keith olbermann on rudy giuliani

Saw this Special Comment on Crooks and Liars just now and thought I'd share it. You go, Keith Olbermann.

what's the capital of the united states?

A couple of days ago I got into a taxi and, unusually, there was classical music playing. My first thought was, "Hm, what's up here? This cabbie must be well-educated, I wonder why he's a cabbie." I caught myself right away in the elitism and snobbishness of that thought and chastised myself for it, but another thing happened a couple of minutes later to smack me awake even more. The guy started talking to me, apparently I look like a guy he knows who studies theater, so he asked me what I studied, and where. The conversation kept going for a few minutes, and he asked where I lived in the States. I told him, "Maryland, al lado del capital," which is my standard answer. Generally people nod and say, "Oh, okay." But this guy said, "So, near Massachusetts?" and I said, "No, not really," and he said, "So, like in the middle of the country" and I said, "No, it's on the coast, near the middle of the coast but not in the middle of the country." And he said, "What's the capital of the United States again?" I answered right away, obviously, but I was really taken aback. But this is the reality of being from the States. I assumed, unconsciously, because we're the most powerful, because our culture is the most widely disseminated, that everyone must know where our capital is, and what it's called. As soon as I thought about it, I realized how ridiculously self-centered and snooty THAT thought is. I resolved to make a greater effort to break out of the North-America-centric, culturally elitist mindset that, like it or not, I'm in.

Another recent observation: I use the word "fuck" more than most. I think this follows from my general tendency to talk about everything in extremes; either I love it so much I get choked up when I think about it or it makes me want to choke on my own vomit I hate it so much. I wish sometimes, without wanting to, that my natural tendency was to be a little cooler about stuff, but at the same time, I know that this is just how I am. Just because the idea that "Let It Burn" by Usher is the greatest song ever written is patently absurd, doesn't mean that I don't mean it when I say it. In the throes of things that I feel passionately about, or things that I've just learned, in that very moment, whatever it is IS this greatest thing since sliced bread. And, being the most extreme of words, "fuck" makes sense. And yes, I realize that I just said I feel passionately about "Let It Burn."

Speaking of which, here's still another recent observation: I have a serious weak spot for corny love/breakup songs, which I tend to get obsessed with one by one. "Let It Burn," "Everywhere" by Fleetwood Mac, "These Words" by Natasha Bedingfield, "Girl" by Beck, "By Your Side" by CoCo Rosie, etc.

Anyhow, I'm going to travel this weekend, because we've got Monday and Tuesday off school for May Day (woohoo!). Vale and I got tickets to Mendoza, right over the border in Argentina, but once we're there we're going to see about moving on to Cordoba, which by all accounts is a super-cool place. We leave tomorrow afternoon at 1:40, which means that right now I've gotta go pack. I wanted to go to yoga this afternoon, too, but I jammed my finger playing frisbee last night and the idea of pressing my hands into the ground, flat or otherwise, sounds pretty awful right now. So yeah. I'll see about writing in Mendoza/Cordoba, and I'll definitely have some pics to show for it.

i started tutoring

Not for money...of course...that would be illegal...Anyhow I went up to La Dehesa on Saturday morning to give my first lesson to Ricardo and Daniela. It went pretty well, although I didn't really know what to expect in terms of their material or what they need to work on. This weekend I will be much better prepared. I ate lunch there and then spent the rest of Saturday, through to Sunday morning, at the Diazes, hanging out with Rocío and Juanita and Wence and Paloma. We watched "Mississippi Burning," which was pretty good but left me with a very different feeling than I think it was trying to give. The way the story is told, the end is supposed to feel like a victory for Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman and the forces of light, but I couldn't help but feel the smallness and futility of their efforts in the grander scheme of things.

There was a small earthquake here on Sunday morning around 6:30, but it didn't even wake me up. Apparently, however, I am a freak about earthquakes, because I never feel them and everyone always shakes their heads at my insensitivity. Scott, a guy who had played frisbee with us for months while he was working at NESsT, had a goodbye brunch at Starbucks on Sunday. It was good to see him again, he'd been traveling for a while. It foreshadowed a little my own leaving. His girlfriend, Sarah, who also plays frisbee, told us that night that it was really hard for him and that he cried in the airpot. On that note, frisbee on Sunday was fantastic. It's been really chilly the past couple of days, which made for perfect frisbee weather up at Nido de Aguilas. I played really well, for once, although my team lost for the second week in a row due in large part to the overconfidence of a couple of new people. A friend of Rene-the-ridiculously-good-Venezuelan played and definitely got it into his head that he was capable of long-distance endzone puts, which was frustrating for Rene and Franco and me, who can actually throw. But hey, it's pickup, we barely keep score, and it was still really fun. Tortilla Factory afterwards was delicious as usual and then Sarah came from the airport and her, Felipe, Carlos and I went out for a beer and played 20 questions to keep her spirits up. I got home around 10:45, showered, ate a bit of dinner and came over to Vale's. She had gotten back a couple of hours earlier from the COPA La Serena trip, which she had been dreading but ended up enjoying. I guess that's how those things usually work out.

Today was uneventful, except that I'm a jackass and didn't get to yoga because I took a nap and set my alarm for 16:45 instead of 18:45, intending, obviously, to get up at 6:45. So I woke up at 8:35 on my own instead of 6:45. Real smart, Luke. And now I'm going to do some reading and go to sleep. Good times. Good night.

oh man

I was lucky and privileged enough to be watching this live... In case you're not a big soccer fan, and I'm guessing most of the people who read this blog aren't, you may not have heard about it, but Lionel Messi, a young (my age) Argentine superstar who plays for FC Barcelona, scored a goal against Getafe the other day that was almost identical to his compatriot Diego Maradona's "Goal of the Century" against England in the 1986 World Cup. Watch and be awed. Absolutely incredible.

tom tomorrow

Never ceases to simultaneously crack me up and depress me at the same time.

This week's strip

i don't like when everyone uses the american flag to make themselves look dignified and important

It's just kind of tacky and stupid. The American flag should not be associated with any organization other than the United States of America. Come up with your own damn logo. I am crotchety and 176 years old. Also, no one, but no one, should have the name of their college or any associated logo tattooed onto their body. There is literally nothing tackier, except maybe the logo of a professional sports team. Except those badasses in BA who have the Boca Juniors logo on their biceps or something. That's cool, if a little insane. There's a reason the Boca/River games have 20-foot fences and huge dry moats surrounding the field.

Anyhow, life is going swimmingly. I had a good weekend...I went up to Cecilia and Rodrigo's house, had a good time with them and Vale. On Sunday morning Vale and I hiked up a big hill way up there with great views, cows and horses and even a hawk that flew really close to us as we were climbing. I tried to get a picture but, well, it's a fast-moving bird. Here's a couple views from the walk:











After frisbee on Sunday, a bunch of us went and got smoothies and then when I got home, I showered, ate Kiko's delicious cazuela and fell asleep with my clothes and the lights on on top of my blankets at about 11. Yesterday I didn't have class, but I read a lot all day and then went to yoga, which was great. Today was uneventful, except for the first clause of the next sentence; I went to class, which was cancelled, waited around for my other class, which was kind of boring, then came to Vale's, where I've been ever since. I talked to Mom and Dad, which was great, and left a happy birthday message for Uncle John, and soon I'm going to go home and eat and go to bed. These sentences are dry because Vale's watching "Friends" and it's really distracting. Oh man. That's enough for now, I promise a more interesting post soon.

the 200th post

So I've reached my third hundred, exactly 340 days, six hours and 41 minutes after my first post. I've decided to use this post to put up a few way overdue pictures of my new (now not-so-new) house and family, along with a really funny thing I found online thanks to Bill Simmons' blog The Sports Guy. First that:

Step 1: Go to Google Maps
Step 2: Click on "Get directions"
Step 3: Put "New York, NY" for the starting point and "Paris, France" for the ending point
Step 4: Scroll down to step 23

Now, here are the pictures:


View from across the street. My window is the open one on the second floor.


Kitchen


Living room


From left: Shiva, Pili, Gabriel, Kiko, Pilar. The females live in the house, the males are serious pololos. But they're around all the time and basically part of the family.

One more thing, because I am a gigantic dork: the Wikipedia entry on 200.

in which i hate my parents

I'm going bald. It's official. I hate you, Mom and Dad. Whichever of you passed on this gene. My life is over.

immigration

It really pisses me off when I read something about some idiot congressman or pundit ranting about illegal immigration and how it's destroying our country. In fact, I can barely read the Samuel Huntington articles we're supposed to read for Armed Conflict, even though his work in the area is seminal and has nothing to do with immigration to the States per se, because all I can think about when I see his name is the headline "José, can you see" on the cover of Foreign Affairs. Racist, racist, racist. We're ALL immigrants, you fucking morons! Practically no one in our country has roots going back more than a hundred or two hundred years. We should be welcoming immigrants with open arms, we should be learning Spanish and Chinese and Arabic, and instead we're getting our panties in a bunch about the "brown tide" and how Spanish is going to dilute our supposedly "pure" American English culture. One of the reasons Vale doesn't want to go to the States in July for her friend's wedding is because of the horror stories her friends (including Isa) tell about going through customs as non-natives. It's shameful.

picking classes

Finally got my enrollment appointment, am trying to figure out what to take next semester. It's a gigantic pain in the butt. More on this tomorrow after I register.

sorry for not posting this week

I've been pretty busy and also every time I've sat down to write a post I've gotten distracted by something or other. But anyhow, continuing in the theme of the past couple of weeks, I'm feeling good these days. Classes and readings are still all very interesting, although the latter are high in volume and appear to be getting more so. But that's all right, I can't really complain. On Thursday night, we (me, Vale, Lindsay U, Matt and Kelly D) went to Miles for the birthday of its owner, Moncho Romero. It was a fantastic show, including the best jazz I've seen in Chile, hands down. There were 15 or 20 musicians in all, playing in different configurations throughout the night, which lasted more than four hours, but the best was the first, the Cristian Cuturrufo quintet plus Moncho on piano and Monchito Romero on clarinet. Cuturrufo is Chile's best trumpet player, has recorded with all the best Chilean jazzistas (Pancho Molina, Angel Parra, Valentin Trujillo) and he and his group were absolutely fantastic. And at the end everyone in the packed house got cake.

Earlier on Thursday, classes ended at PUC at 1, so instead of going to my afternoon class (Armed Conflict), I went up to the Centro Cultural Matucana 100, which has ads all over the metro for this video exhibit called "Repeat/All" with artists from Afghanistan, Iran, Finland, the States and Spain, among others. When I got there it was closed for lunch break, so I went across the street to the Santiago Public Library, which I guess I must have known existed but never really thought anything of. The book culture here is nonexistent because books are so, so expensive, as I've complained about before, so I was surprised first of all by the size of the building's facade (huge). I was even more surprised--floored, even--when I went inside and discovered that the collection is huge, the building is beautifully designed and easy to use, there are computers and free wi-fi everywhere and tons of people, even in the middle of the day on a Thursday, walking in and out. I didn't get a look at the stacks, but I'll be back. I sat down there and tried to write a post about it because I'd lugged my laptop around all day thinking to get it set up to use at PUC (hah!) and figured I might as well use it. Obviously I was not successful. Anyhow, around 2:15 I walked back across the street and really liked the exhibit. Hungry as I was, I only stayed about 45 minutes, but I'll definitely be back to check it out with some more time and a full stomach. Maybe above how much I liked Matucana 100 and the library, it felt really good to be exploring a part of Santiago I don't know at all, namely, Quinta Normal. I suppose I've been surprised to find, more and more since my solo expedition to Puno in Peru, that I really like exploring and finding out new places on my own. You can't learn something for someone else, I suppose, and while it's definitely fun and rewarding and all that to share new experiences, sometimes it's better for me to just go alone, at my own pace, seeing what I want to see, with no schedule or obligation to anyone else.

Friday was Good Friday, and as a result there was absolutely no one on the street. No one, at 1:30 in the afternoon it felt like 4 in the morning on a weeknight. But Katy and April called and I went to go hang out with them and their friends Taylor and Kelly (I think that's her name). We met up at Baquedano, walked through Parque Forestal to Lastarria, hung out in Cafe Utopia for a while drinking coffee and tea and things, and then went up Santa Lucia. It was a nice afternoon. Around 7, we met up with a friend of April's from high school, who's apparently studying here, too, bought a few bottles of wine and went back to his house in Pedro de Valdivia. I just realized how many names of places there are in the past two sentences. Six. Five in the first one. That's quite a few. Whatever. I'd give a play-by-play of the rest of the night, but it really wasn't that interesting and involved a lot of different places and movements. The one overwhelmingly cool fact of the night was that I met a girl studying here who was one of the childhood best friends--and still neighbors--of...drumroll...Judy Wexler. OooooWHAAAAT?!?! And, as if that wasn't a freakish enough coincidence, just as she was starting to tell me about the video she and Judy and some other of their friends made to "Tell Me What You Want" by the Spice Girls, that song came on whatever mix was playing at the house we were at. Insane.

Today has been very laid back. I got up, ate breakfast, read a bit of European Political Economy (Polani's The Great Transformation), took a shower, shaved, read some more, ate lunch, watched the end of the Chelsea-Tottenham game (1-0, Chelsea), read some more, did a few yoga exercises that I'm learning, and came down to this here internet cafe. Good times. Vale's mom is visiting and Vale called to invite me to dinner with the two of them at 8, but it's not quite five now and I've got nothing to do but read or something. I'll run when it cools off a little more, maybe around six. Tomorrow there's frisbee and more reading, and maybe calling home. I'm gonna call that a post, and I promise to try and write a little more regularly.

good weekend

I am happy and content. I can't remember the last time I felt like this, peaceful and comfortable and full, and it's wonderful.