afternoon chores

One day Xu Bao was walking home from school.  He saw a bird, grounded and limping, trying to cross the street.  A car ran over one of its wings and it cried out right at Xu Bao.  It frightened him so much that he dropped his books.  He ran to the curb and called, "Come here, bird," to coach it off the street.  It made it, just narrowly evading a bus, and hobbled onto the sidewalk.  It walked to Xu Bao, flitted its eyes at him for a moment, then fell over dead.

Xu Bao was not that surprised.  He put the bird in his backpack and went home.  He did his chores for the day: climbed onto a chair to was dishes in the sink, swept with the severed bottom half of a broom.  While he swept around his mother in the living room and she dodged her head to either side of Xu Bao to stay in contact with the TV, Xu Bao looked it his bag where he had left it just inside the front door.  He knew it was a mistake to leave it there, that she could find the bird if she looked in, but he couldn't move it without drawing more attention.

Before dinner he went to his room.  He stuffed the bird into the curtain that was cinched together at the side of his window.  The next day he pried up a floor board and hid the bird there.  He would check in on it every few days and laugh.

Happy Birthday Herv Nation

"I prefer my less than perfect orthodontics knowing that one day Ill die in a fire."

Harvey Harper

you live in a zoo, you look like a monkey, & you smell like one too

Mike McCurtain's nephew dies of a poisonous snake bite during a backpacking trip through the Himalayas.   His daughter Claire becomes terrified of succumbing to the same fate.  Mike checks under her bed every night to be sure there aren't any there.  He checks the car before she gets in and then looks underneath it before she gets out.  She makes a checklist for him to go through daily so that she knows by the certainty of a dozen initialed boxes that the house is snake free.

Mike had a recurring dream of a big snowly plot of land that he had to drive around in for a long time without getting anywhere.  The car was noisy and it was crowded in the backseat and all he could see out the window was white.  Sometimes they would reach a house and Mike would go in alone and there would be a woman inside who didn't like him.  He'd look out the back window wind blowing cold on him, and think that he needed to replace that window that his father had broken.  The car's engine made a chalky grinding sound like two pieces of broken glass rubbing together and when he heard it he knew he had to go.

His temper got short sometime and he lost it at home once because they asked him to take a night off for Claire's play.  He had a case to work, though it actually wasn't his but a different detective and he was working on the case as a favor.  He shouted, nothing horrible, but his raised voice was unusual in the house.  Claire told him he was being unreasonable and he told her there was a snake under her chair.

patti smith synchronicity

i could already tell it was late when i woke up.  i had a dream where i checked the clock and it was still early and then i woke up and wanted to look at the clock and then i fell asleep and dreamed about looking at the clock and it was still early.  i woke up and said, "fuck."

i drove to the grocery store and usually i want to hear music, but not today so i drove through estabrook park listening to an npr anchor interview patti smith.  i was like, "oh, she's cool," so i kept listening.  she is cool.  she lived in the chelsea hotel trying to be an artist, knew the coolest people ever born and was robert mapplethorp's girlfriend.  she was 20, 21.  i was like, "fuck, i'm 25."

she wrote poetry on the side and at some point she started performing poetry with a backing band, which is something a lot of poets i know frown on.  this is when i arrived at my girlfriend's house and shut off the car so that's where the story ended.

i walked inside, put away the groceries, and set about cleaning things so it would look nice when my parents came over tonight (for i was going to make them easter dinner).  i unfolded my laptop so i could listen to music while i swept the kitchen.  i thought, "i know patti smith is cool but i hardly ever listen to her music," so i put on the album they were talking about, which is called Horses.

as many people know, this is a really great album.  the first song is called "Gloria" and it comes in two parts: "In Excelsis Deo" and "Gloria." the second part is a cover of the Them song.  "what?  that is awesome," i thought.

about the time the album finished i had completed cleaning the kitchen (i take my time with these things) and was about to start on the bathroom.  i put on another patti smith album (actually this one was a patti smith group album) that i looked up because i wanted to hear that one song of hers that she wrote with bruce springstein, "Because The Night."  The name of the album that really incredible song is on: Easter.

it seemed like a very circular demonstration of time.  sometimes i get those euphoric moments where i think on some moment from the past and something seems to stretch from it through time like some wormhole (though no one knows if those really exist) and touch the moment i was living and thinking in right at that second and everything makes more sense than usual and i kind of feel floaty or like i have extra eyes on the side of my head and can see more.  this was not one of those moments but it reminded me of them and it was cool nonetheless.

That's Hard

I spent 5 months in Colombia once with a drifter I met in Georgia. He was smart enough but always dirty around the mouth and ears. He walked around begging for change and I told him I did the same, though I got a large sum of money for my uncles passing six months prior.

I drank Agua Diente and did cheap cocaine and spent long nights in strip clubs that weren't strip clubs.

One day in a alley between two streets I saw slumped against a wall moaning body shaking a cup for change. I don’t think he was saying words. I couldn't understand spanish anyway, so it wouldn't matter if he was. The closer I got the harder it was to look away, from the dry pits where his eyes used to be.

Failed New Years Resolution

 
skin peels, luggage of bones.
violins wilt inside pianos -
what it sounds like when we weep (you, silently).
the smallest inky drop of sad
embedded in my cheek, embryonic.

we keep returning to the past, a bad habit,
memory a lungfish sucking on our ears.

my fingers breathe old sweat
harm the varnish on my brain.
these hands keep creating the same veined figure;

clones. we live in a room of them,
make our beds in their shit.

- Bethany Victoria Price (not pictured above)

Hard Growing

I used to get a lot of boners in high school. I don't mean an abnormal amount of boners but probably the usual amount for a young man hitting puberty. Obviously, these bonerstorms were no more under my control than a storm of any other kind, but I was convinced that nobody knew about them. I was convinced they couldn't see the outline of my erect penis through 3 seasons of clothing.

In hindsight, it's absurdly naive, but I know now that an absolutely imperative part of getting your ass kicked by puberty is the lessons in humility. My lesson was two girls laughing at me in history class.

I can remember wearing khakis. If I was unlucky they were pleated, but that doesn't really matter. One of the girls was called Iris. I specifically remember Iris but not the other girl - probably a Jenny or a Sarah - because Iris was the one black girl in my grade. More importantly than her color, she had the most wonderful hair. It was curly and the color of caramel and always elaborately large. I don't mean extension or weave large but the girl was a Rasta large. And obviously I remember having a boner. There wasn't anything particular about that boner. I don't count them, so I'm not sure which it was, but I can say with confidence that it was a full-blown erection.

The two girls laughed and looked, and I'm certain I caught the tail end of their quickly sheathed points before they turned away to feign disinterest. It never struck me as suspect until at least 7 years later. Oddly, I can't remember the exact circumstance under which the realization occurred. I want to say it was the emergence of men wearing women's jeans, but there's no way of knowing the when and where I realized that even a limp cock can be visible through denim. As the dick knowledge dawned on me, humility thundered through my guts as the perfect match to years of, except for the laughing, otherwise silent bonerstorms.

These days I have to manage the occasional boner. I'm done with puberty (don't tell my beard), so it's not like I'm getting spontaneous erections all of the time, but now I know people know. If I could go back to being blissfully unaware of how aware people are of my penis, I would. It's a lifetime of the dealing with the occasional giggle or tucking the tip of my penis into the elastic of my boxers. I honestly can't say which is more humiliating. Chances are good that even when I tuck the thing it's still visible.

Sometimes, I wish I could just say, "That's my cock. Take a long drink with your eyes."

- Herv Nation

Just the Other Side of Nowhere

Hi all,

This is Guy.  In theory I am the co-author of this blog, but I have not been co-authoring that much lately, being hard at work on a screenplay and editing Sean's new story (awesome and will be liked by people who are into well-crafted prose, time travel, soulless debauchery and ass-backward euphoria in equal measures).

In free moments I also work two jobs.  I am writing this in my notebook as I am at one of them, pumping brown water out of a motley crew of buckets and bins set up to collect leaked rain in the top floors of a crumbling, soon to be demolished building in downtown Milwaukee.  Shingles of rust and clumps of wet insulation have fallen from the widening fissures in the ceiling.  It is getting worse up here.  We need more buckets.

Drops trickle on my hair a little as I sink the suction pump into the buckets and I brush it off with my hand.  It is gross but its been worse.  Once I picked a clump of insulation out of a bucket and I gagged for a while.



Another time I got lost in the darkness up here looking for the door to the roof and I popped out in the basement, expecting to have grown a Rasputin beard and for five years to have passed me by.  The experience inspired a section of the screenplay I'm about to finish as a first draft.

I really don't mind the bucket duty.  I worked in this store for six months without realizing these floors were up here liquifying over my head.  It was a department store in the '60s.  Old women come in sometimes and remember buying dresses here when they were girls.  There are hand-painted signs and a rusted pile of metal plates with names and addresses that used to be impressed on receipts for credit transactions.

It takes a couple minutes for each bucket to empty so I have time to think or write or explore or take pictures.  The dressing rooms are the scariest part.  I listen to music on my iPod also so today I've been mostly jamming to Kris Kristofferson (such as the song for which this blog is named, which you can listen to here) and also Jerry Lee Lewis.

So, I'll have more stuff to share soon.  Isn't Sean's adventure exciting?

Most of the time I've been writing the screenplay I've also been suppressing bubbles for a fiction piece which I am going to unburden myself of as a serial on this blog starting in a month or so.  I don't have a title yet, but I can tell you it will most likely involve a community radio show, badly mishandled acid, dogs being blessed over the airwaves, a test of memory, a prison escape, and the do's and don'ts of Buddhist postmortem examination.

Yours Truly,
Guy

Day 9

Went to the opening for a new restaurant in Santa Marta on Sunday. It was like the greatest hits of the time I’ve been here. The gang was all here. Ya heard.

Anyway the had free pizzas and margaritas and Rum and cokes and beers and oh my. That place was a riot. Everything turned out and it was super fun. Recovery time: two days.

Back in the saddle exercising again, watching the diet, doing pretty good. Back to eating a bunch of apples and oranges and shit.

I’ve been doing ten pushup every time I hear this guy yell “OOOOOLYMPICA” on the radio. Which is a ton.

I watched Hall Pass the other day on Mega Video. It was pretty funny.

You Want Truth? Get Your Own. Leave Me Out Of It.

I was with Sammy Leakus the night he OD’d. We drank pepsi and did dirty doses. We talked about hockey at some point. I don’t watch hockey, never have. I left at 9 PM to catch Congo at The Row. He was dead by the time the theater emptied and the usher swept the sticky floors.

Margaret Jensen died in a boating accident three days after giving me a handjob in the bathroom at Denny’s. It was something we both barely remember. We shared two creepers that night and avoided talking about the baby she lost the year before. That fat fuck Bob Love got drunk and backed over her in his Rinker. I never figured if Bob Love was his real name.

As it turns out me and Bob Love came to blows in a country bar over Margaret’s passing. His wife jumped in and I socked her too. Bob Love died three weeks later of a massive heart attack in his filthy hot tub. To imagine the depravity that transpired in that hellish whirlpool. Good riddance.

Me and Rich Angler shot pheasant at his uncles land. He had some long cigarettes and dirty nails. He fell in with a bank robbing crew and they got shot up out front of the Sinclair station on A. He didn't die though. He’s doing a long stint in Oshkosh, from what I’ve heard.

My girlfriend in high school died of cancer. It was a sad thing.

And that tweaker Eoin McMurphy got into rehab and is six year sober. He does oil changes at Benton Auto in Millard, has a wife and two kids. All signs point to him living a long and happy life.

Day 5

It’s the first overcast morning I can really remember in Colombia. I considered maybe I hadn’t seen that many mornings but jack agreed. And that dude is the mornings Terminator. He’s exercises at like 6 in the morning. Crazy.

Anyway, I had vegetable pizza at El Santo last night and watch the first episode of season 3 of Deadwood. I’m gonna go to for a walk in a few minutes like an 80 yr old woman. After that I will feed the ducks, then sit on a park bench for 55 minuets.

I have a couple big days of writing ahead of me. Two papers for school, new draft of The Wild Introduction with P Dubs and the new and improved The Year That Everyone Died.

Coming soon: New Stories and the Sean Williamson original piece “What’s In My Wallet”

Day 4

Fresh Squeezed orange juice is the only thing anywhere close to being delicious as Mountain Dew. Peanut butter and apples is decent.

I watched some of The Ghost Writer last night. Pretty cool flick. I buy a lot of bootleg movies from this guy out front of the super market down the road. We’re buds now. And usually he’s got really good quality stuff. The other day he screwed me though, gave me a bunched of fucked up DVD’s.

Am I mad that I can’t watch I Am Number Four? Sort of. Cool movie cover.

Anyway, still hanging in there. Drinking lots of water and eating fruit.

Yesterday me and Jack were rinding in a cab to Ocean Mall (where the McDonalds is) He asked if I knew what was close to The Ocean Mall.

I did, it is the McDonalds.

At that moment I was thinking about after a month I would reward myself by eating at THE GREATEST MCDONALDS IN THE WORLD or by going to El Corral Burger, which just opened by my apartment.

I was weighing the pros and cons and what have you. I guess I have some time to decide.

Wanna waste some time? of course you do. You’re already reading World Wide Dirt.

Watch NFL Films Greatest Games on YOUTUBE.

Day 3

Many fine beaches, lots of things to do, I watched this NFL films thing last night that replayed a game between The 49ers and Giants in 2002, awesome.

Doing good on the getting clean thing. Ate a broccoli salad last night for dinner then looked back and forth at the door for an hour avoiding the temptation to get Dorito’s and a slice of pizza.

Didn’t get any. Ate a mango and drank two cups of orange juice. Plan is working, it’s been three days but it seems to be working.

Of course I discovered a fried chicken place across from my office. So thats a new monster to fight.

Sean Williamson Gets Clean

Play this Song, then read.

In what may be his most daring feat yet, Sean Williamson gets sober.

I was listening to this radio lab episode the other day about conquering inner demons and it had a bunch of good stuff to say. They had different examples of the lengths people will go to to defeat their worst enemies, which in this case and their case, is themselves.

This Radio Lab episode gave me an interesting idea...

It’s been about ten years now of partying and carrying on and I’ve gotten tired man. I wake up feeling terrible and feel terrible most of the day. I stay up super late and I feel stupider and fatter with each passing moment, I eat tons of fast food, drink too much, smoke too much and so on and so forth.

I don’t like who I am a lot of the time and the constant partying has turned from funny/fun to something that is neither. Thats just how it is. Not everyone should curb their partying but I should.

So heres the plan. No more drinking, no more smoking, no more drugs of any kind, no more chips, and no more....soda. That last one was tough to type. I will exercise, eat two meals a day and drink a lot of water.

And I’m telling you this so I can’t back out. Because what kind of person would make a promise like this on his website and then back out, who does that?

GUIDELINES

2 meals (+1 small meal, salad or something else I’ll hate)

No cigarettes

No Booze except celebrations (friends weddings or birthdays) or accomplishments (completion of my current project or completion of a film or book) or funerals.

Exercise 5-6 times a week

-

and the fun part (I guess) is I’ll be giving daily updates, or at least as many updates as possible.

AND if I FAIL to get in better shape, FAIL to get clean, FAIL to fulfill my promise - Then I will shell out 500 dollars at Denny K’s for drinks for all my friends that show up.

AND BREAK

RADIO LAB "HELP"

Time-fucking-out

I met a guy in 1994. It was in a box car diner. He ordered steak and eggs. I had the fruit parfait and coffee.

We talked about Nancy Kerrigan being clubbed in her dumb ole knee and Kurt Cobain blowing his stupid head off.

-

I saw the same guy in 2011. Alone at the bus station, he saw me and thought about smiling. He was fatter and laughed less.

a bug rained off the earth

once i climbed a mountain and stood on its side and my friend told me to look up and I did and I felt like i was falling up into the sky. i remember it when i was in bed, against my girlfriend, living just the moment i had tried to remember when i felt i was falling up the mountain and was terrified, like i had made it to the other side of a wormhole without realizing it.

Three Main Truths

i will be pithy about this penny dollar
hoping deeply that the motility of my lips,
tongue, and teeth will and may bee-keep
the listener, you, from rolling your eyes

like grandma did teach

and it may mean something to you.

so, in a tripdych projection
of what i mean, this is where it begins:

1. hero shot while foiling robber, rapist
from stranger. He is alive don't worry. and
people congratulate him every day of his life
and sometimes when we realizes he doesn't know how
to really show affection
or that he puts his head in his mouth around women
he looks back and feels calm. he did something once.
and this is enough.

2. I live close to Taiga and when I close my eyes
there are outward floating sparkles.
if i desired so, i could
catch a fish
and let it go

3. a ruthless scythe of "what?" may
possibly be the best way
to hear him say, "yes."

- Kristin Peterson

Jailhouse Clues

“And he made believers of bad men. I’ll tell you that,”

Roy was talking about a pastor he knew. I was on my sixth month of a year and a half stint and the Oshkosh correction center.

I had a job in the cafeteria. It was monotonous but it was a welcome distraction from all the boring inmate lies and shriveled dicks in the shower room.

Roy was seventy years old and blind. He managed to get around pretty well.

“I couldn't tell you how many times I got off just because I was blind. They’d find me stealing out the back door a booze shop and I’d say ‘How did I get here? I’m so confused’” He chuckled.

I ate my peanut butter sandwich and nodded along.

“Yessir. Being old and blind can get you out of most anything. After a while though, I just committed too many crimes. They had to put me in.”

“What’d you do this time?”

“Neighbor of mine ran over my dog. So I went over his house and killed him. Told the jury I didn't mean to, I couldn't see what I was doing. They bought it sort of but I’ll still be in here the rest of my life, maybe not if I’m lucky.”

One thing about big prisons, you don’t really worry about the murderers, after all it’s their home, everyone else is just visiting.

“For a while after I lost my sight I started seeing these visions, long hallways and mountains and grand pianos and waterfalls.”

“Really?” I said.

“Sure. There’s a name for it that I forgot. It lasted a few year and then it went away.”

“That’s too bad.”

“There was another part to it, I saw people too but they were always midget size, mangled and deformed, all trying to tell me something, always failing.”

I didn’t talk to Roy much more. I feared the day for him, the day when the small mangled figures and waterfalls came back.

ka-nock, ka-nock, upon the slim gables

to Carl Small, care of Carl Small, Jr.
who's now in the care of Carl III
married to the daughter of Emma Mae Jones
can't rip any ream - even with a machine
he's lame as Gerty MacDowell and can't hold a job
& he can't keep count of the pulsars he's robbed
his hair is weighed down heavy in rivulets
of titanium alloy
but his ears were leaves in the wind - when he bikes
he heaves harrowed, manic, mimed, + stolen memos
and collects dolls, rotten oranges, skirts and salt shakers
to gratify still umpteens, cracked foragers sidetripped knickwise

The sharp spool of the can opener throbs his back
like an enormous katana of blood and vengeance and penultimate
hatre of life tself, so that the round spool, lump-ridden around its
circumference, actually cut like a guilt struck Samurai's blade.

by Nick Kotecki, Kristin Peterson, Bethany Price, Mary Shippee, Doua Thao, Parker Winship

Veteran's Day Costume Bash

Hi, I’m Jason. I’m 27 and I like to get drunk. You too? Good, we’re on the same page.

Or maybe we’re not.

I’ve had a lot of fun getting drunk. Lots. But I remember it used to be more fun, more often. These last few years, a lot of people seem to be taking the wind out of the sails of my booze cruise, if you catch my drift. It’s not that these people aren’t fun, or cool, or interesting anymore, but a disturbing trend in their drinking habits. But let me allow you, the reader, to be the judge. Have you heard something like this?

“Oh, Friday at our house is Fiesta Night! Doug is making his mom’s famous sangria recipe, we’ll have mini-tacos, veggie nachos and of course, tequila! And don’t think you’re getting out of your turn to swing at the piñata!”

If you’re over the age of 25, I’m guessing you have. If you’re over 25 and ever hang out with women who are “professionals,” I’m positive you have. It’s part of the “At this point in my life…” plague that starts afflicting people around this age.

“At this point in my life I need to be in the position to buy a house.”

“At this point in my life it’s time to really get serious about my credit score.”

And so on and so forth. Cutting through the bullshit someone would actually say, what I’m talking about is the “At this point in my life, I need to come up with some sort of theme to legitimize getting completely shit-canned” variety. This can take many forms. The wine tasting club. The Murder Mystery Party. The ever popular “girls night.”

I’m not sure at what point exactly it became unfashionable to get tossed just for the fun of it, but even the regular occasions seem to require some sort of self-delusional excuse to pour oneself into a cocktail. Birthday drunks become Masquerade socials. Lonely Hallmark holidays mutate into Cupids Ball, complete with a craft table for homemade valentines.

“At this point in my life I don’t just want to go to a bar, ok.”

Not long ago were the carefree days of yore when celebrating St. Patrick’s Day required digging out your one green shirt, rather than being forced to compose and recite limericks to the tune of the Riverdance soundtrack or some shit. “Friday” sufficed as a reason to drink your weight in keg beer and hope for a chance heavy petting encounter you may or may not fully remember the next day. Remember?

“At this point in my life, I’m not into ‘hook ups.’ It’s time to get serious about settling down and I don’t have time for games.”

Lest I be viewed as a party pooper, naysayer, or stick in the mud, allow me to clarify something. There’s nothing inherently wrong with themed drinking. It’s a great way to get everyone on the same page, being creative, and motivated to get some good times underway. Shit, the aforementioned Fiesta Night sounds pretty killer to me. The success of Halloween speaks for itself, for fuck’s sake. Getting into some silly costumes, moaning “brains” over and over, looking for the Han Solo to your Princess Leia. It’s good fun. The objection being raised is that these over-planned, theme based occasions become the ONLY time it becomes acceptable to get bombed and forget about life for a while.

“At this point in my life I don’t want to go out on Halloween and look at a bunch of girls in slutty outfits.”

Why not? I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like a degenerate for getting drunk on a Tuesday because I’m bored, nor do I want to be forced to hunt down a powdered wig and pantaloons to feel accepted at your 4^th of July BBQ. The reason drinking used to be so much more fun is because it was all about a LACK of control. A sort of release, letting go of normal behavior, fully embracing the general uncertainty and unpredictability that is life, no matter how hard you try to make it otherwise. This, to me, is a philosophical loss too dear.

So readers, in the spirit of the rowdiness and blackouts of our not so distant, capricious youth, I beseech everyone to stop taking themselves so seriously, play a drinking game, and make some regrettable decisions the next chance you get; just because.

At this point in my life I want to drink 80-120 ounces of Malt Liquor and feel just awful tomorrow. Fuck it.

- Jason Leighton

Give Me The Lamp!

There is a place far from the frozen factories of the miller valley, the hot coffee of Fuel Cafe and the cheap Pabst of corner bars. It is a place that shatters the american perception of fast food, destroys the concept of dirty burger joints and filthy taco stands. It is a place where hope is renewed, where joy start anew.

This place, this light tower in the storm of mediocrity, this haven of satisfaction. This place that defies odds, resurrects definitions of life and foils the uncertainty of the future is known in an entirely different way from place to place.

This place is the McDonald's in Santa Marta, Colombia.

Now in milwaukee, where I’m from, there are at least twenty McDonald’s restaurants. And though I eat at them from time to time, there is always a sort of attitude or shame that comes with supporting them. It’s like this for me and other people.

We all want an egg McMuffin every now and then, maybe a double cheeseburger and some chicken nuggets and the one thing that I believe that they do greatly, just greatly, french fries. But something, at least for young artist who believe in some sort of social conscience, stands in the way. There is a reason that we don’t eat McDonald’s every day and it isnt entirely because we don’t like the food or we feel it is unhealthy to do so. It is the shame.

People in America don’t respect McDonald’s, they don’t respect people who work at McDonald’s and in turn McDonald’s workers don’t respect their job.

Here is where you get dirty restaurant bathrooms, food being accidently knocked on the floor and served anyway, and messed up orders by disgruntled cashiers. A lack of respect leads to poor working conditions and a poor product.

In Colombia though, serving burger at McDonald’s is a job, maybe some people look down on it but they are in the vast minority instead of the majority.

It is so clean you could actually eat off the floor, they all wear matching McDonald’s pants and blue Chuck Taylor’s, and they have ranch dressing that comes out of a sauce dispenser. It’s like wandering into an ideal version of something you always knew. It’s like seeing the greatness and possibility that lies in mediocre things.

The food is fast and great, the people are nice, everything about a perfect business model is actually perfect.

Everything comes from respect, respect is a great infection that spreads around the world making us care about things we don’t care about, taking pride in things we don’t normally take pride in. Creating greatness where you’ve only known mediocrity before.

porch songs

written by Sean Williamson and Tanya Schwalbe

islands are nothing like cervasas. sunrise don’t give a damn bout the breeze.

Hair grows steady so exhaustedly. butter is creamy and good.

A bird dies like anything. Communication is nothing to tell,

natural lasting, slowly caressing, fire without song, without spells.

Colombian Rundown Week 1

So I’ll start from the back and work forward, then to the middle then back and forward - and that’s what she said.

Ok then. Ever been on a taxi ride where you weren't sure if you’d live or die, if you were awake or dreaming? I have now.

This guy picked us up and was blasting Coolio’s Gangstar’s Paradise. He must have gotten one of these shitty mixing of american music from the super mercado. We also listened to Milli Vinilli and Metallica as he swerved to the music and screamed “you are all cocks” (En Espanol) out the window.

Towards the end, when I was pretty sure I’d be ok, I thought it was funny.

Something terrible also happened that night, as a different cab driver was robbed and killed.

The sooner we all figure out that killing each other isn't getting anyone anywhere, the better.

But I guess the US is involved in countless conflicts across the world, so I guess it is getting us somewhere. And it isn't anywhere good.

In other news I have been watching a good amount of movies but have also made it my mission to get out a good deal more. I have been going to the nearby beach town of Taganga, it’s pretty and they have some cool bars. All the burritos seem pretty soggy around here, which is a problem.

Just this week I have watched Youth In Revolt, which I actually enjoyed much more the second time around - Michael Cera is in the “Do no wrong” realm for me right now.

The Kids Are Alright - Though I’m a fan of literally everyone involved domesticity makes me uneasy and so did the film, which I’m sure says more about me than anything else. Also do kids really think it’s funny to pee on dogs heads? If I saw some teenager doing that I would execute his ass.

The Secrets In Their Eyes. “You will have a million pasts and no future.” If you don’t see this monster of a film the jokes is on you.

I’ve eaten at El Santo in Santa Marta like 5 out of the last 8 days. They are super cool, super tasty and they have one of the cutest dogs ever keeping watch.

If you are in Santa Marta, check that, anywhere in the world, go out of your way and eat at El Santo.