Thanks to Flickr, and specifically El Charro Negro, we heard about a mariachi competition in the centre yesterday and arranged to meet up in La Fuente to go and see the spectacle. It fully lived up to expectations. Each band came and played just one song and then wandered off. Groups came from all over Mexico and most wore the traditional local dress. I still haven’t got the hang of the settings on me camera. Sachiel pointed out that the ISO’s too high on most, I didn’t even know how to change it. Still I’m extremely happy with me zoom lense. Well, the set’s over at Flickr and here are some faves, that will probably end up in the photoblog…

It’s about 15 blocks away and I noticed that although ‘Cus travels forward in a straight line, he’s at an angle of about 15 degrees as he moves. I think it’s time to get his legs realigned. He’s certainly done a fair bit of mileage in the last 6 months or so.

Only 200 pesos to returf the lawn apparently…

There´s this here jewellery site which is a few 100 lines of PHP away from completion. Another work in progress for cosmetic surgery. A translation of a film script, rehoming a domain, Signo Tequila is also in its infancy. And that’s not counting walking the dog, paying rent, cooking up burgers, chasing bouncing cheques, calling landlords and a fair bit of scrabble.

Tis going to be a busy day tomorrow.

…is a nice way to see what people you´d lost touch with are up to and also an alternative scrabble interface. But it´s best when you go to the recently updated bit and see gems like this:

“Monica added “shoes” to her interests.”

Maybe you had to be there…

Despite the neglected state of the film reviews box on this site, we´ve seen a fair few lately. The Simpsons is just like a 90 minute Simpsons episode with slightly more CGI of Springfield (4 stars), but today we saw one of the best comedies I´ve seen in years, Knocked Up. Brilliant it is. There. That´s my review. 5 shining comedic stars.

While we´re on the subject though, Next was perfectly fine aeroplane viewing. The Queen was awful. Awful awful. I was trying to work out who was the most odious character. Sita reckons the Duke of Edinburgh, but I´m still torn between Cheri and the Grieving British Public. I´m glad I missed the aftermath of all that 10 years ago, as two days after she popped her clogs, I was flying to Guadalajara…

Team America: World Police has moments of genius. Idiocracy: nice premise, shame about the film. Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol is a) not as funny as it was when I was 12 and b) really does not do well dubbed into Spanish (Loca Academia de Policía IV) especially the sound effects bloke and Bobcat Boldthwait… Still such are the delights basic cable has to offer at 5 am on Thursday mornings…

…sounds a lot like Lilly Allen, but that´s not necessarily a bad thing:

Martin, Ana´s bloke has been here for the last month or so and today sees him heading back to Belgium. It´s been grand having him around and not just because he bowls as badly as I do… Don´t be afraid to leave comments, Sr. Devos 🙂

In other news, this video is painfully funny and comes from Sita via Notorious Fig…

…and can´t wait for the next series starting in February neither. But… this Lost teaser…is nowhere near as disturbing as Look Around You´s explanation of the Helvetica Scenario. Shudder… I live in fear of Calcium´s Queen Atom breaking loose.

..but since I was talking about camera settings yesterday, note what a difference there is when you take a photo without flash and then with… I’m tempted to do one with Mrs. Bristow…

I was having a fine old time today in Tequila. Sita’s contacts are paying off nicely and we were “gifted” all manner of tequila-related multimedia on everything from mp3s to a set of vinyl records from the 70s. Including a VHS of “Tequileros” which had parts filmed in Columpio, my favourite Destilado de Agave factory.

Anyroad, driving back we noticed there were workers close to the road in the field jimando, ie harvesting and chopping the leaves off the agaves, so I leapt out with my camera and started photoing them. They posed and everything. Naturally, when I got home I realised I had me camera on the wrong setting which has led to some very grainy shots, still it was a great experience. And I’ll not make that mistake again. With highly configurable cameras comes great responsibility it appears.

Here’re me faves (that’ll probably find their way to my photoblog soon):

There´s a chain of chemists in Mexico called Farmacias Similares. They sell generic medicines at bargain prices generally because the main brand´s patent has expired. They’re a fairly large corporation that competes with independent chemists. Visit their godawful website here. Their main method of promotion is having someone in a Dr. Simi costume prance around outside their shops to a reggaeton beat or worse. I snapped a photo of Dr. Simi a few days ago in Gwod:

And here he is again in Zacatecas:

Mario alerted me to an extreme sport sweeping the nation, flooring Dr. Simi… It’s like Mexican happy slapping. On YouTube there’s several videos of Dr.Simi being run at and knocked to the ground by young naco scoundrels with nothing better to do. I felt sorry enough for the poor buggers sweltering in their costumes for 50 pesos a day before seeing them have to contend with these antics.

Anyroad, just a quick post to say support your local chemist and be nice to Dr. Simi.

Plans for tonight? Bowling…

Siteground, who i´m well chuffed with have various advanced stats systems. That means I can see which sites out there are hotlinking or stealing images and using up agaveweb´s bandwidth. Turns out lots of young scamps have hotlinked to a picture of “American History X” as their favourite film. I couldn´t resist a bit of mischief and swapped the image for another movie. With amusing results….

Spot the odd film out on these people´s MySpace pages: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. There´s scrolling to be done. Looking forward to seeing how long it´ll take for them to notice.

That´s the thing with hotlinking pictures, the people serving them up at their expense can change them to whatever they like. I think I´ve been relatively benign with the swap. Word.

Fellow Flickrite Mario has a blog (usually in Spanish) and he posted a Divine Comedy song to accompany a piece about his folks which led me on to browsing more of Neil Hannon´s YouTube output…

This song, Something for the Weekend reminds me of listening to Radio 1 while working for Four Winds Landscape gardening for minimum wage many summers ago in 1996…

Dodgy´s Good Enough is another one. And Boo Radleys´ Wake Up Boo though it was released a year earlier… Ah the UK in the 90s… good times…

A nice weekend all in all. Saturday night Aranza invited us all round to bid farewell to one of the Tapatian Flickreros, Laura who´s off to France for a good while. There was much singing, toasting, guitarring and even Atticus danced… Colibrí has some photos as does Elias which capture the spirit nicely…

The Hitatchi thing finally $orted itself out… * edit Cheque bounced…. * Finished another translation of subtitles for an upcoming film presentation…

Yesterday we had a nice lie in then I bussed it to the baratillo street market. If you go late it´s extremely crowded so I ended up buying nothing (I even passed on Crochet World’s Book of Slippers, yours for 5 pesos…) and just went off photographing things in an area I hadn´t really been (on foot) before. Then a few raindrops fell so I ended up getting the bus the last few blocks to protect me camera… Anyroad here’re the photos from there and below, a couple of faves… And there’s another one over at my photo blog.

After that we nipped out to McDonalds, cos I was starving then rented a couple of videos on the way home. I’d not seen the 6th Sense before, thinking that if you know the twist there wouldn’t be much point, but it turned out to be eminently watchable all the same. Then a quiet night in front of the telly and a few quesadillas and surprisingly good red wine from Washington state. Red Diamond. Recommended…

This week… web designery, more translation, and a trip to Tequila on wednesday I think. I’m looking forward to hitting the agave fields with DSLR in hand.