Can anyone beat 30 seconds on this game? Almost worth losing for the taunts in French “That’s exactly the same time Paris Hilton got..” *Gallic guffaw*

If I get over 400 points in a two player game of scrabble, I’m happy with meself, but this geezer racked up 365pts with just one word…

As I wex lyrical to my jo, it’s not qua my abilities. Even when armed with my jax and the azo qi is flowing fortuitously through the qats.

Meanwhile, my puritanical Scrabble for my pocket PC refuses to accept “poo”.

Matando Cabos (2004). Hilarious, one of the best comedies I’ve seen in ages. Sort of like “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” but infinitely funnier and with better acting all round. Some nice lucha libre moments too… 4.5 Lulus…

Erm, what else? I’ve been busy translating corporate documents for a chain of car dealerships and putting the finishing touches to this here lycra sports clothing shop. I’ve got to do a fair amount of work on Intangible’s site before tomorrow evening, and there’s rumours of a party being held here on Friday with Javier and a load of his students from England… I’m also off to buy tix for Julieta Venegas which is on the 4th, so keeping busy as ever.

Sita asked me what to dress up Atticus as for Hallowe’en. This page has a few ideas: http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2006/10/lets_just_get_t.html though he’s more Princess Leia than Darth Vader… Being a schipperke, or Belgian boat dog, he’s be a good Hercules Poirot…

I’m liking FireFox 2.0, by the way definitely worth installing. Mind you, if IE had extensions IE7 would be up there with it. There’s a new TotalPodCastrophe out, Desmond 22 so I’ll be giving that a play on my next round of errands…

Erm that’s it. Have a photo of some taco ingredients that i’ll almost certainly not be trying anytime soon. Tacos de Trompa (snout)

The Tacos al Pastor come highly recommended though. Mexico City style…

but prompted to post after being put on hold for 3 minutes and force fed an orchestral/muzak rendition of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Pt II”. I’d have stayed on longer to see if Nine Inch Nail’s “Hurt” or maybe M.A.S.H. theme, “Suicide is Painless”, was going to be next, but cell phone calls cost a fortune round this way… TelMex have the Beatles catalog when you’re put on hold. I wonder if they’re paying the royalties. Shall have to ask them next time my bill has more anomolies…

Last night I went cantina hopping with Jose, his sister and a couple of other peeps, it was grand to be out of the house again after what seems like an age. La Fuente first, which was packed. It’s going through a fair few changes. It’s one of Guadalajara’s oldest cantinas but recently it’s been refurbished, expanded and now features art exhibitions and several plasma flatscreen TVs which really don’t help the ambience. There’s a bike above the bar that someone left in 1947 or thereabouts saying they could keep it until he came back to pay his tab. Needless to say he never returned. Anyroad, it was missing last night with a plaque saying it’s been leant to an exhibition on collectibles in the Casa de Cultura. Once they replace the live musicians with a video jukebox we’ll know it’s all over… Anyroad, after there on to El Rincón de la Doa in Calle Heroes, not far from the Coliseo (The lucha libre arena). Much more sedate… We were there till around 1:30 then headed to Los Famosos Equipales where I got involved in a very strange argument about bullfighting.

Strange because I completely agreed with the bloke arguing with me. My every other word was, “exactly”, or “I completely agree”, or “you’re totally right” but it seemed like after years of arguing bullfighting ethics with foreigners he didn’t believe anyone who wasn’t Spanish or Mexican could possibly be in favour of it. I’ve never been to a corrido de toros which is pretty odd considering my lifelong obsession with all things hispano. When I was vegetarian for 3 years I was passionately against it but once you’re an omnivorous, leather-wearing, animal-tested-medicine-taking co-conspirator you’ve not got a leg to stand on. It’s all about using animals for non-essential human ends, and in for a penny, in for a pound reckons I. Bullfight bulls certainly have a better quality of life than your average dairy cow or battery hen. And on their last day alive at least they have a chance to get even in front of a paying audience rather than being transported across the county in a small box, shot up with antibiotics, shuffling into an abbatoir and having a bolt put through their brain…

Today if all goes according to plan, off to the Tianguis Cultural downtown, then watching native Guadalajaran, Guillermo del Toro (coincidentally enough)’s new film El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) which has been getting impressive reviews.

Which might well mean quite a few posts of film & book reviews and pictures of various pets appearing in this blog just for archival purposes…

It’ll save me $7.95 a month on hosting and 20 bucks or so a year on the domain name, and though it’ll be a shame to lose my pagerank and all the potential SEO that goes with it, I’ll get over it… I’ll invest the money in continuing my Flickr pro account and maybe a few tacos…

Have a gander’s at its present incarnation here. T’was good while it lasted and served as a useful “Sandbox” (US) Sandpit (UK) for trying out new webbery ideas and such like… I haven’t updated it for months. Turns out it’ll probably be on the WayBackMachine’s servers embarassing me till the end of time anyway… Relive the heady days of Gwynunlimited in from February 2004 onwards on the WayBackMachine

Word of the week: Loperamida, which is Spanish for Loperamide, the active ingredient in Imodium…

And here’s the first of many archived images. My scanned Ivor the Engine wallpaper featuring one Netherland Dwarf/ Lop brown rabbit…

Everything I know about World of Warcraft comes from that South Park Episode… (Thanks, Annelise) anyroad, here’s a DDR / WoW Mashup thing that brings back fond memories of this Summer round M’n’M’s house jumping around the living room to Beyoncé and friends. If this here Flash game makes you sweat and out of breath, you’re in trouble mind…

Also, thanks for your comments and well-wishing emails. Much appreciated : )

Just to follow 10 days of a common cold and a bang on the head on Sunday, last night I experienced one of the worst gastrointestinal traumas I’ve ever had. Truly, truly grim. I’ve been on the Pedialyte (fruit flavoured electrolyte and water concoction) all day and been trying to catch up on sleep, but it was a real shock to the system. The only thing I ate yesterday was tacos from a popular local stand that I trust implicitly, but I’ll not be going back for a while.

I didn’t feel up to working today so I finished season 1 of Arrested Development and watched Nacho Libre properly in between naps. I think I’ll be up all night finishing some fairly urgent projects tonight though…

Other stuff accomplished: I booked me flights to Blighty for December. I was feeling right homesick today, not just for friends and family, but real bread, Ribena/ Robinson’s Black Currant and Apple Juice and the NHS… I also made a fair dent in Neil Gaiman’s ‘Anansi Boys’ between crawling to the bathroom and back a hundred times. Looks like our Morrissey tickets have been purchased for November and also a plan is forming to see Julieta Venegas next week or the week after. Good times…

What can I say? She surpassed even my high expectations singing her little heart out and shaking it like a poloroid picture for a good 2 hours. Because of the rain, lack of infrastructure and tapatian penchant for heading to these things at the last minute it took a few hours to get there (normally a 30 minutes journey), involving a tire change among other things… so she waited for most people to arrive before taking the stage. “”Es un honor estar en la casa del gran Vicente Fernández. Gracias por su paciencia por el retraso. Espero que la pasen bien, que canten y bailen”” Gracious to the last. That means that all the reviews in today’s local papers start with this info and her first song, and that’s all they could phone in before going to press…

I definitely wouldn’t have been able to get me camera in, but there were enough mobile phones for some photos to surface soon. 20,000 people were there and it felt like it. I happily joined in with songs way out of my natural “range” and it was a fun smiley evening out with a lovely atmosphere and stellar presentation. Thanks to all the many people who got it together to make it happen, Javier, Meghan, Luisa and co 😀

For those of you interested in the set list, this is nicked from Wikipedia with a few edits “#”s denote my top 10 favourites choons:

* Estoy Aquí #2
* Te Dejo Madrid
* Don’t Bother #10
* Antología #8
* Hey You
* Día de Enero
* Inevitable #7
* Si Te Vas #9
* Obtener Un Sí
* La Tortura # (And yes she dances just like in the video in the last post but one, where does she get the stamina?)
* No #1
* Suerte
* Whenever, Wherever #6
* La Pared
* Pies Descalzos, Sueos Blancos
* Ciega, Sordomuda #4

Encore:

* Ojos Así #5
* Hips Don’t Lie #3

Morissey’s next on the list for world class concerts… We’ve got people waiting for the phone lines to open as I type…

I almost knocked myself out cold yesterday afternoon trying to throw a towel up onto the landing. I was in the act of throwing then suddenly a loud noise, bright lights and me wandering dazed around the room holding me head. So instead of Shakira photos today, have one of me with my special icepack fashioned from my headphones, two plastic bags and the contents of me freezer:

And here’s today’s wanderings around town trying to find an exhibition on “Tequila- Que haría sin él” and then some (quite a distance…)

I liked this, bloke figures out how Stonehenge might have been done. And not just because 3/4s through he used one of my favourite Americanisms: Teeter-totter (a see-saw)

Colbert on Demand
All Family Guy episodes

and, of course YouTube…

It looks like I won’t be able to take me camara to the Shakira concert, sorry Tewbewks. I wrote a comment in this bloke’s blog because he’d put up some photos he’d taken in the Arena. He kindly wrote back saying they almost certainly won’t let camaras in and since I’ll have nowhere to put me camara if they decide not to let it in, I’m not going to risk it.

Yesterday was another stocking up on DVDs day: Season 1 of Arrested Development (never seen it, but been recommended it many times), Nacho Libre (a better quality version, the last one was nigh on unwatchable), Edmond (David Mamet directed stuff with William H. Macy) and Old Boy. Javier came round and we watched Old Boy last night. T’was excellent (4.5 Lulus), it’s a Korean take on the Count of Montecristo and then some. Bloke gets locked up for 15 years for no reason then has 5 days to find out why/who/etc. Can’t really do it justice right now, but I might manage a review one of these days.

Have a butcher’s at the comments, a phonetic alphabet based on (my favourite film evah, The Big Lebowski. D is for Dude etc.

This would be well handy to have as a poster or summink. I’m forever on the phone to TelMex spelling my name. G de Gacho, W de Whiskey, Y de Yelapa y N de Nihilista…

Cold’s almost gone, btw…

From The Telegraph of all places… who manage to dumb down scientific research to a point where it makes almost no sense then fail to provide a link to the original paper… :

A second language ‘changes personality’
By Robert Matthews (Filed: 03/07/2005)

If only Basil Fawlty had learnt a little Spanish.

Psychologists have discovered that people take on the characteristics of foreign nationals when they switch into their language – and such a change in the embittered hotel owner could well have improved life for the hapless Manuel.

The personality changes, however, run deeper than a desire to gesticulate wildly when talking in Italian or to plunge into gloom when speaking Russian. According to research, using different languages alters basic characteristics traits such as extroversion and neuroticism.

Researchers at the University of Texas made the discovery while studying the personality traits of bilingual English and Spanish speakers in the United States and Mexico. They began by establishing the attributes of native speakers, using the results of personality tests on almost 170,000 people.

The results showed that English-speaking Americans are typically more conscientious, agreeable and outgoing than native Mexicans, but also less neurotic.

I always feel more extraverted and less neurotic when I’m in Spanish speaking mode, happily talking to strangers, smiling and all that. But the second bit of the article makes no sense to me. Does racial profiling via 170,000 personality tests make it OK? And how the chingada do you measure “agreeability” and “conscienciousness”? Are they including undocumented immigrants in the test, I’d feel less outgoing too if I thought I was in constant danger of being deported and the government of the county I lived in was hell bent on building a 4.5 metre wall along its border with my home country with funds left over after waging a ill-thought-out and illegal war on abstract nouns and then legalising torture round the world… And then there’s the socioeconomic aspects of the respective countries…

Meanwhile, somewhere in Torquay:

Basil Fawlty: Manuel…
[Basil thwacks him on the forehead with a spoon]
Basil Fawlty: …You’re a waste of space.

WordPress (the blog engine I use) just ate my longish post! Hate it when that happens. Anyroad, I can just about remember what I wrote. It was something heavily to do with self-pity…

I shouldn’t have skimped on the tequila yesterday because as soon as darkness fell my cold transformed into the fluidy achey horribleness that I could really do without… I spent the night awake with a headache and, worse yet, no one to complain to and look for sympathy from. So apologies for using my interweb soapbox to whinge, mis amigos, but I can’t help meself. Sita said all the right things on skype, mind, and she’s no stranger to the old insomnia… Also I found a stash of American strength cold medicines this morning in the bathroom so I’ll work my way through that and see if anything happens… Anyroad, to paraphrase Steven Colbert, that brings us to this week’s Spanish word: Constipado

In Spanish Spanish “Estoy constipado” means I’ve got a cold, thus causing 50% of the hilarity that occurs in Spanish chemists (pharmacies). Constipado means bunged up, only in the Iberian peninsular it refers to your nose and sinuses rather than other parts that your average anglophone might think. Round this way it’s ‘resfriado’ which is a more literal version of cold.

The other 50% comes from the phrase “Estoy embarazado/a” which you’d think means I’m embarassed, but actually means I’m pregnant. The time must fly by.

Just so this post has something of worth, eyes right for a picture of the Basilica in Zapopan from the days when I was a little obsessed with filters in Photoshop. Also, today is el Dia de la Raza, which is considerably less polemic here than Columbus day in the States. If I had a proper job, I’d have the day off… Anyroad, Viva la Raza and all that…

A more careful reading of the Tapatian Scrabble Association’s webpage points to them meeting in Cafe Sandys about 100m from where I went yesterday to try and get in on the scrabble action. That would explain a lot… Never mind. Javier turned up in the afternoon and gave me a lift there on the way to the cinema. I was going to go with him to watch “Nia mala” (bad girl) but luckily I googled it and it turns out that’s the Spanish name for Hard Candy which I’d seen the other week (Recommended, btw- It’s a feminist stalker/psycho thriller film with several unwatchable scenes and you’re forever trying to work out who’s occupying the moral high ground…).

Ana popped round too to share her latest academic success stories, then I went over to Providencia for a pot luck and met a lovely band of folks who have the American School of Gwod in common. I picked up some tips for places to visit in Jalisco and once we have the car here again I’m up for a mission to Mascota and San Sebastian de something or other. It’s all written on the back of a napkin somewhere…

Today finishing off a couple of sites, hopefully. I’m getting mightily sick of Flash to tell the truth. Partly because of the below par coding of the templates I’m adapting, but also because of the need to switch between half a dozen programs to import graphics and so on, which means my creaking computer struggles at times.

In other news, you’ll be happy to hear that my cold’s holding steady. Shall be repeating the same strict regime today, pozole, lime, tequila, zinc etc, today and hoping for the best.

Spanish word of the week for last week: Diapositiva A fancy, but the only, word for “slide” as in a powerpoint slide or slideshow… I was in Irvine, CA, and there’s no Spanish there except when you’re helping yer missus with her presentation on the Spanish version of Office 2003…

Personally, I like how her eyes follow you wherever you are… Or maybe I’m imagining things…

I’m experiencing the beginnings of a cold. I’m blasting it into touch with a well-thought out combination of zinc cough sweet things, chicken pozole with lots of lime juice, gargling with tequila and cutting down on the 10 mile walks…

Now I’m off to find the Tapatian Scrabble Association in Cafe Azteca and see if they’ll let rank amateurs join in.

Had the best flight yet back to Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico yesterday night. Since I’d flown the week before I knew all the vaguaries of what to do to / bring / not bring at the airport. Whether to take me shoes off, take the laptop out of the bag, bring liquids etc. On the way out from MX I had a bottle of tequila in me hand luggage and though they confiscated my bottle of water, they let me take the agave juice on board with me because, hey, it’s just tequila… Flying over Northern Mexico we had to divert around some thunderstorms which I’d never seen at night from above. It was spectacular, several flashes per second lit up the clouds like so much electric candy floss. My iPaq wasn’t up to the task of filming it though due to the light conditions and being asked to film stuff after several hours of intense scrabble playing on it. Mexican immigration didn’t even ask me any questions, stamped stuff and let me go on to get me luggage. For the first time I got the “Red Light” at customs. They have a traffic light system where you press the button and it either turns red or green. Red means a hand search of your bags. After the most cursory of frisks before I knew it I was back at the house. Just the way things should be.

Had a bit of a nap and went to ‘rent’DVDs from Santa Tere. I got Almodovar’s new one, Volver (which has been conspicuous in its absence from Mexican cinemas), Thank You for Smoking (which I watched yesterday, 3.5 Lulus), The Butterfly Effect (recommended by El Cala) and, to get the bargain 4 for the price of 3, Reservoir Dogs (it’s been a while). Tacos from Tacos al Pastor on Av. Mexico just to get back in the groove and a quick visit to Starbucks because you don’t want to know what happened the coffee maker over the last 11 days…

I’m trying to find out what’s going on on next Sunday’s Shakira front. There are plenty of tickets left (due to the extortionate price) but I’m not sure who else is going any more. I’ll go on my own if it comes to that…