Gender: Male
Status: Married
Age: 55
Sign: Cancer
City: There are only 50 citizens in
Country: PN
Signup Date: 8/31/2006
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Thursday, June 25, 2009
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I told my wife about the last blog
I posted. Like a Homer Simpson d'oh! I realized I had missed a
great headline. Yes, Dangus, I realize I'm slipping in my old age.
But hey, you missed it too. Hence today's.
Better?
Suddenly, from the punishing,
positive-ion, dusty pre-rainy-season heat of mountainous Michoacán,
Mexico, we found ourselves in winter. Balmy at midday, but brutally
cold the first night, on the ocean shore, in a house made of concrete
block. Our friends here gave us some firewood for a night, then we
bought a few armloads of nice dry eucalyptus for $4, and got a toasty
fire going in a corner fireplace that looks like it should be only
decorative. Sweet!
The first night I got into bed first,
and when my wife came in she exclaimed you're on my side of the
bed!?
Don't you remember the a-frame?
I asked. Yes, it had been a while, but she immediately got the
reference – the a-frame we rented sight unseen two blocks (and
100+ steps) from the beach in Lincoln City, Oregon, and moved to
from West Germany almost 23 years ago. We bought a pickup load of
'dry' alder for the wood stove that was anything but (hissing
ain't a good sign), and I made trips to Portland in our Datsun
diesel pickup that included scavenging broken oak pallets and cutting
them up, so we could survive the winter. Still, the upstairs bedroom
was cold as (fill in the blank), and I got in the habit of
warming her side of the bed before she came up.
Probably as close
as I've ever gotten to being romantic.
Anyway, we're staying here in Uruguay
in the same little house we rented in March, this time opening the
windows during the day to let in the warmth instead of closing
them to preserve coolness.
We're again driving a rented Fiat Siena for a month; this time it's
silver instead of red. We arrived without a reservation, and they
said it would be $1,050; when we said hey we paid less than that
in March the friendly lady made a phone call and suddenly it was
the same $940 we paid in March, for a month.
Yes, that's a lot of money, but while
there are bargains here, cars aren't among them. Steve and Diane,
again our neighbors, who originally arranged for our rental of this
house in March, recently bought a 1977 VW Beetle (only two owners,
somewhat remarkable) for only...yes, only...(drum roll,
please)...US$2,900. Not because
it's a collectible, but because it's, well, a car.
And, last I checked, gasoline in Uruguay is the most expensive in the
world.
Last
trip, we visited Harold, who bought a place in the country with his
wife – 55 hectares, over 100 acres – and among other things,
wondered about bringing in his 10 year old Mercedes from Texas. The
Aduana (customs)
pondered this and decided that his Mercedes was probably worth
$140,000 when he bought it new, ten years ago. Thus, they concluded,
his import duty for Uruguay would be (drum roll, please)
$140,000.
So he drives a 'Deer'
pickup. A $22,000 Chinese Toyota knockoff, best I can tell.
Hence
the plethora of rattling, crabwise-rolling, listing semi-wrecks that
present themselves daily here, often in the process of being
overtaken by shiny new models at breathtaking and dangerous speeds.
There's one road from Montevideo, the capitol of 1.5 million people,
to Punta del Este, one of the
places to be in summer. Seriously, in the world.
The filthy rich glitterati keep places there, and in summer –
December through January
– well, stay tuned. We're told the sleepy little 'burb of maybe
2,000 souls where we're buying our $53,000 house three blocks from
the beach, swells to 15,000 or more as the tsunami of porteños
arrives from Buenos Aires, three hours away, during the summer
months. The wealthier jet in to PdE, perhaps destined for little
towns beyond.
Carlos Slim, owner
of Mexico's only telephone company (basically given to him by the
corrupt president in 1994) and one of the richest people in the
world, and Madonna, and many others whom I don't even know, summer in
Punta del Este.
It's only a couple
hours from us, but that's plenty far for now.
Even further from
here - an hour from where we live in Mexico:
Cambio de
Michoacán (Morelia, Michoacán) 6/16/09
Found by the hamlet of Zumpimito, a
few miles south of Uruapan, Mich.: the bodies of two men, each
dismembered into ten parts including tongues and genitals. This is
the same place where three other bodies were found a few days ago who
had had a large “Z” carved into their chest
Uruguay remains
pleasantly unexciting. We take possession of our bungalow tomorrow.
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Wednesday, June 17, 2009
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This is a nightmare, my wife
said.
No, I corrected her, this
could be a nightmare. Right now it's only a pain in the ass.
We'd left the house
a little past 7 AM, in the capable hands of Nacho and his huge Dodge van. With 250 pounds of baggage, two pet carriers with a cat and dog,
the latter pushing the 100-pound limit, five hours later and some
wonderful Spanish practice (seriously, Nacho speaks clearly, and
even when he gave an example of someone speaking very fast, I
understood exactly – contrast that to Uruguay, but never mind,
there will be time, there will be time...).
At the airport in Mexico City, the porters flung
the cages out of the bag of the van, freaking out the dog, piled them
onto a hand truck and tipped them back at a 30-degree angle, spilling
the water and animals inside, and left them at the front of the long line at Copa
(Panamá) Airlines. Finally our time came, and I hoisted the animals
over the scales, lugged the immense suitcases up. They asked for the
animals' certificates, and my wife produced the required vet
documentation.
No, sorry, no can
do – you have to go downstairs (one of us will go with you) to get
the official certificate. If you don't, when you arrive your animals
could be quarantined or even put down. (Come ON, I'm thinking,
have you ever been to Uruguay? What a joke!)
But no, in the
Estados Unidos de México, We take Ourselves seriously, so a new
porter who looked a half a skip from the grave struggled with our
animals down the elevator, where Nacho enjoyed chatting with the very
attractive young woman from Copa, and we waited. And waited. Finally
it developed that the animlas could go back upstairs, and I alone,
having signed the papers, would wait for the certificates.
Instead the
Official came out and with our vet records, and patiently explained
that I needed copies of the datos and vacunas recientes
of the animals.
Where do I get copies
I asked.
Maybe at the gasolinera
to the right out the end of the terminal,
he replied.
I made
a rule not to run in airports 20 years ago or so, after I refused to
run with a group of transferring passengers who would have seen, had
they been in less of a hurry, that they were scampering past the
correct gate for the connecting flight, which was not
the gate they'd been told. I did walk a little quickly, and halfway
down the terminal a Cope manager caught the señor,
who explained in his practiced Spanish what he was trying to do. The
manager, slightly panicked, took me back up to the checkin area,
where the Pretty Young Thing and I went upstairs to a Copa office
with a copy machine and she made the copies, then we hurried down two
floors where I ran – yes, ran – through the arrival area to
deliver the papers to some lackadaisical babe who worked security for
employees, and who, hearing that we had very little time, did her
most relaxed saunter (reminiscent of those fat ex-Walmart TSA
employees who are part of the reason I refuse to fly in the land of
the Untied Snakes of America) back to the squeaking door behind which
hunkered the Official.
Pretty
Young Thing and I waited, and waited, she occasionally receiving
urgent phone calls on her cell, telling me we had only ten
minutes. This was starting to annoy me. But finally a minion of the
offical walked through the squeaky door and up the short corridor in
slow motion, and handed me the papers, and which point PYT and I ran
back upstairs, and we were shunted off to the boarding area.
Before we could get
to the security check, the Person in Charge of Checking Boarding
Passes did her best imitation of a tree sloth confirming our right to
cross the threshold. Compared to her, the minion of The Official
might have been a wind sprinter.
Dropping boarding
passes, pulling out the laptop, though the xray, stuffing everything
back in, I made it through, but with my wife the entire airport
shut down.
No, not exactly,
but it might as well have. She has a piece of art, a glass head, that
she bought in Italy maybe 30 years ago, before I met her. It's been
with her ever since, and she wanted to take it in a carry-on for
safety. Well, this was just a Little Too Much for the xray people,
and they called for the next rank above, and the attentive Copa
manager suddenly appeared.
I took
our FM3s (Mexican residence visas) to Inmigracion
to get us 'checked out' of the country, and when I returned (my
document signed, my wife's not; apparently they were a little more
relaxed) the glass head issue was finally resolved. Turns out the
Customs Official who appeared didn't want to let the head out of the
country (it came in, by the way, approved with our household goods,
though of course I didn't have that document with me). The motivated
and efficient Cope manager managed to talk his way through this bit
of inanity, and we were on our way.
Remarkably, we
weren't the last people to board the plane.
We saw
the animals loaded onto the plane, still a little nervous about our
thirty-eight minute connection
in Panama City, but we basically walked off one plane onto another,
and saw the animals loaded onto the second plane.
Six
and a half hours later (4 AM), prior to arrival, we're handed
Uruguyan customs forms, passport forms, and long 'health status of
visitors' forms. Here we go,
I think, with the fabled Uruguayan bureaucracy...
We
climb down stairs off the plane, onto a bus, short ride to the
terminal, stand in line maybe seven minutes before going effortlessly
through passport control, find our animals, load them and suitcases
onto trolleys while a porter who helped makes friends with the
animals and reminds us of his propinita
(little tip), which he finally gets in the form of Mexican pesos
(somewhere, buried in our gear, lie Uruguyan pesos, but it will be
hours before we locate them).
Within ten minutes
of entering the baggage area, we're greeted by our Canadian friend
Syd, who assures us that our German friend Eddie is on his way. No
one has looked at the health forms, and the customs agent showed not
the slightest interest in our moving mountain of baggage. The people
who xrayed carry-ons likewise took absolutely no interest in the
mysterious glass head entering the Oriental Republic. Do I need to
add that absolutely no one gave a shit about the animals' papers?
Welcome to Uruguay.
Aside from Syd
hitting a bump in the parking lot and dumping both animals in their
cages (by now they're old hands; this doesn't concern them
particularly), the rest goes smoothly.
¡Viva Uruguay! ¡Ch---a Mexico!
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Thursday, May 28, 2009
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By Barbara L. (from this source.) "The Missiles ,the bombs the helicopter gunships etc.etc.all carried Jewish symbols and yet we can't refer to them as being Jewish without it being antisemitic." Do you remember when the word "nice" that used to MEAN something? Or "gay" was a happy light feeling rather than a sexual deviance? It is my belief that if a word is misused enough that its TRUE intention is lost, or if it is abused enough especially at the cost of truth and ethics, then USE IT. In today's world I am proud to call myself antisemitic if it means I can say, "YES, these bombs are from Israel courtesy of the States, and YES they were kissed by pretty little Jewish girls from Israel." If being antisemitic means I can say what was done in Gaza by the Talmudic Zionist-driven satanic rabbinical leaders and the IDF and IOF, then I will choose antisemitism. If being antisemitic means I can say I side with the victims instead of the oppressors, victims being driven into extinction for political greed and religious hatred, then I am proud to be antisemitic. If I curse a caterpillar tank adorned with the star of David tearing down a Palestinian farm and centuries old olive groves being ripped up and sold elsewhere, throwing entire families into poverty, then call me antisemitic. If being antisemitic means calling a spade a spade and saying, You are starving the people of Gaza and sending back 250 tons of food and boats of medical necessities; they are dieing because of your brutality", then I am antisemitic. If I boycott and advocate the boycott of Israeli goods, I am proudly antisemitic. If I weep for handsome young Bessem Ibrahim Abu Rahmeh, slaughtered at Bilin for calling out "Listen we have children and Israelis with us", or decry the murder of Rachel Corie, the attack on Tristan Anderson, then I am antisemitic. If I point a finger at those behind all this, say the Mossad is largely behind 911, or that the Jews attacked the USS Liberty and Israelis are the greatest terrorists of all, behind the Bolshevik Red Terror that killed 100 000 000 Christians and Catholics, now living in a nation built on theft and nourished on blood, I am antisemitic. And if I point to the terrorism that is rife in America, created by B'nai Brith that is an arm of the Freemasons of Scottish Right Illuminati, NOT JEWISH in final goals, and controls AIPAC as well as the ADL and JDL, and works to change our western society and subjugate us all to NWO conditioning, then I am again proudly antisemitic. If I point out that most of the Jews in Israel are NOT of semitic blood, but are Ashkenazim from Europe, Russia, North America, Africa, etc etc, then I am antisemitic. Now THAT one really confuses the hell out of me! This word "antisemitic" is overused to the nth degree whenever one becomes dangerous to the status quo's wishes. I have done my homework for 40 years and no longer buy the lies. By the way, I also am a humanist enough to thoroughly appreciate anyone who has a good soul and heart no matter where they come from or what their race so do not call me a hater of the Jews or Americans or anyone else. There are great movers and shakers for the peace movement from all parts of the globe. It is the Zionist owned media that keeps everyone from knowing of their existence. I reserve my antisemitism for the criminals amongst us who use that word "antisemitism" like a sword to cut with and a shield to hide behind as they kill and ruin the young men of our country by sending them out to destroy others while they sit back and profit and wait for the arrival of Lucifer and their evil New World Order. Until people begin to THINK about things this way and stop CARING about such labels, these creatures will continue to suck our life source and kill with impunity the innocent of the planet. And get away with it. I also believe, if we are still around, 10 ~ 15 years from now, those of us who have NOT stood up and spoken out and said, YES, I am antisemitic, I stand for decency and human values, we will feel, deep in our souls, shamed.
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
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I've been clearing out old bookmarks and email today - every once in a while I get in the mood, and it does have a refreshing feel about it. So I thought I'd share a few links. First, email: Empty Your Inbox with the Trusted Trio. I'm trying this - we'll see. Food: It's time to get serious about food (storage) Sprouts and microgreens: edible houseplants 7 Tearfully-Pleasing Uses for Onions Master your grill Of course I could burden you with dozens more, but I'll guess you might find something inspiring or encouraging here.
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
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Tuesday, May 05, 2009
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Sunday, May 03, 2009
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My wife's original Mac Mini came bundled with an Epson C86 color inkjet
printer. I've never been too impressed with the idea of inkjet
printers, but this did make some nice prints, and it was a treat to
have a break from black and white. The printer was fine for
about a year and a half, then it started having problems with clogged
print heads, which involved copious amounts of expensive ink to clear -
except that they didn't clear, no matter how many times you ran the
cleaning cycle, emptying the precious ink cartridges. Eventually
it only printed blue and black, yet amazingly we included it in the
pickup-truck load of stuff we moved with us to Mexico two years ago. A
few days ago we dug it out of a closet, and I wondered how I might
creatively dispose of it. Surely someone would find a way to make it
work? But then I did some research, and was
stunned to learn that this printer was so bad there was actually a
class-action lawsuit against Epson because of it. Everyone's story was
the same - 12-18 months (if that) of beautiful prints, and then the heads clogged
and the machine was useless. The positive reviews on Amazon obviously came from people who hadn't owned one that long. Longer than that, the chorus sang 'piece of junk.' I started to put it in the trash,
but curiosity got the better of me, and so I challenged myself to take
it apart as much as possible without breaking anything.  In
the upper right, you can see the inch-deep base with absorbent pads for
collecting all the splattered, dripped, oversprayed ink. What a mess. I lost interest once I had most of it apart, but it made for a fun hour or so. Which
reminds me of the pastor who delivered a fiery sermon on the subject of
carnal sin, pointing out that a lifetime in hell was a large price to
pay for an hour of pleasure, after which a man in the congregation
approached him humbly and asked, 'How do you make it last an hour?'Hope you do something fun for an hour today =P
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009
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1) Cinnamon - http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=5884&blz=1
 2) Microdyn disinfectant - http://www.geocities.com/compu_dr/cinco/more.htm#Microdyn%20english
Common in Mexico for washing vegetables. I'd always assumed it was made with iodine because of its color, but it turns out it's not! Odd that the country with bad water should have a ready-made solution ;-) Don't know if it's sold in the land of the Untied Snakes.
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Sunday, April 12, 2009
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Last couple days we've been sitting outside, enjoying the departure of the punishing afternoon heat. Dry season here peaks in May, then the rains come in June and lettuce grows great - we harvested last year in August! (If that means nothing to you, you better start learning how to grow some of your own food ;-) Views from the back porch:  
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Sunday, March 22, 2009
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 Chemtrails. Haven't seen one in three weeks in Uruguay.
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