Tragicomedy in Costa Rica

The Ground Beneath Your Feet

2010-01-20T15:06:00.018-06:00

I hardly ever get scared, so rarely in fact that sometimes I've wondered if I have some chemical deficiency. But last year, we had an earthquake in Costa Rica, and it was completely unsettling.

We were sitting there on the second story of our cute but shoddy stucco office building when it started to shake. The three of us sitting at our desks immediately turned to look at each other and let out collective "whoas" as we waited and waited for it to end. Things shake often, but this one was stronger and more sustained. After about ten seconds, the editor dove under his desk while the weekend editor and I stared at each other with our eyes wide and jaws slightly unhinged, thinking it was going to end any second now. It did after about 15 or 20 seconds.

We went downstairs to see the others. The heavy-set receptionist had had a panic attack in the doorway during the quake and nobody had been able to get out. Local reports were that I was a 6.2, with an epicenter about 30 km northwest of San José. USGS said 6.1.

We were an hour away from deadline for our weekly paper. We jumped to our computers and phones. The photographers jumped up and headed out to see if there was any damage in the capital. Our one reporter who was on twitter was paralyzed by the huge influx of information. I got my first worried mother's letter to the editor within a half hour. A stream of aftershocks kept my Ichiro bobblehead nodding furiously.

The reporter finished his brief article, and the editor slipped it into a one-column slot on the front page below a picture of a sunset over the Pacific. The article then jumped to the next page and was accompanied by a picture of a blue government building with a crack in it. We'd just got news of the first reported deaths – two girls – as I was writing the photo caption.

We turned in the paper not terribly late. No government reports with confirmed fatality numbers had been issued yet. The reporter got me set up on twitter and showed me the #crtemblor hashmark. We debriefed the issue, teased the editor for having jumped under his desk, and went home.

The next day, our staff reporter and photographer went out at 6:30 am. The intern reporter and photog left an hour or so later, while the online editor and I sifted through different reports of the morning. It was looking like most of the people had died in the town right by the epicenter in landslides, which had also wiped out the main roads. The two girls who had died were roadside candy-sellers who'd been swept up in a landslide. Two different government agencies were reporting death statistics and only one of them had a spokesperson who would pick up his phone.

By mid-morning, the death toll was by most accounts at 15 when our reporter got wind of two more bodies they'd recovered. I called the editor, who was still at home, and asked him if we should go and report a death toll of 17, noting that we'd be the first to do so. He said ok. I emailed him an hour later and asked him if he was coming in. "Yeah, why?" he responded. Most other media took a couple hours, and for a bit an LA Times blog was quoting our 17.

The editor came in at 1 pm and online ed and I briefed him on bits, and the reporters called in a couple times, too. We heard that private helicopter companies were charging hundreds of dollars per person for an evacuation to tourists who'd been stranded at a popular hotel that'd been right near the epicenter. I called one of the companies posing as a distraught gringa who had a sister at the hotel who needed to be evacuated and they quoted me $600. A Tico paper quoted up to $1,700, but, from what we heard, that was the rate for one helicopter evacuation for four people.

One television presenter, when queried as to where she was during the quake, said she was at the salon getting her nails done when all the old ladies screamed. She likes earthquakes because people really overreact and she thinks it's funny. They even had to give one lady Baileys with ice and white wine [to calm her down]. She thought it was so much fun. Everything was falling in the salon. She would have rather been on the beach in a red thong. Really fun.

At 3 pm, all the media were at a secondary airport outside the city where evacuees were landing when a storehouse, full of Red Cross supplies, down the hill exploded. They sent me out to report on it. I got a few furtive shots of the smoking warehouse and one really good shot of the stern fireman coming at me telling me I needed to stop taking pictures. Workers had been welding, ostensibly trying to repair the walls of the warehouse, when sparks caught on the foam mattresses stored there. I found the president of the National Emergency Commission, asked him for the most recent death toll. He told me 15.

I got back to the office at about 5, right as the editor was leaving for the weekend. The interns, who were on their first week, were still out. The others were back at the office. The government agencies had nominated the (completely inept) crime police to handle the bodies and the official death count. I called a dozen foreign embassies to confirm they had no reports of injuries or deaths, and responded to more letters to the editor while waiting for the stories to come in for edit and listening to Turn on the Bright Lights, which was in hindsight not a good listening choice for that day.

The online editor and I went to work on the stories reporters had turned in for the online edition. I edited the intern's story, which included a quote from one "Louise Alce." We turned in that day's Daily Page at midnight. The photographer finished editing two dozen photos for a photo essay, and he and I wrote captions until 1 am.

I took a cab home. I got back and realized I hadn't eaten since that morning. I pulled out a pack of Ramen, curled up, and ate it on the couch while poring through all the reports people were posting online. I looked through our photo essay one more time and went to bed. The next day I pitched the story of the extorting helicopter companies to a few U.S. outlets, but no one bit. The reporter got a letter into that LA Times blog and wrote on his own.

For our next weekly print edition, we had all the requisite pieces: field reports from the emergency tent cities, an interview with the government official saying how most of the city would have been flattened if the quake had been centered in San José, projected losses to the agriculture sector, the role Twitter & Co. played in it all, an interview with the woman whose husband and three children were among the dead, and a photo page. The final official death toll was 23, with seven who were never found or confirmed dead.

I did the article on the science on the quake. While interviewing a USGS geologist in Denver, I accidentally dropped "logarithm" in a follow-up question to him, and he got really excited and started asking me if have scientific background because most journalists' questions are really superficial but I seemed to really know what I was talking about and where did had I gone to school and what had I majored in? Poli sci and philosophy, mae. He sent me a great graphic that detailed all the plates and fault lines that unite to make Costa Rica a "diffuse" and "highly" seismic zone.

The manager of the paper let us all know that there was a second exit through the advertising office, and they'd moved the desks to accommodate that. There was one bit of levity from the earthquake. It got remixed, naturally. On Sunday, my downloads refreshed and I got Live at the Old Quarter.

Monday night there were three aftershocks, and I felt all of them. Normally, I sleep on my stomach, but that night I was lying on my back. I felt the second one as I was going to sleep. They weren't strong, but I knew they were aftershocks and not trucks going by on the street up above rattling the thin walls and window panes. Once they passed, I looked at that ceiling and thought about it falling down on me. I wasn't sure if it would be strong enough to seriously injure me.

I tried very hard to figure out how I would know if an earthquake were serious enough to duck for cover. The doorway was too far away, but I had a hard time believing my red metal twin bed would give me much more protection even if I could get under it in enough time. Would it be better to flip over on my stomach and let things try and shield my neck with my hands, or curl up in a fetal position and try to get my pillow over my head? I figured it was a question of which one I could do more quickly. But this was all probably moot, since the floor would probably cave through too, what with its airy slats that let in light from the open-air garage below, in which case it'd be better for me to stay on top of my mattress if we were to go falling to the cement below. I thought about this for a few hours until I felt the third aftershock at 1 am. It took me two more hours to fall asleep. I woke up at 6 am.

Of course, things still shook all the time. For a several weeks, every time a large truck would go by at work, the windows would rattle, and I'd stop typing, hold still, and look at Ichiro to assure myself those rumblings lasted only as long as the truck was passing and were not prolonged. It happened at home, too, what with the big flimsy window panes and vents in the living room that let the trucks' lumbering sound waves come in as easily as they let the cigarette smoke at parties out.

There were two more moderate earthquakes, 5.7 and 5.9 in March that we felt. The epicenter, though, was thankfully in the middle of the Golfo Dulce, and no one was hurt, although the bay bubbled for a while as the plates readjusted themselves. I wrote a short, and eventually wandered out to get lunch at 3 pm at a bar where I sat next to old men drinking whiskey and watched a Champions League match.

It's been a year since the main quake. Compared to Haiti or China or Pakistan, it is nothing. I have anxieties; they have horror. But a year later, even though I'm long gone from San José, I remember all of this, and not from any notes. There was a draft lingering, but it only had links to the Cinchona blog and the jueputa video. The rest of it and all the feelings of being utterly small and realizing the awesome power of a mantle that can literally pull the ground out from under you and everyone around you regardless of the best laid plans, those stay crystallized.

I eventually threw away the bobblehead.

Marinating

2009-08-29T16:50:00.015-06:00

It's been four months since I left Central America, which to some might mean these videos are overdue. On the contrary.

This is the point by when I usually start to miss Latin culture, when I feel myself settling back into the constant hum of the anxieties of living in the states. No moment feels simple here, what with thinking about how the $5-10 I'll need at least to buy anything (anything) will all add up, about my wrist that now has a chipped bone after I smacked it on the back of a glass doorknob and will this cheap brace I bought actually heal it because lord knows there's no chance in hell of getting an x-ray for the uninsured, especially for a non-life-threatening injury, and just the constant barrage of being around people who must fill their days and do not know, could not if they tried to comprehend, how to sit, say nothing, and absorb a moment.

There is nothing complicated about any of these scenes, all from my trip to Nicaragua this Semana Santa. "Quotidian" in English has an implied negative connotation: a chore to dread, the day-to-day, a monotony. In French and Spanish, the connotation is neutral-positive: the word is more of a reassurance, something steady, something you can rest in, not something you're confined to. Most anything I ever do will be about trying to get back to or recreate communal, quotidian moments like these:

And, an addendum to my ode to Latin American buses last year:

The movies they play on the buses are legendary, or rather, the fact that the bus ayudante is actually being democratic in his selection of such cinematic œuvres is ... remarkable. On countless 8-hour bus rides between La Paz and Cochabamba, which I had to take because I couldn't splurge $50 for the 30-minute plane ride, I would to drown myself in Broken Boy Soldiers on my iPod as I watched the altiplano go by and try in vain to block out the gratingly dubbed apocalyptic Jean Claude Van Damme movies they played back-to-back-to-back, because of course I'd been stuck right underneath the speaker.

I infinitely prefer the Marco Antonio Solís.

In Which We Magnetize Mangoes

2009-05-05T12:45:00.013-06:00

Translating can be great work. It's straightforward, pays well, and people love to see their stuff in English, which gives them an affinity for you.

On the other hand, the material is often so tedious it makes my brain seep out of my skull and down my back. Plus, in April I had full days at home, we were one of the few houses in town with a grassy lawn, and I could count on a fork's tines the number of clouds I saw that month.

Nevertheless, in my last month in San José, I'd had my hours cut and taken a trip to the Corn Islands, and so I (happily, I'll add) took the work and so managed to come back both financially solvent and with a decent tan.

For this job, I translated a series of podcast scripts from Spanish to English on the Multiple Intelligences and other recycled mediocre teaching methods that were probably translated from English to Spanish 10 to 15 years ago. (How do I know this? Because they used this Multiple Intelligences schtick on us when I was in 6th grade because we were one of the district's "experimental" classes! And they were trying to be really avant-garde! With a suburban elementary school curriculum! I digress.)

Oh come on, you say. It can't be that bad, can it? Watch and weep:

Nos enfrentan a nuevos tipos de texto a nuevas formas de leer, nos hacen aprender de una forma distinta y nos plantean un reto mucho más interesante, y es cómo relacionarnos con los demás en ese proceso educativo. Entre estas tecnologías no cabe el rechazo, la indifrenecia, pero tampoco la aceptación ingenua, tenemos que aprender a usarlas.

Sin embargo otras personas que consideran que estas tecnologías más bien disminuirán dicha brecha. La utilización de las TIC en los centros escolares por aquellos que no tienen acceso a ellas en el ambiente familiar, es un elemento de justicia social.
We are faced with new forms of text and new ways to read. We are required to learn in a distinct way, and this poses a much more interesting challenge for us: how do we relate with others in this educational process? Among these technologies, there is no end of rejection, indifference, but neither of acceptance, ingenuity, and we just learn how to use them.

However, others say these technologies will breach this gap. The use of [information and communication technologies] in learning centers for those who do not usually have access to such technologies in their usual routine is an element of social justice.

Yes! Watch the pedagogy and social justice fuse! (I'm sorry, I'm doing the exclamation point injustice here by condemning it strictly to sarcasm. What I really need is this mark. Or this one.)

The problem is that, as I've had it explained to me by professional Ticos and Bolivians alike, is that in Latino government, NGO, and professional writing the idea is somehow that the more you write, the more intelligent you are. And so they reiterate everything. Several times. The same sentence, with its subject, verb and dependent clauses flipped around and rotated a few different times. Those 50-page USAID quarterly reports I used to translate in La Paz? Probably could have been written in ten. And that is not hyperbole. It violated every holy precept of editing and writing I know. (It does not help that I mostly learned writing from those who were of the New England writing persuasion. And New England inevitably is used in the example sentence for what SAT word? Taciturn.)

Usually, I just tried to plow through the gelatinous blather as quickly as possible. But there was one bit that actually presented a challenge that I found amusing, almost fun. Demonstrating the musical intelligence, the student needs to remember a list of elements in a specific order and makes up a mnemonic chant to help himself do so.

I'm looking at the list of elements (line 23) and the rhyme he comes up with (line 27), and I cannot figure out where he's getting "Mango Sin Fe" from "Manganese Zinc and Hierro (Iron)". And then it hits me: They're using the chemical symbols. Of course. But this was fun. Nothin' like being subversive with ridiculous, but structurally correct, parades of elements:

And thus "Magnetizó Al Mango Sin Fé Ni Estaño, Pobre Hidrógeno Cuando Haga Ache Ge Pe Te Au" became "Magnetized All the Mangoes Singing Faith – Nigh, Sin – Public Hydrogen Cures Aging, Hugs Paint Auras".

I also gave all the people in the scripts American names from characters in The Wire.

And that is how we do translating.

Best of, Final Round

2009-05-05T12:42:00.006-06:00

"Fw: FUERZA PÚBLICA DETIENE A DOS MUJERES POR SUPUESTAMENTE HERIR Y ASALTAR A OTRA!!!!!!."

-email subject line from the Public Security Ministry's press office

Corcoveándolo

2009-05-05T09:08:00.006-06:00

Heidi and I went to La Palma, on the edge of the Corcovado National Park, on Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula last weekend as part of my last-hurrah trip in Costa Rica and some relief for her from the economic oppression to the north. It was rad, and I documented this with photos.

Starring: A Somali flag, Moustache Pedro, the pickle tree, a mathematical beach line, the burliest window cleaner ever, and the fly that died by the hand of the hitchhiker's guide.

The Blue Firmament

2009-04-28T16:41:00.004-06:00

... 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven, to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Playa Colibri on Golfo Dulce, La Palma, Osa Peninsula, and Keats.

Ahem, Fido.

2009-04-26T11:14:00.001-06:00

Turns out he's a little man, I just happened to first meet him before The Fall. He still breaks my heart.

(Soundtrack by The Magnetic Fields)

"Vultures pee down their legs to cool off."

2009-04-23T18:56:00.010-06:00

Over a month ago, one of our regular freelancers wrote short feature, maybe 600 words, about vultures. It's been the one article our readers have specifically written in response to in the last month or so. (Emphases, again, mine.)

MARCH 20

Costa Rica Home to More
Vultures Than Reported

The article by Mitzi regarding vultures of Costa Rica last week was interesting, but there were a couple of inaccuracies. Mitzi got her information from a staff member of Zoo Ave.

[Three paragraphs detailing said inaccuracies.]

Zoo Ave does very good work and employs lots of people, but most are not experts regarding birds.

– Henry

APRIL 3

Vultures Are Omnivores
And Cannibals, Too

Concerning Mitzi's article about vultures: Having spent much of the past 50 years in rural Latin America, I have some knowledge of the habits of vultures, mostly the black vulture. It may be a surprise to some to know that a favorite food of the black vulture ... is each other! That is to say, they will fiercely and voraciously devour each other when they can. I have seen a large flock of them feeding on a carcass of livestock at the edge of the road, when a passing vehicle smashes and injures some of them, whereby, those feeding on the carcass will leave it and attack and eagerly devour their brethren.

This vulture seems to be omnivorous, as I have also seen them eating rotting coconuts (discarded pipas) and baby turtles. I don't think there is much in the way of organic matter they won't eat, just so long as they can get their beak on it without a threat to themselves.

– Samuel

APRIL 24

Vultures Play Dead,
Vomit and Urinate

It's not widely known, but owners of vultures that are in captivity for a broken wing, for example, have learned that they can be very endearing pets, squawking and rushing happily over to greet them.

Owners have also learned not to startle vultures.

When frightened, vultures will over and play dead. If that doesn't work, they then proceed to throw up. You cannot imagine what the smell of vomit can be like from an animal that only eats dead things.

In addition, when overheated, vultures pee down their legs to cool off.

Vultures also, it appears, are hard to get rid of. The Dade County Courthouse, which had vultures roosting moodily on the roof, peering down at people going to trial, tried electricity, noise, gunshot and who-knows-what to encourage them to perch elsewhere, to no avail at the time.

– Susan

Crossbred Vultures
Are Fun to Name

As a follow-up to the letter concerning the common American black vulture, I submit the following experience that persons interested in this topic may find of interest.

Many years ago when at the market in San Salvador, I was approached by a rustic looking individual carrying a cardboard box, and in the box was a brood of the strangest looking birds I have ever seen: The feet and head and neck were those of the black vulture, beady eyes, hooked back, etc. However, the body was not that of a vulture, but of a different shape, while the plumage was multicolored. The vendor offered them for sale, and giggling, related the following to me: His children on his farm had captured a black wild vulture and he had enclosed it in a pen of domestic fowl to keep as a pet. The vulture had crossbred, and the progeny were those birds he carried in his box, he said.

I would suggest that any reader in a rural area having domestic fowl catch a male and female black vulture and enclose them, out of contact and sight of each other, as follows: The female with several male turkeys, chicken cocks, and ducks, and the male with females of the same or more species. Keep them continuously together for a few moths or a couple of years and see what, if anything, results – meanwhile, think up a good name to call them. One may go to the Internet for information about distinguishing male and female vultures – I suppose one could use slabs of old meat as bait.

– Steve

A Superlative Twitter Day

2009-04-22T10:41:00.002-06:00

ME: What’s your favorite book?

BIZ: I loved Sherlock Holmes when I was a kid.

ME: But you’ve helped destroy mystery.

sǝʌoɯ ʇı ʇǝʎ puɐ

Shameless

2009-04-21T09:49:00.008-06:00

You know a copy editor's job by what you don't see: misspellings, misplaced commas, or – heaven forbid – an incorrect style reference to the Public Works and Transport Ministry and things of that sort. Mostly it's a thankless job, but on the other hand, we're also the ones who get to help write the quippy headlines, teasers, kickers and photo captions that entice all of you to buy the actual substantive articles, thereby saving profitable journalism.

We don't have to write 700 words of concise, objective text, just a couple dozen witty ones within set character limits. The most readily available bits involve some pun and/or pop culture reference. I've also finagled nods to Keats and Coleridge, Boyz II Men and Salt-N-Pepa. Of course, as happens in 92% of my day, something that strikes me doesn't quite strike everybody else the same way, and I have to go around and poll the editorial staff to support my claim that "The Windmills Cry Mary" is not too obscure a reference. (That one passed. Many others did not.) These are some of my favorite flourishes I've snuck in there in the last year.

For the Daily News subscribers' email, which gets two photos, when I edit it, I try to get the two photo kickers (the word/s in bold before the caption) play off each other. It may seem like an added layer of difficulty, but it actually helps to direct and pin down the creative possibilities swirling overhead. I know that maybe only a pair of readers actually notice the tandem wit – on a good day – but, hey, nerds have to entertain themselves somehow:

Who loves themselves some Velvet Underground? Moi:

But this was, and will always be, my all-time favorite:

The Sageness of the Pubescent

2009-04-15T22:57:00.014-06:00

Students in an 8th grade class at one of the private American schools here sent in letters to the editor as an assignment this week, which I had the joy of editing. Here is their* most poignant prose, emphases mine:

As someone who is interested in the environment and likes chocolate, this article caught my attention right away. I am a supporter of the belief that fun and interesting facts help us preserve this wonderful planet.

– Michael

It is always good to find new things in nature that can be useful to us, and it has many advantages. But ambition is dangerous. That is why I ask Costa Ricans to please take care of Tirimbina Rainforest and be respectful to nature.

– Pam

Based on the information this article has provided, and as a person living in Costa Rica, I’ve reached the conclusion that unlicensed taxis should be banned. There are several reasons as to ban these taxis. There is no organization, if something occurs, there is no record of the taxi, and if one thing fails in the country’s structure, the whole country will come crashing down. If they enforce the laws regarding unlicensed taxis, the country will be more organized and an organized nation is a happy nation.

– Angela

The author provided really good examples and points of view from the taxi drivers. I think that maybe she could explain a little better what happened and why the taxi drivers were so mad and why they went on strike. Also, I think that it would have been good for her to maybe put her own opinion in it.

– Phyllis

I agree that the Petroleos de Nicaragua CEO did a good job on signing this deal. I was a resident in Nicaragua for almost four years and I clearly understand the situation the country is living in.

– Andy

The taxistas have finally decided to take the issue into their own hands and will eventually try to solve this issue with violence. I truly agree with this behavior; sometimes we have to fight and use violence as a last and desperate resource in order to get justice and fairness.

– Dwight

*All names have been changed, since the travails of middle school are enough in themselves to at least merit suffering the snark of an incorrigibly caustic editorial assistant in anonymity.

Nudity solves everything.

2009-04-15T10:48:00.004-06:00

Sadly, her last name was not Paris:

Dear Tico Times,

We love Costa Rica. We were lucky to find a beautiful nudist resort located at the edge of a rain forest. This rustic Costa Rican hotel and club also has a restaurant with fantastic food. Everything about being nude in Costa Rica seems so natural. I read so many letters where people express their unhappiness in Costa Rica, but there are just as many problems in the U.S. Instead of picking on Ticos, go find a place like Mi Amor Resort, enjoy yourself, and be glad you were lucky enough to spend time in Costa Rica.

Twyla
Zephyrhills, FL

I Love 'My' Dog As Much As I Love You

2009-04-14T21:34:00.002-06:00

The neighbors' little lady made my day today while I was taking out the trash:

The Corn Islands

2009-04-14T09:29:00.009-06:00

Photos, in which Rachel and Holly go on a bona fide vacation to a tropical oasis, Nicaragua's Corn Islands, on the Caribbean:

When Words Get Tired

2009-04-14T00:49:00.009-06:00

Granada is a photogenic city:

Starring: a haircut at Hilda's, the Boy Jesus Laboratory, the Man of the Mauve, and more colors and patterns.

Both Equally Commanding

2009-04-06T13:21:00.003-06:00

While buying a sno-cone in Granada, the big-bellied man in a red button-up shirt takes the book from my hand to read the cover:

him: cor-MACK?
me: si, COR-mack.
him: mc-car-tee ... el general?
me: (pause) ah, otro mccarthy.

Hilarity did not ensue.

2009-03-31T21:48:00.002-06:00

Oh sweet lord, thank you, Deadspin, for this:

Massachusetts U-7 Girls Soccer Coach Resigns Over Hilarious, Possibly Insane, Email:

This is not a team, but a family (some say cult), that you belong to forever. ... We do not cater to superstars, but prefer the gritty determination of journeymen who bring their lunch pail to work every week, chase every ball and dig in corners like a Michael Vick pit bull. Unless there is an issue concerning the health of my players or inside info on the opposition, you probably don't need to talk to me. ...

America's youth is becoming fat, lazy and non-competitive because competition is viewed as "bad". I argue that competition is good and is important to the evolution of our species and our survival in what has become an increasingly competitive global economy and dangerous world. ...

Who's with me? Go Green Death!

Best Lines of Late in Correspondence

2009-03-30T23:18:00.006-06:00

"So I don't get to hear from my dear high school friend for years, then am excited to find her on the face book contraption, then all I get is a picture of a scary rug? What is the world coming to?

In other words, how are you doing?

... I dream of starting my own blueberry farm. I am much calmer, happier and more clear sighted than when I was in high school, but still a dreamer. Also, you probably noticed, I changed my last name for that of a high desert plant.

I hope this note finds you in good spirit. It would be great to hear some about the adult you; I miss communicating with you. Do you have a snail mail address?"

I've missed this girl.

Latin American Beauty

2009-03-30T17:51:00.011-06:00

Setting the colors and patterns of my walk to work down the railroad tracks through urban San José to urbane Swedish indie, and in the process flattering Lauren's artistic genius, possibly to the point of plagiarism:

Starring: graffiti tags in Japanese, the Alaska-shaped bough, my jelly-clad foot 30 feet up on railroad tracks over the road, et al.

(The track is "Young Folks" an older one by Peter Bjorn and John, who, incidentally, have a new album out this week. And no, there is no comma, Oxford or otherwise, in that name.)

I cannot wait to frame this.

2009-03-30T06:41:00.003-06:00

He has a tooth in the middle of his upper jaw.

"What Is the Relation Between a Code of Ethics and Actual Behavior?"

2009-03-27T21:18:00.006-06:00

Earlier this year, I did a story on a career Tico law enforcement officer who was a student of the School of the Americas in early 1980, and is now speaking out against Costa Rica's decision to continue to send Ticos to the school's modern reincarnation, WHINSEC, to train. For the story, he let me borrow his old training manuals and study guides from his courses. Most of them were boring: lessons on field skills, leadership qualities, etc.

But the following was one of the few gems of a passage:

These guidelines are given in terms of the ideal way to do something, and cannot be achieved in this way all the time. In fact, for various reasons, times in which the ideal is achieved are rare. consequently, we have to distinguish between people's ideal and actual behavior. There are many reasons for which there is "failure" in the battle to follow the code of ethics: to work at a job that has a big salary but little personal satisfaction; to say all races are equal but then not permit your children to play with a child of a different skin color; and to buy furniture for the whole house now without carefully planning monthly payments; these are only some examples of codes of ethics in conflict. There is a difference between the ideal behavior according to the code of ethics and the actual behavior that takes places. Even when the ideals of a code of ethics are achieved rarely, those in charge must try to reach for those ideals that ensure efficient leadership qualities, and lastly, the survival of their soldiers.

Estos lineamientos se indican en terminos de la forma ideal de hacer algo y como tal no se pueden lograr todo el tiempo. De hecho, por diversas razones, son raras las veces en que se lograra el ideal. En consecuencia, tenemos que distinguir entre el ideal y el comportamiento real de la personas. Hay muchas razones por las cuales se "fracasa" en la batalla por cumplir con el codigo de etica: dedicarse a un trabajo por un gran sueldo y poca satisfaccion personal; decirle a todos que las razas son iguales, pero no permitirle a sus hijos jugar con un nino de un color de piel diferente; y comprar muebles para toda la casa ahora, y sin embargo no planear cuidadosamente los pagos mensuales, son solo algunos ejemplos de codigos de etica en conflicto. Hay una diferencia entre el comportamiento ideal segun lo expresa el codigo de etica y el comportamiento real que tiene lugar. Aun cuando los ideales de un codigo de etica se logran con muy poca frecuencia, los jefes deben tratar de alcanzar aquellos ideales que aseguren un don de mando eficiente y en ultima instancia, quizas, la supervivencia de sus soldados.

Yes, racial prejudice and poorly planned furniture purchases were equivalent ethical decisions. in the '80s. Nostaligia is nice and lowers your blood pressure and all, but I am so relieved we've progressed since this.

Untrust Us

2009-03-27T19:43:00.013-06:00

A friend of a friend is the Mexico correspondent for a German news network, in Juárez right now on assignment and sent this little report. You will note he did not write in Spanglideutsch. The second paragraph from the end is endearing if you've ever seen or can imagine a Western European try to reconcile themselves to Latin America. (English is below.)

Estoy desde hace una semana en el centro de Juárez, según los medios la ciudad más sangriente, más mortal y más desesperada.

Y encuentro una ciudad en paz, o tal vez en paz premortal, pero nada. Ni balaceras ni muertos ni violencia, ni drogas ni un carro mal estacionado. A partir de las 8 pm., tampoco hay gente en las calles. Patrullan 10 000 tropas en toda la ciudad, armados hasta los dientes - y ya. Se acabó la violencia, simplemente, desde febrero, cuando el presidente mandó los soldatos.

El escandalo verdadero son los medios de comunicacion. Porque siguen sacando historias de los cuales gota el sangre. Me topo con corresponsales de Australia, de Alemania, del CNN (con guardaespaldas! los Juarenses se rien), de Brazil etc. .... y escriben historias como si fueran en una zona de guerra.

Claro estoy en el mismo dilema. Me pagaron un viaje para reportar sobre los asesinatos, las drogas, la migración, la corrupcion. Pues nada. Entonces escribiré sobre los medios de comunicacion. De como se fabrican mentiras.

Juárez era el lugar mas violento. Pero ya no lo es. Si vas al barrio de la cueva (las cuevas?) en San JOsé será más peligroso que aqui en México.

Y ademas: México es un pais hermoso, con una cultura y una variedad sorprendente. Ahora ando otro día por Juárez, la gente se comporta como una mezcla de Gringos y Méxicanos. Siempre puntuales, bastante ordenados, y al mismo tiempo sonriente, relajado y abierto.

El lunes voy de regreso a Guanajuato, donde vivo con mi familia, y el próximo festival cultural. Entonces: Me siento MUY BIEN en México y mucho más seguro que en Costa Rica. Sin embargo, el sabado en el partido de futbol apoyo a los Ticos, como no.

I've been here in Juárez center for a week, which is, according to the media, the bloodiest, deadliest, and most hopeless city.

I've found a city at peace, or maybe a nascent peace, but nothing. No shootouts, no deaths, no violence, no drugs, not even a badly parked car. After 8 pm, there aren't even people in the streets. Ten thousand troops patrol the whole city, armed to the teeth, and that's it. The violence simply ended in February when the president sent the soldiers.

The real scandal is the media, because they keep doing stories on anything that bleeds. I've run into correspondents from Australia, Germany, CNN (with bodyguards! the Juarenses laugh), Brazil, etc. ... and they all write stories as if they were in a war zone.

Of course, I have the same problem. They paid for me to come here and report on murders, drugs, migration, corruption. But there's nothing. So, I wrote on the media and how they are fabricating lies.

Juárez was the most violent place, but it's not anymore. It would be more dangerous to go to the La Cueva neighborhood in San José than here in Mexico.

What's more, Mexico is a beautiful country, with an amazing culture and variety. I'm now staying an extra day in Juárez, because the people act like a mix of gringos and Mexicans. They're always on time, very ordered, but at the same time smiling, relaxed, and open.

Monday I go back to Guanajuato, where I live with my family, for the next cultural festival. All in all, I feel GREAT in Mexico and much safer than in Costa Rica. That being said, I'll be cheering for the Ticos this Saturday in the soccer game, how could I not?

Just like 2nd grade ...

2009-03-24T15:56:00.004-06:00

... when you got to be special person for a whole week, and when, on your "Things About Me" questionnaire that hung on a posterboard along with pictures spanning all of your seven years in our classroom for that glorious week, under the item "Things I Do Best!" you listed 1. Play the piano, 2. Read, and 3. Be alone. "Holly, you can't put 'Be Alone,'" said your mother. "But, Mom," you said, "It's true!"

Nay

2009-03-24T08:00:00.011-06:00

Against Depression:

Like rheumatoid arthritis, depression turns your own body against itself. It chews not on your cartilage, but on your brain cells and your sense of reality. It’s as seductive as a wife-beater, shutting out other voices to turn itself into your only friend. The only one who tells the truth about the bleakness of the world. All your energy goes towards getting through whatever stands in your way – struggling, slogging, pushing, through work and small talk and getting food – whatever it is you have to get through until you can be alone again with the voice who can be trusted.

And the last thing it feels like is an illness. No, this monumental, world-swallowing suckage sits outside you: it comes from the project, the job, the love affair, the city, the family, or the decade. For me, these low cycles have always led me to abrupt life changes. It’s a kind of shock therapy: uprooting jobs, careers, relationships, and countries. Those shifts feed the craving for anonymity and reinvention, and they leave behind the shame of a condition that breeds shame.

If you asked me why I move to a different continent every year, I'd tell you it's because I couldn't stay where I was. Why couldn't I stay? I would give you a list of legitimate external motivations for each move, but reading this, I realize the whispering portents of depression were probably playing a role before I really acknowledged they were. Of course, one could also argue that those external tensions upended the internal ones. Either way.

I appreciate so much having been able to live abroad, but, too, the idea of being condemned to the life of the inveterate nomad breaks my heart. Shocks the moves indeed were, but therapy? Ha. I had more than a few people tell me the move/change/blah here would be good, while in my head, though, I'd be snarling, How on earth is this going to help? Don't you see how this only exacerbates all the feeling of precariousness and arbitrariness? No one needs you anywhere because no one anywhere needs you.

And still to see that sentence written there pains me to think of all those times I lay in my bed or sat on my floor, rocking back and forth, shaking as that damn thought terrified me, and how utterly defenseless I was to convince myself of something I knew in theory to be untrue, and yet could not eradicate from my heart or head. But mercifully it doesn't hold sway over me now, and I can correctly identify it as a lie.

Some of the details she describes above hit home, others not quite. But I posted it up there because I love how she so categorically dismisses the idea that being sad is just some thing we accept. Some people will tell you it's just a part of life, although more often I think those people just want an excuse for their own malaise, to indulge their indie street cred, or worse still, have some artistic/writing material, because if you do it prettily enough, giving up is noble, as if faint hearts ever won fair maidens or something like that. (This is why businesspeople aren't (often) artists: They're far too bold to succumb to some silly ironic conviction that success is only found in tragedy. I respect them very much for this.) And I do know being sad is an inherent part of things, but it's not one I want to resign myself to. This is not how I want to be. And it won't be.

If anything brought me out of last year, it has been finally being able to identify that infernal mantra above as a lie; I don't trust depression's intentions anymore. Not that that means it goes away, and batting down that vertiginous existential reeling still takes its daily toll, on my energies, my memory, my patience. But as long as I can dismiss the lie's insistence, which I do thanks in almost exclusive part to support from you all, it's ok.

And by 'ok,' I don't mean in the nonchalant sense, but in the sense of "not dramatic." A steady sort of ok. A state that gets challenged and threatened daily, but one that holds.

foto courtesy of the rrs

Best Inflatable Doll Ever Award

2009-03-23T19:30:00.000-06:00

300 colones ($0.60) at the Tres Rios farmers' market. There was also a yellow one on a scooter.

That's the Way You Need It

2009-03-22T11:36:00.000-06:00

This is one of the sectors that could keep Costa Rica from being completely sucked in the economic undertow.

This guy's going back to the states.

This article is everything everyone already knows about Costa Rica, and epitomizes everything I so dislike about how people approach Costa Rica, or tourism in general, like these countries just their playgrounds. "Any way you want it," indeed. Just go traipsing around, stay in hotels that sport some logo they know will appease your ecoconscience, have your tour guide (the only Tico you'll meet) explain to you in English what pura vida means over an Imperial, and then write a letter to the newspaper about how all the trash or other Issue X is such an unsightly blight on the otherwise attractive country.

Pure life, far as I'm concerned

2009-03-22T08:44:00.003-06:00

lavender tea with milk
fresh tortillas
watermelon-mango-cucumber
text with no hyperlinks
una vista

Maniquies Machitos

2009-03-21T14:49:00.006-06:00

Glitzy costumes from a (literally and figuratively) flashy Latino parade on morose Aryan mannequins:

The Proof Is in the Picture

2009-03-18T23:01:00.015-06:00

What does a copy editor do all day? you ask. This:

This page reminds me of getting a Prob & Stat test back fom the Major, "This was just not your guys' test, huh? Don't get me wrong: I had a great time. My favorite color pen is red, man! I went through a whole BOX of them this time!"

I think this is my record number of proofs for one page. You can click the image to peruse all the minutiae, or don't and be glad that's exactly what you don't get paid to do. But copy editing does suit me in its own way. Granted, about 80% of these never should have even made it on the page, which is lame because it means it will take that many more revisions until the page is all good, but so it goes. So, I just put my head down, turn my music up, and keep sharpening and resharpening my pencil.

As tedious as proofing can be, I'm really glad I'm not editing the content here, because most of the letters this week are so opaquely asinine they make me want to eat tacks.

The irresistible temptation of the 'reply' button

2009-03-18T14:22:00.007-06:00

From: Frances
Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2009 1:58 PM
To: Tico Times
Subject: KATE'S ARTICLE

Kate’s article was most wonderful, cutting through all the confusion of diets. Would it be possible to know more exactly what is her daily menu in the context of cutting out carbohydrates?

Could she answer this directly, or how do you suggest I reach her?

Thank you very much.

Frances

I forward this to the freelancer, Kate. (Standard procedure.)

----- Original Message -----
From: Kate
To: Holly
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 12:34 PM
Subject: Re: KATE'S ARTICLE

Dear Francis,

[...]

Kate

I forward this to Frances.

----- Original Message -----

From: Frances
To: Holly

Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 4:40 PM

Subject: Re: KATE'S ARTICLE

Dear Kate,

[...]

Saludos, Frances

I forward to Frances, then reply to them both.

From: Holly
To: Kate; Frances
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 5:00:16 PM
Subject: correos

I've been forwarding your emails to the other, but now you two can correspond directly with each other. Thanks! Holly

Three weeks later:

From: Kate
To: Holly
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 2:11 PM
Subject: Re: correos

Dear Francis,

Again, I apologise for the delay. I have had a terrible flu.

As for what I eat: I began by eating only chicken, fish, eggs, textured soy meat, veggies, yogurt, almonds, and cheese I don`t like red meat). Then I found my Atkins carbohydrate counter and discovered lots more that I could eat. For example, I discovered that eggplant had very few carbs, and I started making eggplant parmesan all the time. I also discovered that fresh coconut had few carbs, so that is one of my treats. Lately, since I`ve been sick, I have been eating creamed vegetable soups. I often buy surimi (fake crab) and do a cheese melt over it. I also make a lot of quiche. Instead of Splenda for sweetener, I use stevia (They sell it in Mas por Menos, at least here in Cartago). I have read a lot of negative reports on Splenda. Basically, it really depends on the tastes of the person. The important thing is to understand which fooods are carbohydrate and to eat just as much as you want to of protein, fiber, and fat. If you make yourself go hungry, it will lower your metabolism.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Kate

This is what cameraphones and adolescent sisters are for.

2009-03-08T11:02:00.005-06:00

From: 208(emily)@vzwpix.com
Date: Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 7:08 PM

skills.

How to Charm Media Types

2009-03-05T15:46:00.007-06:00

Praise them with pith:

First Name: Carlos
City: Los Angeles
State: California
Country: USA

Comments: I LIKE THE TICO TIMES VERY MUCH

---------
Referred By:
Search Engine: I AM SUBSCRIBE TO THE TICO TIMES
Print Edition: Yes

Yo tampoco.

2009-03-05T13:49:00.002-06:00

Hi Holly,
Te paso este mensaje porque no entiendo de qué se trata.

[department assistant]

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 8:19 PM
To: info@ticotimes.net
Subject: Customer Comments

First Name: mike
Email Address: lobsta@domain
State: Maine
Country: usa

Comments: """"""we want you back"

Dug sez

2009-03-04T15:28:00.003-06:00

Dug, you sure you don't want to get in on one of those drug tests, too? Or at least one that tests your ability to construct prose in coherent English before submitting letters to the editor. Laugh out loud.

----- Original Message -----

From: Doug

Subject: China town

The Chineez probably heard about the crime and wanted to build with an exact amount of material instead of 3 times as much due to theft...........then you have the Semana´Santa adventure coming up. Arias ought to cut a deal. Drug test the Ticos and hire ALL Ticos and if caught stealing give them 5 years GUARANTEED behind bars. They probably couldnt find enough under 50 years old and willing to take the tests and sign the agreement to fill the openings LOL.

Subject: Earthquake

2009-03-03T12:30:00.005-06:00

Amazing.

From: Raul
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 11:47 AM

Gentlemen:

I am a subscriber to your newspaper. I am the owner through Costa Rica-formed corporations of two small parcels of land above the La Paz Waterfall Gardens and off the highway to Cinchona. According to a map in your paper, my land was at the epicenter of the earthquake.

Is there anyone at your paper that I could call to discuss what is happening, is the main road open, etc.

Thanks.

Raul

As Precious As a Fisherman Gets

2009-03-02T12:07:00.002-06:00

... i’m sorry about my grammer and vocabulary. I’m just a retired fisherman, but i had to say somethng. this place is to cool to me to not make a comment. i doubt if if this gets printed, i suck at writting. but, by chance, could you make it look like i don’t write so badly. the spirit is there, but that’s always not enough i guess. ps. keep up up the good work you all.!

We got you covered, dude. And nice job in using "badly" where 93% of people would have used "bad."

Blood

2009-03-01T10:12:00.022-06:00

Chronology is not one of my strong suits, as I've said before. But the great thing is, it's also not always necessary.

(Read: Holly just got around to imovie/vimeo and this is the most recent footage of anything she has. They're also some cute videos. But don't expect me to go FinalCutPro on you any time soon.)

Christmas is one of the best times to be part of the extended family. There's not actually a bad time, but Christmas Day is when the awesomeness is most heavily concentrated. The routine has not changed since I was 4 and there were 15 of us. Now, the whole clan is at 32 and will be at 33 (at least) by December. The morning of, everyone gets to Gammy & Granddad's and stays corralled in the kitchen while the big people eat scones, chat, and try to keep track of the new little people who weren't around last time we were here and are now running around asking how soon until we can run into the den.

And this is a literal "run." We have taken pictures every year, probably since before I was around, of the moment when we open the door to the kitchen and let the little guys sprint from the kitchen, through the dining room, to the big, open garden room, where the presents (whose number expands geometrically with all the new gift-giving combinations the new spouses and babies each year provide) sprawl on the platform under the mammoth two-story tall Christmas tree. Of course, usually the kids have been prowling the gifts for the last few weeks each time they've come to Gammy & Granddad's and know with GPS-specificity where each of their gifts is located, so the running is to see if anybody got one of the big, day-of gifts, like the bicycle and other things like that that would otherwise require an obscene amount of giftwrap. I don't remember the first year I was holding the kids back and not one of the ones being held back because both roles are equally enjoyable.

We then proceed to the den, where we open presents one-by-one, youngest to oldest. These rules are never broken. It takes a few hours, and nobody ever gets bored, although everyone is quick to make sure you don't dally, because they have to wait for you to give your thank-you hug to your giver and then make sure they have the attention of their giver before they can tear into the gift. Inevitably, whoever is around the age of 6 or 7 (just old enough to be able to read the names, young enough to still be enthralled by the hunt) will be the go-to Present Finder for the group, too. This year, it was Andrew, who kept coming back to me, "Cousin Holly*, do you have a gift to open?" "No, bud, I'm out." "OK, stay there. I'll find one for you."

(*"Cousin" to differentiate me from Grandma Holly
and their (hopefully) future Chinese sister, Holly.)

While the footage might be older, the shots of the ever-expanding dinner and side tables (and Gammy surveying it all) might be some of the last ones since this year was the first year ever we did not all eat together but split into two different groups. On the one hand, this was a sad end of an era, but on the other, it meant I FINALLY GOT TO MOVE UP TO A GROWNUPS TABLE. True, we only had one table at our house, but it still was better to at least engage in conversation with my brothers, sister, parents, aunt, uncle, and grandparents, instead of watching the former, along with their other pairs of male cousins, hurl jibes at each other. Not that that isn't entertaining. Josh also remarked how, the next day when we got together for dinner out in Colbert, we all had a perfectly pleasant evening together and no one was having a drink, which would have been more than permissible, and I think there has been a bottle of wine from year to year, but it's just not habit. Besides this, the only other really critical detail about family dinner not captured in a photo here is the massive amounts of ice cream.

Later in the video, Andrew and I also did a 10 K cross-country ski race in February together. And I was not selective with the pictures I put in this: The kid really smiled THE ENTIRE TIME, and the closest he ever got to a complaint in 90 minutes on the course was, "Wow, this course is long." He is the happiest kid I have ever known. He also was a mailbox for Halloween that year.

Last year, he, his three siblings, and I spent a lot of time together and did the following: held a scavenger hunt in the dollar store (with two friends), explored down by the creek in the snow, played soccer, read stories (in many, many versions, loud v. soft, fast v. slow, e.g.), played multiple rounds of "abandoned babies," did school lessons, cooked dinner together, etc. Betsy discovered one of the best questions to ask Cousin Holly is, "Where are these earrings from?" and, anytime I'm wearing large discs, she asks if those are the ones I found hanging on the bush. She took some of the pictures in the later series in the bathroom and of me and Andrew when we were playing outside. She was giving him directions, too, in the vein of, "OK, now be really crazy like a monkey." And while the three of us were doing this, Adam was probably off exploring, and Katie was curled up inside reading for hours on end, i.e. exactly what I was doing when I was her age.

Then, the five of us also performed the marathon photobooth session required of all new owners of any Apple laptop:

(And yes, the song is in that terrible limbo between novel and nostalgic, but the thought of queuing all these frames to some other tune is not one I can entertain.)

And last, here's a tribute to Betsy, my Pacific Northwest version of Capucine:

In the first clip, I'm pretty sure she sings about someone who is "dead because she died [from falling off the table]" at the end, and I am trying to get her to say "girl," which she pronounces "gyearl," at the end of the second clip. She and I had some good times last year. In truth, all her siblings were equally filmable in their time, but she happened to be at that precise age when I had a camera to catch it.

One of my favorite Betsy moments last year, not captured on film, she and I were snuggling when she burrowed her nose into my shoulder. She, who has just discovered superlatives, pulled her head up, looked at me, and said with a big grin, "You smell the prettiest." "Oh ... that's really sweet, Betsy, thanks. [Pause] So what do I smell like?" "Hmmm ... donuts."

I'll take that.

Things I Don't Get

2009-02-28T07:45:00.002-06:00

so-called viral videos
trip-hop
lolcats
most micro and macroeconomics
"pwned"
wii

Obvious Rule #358: Do not mention bathing in professional communications.

2009-02-25T13:23:00.007-06:00

#227: Do not to use five ellipses in a span of 28 words.
#4: TAKE IT OFF CAPS LOCK.

From: Ted

To: Holly

Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 1:15 PM

Subject: HELLO HOLLY

WOW.. I CAN NOT BELIEVE YOU GOT BACK TO ME SO FAST... THANKS... NOW I PUT OFF MY SWIM IN THE MOUNTAIN STREAM... I WILL CUT IT BACK...TED

From: Holly
To: Ted
Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 2:06 PM

Our word limit for letters to the editor is 500 words. If you could trim this letter down to that limit, we'd be happy to consider it.

Best,

Holly

From: Ted
To: Holly

Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 1:11 PM

HOPE ALL IS WELL WITH YOU TODAY. I SENT THIS AS LETTER TO EDITOR. PATRICK'S GREAT REPORTING GOT ME ALL CHARGED UP... TED

Chewin' nails

2009-02-24T21:03:00.007-06:00

while listening to a couple new songs my mom sent me (she saves the cards from starbucks and emails me the codes to redeem the free songs), the phone rings.

me: hello?
dad: hey, it's your dad.
me, thinking this is unexpected since he called yesterday: oh hey, what's up?
dad: well i saw your facebook status* and thought i should call.
me: but it was in french.
dad: yeah, i had to google it to find out what it meant.
me, laughing: wow, i'm just realizing that my dad googled my facebook status in french and is calling me at my house in costa rica.
dad: hey, i'm your dad. ... you wanna talk to your sister?
me: sure.
em: hey holl.
me: hey babe. i hear you're quite the public speaker these days.
em: yeah, [speaking at church about their youth group's 30-hour fast] was pretty cool.
me: you know, the sunday where one of the guys spoke about the fast is one of the handful of services i remember from last year. ...
em: well, i don't know who spoke last year, but my speech was way better. i was 3 for 3 making the associate pastor cry.
...
dad: you know, 'when banks compete you win.'
me: i like how you just tried to pull off a bank's tag line as some maxim.
dad: no, it's not a bank's tag line, it's the lending tree's motto. if banks are competing for your business, you get a better deal. it make sense in theory. ... hey, don't laugh at your father.
...
dad: well, anytime you put up despairing messages in french, just know your dad's here.
me: it does sound more desperate in french, doesn't it?
dad: you know, it does.

i have a wonderful fa mily. in particular, they listen very very well. they are the best part of who i am. and if there were ever a special edition six-person family double dare where all the questions were in the form of movie quotes, we would beat the other team by at least $425 and then win all the prizes from the encyclopedia set to the trip to the nasa family space camp with 12 seconds on the clock. easy.

*Holly en a marre. 22 minutes ago

Blindsided by the seizure of a water bottle.

2009-02-24T16:12:00.004-06:00

I believe you are the black eye, o petty, dehydrated one:

First Name: Jimmy
State: Alabama

Comments: My wife and I visited your beautiful country in mid-January. We thoroughly enjoyed the visit. Upon our departure, we were blindsided by the security procedures in the airport. In the USA, we are allowed to purchase bottled water in the airport after the security checkpoint entering the concourse. Upon our departure from the San José airport, we were searched again just before entering the aircraft and all water bottles as well as other liquids were taken away. Your airport is selling plenty of bottles of water only to have them taken away at the plane entrance. This put a black eye on your country's security methods especially when we were not previously warned of this. This seems like a small issue but it is the final memory we have of Costa Rica.

Subject: US socialization

2009-02-24T16:01:00.002-06:00

From: Raymond
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 12:09 PM
To: Info

The United States uses nasal implant controlled socialization (NICS) as part of it’s national profiled indoctrination by bugging infants with puppeting bugs when they are born and still in the nursery with the program run by US intelligence as a domestic values program.

You're concerned. That's sweet.

2009-02-10T20:46:00.004-06:00

Unlike their Latino counterparts who have no inner monologue, gringo men rarely say anything out loud to you on the street, although they do stare overtly enough. So I was surprised when I passed a middle-aged whitey with his bespectacled eyes fixed on me as I scurried to the Jacó bus station this weekend and saw him open his mouth to say something.

"Wow," he said, as I braced myself. "I hope you have sunscreen."

A superlative post script, there.

2009-02-10T19:53:00.003-06:00

"St. Maria's School for the Grumpy Deaf"? Cute.

A superlative example sentence at the end, there.

2009-02-09T10:39:00.003-06:00

Palabra del día:

mamarrachada f fam
1 (comportamiento) bad behaviour
2 (dicho absurdo) stupid story: déjate de mamarrachadas y ponte a estudiar, stop being so stupid and get down to your studies
3 (cosa mal hecha) botch up: esa obra de teatro era una mamarrachada, they really botched up that theatre play

mamarracho mf buffoon, clown: no sé cómo pudiste enamorarte de semejante mamarracho, how could you fall in love with such an idiot?

The hippopotamus was allergic to magic.

2009-02-07T10:15:00.003-06:00

Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.

Francis, we told you to lighten up.

2009-02-04T16:14:00.004-06:00

From a review for a voice recorder:

Do you work with people who will tell you one thing, then "conveniently" forget what they said when questioned by the Boss? Me too. Does your Boss never answer your emails in writing, but always calls or speaks to you personally to answer your emails? Mine too. You NEED this digital voice recorder!

"When I saw the horse's head coming toward the windshield ..."

2009-02-04T08:13:00.007-06:00

"... I thought I was sleeping and that I was having a nightmare. How could have I imagined that a horse was going to fall into the car?"

A runaway horse was plummeting down the street at about 1 a.m. when it tried to jump over William Lerroy's taxi ... and didn't make it, but went through the windshield and was killed.

Lerroy was badly cut and shook up, but was able to leave the hospital after 24 hours.

But his car – and livelihood, for that matter – was totaled. Lerroy had only bought the car in November, after making the career switch from salesperson to what you could call freelance taxi driver.

The clincher: "Although authorities located the horse's owner, he denied that the animal involved in the accident belonged to him. The animal had no markings.

... Even though the penal code sentences 'owners or handlers of domestic animals or other animals that, either for abandonment or negligence, cause damage to others' property' of 5 to 15 days in prison, the article was annulled February 28, 2008."

(The picture is a snapped a shot of mine of the evening news.)

This is why editors become curt jerks.

2009-02-02T11:34:00.006-06:00

Because if you give contributors even the slightest leeway you didn't even know you were giving, they end up retching worthless responses and waxing poetic about your eyes:

--- On Mon, 2/2/09, Holly wrote:

Hi Ted,

Quick question re your Perspective submission. What is your latest novel about? Thanks in advance.

Best,

Holly

--- On Mon, 2/2/09, Ted wrote:

Thank you Holly for your little sunshine on a Monday morning:

What is it about? hummm... I like to say its about getting up when lifes drive you to the ground; to make big changes in the face of doubt, don't give up on those dreams. I suppose Henry Miller summed it up for me when he wrote: "Writing is about life; and life is 880 hourse power in a two cylindar engine." Stories can capture some of this, with all the love, tears, confucsions etc, to bring home the greatest reality of life: it all happened before and it will happen again. Like the water rushing down our rivers here, it will be back.

Let me send you he cover to the book, whose back cover gives some information. (plus the covers of two other of my books soon to come out... just for your information, not to load you up) .... I live the life of a writer more than I want to.

The novel is based on a story I wrote to be published under one cover; but forces around me, with more common sense than I, convinced me to bring them out as a trilogy. After considerable re-work, it is as I once dreamed. Some writers never get to see their work as they intended as you know. A piece I wrote in 2004, if I had time today I would slash and burn pieces of it, you can scan and perhaps get for some feeling for what my storytelling is about.

I am also uploading the introduction to my poetry book; throw it away or it may be of some help.

the last page of my "Gesar Tale" sign off the acknowlegement, and reads: "San Jose, Costa Rica, September, 2008." It was published a little over a month ago. It has been send to reviewers but nothing as of yet.

give my best to (the editor). His character and his humanity glow in those eyes, a real good guy.

thanks,,, ted

1 Ulysses = 260,000 words

2009-02-02T07:40:00.004-06:00

I like this one better: No sweet slides, but all the same enthusiasm, some of the same analogies, and less performance.

Erin McKean speaking to Google in 2006, "Verbatim."

"Some of my best friends are books."

2009-02-01T23:18:00.008-06:00

"There will still be paper dictionaries. When cars became the dominant mode of transportation, we didn't round up all the horses and shoot them."

My one comment: Spanish long ago beat English to the whole let's-just-make-everything-a-word game. While such a (happy! non-judgmental! progressive!) fluid relation with words can at times be useful (permanecerse), inventive (mariposear), or sometimes cute (cuchear), it can also be an amorphous mess, and you end up with words like "fotorrejuvenecimiento" and "futbolisticamente." And that's just a little too close to German, folks.

"90 minutes of fun"

2009-02-01T08:33:00.008-06:00

If I had a nickel for every cab driver who's asked me why a girl like me is single, I'd probably have at least $2 by now. I wouldn't know, I usually tell the taxistas, you'd have to ask the boys. I don't bother to tell them that, while the boys have never had enough gumption to take me on a date, they have had enough to proposition me, a few times. Other people get 15 minutes of fame, while I get offered 90 minutes of fun. It's not something I quite understand.

I've never liked to kiss & tell, for a lot of reasons, but often it's just because there's this startling paucity of any real stories worth telling. I embellish most of them (sometimes past the point of embellishing to appropriating someone else's bit and slipping it in as mine) just to be able to come up with any droll bit because the stories as they are are rather deflating. Sure, there were some nice moments with some guys, but mostly, I've just seen a lot of game, very little original material. Those sweeter moments are usually the same ones they recreate or elaborate on with the next girl, so it wasn't anything specific about me they appreciated about me, they just like appreciating girls. Like the way you have a job: if they hadn't hired you or once you leave, they just hire someone else, but no one's ever set on having you around. I'm plenty amusing and have a pretty enough smile, but nothing to compel them either. In the lower moments, it feels like a lot of wasted heart, but I'd rather feel that than that I was arbitrary to someone. At that point, there's not a lot I can do, including resent it. It is what it is.

But if you are with someone, please appreciate them. There are a lot of people who fall in love in the world, but it's not something we're ever promised. To have someone who will put up with you, to watch the game with, give to, who will challenge you without judging you, who'll stand up for you and maybe even throw a hook at the guy who just insulted you, someone who knows they want to be with you regardless of where you are or what you're in, that's a gift. So don't take them for granted and show them this. Give them a story.

Best of, Round II

2009-01-31T16:53:00.007-06:00

A continued tribute to the strangest things people have bothered to send to the paper over the last few months:

(You are seeing the entirety of this facsimile transmission.)

George sends us many, many letters, all of them faxed, most hand-written. Often they're letters to the editor (and actually, more well written and relevant than most), but this time, he sent us a poem. He called me the next day to say that he'd reconsidered and didn't want us to run the poem because "it might be libelous in some way."

Irene also writes frequently, usually to say she likes the articles of one particular freelancer, who also happens to be her friend. She also mentions every time that she's 105, and once sent us a newspaper article the local paper recently did on her. Then, this time, she sent us a letter on this stationery, which her son had made her. I think I'm just tickled that a 105 year old can take as much delight in herself and her birthday as a five year old does.

First Name: Janez, Slovenia, Europe
Day Phone: 00386 00386
City: Slovenia
Country: Slovenia

Comments: I am Janez P., from Slovenia, Europe and I am interested in
buying classic cars. Can you please tell me the title of a magazin or a
website, where you can buy classic cars.
Thank you for your help.
Yours sincerely,
Janez

What possesses a person in Georgia read about a canceled arts festival in a tiny town on the Caribbean, sense the "extreme danger" such a move represents, write a postcard in which you equate the "cowering officials" with Marxists and then mail it? Lighten up, Francis.

I hope she took the lace umbrella to the Roller Derby.

Miss Peggy, was many will remember, was always armed with a lace umbrella at the ready for the blazing tropical sun or the unfortunate soul who vexed her. ... She chose Costa Rica because of the rich Tico pura vida Central American fermentation she loved so well. ... Many of Peggy's friends here may not realize she was quite famous in her other lives. She was known for a time as "Peggy, Queen of the Roller Derby" during the war years.

Remember the obsessive, fasting filmmaker from last time? IT'S COMING TO FRUITION.

This is why it's ok to use a smile sometimes to get information from Latin American bureaucracies:

In a recent study by free-press experts, state ministries and agencies were quizzed on what they do to provide public information – such as budgets, salaries, contract details, administrative procedures, etc. – to the press and the public. "We had to pursue them and call and ask if they received it and resend the questionnaire. Even then we got a response of less than 50 percent of the institutions," said Carolina Carazo, who headed the study.

This was from a Perspective column on ways to "greenify" your life:
#7 This list can go on for miles. You get the idea. Almost nothing is exempt. How big if your list of what you can do? Mine is pleasingly large, pro-active and enjoyable.

They learn so young:

It's not like you need to go to Africa and stare deeply into the eyes of suffering children to know that something's wrong with this world.

Annelise, in her Young Writer's column urging people to shop with reusable bags

We need to expand our readership:

Nobody at Lake Arenal has done anything that I can report on this week - not that a few people haven't been doing things they haven't seen fit to tell me about - but the animals have been interesting. A thrashing of branches in an avocado tree proved to be the wild attempts of a frenzied squirrel trying to avoid the attacks of a clay-colored robin. Several times the squirrel came to the ends of branches as it tried to evade the swift assaults of the robin. Finally, it darted past the bird toward the trunk of the tree and fled through a series of interconnected trees. The attacker may have been the robin who has a nest in a bougainvillea bush beside our porch.

These next two are courtesy of the Public Security Ministry.

Best Shirt by Any Arrested Person

Thankfully, through the seizure of these 121 crack pellets and 16 bills worth not more than $42, the ministry was able to recoup the money they wasted in wages used to pay someone to arrange this:

Bravo to the local animal shelter, which found a way to make cute animals positively terrifying:

INANE LETTER OF THE QUARTER

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Letters wrote:

Dear Gene,

Thank you for the below letter, however it exceeds our 500-word limit. Would you be interested in trimming it to that length and then resubmitting it for consideration?

Best,

Holly

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 1:14 PM, GENE wrote:

Thanks Holly but I do not know what constitutes a "word" on your end of the line. Spaces? Punctuation? numbers? or simply words? Let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Gene

Know Hope for the Current Generation's Command of Technology

2009-01-28T09:56:00.004-06:00

Various e-communications with the mother lode.

Patty: how's your day starting off?

can you believe that i'm i-chatting. thnx to emily

Patty: Just wanted you to know I was thinking of you...even had a gummy bear dream last night...

I just think it's cute that she's not even 50, but 'chatting' by default still refers to the verbal form of communication.

This explains so much (emphasis mine):

Hey Holly, There's a longer story to this, but basically I got a free tube of Lancome UV Expert 20 sunscreen that I thought you might like ($35!). I will send it with Gammy and Grandpa...who are very excited to see you!.... With love, Mom

Know Hope for the Future Generation's Grammar

2009-01-27T20:34:00.007-06:00

Chatting:

Emily: i get angry at people when they use abbreviations like lol, u, rofl, wtf, gtg, etc SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY I'M SURE YOU'LL FIND ANOTHER WAY TO GET THOSE TWO SECONDS THAT YOU JUST SAVED BY NOT TYPING THE FULL FREAKING WORD

*although it might be a bit ironic that i used etc.
Emily: ...OH and when people use 2 instead of to because it really is so tedious to spell it out

I think it's cute she thinks 'etc.' is an abbreviation invented by the text message generation. I also think she understands irony better than I do.

Winning Formulas

2009-01-26T23:30:00.014-06:00

BANDS WITH ASIAN LEAD SINGER LADIES

Blonde Redhead (NYC via Japan and Italy)
The 5.6.7.8's (Japan)
Thao & the Get Down Stay Down (San Francisco and Virginia)
Deerhoof (San Francisco and Japan)
Dengue Fever (Cambodia and L.A.)

At a recent show in the Echo Park neighborhood here, the male members were downright goofy, but Chhom, singing mostly in Khmer and dressed in shimmering Cambodian silk garments she designs herself, looked like old-school royalty, a queen before the hipoisie. No wonder she seemed to roll her eyes from time to time onstage. But after the set, when she lighted a candle onstage to honor those killed by the Khmer Rouge, her voice broke and tears ran down her face.

"I think we balance each other out," Holtzman said in a recent interview. "She'll bring the whole place to a hush, and that would be a long night if it was just that. And then we smash the place up."

"Seeing Hands"

MONTERREY, MEXICO

Control Machete
Celso Piña
Quiero Club
Plastilina Mosh
Kinky

Because only a "norteño" rock band could figure out how to amalgamate a cowboy bassist, an accordion, and the indie rockstar hair swoop. I was going to post the actual music video here, until I found some dear YouTube user who put this up, her only video to date, a clip from this Kinky concert we went to last week. And the grainy live camera phone video makes the professional one seem dull. I was probably about 16 inches away from this person, although not one of the ones screaming the words ... because I have more of a head voice and this was really in the throat range. But I do dance.

"A Donde Van los Muertos," Kinky @ Palmares, Jan. 22:

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND

Franz Ferdinand
Belle & Sebastian
Jesus & Mary Chain
Mogwai
Camera Obscura

One day, I will have my white Dodge Dart convertible and drive across the country listening to this album, Let's Get Out of This Country. Here's "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken":

EARLIER TIMES, FARTHER-OFF PLACES

Les Yper-Sound (60s France)
Agentenmusik (60s Germany)
The Plastic record label (60s Italy)
70s Nigeria Rock Special
The Pulse Series (80s Russia)

These albums make arguably the best case for downloading albums. The Nigeria series aside (a disc I bought in the flesh in an actual records store, haters), these are not albums you could find in any music store, physical or virtual, nor are they anything I would have ever known to look for. Whole galaxies of genres and time warps that only open up more expanses than you knew even existed.

Amen.

2009-01-20T14:18:00.004-06:00

Everybody else is doing it so why can't I?

2009-01-13T21:10:00.018-06:00

Five favorite 2008 albums, among many (many) others:

Passion Pit, Chunk of Change (Cambridge, MA)
This EP was originally a gift from the lead singer to his girlfriend. Hope your ear canals are sufficiently wide for this one, "Sleepyhead":

No Lo Soporto, Avión (Argentina)

Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (Seattle)

Paavoharju, Laulu Laakson Kukista (Finland)

Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, We Brave Bee Stings and All (Virginia/San Fran)
The drummer and bassist are brothers, and the guitarist is their ... dad. Thao met the drummer in college.

kexp: tell me a little about your approach to writing songs. usually, you write on guitar?
thao: i do, i write on guitar. normally it is in the depth of some kind of depression, and i'll start with the guitar part and then hopefully a lyric or vocal melody, or both, kind of instantanteously will happen.
kexp: when you say depression, so you mean that brings forth the songs a little better?
thao: yeah, yeah, there's more color. (4 apr 2008)

"Bag of Hammers"

***

Best Free Album to Justify eMusic Membership:
Richard Swift, Ground Trouble Jaw
(You could make me a very happy woman.)

Best Album to Justify Having a 14-Year-Old Sister (Especially If It Means Road Tripping It Across the State With This Album Up Allllllllllll the Way) and Vice-Versa:
The Ting Tings, We Started Nothing

Worth the hype: Cut Copy, TV on the Radio, She & Him, High Places, The Dodos, Girl Talk, Hercules & Love Affair, MGMT
(Fine albums, but) I don't get the hype: Portishead, The Walkmen, Vampire Weekend, Crystal Castles, The Cool Kids

I'm indifferent: Santogold's album
Far from indifferent: Santogold's "L.E.S. Artistes" (make sure you get to 1:15)

Pop musically speaking, not a bad year to be a single lady. The disparity in dancing ability of these two is comical.

Annie (Norway), "I Know UR Girlfriend Hates Me," because life is too long to get it wrong:

Well, we know she's not opposed to spanking.

Copy Editor Porn

2009-01-05T20:55:00.006-06:00

Now if only there were a similar "tribute" to all the misspellings of 'definitely.' (definite + ly = definitely)

"It goes on."

How To Be a Gentleman

2009-01-04T01:16:00.012-06:00

Suggest to split a cab once we realize there's no way a train's passing at this hour.
Ask if I'm not cold when we get up to the street.
Hail the cab. Open the door for me.
Turn off the cab's TV monitor the minute we get in.
Let me prattle on, and when I stop, ask a follow-up question.
Have the cab stop at my place while you walk the last two blocks to yours.
Dismiss my protest and cover the cab fare. Open the door for me.
Don't ask for my name or number; do wish me a happy new year's.

Miles To Go

2008-12-23T01:55:00.014-06:00

Traveling makes me anxious like nothing else.

Not traveling in the sense of breaking out to explore and find the globe granite. I can't think of anything more invigorating than that. This time of year, though, traveling is the opposite type: latching yourself onto a trajectory to shoot you right back to your starting point. It's the opposite of discovery.

I nearly always travel by myself, a big chunk of the anxiety itself. Don't miss your cab, your flight. Don't forget your cab money, to print your itinerary, your passport. Make sure you've looked up this bus route, locked everything up, turned everything in. Don't run out of money. I don't think I've ever overslept an alarm on a travel day because I usually only can sleep a few hours anyway. (The time of this post, case in point.) I realize it's been over three years since I flown anywhere with someone – not the serendipity of running into someone on a flight, but actually going to the same destination with somebody.

I know I'll go back and enjoy moments, to be sure, but I'm afraid I'll mostly be reminded of why I left. And while I miss the Sawtooths already, I'm relieved to not have to go back to Ketchum. Make the obligatory outing to the bar, enjoy the first part of the night when you can actually catch up with the people you want to see and care about, and as the music gets louder, start bumping into and having stilted conversations with people who either ignored or vilified me a decade ago and watch them oblige me now. Wish for myself it could have been different. But Idaho's over for now, besides the lingering 208 area code and scowl of a driver's license.

Home, on the other hand, is never over. Never can be. It mutates, though. There's no parachute of t-shirt pajamas over your spindly frame, the only thing creating any resistance as you fly down the hall or stairs to the stockings at 6 am, nor younger siblings jumping on top of you at 5:48. There were directors and orchestrators (i.e. surprisers) and masterminds, and wide-eyed surprisees. Maybe there was snow. Same food, same soundtracks, different conversations, different moods. There aren't often surprises. There are often sweet gifts. The light moments can feel like relief, but you do laugh, a lot. Some years you cry; some years you don't. There is usually snow. Thank God for the snow.

The Sweetest Diabetic Sister

2008-12-21T17:57:00.010-06:00

Today is my sister's five-year anniversary of being diagnosed with diabetes.

A few days before Christmas 2003 on a trip home from Boise, the brothers were teasing her mercilessly about having to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes. But an astute Dad took note, looked up the symptoms when they got home, realized they matched diabetes, and took her in to the hospital. She was diagnosed with Type I diabetes and spent the next three days in the hospital, with a new tally of how many times she'd been 'pricked' each time we came to visit her. She stopped counting somewhere around 100.

In the car home after she was discharged on Christmas Eve Day, she, then 9, asked us nervously, "You didn't decorate the tree without me, did you?" To which we, her three incorrigible older siblings replied, "Oh, sorry, we thought kids with diabetes didn't like to decorate Christmas trees." True story.

We had, in fact, waited for her to come home to put up the ornaments. But those jests were a sliver of what was to come in terms of the ordeal she's had to put up with since then. She has to account for every carbohydrate in every meal and snack and morsel of a bite every day. And she does this, not out of some ill-advised fad diet, but because her body can't regulate what ours do involuntarily. She has to keep her feet warm and dry, has a higher risk for heart & kidney disease, and, oh, also has to watch out for blindness, among other things.

I had a heart condition when I was her age, for which I had to give up lots of things, notably swimming lessons, because laps (specifically starting to run out of breath while underwater) would make my heart rate jump from 80 to 180 bpm. (I blame this for the reason I still swim like a frog.) At one point, I was taking medication four times a day. One time in middle school while sledding with friends, after flying off the saucer and faceplanting in the snow (underwater with no breath = in snow with no breath, apparently), my heart went off and I had to excuse myself while I went and discreetly stuck my head in the snow repeatedly to try and get my heart rate back down. Because moving, paralyzing shyness, acne and MIDDLE SCHOOL weren't traumatic enough on their own, but thankfully I had a medical condition that occasionally turned me into a brumal ostrich.

But those were extremes, and at 13, they fixed me enough to go off medication, and cured me fully at 17. Em, on the other hand, will have this for her whole life, barring some monumental medical breakthrough.

I often say that Em is one of the most well-adjusted people I know, besides being 14, moving from the only town she's ever lived in this summer and having this medical ball and chain. She handles this disease well. And I don't mean this in the way people will insultingly say "You'd never know Sheila has cancer," where they're really just glad Sheila isn't burdening them with the gravity of her illness. Em is not shy about having diabetes and is openly frustrated when she either over or underestimated the carbs in a certain food and now her insulin levels are either too low or high. She also will readily introduce you to her insulin pump, Gloria. (Her first pump, Todd – named after the dog I will have one day – passed away last year.) The kid might not have insulin, but she's got more heart and strength of character and beautiful flaxen hair than the lot of us, and she deserves some recognition.

Here is her Sweetest Diabetic Sister in the World playlist:
"I Want Candy," The Strangeloves
"Sugar and Spice," The Cryan Shames
"Falling Sugar," The Palace Guard
"Sweet Young Thing," The Chocolate Watchband
"Ready Steady," The Sugarettes
"Sweet Lady," What Made Milwaukee Famous
"Dulce Compañía," Julieta Venegas
"You Want the Candy," The Raveonettes
"Sugarcube," Yo La Tengo
"Angry Candy" and "Sugarless," Autolux
"Sugar Man," Rodriguez
"You're So Sweet," Neil Diamond
"Sweet Darlin'" She & Him
"Sipping on the Sweet Nectar," Jens Lekman
"Sweet Thing," Van Morrison
"Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" The Velvet Underground

Costa Rico Suave

2008-12-06T09:51:00.027-06:00

Costa Rican Spanish is smooth. This is not the Aymara- or Quechua-derived Spanish with its hard palatal clacking I initially learned. It's a fluid, soft accent, without the jarring lisps or pronunciations you hear other places.

And it's not just the accent itself, but the delivery and Tico-style speak is almost (U.S.) Southern with this hyper gentility. They don't use the personal you tú form at all. Everyone (friends, little kids, couples) addresses each other with formal usted form, or what would represent Sir and Ma'am in most other Latino countries. "You're welcome" isn't "de nada" (it's nothing) here, but "con gusto" (with pleasure). When people get off the bus, they thank the bus driver with "Thank you, God bless." Where we use "if there's anything else you need" or "any way I can help," Ticos use literal translations of "at your orders/service."

And, they're big on terms of endearment, regardless of whether there is any actual relational endearment between the two speakers. When I go buy milk from the little shop next door, I get a "How are you my love," from the owner. I thank the IT guy for fixing changes on the Daily Page, and he'll reply with a "With pleasure, honey." When I went to buy a phone card, the middle aged phone company guy asked me, "How can I serve you today, queen?" These types of things are said all day every day among a married and unmarried person, two people of the same gender, whomever, and it has no suggestive connotation; they just really dig being polite. Of course, that can be the problem sometimes, too.

While it's a general trend in Latin America that people don't like to let you down by saying 'no,' this doesn't mean they will get you what you need, just that they have a softer way of letting you down. In La Paz, you could bet on hearing "Es que no hay" (it's just that there isn't any) on a daily basis. In Costa Rica, it's "No sabría decirle" (I wouldn't know what to tell you) from every other "customer serivce rep" you talk to. People will tell you an interview is cancelled or that their cab meter is broken and your fare is twice as high as it should be while smiling. Frankly, it makes you want to pop a left hook in that smile.

My interview with a 17-year-old convicted felon has been my easiest by far for one reason: It was straightforward. He was perfectly affable and talked easily while gnawing on a piece of raw spaghetti, and I got more out of my five-minute interview with him (you can rent a gun for four hours for $18 in his neighborhood, one of the city's most notorious) than I did in the 45-minute interview with the legal expert ("You could say there's been a light increase in youth violence in recent years").

Even knowing it's all just cultural adaptation, all the over-formality makes it hard sometimes for this Pacifc Northwest Yankee to not want to sit down and have a DTR talk with the Judicial Investigation Police spokesman, which would essentially go, "I give you the question (have you made any arrests in the case yet?), you give me the answer (yes/no). End of transaction. We don't need to bring terms of endearment/submission into this."

Gillian, one of our reporters, could probably have one of those talks with this legislative aide. (And yes, this is a particularly egregious example.)

-----Mensaje original-----
De: Gillian
Para: Herman
Asunto: consulta de Tico Times

Estimado don Hermán,
Un cordial saludo departe de Gillian de The Tico Times. Le escribo para pedir el proyecto de ley de la capitalización de bancos. ¿Me lo podría enviar de una vez?
¡Gracias!
Gillian

Dear Hermán,
Best regards from Gillian of The Tico Times. I'm writing you to ask for the plan for the law on bank capitalizations. Could you send it to me one (more) time?
Thanks!
Gillian

----- Original Message -----
From: Herman
To: Gillian
Subject: RE: consulta de Tico Times

Distinguida Señorita, adjunto le envío la Ley de Banca de Desarrollo que considero Usted necesita, un gusto poder servirle y que Dios bendiga su trabajo en la información del periódico la cual Usted es funcionaria, para mi ha sido un privilegio servirle, estoy a su orden para cualquier información que requiera. Un abrazo y un gusto es bendecirle a Usted en esta mañana..

Distinguished Miss (Gillers),
I'm sending you the attached Law of Development Banking which I believe you need. It's a pleasure to be able to serve you and may God bless your work in the reporting for the newspaper of which you are a member. It has been a privilege for me to serve you, I'm at your orders for whatever information you may need. A hug and it is a pleasure to bless you this morning ...

He sent her the wrong bill twice.

Italialaisella laivalla

2008-12-04T21:40:00.017-06:00

This music section is the one I feel most vulnerable writing. Mostly, I'm comfortable with my musical tastes, but my education has been woefully incomplete. I've also had too many bad experiences with music snobs who couldn't forgive me for not having learned of some band's evolution or album's historic significance by age 14, nor did these snobs have the patience to educate me, because that would mean sullying themselves in my ignorance. Sorry, but in 1997, I was more interested in soccer, namely the fact that I got to play with the boys because we didn't have enough girls to have our own girls team that year. I think it's reasonable for a teenage girl to have been more absorbed by the varsity captains than OK Computer. (And still, some will bristle.)

But that's also meant I have plenty of catching up/rabid consumption left. When it comes to music appreciation, I'm mostly my own teacher (and then dangerously my own editor when I post on it). Sure, I try and glean as much as I can from others who have an investment in the art, but I am the one who selects the next loci for exploration.

As much as it makes me nervous, part of me likes it this way, too. If I'm being generous, it feels more unadulterated. I don't need to know who used to work with/produce/be labelmates with/be the muse for whom. I don't need to know who was the leader of a movement, who was a follower. Pop the disc in. Listen. Repeat. How do you feel? The end. I think this is also why I am initially drawn to (or repelled by) band names and cover art: It means you don't have to make your (initial) selection off the music reviews.

This is the cover that spawned November's theme of Scandinavian albums of goodness:

Dungen, Ta Det Lugnt (Sweden)
Do you miss 1964 or feel like you never really got to appreciate it because you weren't born for another 18 years? Me, too. Thankfully, we have Dungen. They swing from roughshod guitar to billowing flute in the same song like no one I've ever heard. Literally, I've never heard anyone else try to do that. Oh my, I love this album. Key tracks: "Det du tanker idag ar du I morgan," (no, I have no idea what any of these titles mean) "Sjutton," and this one, "Panda":

Múm, Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is OK (Iceland)
The album title sums up in six words what these ones did in 1,445.

José González, Veneer (Sweden, via Argentinian parents)
The spare balladier and a transport to 197----(choose wisely, Holly)---2. 1972. (Best link of this post right there.)

Paavoharju, Laulu Laakson Kukista (Finland)
This album is the argument for jumping into the mountain lake instead of wading into it. You'll never warm up to it if you try to ease in; you have to let it all go and go all in, because only completely divesting yourself from what you know is what will let you fully absorb what's hitting you. I listened to this album a dozen times in the first week I bought it.

I'm From Barcelona, Let Me Introduce My Friends (Sweden)
It's one of those obnoxious ironic names, but the 29-member band has something going for it, namely, a niche in indie rock for kids who have grown up. Also, they clearly wrote Track 5 for Miriam, who, despite living in France in high school, i.e. a ways from being married, refused to go up the Eiffel Tower with anyone other than her husband. So, however many years later, Jon proposed by asking her if she would go up the tower with him. That's about as precious as it comes, folks.

Sigur Rós, Ágætis Byrjun (Iceland)

Swimming in ice. That's all I could think of listening to these albums (especially Paavoharju, Múm, and this one). All stark, cold, lucid splendor.

I was pleased with this idea of ice bathing for the first week or so I was listening to these albums, until I started reading the reviews about this one. I found out that, not only was my idea of gelid images not unique, but it was universal. Everybody thought this album invoked glaciers and fjords.

My creative sensibilities sulked at first, but then I thought of something: How remarkable for a group to create an album that evokes the same, particular notion in everyone. If someone told you to create an album that made everybody think of climbing trees or watching elephants on the savanna or eating a hamburger and strawberry milkshake in a hole-in-the-wall Chicago diner, all via a language other than the majority of your audience's maternal one, could you do it?

Can we count up now?

2008-12-04T21:24:00.005-06:00

A retrospective of my favorite parts from the election, one month later, and with a whole lot more months to anticipate.

Senator Obama was doing press interviews by telephone in a holding room between events. Sometime later as he was getting ready to begin his event, he asked me if I was photographing his shoes. When I said yes, he told me that he had already had them resoled once since he entered the race a year earlier. Providence, R.I., 3/1/2008. (Click 'Show More Images' about five times to get to this one and its caption.)

Best Flickr set ever:

Harbinger, November 1999:

The BBC's Washington correspondent, Paul Reynolds, said the speech was designed to demonstrate that the Texas governor does have a world vision, despite some slips up recently which betrayed his lack of experience.

The meta-political observer, October 1988, when I voted for Bush in our kindergarten election, probably because I didn't know how to draw, much less pronounce, a "Dukakis":

"Black," in other words, could be useful, and even a moral force, a way for white Americans to attain more perfect attitudes: "His color is an enormous plus. … How moving it is, and how important, to see a black candidate meet and overcome the racism that lurks in virtually all of us white Americans," Anthony Lewis had noted in a March column explaining why the notion that Jesse Jackson could win was nonetheless "a romantic delusion" of the kind that had "repeatedly undermined" the Democratic party. "You look at what Jesse Jackson has done, you have to wonder what a Tom Bradley of Los Angeles could have done, what an Andy Young of Atlanta could have done," I heard someone say on one of the Sunday shows after the Jackson campaign had entered its "historic" (or, in the candidate's word, its "endless") phase.

Ercassiel, that's me.

2008-11-21T09:38:00.001-06:00

Obviously a former Knowledge Bowl team captain is not one to be pointing the Nerd! finger, but this is another level.

Quite the devolution, oh brother o' mine.

2008-11-21T09:04:00.001-06:00

Brother Caleb, 20, gifted me a playlist today. Here were his messages accompanying each selection.

Holly

I just heard this the other day, and it's been stuck on repeat since then.

Caleb

Holly the tool

girl song. but a good song

Caleb

Holly the Shoobie

an instrumental that changed the way i listen to music. wait until the guitar at 2:10. blew me away.

Caleb

I Once Heard Holly was so dumb that she tried to eat a ROCK FOR BREAKFAST LOLOLOLLOLOLOOLOL

Once you're over that blast of humor. This is a great, chill song to listen to.

Caleb

Loser Sister McGee

one of my favorite punk bands. they go for a softer approach with this one. disregard the lyrics, i think he's a subpar lyricist, but its adorable how hard he tries.

Caleb

The last two selections (including one by a group whom Caleb described as "nasty") were addressed to Holls Ballz and birthday girl lame-o, respectively. It was signed, "xoxo from NC," which is now the playlist's new title.

that stubborn darkness

2008-11-17T08:16:00.002-06:00

for the most part, it takes a lot for a question posed of me to make me uncomfortable. i try to be thoughtful and forthright answering any question, and don't often have qualms about it.

i also cannot lie. and when i say "can't," i actually mean "not physically able." (really, i lose to 7 year olds in games of BS.) it's not a convenient trait. there are a lot of times we need to oblige people, and even when i deliberately make myself do that, i get this deer-in-the-headlights look plastered across my face that reads "SCRIPT ERROR," and it's awkwardly obvious that i don't believe what i'm saying.

by far, the question that has made me the most uncomfortable of late has been, "so how do you like costa rica?" except there is usually an implied (or sometimes explicit) exclamation point after that question mark, coming from someone sitting, like me any other time i'm not abroad, at a computer in a house with cottage cheese in the refrigerator, Lou Dobbs on the television, poorly-maneuvered SUVs on the roads outside, and that damn 45˚N latitude sunlight slipping through the slats in the blinds before you've hardly had time to kick off your shoes after work.

i sit and try to summon any latent powers for mendacity, but i realize i might as well be trying to make myself sprout chest hair. those carefully culled skills in diplomacy fail me. the truth? i don't like costa rica. i'm thankful for the job. actually, not many people like san josé, and i'm probably one of the more optimistic ones about the job. most gringos don't stay long-term, and if they do, it's often because there aren't any better job prospects in the crumbling economies to the north. but that's not the point.

i spent much of the last year in depression, something that makes it nearly impossible to appreciate anything, let alone moving to central america with a job in my profession of choice. the depression is something that's danced around the periphery for a few years, only touching down for a few fleeting moments at a time in the past. but last year, i was no match for it. i got obliterated.

there was a small group of people who knew what was up, but mostly, i was hesitant to discuss it because what general understanding there is of depression is clinical, and i am quite convinced, and others have confirmed, that this was not a chemical depression, although it did have very chemical-physical effects. (that was another awkward comment i wished i could fib a response to: "you look great!" thinking: this is no diet i would ever wish upon anybody.) i also decided very specifically in one moment that i did not want to write about depression, because i wanted no one to empathize with what i was in. (writing = poignant articulation of empathy) i still don't. i don't ever want to empathize with myself and revisit those places. at least not right now.

lastly, i avoided bringing it up because there was this small part of me that really wanted to think that if i moved, even if the move wasn't going to address any of the core issues, the depression would just go away.

but it didn't. i didn't think it could, but the depression got a lot worse when i got down here, a functional depression in only the most rudimentary way. everybody in the states (innocently enough) wanted to know how awesome it was here, and all i wanted to say that the clouds and i both rained all day. not being able to go to the wedding in july was hard, hard, hard (mostly because i try not to ask a lot of Money, not demand too much, but when it excludes me from attending my own kin's wedding, then i get resentful). but the thought had crossed my mind that if i went up to seattle, i wouldn't come back down to costa rica. except no one would understand why i'd given up on costa rica and this picture-perfect job so quickly, and i'd come out looking like some ungrateful, insufferably morose 20-something who couldn't buck up and buckle down and get it done. oh, and i'd be jobless, too.

(and no, this thought and others did not develop out of conversations with anybody. it was nothing anybody planted or insinuated, just an example of what happens when these ideas would get masticated ad nauseam in my head and snowball to fantastic lengths, and i knew of no way to stop or extract them.)

along the way, small things helped immeasurably: impromptu emails from heidi or emily, a skype call with lily or nana over a poor connection in a café, even the chance to clumsily take back up skills that had been on hiatus and tell a story to adena. little emails from people saying how much they liked this post or that one. (wait, really? you really like what i write and weren't just obliging me in saying you wanted my rambling emails from afar and now aren't just politely responding? cool!) i'd prop my computer up on the ledge of my window to grasp some waft of an internet signal from across the street and load pages of dooce, sit back down and read about someone bravely facing an even more serious depression. music, of course, helped, too, some say too much, but all i know is it was the one thing that could make me stop crying. that and french fries.

and then, the gnawing stopped at the end of july, and those acids slowly dissipated and drained out of my spinal chord and stomach over the month of august. why, i don't know. nothing materially changed, but the depression is gone for now, and for that, i am grateful. there's a part of me that's wary, or feels it'd be naïve, to claim victory. since i don't know how/why it ended, i don't see how i can assert it won't come back. and in that sense, trying to keep yourself from falling into depression feels like trying not to dream a nightmare. you can try to follow as many old wives' tales as you want and not eat right before you go to bed and think happy thoughts or better yet listen to sweet lullabies or soothing voices as you doze off, but you could have a happy or nonsensical dream, or a nightmare all the same. but i am attending to it, rest assured.

not that anything goes back to the same, not that it ever does, although i wish it could for reasons i tell myself are silly to hope for. (if things went back to before, it'd mean we didn't grow or learn. not that we always ask to be so knowing.) i mostly wish i didn't feel like i'd changed so much. i feel more eroded or raw now. i find myself scared to cry, and have to dutifully remind myself that healthy people cry from time to time, and just because i do now doesn't mean i'm depressed again. some of the weight's back and i sleep better, although i am being woken up a couple nights a week with allergy attacks. (wrote lots of this post at about 4 am. thanks mold!)

yes, there are times, mostly on the highways out to the coast, watching the litany of billboards in english selling condo developments, when it's hard to enjoy living here because i can't get past the notion that costa rica has whored herself and culture to the first world, that her only identity is in being eco/gringo-social-conscious-friendly. both other foreign countries i've lived in had such distinct national heritage, albeit one was obnoxiously arrogant about theirs and the other painfully meek, it's hard to grapple with a country whose national motto, pura vida, was first coined by foreigners in the '50s, and then turned into a tourism ministry campaign a couple decades later. there are times when i resent the idea that i abet hordes of people in their criminal failure to engage in their host country as we inoculate them against learning spanish under the guise of our benign little paper and its chipper sun logo. but that admittedly is me being cynical.

all this to say, yes, it has been hard here, and the idyllic image of life in the tropics is hard for me to know how to promote. but it's not costa rica's fault. if anything, the beaches are an incomparable antidote.

Since when have you been purple?

2008-11-10T14:08:00.000-06:00

An article on the #1 fan of the perennial purple champions, Saprissa: an 81 year old who's even streaked her hair with shades of violet.

*

La abuela más morada de Costa Rica

En su casa hasta la “refri” y la escoba son moradas. Su sueño es ver un partido del Deportivo Saprissa en el extranjero

“Cuando Saprissa mete goles o gana, brinco y toco una corneta que tengo. Es una alegría inmensa”.

Jugadores del monstruo, directivos, aficionados, la Ultra... todo mundo la conoce como la abuela del Deportivo Saprissa.

Con casi 82 años y vecina de San Ramón, María Cecilia Núñez, es sin duda la aficionada más fiebre de Costa Rica.

Su pelo está teñido de morado y los toques de blanco lo ponen las canas. En su casa la escoba, la “refri”, los adornos y hasta el chorreador de café son de color remolacha; como su corazón.

¿Desde cuándo es morada?

Desde que tenía 11 años. Era una chiquilla, el equipo ni siquiera estaba en primera división. Leía los relatos de los partidos en el Diario de Costa Rica.

¿Cómo llegó a ser tan fiebre?

Hace unos 15 años empecé a ir al estadio porque era socia. Iba solo al Saprissa, pero luego empecé a ir a todo el país. He estado en Osa, Puntarenas, Liberia, Limón, Pérez Zeledón y Alajuela.

¿Va a todos los partidos?

A todos, juegue donde juegue. Voy solita en bus y todo mundo me cuida en el estadio.

¿Algún juego fuera del país?

No, ese es mi sueño de toda la vida. Me encantaría ver a Saprissa jugando en otro país.

¿Cuándo empezó a ser tan reconocida hasta por los jugadores y entrenadores?

Fue en la época en que el presidente era Enrique Artiñano.

¿Cuál jugador la chinea más?

Todos han sido muy buenos conmigo y han venido a mi casa. Erick Lonis es de los que más me chinea, incluso me pagó un palco mucho tiempo.

¿Todavía es socia?

Sí y accionista (ríe). Tengo apenas dos acciones, no como el señor Vergara.

¿Conoce a Vergara?

Sí, fue muy amable conmigo.

¿Cuáles son los mejores jugadores que ha tenido el monstruo?

“Catato” Cordero, el “Príncipe” Hernández y “Cutty” Monge. Jugaban increíble.

¿Y de los actuales?

Apoyo a todos. Admiro mucho a Jervis Drummond y a Víctor Cordero por su entrega.

¿Qué opina de Porras?

Es excelente portero, una lástima que se retire. Yo incluso lo llamo por teléfono para saludarlo.

¿Y de Keylor Navas?

Va a llegar muy lejos.

¿Por qué perdió Saprissa en Honduras?

No sé qué les pasó. Viera cómo he sufrido con eso, hasta se me llenaron los ojos de agua.

Así es ella

María Cecilia Núñez

Edad: cumplirá 82 años el próximo 22 de noviembre.

Hijos: cuatro.

Dato: Nació en San Ramón. Todos sus hijos son saprissistas y le ayudan a coleccionar cosas y a pintar su apartamento.

Subject: your perspective

2008-11-08T16:10:00.000-06:00

On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 1:38 PM, Holly wrote:

Mark,

We were all ready to run your perspective and had it laid out on the page, until we realized you've already published it online on another site (insert link).

Please know that we require material we print to be original, and as such, had to pull this perspective.

Best,

Holly

On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 1:56 PM, Mark wrote:

Dear Holly and staff at Tico Times,

My profuse apologies. Truly. If this doesn't forever squelch my chance for future pieces with the Tico Times, please know it shan't happen again. I should have realized this would be your policy and I have no excuses.

Again, I am very, very sorry for the trouble and unnecessary work this has caused you all.

With much contrition,
Mark

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Mark wrote:

Dear Holly,

I feel awful about what happened, and about all of the needless work I caused you and others. I am sure I am not a very popular person in the TT world right now.

Am I banned from future submissions? Obviously, I fervently hope not but if so, I will have to count it as a very painful lesson.

Regardless, again, I am very truly sorry.

Sincerely,
Mark

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 12:06 PM, Holly wrote:

Whoa, tranquilo. You're hardly banned from submitting things in the future. This was just a heads up.

Best,

Holly

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Mark wrote:

Great! I guess I can put the noose away now.

Thank you very much, Holly. Hasta la proxima vez, entonces.

Paz,
Mark

REAL DOG LOVE!!!!!!!

2008-11-03T20:47:00.000-06:00

She came to look for help, her dog was urinating blood...........
The result, kidney stones. 15 kidney stones, some huge, some small were removed.
Her owner loved Canela so much that she sat with her every day for at least 2 hours in her cage were she had the after treatment.
Our own shelterdog “Tica” is looking at this situation, not understanding, probably asking herself: “Are they both up for adoption?”

Canela and her owner left as a happy couple.

Cured and well!
We thought this picture was worth sending out to all our animal friends!

Lights & Music

2008-11-02T22:01:00.001-06:00

You have generally three options for appreciating music from Central America:

Get into Latin music.
Live vicariously through friends in the states and Europe who can actually go to all the cool festivals and concerts.
Make the most of the concerts you get to go to here.

1. Bailamos ... just like Enrique

Bonde do Rolê, Bonde do Rolê With Lasers

Yes, this Brazilian trio is one of the best baile funk bands right now and produced by one of the best DJs out there, but I want to talk about the album cover.

In college, I had a friend who was rather fixated on doom. There was the "practice of doom," "quiz of doom," and the "library of doom." So, when I was studying in Cochabamba, I sent him a postcard of Cochabamba's Cristo, upon which I'd drawn lightning bolts coming out of the Cristo's hands and eyes, big clouds overhead, and the words "POSTCARD OF DOOM" across the top. (And no, it's not sacrilege: It's a statue they made to attract tourists and compete with Rio; it's not God.) When I got back to campus, you can imagine how pleased I was to see the postcard posted on their fridge.

Then a couple months ago, I came across this album, and just about snorted my tea because I was sure they'd ripped their cover art from that postcard. I forwarded it to said friend, and the best part? "Haha -- I still have that post card! I will never throw it away," he wrote.

The album's as tight as the cover art.

No Lo Soporto, Avión
Three Argentinian lady rockers, a sly mix of jaunty riffs and glossy harmonies. "Nunca Iré":

Austin TV, Fontana Bella
Instrumental rock group from, not Texas, but the DF and who deserve much more praise than I'm able to lavish here.

Os Mutantes, Everything Is Possible
The original Tropicália/Latin psychedelia trio. Here they are with Gilberto Gil with "Domingo no Parque" ... tão bom:

2. Thank goodness for co-workers' cousins who go to the Pitchfork Festival, make a mega-mix (read: burned DVD with 400 songs) in preparation, and send it to the cousin for him and his coworkers to rip, resulting in – check it – 30 new albums in one fell swoop. Christmas ain't got nothin' on September this year.

!!! [Chk Chk Chk], Louden Up Now

Definitely was calling these guys "that group with the three exclamation points," until someone told me about the "chk chk chk" part. I'm figuring they had to add the chks because if you put "!!!" in a search engine, you actually get nothing. And if you are not searchable in the Google, THEN YOU DON'T EXIST.

If they can name their band for a palatal aspiration, I might just go ahead and name my band after Josh's inimitable machine-gun sound. He's really good at it, has been since the age of 2. It's pretty awesome.

Caribou, The Milk of Human Kindness & Andorra

Sharp vocalists and adroit instrumentalists and bold musicians. Trifecta [insert: chk chk chk] Here's "Brahminy Kite" off the former album:

And "Melody Day" off the latter:

Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours
Two sick things:
1) this album
2) me, of describing albums.
So just listen to it.

3. You're darn right I gather the rosebuds that are concerts.

Soulwax decided to grace San José with their presence, hopping down from Tokyo via the DF before slingshotting back up to New York. Can we just stop and reflect on this a moment? No one ever stops by San José en route to NYC. A miracle. That being said, I wonder why more artists don't pass by (and not just wait until they're past their prime and can't sell out a tour in Europe or the U.S.), because, the people here who love these shows are starving for this type of stuff and, consequently, eat it up.

Bottom line: it was a rocking show. When it got to the point (after Soulwax's set, when 2 Many DJs were up there) where they pull people up to dance on the stage, I went ... and outlasted everyone else until it was just me bouncing around the stage. Addie swears I was up there for two hours, while I say at most it was 30 minutes. Alex was more diplomatic and said it was probably an hour. In any event, it was a blast. In subsequent days, I was icing my foot, knee, neck, and back from literally jumping around for all the time I was up on the stage, plus the rest of the time when we were all just dancing in the crowd.

One of the photographers from a social website snapped this one of me up there. I didn't realize it at first, but now I'm about 97% sure this is me leading everybody in overhead claps. You can see the various blurred arms in the crowd.

The best part of that night was arguably that those El Alto boots were finally worn to an event that merited their presence. Although Addie's karaoke later was a contender, too.

Curdle That Blood! Work That Accordion!

2008-11-01T23:22:00.001-06:00

OK, let's lose some fans here: Alison Krauss annoys me. Her voice and tonality are too perfect, too rounded. I don't feel the emotion in it. There's no tension. When I hear her, I just sit there and wonder if she ever gets mad, or even sweats, for that matter, because listening to her, I can't imagine that she ever pushes herself like that.

Not that it's just about soft vs. loud. There's spare, achingly pretty Gillian Welch, and there's forced shouting like Régine Chassagne does sometimes that grates.

So whom do I love? These artists, among others, especially in these songs, where you know the singer isn't just sweating, but probably about to pop all the blood vessels in his or her eyes from these lyrical convulsions, songs that throb intensely enough to throw off your inner ear balance and make you dizzy:

"Grass," Animal Collective

"Charmer," Kings of Leon

"You'll Find a Way," Santogold

"Faberge for Shuggie," Of Montreal

And the original King of the Primal Scream, Little Richard in "Good Golly Miss Molly," naturally.

Now, the instrumental counterparts to the oral paroxysms:

Bass: "Moby Octopad," Yo La Tengo (Honorable Mention to the keyboard); "The Girl I Love, She Got Long Black Wavy Hair," Zeppelin; "Balaclava," Arctic Monkeys

Guitar: "I Turn My Camera On," Spoon; "Patty Lee," Les Savy Fav; "Production City," The Whigs; "Pulling a Train," Six Finger Satellite

Drums & Percussion: "Brahminy Kite," Caribou; "Dear Can," !!!; "Woman on the Screen," Boris; "Pulling a Train," Six Finger Satellite

Most Capable Implementation of an Accordion (Along With Julieta) and All Other String, Wind and Reed Instruments by Current Artists: A Hawk and a Hacksaw

Here's "Fernando's Giampari," from The Way the Wind Blows:

I'd hope my opponent uses this picture against me if I ever run for political office.

2008-10-31T08:54:00.000-06:00

Just when you might be thinking a little too highly of yourself, your brother finds a childhood Halloween photo in which you look like a panda that has just happily devoured a sloth. Wearing ruffles and tights.

Here's to being never too concerned with our own nobility.

Happy Halloween.

"I am the famous Wang Hao!"

2008-10-13T07:31:00.000-06:00

You know he uses that line to pick up girls, too.

Word.

2008-10-10T08:06:00.002-06:00

Glorious words, which must sound even better when Brits are excitedly extrapolating upon them. I've been trying for the last five minutes to pronounce that one and still can't.

. She laughed. "It won't last. Nothing lasts. But I'm happy now."
. "Happy," I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception – especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.
-trd, 55

There Were Bunkers on the Hill

2008-10-10T08:02:00.000-06:00

"You were always in a perpetual state of fear. Anybody who says they weren’t afraid was a damn liar. ... We didn’t know what morale was; we just knew we had to be there.” -Papa

the only girl i've ever loved
was born with roses in her eyes
but then they buried her alive
one day in 1945
with just her sister at her side
and only weeks before the guns
all came and rained on everyone
-jm

eisenhower said in the war
he kept her picture in his pocket that was closest to his heart
and when he hit shore,
must have been a target for the gunman
-w

Best of

2008-09-18T14:56:00.003-06:00

Some of the better nuggets from the paper over the last few weeks, i.e. the things I keep laughing about, but know everyone will get really annoyed if I interrupt them again with these:

A Florida filmmaker on the phone with me, telling me why we should do a story on his film project that obviously was so inspired:
"I was fasting for 30 days in the jungle. … I'm very obsessive. … When I do something, it's on a grand scale. I was seeking a grand story, and I found this."

It gets better. This was the ad he eventually placed:
"Husband and wife are actors, writers, directors, and also compose all musical score. The film is 2 people, one sailboat, 2 person production crew. We have a complete marketing plan and promotional strategy for this very controversial film with experienced filmmaking background. This is not a vanity project we have devoted our lives to creating a film that will transform the soul and spirit of mankind."

A related testimonial from a restaurant ad:
'We felt transported to Thailand and India ... the sounds, the sights, the smells, the tastes. The food was heavenly, the waiters divine. And we were uplifted, sensually and spiritually."
-a customer from San Francisco, claro.

First there was a workshop on masculinity. Then, there was one on the "Empowerment of Our Sensual Feminity." Then, we got this:
Workshop ACERCÀNDONOS AL CUERPO con esencias florales
Or, a workshop on approaching/familiarizing ourselves with the body with floral essences, emphasis theirs.

There was also a quarter-page color ad ($400) placed this week advertising under the banner of "Arriving September 12!" a self-professed handsome middle age guy who's just looking for some nice marriage-minded lady. I would've called, but you know, I've never been one for long walks on the beach.

One sports bar boasts every week in their ad of their "Pool and Foolball Table," and once for their "Foolsball" table.
And every week I, sadly, have to correct them.

So do the gastronomic security Luddites exist, too?
"With this initiative, Costa Rica puts itself with the avant-garde in Latin America in efforts toward food safety in the gastronomic industry," states a press release.

The humans are included! From a classified real estate ad:
Includes caretakers' cottage with caretaker couple.

Just because it's Liechtenstein
The cooperative hopes to receive funding for the $250,000 project through loans from partners in Liechtenstein.

Be SO THANKFUL FOR COPYEDITORS who are there to put in that critical comma in sentences like this one:
Frank, a Costa Rican visitor for 30 years, built the church, which he then dedicated to his late wife Mary, who passed away four years ago in honor of their mutual love for this country.

Other good lines from various articles:
“He’s delightful and impressive,” Jill says. “He has deep, deep values. You don’t often see that in a good capitalist.”

"A golf course is a sin. No matter what it is, it doesn't make sense. It's not sustainable development," Amit said.

The company said it was the work of the zealous, anti-pineapple protestors.

Piropéame, porfa.

2008-09-13T17:32:00.002-06:00

What would Latin America be if you couldn't get catcalls every 100 yards? Not Latin America, that's for sure.

I knew one girl who did a research project on catcalls, or piropos, in Cuba, and the women there told her that they were disappointed on days they didn't get catcalls and usually resolved to put more effort into their public presentation the next time they went out. It's a shame catcalls have mostly negative connotations in the states, because it's a cute game for the most part. Not anything to put a lot of stake in, but some good fun all the same.

Pretty much any gringa gets attention here simply because the fair skin is the rarer foreign trait, and I smile thinking how Norwegian qualities are thus turned into something exotic. That being said, I felt the most uncomfortable in La Paz when it was clear they were hitting on me because I was white, the whiteness being the desirable beauty trait, especially in a country so painfully aware of its skin colors and races and the vestigal colonial value of white over dark. To get a lecherous, even if ultimately benign, sucking-in of a hiss calling attention to your skin's lack of pigment every afternoon on the street was not flattering.

Thankfully, the skin color gradient is more varied here in Costa Rica, so I don't stand out as much, and even less so if I keep my sunglasses on. Whereas I honestly can't think of a memorable line I got in La Paz (or at least memorable in the good way) – although the Cochabamba buses did have these funny loud catcall whistle-replicating horn they would frequently let wail – it's a much more amusing game here.

By far, the most common pickup lines you get are lots of awkward Spanglish sayings, "Hi, beautiful lady. Goodbye." Sometimes they directly translate favorite Tico terms, and you get a "Hello, my queen." But others have stood out, for the simple fact that these are the ones that got me to turn around:

Least Sleazy, Somehow
One afternoon, I had a lanky middle-aged guy with one of those perpetually concave torsos in a button-down shirt, grin, cock his hand in pistol fashion to point at me, then pull it up to his ear in a telephone gesture, and follow with a wink.

Most Confusing
One morning as I was walking downtown on the main pedestrian thoroughfare, as I passed this one guy, he leaned in ever-so-slightly, and gave this completely asexual "meow," as if he were really trying to accurately imitate a feline.

Most Terrifying
It was the same type of lean-in move as above, except this time there were two guys walking together, and right when they were a couple feet in front of me, they suddenly split to either side of me, leaned in and gave low, throaty "ojos" in unison.

Most Unnecessary Double Standard
OK, so this wasn't a piropo, per se, but one time when I was wearing one of my better sundresses, I passed an elderly lady who had a very concerned look as she surveyed my legs. Once we passed each other and I guessed we were about five yards apart, I turned around and found her still looking at my lower half as she walked away with a HUGE SCOWL ACROSS HER FACE, one that involved all her eyebrow, forehead, and mouth muscles. And I just thought, really, amid all the other flesh that's shoved and smashed into tops four sizes too small, you're going to bother to judge me? At least my dress fits ...

Best Attention to an Editorial Assistant's Sensibilities
On my way to work, a guy resting up against a car hood a few meters away says, in stilted English, "I really enjoy looking at you this morning," and the only thing I could think was, "Wow, I just got hit on in a complete sentence!"

Can You Come Down With Us?

2008-09-13T13:33:00.000-06:00

The Albums That Hardly Employ A Guitar Appreciation Month:

High Places, 03/07-09/07
The pared-down electronic simplicity much in the same vein of Au Revoir Simone, but bolder. And bold is good. Very good. Probably what I'll nominate for Character Trait of the Year.

M.I.A., Arular
She is not a simple lyrics-set-to-a-tune artist: She's a full-on surround-sight/sound experience that infuses the entire nervous system with this writhing artistry. As Joshua Klein put it in describing another album, "such wonderfully weird and inventive craft that reveling in [the artist's] ingenuity and tapping your toes become inextricably linked activities, making the disc the perfect mind/body split: blowing the former while moving the latter." Except listening to this album involves a little more than tapping your toes.

Panda Bear, Person Pitch
Arena indie rock. There's a type of soaring, euphoric quality to this album that makes me think that if I ever went on a hot air balloon ride, this is what I'd listen to.

Wax Tailor
This was a concert, actually. (Hooray for seeing French electronica in Central America!) The performers included Wax on keyboards, a cellist, a flautist, and a visual artist whose electronic scribbled flourishings were projected on the large screen directly above the stage. There was also a small projector to the left that played random clips of WWII-era films and commercials. Good times!

Plus heaps of yummy India.Arie and Dar Williams, courtesy of the equally yummy Lily.

The Olivia Tremor Control, Dusk at Cubist Castle
Because there was no way the E6 month would have been complete without this album, but I couldn't fit all 10 green typewriters and the other 17 tracks into my monthly allotment of downloads last time. For all the active bands out there who are dying to have "the White Album" breathed in their reviews, Olivia Tremor is the most successful of any other I've heard. Not that they're trying to specifically emulate the White Album, but the best moments of Dusk harken back to it.

It's important to know that I have this section to promote albums popularly, not pretentiously. One reason I so loath absurdist band and album titles is because it strikes as an elitist move, some artist thinking they're coming off as "deeper" by making themselves more inaccessible (when they usually just end up seeming more convoluted). I would hate for someone to avoid buying, or even sampling, this album because the name – which, now that I think of it, just add a 'b' to the front and it pretty well describes Evo's job – threw someone off or thought that album couldn't be for them. This album is infinitely accessible.

Plucked Her Eyebrows Along the Way

2008-09-11T18:23:00.000-06:00

a preface

"one thing was evident, she thought, hollywood had not spoiled holly's goodness, she was so unaffected and friendly, and her words were not just idle ones, spoken for the sake of it. she meant them."
-sbgr, 90

"in 'how a resurrection really feels,' one of finn's recurring characters, a lost soul named holly, crashes into a church on easter sunday – 'limping left on broken heels' – to declare to the congregation that while druggy parties might have killed her, visions and saints have resurrected her. it's a strange tale."
-nym on ths, 7/21

"holly had achieved nothing, and this was entirely due to the unexpected unfriendliness of the efrafan rabbits."
-wd, 256

Que Viva la Vista de Mi Ventana

2008-09-03T10:17:00.002-06:00

My living room is famous.

What can I say? I've got a knack for first suffering through one miserable living situation in which I inevitably get gypped before landing myself in apartments with killer views from the living room, along with pairs of chairs where you can sit and read or maybe just watch it all for hours on end.

OH. MY. GOODNESS.

2008-09-01T16:35:00.000-06:00

My life is now divided into the Before Solla and In the Year of Our Solla eras.

"Solla Solla Enna Perumai"

Key moments: 1:59 and 2:51

(This, more than anything else, makes me want pick up Hindi again, if only to be able to open up the final dimension of this video, which would be the lyrics and therein the reason for All the Awesomeness.

And you guys are all in trouble now that I've figured out how to embed YouTube videos, or, I should say, now that I've realized that embedding requires nothing more mentally intensive than copying and pasting.)

Soundtrack for a Crab

2008-08-29T09:51:00.002-06:00

Miriam posts multiple vids of Grayson and her babbling. I post ones of crabs eating to the beats of a couple different drummers. It works.

Out on Playa Sámara this past weekend, I was on my way to take pictures of the beach at sunrise for a hotel review, when I became completely engrossed by these bizarre multi-colored tree-dwelling crabs along the road. While they were apparently unperturbed by the speeding motor vehicles a few meters away, most of them shot into their lairs when I so much as thought about farting in their general direction.

But not this guy. About 5" long, he had that big papa don air, and there wun't no way he's gonna interrupt his meal fur no silly white girl and her camera.

But I like the video with this track, too, because what if those were your baby's arms?

I ended up with about a dozen pictures of the beach and three dozen of the crabs. (I also missed the Palin nomination by about two hours because I was having so much fun figuring out which song's lyrics were most in synch with the footage.)

On Perhaps Prescient Blague-Naming

2008-08-25T15:18:00.001-06:00

Dear U.S.S. Mariner,

You don't have to choose! There is one magical word that will grant you both!

Love,

She Who Might as Well Have Named Her Blague for Following the Trials of Her Dear Team from Central America

In the Balance

2008-08-20T09:48:00.000-06:00

Right now there's a man threatening to jump off a fourth floor balcony of the justice building right across the street and visible from our office windows, and you don't know if it's more insensitive to gawk or to simply ignore him and go back to your work.

[An hour later]

I had a couple other coworkers from classifieds come up to check out the view from the newsroom. "How awful," one said, and "Some people will do anything to get attention," said another. One girl came up, looked out, and went, "Men don't have any problems; it's we women who carry everything."

He didn't jump.

Bring It On Home to Me

2008-08-19T08:52:00.001-06:00

One Night Stand: Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963

One of Cavell’s bewilderments about modern cinema was how it casts romance as what happens only when you think someone's cute and they think you're cute and you laugh at each other's jokes, a flawless crafted thing that would be lost if there were conflict or hurt, where tension is bad.

What the old movies, on the other hand, took for granted is that we're far from noble, but often just that unholy mess of a girl or boy. Old movies made the fallibilities the endearing part and knew that romance had to do with the grace someone gives you in light of our gauche and weak selves.

The album opens with some suave enough dance numbers, but its culmination is the pair of the above song and the following one, both to this one woman. Cooke’s well into the concert and has already sung (a medley, even) to her, someone about whom he's said there are plenty of rumors he doesn't need to hear, when he sings this one "just to tell you how I feel." He throws out an actual “haha” early on, tells her what she means to him, then pleads, boldly – and at 1:07 and 2:43 he even smacks his chest – and you know he’s smiling while he’s crying.

In between verses, he throws out a, “Listen, I gotta be a man to tell you this. Honey, look ..." and then he offers her redemption.

That is romance.

I kissed a medalist.

2008-08-18T21:20:00.000-06:00

OK, so I kissed him on the cheek four years before he took the silver in the 100m backstroke, but it still most definitely counts. And gracias a Süper Toga Party, I have this pic as proof, although, Addie's response was, "I was hoping for bit more of a full-length toga shot." Good point, except I'm going to venture that the trigonometry would have required that, to have gotten all 6'kajillion" of him in this, this Flying Dutchman's left wing would have had to been raised to at least a 57˚ angle, something that low basement ceiling would not permit.

That being said, the best part is obviously Meg lurking there on the right.

And here, I'd like to think you could substitute "All-American" and "national champion" with "Olympic medalist," and the gist would still be the same. Although the Daily the FORGOT THE UMLAUTS. Proofers! Where were the proofers, Elaine?!

Makes you wonder if they sometimes forgot Poland, too.

Olympic Proportions

2008-08-18T20:36:00.000-06:00

Bodies of Work

The Most Sublime State

2008-08-17T13:09:00.001-06:00

you took the car
it was my favorite one
little white dart
and drove it to idaho
-lp

i might even wind up in idaho
and visit a cute little miss
a sweet little someone i used to know
and i might even stop long enough for a kiss
-mr

was a five-band bill, two-dollar show
saw the van out in front from idaho
and the girl passed out in the backseat trash
and there were no way they'd make even a half a tank of gas
-gw

Beers would dribble.

2008-08-09T15:00:00.002-06:00

English menu translations are consistently good fodder to the average traveler. But the below, from a restaurant out in Cartago, are quite possibly the best/worst ever. Apparently the Negrita's blessings do not extend to trials in gastronomic elections.

(gallo pinto = typical tico dish of black beans and rice)

(papas a la francesa = french fries)

(izar = to hoist;
babear = to dribble
but we're pretty sure the menu says "cervezas bavaras," or bavarian beers.)

(gaseosas = carbonated beverages)

This is also a week when everything must converge – online in addition to copy editing duties, plus some reporting on the side – so you might not hear much from me. Luckily, there are things like this in the interim. Some of the vids aren't available – and would still easily be available on youtube somewhere, obvio – but YOU MUST AT LEAST CHECK OUT THE HASSELHOFF VIDEO.

YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.

Bunyan would be proud.

2008-08-04T23:29:00.000-06:00

Costa Rica's patron saint – a little dark wood statue called La Negrita – lives in Cartago, about 20 km east of San José. Every year, there's a pilgrimage where people walk from all over the country, some from as far as 200 km away, to come to Cartago's formidable basilica.

For my friend and me, it was a lot simpler: we didn't really have anything better to do on a Saturday than walk for a few hours. So we did.

Strangely, there wasn't anything notable, except that despite getting past the discomfort of pulling a rather colonial move and using my umbrella as a parasol to keep off the sun in the four or five hours we were walking, I still managed to sunburn the living daylights out my face, the backs of my calves, my right forearm, and the right side of my neck, making my epidermis look like some unfortunate paint-by-numbers experiment.

Then, I had a miserable allergic reaction to the sunburn the next day.

But my legs were NOT SORE! Thank goodness.

Gronlandic Edit(or)

2008-08-04T19:56:00.000-06:00

The original plan was for this month to be an E6 lovefest and dabble in modern psych. ("psyche" = Greek for "soul" + "manifest"!) What I ended up with, on the other hand, was a tentative sort of 10-year Elephant Six High School reunion. Some of the sounds are recognizable, but have become more mediocre and ordinary over time; others have remade themselves, and it kind of floors you how good they look now, even though you always thought they were cute when you were in school; and others are just as stunning as they ever were ten years later.

The Apples in Stereo, New Magnetic Wonder
Goose: "How about terrific, terrific, terrific?"
Charlotte: "Cut that down to one terrific, and it will do nicely."
The moral being that editors know how to impress Zuckerman.

Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
Long title, so a short review: Swinging. Oh so swinging.

The Instruments, Dark Småland
Some of the tracks are pretty enough (almost), but I should really make a point to not be so easily enticed by the opportunity for Scandinavian keystroking.

Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane, Over the Sea
A perfect album, by all accounts, and one that forever further enshrines Anne Frank, this time in indie rock. The meta-crescendo builds with every listen.

But I do have one gripe: who on EARTH deemed that "Neutral Milk Hotel" would be a suitable band name? Not that band name determines greatness, at all (else Save Ferris might actually make good music), and lord knows the indie rockers have a remarkable affinity for the absurd or ironic titles they so desperately want to endear you with, but this one's inanity I find unrivaled. Makes me think of a Swiss dairy co-op ...

Other albums, in a mini-tribute to the North Shore:

Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
Fellow alum + Fat Possum = I was behooved. (And am so grateful that I was.)

Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville
You'd probably be jaded, too, if you'd grown up bonking New Trier HS boys. (Not that "jaded" is the sum of this album, by any means.)

Song of Traveling by Myself

2008-08-03T18:23:00.002-06:00

Every 90 days, as a non-resident (i.e. tourist), I have to appease the Costa Rican immigration gods and sacrifice my presence for 72 hours outside of the country. In other words, I get an excuse every three months for some righteous jet-setting.

Except in this world, when we say “jet,” we mean “bus.” Lots of them, lots of rickety, coil-spring seat, retired school buses, and only sometimes do we mean a converted charter bus. But these buses are not to be disparaged.

Much like trains in Europe, buses in Latin America are where you are marinated in the culture, forced to absorb each sight and smell with every kilometer and hour that pass. They are the things you could at best espy from the stale encasement of airports or out of vacuum-sealed windows at 30,000 ft.

Originally, I was supposed to be in the states for last weekend, but that trip fell through, so by the time the weekend got here, my planning for the new trip had gone as far as borrowing a Central America guidebook (mostly for the maps). I picked Nicaragua because it was cheaper than my other cross-border option, Panama, and because two colleagues live in Granada, a city I'd heard enough charming things about. In the end, I spent one night in Liberia, CR, near the border; two in Granada and one afternoon in Masaya; and one in San Juan del Sur, on Nicaragua's southern Pacific coast.

This might be where some of you are saying, “Well, she’s lucky she can travel like this while she’s young/before she gets tied down.”

Precisely. I am acutely aware of the fact that this is a time when I have no obligations to any job or other person, and I will indeed indulge that latitude for whatever the short or long while it lasts. That being said, it's not quite a lifestyle to be covetous of, exhausting on a lot of levels, and I doubt I'll want to go back to this however many years down the road. But still, the ability to up and go to these strange corners is nonetheless part of why I like so much living abroad right now, and the mode of transportation is inextricable to reaching those corners. Anyway, it beats having self-important TSA personnel rifle through your unmentionables any day.

So here is an exposition on how one gringita travels by bus in the third world. You can decide if you're jealous or not.

Pack your passport, a few pithy sundresses, two books, the toothbrush, little else, and leave straight from work for the bus station.

When the buses to your original destination are full for the next two days, hopscotch it and take the bus to the closest city to the border to spend the night and figure the rest out later.

Keep your imposing El Alto feria sunglasses on while your uncertain eyes scan whatever new scene you’re trying to grasp to mask any of the solitary traveling gringa’s vulnerability. Take off the sunglasses when you need to robarte a favor.

Deem your taxi driver trustworthy and let him take you around to five different hostels (and even spend five minutes talking to his friend who sometimes lets out the room in their family’s apartment, but they’re full this night) to see who has a room for you at a reasonable rate.

Try to read on the hostel’s patio, but only cringe at the conversation of an adjacent Santa Cruz twenty-something ramble on to two obliging Brits about surfing in northern California and how massive the swells are – so massive in fact that he himself is not yet good enough to ride them – his only consideration of his guests’ sensibilities being to convert wave heights into meters.

Buy a bottled water from the little Nicaraguan girl who’s bustling between the other vendors who’ve boarded the bus and chat with her about nail polish. While still chatting and French-braiding your already windswept hair in preparation for the next leg, have the guy outside mouth a toothy "guapa" to you right before he hoists the massive spare tire on his shoulder and climbs up the ladder to the bus’s roof to secure it up there. Apply your new goldenrod shade to the one finger she lets you.

Arrive, plod from the bus station to the main plaza, then down the stretch to the lake. Sit and watch the lake.

Join a 30-something Granadino on the bench back in the central plaza and engage in a meandering conversation that begins with his wistful remark that “the plaza’s where you can always come and let your day – good or bad – unwind,” and that culminates with him extrapolating the power of the sea to how God and the devil made a deal that the former would relinquish control of the sea to the latter, pausing and going, “It’s like that movie with that big boat and the old lady who threw the necklace into the sea.” “Titanic?” you venture. “Yeah, that one.”

Eventually get up and go check into a hostel, cold shower off the stick and grime, and hit the sack not long after the sun does.

Wake up and head down to the plaza while the air's still cool. Buy two small styrofoam cups of coffee for 25¢ apiece from the vendor and her coolers and marvel Nicaraguan innovation.

Make a day trip to a couple markets with the Belgian hostelmate (born in Burundi and researching in Brazil for her doctorate in anthropology) and spend most of the time flitting between the three languages common to you both, never really settling on one in particular.

Go to the bar and listen to a Nicaraguan guy tell you that all the Tico men are metrosexuals who use product in the hair on their heads and shave the hair on their chests, all the while his blue dress shirt is unbuttoned down to the upper abdominals, exposing an inverted triangle with an estimated 24* square inches of his own lush pectoral tresses.

*(8 x 6 / 2)

Follow that up with a conversation with an Aggie undergrad who is voting for Nader if ol' Ralph makes it on the Lone Star State’s ballot.

Be grateful you’re camping out at the spare hostel so you can twice enjoy a garden courtyard breakfast at the historic hotel named for the national poet, complete with a caramello macchiato one day and a strawberry milkshake the next.

Pack up and head for the beach, because salt water beats fresh any day and you did not pack this swimsuit for naught.

Turn frustration at forgetting to charge your camera battery into resolve to better describe it for you all here.

Sit and wait at a dusty bus stop, on a bet that the person who gave you directions did in fact know what they were talking about and weren't simply proffering something to avoid letting you down by saying they didn't know what you need to do to get where you're going.

Find out the buses aren't running to the coast because it's Sunday and join three others in a cab (at one point, there would be seven people in the five-seater).

Eat ceviche in the late afternoon on the deck overlooking the sunset on the beach with a Toña in one hand and O’Connor in the other.

Come back from the beach and let the saltwater dry taught across your cheeks while you sit on the deck in the hammock with the hollyberry print and hold the book closed in your lap while trying to pick out names for the colors of the bands in the sky as they morph in the twilight, settling on baby blue, florescent salmon, and stingray grey in the end.

Finish your book the next morning on the beach next to the dog and owner playing fetch while the rest of the town wakes up.

Fashion tortillas and litchis from the market into a breakfast for the bus. Buy a water from the brother of your amiguita from the other day, then have her pass through your bus again, and repaint that same fingernail on the left-hand ring finger because the previous polish rubbed off.

Finagle your way through border Immigration by ignoring the first guy who tells you you have to go stand in the hour-plus line and smiling and asking the guy next to him if he could give you the exit stamp you need, which he does.

Spend two hours waiting to buy a ticket for the bus, or at least 116 minutes more than it would normally take, because it’s a holiday and barely a bus is running.

Ticket in hand, take the one hour until your bus leaves and find a small trail, follow it down to a wide, languid river, counting three blue morpheus butterflies along the way. Go down to the bank, prop one bag under your head and the other under your arm, lie down, and watch a boy with a build like Mowgli hop from rock to rock on the other side of the river.

Sprint your heart out for 200 meters when you find your bus is leaving because you got back in the wrong line (none of them marked) and missed the original boarding. Climb breathlessly aboard and realize one of the standing passengers has taken your seat, but since none of the seats is marked, relegate yourself to squeezing yourself in amid the other standing passengers and assuring yourself how refreshing the breeze that’s coming in and cooling off your sticky self is after the unanticipated aerobic activity, and think that you'd make a good Buddhist.

Think about either crying or reaching down to get your shoe – if you could get to it between the wedged mass of pudgy spare tires and booties – and use it to bop the head of the elderly woman who just laughed at you when you affirmed that you did in fact lose the seat you’d paid for and were going to have to stand up on this six-hour plus bus ride, and think that maybe you wouldn’t make such a good Buddhist.

Make your way up to the front at the next stop, explain your situation to the bus ayudante, watch him give up his seat for the next half an hour until the next seated passenger gets off, and do not feel guilty about this while sitting for the remainder of the trip. At all.

Stare out the window as the light dims on the monolithic trees, draped in vines like Medusa's hair, that loom over the landscape and formulate phrasings, and mull phrasings like that as you think of things to post or send later.

Arrive back in your gristly, diesel-infused city after 32 hours traveling on 11 buses and four taxis in four and a half days with half a córdoba, no dollars, and just under 500 colones in your pockets and miss the solitude already.

"It is clear that such a man could not reach new countries, or add to his past experiences, if he went not along new and unknown roads and abandoned those which were known to him. Exactly so, one who is learning fresh details concerning any office or art always proceeds in darkness, and receives no guidance from his original knowledge, for if he left not that behind he would get no farther nor make any progress."
-sjdlc

don't forget to writ me

2008-08-02T14:39:00.000-06:00

First time in my life I've ever cried over politics:

To my dear family:- i miss you very much and i hope i can see you in the nearast time . . . don't forgat me from you pray'urs and don't forget to writ me and if ther any problem writ me. your [heart] son:- omar [heart] khadr

Bounce, baby, bounce them waves.

2008-07-29T11:28:00.000-06:00

From Customer Comments, sent by Molly C. herself:

Molly c., earthquake savant, says take those breakables off the shelf because Guanacaste could feel a whopper in the next day or four. Low frequency radio waves have a way of bouncing around my head (gift from God) and at 5:17 am more or less on Monday, July 28 I got a good blast of them, and I suggest a heads up. I'm usually right; this one could be well into the sixes, Richter Scale-wise.

By "fellow countrymen," do you mean Texans or other 49-staters? Because there is a difference, I've been told.

2008-07-22T14:09:00.000-06:00

A letter we received "for your editorial board":

During the years that I lived in Puerto Rico, I was president of the Texas Society of Puerto Rico, a group of Texas expatriates, along with anyone else who was of an independent mind, enjoyed country and western music, Tex-Mex cuisine and chili con carne. With our annual Chili-cookoff on the beach (sanctioned by "CASI" - the "Chili Appreciation Society International", we raised over US$30,000 for local charities.

Are you aware whether any similar organization currently exists in Costa Rica, or, whether there are a sufficient number of my fellow countrymen who would be interested in forming such an organization, for social and community service purposes. Our motto in Puerto Rico was "we party for charity"!

Does this happen to anyone else when trying to buy a pint of milk?

2008-07-21T14:20:00.001-06:00

This afternoon, I'm in the little store next to the office, chatting with the 40-something owner about our respective weekends. When she asks about mine, I say I had a nice, low-key weekend, including a lot of quality time reading.

She goes, "Oh, you shouldn't be doing that. You should be with a boyfriend on the beach."

I mean, that was my next idea if the whole wander-around-in-the-rain-along-the-railroad-tracks-looking-for-new-cafés thing had fallen through.

The View From My Window

2008-07-20T15:52:00.000-06:00

a progression:

(Kerosene + Sulfuric Acid)x2 + Hydrochloric Acid

2008-07-20T12:56:00.000-06:00

Profiles = trios of tidbits on a theme, culled from wherever.

Importantly, these are not things I'm necessarily condoning or identifying with, but they are things that alternately amuse or floor me. Sometimes it's the interposition of some raucous melody over a poignant lyric, or vice versa (and to that degree, it is probably unfair of me to post just the text without the musical complement). Sometimes it's me playing off the irony if something were applicable to me. And sometimes there are just things that become rather risible when you strip them of their context and lay the words bare.

Now that we've cleared that up.

"turning coca leaves into cocaine is a three-stage process. first, the dried leaves are treated with an alkaline solution (lime, sodium carbonate, or potash), which begins to break down the fourteen alkaloids contained in the leaf, one of which is cocaine. the leaves are then stomped in large plastic vats full of kerosene, the blackened leaves removed, and sulfuric acid added to the mix. the substance left at the bottom of the vat is known as cocaine paste. in the second stage the base is usually washed in kerosene again, dissolved in sulfuric acid, and mixed with potassium permanganate and ammonium hydroxide to get a purer form of the cocaine alkaloid known as cocaine base. in the final stage the base is dissolved in ether, hydrochloric acid is added, and the mixture is then dried and filtered until it reaches the final stage, known variously as hcl, hydrochloride, or pure cocaine."
-jp

some get a kick from cocaine
i'm sure that if
i took even one sniff
that would bore me terrif-ically, too.
-à la bh, claro

cocaine flame in my bloodstream
sold my coat when i hit
spokane
-rl