too much

much too much yesterday. trying to get a bunch of things done w/ add riddled amigo who smokes too much (think marv on cocaine). purpose being that my parents are coming down and supposedly this place has been functional for ~1-2 yrs, but really amigo has been in el carcel and nothing much continues to happen. so the day was not entirely useless, but remarkably inefficient. almost nothing got done, a few useful things happened, and then el amigo decides to be an electrician, stripping the outer insulation off a set of 30 amp 10 gauge wire and shoving it ruthlessly into a 1/2 inch conduit that is way too small to accomodate said wire. anyways, now there is no washer and dryer b/c the wire has been violated, i wont use this new shit cause i have slept and am not super stoned and know that it is a shit idea, and anyways that was my yesterday. today i go to the bay.

you didnt just say that

condy rice just said that iraq was "worth the investment." yep. really. halliburton.$$$.oil tanker...yeah.

"
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Associated Press on Thursday that Iraq is "worth the investment" in American lives and dollars

and...

Rice was asked whether an additional $100 billion the Pentagon wants for the Iraq and Afghan wars might amount to throwing good money after bad in Iraq. President Bush and Congress have already provided more than $500 billion for the two conflicts and worldwide efforts against terrorism, including more than $350 billion for Iraq.

"I don't think it's a matter of money," Rice said. "Along the way there have been plenty of markers that show that this is a country that is worth the investment, because once it emerges as a country that is a stabilizing factor you will have a very different kind of Middle East."

"
from http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2744238

ethiopia calling

thankfully many things continue to conspire to remind me that there is no possible way that this world is real. so perhaps because of this i am more content with my existence which is a good thing, though often it only induces torpor and lethargy. but anyways the central america girl quit, the ethiopia project is now mine, as is india, so if things work out i could be on the road from new years till march, doing some groovy things hopefully. will see...

dig if you will

many funny events have conspired to make the world seem rosy lately. most amusing to me is the fact that ms. sophie turns out to have a boyfriend w/ a house/farm right at the bottom of the hill from the farm that i was on, both this and last year. is amusing the right word i'm not sure.

last nite was fun, 31, birthday, seann kept yelling, drunk as shit, i cant belive how fucking old you are. then he even busted out the photo album, somehow he has an amazing collection of pics of me (mostly shots of me smoking weed) from way back when.

so i had a long and relaxed dinner w/ my parents and some old family friends. this guy is now the ceo of UL, the people who do whatever to make sure your lightbulb wont accidentally turn into a death machine. then i go to meet dante at a pirate radio benefit, for cpr radio (community power radio baby).

dante is a cool chicka. she looks a lot like sophie but she dont need to know that. well sophie is half asian and dante is chinese, so naturally there are bound to be similarities. but anyways. life is funny.

free at last

yeah well good to come back and finally see my friend (aka lucifer) who spent the last year in jail awaiting trial. i thought he got off but apparently he pled guilty and got out w time served. dont break into embassies. with guns. regardless of what the voices in your head tell you to do.

anyways things here are the same, the nephew is cute, the friends are drunks, the people are cool except for the ones who are not, the busses are big, the jobs all look crazy, i have no idea what i want to do which is not really a problem just there are so many options. having issues with plan b which was to go trim herb in the hills for a month or 2 w irie ites, mostly thanks to lucifers year in the pokey and my forswearing of all things shady, for once nothing i do is really illegal, but i may just go anyways.

so i am working, sorta, and if i can stay awake it could work out well. i for some reason have like zero energy when im not doing crazy fun stuff and just want to sleep.

amoral omnivores born of the suburban vacuum

i left the book on the bus, but not before i got to that line, which is in fact just about the last line i read in the book, and its soooo good that i guess its ok. i think that abt sums it up.

so i am getting ready for re-entry, doing tests to check that all systems are functioning, getting in touch with people, eating pringles, preparing in whatever small way i can to return to the heart of the dragon. fortunately it is summer so people are not going to be ghostly white, which can really honest to god be damn scary.

been riding around plenty lately, racking up the miles. today made it to trujillo another phenomenally beautiful spot, seriously just sugary nipples and chocolate. saw a sign off the side of the road into town for a casa alemania, which seemed worth checking out so i am set up there for the nite with gunter, a friendly single middle aged germanic looking and sounding dude who gots himself a nice if somewhat lonely life, and the only other guy staying there is a hondureño from a few towns away here on work but nice guy, took me into town on his motorbike to show me around, with the hope that i could bring home a bunch of ravenous gals dying to do it, you know how those gringas are, just gots to speak english right, well he drops me off and heads to his AA meeting and i chat up this nice looking girl, i under the pretext of looking for ice cream and so she says yeah she knows the town well lived here for 8 yrs i can get ice cream arond the corner, and i ask why she left and she says because her husband died here and well so looks like ill be solo tonite.

back in the poo poo

last few days were good fun, as my mom likes to say. couldnt really find any convincing reason to leave lake atitlan until it was really really necessary, which therefore led to a marathon-esque return home. the play by play: 12pm take the boat to san pedro from san marcos and hope to god we can pull some money out of the atm or else we stuck up the poo poo creek. 1pm: with pockets full of quetzales hop on the bus towards antigua. 5 pm: get to antigua and meet up with freaky cool mayan buffs an aussie and a brit. 1am: go to sleep after drinking much with said freaky mayan buffs. 4 am: bleary dreary shuttle ride to copan. 9am: honduran customs peoples try and explain to me why going to guatemala doesnt count as leaving the country and therefore i have overstayed my visa and should not be allowed back in. 9:10am: honduran customs peoples get tired of listening to me and let me back in. 10:30 am: arrive at copan. 12 noon: go to the ruins of copan. 3:30 pm: leave ruins of copan. 5 pm: get on bus towards san pedro sula. 9 pm: arrive in san pedro sula and scurry to the closest hotel which used to be nice and comfy accdg to the bobo book but is now a total piece of decrepit shit. 8 am: wake up and try and leave said hotel to find that the front door is locked and noone is around. 8:30 am: after banging on the door and everything else finally some guy on the street calls the owner -god knows how he knows her-and she scurrys over in a taxi and lets us out. 9:30 am: back at hotel send cousin off in taxi to airport. 10 am: go back to the office and finish up some work.

well now i am in a medium sized town known as siguatepeque looking for a dude named oscar ochoa who has info that will lead me to the next clue in the game of life.

exciting isnt it...

freaky mayans

been trompsing around for almost 2 weeks w my 17 year old cousin, a fresh graduate from high school on his way to collegio if he doesnt talk himself out of it and go to culinary school. hes a cool kid, reminds me a lot of myself when i was younger, but he is much more mature and much less of a nutcase than i was. speaking of nutcases there is a freaky older gringa here in some kind of white mumu dress probably fresh from the las pyramides meditation joint who is getting stressed out by the freaky mayans inability to get the other computers to work.

the mayans arent really freaky, its the gringos. the mayans are about as mellow as it gets. its cool they really arent much over 4 feet tall so they often row their boats standing up. super nice people. kinda look at all the gringos with funny expressions, like how did people this retarted get so rich.

so guatemala is pretty toursity, so much so that i have been hard pressed to find some real guatemalan food. all that shit about just eating rice and beans - tell me where, i have to just about beg and steal to get some.

right now we are at lake atitlan, as beautiful a place as exists in this world and probably the next couple as well. minus the freaky evangelists on their loudspeakers, tho if you tune out enough it sounds vaguely similar to the musical droning that comes out of mosques in arabian lands, which i like.

we were in a town called san pedro for a few nites, freaky gringo central, piercing / person ratio well over 5 i would say, zombielandia, tho some rather cute zombies not the living dead variety. moved across the lake to a much mellower town called san marcos. got some nice cliffs here to jump off, did a 50 footer no shit yesterday, dove off a 15 footer, new goal is to cliff dive. well yeah you can just fling yourself off a cliff and hoep for the best, but being that i wasnt all that graceful in just jumping, i think i should opt for a more formal approach.

so the cuz goes back on tues meaning we gots some miles to cover and then i go back to figuring out the next move in the freaky chess game that i got going on with myself.

be seeing some of yall sooner and some later. much love

the danger zone

hot tv nite yesterday, started it up with top gun around 10. being that my memory is terrible its funny that i have some kind of strange space in my brain where i really remember watching that movie 20 odd years ago. Goose dying didnt get me to cry this time but the take my breath away scene is still hot, well filmed. then i switched to an amazing soccer game between a brazilian team and a paraguayan team, and during halftime discovered on the very next channel a fascinatingly pathetic documentary abt a stripper named cashmere, the nasty dude who is her big $$ customer, and her boyfriend who had the most laughable labrette piercing ever.

nuff said. now, today, i have been once again taught that age old computer lesson that i learned in 4th grade when i lost my copy of my paper on jamestown that my sister mostly wrote. no the lesson is not that you shouldnt lie steal or cheat or have your sister do your work for you, but that you best back your shit up. i put the finishing touches on the database the day before yesterday, went to make the backup copy today, and the damn computer turned into a pumpkin overnite. no shit. aint that a bitch.

well i guess i´ll come back and finish it up again after guatemala. laughable really. all that i really care about is for ms atlanta to write but whatever happens happens.

plastic

today nothing in particular reminded me of last week, when the wife of santiago, a mildly conniving lady who cooks and takes care of the centro de capacitacion and whose name i forget, saw the brand new plastic box they had brought up for the kitchen at the centro. it was tupperware like, about 12"x10"x6", clear plastic, with a blue lid, and from her voice as she talked about it, her body language - the way she touched it and looked at it, her total admiration for the beauty and utility of this piece of modern alchemy was unmistakably clear.

here i go again

last day of work! well i thought my cuz was showing up tomorow but b-c he is coming from bumfuck ND he is leaving tomorrow but dont get here till weds, but tomorrow i just eat ice cream.

a lovely week with the gringos, many of whom came from the high school where dead poets society was filmed. they have a "pond" the crew team rows on. the kids were cool and calm, were remarkably into the whole thing even the homestay which had a bathroom straight out of the slums of india and a small pig-farming operation, which smelled like a lot of pigs.

the fun part came when we somehow aquired 2 chickas gone awol from a church trip, who couldnt handle the evangelicals and the no drinking dancing etc. Not your average churchgoers, one of them a hippie goat farmer and the other a 3/4 crazy 6 foot 3 half jewish half irish redhead lesbian into sex clubs and bdsm. the goat farmers mom is the lesbians pastor.

so we had some good conversations in the back of the pickup, and it was pretty funny the encounters with the group of high school and a few college gringos and our new friends. as for the work part of the trip we hauled some cinderblocks way way way uphill to where these fellas are building a small holding tank to irrigate some veggies, which was lots of fun as everything was muddy and many peoples were sliding everywhere and getting muddy. then when it was time to leave the truck couldnt get up to the house so we had to go honduran and tie some ropes to the axle and bull the son of a dog up the hill. amazingly enough you can do that and it works.

so then we all went to the mayan ruins of copan to chill for the weekend. things got fun, the lesbian and i had some hot dirty dancing, sat around and did plenty of nothing and kept happy.

so weds i am off to guatemala for 2 weeks, then 2 weeks more and i am back in the land of the overgrown apes.


will close with some inspirational words:

I don't know where I'm goin but I sure know where I've been hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday. An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time but here I go again, here I go again. Tho' I keep searching for an answer I never seem to find what I'm looking for. Oh Lord, I pray you give me strength to carry on 'cos I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams. Here I go again on my own goin' down the only road I've ever known. Like a drifter I was born to walk alone. An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time. Just another heart in need of rescue waiting on love's sweet charity an' I'm gonna hold on for the rest of my days 'cos I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams. Here I go again on my own goin' down the only road I've ever known. Like a hobo I was born to walk alone. An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time but here I go again, here I go again, here I go again, here I go. An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time. Here I go again on my own goin' down the only road I've ever known. Like a drifter I was born to walk alone 'cos I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams. Here I go again on my own goin' down the only road I've ever known. Like a drifter I was born to walk alone. An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time but here I go again, here I go again, here I go again, here I go, here I go again

island in the sun

i need to pack, heading back out to the bush soon for a week. new group o gringos on their way.

got back weds am from a truly spectacular week on roatan, the yang side of honduras. beaches, bikinis, pina coladas, scuba diving kind of thing. went diving there and i finally understand why people do it, tho i still think divers by and large are a wierd lot.

it felt like gravity lightenend up a bit around there, and people kind of float around lazily. i felt so mellow i even turned down some ganga. granted it involved hanging out with a crazy ass mom who plays drinking games with her 20 year old slutty ass daughter, which influenced the decision, but still thats a first.

well if i hadnt met this dream of a girl on the bus i may well have gone off and gotten acquainted with the slutty daughter but things were not destined to turn out that way. see i made a remarkably dimwitted move and left my duffel bag w my yoga mat, sunscreen, and flip flops on the minibus into the center of town. after punching a few things in a most untranquil manner, i then had to walk about for an hour trying to find the stuff i needed and get back on my way. so beacuse of that i missed the 10:00 bus and got on the 11:00 bus, where in front of me sat a girl, tall, with curly brown hair, from atlanta so having a slight southern drawl, and being in a friendly mood i asked her if she was going to the islands, and the long and short of it is we spent much time together over the next week and the universe lavished all kinds of good vibes upon my world and for this i am happy. i am now looking for a good voodoo witch doctor to help take care of any doubts she may have. should have cut off a lock of hair...

so im off to pack and off to the cut for a week.

lip-synch

on the bus today they were cranking the black eyed peas...whatcha going to do with all that funk... and there was a maybe 10 y.o girl, hot pink shirt, kinda nerdy looking, casually mouthing the words to the whole song. she got me spending..spending all your money on me, and all your time on me...

off to roatan for a few to hang out w rich pooches. funny that for being the biggest tourist destination in honduras, cant find a current ferry schedule. i guess it doesnt take much to be the biggest tourist destination in honduras.

coco

went out and got me a coconut ice cream today - all kinds of good. the ice cream factory is in the neighborhood so we get the freshest dope ass ice cream in town, a nice byproduct of the apparent complete lack of zoning. goal for the week is to try every flavor they got. rum raisin is surprisingly good, cookies and cream, chocolate, and coconut top ranked, vanilla pretty poor. now left with the strangely colored ones - strawberry (hot pink) & pistachio (neon green). the gringos left me with a cold and im still trying to kick it out of my cerebral passages. therefore didnt do much this weekend except cook a huge pot of beans, which i am creatively consuming. good thing i live alone.

the sun rolls up the tide rolls out

"welcome back" said the city, with a warm hug of fumes. reminds me of india. i got some diesel fumes, thick n black with a gritty flavor, the kerosene/badly burning gasoline, white colored with a hint of a sweetness, and then the unmistakable smell of burning engine oil that will never fail to remind me of when we finally totally and utterly blew the guts out of the vw engine in guaymas. oh brad.

been plenty people around lately, group of heads from the NW rolled down in an ites green and gold schoolbus, preaching biodiesel. they put together a pretty good conference, slightly over the top and somehow kept making it sound like they were pioneerings in the field, but good..

unfortuantely almost nobody in that area really has a car, tractor, or any kind of engine. a bag of cementcosts 2 peoples full days wages, a gallon of gas one persons. for such reasons mauricio been talking to me abt how he wants to go to the states, is ready to roll out and leave his family and shit, says there is no work around here. and he is the best adobe and cement builder in the area. earlier today was daydreaming abt ways to keep him from leaving, like paying him for one week a month to do work in the community, whould only cost me abt $25 a month.

the gringos got me sick, with some help from the fumes, so i am now drinking turmeric tea. not really the tastiest thing in the world but better than i thought it would be. a half teaspoon in a cup of hot water, and things start feeling better.

while i was in the sticks heard on the shortwave abt bombs in mumbai and madness in lebanon. my cousins husband was supposed to be on that train but took a ride home. something good in a mess of ugly.

also on the sw heard some of the best god-talk ever. preacher man is talking abt the bill of rights, enumerating them, gets me wondering where he is going, and then jumps headfirst into the heart of the issue: but, what if you´re a moron? and then proceeds to rail on morons, how they are everywhere, and how they dont deserve any rights.

i should google it.

rekindle heated and lustful moments

the title being my favorite recent viagra-spam title. haunting.

well, i am off to the sticks tomorrow till abt the 20th to entertain another groupo gringos, this bunch driving down from a college in the pacific NW in a biodiesel powered bus, with a biodiesel processor in the back that they are going to donate to us, and use while down here to teach workshops and make 250 gallons of bio-d to drive back. of course that is assuming we get them 200 gallons of oil, which of course we dont have.

today i saw a great t shit, in yellow, with red puffy letters, worn by a lanky tall young 16 year old kid. and it said: Cuidado, soy de Jesucristo = Watch out, I'm with Jesus

thats something we can all agree on.

From a review for the Cider House Rules, a recent gift: " Victims of tragedy, violence, and injustice, their lives seem more interesting and full of thought-provoking dillemmas that the lives of many real people."

right.

well its from the houston post. apparently suffering a lack of interesting and thought provoking dilemmas down there.

rak-a-tak

nobody at work today b-c today is board meeting. so i have not much to do other than wait till 6 for my $5 massage. going to tell the lady not to crack my neck this time, i think ive had enough of that. sometimes she does it very gently and it feels good but sometimes she really gets a real bone crunching pop, and that cant be good.

nyways, last nite made some fabulous paneer and dal. first that involved hopping a minibus to the super-mondo-market and buying some ingredients which, if they were all available, would have been: tumeric powder, cumin seeds, cumin powder, coriander powder, ginger, garlic, onions, a bell pepper, 2 tomatoes, cilantro, hot green chilies, yogurt, white vinegar, a half gallon of milk, and a cheesecloth.

couldnt find powdered coriander, only seeds, so improvised the mortar and pestle from a glass pepsi bottle and a coffee mug. no cheesecloth either, but they had some pretty large cloth coffee strainer tingems, which did the job. so then i came back and got down to cooking on my 2 burner electric souped up hot plate.

making paneer:
boil milk, then add vinegar while stirring till the whey separates well, then strain through cheesecloth (or t-shirt, whatever), and then stick it in the freezer for a half hour or the fridge if you are not in a rush. if you are making paneer with peas, save a bit of the whey/water as it adds a nice flavor, otherwise toss it.

my favorite way of cooking it up:
slice one medium onion (per half gallon of milk used) into long thin slices. dice 4 cloves garlic, abt the same amt of ginger. slice one medium bell pepper into long thin slices, and one tomato into 8 or 10 sections. once the paneer has cooled and hardened, chop it into 1"x1"x0.5" cubes.

heat up a generous amt of oil on high, toss in 1-2 tbsp of cumin seeds, let em brown for 20 secs, then toss in the ginger and garlic and diced hot green chilies, stir up for 30 secs, then toss in the onions, cook em up good till they are pinkinsh brown, then toss in 1 tbsp of cumin powder and 2 tbsp of coriander powder, stir it around for a minute, toss in 1-2 tbsp of powdered tumeric, some salt, and the bell peppers, stir around for 2-3 minutes, toss in the paneer and the tomato, stir around for a minute or two, not long just to heat up the paneer. throw a good bit of chopped cilantro on top once you take it off the stove, and then think of me and eat it up.

lentils: boil them with some cumin seeds till about done. then sautee some diced ginger, garlic, onions till pink/brown, add powdered cumin and coriander, sautee till the spices get all browned and full of goodness, then throw in the tomatoes and everything sizzles up for a minute or two, and then toss into the lentils and let em cook for 5-10 minutes. throw some chopped cilantro in at the end.

well as best as i can tell every girl i have ever dated has really been in it for the food, so dont underestimate the power of them spices. thats why they cut them out at the ashrams.

back to the future

spent the weekend visiting the copan ruins, an old mayan megalopolis near the guatemalan border, just phenomenal. the ruins are amazing, esp as you can wander around at will and actually touch many heiroglyphs and statues made 1,000 odd years ago. personally i am still a bit dubious on how people know what they say they know abt them mayans but to think about how their world was put together and then reflecting that upon our current one is quite enough to take the head for a spin. read today the intro to confessions of an economic hit man and hopefully will read the rest soon. looks to be fabulously subversive and disturbing to the mental status quo. check it.

groupo gringos

well breezy it has been over the last 10 days as i sorta led a groupo gringos on a service trip, mostly high school kids from a boarding school in the NE and a few adults. beautiful and fascinating, at times inspiring and at times more in the manner of say a week old dead and rotting elephant seal on a pristine beach.

now i pèrsonaly would never shell out a grand to go and slave away for a week, but i can understand that not everyone is up for jumping out and hoping the chute opens. and they get to see some beautifully remote places, full of happy kids who for the most part go to school for 4 hrs a day till they are 16 or dont feel it anymore and then go get knocked up repeatedly. plant some corn n beans, eat some corn n beans, make babies that will plant and eat more corn n beans, play a bit of soccer, its not bad. 4 year old kids walking around freely, in rubber boots a bit too large, happy kids, laid back town, no alcohol there so people are good, hardworking, and really mellow. one guy in town sports the full length straight chops and a thick handlebar mustache, always smiling, everybody missing lots of teeth, but, other than a general lack of dental care, seemingly a carefree way to while away the days. they got some slowly running water a few hours a day and no electricity but they may someday.

so the project i was working on had a taste of zen, as it involved tearing up a badly made concrete floor in a church and pouring a new one. then they ran out of sand so i got to switch to working on building an adobe classroom at the ngo´s demo farm. have people pay to come down and do your work, gotta love that. the other one involved building a cistern or somethign to catch water from a spring. mostly hauling sand and cement and the like.

well at the momento my cabeza is feeling a bit funny, was a bug passing around and i got it. not too bad but right now i seems to have lost most ability to regulate body temp, so i am wearing a fleece jacket and its far from cold. but, this brings me to a valuable lesson: the shits, 101. so, lets say all of a sudden you come down with the shizziles, what to do? while your instinct may be to reach out and grab the immodium you must resist. many of the gringos on the trip did that and promptly spent the rest of the day yakking. you see your body is reacting to the bugs waging the guerilla war inside your gut by flushing them out, and if you clog up the downward path, things only got one way to go. so give it a day, or two, and as you start to get better perhaps take some.

well i think people may show up soon ( i live at the office, which is actually in a house, in a back room) so i better put on some clothes, spiff up and the like.

the barber

went and got a haircut around the corner yesterday. the barber turns out to also be a sensei. needless to say he cuts a mean head of hair. tho he got the sideburns uneven.

off to the sticks tomorrow for 10 days. purportedly to plan out some test plots for the jatropha plantations, but really i am quite sure that they just need an extra hand taking care of a group of do-gooder types coming down to help fix things.

back at the beach sunday i went for a kayak ride on a piece of shit sit on top, and a beagle swam out a good 50 feet, totally of his own accord, jumped onboard, and rode around for a while. took some waves and everything. cool dog.

free beer

got some free beer last nite, thanks to a paunchy guy in a yellow shirt. Im pretty sure he was chasing the gaunt fellow in the white shirt, though it was hard to say for sure. definitely possessing a rather large gun that could have been some kind of shortened shotgun, but once again hard to say even though i would get to see it up close.

it was abt 10pm and 4 of us had been sitting around for about a bit. heard a shot, not too close, but not too far, causing me to glance over my left shoulder, whereupon about 200 feet away a guy in a white shirt comes flying out of the shadows, tumbles on the beach and sprawls out, looking to be doing much the type of thing one might do after being shot. so without much hesitation i jump up, spit out "its time to go", which probably didnt help the mexican guy and the puerto rican girl with us, tho they figured it out quick enough, and promptly scoot behind the building with a heading towards the road. but right then rounding the corner of the building coming straight at me is none other than a gaunt fella in a white shirt, so thinking its best to avoid the company i spin around, run and dive behind a fishing panga, for lack of anything better to do. then comes the paunchy guy in a yellow shirt with the large gun that could have been a shotgun poking around, and seeing me more or less cowering behind the boat seems to think for a minute whilst pointing his gun most aggressive like, and motions me up. so surely we were all getting done off and/or robbed i assumed but nothing like, he just points at the road and doesnt say much, so we took that as our cue to leave and promptly did so without paying our tab and so we got some free beer.

the weekend until then was a fairly relaxed affair spent at the beach of omoa, mostly in the hammock and with the company of interesting strangers. the beach was covered in a fairly impressive amount of crap, mostly plastic and driftwood but including a whole banana tree with bananas. found me a scorpion in the shower, met an interesting australian going to nursing school in mexico for a year, a mexican whale shark biologist, and a puerto rican gypsy type traveling solo, an older german database designer settled down in a remote part of honduras, and a few fairly benign americans surfing their way back home.

working on database no. 2, which is a bitch. no 1 was easy. beginners luck.

oi

the title comes from a comment by some gringo baloney head when ben and i pulled up, somewhere in baja, at the end of one solid hell raising morning where shrimp boats been hiding behind islands. we thought it funny then and i still do. and the flying squirrel shit comes from an ingredient in a chinese pain medicine that an acupuncturist gave me a lil while back. shit works, relives stagnation.

today i went on an expedition to the super-mega-gigantic-check-your-soul-at-the-door-grocery store in the hope of finding exotic tropical tingems and some vegetables. not too much on the exotic scene but i got some lettuce and some kraft italian dressing, so not half bad. i walked there and got a good buzz off the exhaust fumes.

apparently there is a lot of crime here. i didnt exactly believe it at first- seems like a pretty normal place, or just like the hood in dc which seems normal enough. right when i got here i was sitting in the garage/porch with the fence/bars unlocked and the neighbors came by and said i should lock up cause there are theives running around. my mom always said the same thing and if youve seen where i live there isnt anything running around there except deer, and if they are on two legs they´re coming in regardless. but everything here is barred in, stores, houses, some even throw some razor wire in for effect plus a good dose of big mean dog thrown in, and i guess for good reason. lily, a most wonderful person i work with, gave me the helpful tip to walk in the middle of the street, as its purportedly safer than the sidewalks. and with the way people drive, thats really saying something. well turns out the lunch spot done got stuck up on monday, kinda funny really the way they did it, they just walked in and shut the metal security gate so noone could leave and took everybodys shit, watches, cell phones, everything, and then walked away.

anyways i´ve taken to dodging cars and walking in the middle of the street. i fortunately am about a foot taller than everyone else here so i put on a mean face (really=) and so far been doing ok.

otherwise the radio here is great, the best thing i brought w me by far. life is interesting, hot, sticky, far enough away not to worry about too much, which is nice.

g