Oh what a night. I’m a convert. I’m not sure of the names or who won or many other trivialities, but i do know that I smiled the whole way through. It’s like panto without the nagging suspicion you’re going to be dragged up on stage and made to sing the birdie song because you have a birthday in January, and it’s a lot better, natch.

I took tons of photos, at first, furtively, then getting more brazen and using the flash a bit, then they told me I needed a permit which you have to get in advance, so i watched for another 20 minutes, then sneaked another picture in. A lady came up and told me I’d be escorted out if I continued so that was that. I’m definitely going back and getting a permit next time so I can take some proper ringside pics. The place was packed and full of hardcore fans with their gimp masks and all. Something I’d not seen before in mexico was the class warfare. The people in the cheap seats (3 bucks) were chanting for the rudos and the folks where i was (6 bucks) turned around and chanted ‘pobres’ (poor people) back at them. There was a fence in between… Shocking… Besides all the action there were vendors selling beer, chicharron (deep fried pig fat/skin), pizza, crisps, fags and of course, masks. It was a great spectacle, I can’t believe I’d never been before.

Well, Sita, Jose, Jana, Victor and Cesar, you missed a treat, but I’m well up for going again. Oh, how I spoil you with options for seeing the pictures… first off there’s a Flickr Slideshow, Flickr thumbnails then there’s an all singing, all dancing, Windows Media File (4670k) (Recommended, broadband especially).

Some bright spark has converted all the series of QI (Stephen Fry & friends) to MP3s so i’ve been listening to them non stop. I love how what started as a harmless panel game has gradually descended into a primary school classroom with Fry as the teacher and the rest of them misbehaving. What other country could this format work in?

Channel4.com – IT Crowd
Not quite sure what the benefits for C4 are, but many thanks all the same. Channel Four are streaming episodes of new Graham Lineham comedy The IT Crowd. And it’s got Chris Morris in it. It’s a cross between Father Ted, Black Books and The Office and is rather good. Click the link for the download page. Righty, I’m off to see Satanico fight Loco Max. On my own… cheers

So Jose and me are putting images and music to his writing:
here’s the ‘demo’. Enjoy…

http://www.gwynunlimited.com/propaganda.htm

& people are starting to wimp out of the lucha libre mission. I’m going, no matter what (as long as I can bring me camera…)

tomatopatch.com : “Sleepless In Seattle” Trailer Recut
Found this on Boingboing.net A trailer that’s better than the film itself. Again…

Here’s the line up for the lucha libre this evening. Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks aren’t billed, but we live in hope. I’m sure EL HOMBRE SIN NOMBRE won’t fail to entertain… and if all else fails, there’s Strongbad

ARENA COLISEO: Martes 31 de Enero 19:30 HRS.

LUCHA ESTELAR:
DOS CARAS JR., DR.WAGNER E HIJO DE LIZMARK vs TARZAN BOY, REY BUCANERO Y UNIVERSO 2000

LUCHA SEMIFINAL
BLACK WARRIOR, SATANICO Y LIZMARK vs EMILIO CHARLES, HIJO DE PIERROTH Y HOMBRE SIN NOMBRE

LUCHA ESPECIAL
VIRUS, TONY RIVERA Y STUKA vs OKUMURA, DR. X Y LOCO MAX

SEGUNDA LUCHA
LEONO, TRUENO Y DANGER vs RAMSTEIN, MESALA Y CALIGULA

PRIMERA LUCHA
RAYOS TAPATIOS I Y II vs POLVORA Y VAQUERO

Tortilla… Eggs, spuds, onions and acrobatics

So Sunday morning I awoke, stretched and started peeling spuds for a tortilla cos we’d been invited round some friends of Victor and Jayna’s for brunch (desalmuerzo?). Lots of Yanquis teaching in the American School of Gwod were round there and had brought such delights as waffles, pancakes, olive tapenade and bacon. T’was very nice and I got to explain what I was doing in MX. It was nice to say, Well, I’m not teaching English… Afterwards, V&J came round for a nice cup of tea and a sit down and agreed to come to the lucha libre on Tuesday… Sita missed out on all of this ‘cos of grant applications, Spanish revision and other trifles. I wandered off to Santa Tere to see the market being taken down, try and find some more ‘cars that resemble where they’re parked‘ and hunt down a cantina (La Taberna de Mou). Success on 2 out of 3; Moe’s Bar is still too elusive and I did walk for a fair while.

The evening was pleasant enough, with the leftovers of Sita’s recreations of tequila based dishes from Saturday and we watched El Matador, which is an American film set largely in Mexico D.F., and was pretty good. I rang Jose today to check he’s still up for the lucha libre and he is. He also wants to make a cortometraje mini film about some idea he’s had or other and is coming round to pitch it this evening. More news about that as it happens…

Sita rang me at work to say she’s got shunted by an SUV when she was waiting at a red light. Had a miserable time of it because the SUV was driven by a hija de la chingada miserable woman. Sita and the altima are unscathed, but it sounds like the slanging match they had wasn’t much fun. Bless her.

Last night Sita came home knackered from her Tequila class, it was at a world class restaurant and they were watching various tequila infused dishes being prepared and then sampling them. She got a chef’s hat and everthing. Picture coming soon… So we didn’t do the whole music club thing, instead we settled down to Steven Colbert’s unique take on recent news courtesy of bitttorrrent and an early night. If I’ve understood it correctly right now (sat. midday) she’s off tasting cocktails with her class. That can’t be right surely? We’ll see soon enough. She took the camera so I couldn’t go on my photography mission so maybe this afternoon.

So what have I been up to? Well, driving sita to her class, but also watching Steven Fry researching his family’s history in a v. interesting BBC documentary, cooking a gourmet turkey bacon and cheese omelette and archiving my blog for 2004. Who knows? Maybe in the distant future people will wonder what expat Zummerzet folk in the Americas filled their time with in the beginning of the 21st Century and my since blog isn’t cached by google (deliberately) there’ll need to be a printed record. I’ve been reading all about the dread building up to Atticus’s arrival, my old job *shudder*, our doggy’s problematic behaviour at Xmas around Sally and Martin and all kinds of other things. I can’t wait to find out what happened next. To be honest it’s pretty sub-Adrian Mole (he mentions the outside world and other people occasionally) but it’s been a laugh. I’m glad I’m doing this. Anyway, if you’d like a 1.6 meg PDF of 2004’s entries to print out, email or comment me and I’ll send the link. That’s it for now, happy weekend and all that, byee, gwyn

Last night’s (patriotic) shepherd’s-pieathon spawned all kinds of ideas:

Tonight: Friday night music club round Jose’s psuedo uncle’s.
Sunday morning: Brunch round Victor and Jayna’s
Tuesday: Lucha Libre (wrestling). Definitely. No excuses this time…
Sat/Sun: Arandas, Jalisco’s Tequila II
Sun: Superbowl party chez nous (not my idea), I’ll be on pizza production again.

So that’s plenty to be getting on with for a few days. I feel like the photography’s taken a back seat the last few weeks, so maybe I’ll head off tomorrow morning with me 1 gig SD card and get some more Gwod cityscapes in. I’ve still got the Parque site to finish off too. So I’ll not be bored. Don’t you worry now.

Also in an idle moment I set up all my email notifications for spam at gwynunlimited to forward directly to contact @ phentermine-support.com, how d’ya like them apples eh?

People tend to arrive on this page to see if there are problems with http://isc.ro, your best bet is downforeveryoneorjustme.com/isc.ro to see if it’s down for everyone or just you.

EDIT: 1/12/08

When I logged into scrabble today I saw this message, thought it might help the folks who got here via google for ISC server status…

EDIT: 2/Nov/08: The isc.ro site’s been down for me (and everyone else according to http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/)  for a week or so. I can still log in and play though… Doesn’t bode well.

Internet Scrabble Club

EDIT: 1/June/08 : Just noticed a spike in traffic for hardcore scrabble addicts wondering what’s up with the ISC server. On their site it’s saying:

The main server is currently experiencing an outage. We do not have an estimated time to repair at present. ISC backup server is running, to connect select from the ‘Open Connection’ window ‘ISC backup server’
We apologize for the inconvenience.

I can’t connect to the backup server though… Hey ho. Looks like it’s back to Scrabulous on Facebook

Just testing a new button I’ve got on me browser that I can press when I want to blog a page I like… My scrabble rating’s presently at 915, highest ever. This year I intend to get past 1000. Sita’s moving over to the dark side though, with her Su Doku, so fat chance of any real world practice…

Just ask Mrs. Lisk

Did he even study for this exam? (c) Gwyn’s History School Report, 1988

The sad thing is I did. Anyroad, I’ve been all over the interweb and in and out of books researching the history of the Royal Inland Road and also listening to the Top of the Pods podcast (I even got me name read out on it the other day. And it has upwards of 1600 listeners…). So here is the natural conjunction of those two pasttimes: my
Top 10 historical things I’ve learnt about El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro:

10. The whole thing about Moctezuma thinking (Conquistador) Cortes was Quetzalcoatl- their lightning god- returning was probably a convenient myth made up by the priests to showcase once again that God was a Spaniard.

9 Guadalajara was founded in 4 separate places. Injuns was the usual excuse for upping camp and starting again down the road.

8 Guadalajara is named after renowned sadist/explorer Nuo de Guzmán’s home town in Spain.

7 Nomadic Indians were a lot harder to fight than the settled ones, hence the 40+ year Chichimeca War from 1550 to 1590ish. ‘Chichimeca’ is what the Aztecs (not the most peace-loving of nations) named them. It means, depending on which source you use, ‘of dog lineage’, ‘language of dogs’, ‘dog people’. Basically sons of bitches…

6 The camino was originally used for sucking all the mineral wealth out of Zacatecas and surrounding area and supplying them with vittles from Guadalajara. Cos the land round them parts weren’t none too fertile.

5 The Chichimecas found it very easy to attack these convoys and used their impressive bow and arrow skills to take out the muleteers and who they reckoned were atrespassin’ on their land. Hence the swift change of route to go via San Miguel de Allende to Mexico City and stay well away from Gwod.

4 The Chichmecas only started playing nicely when the Spanish/Mestizos stopped attacking and enslaving them and started trading trinkets and baubles instead. Half Chichimeca/ half Spanish Miguel Caldera spearheaded the operation of ‘Paz por compra’ (peace by purchase) which replaced the previous tactics of ‘Guerra a sangre y fuego’ (War of blood and fire, or more roughly, shock and awe…)

3 Juan de Oate extended the route from Zacatecas up to Santa Fe, New Mexico once the Chichimecas had calmed down a bit. But he still had troubles when he had to finance the whole thing and there wasn’t much in the way of gold/ silver/ docile natives to find. His brutal reprisals in Acoma at his mutinous men and indignant indigenous peeps by cutting off feet and suchlike made him few friends, even the Spanish Virreyes stripped him of all kinds of titles and fined him.

2 The Camino Real was later important for all kinds of historic events. Which I’m still getting to… Independence, Revolution, Cristero War. And ting.

1 Wikipedia is more useful than any other site on the interweb for historical research. If I earned a living wage, I’d donate… I read the founder’s personal appeal, and he says it’s there for ‘the child in Africa who is going to use free textbooks and reference works produced by our community and find a solution to the crushing poverty that surrounds him.” And I’m sure if he’d pondered it further, he’d have continued ‘and impoverished Brits trying to research background material for a documentary of trinational importance in Mexico”.

And also, thanks, Amy, the latest Guestmappee who’s no longer in manateeville but NYC with a predilectation for audience participation in Comedy Central satirical news shows.

Ajijic en español
Ajijic in English

Does blogging about blogging constitute metablogging? Here are some popular metablog themes of which I’ve been guilty:

• (bloody) Comment Spam
• “Sorry I haven’t updated this in a while, but…”
• Memes (questionnaires, etc that get forwarded from blog to blog like ‘mind viruses’) You are a Capricorn! type thing
• How to use my RSS (Richard Sutherland-Smith, I’m reliably informed) feed
• Sign my Guestmap
• Search terms that got people to the site. Michael Jackson Dance Moves is a regular one for Gwynunlimited, they get to the film review of 13 going on 30…
• Google Pagerank

Righty, I’m giving it a week and Gwyn’s blog is moving addresses and all because of the Russians and their underhand phentermine flogging tactics. What they give with www.allofmp3.com they take away with this stuff. The archive will stay here but I’ll turn off comments and shove a bit red CLICK HERE TO GO TO NEW BLOG button in the first entry, then I’m afraid you’ll have to update your bookmarks, links or aggregators and hie thee hence to agaveweb.com/blog. I meanwhile will have to notify feedburner, technorati, google, bloggingbrits, and a ‘sinfin‘ of other sites to try to nudge the pagerank up a bit.

Cesar was true to form and didn’t take us to the Lucha Libre last night, el muy cabron. But we’ll get there eventually especially after Ed’s glowing recommendation in the comments in the entry below, somewhere after online casino, but before Viagra. We went out for pozole and tacos instead and I watched another DVD- Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman. Review coming soon to the IFRAME on the right… Breakfast and work beckon… hasta pronto, gwyn

WELCOME! Thanks for clicking through. I’ll continue with the entries about my life in Guadalajara, Mexico as often as I can, with the occasional link to new photos here and in the Flickr Photos bit on the right. Stuff I read/watch ends up reviewed in the IFRAME to the right as well, with the occasional link to longer posts. Because of WordPress’s easy integration with Flickr and other stuff, expect more links to sites I like and better annotated photos.

Archives from 2004-2006 from the old blog are available here and might even be available in a PDF one of these days… Of course there’s still a wealth of rubbish to read here too.

Un Inglés en Guanatos is Spanish for An English bloke in Guadalajara. Although there’s a fair amount of the Welsh in my ethnic makeup English will have to do for the tagline for the time being. Guanatos, is what locals call Guadalajara, like Brum for Birmingham, Bridgey for Bridgwater, Chilangolandia for Mexico City, etc…. Self-Apsorption Central is the English version of the title, ‘cos it’s pretty much all about me, by me and for people who know me. It took me about 15 months to realise that absorption isn’t spelt with a ‘b’ too… Anyroad, if you have any suggestions for a better tagline, feel free to comment it. Talking of which… Comments can be sent via the comment thing at the bottom of each entry, this time though, you’ll have to type the letters/numbers combo in before it will let you add anything, this (as I’ve gone into in too much depth already) is to banish the spam once and for all…

You’ll still find the usual introspection and apercus about the goings on round my way (often interupted with the gratuitous use of parentheses, ellipsises and the word ‘anyroad’…) and I’m more than happy to enter into correspondance about anything I’ve mentioned. I’m still up for recording mp3s of me playing acoustic guitar versions of any songs you’d care to mention too, so far: Here comes the Sun, Land of my fathers, and an as yet unidentified Name That Tune.

What else is new?

• Well if you wanted to find the article where I went into depth about how to hypnotise rabbits you can now search for it with box down there on the right.
• The Blogroll is a growing list of people’s blog I myself read. I’d be glad to add you if you’re not there yet. Unless your name is Phentermine.
• RSS is now an option if you’re into that kind of thing, you’ll find a wealth of options for that.
• You can Skype me at most hours of the day.
• If you’ve never added yerself to the guestmap, that’s something else that further brightens up me days.

So that’ll be all for now, can’t spend all my lunchtime blogging now can I? Arse, I just did… Shall have to have a quick walk around the block and have a Milky Way so I feel the benefit. Thanks for stopping by and feel free to make your presence known. Looking forward to your continued support and readership. Salud!

Cesar lent me a load of photos from 1998 when we went to visit Lake Chapala, I’ve just scanned some of them in. I’ve put on weight since then, but not as much as Cesar. ja ja. The lake’s put on weight too, mind. Best year evah.

Have to go to work in 5 mins, so a quick post about the weeked. Saturday: Sita had her tequila class and I changed the oil in the car. Well I took it to an oil change place, there’s no quickilube so it had to be a garage. i thought I’d show some brand loyalty and took it to Multiservicios Gaytan first, but they were closing and somewhat brusque so i went elsewhere and got to watch the entire mysterious process which you don’t usually get to see. Jose came round in the evening and we never got round to the podcast cos he’d forgotten his notebook (the paper sort). Good night all the same, though. Yesterday I went to the baratillo (pictured) the huge sprawling market that takes over Oblatos on Sundays and picked up Aeon Flux, which has had terrible reviews but what the hey… since I was in the barrio i checked in on Cesar at his house, he was there and i caught up on 2 yrs worth of news. He might be up for going to see Lucha Libre (Mexican Wrestling) on Tuesday evening, but I’ll not hold my breath. Watched Shaolin Soccer in the evening which was grand, then flicked through the channels and got hooked on a fantastic film about drug addiction, i didn’t know what i was watching till the end, but it was Requiem for a Dream. Bloody brilliant film, i foresee a lot of nightmares. It’s by the same director as PI, which is another great film… anyroad, off to work. Wish me luck, I’m meant to have come up with some kind of unifying theme for the Camino Real documentary and to be honest, I haven’t. it’s hard to summarize the history of a 2000 mile stretch of road over 500 years. In Spanish. Ah, we’ll see how it goes, i’ve got a few ideas…

When grooming rabbits, make sure you ground them first.

Frankenschipperke:

I’m following a load (or ‘bunch’ for you Americans out there) of tutorials from watchandlearnphotoshop.com. Every now and again they send me a link to a new one in the hope I’ll shell out for the full course one day. It might happen yet. In the mean time it’s like having a new craft project come through the letterbox. I enjoyed the ‘add rain to a picture‘ one and this one was how to make an ancient map. So this is what an OS map of Gwod would look like after one of sita’s gas explosions. Probably. Making it reminded me of a stand out English class in Taunton School (16 years ago?), in the 5th year, or whatever it’s called these days. It was Mr. Hughes and we were reading Fahrenheit 451, a book about the near future with firemen being in charge of burning books and the totalitarian police, etc. Anyway, one inspired day, our homework (Jesus, we had to call it ‘Prep’ in those days) was for each of us to memorise a page in one particular chapter to recite. The next class, we had to rip that page out and put it in a bin in the middle of the room and then he set light to the lot, in the classroom… then we’d go around the class reciting the chapter in the acrid smoke of burnt paper and remnants of chewing gum, biros etc in the bin. Thrilling stuff actually, and doubtless illegal nowadays. As with most books that year, we never got around to finishing it and ended up watching the video. Even Hamlet. You know, the one with Mel Gibson.

Thanks Mum, the book you posted on Dec 12 2005 arrived yesterday intact. There’s hope yet. Don’t suppose the beautifully crafted DVD tour of our house has turned up your end yet though? Sita and I spent Beth and Ali’s Amazon voucher last night, fingers crossed, is should arrive end of Feb at present speeds.

Sita’s learning about Tequila and China right now in her diploma class. I’m about to cook me turkey bacon (and made Shepherd’s Pie last night). Jose’s probably coming round this evening and we’re going to Podcast some of his poetry with minor chords acoustic guitar accompaniment. Viva Bohemia. Cheers

I’ve spent more and more time deleting comment spam and blocking IP addresses of late than I’d care to. The program I use to make this blog is called GreyMatter and it’s starting to creak of late. However, because it was old it was fairly easy to customise…
Since I got a WordPress blog with my agaveweb site, I’ve been trying to customise that too and I think I’ve got it more or less how I want it. No more online craps for me, hopefully… However, I’m still not quite ready to update all the links to this blog to go to agaveweb.com/blog yet. Also, it’s taken me the best part of 3 years to earn my 4/10 google page rank and I’m loathe to leave it behind and start from scratch. When I change over there’ll be all kinds of warnings first. Have a look at how it is now. I’ve tried to make it look like this page does now (how’d you like the new Viva Mexico colours?, by the way), but it’s got a few extra features like search, tags and all kinds of RSS. And writing entries should be a lot more straightforward…

Stay tuned…