Argentime

On the Road

2009-08-23T23:42:00.003-04:00

Today began the 20 hour voyage across America. I dozed for most of the day, as typically happens to me when I'm in a moving vehicle (other than just the planet). My mum and I have settled in at some hotel a few miles past Cleveland. After lengthy negotiations with the hotel manager, who wasn't exactly sure of the price (people typically just throw their credit cards at him), I have located the business ceenter where I am happily emailing. Also blogging. Obvy. The day has been a good one, listening to "On the Road" on books on tape.

I'm enjoying this computer. There are shortcuts on the desktop to a gameboy emulator, a file about incentives called folly.pdf, a word document, some other random stuff.

Opening the My Documents folder, I see that there are all sorts of hilariously titled documents... such as "DUE TO THE CITY OF STREETSBORO FLUSHING THE WATER LINES THE WATER IN THE GUEST ROOMS IS SLIGHTLY DISCOLORED" and "DO NOT OPENNNNNNN". Additionally, there is a petition by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and of course, "WE HAVE NOTICED YOUR TRUCK"

Alright, it's time to sleep. I'm going to post this and then open "DO NOT OPENNNNNN"

Important

2009-08-23T02:52:00.003-04:00

I drove two and from Madison recently. While driving back, I had a thought which I've had many times before. Here it goes: I really, really would not want to die by hitting a deer while driving in a car. It just seems like the stupidest fucking way to die. And another thing is, if I actually did die that way, I would want the comfort of everyone knowing how pissed off I would be about it. Or I at least would be super pissed off if my last thought is that while I'm being impaled on antlers, carreening into some fucking tree in the middle of a cornfield, I realized that no one would ever know how pissed off I would be in my last moments, or even how much more pissed off I would be that no one knew how much extra pissed off... it would thus build on itself.

Hopefully this isn't too depressing. But, I just thought you should know. If I die by hitting a deer while driving in some kind of motor vehicle, I would be pissed about it. But I suppose we could laugh it off.

Live Free or Die Hard

2009-08-17T20:37:00.005-04:00

I'm spending the night watching Live Free or Die Hard. I've decided to blog my reactions to the movie as I watch it.

Unobtrusive way of killing computer hackers: upload a virus that creates hardware issues, causing nerds to hit ctrl+alt+delete. This triggers some planted, helpfully labeled C4 to explode.
Plan B: shoot up the entire apartment with illegal, high power weaponry.
Are the villains French? Only appropriate for a movie full of America spirit.
Less obstrusive ways of killing someone: fake mugging, hunting accident, radon poisoning, regular poisoning, run someone down with car, hit over head with blunt object.
Awesome: Bruce Willis. Creative fire extinguisher trick reminds me of halflife 2.
Oh shit! Is this bad guy the dude from Wanted? Awesome. I hope he can bend bullets.
More unobstrusive ways of killing: shoot with tiny gun, push out of building, fake suicide, push heavy object on top of them, kidnap and then kill them.
Okay, this bad guy, we shall call him Wanted dude, is just awesome. He is awesome. Awesome.
Hacker shit in a semi. This bodes well.
Ah, excellent use of CCR's classic Vietnam protest Fortunate Son as a patriotic song. Great.
Ah! The drivers can only follow the directions of the lights! We are sheep!
My other choice of a movie was Hackers. I'm debating which would have been more realistic.
Oh fuck you terrorists. You do NOT mess with 4th of July weekend.
"Video package is ready for upload"
President montage was pretty good.
This software has a way better interface than what I'm guessing the government has.
Alright I need to pause this for
Helicopter stuff: That was awesome.

Auxillary Thoughts

2009-08-15T11:55:00.004-04:00

Funny name of the day: Dick Polman

As an editorial said in today's Star Tribune, Garrison Keillor should do the voice-over work at the Minneapolis airport.

I also saw Wanted, which had a high degree of awesome. Another nice bad sci-fi movie with a cool world and a cool idea. I didn't think Wanted failed too horrifically in execution, however. The film had a coherent feel to it, some great action sequences, and sort of explained some stuff in a satisfactory manner. Well... it had some great action sequences. I also thought the main character did a pretty good job in the nerd-turned-super-assassin role.

Movays

2009-08-15T01:56:00.003-04:00

There are few things to do in Rochester. Fortunately, unlike New Haven, you are able to see movies, in a theater no less.

Last night I saw 500 Days of Summer. I thought it was a pretty good film... in the words of the advertisements, a story about love, but not a love story. It was filled with some fun quirky things that kept it engaging and interesting, although I really grew to hate one of the characters, Summer played by Zooey Deschanel. I think I dislike Zooey Deschanel in general, I can't decide. Right, but worth seeing. There's some stuff that might be self-referential, where the main character complains that actual love is completely ruined by the portrayel of love in books and song and... movies. Right. Reminded me of the first essay in Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs, where Klosterman claims that John Cusak destroyed love in the real world.

Tonight I saw District 9. Thought it was pretty damn awesome. Some great effects, a video game feel at certain parts, but also with some interesting ethical questions. The "meaning" of the film isn't burried very deep, obviously, but it fortunately doesn't completely bash you over the head with ideas like "RACISM IS BAD!" Hadn't really seen many previews, so I went in expecting something very different from what I got. I think that heightens my appreciation of a movie, I like being surprised.

Finally, a confession. I really like frogs and toads. My first and only pet was a toad. Thus, when I'm driving through my neighborhood at night and I see a toad with a deathwish, hopping madly toward my tires, I swerve wildly, park my car, take him off the road and give him a stern talking to about the finer points of automotive safety. All the toads I save are males.

Recipe Corner!

2009-08-14T19:42:00.002-04:00

I'd like to share with you what I cooked for lunch. It's called the BT. Or the B, if you go for the minimalist form.

What you will need:

4 strips of bacon
Frying pan
Stove
2 pieces of bread (optional)
Toaster (optional)
Mayonnaise
Tomato (optional)

Put the frying pan on the stove. Set the heat to like medium. Or maybe low. Put the bacon on the pan. Cook the bacon. At this point, you could be done. Or you could toast two pieces of bread, chop up some tomatoes, slather some mayo on your toast, combine, and eat. It was pretty good.

Super swift

2009-08-13T02:13:00.004-04:00

I was driving home from a friends house, and there was a young raccoon with a terrible limp crossing the road.
I am about to go view the meteor shower hopefully.
I went up to the cities today for a Yale thinger. Met some Yalies, young and old, a good time.
The current totally rocks my socks.
Listened to some Zee Avi on the current. An interesting story, super chill music, her voice reminded me of a Malayasian Regina Spektor. http://www.zeeavi.com/
Absolutely no offense to the girl who said this, but after meeting some ppl today at the Yale thing, there was the comment "That's a real pretty drive." This is something I've heard my parents say SO many times. Just reminded me about getting older, and getting excited about things like pretty drives.
Okay seriously time for meteor showers.
Gabe Friedman. Friend, poet, lover?
I'm getting up in about 4 and a half hours to go fishing.

Testosterace 8/11/09, Day 92

2009-08-13T00:48:00.002-04:00

Old Total-- 23300

8/11-- 825
8/10-- 815
8/9-- 300
8/8-- 500
8/7-- 400

New Total-- 26140
PUP'D-- 284.1

Mare and Steve do China

2009-08-11T20:41:00.003-04:00

Here are two pics I like a lot that my parents took in China. I know I promised zoo pictures, but these will have to do for now.

Another stew

2009-08-10T22:31:00.004-04:00

This will hopefully be a more informative, interesting post than previous ones. I'm clearly incapable of writing anything funny anymore, although I occasionally do funny things.

In relation to the last sentence, I leave you with the following advice: hot tubs and alcohol do not mix. Additional advice is that q-tips can be bad for your ears.

For the goodly Friar, my PIPD (pathetic income per day) is currently 0.4383, USD (baby!). I've developed a habit of saying "baby!" whenever I say U.S. Dollar or USD. This is probably because of my living in a country where the 2 peso bill is used mainly to roll up your fine cuban tobacco.

Alright, first off, you can apparently use Twitter to pray now. If you send a tweet to @thekotel, a kindly soul will place your prayer in the Wailing Wall. http://twitter.com/TheKotel There are also iPhone apps and so forth for finding the direction of Mecca. Yowza.

Finished The World is Flat. I think we're going to read some more Asimov as a bit of a cool down.

The primate of the week is the Emperor Tamarind. Baller:

Post/pics from the zoo tomorrow.

For those interested in computer science, I've been totally digging this site:http://www.cs.cmu.edu/puzzle/

Emailed my mayor today about the problem of Somali refugees (living in MN) returning to Somalia and becoming suicide bombers, militants, etc. Pretty sure my email will, you know, clear up that problem.

From Casey, That Yale Thing.

Also from Casey, a good ole WTF.

Tim Pawlenty... 2012?

Ostrich Racing

Bye to my sister J, see you in a few weeks. Keep rocking Long Island.

Nice Day For A...

2009-08-10T03:24:00.003-04:00

Went to a few weddings on Friday. Good stuff. As we were pulling into the reception at the last one, Billy Idol's "White Wedding" started playing, which I had been requesting all day. That you, gods of rock (AKA 101.1 LASR!)

More tennis. Kids beat parents.

Today (well I guess yesterday) was the anniversary of two significant events: the bombing of Nagasaki, and the day when Netscape went public. Good day to highlight some of those ideas of technology: dual nature, good and bad, technology is a tool, yadda yadda yadda.

Going to the ZOO tomorrow! Although Sparky the Sea Lion has unfortunately passed away.

Also goodbye to the sis for a while.

I'm getting progressively lamer with every post, mainly because readership is way way down, not that it was high earlier. But yeah. I'm currently working on a personal website, and I need to make the decision about blogging in the future. Maybe I can slap together all my crappy blogging and plubish a book, marketed as a how-to about getting into Yale. At any rate, I think I'd rather make a decision about my future of blogging rather than let it slowly die off. Odds are I will continue blogging at this point.

Testosterace 8/6/09, Day 87

2009-08-07T15:10:00.005-04:00

Old Total-- 21230

8/6-- 310

8/5-- 525

8/4-- 650

8/3-- 0 (Valley Fair Fail)

8/2-- 585

New total-- 23300
PUP'D-- 267.8

Fuck... FUCK!!

2009-08-07T14:50:00.003-04:00

The more I read Thomas Friedman the more depressed I get. I mean, I don't really give too much of a shit about Thomas Friedman. In the (paraphrased) words of Gabe, "Yeah, I mean, Thomas Friedman is all like, goes to Yorkside pizza with his daughter and her friends, and none of his daughter's friends are engineers, and the conclusion he comes up with is that America has failed."

I mean, right. The book is completely based on anecdotes and just Friedman's thoughts. At the same time, however, I always have this huge sinking feeling whenever I think about my science/math abilities and the future. SO! To counteract this, I've been feverishly reading my old multi-variable calc book. Then I think that I've probably missed the physics train, so I can maybe get aboard the econ express and ride that baby into a consulting job... then I think I'm a tool, say to myself that the problem with America is no one is riding the physics train, everyone with math prowess is going into finance, which is necessary, but we need science and junk too in order to drive economic growth... basically we end up back at square one, and I'm still just sitting around shirtless when I could be learning why it is again that Lagrange multipliers actually work.

Basically, I'm neurotic, and just had a lot of caffeine. I think things will work out.

Saw my friend Kristen off. Kristen is going into AmeriCorps in Vermont. Apparently, AmeriCorps people aren't allowed to make any money. It hurts their connection with the community if they're living off of just a stipend. Kristen and I discussed our mutual need for hard work, selection of goals, and the difficulty of 20-hour long car rides with your parents.

I've calmed down.

In other news:

Squirrels getting busy in the backyard yesterday. Oh, to be a squirrel. Just get busy, and throw acorns and people. Also cause my dad to want to cut down all trees within 50 meters of our bird feeders. Damn things are crafty. And horny.
Going to some weddings today for my sister's friends. Fuck... FUCK!! Weddings?!
I may not have mentioned that I saw Iron Man the other day and thought it was totally Rad.
Got my Newt's Burger on. I love those burgers.
Cyberwarfare... getting huge. Twitter got shut down by military activity in Russia or Georgia? Cyberwarfare is another interesting thing to worry about in the future.
Thanks to Casey, a horse/car collision: awesome.
Push ups while watching online tutorials about using flash.
I thought this was a very interesting article. It didn't really change my opinions on gay marriage, but definitely got me thinking about a possible debate between the possibly positive removal of social stigma and the possible negative outcomes of those removals. It's also written in a hedging and doubting manner, so I of course enjoy it.
I'm clearly in a hedging, doubting manner today.
Alright, what the hell is this Green's Theorem bullshit again?

Time keeps on slipping

2009-08-07T13:50:00.000-04:00

Wrote this a bit ago, posting it now. Good background for the post I'm about to write--

The future has always seemed a pretty sweet place to me. I was always more into the imaginative aspects of it, holding giant galactic battles with lego men, plastic snakes (space snakes), and random bits of trash that I thought were cool (I had toys, but I also had a pretty sweet imagination). Recently, the future has taken on a slightly different tone, one that lacks space snakes.

First off, I recently said bye to a friend who's spending the year teaching at an Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A large portion of my friends are now heading off to do various things in the world, which is just a reminder of this being my last year at school.

Also, I'm currently reading "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. I thought that it was going to be a lot of stuff that's almost outdated (the book was written ages ago in 2005) or that I already knew. Indeed, there's a fair amount of stuff that most kids know now, but there's also some stuff that just completely floored me. I had no idea about how important UPS is in the world, and didn't really get the idea of "insourcing". Apparently UPS does huge amounts of work for a large variety of companies. Friedman gives the example of repairs for Toshiba laptops. When you send in your laptop to get repaired, it is actually just picked up by UPS, mailed to the UPS hub, fixed at UPS by UPS, and then mailed back to the customer. Friedman gives numerous, similar examples.

Overall, the book is pretty good, but a little longer than it needs to be. Friedman really drives home every point with loads of examples, making for many extra pages of reading. But I am indeed enjoying it, learning new stuff like the UPS anecdote, although I'm skimming some of the more reptitive parts.

The book makes me nervous about America's future in general. I feel like our country needs something to drive us, beyond simply success. I wasn't around for the cold war, but that whole annihlation idea seemed to be a good motivator. Who knows, being from a cushy suburb and having a cushy life, maybe I don't see the strong motivations that exist for the rest of America. But I do know that there are tons of Russians, Indians, and Chinese people who could kick my ass at math, something I once thought I was pretty good at.

With all these thoughts, I decided to go out and engage in an activity that Americans are undoubtedly good at. Oh shit shopping:

12 cup coffee maker. That's 12 cups, baby.
If you see massive amounts of smoke pouring out of J22 next year, Goffman probably tried to make coffee and has doomed us all.
iPod connecter cable, because mine was stolen out of our room.
$7 speakers, because sound quality (pronounced, as I do, "koala-tea") is expensive and I'm no longer using Argentinean play money.
Shorts, because mine have holes
Shirts, because my parents expect me to wear clothing
Failed to buy a vase to make my bamboo look happy (it was in a plastic Norte Dame cup, weighed down by golf balls), but found a nice one at home. My mom has named the bamboo "Bambi". Cute.

It's nice to be back in MN. While in the checkout line, using my coupon, a lady behind me asked if I wanted to use hers. She wasn't going to use it and was just hoping it would help me out. Good to hear some nice accents, as well.

When I'm not despairing over the lack of American's (read: me) ambition, I'm hoping to have some more legal drinks at local Rochester hotspots (read: nonexistant). I did find that my favorite chicken wings in the world can be received for half off during a happy hour inside of some chain hotel across from the hospital. 5-7 pm. Alright baby, it's time for some early evening shenanigans.

Worst. Movie. Ever.

2009-08-06T19:28:00.003-04:00

Just got back from Orphan. Called that shit. I mean that in the sense of calling the twist in the movie, and then called the movie "shit" after walking out of the theater.

My sister owes me approximately 2 hours and 10 minutes of my life back.

But there was a Yale shout-out in it! Heeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeeey!

Goodbye to a Friend

2009-08-06T12:23:00.003-04:00

Anton Zucchini

2009-2009

Mr. Zucchini was with us for only a short period of time, but he will be missed.

On Tuesday, August 4th, he was placed in his final resting places, several loaves of zucchini bread.

No no, no no there's no limit!

2009-08-05T11:12:00.003-04:00

I've been a big lazy ass. My apologies.

Tuesday was a great day. I went up to Valley Fair, our local amusement park, with a few friends. I also ate Chipotle. Roller coasters are just frickin awesome, let's face it. The day was basically perfect. It was hot enough in the sun that you could dry off quickly after going on "The Wave" or "Riptide". The lines were pretty short, and I was dressed like a complete tool in old lady sunglasses and a swimsuit-as-shorts.

The Wave is really a hilarious ride. I thought it would have been made in the 70s because of it's simple design, but it was created in 1992. Basically, you go up an incline. You then go around a corner. You then go down an incline, and you get wet. You get off. Beautiful in its simplicity. You get really frickin' wet. Here's a video of it in action. HISTORICAL NOTE: Julie Riederer once, as a little girl with nerdy glasses, lost said nerdy glasses while crossing the bridge.

Alright, I'm totally loving these youtube videos of rides at Valley Fair, so I will continue to post them.

Steel Venom (gotta love the music in the vid)

This one is okay, when you're shot up in the air, you're a bit disoriented, so it's hard to realize how high up you, losing some of the thrill. Riding in front and riding in back are very different experiences.

Wild Thing

Classic coaster of my childhood. Still think it's great. Goes up to 74 mph

Renegade (Music even better in this. Video repeats after a minute or two)

Another Renegade video

First time I'd been on this guy. Riding it in the front was pretty awesome. It felt really fast, although I think it only got up to 54 mph.

Going to ValleyFair reminded me of how much I love theme parks. Yale kids-- let's try to get to one sometime this year.

That Zucchini

2009-08-02T20:48:00.003-04:00

I realize there's no perspective on this thing. Trust me, it's big. Maybe I'll take a shot of it tomorrow with my foot in it or something.

Testosterace 8/1/09, Day 82

2009-08-02T19:26:00.007-04:00

Old Total-- 20,340

8/1-- 530
7/31-- 260
7/... -- ?? (0)
7/21-- 100

New Total-- 21230
PUPD-- 258.90243 (repeating)

Basically took a week off when the parents came to visit in BA. This may have been caused by any number of things. Mainly failure on my part. I now need to work my ass off.

Summer

2009-08-02T17:04:00.000-04:00

During an interview that I later viewed as entirely botched, I was asked the question "When do you most feel like yourself?" It seems to me now that there's not much of a true self, there's just a person who acts a certain way and changes depending on where you are and who you're with. I've moved from the cold of Argentina, surrounded by friends and unknown portenos, up to MN in the summer, back in the house I grew up in. Weird.

At any rate, what I wanted from Minnesota was hot frickin weather. I wanted standing outside to be a workout. I wanted the humidity to make any clothing uncomfortable. The last few days had been disappointing, but finally, on August 2nd, we have a little bit of heat. I celebrated by playing tennis with my parents in my good ole gradeschool basketball jersey, and now am the proud owner of a set of lobster-red arms. We'll be working on the great arctic expanse, aka my gut, in the coming days.

I should follow this up with a note on my use of clothing in the summer. It is close to non-existent, and when I do choose to adorn my body with colorful decorations, they tend to be tacky, mismatched, smelly, or not actually clothing. I was asked by every member of my family whether I could actually "wear those shorts out of the house", as they're probably actually pajama pants for a small Japanese boy (some of you know what I'm talking about). I basically wear boxers, occasionally with a bathrobe, until one or both parents gets upset. At this point I transition into shorts and a button-down shirt, with more unbuttoning as the day progresses. This transitions to shirtless reading on the deck, shirtless frisbee playing, naked showering, and then shirtless sleeping. yeah this discussion is hot. So hot.

A few nights ago I finished up the bottle of wine that sounds more like a porn star than most porn stars: Rodney Strong. You keep working it, Rod. In other drinking news, here's my entire family with embarassing drinks:

Special thanks to my mom for (almost) learning how to put pictures on the computer from her camera. We're slowly moving in to the 21st century.

Finally, my dad apparently won an MP4 player in a karaoke contest in China. It comes in a sweet box with this like cyborg samurai dude riding a motorcycle. Totally sick. It's basically the same shape and design as an iPhone, missing key characteristics such as a touchscreen or being navigable. The entire thing is in Chinese, leading me to delete a few files (maybe a readme) in my exploration. It comes equipped with some pretty bad Chinese music and a trailer for "Fast and Furious". We're still developing a strategy on how to deal with this thing... options include

Family member learns Chinese
Device given as gift to Chinese-speaking grad student in Dad's lab
EBay that shit

I'm pushing for my mom to learn Chinese. But for me to EBay it.

Zucchini

2009-08-02T13:22:00.002-04:00

I just took a picture of the most massive zucchini. It'll be posted soon.

Happy Birthday to Mom

2009-08-01T04:09:00.004-04:00

A glorious day, a celebration of all things Marilyn.

My mom and I started off the day by a festive visit to the DMV to renew our drivers licenses. This took a while because of a lady in front of us. For whatever she was doing, she required 2 IDs. Fortunately, she had many more IDs than 2. Unfortunately, all of her IDs had different names. Each one would spell the name differently, or the middle name would change from Marie to Matthews, and so on.
It's $24 frickin dollars to renew your driver's license in MN
My first legal drink in the United States was a Raspberry Lemondrop Martini from City Cafe. I debated for a while what my first drink should be, wanting to go for something a little more masculine and awesome, like straight Jack or a made-up drink called Ancient Shenanigan or Beer. However, everyone else in my family ordered a Raspberry Lemondrop Martini, and a mother's birthday is no time to disagree with your family. Picture forthcoming. In the picture, all of the lemons on our glasses are oriented the same way.
Watched a nature show last night with frickin awesome deer and shit. And wild boars.
Deer completely infest MN. Almost hit like three little bambis running around.
I have consumed more cheese in the last few days then
Thai chicken wings from Saint's on Second are my favorite chicken wings.
Yesterday chilled with Jake Snell. Jake has been working in my dad's lab for the summer and left for home/Germany today. Dinner with Jake included cheese curds.
Tennis with the family. Parents beat kids. That wasn't a hidden cry for help.
Totally dominated Clue.
All the bars in Roch close at 1. This makes me resentful of waiting til 2 in BA to make sure the club would be open.
I don't know a lot in this world. I'm afraid to really believe that something is true. However, I think that K Swiss makes a damn fine shoe.

Later... Interesting things if they happen and I rememer them.

Sweet Home Minnesota

2009-07-30T17:06:00.002-04:00

After quite a bit of traveling, I've made it back to good old MN.

Transitioning to summer is very strange. The amount of lush, green, Minnesotan flora just seemed to swell all around me, contrasting greatly with the gray winter of Argentina. Being back in MN, I still automatically think of a simplistic way to ask a question in Spanish whenever I need something from someone... ("Hay una tostadora?")

I'm backlogged on BA thoughts, so in the next few days you'll be getting more.

There are a few tales from the journey...

The other day, while shuffling my family to go eat lunch, my sister just straight up stabbed me in the neck with her thumbnail. Unprovoked. It was brutal. Possibly caused my movement of the subway, but I still bare the scars.
I had the coolest Uruguayan taxi driver. Guy was the man. Well done, Uruguay.
Most awesome baby ever sat behind me on the flight from BA to ATL.
I always tend to be seated next to older gentlemen who feel obligated to impart life's lessons unto me. Nice guy. Was in Vietnam. Imparted some life lessons.
It's bad to judge people based on what they look like.
Also sat next to Peruvian dude, who was awesome. Tattoo artist. Traveling to a circus or something to provide tattoos? Gave me tattoo advice.
Peruvian and Old Guy made an excellent team.

Here are my plans for the rest of the summer:

Program. Make millions.
Push ups. Do thousands.
Read.
Track down Omnivore's Dilemma. Skim. "Facilitate" my parents' book group's discussion. Don't ask me why. I guess I'll find out what a bunch of anesthesologists think about modern agriculture, which should be kind of cool.
GChat.
Cook
Watch "True Blood".

Alright, it's library time, then din-din with Jake Snell at "The Canadian Honker", one of Rochester's premiere restaurants.

Smorgasbord

2009-07-28T16:10:00.005-04:00

From the wiki: Smörgåsbord [ˌsmœrɡɔsˈbuːɖ] is a Swedish word which refers to a type of Scandinavian meal served buffet-style with multiple dishes of various foods on a table.

This post is a bit like that.

Today is my last day at work. I've said goodbye to the ever amusing porteno Gabe. Thomas the Brit left a few weeks back, I have no idea where Rob the Yankee is.

NEWS FLASH: Oliver reports that the word "limey" is not offensive to Brits. Or really known by them, for that matter. Oliver the Brit has left the office. I am the last one remaining.

When I was younger, I had a spirited debate over the meaning of the word Smörgåsbord. This ended up with us calling random numbers and asking what people thought it meant. Ah, I was such a scoundrel in my day.

This video is amusing: Amusing Video. Thanks to Dillon.
It takes place in MN

Something I've known since last semester. Thanks to Raffi.

GEORGE is returning!!

Going out to a bar tonight, with Bullinba, Friends, and Sister. Should be great.

I recently switched back to Firefox from Chrome. I find that Firefox deals with having a bunch of tabs open much better than Chrome. After opening more than ten tabs, Chrome would eat up a bunch of memory and everything would run slowly. Firefox on the other hand is handling all these tabs like a champ. Additionally, Firefox has a bunch of cool add-ons.

Holy shit there are pigeons that are like frickin attacking my window! Oliver was always kind to the pigeons, maybe he was all that kept them at bay...

Liked this article on making bank.
Good quote: "The best school that turned you down is a better predictor of your future income than the school you actually attended."

Daniel Tammet is smart.

And finally, thanks to Jason, ROCHESTER MINNESOTA IS THE 9TH BEST HUNTING CITY IN THE AMERICA. WOOT.

Bluebooking continues. Looking at Intro to Architecture. Trying to find interesting econ courses that would potentially help me bro. Might do the same with math. Cold War, Formal Semantics, and the good Intro Micro lecturer are all at the same time.

Alright, see you all state side in 48 hours. First stop, dinner with Jake before he leaves the 9th best hunting city in the America. Second stop, I'm legal, so I might as well go get trashed at Cathy's Pub.

Contest: Greatest Person Ever (of My Summer)

2009-07-28T12:27:00.005-04:00

Nominees Accepted Until August 1st, 2009.

Nico Barawid
Reasons for Nomination: Stylish. Philippino. Stopped a robbery. Snappy dresser. Puts up with my sleep schedule. Is younger than I am. Once made me feel like I was wizard whenever he spoke.
Downsides: Thought I was trying to kill him with a syringe.

Dr. Richard Low
Reasons for Nomination: Visionary. Intelligent. Driven. Polymath. My boss. Considers me part of his family. Knows the True Story of the Falklands War. Baller. Doesn't make me work that hard, but makes me feel accomplished for the work I have done.
Downsides: Only talks in hyperbole. Occasionally absent-minded (also a plus).

Korean Laundromat Guy
Reasons for Nomination: Always friendly, always smiling. Efficient. My clothing smells clean for days after a visit. Competitive pricing. Delivers change without a complaint. Is often watching awesome movies.
Downsides: None.

Actual shit More importantly, Nutrias

2009-07-27T16:12:00.006-04:00

A bird pooped on me on my way to work today.

This probably meant it was a bad idea to go to work. I've had the same belief for about a week though, so I decided to ignore this omen and carry on. I decided to experiment a little with transportation. Glancing at a map, I thought that the A line would drop me off at my subway stop. The stop looked right next to Gaona on the map. Right next to translated to 27 blocks. We'll be taking the bus home. Gotta love that bus.

I need to describe the zoo a little bit.

Why cage animals when you can let them roam around? There are a variety of animals allowed to roam free in the zoo. These include giant rats, wart-covered ducks, and the awesome bunny-deer.
The giant rats are actually nutrias (which is another name for "giant rat").
The wart-covered ducks were kind of pretty. The warts were bright pick. A more apt word might be... I don't know... growths.
You'd think that the giant rats would beat out the ducks in going after food. You'd be wrong, those ducks totally kicked ass.
Trying to figure out the name of the bunny-deer took hours. You can't just Google "bunny deer Argentina" and get it. Finally, Casey and I figured the name out at the same time while Skyping.
Can you figure out the name? You might win a prize!
The prize will probably be a hug.
The day we went to the zoo was really cold. This meant that the giraffes and billy goats weren't out being friends with each other, which is apparently what happens normally.
You can feed the animals. This usually involves pelting the animals in the head with food.
Most of the animals at the zoo had limps.
Capybaras!
Baby Capybaras!!
There was a dude whose job it was to feed said Capybaras and Baby Capybaras!!
All-in-all, the Zoo was depressing, but in an awesome way. If you don't worry about bullshit like speciesism (this is only in here to bug strong utilitarians (Dan)), and focus on having a good time despite the possibly mistreated, sad animals surrounding you, you'll have a great time!

...

2009-07-27T01:15:00.003-04:00

I can't really describe this weekend. If you want the full story, you'll probably have to email me.

Let's just say that it's good to be back. Not from Iguazu, that is, but in general. Here's a quote from Saturday:
C: (waking up from sleep) you could biff the plates... you need to biff them. That's what you have to do... biff...
J: What?
C: Biff... um... (remembers he's trying to say "buff") oh, it's the wrong word. (resumes sleep)

Iguazu was a good time. Bonding with the fam... the falls were down a little bit of water, which actually made them better to see. Less difficult with less mist.

I ran into a girl from school: Marina Santiago. Crazy coincidence. Hadn't spoken to her for a while.

Right. Anyway, to find out about my Friday, we can talk via email.

Oh. Hell. No.

2009-07-23T23:13:00.003-04:00

The inside story tomorrow.

The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown! (TGHBT!)

Oh, shit!

2009-07-23T19:19:00.003-04:00

Went to the zoo!

Also important, my family is here.

Okay, craziness... last few days need a recap. Basically I've been sucking since Iguazu. Really threw off my game. I'm going back there with my family this weekend, so perhaps if I left my mojo lying around up there I can find it and bring it back with me. It's a terrible thing to leave your mojo lying around near a giant waterfall. The humidity really eats away at it.

Here are the main things you need to know:

Writing this post may make me late to eat with my family.
I feel a huge sense of shame whenever I am late to meet with my family
I haven't been to work in a week. Shameful. However I did send a bunch of emails out, good job me.
Been in the doldroms lately... not enough push ups, blog posts, programming has been poor, etc.
Phantom Tollbooth.

I stepped away from this post for a while, and returned to it a few days later. Um, thought I'd post it.

Shit

2009-07-22T01:30:00.002-04:00

It rained. Thus, no zoo.

Thus also I just ate good food instead. Ended up doing push ups, cooking in with all of Bullinba and some new friends, and getting a bit drunk, mostly on wine.

Directed via xkcd, you should all wander around tvtropes.org a while.

Testosterace 7/20/09 -- Day 70

2009-07-21T11:11:00.003-04:00

Old Total-- 18,615

7/20-- 530
7/19-- 0
7/18-- 0
7/17-- 0
7/16-- 370
7/15-- 0
7/14-- 725
7/13-- 100

New Total-- 20,340
PUPD-- 290.57142857142856

Ugh... pretty bad last week. PUPD is below 300 again... a terrible sign. I have broken 2/5 of the way there, however!

Tomorrow, the zoo

2009-07-21T01:02:00.002-04:00

40 years ago, humans landed on the moon. Sick.

Today I went to Puerto Madero and enjoyed the beautiful weather. I think all of the kids, out of school because of swine flu, hang out down there. Very young people running around. Later, I went to a ridiculous drum show. Bongos, maracas, etc. Moshing. Craziness.

Today (The 20th) was the Day of the Friend in Argentina. Many thanks, friends.

Um...

2009-07-20T00:08:00.003-04:00

So, it's really not legal for me to comment on the money-making device to the left of this post. But, apparently some people have been getting ads for "girls panties". I just saw one that I hoped was going to be for a sweet video game, but turned out to be for scientology. Interesting. Maybe it's the mention of "Jesus Theme Parks" that trigger that. Maybe the ads are a way to delve into my subconscious.

But yeah sorry bout that.

Bitches and Playas

2009-07-19T20:03:00.004-04:00

Today was an Uruguay Expedition.

As mentioned before, Uruguay is basically the Canada of Argentina. We all also know that the only good thing to come out of Canada in the last 30 years is probably Marta Hodgkins-Sumner. Uruguay is very much like Canada, it's a nice place to visit for a few hours. There are very nice people, but at the end of the day, not even Canadians want to be Canadian (just look at Quebec).

Uruguay primarily exists to have nice beaches so that Argentineans can walk around naked in the summer. The town we went to was the small, historic Colonia. I believe the Portuguese and the Spanish fought over it a lot. Eventually, the realized that they were fighting over Uruguay, and they both went home to Europe. The day was fairly relaxing, consisting of walking around on the beach, drinking coffee, eating, and wandering down historic streets.

Our tour guide had red streaks in her eyes, was rather dull, and said the word "beaches" like "bitches". Uruguay is known around the world for it's beautiful bitches.

Last night was a great one. My boss had all the Yalies I know over for dinner, which was a delicious Incan-inspired mix of corn, chicken, spices, etc. He has a great apartment which felt really homey, a nice contrast to our hotel rooms. Everything was filled with his daughter's art. The night ended in some more debauchery and wandering around, attending a few bars. Highlights include Sherry, BT, and Joe trying their first Fernet. After an initial unwelcome encounter with the hard stuff, we mixed it with some coke and were on our way to a good night.

I forgot to mention... BT HAS ARRIVED. Sick. Additionally, of all the places he might stay in Argentina, he was placed at the building directly next to ours. As in, we might be sharing a wall. What the shit? Good times with the guy.

Saturday was spent basically playing frisbee the entire day. For some reason, the team Dan and I play with love this one drill where you start and your chest, then you get up and run and the frisbee is thrown over your head. I'm not sure why this is a good drill... it trains you to run, and awkwardly reposition yourself if a terrible huck is thrown to you. So... great, I guess. Pick up was with some of my favorite Argentineans (Ian) and some great Americans. We ended up playing next to a field full of people who drummed and danced for THREE HOURS STRAIGHT. Craziness.

I'm getting behind on blogging and am just kind of sucking the last few days. Tomorrow is fortunately a new day. Closing thoughts:

In celebration of BT's return from Mexico we went out for terrible Mexican food, Argentina style.
Went to the oldest ice cream store in BA, forget the name, but it's right by the Obelisk.
Am trying to coopt the clothing of others into my wardrobe, one piece at a time...
Still need to write about Falklands, Jesus Theme Park, etc.
Looking forward to a highly productive workweek.

Monkeys riding Capybara

2009-07-17T14:10:00.002-04:00

Sick.
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4551368/12188085

Tidbits

2009-07-17T00:41:00.005-04:00

Rapid fire:

At Iguazu, there are many coatis. Coatis are basically raccoons of the area. Raccoons that eat crabs. You might need to enlarge this image. I might be the only one who finds it funny. Crabs are funny.
Getting excited by the raccoons, I told the guide in Spanish "There are many raccoons around my thing!"
Our guide then said to me in perfect English "Yes, when I was learning English, I was always like blah blah blah."
Today on the crowded subway, I ended up next to a man who started shouting "Stop the music! Stop the music!" He then laughed wildly.
Earlier in the day, a blind accordion player walked through the train. He was pretty bad at the accordion. But, whatever.
Also on the train, a man sold a whole bunch of Nike athletic socks out of a plastic bag.
At Iguazu, a waitress attempting to serve Nico instead dumped all of that delicious food on Elena. Elena smelled delicious, and found it hilarious.
Then Elena realized that she was covered in food and it sucked.
Dan doesn't like the picture I posted of him, but I think it looks good.
I'm making more progress on my maze thing... I'm hoping for iphone/facebook application/android/etc. glory in the future.
THERE ARE FUCKING ROBOTS THAT CAN EAT YOUR CORPSE AFTER IT KILLS YOU: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,532492,00.html
Went to a boliche last night. Came home rather drunk and pulled a Hemingway, although, as has been astutely pointed out, Hemingway did not own a laptop, and most certainly didn't use gedit. I have a few pages of prose to sort through now.
After reading a bit of a Saybrook blog, I came across an interview with our new master, Master Hudak. In the interview, he says that he just finished a book in the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. He continues that his next book will probably be the next in the Foundation series. This is all well and good, except I just finished Foundation by Asimov, Outliers by Gladwell, and I'm currently reading Foundation and Empire by Asimov. Spooky.
Bluebook came out ooooooooh shiiiiiiiiiiiit.
My boss told me the "true story of the Falklands War". All I had known about it before was that Argentina lost, and it pissed Diego Maradona off so much that he forgot he wasn't allowed to use his hands in soccer matches. Stay tuned for more.
Here's a picture of the capybara one more time. Sick.

Fauna

2009-07-15T00:14:00.005-04:00

With every minute, I find I'm forgetting the minutia that make for fine blogging. There were magnificent events that took place today I'm sure, but they will have to remain in the recycle bin of my brain for now. The only things I can think of are that

Plums are really goddam expensive here
Apparently boxers are the highest paid atheletes, right before Formula 1 and then MLB.
Sometime last week my British coworker called his mom, who promptly responded "I can't talk right now... I'm watching the Michael Jackson special. It's beautiful!"
I finished "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell and "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov. Reviews forthcoming.

Those things aside, I thought I would briefly discuss the wildlife of Iguazu, including a few pics. All these pictures were taken by me, meaning with my broken camera, meaning I had no idea what the shit my pictures would look like.

We saw a giant ant. The thing was frickin HUGE. We have a picture of it next to my foot. It's big. You'll see.
Capybara. I love these things.
Owls
Dan
Dan with Spearow. Spearow use sleep. It's super effective!
Fearow
Another picture of capybara! Julia informs me that it eats its own feces. Sick.

This post sucks

2009-07-13T23:15:00.003-04:00

...although, I suppose you're still reading it.

I don't think the experience of Iguazu can be sufficiently described with one post. For that matter, there about sixty thousand experiences I want to cover in depth from the past week that I never really posted about. At this moment, however, I am rather tired from running about the jungle, as well as getting bused about the jungle, so intrepid reader, assuming you exist, I will have to make you wait another day.

I will, however, go through one small aspect of the trip. When most people think of a wonder of the world, they probably think of the pyramids of Giza, or the Great Wall of China. They may think of natural wonders as well. They probably don't think of the 2006 smashing comic success "Phat Girlz", starring Monique and that dude that plays the Haitian from Heroes. (Apparently the Haitian is actually Haitian. That probably explains why he plays that part so well).

On the 18 hour bus ride from BA to Iuazu, we splurged (actually it was the best because of timing, I think) and took the "cama executivo". On the way back, the only bus that left late enough offered only the lowly "cama", which would take 20 hours despite the distance being the same. On the way up, we were each presented with a small bottle of wine, as well as a coffee and dessert after dinner. On the way down, we got coffee, however it was at 7 in the morning when they woke us for some unknown reason (I suppose part of the extra money for the executivo goes into the "not being randomly woken up" fee). Going up, we were shown such movies as "Yes Man" (surprisingly good), "Australia" (also pretty good, although I would have named it "Australia!"), and "The Last Legion" (pretty bad, I think it was Britain's low-budget answer to Lord of the Rings). Going down, instead of dessert, we had an army officer climb aboard the bus, wake up Nico, demand to see our passports, and then leave before seeing them. Also, for movies, we saw 95% of Phat Girlz.

Phat Girlz is a 2006 comedy starring Monique, who apparently is a large comedian. The movie was a nice combination of poor fat jokes, racism against white people, racism against African Americans, racism against Africans, sex jokes, sassiness, and a heartwarming story of how one overweight woman learns to love herself. In the movie, Monique plays the role of Jazmine Biltmore (oh my god I just got that joke... seriously), whose large body is only matched by her big dreams... or her sassy attitude! Things start to get larger-than-life after Jazmine wins a trip to Palm Springs for the weekend, where she meets some exotic men who come from a culture with a traditional appreciation for the "big-boned". Will Jazmine regain her lost self-esteem while meeting the man of her dreams?

You won't be able to find out unless you watch the movie. Just as I won't. Apparently my "Cama" ticket did not have the price attached to it that would have allowed the entire display of the movie. Instead it ended with Jazmine and her pal Stacey getting funky during a dance sequence at a club. Because the 400 pound behemoth now has a better outlook on life, men (all of whom are remarkably attractive) find her curves alluring, as opposed to 90 minutes earlier. Whatever, complaining about not seeing the end of Phat Girlz is like the old gem: "The food was terrible! And the portions were way to small!"

I realize that I've basically become incoherent. So, a few closing thoughts: The movie Phat Girlz was bad. I once made a program that generates short movie taglines/plots, which is where some of this came from. Reading Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs has made me appreciate any pop culture creation much more than I would have before, or at least it makes me think about pop culture (crap and otherwise). Capybaras are awesome.

Final thing: adventure poze by waterfalls. Craziness of water probably gave the strange misty effect to the pic. Nico is in front, followed by Elena and then me.

Testosterace 7/12/09-- Day 62

2009-07-13T23:02:00.002-04:00

Old Total-- 17,605

7/12-- 0 (I'm at Iguazu fail)
7/11-- 50 (I'm experiencing the wonders of Gods' creation fail)
7/10-- 0 (I'm on a bus fail)
7/9-- 500
7/8-- 70 (Wednesday fail)
7/7-- 390

New Total-- 18,615
PUPD-- 300.24193548387098

I'm in Iguazu!

2009-07-11T19:22:00.002-04:00

I am currently in Iguazu. This post may have been written before I left for Iguazu. This does not take away from the fact that I am in Iguazu. Hopefully. I guess the bus ride could have never made it, or a rare hunting party of velociraptors may have attacked us at the falls and pulled our bleeding carcases into Brazil, in which case I would not be near Iguazu. But baring those, and only those, two possibilities, I will be in Iguazu rocking out hardcore.

Sick.

Also, if you're in the US, you can probably get a Slurpie or whatnot at 7-11 for real cheap. Like 7 cents or something.

Sick.

I'm going to Iguazu

2009-07-10T16:18:00.003-04:00

I'm peacing up to the far north of Argentina, in search of sunlight, humidity, dengue fever, and Iguazu falls. I'll be gone until Monday, so you'll just have to picture in your head whatever I'm up to. You're probably picturing push ups and standing behind my friends as the communicate in Spanish and I slowly nod. This is accurate.

The adventure begins with an 18 hour bus ride. Reading list:

Some shit about marketing
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Also, playings cards. Wish me luck.

Communication

2009-07-09T21:09:00.000-04:00

The following conversations are translated from Spanish.

Chris: Hola

Diego: Hola

Chris: Que tal?

Diego: Bien. Y vos?

Chris: Bien, gracis.

Diego: The weather's really ugly today.

Chris: I am very ugly?

Diego: No, no, it's very ugly out today.

Chris: Oh yes, the environment is dark.

Diego: ...yes.

Chris: This morning was very bad.

Diego: ...yes.

Chris: Chau!

Nico: Hello, I recently purchased an item of clothing here. I understand that, since I am a citizen of a different country, I am able to receive a certificate that will allow me to receive money back when I return to the United States.
German: I don't work here.
Nico: Do you know where I would be able to find such a certificate? I have my receipt for this fantastic coat, which I purchased using credit very recently.
German: I'm from Germany.
Nico: Oh.

I have recently been slacking in my own communication with the blog readers. Some brief details and future topics, compiled here so I will not forget to mention them later:

NEW MSG: My maze program is working mildly well at the moment. I'm planning on learning flash, porting it to flash or some other language, and turning it into a facebook application. Then I can continue to make massive cash w/ advertising (currently I'm at $0.69!!).
NEW MSG: Idea for another FB app, but it will take much longer to make.
Chess database was pseudo-completed (functional but not pretty, possibly with security leaks)
Today I went to the strangest, most ridiculous theme park I've ever been to. This really deserves its own post. Just suffice it to say that I am not exaggerating, and it involves a 40 foot tall Jesus.
Happy Independence Day Argentina!
Protests galore.
Troubles with the hotel.
Everyone here managing to avoid having Gripe 'A'; one close call with strep.
PowerJump: Trampolines, Pop Music, Unstoppable Women, Short short shorts, steaming bodies.

Hopefully will have these topics covered soon.
Beso.

Spam

2009-07-07T15:21:00.003-04:00

I've found two awesome spam messages. They're from a guy who believes that he's discovered the secret to "infiniti".

The title of this email is:

PLEASE SOMEONE KILL STEVE JOBS!

Excerpts:

"here is the data you need, any color that is not 100% white
is responsible for abusing humanity.

colors do not come from white, that is why they are not white.
they contain darkness inside them, and darkness just like a
black hole pulls imagination and life, making humanity mortal.

wear white clothes dye your hair to white and experiment it.
wear black clothes and experiment it. i want results now
i want them fast.

infact i want you to shave your head and eyebrows and wax
all the body hair on your body including private parts.

anything dark near your body including sun-tan will pull
jealousy from other scientists that do not want you to rise
into power and they will control your mind and imagination.

the reason why WILL SMITH wears BLACK and yet he is
successfull, the reason why TOM CRUISE wears black and yet
he is successful, is because they wear WHITE UNDERSHIRT
and WHITE UNDERPANTS.

If you are wondering what those 2012 "dooms day" rumors
are all about, duh, it is me taking over this planet, and jealousy
will die forever.

NEW WORLD ORDER BITCHES, weather you like it or not
it ain't gonna stop.

IF YOU FEEL DEPRESSED, GET NAKED IN YOUR ROOM GET
SOME SUNLIGHT, WALK NAKED IN YOUR ROOM, YOU WILL BE
INJECTED WITH IMAGINATION AND DATA YOU NEED TO EXECUTE
YOUR MISSION.

IF YOU CAN NOT HANDLE THE SICKNESS INSIDE YOUR MIND
GO ON YOUTUBE LISTEN TO SOME SICK MUSIC, BY EMINEM OR
SOMETHING, ANYTHING IS FINE.

EAT MEAT TO KEEP YOURSELF SAFE, BEST SAFEST BURGERS
ARE AT IN-N-OUT. DRINK SOME COFFEE TOO IF YOU WANT."

The last part reminds me of Baneman trying to send a text on the crappy Argentinian phones we have.

Testosterace 7/6/09 -- Day 56

2009-07-06T22:07:00.002-04:00

Last time--14,455

7/6-- 695

7/5-- 830

7/4-- 0 (America Fail)

7/3-- 630

7/2-- 0 (Day after Canada Day Fail)

7/1-- 400

6/30-- 605

New Total-- 17,605
PUP'D -- 314.375

Managed to get back on track again (or at least, doing them again). PUP'D is back over 314! Sick!

Make that Money

2009-07-06T18:17:00.004-04:00

First order of business: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LW8dKMBuUI&feature=related

Second order...

So, you may notice the ad banner at left. This would involve a long story, where the story not incredibly short. Basically, I read this article on NYC: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/jobs/28teens.html?ex=1261972800&en=d61ba4994156e65c&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=JO-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M104-ROS-0709-L2&WT.mc_ev=click

I then became depressed at my supposed skillz and lack of income, especially over the summer. Combining this with my enormous laziness, I clicked a few buttons and now there exists an ad banner next to my prose. So far, afer only a day, the ad banner has generated 7 cents (US, I hope). Sick. By the time the summer ends, I will have at least a dollar. I can then place that dollar into a mutual fund, and in a number of years I will have at least 80 cents!

In addition to the PUPD, we now have the PIPD (pathetic income per day).

PIPD-- 0.07. Sick!

Finally, an email:

P.S. Your country is in no way American. Not even Southern. South America is the home of grits and guns and confederate flags, the place where each March we men of Süperfly follow in Sherman's footsteps and burn our way down to Savannah, GA. No, you are not in South America; you are spending the summer in what is commonly known as South Mexico. Just so we have that cleared up.

Argentina, the Beautiful

2009-07-06T10:15:00.005-04:00

An awesome fin de semana. The fourth of July was a pretty darn good day. A few of us headed out to beautiful Puerto Madero to sample the classic Argentinean cuisine of TGI Friday's. Alas, they only have Pepsi at Friday's so I was not able to have a coke. They do, however, have a Jack Daniel's burger as well as baby back ribs. Dan's Jack Daniel's sauce was later co-opted into some delicious potatoes at home.

After stuffing ourselves so full of Argentinean grown, America-themed meat that we could barely stumble back past the Casa Rosada to our hotel, Dan and I went off go play frisbee. We figured that finding a baseball game would be tricky,, so frisbee would suffice as a Great American Sport. Since joining the Cadillacs ultimate team down here, Dan and I occasionally get classic facebook messages. These are typically in all caps, written in Spanish, and entirely indecipherable. One included a strange reference to karaoke. They are typically stream of consciousness and without punctuation. The attendence at frisbee practices and games seems to be as schizophrenic as these emails. Dan and I have approximately 40% success at attending frisbee related events. The 4th was no exception, and after finding only a handfull of 14 year olds in the field where we expected to see a large grouping of 20-somethings (and old-timers) throwing around a frisbee, we had to dejectedly head home.

The day was not lost, however, for two reasons. First off, on the way to the field we passed Tierra Sancta, an idea so American that it had to be located in a different country. Tierra Sancta is a religious-themed, well, theme park. I was first able to identify it by the lifesize creche figures surrounding the gate, but really knew what I was looking at when I spotted the concrete Gethsemanee, topped by three crosses. Apparently there's a special Resurrection every 45 minutes or so, but unfortunately we didn't pass by when this took place. I'm not sure what the rides are like here. I'm hoping for a Tower of Gods' Power, maybe a Christ Coaster. Carnival games? Pin the stone on the harlot?

The night finished out strong. We indeed did attend the pub crawl, which was apparently started by a few GA Tech frat boys. The first bar involved a few hot dogs, free beer, and indeed, an awesome Obama t-shirt. A few jello shots later (red, white, and blue) we headed out into the street, where I waited for the bus, and all the drunk expats swirled about in Brownian motion, in and out of the streets while the crazed taxi drivers simultaenously tried to avoid us and pull us into their cabs. At this point, someone realized that free transporation meant walking, and the frat boys managed to shepherd us into the next bar. A few more drinks occured, with the result being progressively more intelligent conversation ("Elena, you have great arms! Just really great!" Confirmation of this fact was hindered by Elena's wardrobe choice of a sweatshirt this morning.) Unfortunately Jack and Coke was too fancy a drink for most of these bars, so I settled on ron y coca. The next bar included a small, indie band with the lead singer wearing an anti-swine flu mask. Nuff said. I think Elena stole two glasses from this bar. We ended up at an awesome bar with perfect music. I remember singing along to "Karma Chameleon", a song which I had probably not heard before. I believe they may have played ELO, which is what I wake up to every morning, which lead to my freaking out. Some dude came by and handed out suckers. I was convinced that such lollipops were merely a delivery mechanism for mafia drugs. Dan and Katiapine both consumed one. I tasted one and watched for them to start thinking they were flying iguanas. Apparently the suckers were delicious, and nothing more.

The night ended at Fusion, a pretty cool bar with $10 peso frenets. Huzzah.

The 5th merely involved delicious shawarma and the purchasing of pants. Keeping on the theme of America, my roommates and I bought clothes from Wrangler and Levi's. The clothes are made in Argentina, however. All this might be a storing for another day, however.

Overall, the 4th was a great time. Others I know went through more Argentinean means of celebration, but it ended up being fun to be around a bunch of Americans for the night. Sitting in my hotel room, I'm returning to Argentinean culture a bit. I'm listening to the drumming of the dudes that seem to have no job other than to drum. Every day at around 11 or so, they whip out there drums, stand in the middle of the street Callao, and drum away. They're probably upset by the lack of a job market for their drumming abilities. Equally upset are the intermittent fire-cracker specialists, who set fire crackers off intermittently. The sky is black today, with more rain than I've seen before here. People seem to be worried about swine flu, Honduras, and the general state of lack of positions for experienced drummers. It's alright, though. I've got my Obama t-shirt, my new pants, my Electric Light Orchestra playing, and it's a beautiful new day. Hey-ey-ey.

Death, Shoes, Steak, America

2009-07-03T22:36:00.004-04:00

Everyone is being told not to panic. That is: DON'T FUCKING PANIC!!!!! REMAIN CALM HOLY SHIT DON'T GET THE FLU DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN GO TO SCHOOL I REPEAT DO NOT LET THEM GO TO SCHOOL MY GOD THE HORROR THE HORROR. We are being told that everything is fine, and that the only way we can get the flu is by coming into contact with, you know, infected people, infected surfaces, water droplets floating in the air, etc. School is canceled for the next two weeks, as is everyting else, seeing that government officials will take whatever excuse they can get to just chill. Thus, tours of the capital, canceled. Our trip to Tigre, canceled. School, canceled. Shopping? Let's GO. But more on that later. NYTimes usually doesn't take an interest in Argentina, but, here we go: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/world/americas/04argentina.html?ref=world

Above the Subte (subway) tunnels, there is a helpful sign that states "La Gripe A (H1N1)" and then proceeds to spreads advice on how to not spread the virus. We are being told to avoid leaving our homes, and to avoid enclosed spaces (such as clubs, the cinema, and, well, I guess our homes). Seeing Transformers 2, however was definitely worth the risk.

Dan took an additional risk while watching Transformers 2. There were a few thoughts that I neglected to mention about Transformers...

Dan very nearly died leaving the movie theater. While stepping onto the escalator, I looked down at Dan's shoelace, which was happily untied. This remined me of a timee when my cousin tim went on an escalator with untied shoes, and was nearly sucked into the abyss underneath the escalator when his shoeless got stuck. I was brought out of this thought process when Dan's shoeless got stuck. My first reaction was to grab his thigh and tug wildly. Casey's reaction was to burst out into terrified laughter. Dan's reaction was to run forward and yank as hard as possible, which was actually effective. After waiting a respectful amont of time, the Portenos behind us burst into laughter.
Megan Fox's pants remain blindingly white the entire movie despite running through the desert, rolling about through blood, mud, and robot juice. At first I thought this was a new kind of turbo-fiber which was incapable of retaining stains. However, in the last few scenes they became dirty. I suspect that Fox's pants have discrete states of cleanliness, and they can either be clean or dirty with no intermediary states. Thus, this leads us to the conclusion that Megan Fox has access to the world's first pair of "quantum pants".
The use of Megan Fox in general was hilarious. To give you an idea, the first time we see her, the shot saunters slowly from her backside towards her face, as se clings doggy style to her motorcycle.
The only girls that exist in college are stupid, and where cut-offs. Or skirts!

My God, too much Terminator talk.

Last night I ate my most expensive dinner of the trip, which was also the most disappointing. The ingredients all seemed very high quality, but there was basically no added flavor. The meat I was tasting was just pure steak. I sampled some duck, which seemed like great duck meat, but which didn't seem to be altered in any way from when it was removed from the bird. The side to my steak included potatoes, which were probably cooked by being placed in directly in an oven. I feel like the point of cooking is to make things taste better. I could take the best piece of meat and place it on a grill. That said, there were some really delicious foods. Whatever Casey ate (don't remember) was awesome. The restaurant was Club 647. The night in general was great fun as we celebrated Paloma's birthday! WoOt!

The only cure to swine flu is shopping. Walking around a "leather area", I managed to get a new wallet, some great shoes, and a nice belt for around USD$80.

Tomorrow is the 4th. Hurray! Fears of the flu cannot stop Americans celebrate. U.S.A., I repeat, U.S.A. Our activity for the evening has even been pointed out on CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/07/03/international.july4/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

I look forward to getting my t-shirt, which features Obama hefting some frosty brews.

Michael Bay deserves to be killed by falling rocks

2009-07-02T01:20:00.006-04:00

Today, the "major", or perhaps the mayor (not sure if the Argentinian website I was looking at had typos) declared the city of Buenos Aires a "sanitary emergency". This is entirely missing the point. The point is that there's an even large emergency, mainly a "giant robots emergency" known as Transformers 2.

Overall, there's a fair amount that could be said about Transformers 2. A lot of what could be said includes the word "suck". A large pasttime of mine is "terrible sci-fi movies". I enjoy anything where the ideas are interesting. The movie itself can be pretty bad... it can have a terrible story, shitty acting, and gaping holes in the story. But I'll still like it if something triggers some "cool" factor in my mind. The best example of this is probably the shitfest known as "Jumper", starring Haydren Christensen, Rachel Bilson, and Mr. Samuel L. Jackson. Just truly awful movie... but how sick would teleportation be? Very sick. Maybe as sick as all the people walking around BA wearing disease masks.

Transformer thoughts:

The first Transformers was an absurd amalgamation of about 6 different stories/themes/tones. There was the serious plotline of the soldiers, the cool "wtf is going on" plotline of the car, the complete accemptance of the existence of autobots, the Optimus Prime voice over kind of mode, and of course the "we have no substance so let's show Megan Fox in compromising positions" story. Transformers went with sort of the same theme, jumping back and forth between "serious" themes, complete stupidity, and starting a new storyline about an hour or 2 into the movie.
Giant robots are cool.
80% of the characters were added for comic relief. Too many.
I was shocked to hear the voice of Orson Welles about an hour and a half into the movie. Little known fact: one of Orson Welles's last roles was as Unicron, a planet eating decepticon in the 1987 movie. I guess they dug up the old audio from this and remastered it for the current movie. Those who left early missed out.
Michael Bay remains master of lightly treading through racial stereotypes and controversial issues.
The film cut costs by using footage from the badass "join the marines" commercials that always run during football games. You know, the ones with rock and roll and jets and killing dragons and stuff. I'm pretty sure the movie took this footage directly. The thing seemed like a giant
All of the decepticons look the same. You can tell the autobots apart because they are colored. Except, then they add colored decepticons. I don't know which giant robots I should be worried about!
The fight scenes would be cool, except it's impossible to distinguish where one robot starts and the other begins. Thus, what was a sweet punch looks kind of like a jiggly arm. All I really saw during Transformer fight scenes were basically a mass of CGI robot bits flopping about.
My favorite robot on BattleBots was "Biohazard": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioHazard
My favorite character is BumbleBee, because his kickass and he doesn't talk, making him not sound like an idiot. Optimus Prime is cool too, but I kind of want to laugh on every voice-over he does.
At the same time, I wish Optimus Prime did voice overs for my life. "Man, machine, together, cooking dinner. A dinner so that Dan and Nico will not be hungry. A dinner that contains too much pepper.
The last image of the film could have been Optimus Prime standing next to Shia LeBouf, zooming out as man and technology are united in the ultimate partnership, the firm ground they are standing on actually an aircraft carrier, providing us with a metaphor that man is nothing without technology, and perhaps technology also holds the soul of man, while also looking badass. Michael Bay wisely decided to tag on Rainn Wilson with a beard looking kind of funny, and Shia sitting in class saying sheepishly "I'm fine".
I still kind of enjoyed it.

Ajedrez

2009-07-01T01:23:00.002-04:00

A brief summary:

I prefer the night
I occasionally play chess por los Internets
A new Manic Summer Goal: Mastery of the Internets (by making a chess database for the club)
B. Flo has a blog featuring delicious foods. Hopefully it won't suck: http://dontbraisemebro.blogspot.com/

And now the real deal:
I often have my mornings free. Unfortunately, I also hate mornings. I suppose it's a good thing I have them free, because otherwise I'd be spending my time at work really hating everything. Now I get to hate everything on my own time.

Morning activities then include a lot of things. Typically these don't need to involve other people, and focus more on quiet, self-oriented activities as I get accustomed to not being asleep. Lately, many of these activities have been centered around chess, aka ajedrez.

The first of these activities is actually playing chess. I used to play in high school, joined the club at Yale, but have basically fallen out of practice, going to club meetings about one ever two weeks. I improve slower than NK moves after we've all decided to go to dinner. If you're into casual chess, check out the Free Internet Chess Server, aka FICS: http://www.freechess.org.

The site is great because there's no waiting time between games, there's an incredibly easy interface for finding a game (giving you rank and time quickly), and it seems like there's a nice regulated community around it. Those who sat by me "studying" in LC might remember me alternating between louding swearing about my inability to find a game and my louding swearing about my inability to play the games I found. We still have swearing, but now just more of the later kind, and I'm alone in a hotel room.

The second morning activity has quickly become an MSG, which might go under the sub-heading of "Mastery of the Internets". Basically, I want to make a database for the chess club, so that we have an easy way to store all our games electronically. I also want to make a site where users can select and view games. I feel that this project has a nice effect when juxtaposed against my other goals such as "Get Jacked". For my non-tech readers, a simple explanation of what I want to do is make a website that will let you list all of our games, organized by event, player, opening, etc. After you pick one, my code will automatically generate a page that nicely displays the game.

For my tech readers (all my ni-zerds say "heyo"), I've just learned php, and I'm hoping to maintain a mySQL database. All of this is hosted on bin.yale.edu, which presents a few challenges and appears to run very slowly, but also makes it so I don't have to deal with setting up and running a server. The whole server stuff might not be too hard, but it's another thing I don't have to mess with. Also, I realized today that some image preloading javascript code I was including throughout the entire chess website was broken since i screwed up a quotation mark. Oh well, I'm sure the massive traffic to the site wasn't too upset by it.

Today's word associated with my life is "messy".

I'd put a snazzy picture up, perhaps even a HAPotD, but all my pictures are elsewhere at the moment, so you'll have to look at the mind-numbing background instead.

Oh right, the blog of Flores. If you do not know Ben Flores, you are missing out. He keeps my blog fully loaded with awesome games, website, and trifles. Including this. Awesome. Anyway, Flores has started a cooking blog. I plan to take recipes from it, cook for Dan and Nico, and then harrass Flores if the food sucks.

There's currently trouble afoot at the Apart Hotel-Congreso, with an egregious crime having struck down the spirits of the Bulldogs in Buenos Aires. Future posts may include the foul stench of corruption, the complete failure on the part of 602 to cook, and an extended metaphor between the way I play chess and my social awkwardness (who would ever think those two go hand in hand?).

Testosterace 6/30/09 Day 50

2009-06-30T10:15:00.003-04:00

Last time-- 13,055

6/29-- 585

6/28-- 525

6/27-- 080

6/26-- 050

6/25-- 150

New total-- 14,455

PUP'D-- 288.9

My PUP'D has fallen once again, but I think I'm getting another wind. Hopefully the rest of this week will go well.

The Drought is Over

2009-06-29T19:22:00.005-04:00

It's raining in Buenos Aires, and the blogosphere (ugh) is clouding over as well, as soon a torrential downpour of manic thoughts of Argentina and Other Stuff appears.

Elections

The elections were this weekend. The elections were very important to me. Following is a chain of causation

It is illegal to sell alcohol the night before an election
Clubs are closed the night before the election
Everyone went to see Transformers 2
Including me
There were no open seats to see Transformers 2

Also,

Everything within a block of the capital was closed
The local grocery store is a block - 10 meters from the capiptal
My apartment is a block + 10 meters from the capital
A giant fence sprung up in between our hotel and the capital
Our dinner consisted of sauteed veggies and potatoes
I don't know how to make french fries, apparently
Instead of papas fritas we ate papas calientes

Spanish Programmer Delicious Monday Lunch (SPoDeMoL)

In other news, today is Monday, the traditional day for me to eat with the programmers. The programmers are locals who pretty much only speak Spanish. The exceptions to this rule are Dmitri, who is Ukranian and speaks a hesitant English, and Diego, who I believe may be president of the Argentinian Star Wars Fan Club, and who is entirely awesome, entirely bearded, and speaks flawless English. Today I happened to be sitting next to Pablo, Miguel, and Matias. You will notice that none of these are Diego or Dmitri. This was actually awesome because it forced me to speak Spanish, and since they don't really know English, it forced them to speak in Spanish to me. One of the larger problems in trying to speak in Spanish to practice is finding someone who doesn't get frustrated and just speaks in English to you (laughing waitress)

Non-sequitor:

We went to a delicious deli this weekend. This is where the waitress laughed at us, after one of us said "dieci-cuatro" instead of "catorce". But yes, it was delicious. I think is was called Mark's Deli... located a few blocks of Scallabrini Ortiz, which I am now calling Scaz in honor of the Yale computer science professor

Non-sequitor 2:

Also in honor of Scaz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T500ecHP3pE

I actually remember some of those things... it used to be on right after (maybe before) the Daily Show. Good times.

/Non-sequitor 2

Right, I think it's at the corner of... El Salvador and Honduras. The streets have names of countries. Useful. But the sandwiches are really great, you should try them.

/Non-sequitor

But yes, today was probably my longest and best Spanish conversation of the trip. It ended with me trying to explain how I liked Obama because of the fact that I think he makes Americans less afraid of politicians that appear and act intelligent. It also included some of my somewhat limited thoughts on the healthcare system of America and what's wrong with it. At this point my Spanish degraded enough to not be very useful.

Here's an article on healthcase... my talks with a nephrologist has swayed me in favor of the argument made in this piece.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=john_mccains_best_idea

Another highlight of lunch was when the waitress started sassily talking with one of my co-workers. The guys sitting by me laughed and tried to explain what was going on in Spanish, which an expression that seemed to be "throwing out the bait". They then made fishing gestures. I did not understand. They asked the flirted-with gentlmen to explain the concept in English. This guy, I don't know his name, turned to me and immediately said in unaccented English: "She's flirting with me." His dessert came first.

Typical Argentinian Frisbee Failure

Dan and I were trying to go to frisbee this evening. We received a facebook message from the frisbee players that was long, Spanish, incomprehensible, in ALL CAPS, and mentioned KARAOKE. Dan showed up at the frisbee fields. There was no one there.

The End and HAPotD

That's all for now. We'll close with come creepy pictures of the hospital near work, which I'm not entirely sure is functioning, haunted, or both.

Ridiculosity

2009-06-26T16:00:00.004-04:00

Michael Jackson is dead. I actually feel sad.
Gov. Sanford is rejoicing about this.
Despite these and other big stories, there's still stuff happening in Iran. These pictures are now a little old, but I still found them fairly moving: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/irans_disputed_election.html
Other interesting tidbit about Iran: I received an email asking me to participate in a denial of service attack against Iranian websites. Basically if a bunch of people keep making continually requests to the Iranian servers for websites (that is, basically automatically visiting the website anew as often as possible), the server, which can only do so much at one time, would collapse, and no one would be able to view these sites. A quote accompanying one of these emails was "crowd-sourcing the revolution".
The "command" to take out these websites came out of Iran on Twitter.
The debate over whether or not to attack these sites took on a parallel with the debate over whether or not Obama should speak out harshly against the election results.
What's the deal with Twitter? Like seriously, wtf?
Last night I ended up at a club with a tranny show. As in, people in drag dancing around on stage. The crowd seemed utterly nonplussed by this. Just a bunch of normal club people, doing their thing while a combination of people in drag and acrobats doing backflips freaked out on stage. Rather surreal.
From Julian, stoned wallabies (Rocko's modern life, anyone?): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8118257.stm
From Christina, gold-diggers (cue Gunther): http://www.startupconversations.com/2007/10/best-craigslist.html
From Flores, an innovative game (I receive about one a day): http://www.gamerevolution.com/goodie/flash_games/cursor_10
Hopefully seeing Transformers 2 as soon as possible.
That is all.
Actually, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E-Y-d58HIU

Argentine Politics: A True Parable/Allegory/Tale

2009-06-25T02:25:00.002-04:00

What has grown to be a hobby of mine is to think of interesting questions for our taxi drivers. I then pass this question on to someone who is able to speak Spanish, and then wait til we leave the cab to find out what was said. Topics of cab-driver discussion have been "How do you feel about Americans?" and "Are you going to vote?"

I don't really remember the first, although I do remember that it somehow lead to Nick yelling excitedly in Spanish about thhe beauty of Greek women, or the cab driver yelling at Nick about the beauty of Greek women, or something like that. At the time, I was probably giving Leslie unsolicited insights into my how my body functions, and thus couldn't be expected to try to understand Spanish. Recently, after being cut off by a dude in a station wagon, a driver explained the difference between a conductor and a maneja. Conductores are professional, like the drivers, who are good drivers. Manejas are amateurs who merely use cars for transportation as opposed to a lifestyle, and are typically terrible drivers. Manejas, he repeated often, "son hijos de putas".

Last time, however, after carefully conjugating and enacting my sentence, either Dan or Nico flew to the rescue and explained to our driver what the hell I was trying to ask him. "Voy a votar en los elecciones?" (or something of that nature, "You are going to vote?") Basically, we discovered that the elections in Argentina are "a lie". They have many parties. The US has two parties: Republicans and Democrats. Argentina has many parties, and the elections are a lie.

"Will the Kirchners lose?"

"Ojala!" a word which traces its roots to arabic, and meaning "God willing!"

"But are you going to vote?"

"No. The elections are a lie"

The elections may be a lie, but it appears to be a lie that many people believe. Either that, or maybe it's a lie that many people want to believe, or pretend to believe, much like Halloween or Christmas. It actually is fairly similar to a holiday. Jolly faces on posters are slathered all across town (X-mas). I am awoken often (albeit in the afternoon) by communists drumming out happy tunes down the street, their voices punctuated by the occasional explosion of some festive anti-pig-dog-capitalist-scum-firecracker (socialist fourth of July?). The other day I wandered through an impromptu parade of festive, orange wearing people as well as a loud raspy woman on a megaphone (okay, not sure what holiday this is. Maybe St. Patrick's day). Flags are waved (I guess Flag Day. Then again, I think it actually was Flag Day). In an effort to "appear nice" to the populace (also know as SANTA), the government has dug up the streets in an attempt to rapidly repair everything. Nothing says "vote for me" like finding a giant ditch where your bus stop used to be.

It seems difficult to identify the different parties. They all have slogans like "The New Left!" "Change with the left!" "The new leader of the left!". I catch myself thinking how ridiculous these promises of change look, right before I catch myself lookin to last fall...

My favorite is "Anarchist party: We have ideas!" I believe they should probably add "although one of those ideas is that we have no right to enforce any of them".

The way I try to distinguish between the parties is by the posters I see and the glaring problems with them. For instance, there's the Fueled-On-Anger party (For the crisis, the capitalists will pay). The ugly party (I swear, they got the three ugliest politicians they could find, and then put them on a ticket). The party where the candidate is surrounded by bored, scowling supporters wearing happier looking shirts. The First-Time-I-Saw-The-Candidate's-Face-I-Thought-It-Was-A-Fusing-Together-Of-A-Man-And-A-Woman's-Face,-probably-the-Kirchners,-As-A-Political-Commentary-But-Really-The-Candidate-Probably-Just-Had-A-Stroke-Or-Her-Right-Side-Is-Actually-A-Man party.

I think the best way to describe Argentinian politics is through this simple story, which happened to me. As I neared the final stop on my way home from work, the traffic grew slower and slower. I saw what appeared to be the problem. Up ahead on Corrientes, the major street my bus takes home from work, the road had been blocked off by a group of cars, a stage, 5 bespeckled leftists, and a whole bunch of red canvas. One tiny police officer attempted to steer the throng of motorists to a navigable area. Turning the corner took about 15 minutes, making the already non-sensical bus system even worse. When I finally emerged from the bus, I walked past the rally, intruiged. I tried to pick out what the speakers were saying, but only heard a few words, such as "capitalists", "potential", "last twenty years", "United States". He didn't sound happy. I decided that instead of this incomprehensible crap, I would get a burger. I walked into Burger King. After deciding what I wanted, I realized I didn't have enough money. I then walked home through the broken streets.

I guess I should also mention that there was a Spanish "House of Wax" ("Casa de Cera!") in Burger King. I'm really not sure how that fits into the allegory though. Maybe that's the military industrial complex or something. Or Uruguay. Yeah, it's probably Uruguay.

Testosterace 6/24 Day 44

2009-06-25T01:18:00.003-04:00

Total last time-- 11690

6/24- 100

6/23- 330

6/22- 455

6/19- 150

6/18 - 330

New total-- 13,055

PUP'D-- 296.7

Disaster. I've been slacking majorly, especially on the weekends. During the week hasn't been much better, I need to get back into doing over 500 a day.

BusThoughts

2009-06-24T11:11:00.005-04:00

Do bus adventures ever get old? Probably. Hopefully not yet.

When I got to my stop today, I found FOUR 24s waiting at the stop. FOUR. In case you missed the first three. I had to wait ten minutes for my 124 to show up.
People don't really give up their seats here. To counter this, women with young children will maneuver their fledling Argentinians to be as annoyingly close to you as possible. At this point, you will stand rather than have snot wiped on your coat while some toddler shouts "no me gusta".
Dan and I tried to ride the 37 the other day. It stopped 8 blocks early, and once again everyone silently trickled out.
Occasionally there's an LED ticker that displays news stories, jokes, and other information. A joke, roughly translated: "There once was a man who had many children who all had distinct last names. The man's name was John Distinct."
Yesterday, the ticker was saying "Police killed two men when..." A pause. Screen refresh "Espectaculos! Transformers 2 fuera..."

A text:

"so far no hamdouches in uruguay, though there are 2 stores next to each other called 'gay mar' and 'tugays'. also a store called tits"

Pictures:

Malba

The Elusive Nico, With Tie and Rock

Nerdtastic

2009-06-22T22:04:00.004-04:00

A few notes:

The Bane-Clock is going to have to be amended. First, wireless no longer functions in our room. Thus, we had to get another alarm clock than the website we were using. I wrote up a quick one using python. Unfortunately, it plays mp3 files at 1/4th speed or so, turning "Mr. Blue Sky" into a horrific series of grinding noises. We ended up recording the mp3, and now it works fine, just with poor sound quality.
The main problem with the Bane-Clock now is the Bane component. I think he's going to start doing 9-5 hours at work, which doesn't fit well with my wake up around 10 a putter around for a few hours schedule.
My maze program is still progressing... it now has levels! Levels!

I owe a bunch of pictures. So, here we have...

Nikos Going To Work

Casey Blue!

Bench at Malba!

A ONE CENTAVO PIECE! (You'll have to trust me on this)

Mate-ing on the Beach

2009-06-22T13:56:00.005-04:00

Sunday was a typical Sunday for my room. Wake up extraordinarily late, stumble about for a while, realize that we need to leave the room if we want it to be cleaned, and emerge blinking into the few hours of remaining daylight.

After our typical slow start, we took the subte to Puerto Madero, one of my favorite parts of Buenos Aires. It used to be a sort of failed port, and then some trendy and cool people came along and made the area trendy and cool. Very few things are cooler than giant, brightly painted, unused cranes. Additionally, in honor of all the women of Argentina, someone placed a giant phallus-shaped bridge over the water: http://www.restospuertomadero.com.ar/

To the east of the port lies an ecological reserve, where I guess there are birds and so forth. Here, standing in the middle of a field/swamp, we found two of Yale's Women of the Water, Leslie and Marisa. We were able to identify them by Marisa'a strange stretching gestures. After reaching them, some random people inside the reserve paradoxically yelled at us that no one was allowed in the reserve, so we marched back through the swamp and walked alongside the... swampwalk.

At this point we went to some shops set up in stalls, and eventually wandered back to the swampwalk. This is where we consumed parilla.

Parilla is basically meat, cooked, and then put between slices of bread. A meat sandwich if you will. After receiving the sandwich, you then proceed to the condiment table. This is where the fun begins. Basically, there was a giant assortment of sauces and toppings, which were in a motley assortment of tupperware. Most of them looked kind of dubious, but all of them were delicious.

We then stopped in Puerto for dessert and mate. Mate is pronounced in the typical Spanish way, two syllables, emphasis on the first (ma-tay). Mate is a tea-like drink, consumed in a distinctive way. People carry around these little cups, filled almost to the top with some crusty leaves. Hot water is poured through these leaves, which you then drink with the help of a filtered, metal straw. You'll often see people walking along the street, mates in one hand (in typical Argentinian fashion, the cups are also called mate, so as to confuse and dishearten), hot water thermos tucked carefully under one arm.

Anyway, at this shop I ordered mate, having never tried it. Brought to me was a mate with bombilla (straw), thermos of hot water, two crescants, and about a kilogram of yerba, the leaves one places in your mate to drink. What they expected me to do with two pounds of dried leaves I'm not sure... was I to refill with every sip? Where would I dump the leaves? I'm going to go ahead and point to unknown cultural knowledge on this one, once again...

I took the bag home with me. In my giant sweatshirt pocket. I took it. It's right now next to the peanutbutter.

Best Day Ever

2009-06-21T04:14:00.003-04:00

Today was the best day ever.

Hung over.
Dan provided me with advil, allowing me to leave my bed, ~1:30
Cold pizza for breakfast/lunch
Electric Light Orchestra is joy encapsulated in music form.
Attempted to clean. Room smells like beer, vomit, and lemons.
Rode bus. In progression, a kid wearing a "georgetown prep" sweatshirt, then a Columbia sweatshirt and a Harvard sweatshirt got on the bus. Thought that we were the new exchange kids in their program. Dan and I were not. I don't think the ivy-sweatshirt-wearers spoke English.
We saw frisbee players from the bus, and slowly got the bus to come to a stop. We recognized some of the DiscoSur players who I met a week or two ago when we "practiced" with them.
The frisbee people of BA are hilarious and awesome. To quote a new friend, Ian, "That is the building where they have the architecture and design schools. That is where the buses come. And this is WHERE WE RUN AGAIN"
The frisbee fields are in Ciudad Universitaria, which is the college built by the communists. Thus, it felt less like Argentina and more like Bratislava... stray dogs walked around with us, and all the buildings were made of concrete and graffiti.
I ended up calling this one kid on our team "chico" for the entire game... probably should have learned his name, or called him "che" or something.
I'm probably joining a team called "Cadillac". There's also DiscoSur, Ian's team, and one called "Big Red", who inexplicably wear green jerseys. One dude named Chappy or Choppy or something completely destroyed everyone, so fast. I wish I could be Chappy.
There was a girl that somehow looked like Cantrell.
Nap with dream in Spanish. of course, in the dream, none of the native speakers could understand what I was saying, and I had no idea what the shit they were saying either. Pretty realistic. The dream was about trying to order a McFlurry at McDonald's.
McDonald's for dinner. I'm probably prescient, because when I was ordering the lady was trying to explain the system for getting a McFlurry. Instead of having the McFlurry machine behind the counter, there is a separate little area of real estate where you have to walk and get your McFlurry made.
I'm begging to realize that people don't automatically peg me as an American, or at least they believe that I speak Spanish. This is a reasonable assumption, as I would probably believe that most people I run into on the street in USA speak English
El Cuatro Fantastico was on. It would be sweet to be the human torch.
Marisa's roomie Sol is amazing. She taught us dirty words, like "bija".
Discovered that the previous night when I got out of the cab, I shouted "Adios, Boludo!" to the driver. We had had an incredibly spirited and entirely forgotten discussion. People spoke Spanish. Nick the Greek got very excited, I remember. But anyway "boludo" means "balls", or also, "dude". I'm not really sure if it was appropriate or not.
Clubbin'. Or attempt to go clubbin'... we were going to go to "Fetish" but it was filled to capacity. We instead ended up at a house party. I still have no idea about the connection... I think it might be Elena->work friend->random argentine->some dude's birthday->party.
After this we went to a club. In a hall going into the dance floor, there were couches up against the wall. Above these couches were photos of dismembered baby dolls. On the opposite wall were artistic pictures of beautiful naked women and rose petals.
After the club, I WENT TO MCDONALDS FOR THE SECOND TIME TODAY. I ATE A BIG MAC AND I LOVED IT.
As I write this, Dan is snoring. Dan claims that he doesn't snore, but he is currently fucking snoring and I can hear him. I go to bed about an hour or two after him every night, and every night he snores. I should fucking record this shit so that he'll believe me. Wankers!
I really want to see Transformers 2 next week. It comes out Miercoles 24. Megan Fox. Shia. Megatron. Awesome.

Oh shit I'm drunk

2009-06-20T05:26:00.002-04:00

Yes, I'm drunk. Like really drunk. And not in a Hemmingway drunk... like, im barely capabale of pressing the buttons on the keyboard drunk.

Thought you all should know. I have a big burn from someone accidentally putting a cigarette out on my hand. Other than than I've managed to avoid making silly (sillier than usual) decisions.

Much love to everyone, except the people I hate.

-Riederer

Thursday's HAPotD!

2009-06-19T01:39:00.003-04:00

A bit more frenetic programming, but I finally got the thing to spit out a maze... my work is definitely far from done, but this is a pretty satisfying step.

In other news, tonight was a lovely time at Malba, which is sort of the modern art museum of BA. Catherine, the Yalie who works there, calls it "sort of the BA equivalent of MoMa".

Future topics may include...

4 peso milanesa "sandwiches"
Crazy old women who follow you on the bus
Hospital Israelita
Shots of Malba
The perils of drunk flossing

HAHAHAPotD

2009-06-18T13:40:00.004-04:00

Here are two pics for Jueves y Miercoles. The first is doing push ups at the house of the lovely Brigid Lane earlier in the summer. The second is at Acabar, with an adult Spanish-language board game.

Testosterace 6/18/09, Day 38

2009-06-18T01:56:00.003-04:00

Total last time-- 9665

6/11 -- 510
6/12 -- 170 (beginning of gripe fail)
6/13 -- 0 (gripe... porquenia?)
6/14 -- 0 (gripe)
6/15 -- 25 (recovery begins)
6/16 -- 700
6/17 -- 620

Total -- 11690
PUP'D -- ~307

After a harrowing few days, I've managed to recover. Push ups remain easy... I did a set of 65 straight, which is probably the most I've done without pause ever, and it really wasn't that hard. Can almost always get 40 now, can usually get 50.

What are you looking at?

2009-06-17T23:00:00.004-04:00

I've decided to focus this post on a crucial topics of the streets of BA.

Porn

Being from a strange cross of small-town America and suburbia, I find that I'm not very good at walking through cities. I never know where to put my eyes. I'm not sure whether or not to look at the oncoming traffic, when to smile, nod, or look through. You certainly don't make eye contact with eager looking young men holding stacks of tiny slips paper, or scruffy one-eyed men crouched in alleys. This leaves a lot of grey area, however, such as attractive young women holding stacks of tiny slips of paper, and a whole sleu of others that we don't need to taxonomize at this point. Oftentimes, I will instead allow my eyes to wander to the surrounding areas. I'm amazed at how often something new will appear... either a giant Harry Potter poster appeared overnight on the street where my bus lets off, or I'm even more unattentive than I thought.

Right, but porn. Newstands fill the crowded sidewalks. The stands do not actually hold news, of course, but rather a combination of comic books, action figures, and pornography. My guess is that the stands try to get subscribers while they're young and playing with toys, and then can continue selling to them when the customers get older and trade one set of fantasies for another.

Anyway, if I'm not seeking out eye contact and strange nods with each passerby, my eyes might naturally wander onto the naked flesh populating these stands. Do I look at the porn? Surely not. But if I completely avert the porn, maybe onlookers will think that I'm making a big deal out of the porn. Maybe this guy is a porn-fiend, they must think! No one would completely avoid a glance at such porn, unless he were trying to hide something!

One might think that a casual glance would then be the solution. Perhaps a gesture to show that the porn is seen to be an amusement, a silly triffle designed for the lower classes and bearded, shamed men who rush away, slipping their rags into leathers bags. A quick glance and a smug smile should suffice. However, there are about two to three newstands every block. The muscles for the smug smile might get overworked, and then I would either not be able to look smug when I need to ("Why yes, I Do go to Yale!") or perhaps my muscles will get locked, and I will remain constantly looking as if I were a vegan or took DS or understood dadism or something.

The solution, as is the unsatisfying solution to all problems in life, is of course time. By now, that one chick who grabs at her tities while looking coy really doesn't phase me, or even attract my eye. The DragonBall Z action figures are a different story.

The reality is that the thing that really stresses me out is that I never was into comic books when I was a kid. However, I love the damn things. I just can't bring myself to become a comic book nerd now. There's so much history that's lost. There's something about it that I'll never understand that those who read them after bullys took their lunch money will always have. What I'd like to do, more than peruse "El Playboy" and "Las Juggs" or whatever the porn is named here, is go through each and every comic book to absord the repetitive, silly stories of men hit by a radioactive ice rays and so forth. That, of course, would look ridiculous, and so should probably be done from the safety and privacy of my own home.

Wowzers, this has turned into way more prose than I believe I am entitled to. I also realize I forgot to post the HAPOtD for yesterday, which I suppose would make it even more highly anticipated, a HAHAPOtD if you will. Well, the anticipation will continue to rise until I post it in an hour or so.

Also, for anyone keeping track of my programming for whatever reason, I got Prim's alg running... I might want to reevaluate if I like what I've written or not, but hopefully will get some sweet mazes done soon.

Best laid plans

2009-06-17T02:47:00.003-04:00

I was planning on writing a blurb on the things I see while riding on the bus. However, an idea popped into my head while I was riding the bus. This idea quickly grew into a Manic Summer Goal, which I have manic-ly pursued for the last few hours, instead of sleep. The idea, rather dorky, is as follows:

I wonder how mazes are made.
To abstract a bit, mazes are really just trees. So if you wanted a pretty, rectangular maze, you'd have to figure out a way to fold a tree up all nice.
If we had sort of a grid that you want to turn into a maze, you could start out representing each square of the grid as a node connected to adjacent squares/nodes. If you assign a random weight to each edge, you can use a minimum spanning tree algorithm to quickly make a maze. Edges that don't exist become walls, edges that do remain open paths in your maze.
I could quickly and easily make a video game!
Oh shit!

Quickly and easily will probably be more than a few hours, unfortunately. I've decided to write everything myself, and use Python / Pygame. I made the random graph generator and have a bugging Prim's algorithm... wish me luck, I'll keep you posted.

Sorry for the incredibly boring post, which is really more me just recording my thinking. You'll probably get something mildly more entertaining if I can wake up and drink coffee tomorrow.

I also hear there's a new prime number that was just confirmed... very exciting. The number was found on April 12th and verified yesterday. You, too, can join the search for prime numbers!
http://www.mersenne.org/
I believe the DoD will buy prime numbers from you for $10-100k, I forget which. A ten followed by a few zeros. In dollars.
Thanks to Kateipine for the tip on this one.

Experience the flavor: Kung Pao Chicken

2009-06-16T21:54:00.002-04:00

I've always loved food. I don't really buy clothing, or video games, or drugs, or presents for friends. But I do buy food. Good food, bad food. Chicken wings. Wenzels. Crab ran goon. Sushi. Buenos Aires has been a time greatly directed at food for me... eating at some incredible restaurants, getting to cook. One of the MSGs is to become a masterchef, which was clearly demonstrated by tonight's activities.

After debating with my roommates and an enlisted coalition of gChat contacts, I settled with the help of the lovely Yuan on a recipe: Kung Pao chicken. After determining this recipe, nothing could stop us from enjoying this delicacy. Nothing, of course, except a lack of ingredients and knowledge of Spanish.

Original recipe: http://blogchef.net/kung-pao-chicken-recipe/

Modifications:

Flour instead of cornstarch (called Nico to learn Spanish word for cornstarch... couldn't find it at the store)
Regular cooking oil instead of sesame oil
No garlic... thought about using garlic salt, forgot
Attempted to buy red pepper flakes. Bought pimenton (Spanish for "paprika").
Bought ginger instead of ginger powder. Dan and Nico spent around 50 minutes googling for a way to consume ginger.
No vinegar
No sugar
No peanuts
Instead of the last three, we just used peanut butter.

So, to recap, here's our recipe:

Chop chicken. Put oil in pan, cook chicken, place aside
Mix in pepper (as one would find in a shaker), paprika, green onions, ginger things.
Put soy sauce and peanut butter to taste in the pan, mix in.
Stir in chicken.
Serve over rice!

This was honestly the best thing we've cooked so far. That may not sound like much, but it was delicious.

Happy Flag Day, Argentina

2009-06-15T23:38:00.006-04:00

Or at any rate I think it's Flag Day...

I'm interested in the future. I like thinking about technology and the future of humans and so forth, and though I really haven't dug that far into bioethics, I've found myself on certain panlists of a more transhumanist bent. Anyway, I found this gem in my inbox today:

"Have to be an abbreviated message tonight, since I'm off to Washington D.C. at the crack of dawn for National History Day, and to meet with technoprogressive sleeper agents in place in critical government agencies."

Just remember, when the machines come to replace you, it's probably for the betterment of the universe.

Well, now we can do a brief summary of the day, and updates on my life.

TODAY:

Woke up late. Last night I went to a different room in the Apart to find at least four of my fellow Bulldogs rather drunk and pantsless. Amusing.
Today, roommate Nico, with the delicacy and precision of a eye surgeon, crafted omelettes.
I played an inappropriate amount of Plants Versus Zombies. My Zen Garden is really starting to look nice. Also, Dan and I agree that the Tree of Knowledge is a bit of a rip off.
Many of us went to a park in Palermo. Met up with Casey Blue, everyone's favorite Saybrook sophomore. There's a huge series of parks to the North of Palermo, nearby a zoo and a Japanese garden. You're able to rent a paddle boat or a giant group bike, so everyone can look stupid together while biking around. Dan and I threw for a while, which was pretty fun.
Found another Yalie, Katharine, and got some pizza. Had a delicious pinneapple themed pizza, complete with cherries.
Made it home, got some dessert with the roomies and Marisa, assured my parents via email that I have not yet died of swine flu, and chilled out to the smooth tunes of Mango Groove.

UPDATES:

The bus system in BA still doesn't make sense.
I still can't function as a Spanish speaker.
The Testosterace has collapsed due to illness over the last few days. It will begin again with a vengeance tomorrow.
If you remember any of my Manic Summer Goals, some are actually starting to come to fruitition. I'm almost done with my weird Piet thing. Yesterday I finished a small python script that, given a search query and a website, will tell you what the position of that website is on Google. This is something many people have done before, but I don't mind rehashing the past.
Books... haven't posted about books yet, but I just finished "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". It was awesome.

And now... the HAPOtD.

Roughly translated, the sign on the left, "Jardin Zoologico" means "Zoo Garden", and the sign on the right, "Campo de Polo" means "Beware of Centaurs"

MANGO

2009-06-15T21:05:00.009-04:00

An informational post:

Today there is no work in Argentina. The reason? I think Flag Day. I'm not sure if anyone really knows.
I learned a way to consume delicious mangoes. Many thanks to Elena for showing me the light.
I am incapable of taking pictures. As mentioned before, the screen on my camera is broken. Thus, I have to guess if I am taking a picture of what I think I'm taking a picture of. Apparently, it is exceedingly difficult to photograph things directly in front of you (as evidence by the series of mirror pictures below and the following series).
This is getting boring...

Alright, so you buy a delicious mango.

You want to eat the delicious mango, but you're not sure how to consume it, other than the manly albeit inefficient way of chopping random bits off, shoving them into your mouth and hoping they're edible. Enter Elena. Young, hip, mango-savvy Elena who's ready with a kind word, a friendly attitude, and a knife. Following are Elena's tips, complete with pictures.

Step one: Locate the mango. Harder than it seems... for example, in this picture, I have attempted to find the mango, but instead I've located the head of Paloma. When trying to find your mango, remember, look for a mango, not Paloma.
Step two: Cut fourths off the mango. Cut downward from the stem to the... bottom.
Step three: Cut mango tissue into a grid. Don't break through the skin. Make sure that the grid is relatively tight, with less than a square cm per, um, square.
Step four: Pop mango outward in a convex manner. I'm not really sure how to describe this. A picture is worth a thousand words...
Step five: Don't actually take a picture of the mango. Instead, take a picture of Elena's stomach. Here's what I was going for:
Step six: Eat A Mango. Not only step 6, but also the hit 1995 album by Mango Groove.

Chris's Guide to Surviving Swine Flu

2009-06-14T16:10:00.003-04:00

Since I both not feeling well and in South America, I am practicing the art of self-diagnosis with a claim of swine flu. The cure so far:

Sleep. Sleep a lot... don't half-ass about it. When everyone you know in the city of Buenos Aires gets up to go horseback riding at a ranch for the day, you don't even consider joining them. You knuckle down and keep your ass in bed.
Sleep some more! When other friends invite you to go out to street festivals, you sleep.
Wake up. You can't just sleep all day.
Investigate this awesome website: http://www.longbets.org (Thanks Flores. Ben send me the best websites)
Advil
For sustenance, take in some crucial nurtients at everyone's favorite empanada place: La Americana. Be avoided by several waiters, since you are a gringo, or because you look like you have la gripe.
Explore a mango. Buy the mango. Read. Eye the mango. Try to cut mango in half. Discover that mangoes have cores or pits or something. Develop a hypothesis in regards to the edibility of mango skins. Test your hypothesis and eventually reject your hypothesis.
Wait awkwardly in room as cleaning service comes in to clean. Write a blog post as a way to distract yourself from the overwhelming sense of guilt that overcomes you in the presence of people in service occupations. Hide free condoms given to you and your roommates at the youth festival.

After feeling like hell this morning to now feeling physically okay but emotionally more connected with my Catholic past than I would enjoy being at the moment, I think I'm actually improving.

Tengo La Gripe

2009-06-14T00:11:00.002-04:00

So, I have to admit the last post was one I wrote a while ago, in the event of a lack of inspiration/energy. After sleeping til 1 today and awaking feeling kind of like hell, I've had a lack of both. However, I must soldier on and dutifully record my memories...

Nico made eggs this morning. Ya!
Casey Blue and Marisa crashed at our place, we have lots of extra room. Party time.
Lots of massaging last night...
Wandered about Recoleta w/ Dan and Case. Tried to go to a "Youth Festival".
Made it within about a block of youth festival, turned and ended up wandering about Recoleta
Ate lunch at a place that appended every menu title with "de la nueva generacion". I ate a cheeseburger, apparently of the new generation. Dan got some explosive tuna crepe thing, and Case attempted to order a burger with fries, which turned out to be a single, lonely meat patty with fries.
Went to Freddo, an outstanding ice cream place. Amused the locals since we apparently had the word for "cone" and "cup" mixed up, so we ended up insisting that they give us a cup while pointing wildly at the cone. I went with Frutos del Bosque (Argentinians asperate the s, so it sounds like "beau - kay") and almond chocolate. Frutos del Bosque, or fruit of the woods, is one of my favorite ice cream flavors in any language.
Saw a crazy mime. He was actually kind of funny, although I also hated him for being a mime. He was very flexible.
Yesterday, the tech guy at work tried to do some stuff on my computer. I realized I can typically only understand Spanish when a non-native speaker is speaking it. Bad news. Also, I need to install a service update. Right.
Made it to the youth festival. Will write more bout this later... got some anime pamphlets and condoms, which they were handing out. Hopefully not meant to be used together.
At the Youth Festival, a Brazilian band was playing. They were 4 black dudes, doubling the black Buenos Aires population.
For the last 10 minutes or so of their set, the lead guitarist just put his guitar down on the stage and basically scratched the strings.
It didn't sound very good.
Returned home.
HOLY MOTHER OF NAPS
Awoke.
Tonight's restaurant: Green Bamboo, where you sit on the floor and wait 2 hours for your meal, which was fairly tasty.
Hopeful plan for tonight: HOLY MOTHER OF SLEEP

Tomorrow we're supposed to go to a ranch and pretend we're cowboys or something. I might gripe (Spanish for flu (actually I might gripe in English too)) instead of go... we'll just have to see.

And the highly anticipated Picture of the Day (I'm thinking about changing the acronym to HAPOTD instead of POTD):
The brain of my sister. Pretty screwed up, huh?

Lynx!

2009-06-13T14:07:00.000-04:00

This has been a good morning for coffee consumption, so a nice manic post is in order.

To set the mood, some good drum and bass courtesy of Jorge:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LP7InKD3Y

Also to set the mood, a sort of terrifying robot which will probably be used by the military in a few years:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww

And, instead of just videos, NYTimes article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/science/09robot.html?th&emc=th

I was able to appreciate thhis article a bit more because of taking Scaz's course on robotics. For instance, the robot they mentioned, Shakey, seemed to be more of a complete failure than the success they made it out to be. Shakey basically would act differently based on the time of day, because the light would change the way Shakey processed the world around it, and would often get stuck for huge amounts of time, thinking about what to do... They also mentioned robots that could plug themselves in. I believe Grey Walter's tortoises could sort of do this, based on candle light:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Grey_Walter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(robot)

My favorite part of the NYTimes article was probably the quote at the end.

"Now they can escape and fend for themselves"

Great tidings of joy

2009-06-12T01:00:00.002-04:00

Just got back from a fantastic night out, and perhaps had one too many penguins, so please bare with me.

First, I often get confused as to whether to use bear or bare. I just don't remember, and they all would have ridiculous double meanings. I mean... are we baring children here? Teeth? Good fruit? Tidings of joy? Or maybe we're just naked together. I'm into that.

The wine from the restaurant we went to comes in jugs shaped like penguins, to explain the last bit.

On the other hand, bear just clearly seems to be a noun. Doing nouns as verbs is pretty funny... to quote my lingustic anthropology professor, Joe Errington:

Any noun can be verbed.

So the idea of bearing is just kind of funny.

Right, so went to a restaurant called "Cuyanita". That's actually a complete lie, as a cuyanita is an empanada filled with souffle of meat. However, I am incapable of remembering words and will now ask Dan what the name of the friggin restaurant is. La Chulita. Fuck! We also went to a restaurant called Cumaná our first night in town, which is next door to La Chulita. You can draw with crayons on the tablecoths of both.

Tonight, trying to do my best M.C. Escher imitation, I had a drawing that contained
A ship, and underneath it
Water, which curved up and turned into
Clouds, in which were flying
Birds, which turned into
Planes, superheroes, and flying saucers shaped vaguely like
Lips, which awkwardly collided with the drawing I had earlier of
A giant pig underneath the word "Pandemico,"
Which I don't know if it is a word or not, but the lips were surrounded by
Beards, which extended outward from
An evil Gnome (the links are coming, I swear)
Out of which shot, sort of phallically,
A frog, jumping into a
Sun, that was also sort of an egg (oh God, my dream of a few nights ago/Freud)
That was fertilized by some jolly sperm,
Who sort of turned into nooses, hanging off of
A wire,
Connected to a lightbulb,
Shooting also out of the Gnome,
Also Casey drew some pigs next to the gnome

Phew.

In the interest of bonding, we discussed books, consumed penguins, and played some more never have I ever. To preserve the integrity of all those involved (including me (and a Q-pac girl)) I will not mention what was said (although the Q-Pac girl probably wouldn't mind too much)

Here's the deal with the gnomes, brought to you by one of the chaps from work, Oliver...

Oliver ‎(4:09 PM): http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article902014.ece

Oliver ‎(4:12 PM): http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/weird/article1817406.ece

Hilarious? Yes. Terrifying? Yes. Imagine waking up with this shimmy little dude hanging over you. I now know where Shakira was taught to shake.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Skype me. Email me for my Skype. Or just search for me. I'm not too hard to find.

MORE IMPORTANT:

Broke 10,000 push ups today. Siiiiiiiiick. Riley, my boy, did this probably a day or two ago, but I'm tight on your tail, Riley, even if you're my boy.

And I should probably post a Picture of the Day (from now on, PotD) for Thursday...

Testosterace 6/10/09 Day 30

2009-06-10T23:47:00.002-04:00

6/8-- 510

Total-- 9030

6/9-- 170 (birthday fail)

Total- 9200

6/10-- 465

Total-- 9665

PUPD-- 322.16 (the 6 repeats at this point)

Closing in on the 1/5 point. At this rate I'll be done in October, keeping me on track for my plan to be a topless ventriliquist for Halloween. I've noticed that push-ups are becoming a lot easier, I can now pretty regularly do 40 in a row.

"To shit", frisbee, Picture of the Day

2009-06-10T22:49:00.009-04:00

Got to see my gurl Marisa today. Sick. Not too much to post in the way of updates in BA. However, I can leave you with a few key items. First, the highly anticipated "Picture of the Day". this will go on the theme of failed attempts to take pictures of post-it notes.

The main reason I like this picture is because I think I look kind of like Angel from Buffy in it. The first time I typed that, I said "Buffy from Angel"... see these are the key insights into my brain you get from reading this.

FRISBEE:

Tonight, I got to play a little bit of frisbee. Not many highlights... nine people showed up, 4 Americans and 5 portenos... they asked Bane and me for advice on drills to run. So, not highly organized. On the upside, I did get to D a 5-foot tall girl.

TO SHIT:

Hope you enjoy scatological humor. From our host last night, we all received a book called "Che Boludo!", which I believe means "dude balls/testicles", but is taken to mean "dude", or I guess the way I originally translated it was "dude dude". The book basically gives you all the strange words that you only find in Argentina, or that have different meanings in Argentina. Without further ado, we launch into "cagar" and "cagarse".

CAGAR-- to shit; to wreck, to ruin or fall apart; to screw someone over; "tener cagando aceite", lit. to have someone shitting oil, "me tiene cagando aceite", 'he has me under his thumb'
CAGARSE-- to break down, to fall apart
"estar cagado" to be shitted; to have big problems, to be fucked
"cagar a palos" to shit to the sticks; to beat the shit out of
"cagar la fruta" to shit the fruit; to die
"cagar fuego" to shit fire; to die [Phil, this one is for you, and the complaint you often lodge on the post-consumption effects of the wenzel.]
"tener un cagaso" to have a huge shit; to be scared
"cago'n" big shit; coward
"caga de risa" a shit of laugher; hilarious
"cagar de frio" to shit from cold; to be freezing your ass off
"cagaste!" you shat

I'll keep you posted on other gems. Stay tuned for upcoming posts on robots, the British, books, and the terror of Argentinian gnomes. And if I see one of the buses chase down and kill a wildebeast tomorrow, you'll be the first to know.

Oh, and thought I'd include the bday card I received from my sister:

Birthday complete

2009-06-10T00:25:00.008-04:00

Phew.

For some reason, I don't like my birthday. It's a combination of things... I've had some unpleasant birthdays in the past, and always have a sort of concern that the day will end with more bad luck. This is a minor thing, however, and I think the real issue is something different, more to do with a sudden change in self image that never really feels right, and quickly switches back to normal. At any rate, I don't really feel like posting all my feelings towards birthdays here, so if you're curious... you'll have to determine an alternate way of communication that involves more participation on your part.

We interrupt this slightly moody post for the announcement that for some reason the director of sales at my company just emailed me, and only me, an advertisment for urban paintball, which will occur on "el dia del padre". What better way to say "I love you" to dad than to take him to the middle of the city and fucking shoot him up with colorful projectiles. Sick.

To get back to birthday moodiness, I owe many people a large degree of thanks. Obviously my family and friends. And I suppose my enemies, for inspiring me to be better than them. Right. But anyway, I've gotten to meet a bunch of incredibly cool people who have been incredibly successful. However, I think that if you've done a bunch of cool stuff, but no one you really like cares that you did it, you're still not going to be very happy. Not that happiness is the end all be all, but it seems nice. Right. What I've been beating around, because I hate sounding cliche, is thank you.

So, a longish recap of the day:

Wake up the usual way, via Bane-Clock. No one has an alarm clock, so Dan opens his computer to a website that plays an alarm. The alarm he has selected is the Jaws theme song, which starts slowly in poor, synthesized form, until it grows to an almighty roar of computerized, shark-recalling terror. This wakes Dan up, and then he wakes me up, and we eat breakfast. Today was no exception.
Probably sent emails or gchatted or god knows what for a while after breakfast...
Got my work out on. There was a fairly hilarious episode involving some nurse trying to give me a physical so I could get a gym membership. Not wanting to spend a long time converting my height and weight into metric, I think I ended up as 5'4" weighing around 200 pounds. My blood pressure is pretty good though.
Got back from the work out, at which point my decided that breakfast hadn't been so good after all. Took a nap, felt immensely better.
Whenever your stomach is upset, you should eat something simple to settle it. I decided that a McNifico, I think the Arentinian version of a McDonald's Big and Tasty, would do the trick. Realized that it was my birthday so I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to. Ate McDonald's. Delicious.
Saw two dudes fighting on the walk to the bus. There was a fairly peaceful crowd watching. One picked up a brick, at which point the crowd sort of clicked in disapproval, and he guitily put the brick back down. The yelled for a little while more. One started walking away, and the other kicked him in the calf. I continued to the bus.
SEAT ON THE BUS THE WHOLE WAY SCORE
Was treated to a pint or whatever the hell volume measurement you eat ice cream in. Had fruta de bosque and durazna, where I learned that durazna means peach and you say "bosque" as "bo-que" and "durazno" as "dura-no".
Attempted to ride bus home. Realized that all the coins I thought I had were actually a combination of American, European, Canadian, and Turkish change. Poured all of these into the machine. The nimble-minded Argentinian bus engineers had forseen such trickery, and my UN assemblage of currency failed to produce a ticket. Eventually a crowd formed behind me, hudled between the door of the bus and the ticket dispenser. I mumbled something about billetes, waved about a $2 note, and then sat down. The bus driver must have realized it was my birthday as he didn't care. Either that or I have misunderstood another part of the bus-porteno entity.
Changed, rushed over to an alum's apartment for dinner. Was greeted by his butler on his floor of the building. Will need time to digest thought process of this evening later. Had one of my many Gatsby flashbacks. Discussed participation in societies with our host. Met some locals, received birthday cake, was told to cut birthday cake, mangled pieces of birthday cake, had birthday cake silently taken from me by a servant, who proceeded to cut beautiful pieces of cake in a methodical matter, like a craftsman stripping chunks of marble off a block to reveal the true underlying statue that lurked beneath the surface, tried to step onto balcony, told it was slippery and I would die, spent remainder of night inside, enjoying good company of friends. Went home in a cab.
Received cake round two in a surprise from kids in the program with me. Drank wine, played chess with Bane, blogged.

Alright, it has obviously been a busy day. Nico is soundly asleep, despite the bright lights, and Dan is doing that sniffing thing he does when he tries to sleep or when he's concentrating really hard. It is time for the picture of the day, a shot from last night with a completed Quilnes.

Note the triumphant look, the muscly thighs, the wine-filled coffee mug, and the omnipresent open computer.

Life is good. Here's to another 21 years (I'm not going to get greedy). I'll see you all at the singularity.

Also--

2009-06-09T00:17:00.000-04:00

There is a cafe named "Wham!" a few blocks from my apartment.

It's my birthday, goddamn it

2009-06-09T00:09:00.004-04:00

Yup. It's my birthday. I sort of forgot it; birthdays haven't really worked out for me in the past.

I'm a bit tipsy right now, as I consumed a liter of beer by myself, in addition to a moderate amount of wine. I probably shouldn't be that tipsy based on the amount I consumed, but life is short. Still not a good justification, but whatever. This is Tsega's fault. A quote follows the colon:

"For every minute after 12:21 that you have not finished that beer, I'm going to break something that you hold dear."
"Like...Nico?"
"Maybe."

To be clear, Nico is the roommate that is not Dan.

In the interest of making this an interesting post, and full disclosure, I may have had a dream a few nights ago that a certain significant person in my life was pregnant and instead of having a child, laid numerous eggs. The person then failed to sufficiently care for the eggs, which failed to hatch. Another significant person then was electrocuted in a hot tub. The person turned out fine afterwards, they may have been faking it. That is all.

POSTING FRENZY

2009-06-08T10:09:00.004-04:00

Alright, I've been reading some good articles lately and wanted to link to them. I'm also introducing a new feature that may soon die off if I get lazy. SO, to recap, or if you skipped this text and went immediately to the bullet points:

I've been reading some good articles lately
Introducing a new feature that may soon die off if I get lazy

GOOD ARTICLES:

The all about healthcare section... the first I highly, highly recommend, it's a very interesting article from the New Yorker. Makes some interesting points about healthcare, and most importantly, talks up the Mayo Clinic (yes, pronounced like the shorted version of "mayonaise") which is basically my home town. Thanks to Goff and Casey Blue for this one.

Healthcare Goodness!

Another article, which I received from someone from work, as we work on electronic medical records. An interesting perspective, the industry is going to blow up soon with all the money Obama is about to inject into it. Short, but a nice non-mainstream perspective.

EMR Goodness!

Finally... on the nature of blogging. My audience of 1. Don't know if I can follow this career, guys. My private life has become to public.

Blogging Goodness!

AND NOW... THE PICTURE OF THE DAY (CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL)

You can FB good pictures. I'll put whatever random pics I have here. My camera broke so I can't see what I'm taking a picture of, there's no viewfinder, just a broken screen.

So, this is one of me attempting to take a picture of a reflection of the word "espejo" in the mirror. Espejo means mirror, to be clear, and we labeled everything in our room w/ Spanish post-its. Also, looking at this picture after I put it on my computer is how I discovered that we have a hairdryer in our room. Sick.

Testosterace 6/7/09 Day 27

2009-06-08T09:58:00.002-04:00

6/5-- 340

Total- 7375

6/6-- 625

Total- 8000

6/7-- 520

Total- 8520

PUP'D- 315.5 (repeating)

So... I believe I'm actually starting to look pretty good from this. You can ask Dan. He's seen me shirtless. I would recommend the 50k push up challenge to anyone trying to, ya know, make Dan think your chest looks good.

You are creepy (a make your own post!)

2009-06-07T23:59:00.004-04:00

(Heyo\Yo\Sup thugslaya),

I've been (surprised\amused\awed\mildly interested) by the amount of (people\thugslayas) who say they (read\skim\endure) my blog. This is just a (friendly\desperate) reminder that (you are\Du Pont is) encouraged to comment. I don't think (you\ Du Pont) need an account, so you can post annonymously, if you're an (asshole\jackass\George). But basically I would love to hear from everyone. Think about the (hours/minutes) of (Trebuchet font/enjoyment/distraction/strange, voyeuristic pleasure that you don't think you should enjoy, but God, it feels so good, and I just can't stop reading. I don't even know who this fucking kid is, but my eyes flutter over his beautiful prose like the hands of a 15th century teenage-farmboy upon his bride, shaky and unsure, yet eagerly desirous of that which is to come. If this is wrong, then dear lord, perhaps my soul is not destined to remain in Your eternal palace, or to quote Billy Joel, I would rather laugh with the sinners than die with the saints. The sinners are much more fun. Virginia, only the good die young...) I've provided you. So try it out, write a post that (clamors for images of my newly developed, impressive pectorals/begs for photographs of my finely sculpted biceps/pleads for wacky shots of Dan, as well my jaunty grin perched in that chiseled face/tells me what you're up to). But also don't worry about it, I'm just glad you're reading it.

Sincerely,

(C/Chris/Riederererererer/Rieds)

Voy a Acabar

2009-06-07T20:09:00.005-04:00

After a long day of sleeping, with some PVZ thrown in just to mix things up, we went out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants of the trip, Dominga. It's in Palermo, which is actually a collection of smaller neighborhoods. In general, Palermo is pretty hip. The meal was beautiful and incredibly delicious. I had some excellent sushi, with a pyramid of panna cotta to top it off. Thanks Elena for the great pictures!

Also, yesterday was Argentina v. Colombia to qualify for the World Cup. Argentina won. It apparently was ridiculous to try to get tickets... one of my friends managed to secure tickets via some shady connections that I think involved him meeting people in long overcoats at a dock at mdinight. That's not entirely true, but also not entirely false.

After dinner, we went to Acabar, which means "to finish", optionally sexually, in Spanish. It's a good spot, a bunch of kitchsy decorations, and board games to be played for all. Dan and I completed the most epic game of checkers that has ever occured. Ever. There was also giant jenga, and we met some other Yale kids. Again, picspicspicspics coming.

I started writing this post about three hours ago, and we just need to finish it now. Also, I can smell Tsega's breath he is so close to me right now, so we'll post this so he can go sit back down and we can all just calm down.

Muzak

2009-06-06T19:48:00.003-04:00

In loving memory of George Singer, here are two techno songs that have been buzzing around in my head since going out on Wednesday:

Walking Away, by The Egg:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR3kNG4rcGc

I find the music video very entertaining

Infinity 2008, by Guru Josh Project (or something like that)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9KnuJZkBjg

Huzzah, Argentina beat Colombia 1-0.

Friday

2009-06-06T04:27:00.003-04:00

On the ride home, the bus stopped at one point. Everyone silently shuffled off, and waited for another bus to come along and pick them up. I attribute this to my growing belief that the bus system and citizens of Buenos Aires are some of sort of entertwined mental entity.

Went to a tango show. Fun.

Afterwards, went to a club. Met some people. Apparently, high schoolers stay out really late in Argentina.

Now... pvz?

Distractions

2009-06-05T10:07:00.003-04:00

Best flash game ever is called Plants v. Zombies. Ever. All I want to do is just kill these fucking zombies. Dammit. Why am I blogging when I could be killing zombies?

http://www.popcap.com/games/pvz

Thanks to B. Flo

Another enjoyable game is "The Space Game". No where near as good as PVZ, but has a nice aesthetic to it. For full disclosure, I have a strange love of dots with lines connecting them.

http://www.candystand.com/play/the-space-game

Thanks to Adam.

On a theme of video games, if you like consoles at all, here's a link to see the awesome looking technology for the PS3. It's like Wii on crack. Also, the engineers are delightfully nerdy and awkward.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/02/sony-announces-new-ps3-motion-controller/

I'm currently labeling everything in my room in Spanish, including my roommates, "El Nico" and "La Dan". Having something to do is the only thing stopping me from playing more PVZ.

Testosterace 6/4/09 Day 25

2009-06-05T10:01:00.003-04:00

6/3-- 275

Total-- 6620

6/4-- 415

Total-- 7035

PUP'D-- 281.4

Special thanks to the roommates for not yelling at me for my late night push ups.

Thought process on the bus

2009-06-04T23:48:00.004-04:00

Alright... 106, too crowded.
124? Too crowded. Sick, a near-empty 124 right behind it! Didn't stop. Don't run after it, C, then you'd look like a stupid American, and then Argentines would think all Americans are stupid. You're a representative of your country.
A packed 106? Let's go.
Ah, I see that I don't have to pay today. I don't know why, I don't care.
Maybe I don't have to pay because I'm a stupid American.
The girl standing next to me, like all girls in Argentina, is the most beautiful girl in the world. Why is she standing so close? DON'T SHOW INTEREST, she'll think you're just a horny American. You're a representative of your country.
Okay... can I read? Then they'll know I'm an American. I better look extra intelligent, being a representative and all.
Shit I should pay attention to the streets. I'll put the book back in my bag.
Wait, I have like 30 minutes. Let's get that book out.
WHERE AM I? Shit! Put away your book and concentrate!
Oh god, there a bunch of old people standing. Am I supposed to offer them my seat? What's the norm? Maybe they'll think I'm an asshole American... Okay, maybe if I get my book out and read it intently, they'll think I don't notice the old people standing.
The dude standing next to me has a hand on the seat in front of me, and a hand on my seat. I'm not positive if it's his briefcase, his coat, or his junk that's hitting me. Maybe this is like a milder form of the kissing thing? You just bump people when you can't kiss them because you can't move?
Alright, that's where I got off way too early yesterday. Yes, I am confident today. I have mastered the system. Just a few blocks, and I will stand up, push that button, and gloriously step off, mere paces from my apart. Callao is within sight, and--why are we turning?
Ah, I see. The bus is trying to keep as close to a 10 block radius from my apart.
Fuck it, let's get off at Santa Fe.
That old man... was he motioning to me? Was he saying sit down? Will I get us all killed if I try to stand up now?
Fuck! Can I make it the door in time? Will I have to shove this old woman? Maybe I can call out "stop!" in Spanish... hahaha.
Alright, I made it. Only ten blocks to walk. Better than yesterday.

Seriously, what's the deal with this country

2009-06-04T03:11:00.003-04:00

Today included

A journey across town to find cleats
A successful bus ride
A plan to go home at 6, make it to the frisbee fields at 7.30 to possibly join a team
My boss talking to me at 6, inviting me to his daughter's art show at 7
Dinner with my boss's family after the art show
In Spanglish, discussing "La SIDA" with my boss's wife
Return to the apart at 12.15
Seeing Casey Blue! Woohoo!
Consuming Fernet, the miracle drink of Argentina. It's made of water, alcohol, herbs, and magic. You don't get a hang-over, and if you drink it, you can fly!
Going out to the club "Asia de Cuba"
Rocking out to "Love is Gone"
On the way back, the cab driver stalling the car, then furiously tryin to get it working again, at which point he accidentally ripped the stickshift off the car.
More push ups

Testosterace 6/2/09 Day 23

2009-06-03T00:26:00.002-04:00

6/1-- 330

Total-- 5845

6/2-- 500

Total-- 6345

PUP'D-- 275.8689565

Since I didn't want to keep my roommates up, I had to go to an abandoned part of the hotel to finish. Dedication.

The Boss

2009-06-03T00:06:00.004-04:00

Work is absurd for a variety of reasons.

First, let me discuss my boss. I first met Richard when he sauntered into our hotel, found the Bulldogs sitting around, and introduced himself. That evening he took me and Sam, a fellow American, out for dinner. Dinner involved first driving to a hip part of town known as Palermo and finding a spot for appetizers. This was at about 8... over vermouth and a giant platter of delectables, we talked a bit about the company and some of the obvious questions associated with it...

Richard believes that the "age of the clock" is fading. That is, we won't need companies that are based entirely around strict 9-5 jobs, or logging hours and so forth. Thus, the programmers can work when they want to work, taking long breaks for mate or cigarettes, listening to death metal at full blast, coming in to work at 2 and finishing whenever. After my all-nighters in 323, I can understand the idea behind this. Additionally, the nation-state will soon go away. I'm not sure what this means for the companies location in Buenos Aires, but...

Back to my night. After appetizers, at which point I was filled, we went for dinner. A classic off-the-charts Argentine steakhouse, where I met Richard's family. I managed to mess up the whole cheek-kissing nonsense multiple times. Dinner ended and I got a ride back to the hotel.

Since the company does no business in Argentina, it doesn't need a physically impressive space, which is why it's located in what seem to be three older residential buildings. The purple walls do add a certain flair. I work in a room with two Brits and a local porteno, who are all just terrific office mates and make the whole time pretty fun.

Anyway, the boss is quite the interesting fellow. He's done many jobs, as a doctor and now as an entrepreneur. His ideas are probably a bit unusual in the business world, but it makes for a great work environment. Now if I could just figure out how to get to work...

GChat

2009-06-03T00:04:00.002-04:00

anonymous: bloody great > fucking great

anonymous: murder > sex

anonymous: erm

anonymous: nm

Shit.

2009-06-02T15:02:00.004-04:00

Just got to work. Missed my stop on the bus. Wasn't sure how far I'd gone, ended up taking it to the end, which is podunk BA. Managed to make my way back to the office. Hopefully I'll have better luck tomorrow.

Testosterace 5/30/09

2009-06-01T22:14:00.001-04:00

5/30-- 500

Total-- 5515

I'm also going to start keeping track of push-ups per day (PUP'D). We started on May 10th, making 5/30 day 21, so this gives us

PUP'D-- 262.619048

BA so far

2009-05-31T23:12:00.003-04:00

There's really too much going on to describe everything...

First off, I'm going to try very carefully not to describe everything in superlatives and speak about how much "better everything is than in America".

Last night, after meeting the other program people and getting into a hotel, we all napped (separately (or at least I didn't nap with anyone)) and then went out to eat. We ended up at a nice place about ten blocks away.

We each ordered a cazuela, which we assumed was a type of caserole. This was incorrect, when each of our meals showed up in a different form (one calzone, two stews, one backed potato thing). Seeing mondongo on the menu, one of us asked what it was. The waiter said a variety of words, which I interpretted to mean "minced chicken".

Best part of the meal: you could use crayons to draw on their paper tablecloth.

Most unexpected part of the meal: Mondongo actually means tripe (intestines).

ARGENTINE AMERICAN DIFFERENCES:

All pretty mundane things here, but...

COST-- Nice restaurant with appetizer, main course, wine, and dessert cost about US$11

SERVICE-- Waiters don't do the typical check in thing, so if you want dessert, the bill, etc. you have to track them down.

EATING TIME-- We got to the restaurant at 8.30, and were probably about an hour ahead of when most people showed up.

There have been many more occurances, such as a tour of the city and a night out with my boss and his family. Write about these later... my boss is picking me up to go to work tomorrow at 11:30.

Random Thought

2009-05-31T23:08:00.005-04:00

My roommate left his router in our room. Thus, I took it to Minnesota, to be returned to him at some future date. Our router is broken at home, so I have his set up. My dad has awkwardly paused whenever he mentions the new wireless network in our house, probably because it kept the same name as in our dormroom, which is "lick my carpet".

GChat

2009-05-31T00:04:00.003-04:00

Anonymous Friend: hope argentina's great!

talk to you when

i'm

sober?

Anonymous Friend is offline. Messages you send will be delivered when she comes online.

Testosterace 5/29 & 5/30

2009-05-30T23:20:00.001-04:00

Today-- Oh my god my body

Total-- 5015

Sore and traveling. Hopefully we'll get some more in tomorrow.

The Argentine Ultimate Journey (TAUJ)

2009-05-30T14:33:00.004-04:00

The Bulldogs in Buenos Aires people and I are all sitting in the lobby of our hotel. Some of them have been here since 10am or so... apparently our rooms are not yet ready.

The journey here was fairly uneventful... here are the highlights

I think the first mate bet the pilot that he couldn´t make the little kid behind me throw up during the flight. The pilot won the bet.
In the Minneapolis airport I saw a little kid who was wearing a monkey backpack. The monkey had a tail which doubled as a leash. Awesome.
The flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta had a large ¨raft¨ compartment in the ceiling. I´m not sure if opening this compartment would release a raft in the airplane. I can just picture a group of stewardesses in a sinking plane inflating the raft and then looking around... ¨Um... now what?¨
At the airport in Santiago, I wanted to be sure that my baggage had been transferred. I walked up to the counter of my next flight. The man at the desk said something uninteligible in Spanish, took my passport, and then began frantically making calls on his cell phone, typing, and contacting people over his walkie-talkie. Although I hadn´t said anything to him, he assured me ¨There is no problem with your baggies¨. I ended up waiting to get on the plane, and eventually he gave me a ticket and said everything was fine.
As I was following my taxi driver to the car I noticed a mother holding a little kid. On the back of the little kid was A BACKPACK SHAPED LIKE A MONKEY. Same little kid? Maybe. Same packback? Maybe. Is this mother-son duo following me across the Americas? Fosho.
When I entered the cab to my apartment, the music softly playing was "Why They Call it the Blues" by Elton John. He turned it up when "All She Wants" by Ace of Base came on.

Pre-Depature

2009-05-29T03:45:00.002-04:00

Well, it's 2:49am here, and packing hasn't exactly started yet. I leave at around 3:30pm tomorrow/today so I should have some time.

I'm a person who doesn't get dramatically blown away by anything, unless I've just had a cup of coffee. My most recent cup was almost 6 hours ago now so I'm fairly calm, and I think tomorrow should go smoothly. My main hope is that I don't somehow get myself mugged and killed while leaving the airport.

I'm reading some of the books my boss asked me to read. They're all about advertising. Interesting. We'll see how much programming I do this summer...

Alright, after a day of tennis, push ups, a stupid scheme to get a working camera in Buenos Aires that cost about $70, foodcourts, Radioshack, heartfelt conversations with good friends, Clue, Guinness, HBO, pizza, Barnes and Noble, and my mom asking me to tell her about "my flings", I think I've had a decent amount of America to remember for the next few months.

Testosterace 5/28/09

2009-05-29T03:33:00.001-04:00

Today-- 1015

Total-- 5015

A good day. George would be proud. I only need 45 more days like this and I'm done!

Trip of America

2009-05-29T03:22:00.005-04:00

Yesterday I went up to St. Paul to chill with fellow Yale Ultimate All-Star Chelsea "Charks" Willet. The main events of the day were re-exploring my youthful memories of the Mall of America and watching Star Trek in the mall's movie theater. Quickies:

Whilst in Legoland, Chelsea "Deadeye" Willet spotted someone wearing a "Say What Saybrook" shirt, which turned out to be Craif Kafura, who had wandered out of the Squiche to visit his girlfriend in Minneapolis.
Holy shit Star Trek was awesome
I made a brown penis out of legos at legoland, but on the suggestion of Chelsea "Nunsense" Willet, I turned it into a dragon face.
I discovered in ENGL 120 that they used to keep a horde of mentally handicapped adults in the basement of the mall, who used to sort through trash to pick out recyclables. They got less than minimum wage pay. Thanks for destroying my childhood, Richard Deming.
I have never taken another English class at Yale
Chelsea "Hooter-Lovin'" Willet loves Hooters:
Check out this lego Apotosaurus, with a lego plane flying above it.
I ate the most delicious burger ever for dinner, and fell asleep about 20 minutes afterwards.

Testosterace 5/27/09

2009-05-28T12:47:00.002-04:00

Today-- 30

Total-- 4100

So, I spent the vast majority of the day driving, being entertained by Chelsea Willet, and watching Star Trek. I didn't want to bust out too many push ups while Kirk was battling the Romulans. Today though (the 28th) is going well. I'd like to do a George Singer day (1000).