Stuff

I think we’re all pressied up thanks to a quick trip to the craft market. I just had a chance to explore the non-markety bits like the cemetary which is a much less grand affair than Guadalajara’s Panteon before Sita called me on the mobile to say she was done shopping. Now we’re back and preparing for a BBQ this avo with a few mates of our before we leave.

Last night we stayed in and had a lovely meal cooked by Sita then watched Good Night and Good Luck, George Clooney’s take on CBS during the McCarthy witch hunt years quickly followed by one of the bleakest documentaries I’ve seen (at that includes the bloody penguins) called Darwin’s Nightmare all about the extreme poverty in Tanzania around Lake Victoria. I’m a bit behind on my reviews right now, but I’ll have a stab if I get the chance on the road. If you find yourself feeling far too positive about life and the world in general, Darwin’s Nightmare will take your serotonin levels down a few pegs…

Fernando’s flood pictures taken from his apartment, cunningly 3 floors above the destruction. He was all ready to go surfing at Plaza del Sol till the hygiene aspects of such a mission were pointed out.

Just found out Kathy and Vance have a Lewis Carroll inspired blog (thanks for the comment, Kathy) http://siximpossiblethingsbeforebreakfast.blogspot.com/ Looks like they’re off to see that rarest of things, Edinburgh on a sunny day… Enjoy : )

Sita’s talk on Pancho Villa, Tequila and Mexican National Identity went down a treat. So we celebrated…

Our good friend, Ana, gave us a molcajete t’other day. It’s a volcanic rock pestle and mortar type thing crucial to Mexican cuisine. We christened it yesterday when Berta came round to make salsa and go over Sita’s talk for today. The next stage is experimenting with different chiles…

Julieta Venegas, an important exception to the general ruling: Play an accordion, go to jail. (or gaol… Sarah)

Make yerself dizzy watching badly filmed footage from Tonala today, if it looks less busy than usual that’s cos it’s near the edge, the only place where filming from your waist doesn’t result in a permashot of people obstructing the way… You don’t realise how loud it all it till you listen to it in the comfort of your middle class barrio and it’s just the fruit, veggies and DVD bit…

Sita bought plenty of artesania & pressies, including 2 huge mirrors for MX$300 the pair of ’em. No idea how we’ll get those back one day. And also the following DVDs found their way into my hands (reviews soon, and Superman too 3.5 Lulus):

Batman Begins : saw it on 4-8-05 “Formidable rendering of Batman’s backstory. Nice understated CGI too. Yay. 4 Lulus”
Cronicas: (Sebastián Cordero) s’posed to be good
Jarhead: to take my mind off the incipient WW III brewing to the East…
Good night and good luck: Was misadvertised at the cinema and we ended up having a coffee instead
City of God: Saw this before I started reviewing films. One of my all time favourites.

Here’s a state-of-the-art, bleeding edge out-of-the-box, envelope-pushing web design agency in a back street, Felipe’s:

We’ve been planning the trip back, and shall probably only slightly vary the stopping points. Any recommendations for places to stay/eat in Hermosillo and Culiacan?

Blimey, me blog’s pagerank’s just gone up a notch to 5/10… search for ‘Gwyn’ on google and I’m result number 4. Take that gwynfisher.com, my namesake in New England… You might have got the domain name before I did, but I outstrip you in the SEO stakes. To celebrate, here’s a photo of the church in me little village in Zummerzet…

I like this…
Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

It had just started to pour down so we though we’d head for the bookshops in Chapultepec and then a restaurant, so we jumped in a taxi and checked out the bookshops for some scholarly tomes and investigated the space where Sita’s doing her talk next week. All v. nice though they didn’t have the books we were after. Anyroad, then it really started to piss it down, vertical sea type stuff with hail and all, and within a matter of minutes cars were practically floating past. A bus crossed the central reservation and everyone went searching for higher ground. After an hour or so it stopped but the streets were still rivers and it became an urban jungle type scenario having to edge around walls and find lower waters and all that. Quite fun, but I soaked the only shoes I own (except me flip flops). Anyroad we went to Funicular to eat and then Sita stayed home and watched crap on the telly and me and Jose went round Fernando’s for snacks and ales and met some more really sound friends of theirs. Fernando shot some nice footage of the floods and if he sends it to me as promised I’ll post it… On the way home I had my first tacos de carnaza in Av. Americas, and they were surprisingly good, even though you can eat anything at 3 in the morning and it’ll taste good. “Al buen hambre, no hay pan duro” can be your Spanish phrase of the week… “when you’re really hungry, there’s no such thing as stale bread” is a rough translation.

And for your word: naufrago – Shipwrecked person.

Jose’s been trying to persuade me to put this one in too, but I’m buggered if I can translate it decently: El que es perico donde quiera es verde y el que es pendejo donde quiera pierde. Literally: “He who is a parrot, wherever he goes, is green, he who is an idiot, wherever he goes will lose”…. more loosely, “A parrot will always be green and a loser will never win” and looser still “You are who you are no matter where you go”. It doesn’t quite trip off the tongue for me mind…

Plans for today, you ask? Translate a load of Sita’s talk, and then Superman and bowling/pool. Stu and Anne rang me this morning at 9:30 when I was fast asleep, but it was 3:30am their time in NZ so I couldn’t complain. Nice to reverse the situation a bit there. That’s yer lot for now. Sorry bout the lack of posting lately, I’m all involved in the LAUlens site, trying to get it to do discounts on bulk orders and suchlike, and am back updating one of my first sites from 2 yrs ago, GO joven. Have a grand weekend, cheers : )

Thrill to the 84 frames of, frankly, very similar looking glasses… HERE

Guardian Unlimited Arts | Arts news | Syd Barrett dies aged 60

It was the size of footballs, so it was… it just melted while I tried to find the macro settings on the camera. Actually not even pingpong ball sized, but hefty all the same.

Graniza?.. Anyroad, hopefully it’ll destroy all the black widow spiders… like the one we found lurking yesterday. Hang on, what if they come into the house to shelter? That’s it… I’m sleeping fully clothed clutching a spray can of RAID EXTRA (the adverts for which show the insects actually EXPLODING after you zap them) and commending myself to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Friday night: Sopranos x 4, TV at its best
Saturday: Designing logos for Kevin’s construction then Jose came round and we all headed off to play pool, cos it’s been a while… had a chat with me mate in New Zealand, started watching the Life Aquatic, and peacefully nodded off around 2am to awake on
Sunday: with a World Cup bbq/beers party to get going. Dramatis personae included: Sita, Ana, Jorge and Maya the Xoloitzcuintli (Mexican Hairless Dog, pictured), Jose and Fernando.

Today, monday, is best represented by a picture of my desk right now… :

Word of the week: Armazón
I may have mentioned I’m doing a website selling glasses frames. Well, spectacle frames in Spanish are armazones. I was hoping to get some mistyped traffic from amazon.com but armazon.com was already taken… and your phrase is:

“No quiero queso sino salir de la ratonera”- I don’t want cheese, I just want to get out of the mousetrap.

Suggestions on when you could use this in the comments, por favor…

A couple of weeks ago I got thoroughly fed up with WalMart, it’s the nearest supermarket to our house and Guadalajara’s only supplier of Portabella Mushrooms (casi regaladas). It was over a special offer on Heineken, but I digress. Anyroad, I’ve been boicotting it for 2 wks, but I just saw this on cartalk.com’s site and think I’m going to change my tactics….

The following letter was sent to a long-time patron of a local Target store. After receiving this letter, she vowed that she would NEVER take her husband shopping with her again!

January 12, 2006

Re: Mr. Bill Fenton
Multiple Complaints

Dear Mrs. Fenton,

Over the past six months, your husband, Mr. Bill Fenton has been causing quite a commotion in our store. We cannot tolerate this type of behavior and have considered banning the entire family from shopping in any of our stores. We have documented all incidents on our video surveillance equipment.

Three of our clerks are attending counseling from the trouble your husband has caused. All complaints against Mr. Fenton have been compiled and are listed below.

15 Things Mr. Bill Fenton has done while his spouse is shopping:

1. June 15: Took 24 boxes of condoms and randomly put them in people’s carts when they weren’t looking.

2. July 2: Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5-minute intervals.

3. July 7: Made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to the restrooms.

4. July 19: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official tone, ‘Code 3’ in housewares….. and watched what happened.

5. August 4: Went to the Service Desk and asked to put a bag of M&M’s on layaway.

6. September 14: Moved a ‘CAUTION – WET FLOOR’ sign to a carpeted area.

7. September 15: Set up a tent in the camping department and told other shoppers he’d invite them in if they’ll bring pillows from the bedding department.

8. September 23: When a clerk asks if they can help him, he begins to cry and asks Why can’t you people just leave me alone?’

9. October 4: Looked right into the security camera; used it as a mirror, and picked his nose.

10. November 10: While handling guns in the hunting department, asked the clerk if he knows where the antidepressants are.

11. December 3: Darted around the store suspiciously loudly humming the “Mission Impossible” theme.

12. December 6: In the auto department, practiced his “Madonna look” using different size funnels.

13. December 18: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browse through, yelled “PICK ME!” “PICK ME!”

14. December 21: When an announcement came over the loud speaker, he assumes the fetal position and screams “NO! NO! It’s those voices again!!!!”

(And; last, but not least!) 15. December 23: Went into a fitting room, shut the door and waited a while; then, yelled, very loudly, “There is no toilet paper in here!”

Check back for updates on this… ; )

In other news… agaveweb.com/lens and 3 wks to the next road trip to gringolandia…

Back to work after a good few days seeing the sights of Guanajuato with Monica and Daniel. Click on either photo below to be magically transported to Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende. Might manage a post or two on Friday… agaveweb.com/kevin and the spectacles site’s what I’m up to for now…

Guanajuato

San Miguel de Allende

Click to biggify

Sita’s presentation on Pancho Villa, Tequila and Mexico went extremely well. She’s a star, anyroad the location for the conference was pretty spectacular being on the 12th floor of a hotel in the town centre. Daniel’s on the right.

We’re still stocking up on booze for the ‘dry weekend’ and are planning to go to San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato… Last night Jana and Victor invited us round and it was a fine party, and we spent a fair bit of time on the roof where there we had a grand view of an impromptu fireworks display down the road. Good times… Tonight it’s more Chicano/Latino studies fun, but this time in the Santo Coyote. I’ll be having the arrachera please.