painting a good picture

aaaah, that last post brought back memories. memories of what? spite. yeah, that's right, my 'good times' often result from spite. spite done unto me, or my spite smiting others. anyway, it was all in good fun, and all a thing of the past now...(will continue indefinitely)

....

It's winter, 2002, and I'm finishing up university in lethbridge. I have 2 roommates, one being an avid hunter, bush supporter, and general right winger. we clashed. we got along really well, we just couldn't discuss politics, hunting, etc. without eventually arguing.

anyway, it's cold outside, as it's winter. he's getting ready to go killing some coyotes with his friend. obviously, we start arguing. so, being as there were two of them and 1 of me (as is usual), they thought it would be great to take me outside, with no socks, and hold me in the snow. They held me for 2 or 3 minutes, but in -25 weather, with no shoes or socks, it's sufficient to freeze your feet well. So, I was in pain, and eventually lost my temper...at which point they let me go.

They went hunting, and I went upstairs to run my feet under warm water. I went into his room, with the intention of peeing in the corner or something, but thought better of it. 2 days from then, we would be on our spring break. perfect. i bided my time.

That Friday, the room mates cleared out before me, and so I was left alone to my spiteful task. I took a kilo of hamburger meat out of the fridge, and placed it in a large bowl. Then, I headed upstairs, and put the uncovered bowl of meat under my roommate's bed, over the heat register, of course, where it would, over the course of the next two weeks, have an opportunity to mutate into a wonderfully moldy, fly-y, generally disgusting, revenge--which it did. Thankfully, his door was shut the entire 2 weeks, so the smell was relegated to his room alone...

wanna be my room mate?

I have been listening to clap your hands say yeah a lot lately...damn good. i hear they have a new record, so i'll have to check that out as well.

what do you think of this.....................

i took these two pictures during my 8 months backpacking in europe in 2003-04. the gondola is obviously in venice (which wasn't really all that great), and the coastline shot was in cinque terra, italy (which maybe you haven't heard of, but need to). Overall, I guess that barcelona or budapest were my favourite cities, with berlin and krakow right up there as well. Vienna? pffffffffft. And, in a nod towards the Outlaw, the balkans were amazing, with ljubljana, dubrovnik, sarajevo, split, and zagreb all being too cool.

alright, time for a poll on a hot topic in Canada--


CANADIAN SEAL HUNT---GOOD OR BAD---possible alternatives?

admissions

end of summer beachtime
Originally uploaded by dbuc.

this was taken, as it says, on the beach in mar del plata. after all the griping and general unhappiness i've had here, i still look at the country as one of the most beautiful and diverse places on earth. ok, buenos aires isn't for me...but there are few countries in the world with the geographical landscape that argentina has to offer....

rain forest and waterfalls in the northeast

dry desert andes in the north west

lush prairie in the middle

beautiful coastline on the east

alpine andes in the west

arctic archaepeligos in the south

and, a sparse population...with 14 mil in buenos aires, and an overall population of 38 mil...that's not bad.

so, yes, argentina, you win this round. i won't cry for you, but i will say you are beautiful.

another admission.

when i was in grade 12, i got a girlfriend. one night at a party, two of my friends said that they liked her and would 'kiss her' if they had the chance. when they weren't looking, i went upstairs and threw their shoes across the farm parking lot into a snow bank. don't mess with me. i won't fight you, but i'll spite you. and you'll never know. or, you might know, but feel it too strange to confront me on what you think i might have done.

alberta separation

Sunrise, Mar del Plata
Originally uploaded by dbuc.

i took this photo from the balcony of an apartment we were partying in after the actual filmfest party. It was strange...i met the director of the vienna film festival in the apartment, which is neither here nor there, but it was an interesting conversation.

One of the first things i read when we got home last night on the internet was part of a discussion group of alberta separation. what the hell is that all about? why would alberta want to separate?

ok, i know that all of these rednecks think that the feds keep screwing them over, etc, but i think we need a little perspective. WE GET BONUS MONEY from our provincial government. I just got 400 dollars for doing nothing. absolutely nothing. i don't even live there.

Your life in alberta isn't that bad.

'but they keep taking all of our money with the National Energy Program.'

who cares, we're all part of the great country of canada. don't you want to take care of other people in your country? if alberta falls, and it may when the oil runs out, wouldn't you want the rest of canada to help out, as we have done with the east coast (maybe not enough)?

'but the feds are all crooked'

ok, they've had problems. our premier is a drunk, he went into a homeless shelter, and yelled at homeless people, telling them to get a job. What kind of leader is that? Anyway, how bad off are we that we lost that money as tax payers? what i mean is, it's not the end of the world, and we didn't suffer from it. it was wrong, but i'd rather have the liberals in power, trying to correct their mistakes, than stephen harper.

what would alberta's options be if we separated? become part of the states? who says bc wants to separate? you know we'd end up another state, being exploited for our oil and natural resources. the point is, if you're unhappy in canada, you can move your family to the states. if you don't want to move, do something within the democracy that is canada to change what it is you don't like.


here's a link to the discussion forum....here

In Mar Del Plata

Homeless Graffiti
Originally uploaded by dbuc.

we came to mar del plata yesterday for the film festival which is here for a couple of weeks...we're just catching the tail end of it. (this is the same city as bush was in in november for the summit of the americas.) needless to say, things are a little more calm now...well, in the city, not really in my life. there's some tension, as both ana and i are in the middle of me deciding about leaving etc, etc, so neither of us are in great moods...she's upset thinking that i'm leaving . and i'm pretty irritable as well, actually pretty impossible to get along with, to be fair to her.

anyway, we went to see gravehopping last night, which was fantastic..it's a slovenian movie, and not unlike most balkan movies, it was an incredible mixture of complete desperation and sadness mixed with crazy manic moments...if you ever get a chance to see black cat, white cat, you'll know what i'm talking about...really dark movies. anyways, that's where i'm at now...

i took this picture a few days ago in buenos aires...it's better if you look at it in a bigger size. anyway that's it...i hope everyone is well. take care

i see the sun coming up, rather than going down

bright sunrise
Originally uploaded by dbuc.

ah, the great white north, so close...it's strange, but i think of being there, back in canada, and i feel excited. i haven't felt that way in a while. i guess it's a sign. i picture myself staying here another year, and i feel ill. of course, i know the grass is greener, yadayada, but whatever. so, i feel happy, even though i have a tough period ahead of me. um, not much else happening..had bbq yesterday, which was fantastic as always, and my cats do nothing but pee and poo all day. it's ridiculous, really, that cats 3 and 4 months old can fill the toilet bowl with caca everyday.

i snapped this pic at around 7 the other morning from on top of our roof. hope that all is well with everyone...

holy randomness

I've sat here for a long time now, both today and last night, and i can't write anything...
it's worrying. i want to kind of switch it up a bit on here; focus on something positive...well, one positive thing is that i'm listening to jack johnson's In Between Dreams. It really doesn't get much better than Jack Johnson. I was saying to ana the other day how, I can listen to something more complex, let's say for example the Arcade Fire, and I really enjoy it. It may even make me
forget how much i like acoustic music. But all it takes is one listen of neil young's harvest, harvest moon, or Jack Johnson's anything, and i realize that in the end, i appreciate simple, honest sing-song over loops, engineering, and different layers of noise. Simplicity is something you crave when you're surrounded by the complicated. In university, i took a sociology class called something like Canadian Identity--How to Identify the Canadian Character. It was an interesting course, and we focused on topics such as music, hockey, urban character, how we are seen internationally etc. In the end, I decided that to define the canadian characteristic, you could divide us into two groups of characters...1. that character which can be defined as the group trying to find a common identity to unite canadians, usually unsuccessfully, and...2. that character which defines Canada as anything that America is not, and bases the identity on challenging americans, finding things that we do better than Americans, or pointing out their flaws (often not admitting our own similar faults---ie..obesity.)All of this came to mind in the past couple of weeks during the olympics, which I could sadly only keep track of via the internet and the world baseball championships. I found myself, everyday during the olympics, though it shouldn't even matter, going to the medal tally, and seeing where canada placed. After a while, I noticed that I didn't care where Norway was, or Germany, or Russia in the standings. I wanted to see where Canada was and the States...that's all that mattered. When the women couldn't play the States in the gold medal game, it was a let down...like, at least we were in the gold medal game, but it was lesser knowing that we wouldn't beat the states. In hockey, though it was a bitter pill, I took comfort in the fact that the Americans didn't do very well either. So, in the end, despite the fact that it was a world stage, really, all that mattered to me was how much/if we did better than the Americans. I could care less about baseball, let alone the world baseball championships. But, when I saw that Canada beat the States, in the States, it became a matter of national pride. "Damn, feels nice to beat those yanks on their own field", and other thoughts like this. It's moments like that that make me think about our national character and much of it is tied to our neighbors to the south. It's also moments like that that make you thankful that we have a neighbor like that to the south, rather than a Sweden or a Norway-those countries are far too perfect. No, it's better to have a fault ridden, easy target neighbor like america.

In other news, they discovered this new Lobsterish creature in the south pacific.
Ok, I know it's important for some to keep exploring, to keep learning about the earth etc. But let's face it...what is the real significance of this thing?

news conference.

diver...yes, we made the discovery off of easter island a few months ago. it's never been seen before.

reporter...so, it's a very important, significant discovery, then.

diver...yes. very important to the scientific community.

reporter...how? how is this thing important to the world?

diver...(long pause...awkard silence ensues) well, if you look at the picture, this thing is wierd looking. look how wierd it is. it has blond hair on its claws. isn't that wierd?

reporter...so, that's why it's important? because it's wierd?

diver...essentially, yes. Next question.

There's something to be said about shoe-less advice

It wasn't the strangest thing I did yesterday; that- spending three mid-afternoon hours wandering a sprawling public cemetary taking fotos. It was strange, sure. There is something implicit, some intrinsic satisfaction with facing death, some heinous curiosity in imagining how others faced death, that brings people to cemetaries. Maybe some morbid exhilerance that comes from knowing you will one day, at most odds, be in one of these strange, city-like places.As I have already explained, however, this tour of mausoleums and unkempt graves was not the strangest, or even most satisfying occurance from yesterday. As I was leaving the gates of the cemetary, back into the throng of noise and smells and general unquiet of the city, as I was being abruptly brought back into the fold of my life here--the worries and questions,--the doubts, I came across this old gentleman, sitting at a park bench, his reeboks taken off, and his pants rolled up to just past his knees.
He appeared to be sleeping, and I positioned myself across from him and casually lifted my camera from my bag, obviously hoping to catch him in that position. But, he had not been sleeping...he had been thinking, or he had been lost, or he had been waiting for someone.

As I fumbled with the camera, he started to comlain to me, from his spot ten feet away, about the noise of the subway underneath of our feet, as it rumbled by. He complained about the rats, and he complained about people and their dogs. He didn't complain like I might complain. He more told a huge story, rarely stopping for eye contact, a gesture, or to even see if I was still there. What I mean was, he was animated, entertaining, sure of what he was talking about.

I guess that the tsk-tskers that walked by, and gave me the 'don't worry, he's just a crazy old man' look must have seen just that--a crazy old man, with a tartan golf hat, in his socks, with his pants rolled up, animatedly telling another guy, ten feet away, about how much he hates rats.
He then went on to talk about Argentine hospitals, expenses, and some other stuff that slipped by me due to the buses passing. Then, he asked me if I was receiving benefits from my work at the moment....I answered that no, not really...I was just sort of travelling in Argentina.

--really? where are you from?

--Canada

(switch to surprisingly good english)

--Canada? C´mon over here and chat with me for a while..i've got about 15 minutes before I have to go in there and meet my wife.

Given that I have had generally nothing to do for about 2 weeks now, and have been reluctant to leave the apartment even, this chance meeting, this strange conversation, was perfect.

I forgot the tsk-tskers. I forgot that he had is shoes off, and that he had his pants rolled up past his knees. I forgot that I don't generally like talking. What they, the tsk-tskers didn't see, or what they saw, but didn't realize they were seeing, was two lonely people talking-two lonely people, one talking, the other mostly listening, and enjoying their time. He was 82. I guess it did look strange, but it felt perfectly normal.

He told me about his work---he was a banker.

He told me about his wife--she was a housekeeper, before she died.

He told me about fantastic vacations he had taken, all payed for with a morning job he had as a newspaper printer, before he went to the bank, each day.

He ended by asking me what I was doing in Argentina.

I told him I had a girlfriend here.

--yes, yes. but don't you have a job, a secure job in Canada?

--yeah, i guess i do.

--well, why are you here, then? what are you thinking?

--my girlfriend has to go to school...

--listen. listen to me. You have sacrificed enough. You've been here what? a year now? Listen...your life is Canada. Your friends are in Canada. Your future is in Canada. Here, you have no future. Here, nothing is secure. You have to look after yourself, first.

--me, stunned.--I know it's hard. but, you have to sit your girlfriend down, and say, listen. I'm going back to Canada, because that's where my life is. Without it, I'm not, i'm not me. She'll understand, if she loves you. Trust me, she knows deep down what is best for you.

It might be the best time right now to reiterate that I had not told him anything of my life, other than that I'd been here for a year, and that I had a girlfriend. I had listened to his stories, and that was all. It left me speechless, and I half expected him to disappear a la Hallmark Movie, like an angel.

Maybe it was the fact that I'd listened to an old man talking. Maybe no one listens to old men anymore---no one has time for that. I never have time. Maybe from that, he knew that I was not myself here. That I don't belong.

He looked at his watch and said it was time to go and meet his wife, and with that, he took my hand, shook it kindly, and told me again what I had to do....then, he stood up and walked off.

As I got onto the subway, still dazed and with my mind racing, I was thinking about how great it would be to meet him again, there. But no. No way do want that. Another meeting would ruin it, I'm sure.

Mausoleum Black and White

Mausoleum Black and White
Originally uploaded by dbuc.

They have two huge cemetaries here in buenos aires, one called chacarita, and the other recoleta. Chacarita is huge, spanning many city blocks. I went there yesterday because the monuments are supposed to be fantastic,but it was closed, so I walked around the outside. While walking, I noticed that several of the windows were broken. I looked in one, and saw flowers, and cupboard drawers. I was looking into family-owned mausoleums. I didn't exactly feel right taking the fotos from the sidewalk looking in, but I liked the outcome. In this photo is Jesus hanging from a cross.

I'm trying this post from flickr to see how it turns out, format-wise. If anyone is on flickr, tell me, and i'd like to add you as a contact. It's ana's sister's birthday tonight, so wish her a happy one in your hearts...also, let me know what you think of the flickr format on blogger. chau, y que tengan un buen fin de semana.

The Computer is now an extension of my life

well, i've officially crowned myself the biggest friggin' geek in buenos aires. i've spent hours..yeah, hours, playing around with flickr. That quote on their homepage is right, it is addictive. Anyway, i've published a ton of photos, and i'm now working on sorting them, naming them, tagging them, all of that crap...scoot on over to the right and click that flickr badge.

In other news, my cats got a reoccurance of flees, meaning i have lots of flea bites...mostly around the ankles. I'm waiting for somebody to see one in my hair while i'm teaching or riding the subway.

Here's a funny story i'm sure everyone can relate to...it has nothing to do with gays or guys hitting on me, hence the "you can all relate to" line...well, not including the girls, cause you're all hot and get hit on lots, i'm sure. So, ana and i were talking the other day, and she was explaining to me this idea she had for a script that had to be 30 seconds long and no more. So, she explained to me her idea.

me....ah, that sounds pretty good.

her...yeah, you think so?

me...yeah, do it. (keep in mind she has to have this done the next day, along with 3 other scripts, and she has to study for a final, so i'm keeping it short and to the point)

her...no, it's stupid.

me...no, it's fine. just use it.

her...no, it doesn't make any sense.

me...There's nothing wrong with it.--my downfall--

her...There's nothing wrong with it? That's not good. If you liked it, you would say it was good. If you thought it was bad, you'd say it sucked. There's nothing wrong with it means that it's average.

me...what? what the hell????

her...--leaving, somewhat upset, at least to the point where i know i don't talk for 5 mins--thanks for the help.

me...are you kidding me? There's nothing wrong with it means that. there is nothing wrong with it...--but it was too late, she had left the kitchen.
so, someone new added me to messenger the other day. a guy. i was cautious, and chose to block him. (i've received a lot of texts from fabby asking why i don't answer him anymore, etc. etc.) so, when this person added, i was cautious. when he came online, i allowed him to see me.

first message...dan, it's me fabby, on a friend's computer.

me...block. (who the hell comes up with that lame excuse?)

cut to five minutes later, i receive this email...

La verdad nunca pensé que fueras tan mal educado, supuestamente parecías tan cortés y me llevé una gran desilusión.
English....the truth is that i never thought you were so badly educated. supposedly you appear very courteous, and you gave me a big illusion.
Me parece que te dejaste llenar la cabeza.
I think someone has/ you have filled your head with something.

Igualmente si no me contestás el mail iré algún día a la puerta de tu casa a que me expliques en la cara por qué no me contestás.
Anyway, if you don't answer this email, i will go to the door of your house one day and make you explain to me face to face why you don't answer me.

Fabián

Freak

so, normally, if i'm calling anyone, say a girl, and she doesn't answer me after 2 or 3 emails or calls, i stop. i don't email them and tell them i'm coming to their door to make them explain to me why they don't answer me...aka, i can take a hint. not so, with fabby.

so, i sent him this....

fabby,
la verdad es que no te contesto porque solo te di algunos clases, y ya esta. no somos amigos y no vamos a ser amigos. cada dia que me volver a casa, hay 4, 5 mensajes de vos por mesenger y este me molesta. me agregaste a 3 direcciones de email. no quiero que me contactes mas ni que vengas a mi casa. si te encuentro en la puerta abajo, voy a llamar la policia. tengo todos los mensajes guardados. finalmente, si me escribis siempre, y nunca te contesto, es porque no quiero. entonces, no me escribas mas.
dan

english....freak, the truth is that i don't answer you because i only gave you some classes, and that's all. we're not friends, and we're not going to be friends. every day i come home and there are 4 or 5 messages from you, and that bothers me a lot. You added me to three different addresses for email. I don't want you to contact me or come to my house. If i meet you outside, i will call the police. i have all of your messages saved. Finally, if you always write me, and i never answer you, it's because i don't want to. so, don't write me any more.

dan

he sent me one more, saying some crap about me being a bad teacher, and that he never wanted to be friends anyway, etc. etc. but no more. i never mentioned him posing as a girl on the internet to talk to me, though it was tempting, because i didn't want to egg him on any more. so, i guess it's over...until i beat him up when he comes here. so, that's what it's been like lately. i got offered a job the other day, far from home, 4 afternoons per week...350 pesos per month. that's shit. that's 135 dollars per month. that's not even a tenth of what i make in canada. it's maybe a 20th. c'mon, argentina, you can do better than that!

check out my flickr (mom and dad, it's the box with all the little tiny pictures on the right hand side of the computer screen, towards the top of the page...you have to go up to see it, you won't from here. )


also, my electronic lense cover for my camera broke again for the second time. don't buy electronic lense covers...snap ons are much better. that is all.