It's Always Sunny in Los Angeles

          As I listen to Nirvana my mind wanders. I'm not sure I'm the kind of person that can listen to music and focus on something else at the same time. You'd think I'd be able to use my ADHD to my advantage here. Nope, all of my focus is being drawn to the music. My mind fills with melodic mist and I meander for cogent strings of thought. Is there an accordion in this song? Ugh, I can't see my hand in front of my face.
          I sigh and realize it's a sigh of relief. I've had my first good day in a while. I've had a productive, fulfilling day and now Kurt Cobain is cradling my soul in his warm open embrace. Thanks Kurt. I go to my happy place. I'm in an open jeep, venturing across an endless savana of highway somewhere in the Midwest. There's a dog in the backseat, although he's mostly just for picturesqueness. I'm allergic to dogs and this imaginary dog is not a poodle. He's some iconic American dog, like a retriever. There's rock music playing, and I wouldn't object to some affectionate, beautiful dandy in the passenger seat next to me. She's got a smile that melts any bad day and can wear a pair of jeans like it's no-one's business (unless it's mine).
          Signs of adulthood seem to be creeping in on me. Although I welcome the stubbly beginnings of my neard (note: neck beard), I still think it's weird that I've started to wear a belt. I'm not even sure why I harbor this feeling. The feeling that belts are a formal signature of adults, meant for others, but not me. I suppose I've always catalogued the belt as part of a suit. Apparently, it completes the look. One of the deterrents that I've proudly gotten over is the cold reminder of the belt buckle on skin when one sits down. I also wear a watch these days, a recent development. The transformation will be complete when I'm finally living in my own place and you can find capers in the fridge. It sounds like an arbitrary indicator. Groucho Marx insisted that the price of pumpernickel was directly correlated to the value of the dollar. He ratiocinated that the demand of pumpernickel was very static and thus any price change indicated an economic disturbance. He also once smuggled Cuban cigars into the states, and on the customs form, under the heading of purpose of visit, he marked other and penciled in 'smuggling.' True story. TSA held him for four hours.
          Future plans: get bartending license, fix stereo, and make a stew. If I make the stew an irish one, I'd have the makings for a pub. Hahaha. It's always sunny in Los Angeles (except for right now).

Ear Junk

Daft Punk ear junk, fed from the movie 

clunky tunes melodic smoothie

a reason to smile in the dark

online journal catches my crumbs

drips and thrips dominate and congregate

boldly entertain suggestions of grandeur 

dare I venture? cognate burr sounds like techno

Is that so? Is this of substance? A horse stance readies for trouble

Self-suppliant? not yet

Meandering Thoughts

         I've landed back in LA and it's good. It's good to be home. Being around people who already understand me. I don't have to do the whole meet and greet and build that repertoire before I can cut past the small talk. Having concluded my aimless misadventures in Argentina, I feel compelled to eke out a daily routine. No, I don't usually use words like eke. But when writing, I like to exercise a certain level of finesse that makes me feel fancy and droll. See what I mean?
         If I had to describe my sense of humour I would probably come to the label of self-deprecating [insert poop joke here]. Unfortunately, I feel as though that sense of self-deprecation comes from a genuine feeling of self-dissatisfaction. Don't worry! This isn't going to turn into a whining, "I'm so sad", crying-while-eating-ice-cream-out-of-the-carton-and-watching some-fat-camp-reality-show-on-TV rampant blog entry. I don't do that anymore. No, I'm going to self analyze my own troubles in a graceful manner. Oh dear, I'm getting in my head again. Ok, ok shake it out. That's what she said? Ugh. New paragraph. Also, tangent.
        Right now it's raining, and I'm told by my widget app that it will continue for the remainder of this week. I'm glad. I quite enjoy the rain. It's a nice diversion from the groundhog's day 75 and sunny LA weather that we are usually blessed with. If you've never spent a good deal of time on the east coast, I highly recommend you find an excuse to change that fact. Being forced through seasons can be exhilarating. Here's my tree shout out: The trees allow you this dramatic arboreal calendar. I appreciate trees as much as the next person, but I sincerely do not understand "leafers." Whatever, continuing... Nice sunny days have no value, no goodness when they're all stacked together with no foul, precipitous bookends. You need shit weather to have awesome weather. LA has neither. It has none. Back in Vermont, after months and months of fall and winter a nice sunny day is almost cloying in it's delectation. Everyone's outside playing frisbee. I mean, how cool are frisbee's? They fly. Weird. Anyhow, back to my angst.
         This is a non-pity mongering paragraph. Just want you to know that going in. It can be hard to process life frustration without actual discussion. Sometimes I get twinges or pangs. Those words just sound made up. Sometimes I even get wangdoodles and spurgles. Spurgles from decisions I've made in my past that I'm not proud of that still haunt me. The 'g' in 'spurgle' is a hard 'g' if you're wondering. I don't know. Whenever I'm stagnant: not up to something, I have this masochistic tendency to relive my regrets. It's not crippling, the pain. It's like a sore throat. It's bearable. Perhaps I've watched too many movies and I'm convinced that I need some unknowable burden in order to achieve that tortured hero complex. Now I just need to do something heroic. Hmmmmm. I don't have enough choking friends. They all swallow with tremendous ease. Oh well.
         I'm just eyeballing on these indents by the way. I would use the tab button, but it just advances the cursor to the next typing field. I'm using 6 spaces. Wow. I need to start playing video games or something or I might develop one of those awful hobbies. Like stamp collecting, or taxidermy or scrapbooking. Shudder. I'm sorry if you scrapbook, its just that I always see those scrapbooking kits on the sale rack outside of Borders and they always look so pathetic sitting there next to the unsuccessful children books and how-to-massage reference guides. Although I do have the latter.
         Well, it's ridiculously late and my friend August collects shoe horns. At least he used to. Final thoughts and statements: I've recently discovered a taste for black coffee, I'm quite sure I've got some kind of cold, I'm planning on getting an SLR camera tomorrow, my mom redid my room and I'm not sure I'm digging the tope, gonna start rock-climbing again, think that the Walking Dead zombie series on AMC is uninspired, gonna see Black Swan with friends, bathrobes are weird, and finally the new Tron movie is pretty awesome. It lagged a bit, but that's to be expected when running so many programs. Zing!

Don't Cry For Me Argentina

As I sit here in the dark of my hostel's heavily graffitied lobby I realize this will be my last night in Argentina. It is 9:30, oh no wait 21:30. The Argentines will start going out to have dinner in a couple of hours. Anyhow, I'm in no rush. Some of the graffiti is painted in UV paint and glows underneath the black lights. Some guy from Australia showed me his UV tattoo yesterday. It's invisible normally. Finished The Hobbit today and ate a hot dog. Indeed my adventuring is coming to a close and I couldn't be happier. Just like Bilbo and his halfling friends, I,  enjoy a good cozy burrow, food, drink, and a quiet agenda. Though I'm not much for pipe weed, tobacco mind you. Yes, I am eager to enter the land of the English speakers, and that magical place called Los Angeles. A treasure trove of multi-cultured eatables. Ahhhhhhh! It's been like a long twilight zone episode. Yesterday I ordered guacamole and got a green sauce. To quote my parents, "I'm not mad, just upset." Well, all of the craziness of Argentina will soon be below me, if south is down. Ratatat plays in my ears. A belated Hannukah party awaits me at home, as does the option to consume root beer.
            Some of my strongest memories: Getting electrocuted in the chest. Not sure if I've mentioned this, but I got quick the shock when I walked into a previously benign fence back at the cheese farm. I felt my heart beat and then got thrown to the floor. The guys I was working the field with just started laughing. Miss those guys. They never wore underwear, shoes and seldom shirts. I took a jar of dulce de leche from the farm, which eventually broke in my pack. Fortunately, I had it in the electronics bag. I had great fun cleaning dulce de leche off everything. I must admit I'm pretty good at that. There's also the time I hitched a ride with Rodolfo, the eccentric alternate anesthesiologist. He sometimes stings people with bees in his work. He's also not the best driver out there. We popped one tire, and almost slid of the road about four hours later. Very nice guy though. I will also never forget all of the incredibly creative salads I've had in Argentina. Each one was awful in it's own unique way. A favorite was the caprese which consisted of five cheese medallions and five tomato slices arranged in a circle with a single sprig of basil in the middle. I'm also having flashbacks of the variety of hostel's I've graced with my presence. I'll be honest, it's been weird. There was Ana's house, a hostel set in the desolate town of Cholila. Ana was nice, but it took me ten minutes to figure out how to flush the toilets. A technique I'm not eager to share. This current one has the reception on the third floor. I got sprayed with silly string by one of the staff members today. There was also the gas house nestled in the hurry-get-out town of Rio Gallegos. I could smell this hostel walking up to it's front door. A propane palace of blue and pink. It was there in Rio Gallegos that I experienced the death funeral of ex-president, Nestor Kirschner. I've learned to cook rice, and more impressively, a mean pasta sauce from absolute scratch. I've watched maybe four dozen movies and the entirety of Twin Peaks and Carnivalé, that one show that was on HBO. I've written a handful of blog entires, and engendered several ideas for movies that one day I'd like to direct. One involves chasing ghosts. I've bought three jackets. Met up with two of my college friends, and made countless others, from around the world. Some of which don't live too far, and might be seeing again. I might be changing my major to film, and my stomach is more sensitive than it used to be. I'm ok with both of these things. I hiked on a glacier, got drenched by a waterfall and saw some whales. The most valuable thing I'll come away with? A leather jacket, and a greater affinity for my friends, mexican food, movies and the states. And my hair's longer. All in all, a good trip. Consider this the death of a travel blag and the start of much more random but equally as awesome general life blag. Blag? Blag!

Rule #32: Enjoy the Little Things

If I've learned one thing in my travels, it's an appreciation of the things I so often take for granted. However, in absence of something novel and profound, I present to you a list of trivial differences between Argentina and the United States.

• Gas stations are awesome. They are all full service, often have the best wifi in town, are notoriously clean and the one I'm in right now has a second floor study area with tons of natural light.
• Supermarkets don't have baggers. 
• Things that just don't exist anymore: root-beer, recycling, two-way streets, hot chocolate mix, posted speed limits, berries, the @ button, BBQ flavored chips, black people, cup of noodles, ashtrays, well-paved highways, applesauce, mechanical pencils, bagels, Californian girls, oatmeal, Caesar salads and like 100 things I won't know I've missed until I come back to the states
• Things that still exist but are perverted in some way: hamburgers have egg and ham but no onions, hot dogs are crazy long and there's no relish, bathroom trashcans are really tiny and have tiny lids on them, advertisements are notably better and funnier...
• These things are now ubiquitous: Alcohol, mayonnaise and tuna fish - all slightly revolting.
• Most restaurants have wifi and there aren't any cafés
• The word for underwear is socks.
• Everyone seems to have exact change. 
• You can't double on any soft hand in BlackJack  
• I saw more than one guy holding his helmet while riding a mo-ped.
• Everything that isn't alcoholic says so on the bottle, even juice and water.
• Underwear is only sold at underwear stores. 
• Cars from the 80's, 70's, and 60's are commonly seen on the road.
• I saw a car drive by with a dog standing on the roof. What!?!?!
• Peak business hours now means all the shops are closed
• Pregamming starts at midnight or later
• When you order pasta at a restaurant, you order and pay for the sauce separately.
• You don't really eat breakfast here. Unless you consider bread and dulce de leche a breakfast.
• I've seen stray dogs of almost every breed. Scottish terrier, boxer, greyhound, husky, dachshund, irish wolfhound, labs, retrievers, beagles, setters, hounds...
• All the gatorade flavors are different. They also sell apple juice as a flavor. powdered gatorade is non-existent, but tang is extremely popular. Orange tang is often served in pitchers like orange juice for breakfast at hostels. 
• Apple hasn't reached Argentina yet. If you see someone on a macbook, chances are they're either from the states or the UK. Ipods are less telling.
• Fruits and vegetables are kind of hard to come by.
• 7-Up's are notably and consistently flat. Sprite's good though, if you can find it.
• Classic rock and 80's music is more popular here than it is in the states.
• Everything to do with buses. First of all, in Buenos Aires, people wait patiently in perfect single-file lines at bus stops. When you ask the bus drivers if they can let you know when your stop is coming up they say yes and they're nice about it. They drive much faster. You can get off anywhere and sometimes they'll even pick you up between stops. 
• You don't have to be gay to use hair gel. 
• Jay walking is a god given right
• Residential and non-major streets do not have stop signs. Drivers will just slow down slightly at intersections and magically avoid other drivers, and then maybe people.
• If someone asks for the salt, don't hand it to them, place it on the table in front of them. A strange superstition involving fighting that I still don't quite understand.
• Flip-flops are seldom seen.
• Porn!!!! Maxim now includes full nudity. Instead of being at the back, nudie mags are placed at the front at magazine stands and they're never wrapped in plastic.
• Sandwiches have no crust, which is awesome.
• Toilets flush really unenthusiastically. I have so many metaphors that I'm not using here. You're so welcome. 
• Now, I hate to end on a sour note, but this is important. To Argentina's credit, ice cream stores are hugely popular in the north. But when I asked for a second sample, not only was I denied, I got a funny look. WHAT!? To date, that has been the most stark and heartbreaking difference.

On the Road

I've been through a lot since our last session. I've been to the end of the world, slept at the border, hitchhiked to a funeral, counted cards, and hiked on a glacier. Although I truly believe my photos supersede best explanation of former sentence, I will permit thee a typed narrative of my recent adventures.
      Exhibit A: the end of the world. A pet name bestowed upon the southernmost city in the world, formally known as Ushuaia. Kept afloat mostly by tourists like myself, looking to place a pushpin near the bottom of the map. Indeed, this is a destination town and nothing more. However if you feel like ponying up a cool seven thou' you can leave this port for sunny antarctica, weather permitting. Unfortunately, I didn't have the cash nor did I feel like swimming so after a couple days down south I decided that I'd rather have an adventure than my guaranteed safety and started hitchhiking north. That's right! I'm hitchhiking. But isn't that a right of passage reserved only for the desperate, sun-baked, hippie vagrant? Well, I won't take that as a complement, but I think you left out senseless. Just because I can afford the bus doesn't mean I necessarily want to ride it. Think of me as a modern-day, counterculture Rosa Parks...that's white, male and with none of the societal hardships. Yes, I may regret getting into that black, unmarked van with Buffalo Bill as my chauffeur, but I'm going to play the age chip and just admit to naiveness. Besides, I don't have to justify myself to the internet. You're the internet. Fuck.
      Excuse my french and we're moving on. So, I've been hitchhiking ever since the end of the world and I've been loving it. My first ride came from a local firefighter, wearing a cowboy hat, shoulder length hair, sunglasses and a flannel. Although he dressed like a serial killer, he was incredibly kind and made sure to point out the location of every roadside accident he had ever attended. His job was to take pictures of the horrific accidents before the biorecovery unit came in and performed some sunshine cleaning. For nearly two hours, he recounted dozens of nightmarish automotive mishaps with incredible detail and a casual morbid curiosity. I'll be honest. I was gripping my three-inch folding blade in my pocket for the first hour or so of our journey together. When it turned out that he was just a weird guy in a cowboy hat with a camera full of trauma victims and not a psycho, my grip loosened and I had a really nice time. He even pulled over at one point to show me a particular species of moss that was used to color certain whiskeys. A true gentleman. In addition to not asking for compensation he didn't even ask for road head, of which I was particularly grateful.
      We arrived in the small town of Río Grande at around two in the afternoon, and having such a positive first experience I was adamant to hitchhike again. I quickly made my way to the Argentinean/Chilean border just north of the city limits, where cars and trucks are required to stop. Unfortunately, that didn't help me much. I spent the day getting acquainted with the Gendarmeria, the Argentinean border police. I learned some colorful language and ended up spending the night in the waiting room. The next morning I bummed a ride with four politically minded 20-somethings. They were northwards towards Río Gallegos in order to pay their respects. Apparently the ex-president, and husband to the current president, Nestor Kirschner had passed the day before yesterday. His body was being flown down to Río Gallegos where he was to be buried. I had stayed a night in Río Gallegos on my way down south, and had found it remarkably dull. But this time was different. When I arrived around noon, there were already crowds beginning to form. By six o'clock, the streets were completely packed. It was incredible. When the actual coffin came, the fervor piqued and it was borderline chaos.
      The next day I caught a ride to El Calafate, the gateway city for accessing Torres Del Paine and glacier Perito Moreno. I've been here for a week now, and alas it is time to leave. I will miss this bar however. At the moment I am enjoying the warm atmosphere of a cafe/whiskey bar that reminds me very much of the Three Broomsticks. While they don't serve butterbeer, they do serve honey beer, really thick hot chocolate, hamburgers and damn good whiskey. Well, my mind is starting to roam, and there's not enough ritalin to lasso it back into the stables. Next stop: Valparaiso to visit Dan and Grace, fellow Middleburians studying abroad in Chile. Now if you'll excuse me I have a date to keep with a Mr. Johnny Walker.

Let's do Naked Lunch

Although this a travel blag, I'm not just traveling. When I'm not taking advantage of the Patagonian landscape, I'm selfishly indulging my insatiable thirst for cinema. For the last couple of days, it's been extremely windy and overcast. Conditions unideal for marine mammal viewing. I'll take any excuse to watch a movie. Dinner and a movie: chinese take out and all three Indiana Jones movies. Not feeling well: Progresso and David Cronenberg (not the smartest combination). Can't find my shoes: stay inside all day and watch movies until my eyes hurt, my legs fall asleep and when I stand up too quickly I go temporarily blind with lightheadedness right before my ankles buckle and I drop like a rock. Then, with no feeling in my legs and no peripheral vision, I'd be daft not to continue watching movies...right? Anyhow, I'd like to introduce y'all to some of my favorite films from some of my favorite directors.
      My first love: Spielberg. Now just because he's an extremely successful and mainstream director doesn't mean he's not a fantastic film maker. Spielberg defined what it meant to make a hollywood, blockbuster movie. Jaws, E.T., and Jurassic Park, to name a few. Visually spectacular, feel-good movies that deliver with the perfect amount of profligacy. I love the pace and momentum of his movies - his grasp of the hero's journey, if you will. His scores are also second to none, and with John Williams at the composing helm, how can you lose? [This is directed to all those nay-sayer, flute playing, band-geeks who think all of Williams' scores sound the same and that Danny Elfman is better: come off it. Tim Burton's not that cool. You're just an emo loser with a Jack Skellington hoodie and a faltering grip on reality. Sorry, I've been holding that in for a while] Spielberg also tends to use very little dialogue in his movies. Instead he uses pictures to tell his stories. A great example of this is Spielberg's first commercial film, a made for TV movie called Duel. Made in 1971, the film stars Dennis Weaver and one extremely unique car chase. Aside from the movies already mentioned, some personal favorites include Hook, Saving Private Ryan and Catch Me if You Can.
      John Carpenter is a film-maker by every definition of the compound word. He directs, writes, produces, and even composes almost all of his films. Carpenter essentially began his career, and the slasher film genre with Halloween in 1978. Atypical from his other films, Halloween is an exploitative, crass, gory horror flick. The majority of his other works fall into the scifi genre and aren't dumb. My hands-down favorite is The Thing (1982), starring Carpenter's man-crush, Kurt Russel. It's gross, in terms of gore, budget, makeup, and overall epicness. Carpenter had a short yet sweet 10-year film-making run that churned out gems such as: Escape from New York, Christine, Starman, Big Trouble in Little China and They Live. After that, old-Johnny started getting rusty and the magic started to dwindle. But the handful of awesome films that he has made are simply delicious in their tongue-in-cheek ridiculousness and simultaneous embracement of the scifi/horror genre. You could say he makes B+ movies.
      Slightly more esoteric now...wait, did I say slightly? I meant to say David Cronenberg. Probably my favorite director these days. Cronenberg cooks a strange dish: always stylish, creative, inventive and usually exploring a strong motif. His films also often exude violence and sexuality in untraditional ways. More exciting and endearing is his affinity for campy, semi-realistic stop-motion animation and use of horror make-up that looks as though it came from the late 70's. He used it then and he uses it now. I think he just hates CGI and likes the look of it. If you watch his films in chronological order, it's fun to experience the distinct phases he's gone through. Although I should introduce you to his films with the notorious Video Drome (1983), I prefer the more focused and toned-down eXistenZ (1999). Both strongly motifed films. Other orthodox atrocities include: Shivers, Scanners, The Fly and Crash (the one about having a sexual fetish with car crashes, not the 'everyone is connected' one).
      Lastly, we have Darren Aronofsky, whose movies I don't even really like. He's newish and his films are extremely hard to watch, mostly beyond the point of being enjoyable. However, this crazy bastard gave us Requiem For a Dream (2000), which is incredibly hypnotizing. With every film Aronofsky puts under his belt, his grasp of cinematic pathos tightens, and oh does it tighten. Watch out everyone, this one has promise. With that said, I can't wait to see his next film, Black Swan, which looks as though it might be freaking awesome.
      Alright, that's enough haranguing for one post. While I enjoy a good, respectable film, I also enjoy vampire and zombie movies. So, if you excuse me, I have a date with Wesley Snipes.