On Monday I bought meself a new graphics card and it was working lovely, I had one computer going with dual monitors, ie. you move the mouse off the side of one and it appears on the other, it was a wonder to behold……so when I came home on Tuesday and it had died on me I wasn’t best pleased and am back with the one computer-one monitor until I get a chance to go and argue my statutory rights at Circuit City.
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?
So matey rings our doorbell yesterday, strimmer in hand, promising to work wonders on our front garden, lawn and trees, ‘Bien profesional, bien bonito’. I feel quite chuffed that I manage to haggle him down from 300 to 150 pesos (15 of your earth dollars). I close the deal with a handshake and leave him to it, wandering back to my design stuff. I hear the strimmer (weedwhacker in US parlance, I believe) whirring away. The doorbell rings again, he needs to go and get seed and fertilizer for the lawn and can I give him the money in advance. If this was the UK/ US I wouldn’t have done it, but after my dealings with the gasfitter bloke who sorted out the boiler, this is the level of service I was expecting. If you cut lawns for a living, you won’t have much in the way of pesos to buy extra stuff. So I gave him 130 pesos and he saunters off. This was yesterday. No sign of him today neither.
Then my hopes were raised when some gardeners pulled up outside the house today, but they were there for Senora Teresa next door. I asked if they knew about this landscaper from yesterday and they patiently explained, ‘parece que te chingó ese jardinero’ (Oi reckon you got screwed over by that there gardener bloke in Wurzel) which I’d sort of worked out for myself. Ah well.
It hasn’t put me off gardens, though. Oh no. In fact I went for a meeting with the director of Guadalajara’s Metropolitan Park to offer my services. I’m going to make them a website to attract corporate sponsors and more volunteers to the, frankly, near-insolvent parque. I had a wander round and it’s a big old space, but there weren’t many people there today. They come in the mornings- 6am, evenings, 5pm and weekends apparently. So the photos I took to put on the website are a little unappetizing for now. Bless them though, it’s had a rocky old history. In 1992 a local politician tried to sell it off as a golf course and pocket the change but got caught last minute during a close analysis of accounts after the streets exploded (long story), and since then they’ve got by with volunteers, military and community service people. They can’t afford to buy trees so all the new plants are grown from cuttings from local forests and they’re looking for sponsors for the BBQ areas. The plan is to be a world-class, self-sustaining tourist attraction by 2010. I reckon they’ll do it too, and let’s see if I can’t help with a bit of HTML.
John Hurt, once Winston in 1984, does a formidable job as the Big Brother figure in V for Vendetta. It’s set in either an alternative reality or in 3 years time, hard to tell which, where Britain is governed by a totalitarian regime bent on power and rampant with corruption. The populace is kept at bay with scares about avian flu terrorists and immigrants and V, the masked protagonist, is out to shake them out of their ovine slumber with some bonfire night pyrotechnics all over London…
I’ve always been fond of Natalie Portman despite her Star Wars travesties but in this film her English accent is a stretch to believe. She sounds like a South African who had a Canadian au-pair. Luckily for her, her lines good enough for you think about what she’s saying rather than how she says it. And in the second half of the film there’s the constant expectation she’s about to launch into Nothing Compares 2U.
There’s constant meditation about the power of ideas and not-so veiled references to US, and to a lesser extent British, politics too. The Bill O’Reilly figure is pleasingly hideous. It’s all too plausible if you ask me. Jose watched it too and reckoned it was more like the PRI than New Labour, but that’s cultural differences for you. He’s right that New Labour hasn’t had any political opponents assassinated (yet), whereas the PRI does have that reputation…
I reckon this film could stand a few repeat viewings. There is a lot of stuff going on and in that sense is a worthy successor to the Matrix (shame about Matrix II & III) for the Wachowski brothers. As for why Alan Moore took his name of it, I’m guessing because it doesn’t go far enough. Although it is daring for a film to have a terrorist as its hero, he’s nowhere near as anarchistic as he could have been. I’m not criticising it for that though, he’s placed as far left as he can be and forces you to consider the whole freedom-figher/ terrorist thing. And there ought to be more films advocating political awakening and revolution.
Stylish, well-scripted and excellently paced I’ve no trouble at all recommending this one.
So yesterday we decided to stay another month, till the 2nd of December or thereabouts. I am very happy about this turn of events, it means we can fit in a trip to Mexico City, see the Day of the Dead properly, Sita can finish her interviewing relatively stress free and any other number of happy outcomes. ‘Cus is still slated to leave on Thursday though, and I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I’m going to miss him…
Anyway by way of a despedida for Atticus and celebration of one more month we had some good friends round and did the usual grilled arrachera and tequila thang. It was a fine afternoon. All the “‘Cus has a posse” photos are at Flickr. Here’s Sita, Ana and Jorge holding up the cake with “Felicidades, 1 mes más” on it.
Also of note is the photo of Beethoven, the enormous St. Bernard that sends Atticus into a frenzy when he’s taken on his walk by our house at around 9pm every night.
…so when I came home on Tuesday and it had died on me I wasn’t best pleased and am back with the one computer-one monitor until I get a chance to go and argue my statutory rights at Circuit City.
