Pizza Man by Griffin Brown

12.05.2007

Griff has been recording his own music on a program called Garage Band.
Here is his latest masterpiece.

On blogging

11.29.2007

Thanksgiving

11.24.2007

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Ours was a lovely get together of some of my favorite people. Here are a few pictures from Alisha's camera. The rest are on flkr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10249946@N02/?saved=1

Belated pictures of Venezuela

11.23.2007

Since Griff and I had our camera stolen (or, as we like to put it, involuntarily donated), most of our pictures of Venezuela were lost. Luckily, our friend Ming has saved the day. Here are the ones she sent us.

* No pictures of Griff, as he was doing the Louisiana quick step. Or South American quick step. Whatever it was there was quickness and stepping involved.

Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh

11.19.2007

Tear It Down

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.

Jack Gilbert


*From a lovely book of poetry Abe gave me and Griff.

Christmas Presents

11.14.2007

At a certain unnamed retail store where I work, the employees are now allowed to buy Christmas presents at cost (finally, a perk). Usually this means 50% off or more. This event is for one day only, so if you'd like something, let me know soon.

Love you all,
Adelaide

Haute-couture à la Boston

11.09.2007

People are beginning to notice when I walk around town. They stop and whisper. No, its not the ridiculous makeup--its the clothes.

"Who made that beautiful hat for you?" They ask.

I tell them that one of the most exclusive designers in the country tailor made it for me. Not only that, but she includes with every hat a ridiculously cool jacket and two cook books. It all makes me want to say that "There must be more to life than being really, really good looking."




yay! Thanks Kate. You are, by the way, fabulous.

A

In which, I am related to a lobster

11.04.2007

Seriously cute and much more fun than Kafka. For more Wynn Brown, visit Julie's lovely site: thewynnbaby.blogspot.com

Walt Whitman

11.01.2007

Abe shared this passage with me today. It is stunningly beautiful.

Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,
or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons,
and with the young, and with the mothers or families,
re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
and dismiss whatever insults your own soul;
and your very flesh shall be a great poem....


~ Walt Whitman ~

(from the Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition)

On kittens and Crackers

This is a true story about my grandfather as told by a friend of the family:

Dr. Ramsey O'Neal was a leading physician in Hattiesburg for many years. His son Kelly, a local OB/GYN, told me this Halloween story about his dad. Many years ago, when Kelly was a child, Dr. O'Neal was left to hand out Halloween candy while his wife and daughter were at a church function. The O'Neal's lived in a safe neighborhood with sidewalks and on Halloween it was full of children. Never having handed out candy before, Dr. O'Neal did not know the "drill" so when kids would come to the door he would let them put their hands in the bowl and get all the candy they wanted. Not long into the evening he ran out of candy so went to the kitchen to see what else he could give away. In no time he had given away all the fruit, cookies, and graham crackers in the house. Next he went through his pocket change. Kids were still coming and he was out of options. He then remembered the six kittens in a box in the back of the house. Yes, he dropped a kitten in each of the next six bags opened before him! Some were handed back to him, but four managed to make it out of his yard (can you imagine the looks on the parents faces when the child got home with a cat in their trick or treat bag). Kelly said the when Mrs. O'Neal got home she was so angry at her husband (she had already promised the kittens to several friends) that she didn't speak to him for several days! And that, my friends, is a true story!!!! Have a Happy Halloween. Babs

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone??

10.26.2007

It’s nine o’clock in the morning and the store is about to open. I have been at work for over an hour counting money and setting up cashier stations. Ace of Base’s song, All That She Wants plays on the loudspeakers. Again. Spoiler alert: all that she wants, is another baby. Welcome to a day in retail.

“I’m sorry we don’t have much to do,” my manager says to me. “Things will pick up later today.” I ask him if it's okay for me to write while I wait. He thinks about it a second, “I don’t think the head manager would like that.” Other associates are talking to one another, bouncing balls, wandering round aimlessly--but it is my writing that would reflect badly on the company.

I am apparently to just stand. Doing nothing. Even when there are no customers in the store.

“Try to look friendly,” he tells me.

It is at this point that I realize that I don’t want to do retail. If I had any doubts about the validity of applying to masters programs for next year, these doubts are now assuaged.

He calls another manager. “Hey, why don't you bring those shirts forward. I’m going to get Adelaide to fold them. Just thought, you know, that I’d give her something to do.”

I decide that I will start working on my applications tonight.

I am the only cashier on duty, which means no ten minute breaks. While these are legally mandated, it doesn’t really bother me. I would most likely be told to do nothing there as well. “Yeah, just sit there. Try not to drool.”

It is surprisingly hard to not drool, I’ve found. Especially when you’re hungry. But every time I take out my lunch, I get made fun of. It’s hard to take spinach and basmati rice into the public without laughed at as a hippy.

Which is surprising, since Portland is one of the most hippy friendly cities in the country. But in the twenty minutes it takes me to drive from inner Portland to outer Portland, there is a serious shift in demographics. Whereas every barista and bag boy in downtown has bachelors degrees, on my job I am the only one.

A fact that doesn’t seem to be helping me much. “Uh, Jennifer, line one. Jennifer, uh, dammit!” In case you’re wondering, cursing over the loud speaker is never a good thing. Nor is failing to hang up the phone so that the entire store hears you ring up the next customer. I didn’t think it was a big deal until the next day when one of my coworkers said to me, “Did you hear that someone didn’t put the phone down after a page? We were all talking about it this morning. Its hilarious.” Yeah, wow, I say, that person must be really incompetent.

In truth, it's not the incompetence that messes me up so much as the forgetfulness. Take today, for example. Our apartment is really cold in the morning so when my alarm goes off, I jump out of bed and put my clothes and jacket on immediately. I drove to work and parked my car only to realize: I’m not wearing a bra. Worse than that, I am wearing a pretty thin shirt and no bra. I wear my jacket into the store, but its down filled so if I wear it all day I will most likely asphyxiate. And people will wonder, why is that girl wearing a jacket if she is sweating so heavily? It’s against company policy anyways, to wear coats on shift.

I run through the women’s apparel section looking for a sports bra, a thicker shirt, any kind of nipple hiding device. I finally settle on a cami, but, as I am the only cashier, I can’t buy it until the other girl gets to work at three. So, I did what any other sane human being would do in this situation--I taped down my breasts. With packing tape. Which is really not so bad, at least the taping part. It’s the removal of the tape process that’s hard. Suffice to say I have only one and a half nipples now.

No one seemed to notice my improvised bra. At least no one that could potentially fire me. I was worried because the population of outer Portland is pretty conservative, a fact that I continually forget. Take gender issues. A young guy brought a balance ball to the checkout. On the packaging was a picture of a woman mid crunch. He said that none of the balls had men on the box. I told him that her pink sports bra wouldn't really look good on him.

“Really?” he responded. “I think the pink might bring out my eyes. Anyhow, I guess they’re just not marketing these thing towards men.”

“Unless you’re a cross dresser,” I say. He looks at me and then moves back a bit. “Or transgendered,” I continue.

He's looking very uncomfortable and I’m beginning to flounder. “You know f-m or m-f. I’ve forgotten. Anyways...” I trail off, deeming that talking is no longer the best option.

I hand him his receipt and he says, “Well, this was quite the gender bender conversation.” I tell him I’m glad we had this talk.

Luckily, none of my coworkers heard me. They already think I’m weird here. I was talking to another cashier when Brittany Spears’ song, Not Yet a Woman, came on over the loud speakers. “If I never hear this song again,” I tell her, “I will be happy.”

She nods enthusiastically. “Yeah, I hate Brittany Spears. Christina Aguilera is sooo much better.” Of course, I mumble, that’s exactly what I meant.

I can’t blame her for liking these songs. I’ve heard them hundreds of times and they’re beginning to sink into my psyche. Our company has a playlist for their stores and it repeats all day. I find myself spontaneously singing lyrics I don’t even like. "Meet Virginia, I cant wait to, meet Virginia, yeah yeah."

This seems to be a dangerous situation. According to an article in the BBC, “Middle-of-the-road pop tunes - a category into which most festive songs fall - were reputedly played by the US military to break the fighting spirit of the Viet Cong. The FBI chose Nancy Sinatra's back catalogue when trying to end the Waco siege in 1994.” At my store, it seems they are not only trying to break our spirits, but also to induce psychosis. Which leads me to one questions: Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

Damn you Mac commercial man!!

10.22.2007

I'm typing this from the Apple Store because I've just found out that

My hard drive has died. 

Have lost lots of files/photos.

Sadness.

Please send me pictures of yourselves so that I may remember what you look like.  

Powells on the Colbert Report

10.15.2007

Powell's Books was recently featured on the Colbert Report! It's the nations largest independent book store and I used to walk there from my old apartment (you know, the one that wasn't an unfinished basement).

Go Portland.


http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=111024

This Old House

9.29.2007

Or basement rather. Apologies on the blogging hiatus--Griff and I have been living in what some might call the seventh level of hell. These pictures are after Griff tore out the carpets and linoleum.

1. Our lovely neighbors who took these pictures for us.


This is the kitchen.

The dungeon--a bedroom with no walls and a 6'5 ceiling.


The main area that you walk into. Note my moderate hysterics.

The first thing you see when you walk into the apartment.

A bedroom.
The mural painted on the wall in the bedroom. Yes, the woman is holding her heart in her freakishly large hands.

The carpet you see in the bottom right corner of the last picture used to be in the entire house. And the ceiling, which you can kind of see in the first photo, is sea foam with plaster clouds and glitter. There is carpet on the ceiling of the bathroom. And don't forget the mural of the naked woman/bird/angel of death and suffering. We suspect the previous tenants were on acid.

We have since spent several days grinding down the concrete to make it suitable to receive stain, which then turned out to be this goldish terra cotta color that we had to paint over. Griffin has removed several walls, I've been battling mold, and we've blistered our hands scraping up carpet padding. Now, its still a war zone but much more manageable.

Yes, we're living here. Waking up each morning high on paint fumes and choking on sawdust. More pictures as things develop.

A

Sexual Decision Making

8.30.2007

A song about Flipper

8.28.2007

From the desk of Michael Peterson in response to flipper not showing up when Griff and I swam with dolphins:

They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning,
No-one in the sea, is a bastard like he.
And we know Flipper, doesn't love Shelly,
Avoiding her under, under the sea!

No one really knows the king of the sea,
Ever so snotty a bastard is he,
Tricks he will olay when tourists appear,
And how they curse him when he isn't near!

They call him Flipper, Flipper, that fishy bastard,
No-one you see, is worse turd than he,
And we know Flipper, soon will be slaughtered,
Dragged up with tuna, from under the sea!



Fabulous.

Hurricane Dean Update

8.20.2007

Last we heard, Hurricane Dean was bumped to a class 5. So Griff and I took a bus to Cancun and got on a standby list out of Mexico (extremely lucky). We are now safe and in the US.

Faulkner on Mexico

8.19.2007

In Faulkner`s As I Lay Dying, Addie Bundren claims that ¨Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forgot the words.¨

Travelling in Central America has been wonderful. Griff and I suspect that blogging was our way of making the best of difficult parts of the trip (notice how many times we wrote about bus trips), but that when we are really enjoying ourselves, we don`t need to write about it because we don`t need words to create the experience for us. For whatever reason, I have not blogged much about the second half of our trip.


I miss you all and can`t wait to get home.

Adelaide

Cutting out the middle man

Griff and I have been robbed in our hotel room twice. As this poses a dangerous situation, we have taken to leaving our valuables in public. Like the camera we left at the internet cafe. We hope this leads to a safer and more efficient form of robbery.



* As a side note, any pictures past Venezuela have been ripped off from friends. To see pictures of Lake Atitlan and Lake Bacalar (where we are now), check out this site: http://coleychavez.com/atitlan/index.html . I talked to the guy who posted the pictures. He`s seems like a pretty cool fellow.

PADI Certified Scuba Divers

After 4 days of classes, videos, and practice dives, Griff and I are officially certified scuba divers. Or certifiable. had to write that to head off any blog comment jokes.

According to the video, ¨scuba divers are more fun than normal people.¨My cool points just went way up.



Here we are studying. Look how much cooler we are.

There are, as yet, no pictures of Griff getting drunk and falling asleep on the side of the road.

Yes, we are safe

Griff and I are now in the Quinta Roo at Lake Bacalar. We were planning to fly out of Cancun, but because of the recent weather complications, Mean, Mean Hurrican Dean, we may have to change our plans.

We are safe, and we`ll definitely try to stay that way. Updates soon.



**We are delaying our flight home until Thursday, stocking up on food and water, and hoping for the best.

International calls, anyone?

8.14.2007

I lost my notebook with the phone numbers of anyone who might read this blog in it. (Hey, I keep in close contact with my fan base.) So, if you get any calls from Guatamala, sorry about that. Edwin has already gotten one.

Strange postcards, on the other hand, are entirely from me. I call them WTF postcards.

I'm moving here

8.13.2007

Lake Atitlan-a deep beautiful lake that used to be a volcanic crater. The water is naturally that emerald color Lake Winnepasoka created with fish mutating chemicals. I went swimming in a secluded cove and could see well beyond twelve feet deep.

I spent a few days in a meditation center here and Griff watched a lot of South Park.

Every ridiculous looking American for himself

8.11.2007

Rode an overnight bus. Again. We have now stayed on buses more than hostels. This one was so cold that Griff wrapped a pair of his (hopefully clean) underwear around his head to keep his head and face warm. He wanted me to share my sleeping bag with him, but I said, ¨Lo, there is not enough bag for the both of us. Go and see if you can buy more before the bridegroom cometh.¨I mean, he´s had plenty of time to get his own blanket. I did share with him until he came up with that whole underwear on the head thing. After that, it was every ridiculous looking American for himself.

Venezuala--back in time blog

Caracas is a hard city to be in. It´s thought to be more dangerous than Bogota. Today I almost stepped on a decomposing dog carcass. Broken glass and tall spikes--even the McDonald's is vigilantly guarded. Griff touched the door of a closed LAN house, and, as a result of the severe shock, he will no longer be able to sire children.

Venezuela exports oil and diamonds. Neither industry bodes well for a country. There is a strong anti-American sentiment here fueled (ha pun) by the fear that Venezuela will be the next Iraq. Combined with the fact that Brittney Spears is still very big here, it´s easy to imagine George Bush saying, ¨Oops I did it again.¨

Still, the countryside is beautiful and most people come here for the mountain villages or the waterfalls. We came to see the latter. We took speed boats up the river, hiked around rough spots, and slept in hammocks with a view of Angel Falls--the tallest waterfall in the world. Griff was experiencing gastrointestinal distress which amounted to something like this: ¨Wow. That´s amazing. I hope we find a bathroom very soon.¨

The trouble with things going well is that it´s harder to write about. I think I´ve lost touch with beauty. Things have been so hard the past few years. I´ve gotten good at dealing with sadness--finding irony and humor in it. But straight unfiltered beauty? Beauty untinged by sadness? Riding up river on that boat, surrounded by sheer rock faces, waterfalls that cut their steep descent into the river--it was as if some old forgotten part of me opened up.

I walked on a trail close behind a huge waterfall. In the middle, I started yelling and dancing, spinning around in circles. The people near me started doing it too until we were all soaked and exhausted. It was one of the most incredible things I´ve ever done.

I was struggling with how to put it into words, when a British friend told me to write this: ¨Just saw a bloody amazing waterfall. You buggers aren´t here. Ha. Ha.¨

I´m not sure gloating is the right approach. Besides, that guy can be a real asshole.

Cheers.
Adelaide

Robbed

7.25.2007

Griff and I were robbed last night. In our hotel room. At 1:30 in the morning. We had been reading and talking and did that whole, I´ll brush my teeth after I close my eyes for just one minute...¨So we fell asleep. With our lights on. And our door unlocked.

We awoke to the sound of several knocks on the door. There are electrical lights outside the window, so its hard to tell the time. In my groggy state, I thought we had overslept and they were telling us that we needed to check out of the hotel. Griff thought it was 9:30 in the morning.

I opened the door and a man was panting and leaning over. Do you speak English? Yeah? Good. Americans? I´m from California. Yeah. Listen, I lost my credit cards and there´s a big emergency at home. I need to call. I need to call home. The hotel owner won´t give me nothing. If you could just give me 50 Q. I´m in room 12. 50Q and I´ll pay you back tomorrow. Agitated, he wrote his name and hotel number down.

I thought about shutting the door, but as he was talking he had moved pretty close and I didn´t want to provoke him.

Griff got out of bed and handed him 100 Q because we didn´t have a 50.

He left, promising to pay us back tomorrow.

¨That was freaky,¨I told Griff. On the back of the piece of paper he had handed us was a hodgepodge of photocopied images. Tourists, devils, 666, and pornographic pictures.

We locked our door and tried to sleep. But the guy had seen our room and we thought he might have scoped it out to come back with others. It wouldn´t be hard to pick the lock, and because the hotel opens onto a courtyard, there is a large window next to the door. Griff went to the bathroom and there was a ton of noise outside the room. He came back to the room with beer bottles and two long bamboo sticks. Which, in case you are wondering, are not very effective against people with knives and guns. Bamboo sticks are the weapons you get demoted to in action games. Its below the fist but slightly above the wet noodle. They looked menacing that night but ridiculous the next morning. Griff said we could have poked them in an attempt to annoy them to death.

We tried to sleep, but as Griff put it, ¨I keep waking up every time a bird chirps. They shouldn´t be chirping at this time. Grab the beer bottle of safety, he´s coming back with his friends.¨

The next morning, waiting for the bathroom, I told another guest our story. He´s a Guatemalan who does business in the area often and always stays at this hotel. (Labelled in Lonely Planet as ¨secure.¨)
¨I think he saw you,¨he said, pointing at me. ¨I think he followed you.¨Griff suspected the same thing. The robber seemed to get very nervous when he saw a big guy in the room. At least, a big guy by Guatemalan standards. I had been walking around by myself for part of the day, and had entered our hotel room alone. So if he had followed me, as the Guatemalan business man suspected, he could have easily assumed that it was just me in the room. As Griff put it,¨Either he decided to fuck a couple of gringos out of 6 dollars at 1 in the morning, or he was planning an assault.¨If it had been just me, it would have been pretty easy for him to take everything.

We left our hotel early this morning.

It´s a good thing that the average Guatemalan is 5´5, which makes Griff look like a gringo giant. Besides, we were packing the beer bottles of safety and the bamboo sticks of annoyance. I suspect that we think this is funny only because we´re sleep deprived and tripping on adrenalin. And, in the absence of any concrete action we can take, laughing seems to be the only option.

For the record

7.20.2007

Griff logged in as me on Flkr and made a bunch of comments.

I would not, in fact, tap that.

Damn you flkr!

7.19.2007

Flkr will only show your 200 most recent pictures so Griff is signing up for an account, too.

Here´s the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10249946@N02/

Hey, this is me

7.18.2007

In Venezuala. On my way to the tallest waterfall in the world.

Oh, and we have photos uploaded for real now. Check out the flickr link in the side bar.

I´m introducing a number of series for these photos,

Pale is the new tan

Speedos are so in this year

Maybe shouldn´t be wearing a thong

In which shitty companies take over the world

Oops I did it again--exporting the Shrek 3´s of America

Girls Griff may or may not be sleeping with

Beware of Anti-Social Dogs

Drunken tour guides

Pale is no longer the new tan, red is

Oh, photos are organized by city but totally out of order otherwise.

Girls! Girls! Girls!

7.14.2007

We meet a half-American, half-German man in Venezuala. He tells us that he sells pictures to National Geographic for a living, but as his picutres are not that great, I suspect the file entitled GIRLS!GIRLS!GIRLS! is how he really makes his money.

Stupid Americans

Griff and I were stupid Americans. We sat in a Carrefour (the Brazilian equivalent of Walmart but a bit more like a mall). We ate pizza and snickers bars.

It was heaven.

May be getting Malaria

I can count 50 bites so far. Griff has yet to get one. (Fortunately he´s having gastrointestinal distress.) Anyhow, I´m the one using deet. Deet is so strong that if you are wearing it and you touch a water bottle, the color will come off and stick to you. That doesn´t sound healthy. I´ve decided to stop using it and take my chances with the demon bugs of death.

Jungle Tour part two

That night we had a little confrontation. This isn´t ok, we told him. Its nothing like what we were promised and we may need to find you an AA program. Denial is the first sign. Actually, we asked for an additional three hours to make up for the one we had lost while he was sleeping. Our guide was very accommodating and agreed to this. When I mentioned that we had taken pictures of him passed out in the boat and sleeping in the lodge, we scored an extra night for free.

We awoke the next morning at 5 to see the sunrise and go bird watching. We several different species, the names of which I have forgotten. Griff says that our guide just called everything a hawk. Still, they were all singing and it was great to hear the cacophonous chorus.

We then came back for a quick breakfast-the best meal we had had so far. (The squeaky wheel gets a bit of papaya.)

We got into the boat and headed to the jungle. On the way there Elso, our guide, spotted some dolphins and told us that this was our chances to swim with them. ¨Jump in the water and they´ll come closer.¨ This worked really well, and we jumped in and out of the water, each time spotting more pink and grey river dolphins. It worked great, that is, until one of them tried to attack us. As it turns out, the reason more of them come over when you jump in the water is because they are trying to defend their territory. Near death experiences and all (really) it was still great.

After that we went on a four hour jungle trek. This was undoubtedly the best part of the trip so far. At one point, we came across a giant ant colony on the side of a tree. Our guide told me to stick my fist in it. (I think he had it out for me.) ¨Don´t worry,¨he said. ¨They bite.¨ So I stuck my fist in and soon ants were all over it.
¨Shake them off! Shake them off!¨Griff yelled.
I did and the little fuckers began biting me. Not that many, though. Our guide told us that the indigenous people would do this same thing and the oil left from the crushed ants acted as a natural mosquito repellent. Perhaps I will crush swarms of mosquitoes on myself as an ant repellent. In the meantime, a few ants had wandered up my pants. (insert joke here) This left me slapping my nether regions in front of two male guides and my little brother.

Our guide cut off bits of bark from various trees with his machete and had us smell them. Several of them were used as natural medicines. They all seem to cure gastrointestinal distress probably because of the high fiber content (Griff´s joke). We saw the sap of a rubber tree, which, when touched immediately becomes solid. You can roll it off your skin so that it looks like the leftovers from those erasers in elementary school.

Later, our guide told us to close our eyes and open our mouths. He then fed me a maggot (only me, mind you). It tasted sweet, like coconut milk. I´m thinking of opening up a restaurant.

We did not get to see most of the things we were told we would see, but it was great to trek through the jungle. At one point, our guide let us us the machetes to chop out a path.

Our guide made a hat out of palm leaves. Griff and I took turns looking ridiculous. We swung on vines, and at one point saw a branch that sort of resembled a sloth fall to the ground. And we did see two legs of a tarantula.

As we were walking along, I felt a sharp sting on my chest. Soon they were all over. I started yelling, slapping myself, and running. In the end, I was stung at least 12 times by jungle wasps, cabo. Griff, I might add, was not stung once. Our guide took the flat off his machete and pressed it over the stings, which helped with the pain. I must be a sadist because I found the whole situation hilarious.

It wasn´t until later that Griff told me that we were really lost. Our guide tried to pass it off saying, ¨Look at these tracks. A wild pig must have passed here just minutes before.¨And I was all excited thinking, ¨Damn it, we just barely missed that pig.¨But Griff speaks Portuguese so he understood when the guides were talking to one another. Something like: ¨Do you know where we are?¨ ¨No idea. You?¨

On the boat ride back, I asked our guide if I could swim again. Apparently that whole near death dolphin experience had not cured me. He said it was fine. I jumped into the water and they began to drive away from me. Which is really reassuring when there are pirhanas and attack dolphins in the water. When I caught up to them I said, ¨I have to do something.¨
¨You have to pee?¨Our guide asked.
¨Well, I need all of you to turn around so that I can go skinny dipping in the Amazon.¨ The whole turning around thing didn´t fully translate for our guides, but I got to do a few flips in the water naked. As it turns out, its really hard to get dressed and undressed in the water. Please don´t let me drop my shorts.

We had been offered another night for free (except lodging which was 25$ for the both of us). We were told that we would visit an indigenous family and go harpoon fishing that night. This amounted to one of our guides saying to his uncle, ¨Hey, some Americans are really pissed at us. Can we bring them over and show them your house?¨Still, it was great to see how people live there. We talked with them a bit and drank some really strong alcohol. Later, we got to play soccer with them. Griff has gotten quite good as he practiced a lot in Jao Pesoa. I tried to avoid being killed.

After dinner, Griff invited us to their party, but none of the girls showed up. He described it this way, ¨There are six sexually frustrated guys here and one female. And she´s my sister.¨So the party ended fairly quickly.

The next morning we took a boat, a bus, and a taxi back to Manaus. All and all a great trip even if it was nothing like what we were told we would do. If you know anyone going to the Amazon, tell them to avoid Amazon Riders.

Jungle Tour

7.11.2007

"Your back looks like trash worms," our guide told me as we took a speed boat back to the lodge.
"What?"
He spoke louder, "You´re back, it looks like trash worm."
"Oh, um, yeah. Ok."
He thought a minute, "I think you say shrimp. Your back is red like a shrimp."


Our guide had picked us up that morning incredibly hungover. His bleary eyes were bloodshot-red like trash worms. When we went on our first nature tour, he passed out in the back of the boat, sleeping so heavily that branches cut his face leaving mud and bark there. So instead of being told about Amazon wildlife, we watched the guy in the front of the boat fish with a harpoon. Which sounds exciting, except that the harpoon resembled a salad fork attached to a very long pole. And the fish he was bringing in were really small. Our guide had really just brought him along so that he could sleep.

We then returned to the lodge, where we supposed to have a quick lunch followed by fishing for pirhannas and swimming with river dolphins. Our guide proceeded to sleep. For three hours. Griff and I both tried to wake him, at one point shaking him lightly. Finally, two women from the lodge came in and woke him up.

At which point we went fishing for pirhanas. I feel that if I spell pirhanas differently each time I write it, I will eventually stumble upon the correct spelling. On the way out, our guide spotted a squirrel monkey. Squirrel monkeys are roughly the size of, you guessed it, but have human looking faces. Their ears look almost the same as ours. Our guide, Elso, began to shake the bamboo so that the monkey had to jump somewhere else. They kept shaking its every landing point so that the monkey had to leap of the tall thin trees. At one point, the monkey fell and and our driver jumped into the water chasing it. He brought back to our boat a soaked two month old squirrel monkey. The entire ride the little guy kept calling out for his mother. He even jumped out of the boat while we were fishing for pirhanas, which, in case you were wondering, is a pretty bad idea. I felt pretty bad for him.

Did I mention that the battery on our camera died?

It turns out that pirhanas only attack humans if you are bleeding. Otherwise, there is a pretty low rish of getting torn to shreds in tiny little bites. Griff caught one (even though the guy who sold us the package promised that we would catch several). It was pretty small, proving, once again, that size doesn´t matter. The motion of the ocean or what have you. Anyhow, the pirhana had really vicious looking teeth and a series underbite. I suggested braces. We did not get to fish for long. I did not mention that if we might have gotten to fish for longer if, say, our guide had not slept for three hours. We then left to swim with the dolphins.

As it turns out, it was too late to swim with the dolphins. Instead, we watched a beautiful sunset from the boat. In a nearby tree, a huge flock of egrets jockeyed for position.

What made matters worse was that there was another family at the lodge . (When I say lodge think concrete floors, really thin mattresses and mosquito nets with holes in them.) Anyhow, this family was with a different company. They kept talking about how they had caught several pirhanas (which they got to eat for dinner), had seen dolphins 5 feet away, and had all gotten to hold a caima (an alligator looking thing).

That night we took the boat out so that we too could hold a caima. They have both a vagina and a penis, and are able to mate with themselves. But its just not as much fun that way.

*Incidentally, this caima thing may be totally false, as we are finding a growing number of things our guide told us are complete bs.

Have to go, will post more details of our jungle trip later. :)

Linda

He wrote on his hand, "Linda, voce," and pointed at me. We had met that morning and introduced ourselves: Adelaide, Marcos. But my name is hard for a lot of people here, so when he pointed at his hand insistently, "Linda, you," I figured, sure, what the hell, yeah, I´m Linda, and nodded. He smiled and walked away.

Later I told Griff, "Someone thought my name was Linda."

He grinned and told me, "Adelaide, linda is the word for beautiful."

Trip on the boat: part two

7.05.2007

Day three: A big man with the Brazilian form of machismo tries to sit with me at dinner, but my neighbor (the one who tried to teach me Portuguese cuss words), slips in so that he has to eat somewhere else. We eat in shifts on a long table. This translates into: rush to get a seat so that there is still a good selection of food. Lunch and dinner are usually rice, noodles, and beans, sometimes there is meat.

Maria is 39. I discover this after a good bit of talking, repeating, and hand gestures. Later I will pretend to be trapped in a glass box with similar communicative efficiency. Her hair is a deep chocolate and forms a fuzzy wave behind her. She has a son, filho, and a daughter--a word I do not know, but as it is not filho I'm betting on a daughter or a hermaphrodite.

*Actually, Griff talked to her after I wrote this originally and found out that she has 4 children, all daughters. So much for smoke signals. At least I got her age right.

"Voce e bonita," she tells me. I have a rash on my face that will not go away, I have not showered in two days, and I am covered in poison death spray. Not exactly bonita. Griff says its the blue eyes. He's a fucking movie star here, and I mean fucking literally.

The music upstairs is deafening. Griff says its quieter than usual. They are being considerate because there are families below.

The Lord has sent his judgement on me in a plague of mosquitoes. I asked Edinelza if mosquitoes would be a problem. Nao, she told me. I can count six bites since then. That means at least 20 bites in total in Brazil. Griff has not been bit once. So when even the Brazilians started slapping their arms and legs, I immediately applied a fresh layer of poison death spray to my body, even as mosquitoes were landing on me. Griff helped me put up my mosquito net. I am the only one with this up. Stupid American. I suspect I will sleep my most peaceful night on the trip thus far. I suspect this I suspect this net development will lead to a large number of Brazilians getting bit, as the mosquitoes will no longer have my gringo blood to feast on. I hope Griff gets bitten. Its only fair. My one fear is that mosquitoes will get stuck in side my net and suck my blood until they are bloated and unable to fly.

I have given up all fear of looking stupid, as I accomplished this task early in the trip.

Day four: We awoke this morning to screaming. The boat had tipped so far to one side that a pirhana flopped in. On the other side, several passengers were strapping on life vests. Griff and I, being a bit slow on the uptake, awoke with a "Huh? What?" the boat was tilted slteeply to one side, but soon righted itself. I asked Edinelza why she was so scared. She told me that she can't swim. That seems to be the case for several people.

There are pink dolphins along this section of the river (really). Griff has already spotted two.

We pass small thatch houses on stilts. The children paddle out to us on dugout canoes so that they can play in the waves. Sometimes the captain lets them attach their canoes to the side of the boat so that they can do the equivalent of skiing.

Day five: More of the same. I've heard that the way people get veal is by feeding the calves high carbohydrate food and and not allowing them to move. I'm begining to thin that this boat actually has another purpose. They are fattening us up for the kill. I, for one, think I would be quite juicy meat.

Day six: Earlier this week, a man tried to trick Griff into saying sexual things. In return, Griff taught him that giving the bird is a cool American thing. He is most likely going to hell.

Anyhow, whenever we saw this man, he would give us the bird. I sat with him and his friends tonight and he did it again. Fortunately, I remedied the situation. He has been giving me the eye all week, and tonight he asked me to be his third wive. That's three consecuative wives, not all at the same time. I didn't feel to keen on that idea.

Maria, a woman who is interested in Griff, has reached stalkerish proportions. I told him to just sleep her so that she will leave us alone. She gets super jealous when he talks to other women.

We actually really like the people on the boat, although those two paragraphs imply otherwise. I spent most of the day with a little girl name Lecitietcia. We took pictures of each other and then she ran around board taking pictures of everybody else. We draw pictures in my notebook and play tic tac toe. I seem to have lost my knack for the game. She teaches me how to pronounce a number of Portuguese phrases. I teach her a few English ones and her pronunciation is always perfect. Its great to be young, eh?

Our boat arrived 11 hours late (at 5 in the morning) because of engine trouble. Griff and I were just about ready to brave the pirhannas and swim to Manaus.

Boat ride day 1 and 2

Day one: We are onboard a beat that is taking us from Belem to Manaus via the Amazon River. Our boat has three levels, all open. On the bottom level are more onions than I ever cared to see (packed all of the way to the ceiling.) And two motorcycles hanging between rows. Thankfully, the onions don't smell.

On the second layer of the boat are hammocks stretched four overlaping rows across the width of the boat and maybe thirty rows along the width of the boat. Griff estimates that there are over one hundred people on board.

Most of the people on board are using it for transportation and not tourism. The city we are headed towards, Manaus, is accesible from the south only by boat or plane, which is saying something because its on the very tippy top of Brazil.

We are the only Americans on board. My neighbor to the left is a short 35 year old woman with a bowl cut. Edinelza. She tries to teach me Portuguese cuss words. I pull out my phrase book and she and all the women fall into hysterics and my butchered attempt to speak their language. Today Griff taught me the phrase "Porque voce esta hindu?" (probally misspelled) Which means "What are you laughing about?" They think this is great, and through a series of smoke signals and hand gestures, I begin to understand the jokes. Mostly I am saying things that are totally incomprehisable or accidentally dirty. I prefer the latter. At least I'm saying something.

I sit in my hammock practicing the phrases they have helped me to learn. It must look hilarious to them, the equivalent of someone talking to themselves and saying "Nice to heat you. Niicee to mmmeet you. Nice to meet you? Nice to meet you."

Everyone is totally charmed when Griff speaks to them in Portuguese. He's gotten very good and chats with the pregnant woman to his left. She is travelling with her son to her sisters wedding.


Day two: I awoke this morning to a loud shrill whistle alerting everyone that breakfast is about to be served. I didn't have to speak Portuguese to know what most of the people were yelling in response. Something like: "Alright already. We're up. Enough with the whistle!"

Breakfast is one hot dog bun looking bread. Griff and I have discovered why passage is so cheap. I will probally lose some weight on this trip and all of my teeth, from scurvy. Actually, fruit is really cheap and sweeter than in the US. Everytime we stop somewhere, vendors come on selling anything from fake flowers in a wooden vase to fried cheese (a specialty here.) They also sell asiae a fruit that grows only in the Amazon and is crazy full of antioxidents. Sometimes they sell Mentos and fish dinners, both of which are very popular. The fresh maker and the not so fresh maker. Griff and I bought apples and oranges before we left and two cans of Pringles. Stupid Americans.

We shared our chips with our neighbors. The little boy grabbed a large stack. His mother chided him, but he ran to his cousin and gave her half. I think he's using them as barter. Yesterday she had some ice cream that she would not share with him.

Griff: Today we had one hot dog bun for breakfast. Tomorrow we will have to share. After that, it is on to the small children. Why the small children and not a big fat man? Tender meat.


This is all I have time to write right now. Missing you all. I apologize for spelling errors. Can't spell check here, unless you are writing in Portuguese.

Call me Ishmael

Or something like that. Griff and I wrote this on a 36 hour bus ride a week ago. The bus had a little cold problem and well, smelled. We got a little weird.

Dear Loved Ones-
It is the seventeenth hour of our journey, and I do not know how much longer I will be able to write you. The hysteria accompanying hypothermia has set, and in the row in front of me the wind howls and the snow blows. Outside, the air is hot and the sun is shining. So close to paradise. Alas, I may freeze in this 18 wheeled icy tomb. Damn you cruel fate!

Sir Griff and I have commenced a 36 hour quest to Belem from Salvador. We intend to explore the Amazon's great beauty at whatever the cost. For shame, we may have to do this minus a few fingers and toes.

One would think that if all of the tour guide books warn against the cold on the bus, and if all of the Brazilians brought heavy blankets, that someone would just turn the blasted air conditioner down. Griff and I have launched a covert mission to do this very thing at our next stop. The stakes are high. We may get thrown off the bus. Worse yet, they may make us strip naked and stand in this barren wasteland.

It is winter here, most of the Brazilians I have talked to find the weather outside cold, so there is no way they are comfortable in here. I am now wearing a dress, a pair of Griffin's pants, one of my shirts and one of his shirts. I resemble a rap star without the bling. Still, I had to curl into a ball to sleep tonight. Soon we will burning our passports to keep warm.

I am losing all touch with reality. Hour by hour it erodes. Inside my head echo the words: "The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round." Good God woman! Get a hold of yourself!

Griffin is a little jumpy still. The near death experience has not treated him well. I am afraid he will never be the same. The noxious gasses seem to be getting to him.

We may not have rationed our food well. "For what, Sam?" "For the trip home, Mr. Frodo." "Sam, there will not be a trip home."

There are 18 hours left in our journey. It seems we shall never get there mostly because there are speed bumps in the middle of nowhere and our bus stops every 15 minutes. Not to do anything, mind you. It just pulls of the road, sits there, and then begins to drive again.

Griff and I have started talking to ourselves and speaking in British accents. We laugh at the slightest provocation. For example, we found this post very funny.

Workers of the World Unite!

6.23.2007

Yesterday we flew from Rio to Salvador, but the employees in the Sao Paulo airport were on strike, so everything was delayed. Workers of the world unite!

We are staying with an ex girlfriend of Griffs here. Apparently there is a big festival going on so everyone is out of Salvador. I think we are going to remain pretty chill for a while. I got to spend the entire day yesterday with my little brother, which was great. I feel a sense of home with him.


Pictures to come, and hopefully surfing...

Sleep deprivation

6.20.2007

Sunday night--stay up late excited about the trip.
-wake up at 3:00 somehow convinced that my flight leaves on Monday, not Tuesday
Monday night--Get an hour and a half of sleep because of packing and saying goodbyes.
Tuesday-Get to the Portland airport at 5:30. Fly to San Fran. Two hour layover. Fly to Chicago. Accidentally leave airport and have to go through security again. Three hour layover. Fly to Sao Paulo arriving at 10:30 am. Meet Griffin hop on a bus that takes us to the metro which takes us to another bus. Eight hour bus trip. Hop on another bus to get to the apartment of the person we are staying with. 10:00 pm- thirty minutes to shower before we go out dancing. 3:30 am, come home and collapse into a heap of nothingness.

Going, Going, Gone!

6.19.2007

Yep.

The Latest Wynn Spotting

6.18.2007

My nephew is now 5 months old. Here's a picture of him and his fabulous mother.

Writing Poems on Antidepressents

Writing Poems on Antidepressants
Nikki Moustaki

Writing poems on antidepressants
is hard. You can appreciate the difficulty
by reading the previous two lines.
Metaphors are easy
to come by when you're aching
or pining or wounded in love,
which scientists have proven is a type of madness
and madness can be cured with a pill.
Not everyday
is Paris. Not everyday
does a bird come winging
out of a carpet to give you a free metaphor,
especially if there are oranges on the table
and you're on your meds.
Each day offers some little irony or a dream
or a blind albino woman
sitting next to you on the train
with eyelashes like white silk threads
attached like broom-straw to her one closed eye
as she taps her cane against the window
and you, the poet on antidepressants,
thinks: look at that, hmmm, interesting.
Did I buy dog food? Here's my stop.

Abe Louise Young

6.17.2007

It's official! As of five minutes ago, the plans are finalized for Abe to join the Griffin/Adelaide troupe in Mexico. Yay!

6.16.2007

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it.

-Ernest Hemingway

I gotta start reading these things

6.15.2007

Good tidings and jubilations!

6.12.2007

I got my visa! Blessings on the Brazilian consulate!



(This would happen, as fate would have it, now that I've delayed my flight from Thursday to next Tuesday, but I really don't mind at the moment.)

And, in case you're wondering

Oral sex between consensual teenagers is a misdemeanor in Georgia. As is intercourse.

For more information (as if you really need it) click here.

If Flannery O'Connor had a Blog

She doesn't, being dead you know. But if she were alive, she'd post this:

From "Habit of Being", pg. 457

[Nathaniel] Hawthorne interests me considerably. I feel more of a kinship with him than any other American, though some of what he wrote I can't make myself read through to the end.


http://flanneryoconnor.blogspot.com/

The Latest Adventures of Our Hero

6.11.2007

It's official. I've had to delay my flight to Brazil due to the dastardly deeds of the Brazilian consulate. Or at least, the Brazilian visa service I am using. As a result, I am throwing my attention into the world of Ed Reed. Our hero is now in High School. And too sophisticated to label his picture "me" anymore. But apparently not too sophisticated to put "Basketball" in scare quotes.

My favorite: "Don't bump your head Tom." Tom, as you can see, is the tall fellow in the middle of the picture. I'll apply this to myself, "Don't bang your head forcefully against the wall, Adelaide, while you wait for your visa." Nope, just doesn't have the same charm. Damn you, Ed Reed!

Collage: Or "The Attack of the Giant Baby"

I've been in a women's art group this Spring. It's mostly a wu-wu earth mother love goddess thing, but I've enjoyed doing collage. Here's my favorite one:

On Being Friends with a Supermodel

This is from when Alisha and I went cliff jumping, although the pictures make us look like we are significantly less hardcore than we really are.

More on flckr. Bcs vwls r drky.

Stupid Doorknob

6.10.2007

My sentiments exactly.

A small note

6.07.2007

I turned in a chapter of my novel on Tuesday to have it critiqued by the other students. They really liked it and gave me some great suggestions. I still have a long way to go in my writing, but it was encouraging to get some positive feedback.


Margaret Atwood said, "Blank pages inspire me with terror." I understand that. For a long time now, I've said that I like to write, that I want it to be my vocation, that I feel in some way called to do it. But I wasn't writing, not much at least. Perhaps the triumph of today and of the last five months is that now I am writing, painful as it is. To quote another writer, John Steinbeck, "I suffer always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one." The other students liked my scenes and some of the language, but said I need to work on transitions and pace. Once I got over the initial disappointment that they didn't find my work to be the most brilliant thing they had ever read, I began to appreciate the clarity of knowing my shortcomings--that it gives me a direction in which to grow.

One more quote. "All my life; I've been frightened at the moment I sit down to write." That one is from Nobel prize winner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Knowing that he felt this way helps me feel slightly less crazy. Which is a good thing. I think my being able to write centers on accepting, even embracing, failure. As Lamott would put it, writing "shitty first drafts." I think I've written some magnificently shitty first drafts, and will probably churn out another one in the coming weeks. This is heartening--I'm writing.

Lakeview: The Case of the Laughing Teacher

I was speaking to a middle aged friend of mine today and mentioned the town Lakeview (of Honker fame). He told me that his grandmother had been a teacher there and was fired for laughing too much. The school officials believed that it was improper for a woman to laugh.

I believe that is improper for men to wear leather pants. So there.

There is nothing left for me to do with my nervous energy

I've already called the Brazil visa company four times today.
It was supposed to be here a while ago.
And, well, it's not. Here, that is.
Don't panic.


I've written a haiku on the subject:

Waiting for visa
Blogs endlessly to distract
Tufts of hair will fall

Lakeview: The Tallest Town in Oregon

After a bit of research, I've found the Ed Reed was from Lakeview, dubbed the tallest town in Oregon. This weekend in Lakeview citizens will be participating in the Junior Rodeo which involves: "Riding events for senior boys, ages 14-18, include bareback, saddle bronc, calf roping, bull riding and team roping. Senior and junior girls — ages 14-18 and 8-13, respectively — events will include barrel racing, pole bending, breakaway, goat tying and team roping.
Junior boys events will include steer riding, steer stopping, goat tying, breakaway and team roping." (Courtesy of the Lake County Examiner) I'm not sure why the older boys rope calves and the girls rope goats--an egregious double standard. I'm protesting this by refusing to rope anything, goat or otherwise. And, in case you were curious, pole bending is essentially slolem skiing on a horse. Barrel racing is racing around a barrel, and should you want to "Discover the Rush and Reward" of this fascinating sport you may click here to purchase a video of the 2006 US Barrel Racing Championship.

These two lovely ladies are the featured beauties of the Lakeview Junior Rodeo. Nothing creates a rip roaring good time like a crown on a cowboy hat. Yee-ha!

Junior High Places Third In Tournament

6.06.2007

In 1949, the Lakeview Junior High Basketball, the Honkers, traveled to Alturas and placed third in a tournament. Here is a picture of them. Note the young man in the upper right corner with "ME" written by his face. His name is Ed Reed, and for a measly three dollars at Goodwill, I acquired a scrapbook of his athletic accomplishments from Middle School to High School. This is the first in a multi part series entitled: The Life and Legacy of the Honkers.


If you click on it, you will see the picture with greater clarity.

e.e. cumings courtesy of Abe

let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear

so comes love

~ e. e. cummings ~

(Complete Poems 1904-1962)

Newest Chapter

6.04.2007

If the urge should strike you to read the latest chapter for my work in progress, click here.


Here are the beginning paragraphs:

"Randy liked to watch the slow brown waters of the Mississippi River. When he and Ava were first married, they had taken a trip to the Delta, to the place where the river flows into the Gulf of Mexico. It had been hot there, smelling of dead fish washed up on the shore. They walked along the beach together holding sticky hands. He had caught a puffer fish in a bucket and brought it to Ava. She had laughed, looking at its little face. The spaced apart eyes staring blankly as if it were all the same to him, Gulf or bucket.

They had made love that night, he still remembered it. She had tasted like salt, and he ran his mouth up her neck sucking it off her. She had seemed so beautiful to him then, full, like a ripe plum. He loved to take parts of her between his fingers and squeeze as if he were expecting juice. "

I've been Flickrfied

I'm officially a convert and have uploaded some old pictures.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/68164225@N00/

Nausea and Nauseating

Feeling a little vindicated. From the good folks at Merriam Webster:

Nauseous:

1 : causing nausea or disgust : NAUSEATING
2 : affected with nausea or disgust

"Those who insist that nauseous can properly be used only in sense 1 and that in sense 2 it is an error for nauseated are mistaken. Current evidence shows these facts: nauseous is most frequently used to mean physically affected with nausea, usually after a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative use is quite a bit less frequent. Use of nauseous in sense 1 is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating. Nauseated is used more widely than nauseous in sense 2."

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nauseous