God hates Alabama

Yesterday: To the baratillo, James, to find a lucha libre mask for Fernando and a microwave oven. It was too hot by half, but I’m well fond of wandering round Mexican markets and can even judge which aisle to go down by casting an eye for obstacles such as women with prams, queues for birria and machete-wielding coconut salesmen. A half success of sorts. I found out there’s a lucha libre spectacular in the bull ring on Sunday that might be worth a visit, I found a microwave oven for 25 bucks, but when I tried to get back to that particular stand it had either morphed into a blenders and kitchen sink stall or been raptured up. Never mind, in the town centre they’re on sale for 45 bucks or so new. And they deliver, which is important because I had visions of being discovered passed out on the wrong side of town in the afternoon heat with a microwave on my chest. On the only day of the year I didn’t have health insurance…

DVD purchases yesterday included: El Mar Adentro (Spanish film about a bloke in a wheelchair), Zapata (Hagiography of the famous revolutionary), Sin City (seen it before (4 lulus or thereabouts), but could happily watch it again), Lucky number Sleven (mixed reviews for this gangster film) and Hostal (Tarantino’s latest outing). I’m not 100% on whether they’ll all work cos I found a 5 peso (Fiddy cent) (30 pee) DVD store with no TV to test them on, but at that price, I’ll take my chances. Sometimes I’m not convinced they’re really originals at all…

On the MP3 player at the time: Boagworld– Pragmatic Accessibility, Total Podcastrophe #11, Mark Kermode’s film reviews from Friday and CD1 of Massive Attacks’ recent Best Of. I’ve got some crappy short headphones with a cable that doesn’t quite reach my pocket. So I went round with the player stuffed under my T-Shirt on my shoulder parrot-style, affixed with the ‘gentle perspiration” of my skin. It’s a wonder it still works… Anyroad, my pedometer (pace counter thing, (pedo means fart in Spanish, cue marketing nightmare…)), racked up 22,000 steps yesterday which makes up for Saturday’s shuffling round the house and trip to the air-conditioned cinema when the heat got too much.

We also got a fan from Gigante and barbecued up a storm again in the evening. Chorizo is the new bacon. The VH1 were showing Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange (4.5 Lulus). It was slightly edited, but even then was great to watch again. Such a powerful film, the kind that provokes discussion straight afterwards. If you’re not headed straight to bed… I read on the IMDB that the title is from when Anthony Burgess was in Borneo and saw Orangutans. Orang= man, Utan = of the forest. Hence clockwork man, which is what Alex ends up as when he’s reprogrammed. Seems plausible enough…

Today: Renegotiating terms @ see-nay-sco-pee-oh since I’ve finished the whole Camino Real thing. Jose’s round this avo for a briefing on how tomorrow’s photo shoot at centro nueva era’s going to happen. Life is good. Stu (click for nostaligic look at how site looked 2 years ago) complained that he couldn’t tell arse from elbow of what I’m up to from my blog. Something about cars breaking down and genteel ladies in photos… Give us a Skype and I’ll elaborate, Sr. Capstick. Him’n’Anne’re yoghurt weaving in a hippy commune in NZ right now… To each their own.

Click the picture for the gallery. The tour goes from Grand Ave., the Oakland hills, to a bit of Berkeley. Am off to M’n’M’s now to see what kind of shape me missus is in after a day in the wineries. I’m sure she didn’t touch a drop. She just rang from what sounded like a Madonna concert, but could have been the minibus.

I’m going to have a go at embedding a Flickr slideshow. Pics are from the Colomos Park in Providencia, filled with joggers and too-bold-by-far squirrels. And the occasional rabbit. Rodents galore, basically. Did lots of playing with the depth of field…
Next mission is to work out how to stop it autoplaying…

Monica’s gatos, doin’ what they do. Yesterday during a sunny interval.