Brain

Brain seems to have gone into hybernation. Didn't think the lack of light would affect me in any way, but apparently it has. Not that am depressed nor anything, but my sleeping pattern's become... well, patternless. Was never very solid to begin with, you'll say; totally agree, but it's never happened that i go to bed at 11:00 am and wake up at 4:00 in the afternoon, then take a nap from midnight till 1:30. That was today. Put the hours of the day in a shaker glass and then spill them on the table, and you have my waking cycle over the last three or four weeks.

Brain's very silent, too. Probably snowing a lot in there as well. Got to shake it up a little.

Got to finish packing first, though. Then take a shower. Cab's coming to pick me up in a few hours and then it's ha det bra til Tromsø. Will be in London till the 23rd, and then on to Valencia.

Ooh! Brain just woke up. Thinking of the seventh commandment. Just looked it up on wiki, and it says "Do not commit adultery". When i went through catholic catechism as a child, though, it was "Do not covet the woman of your neighbor".

Catechism classes were mixed. Boys and girls from 6th and 7th grade had them after school, every wednesday. Two years, and then you were ready to take the first communion. Must have been strange for the girls. For them the seventh commandment was not an admonition against adultery, but against lesbianism with married women. Gay boys like me, on the other hand, were scot free: it sounded like that commandment in particular had no bearing on us. Not that coveting a married man is much fun, anyways.

At any rate, the message is clear: whatever your sex and sexual orientation, adultery is a no-no. That's to say, if you're married, do not sleep with married people other than your own spouse. Any other sex partner must be unmarried.

Isn't semantics an amazing thing?

"Panic"

Just read the script of this amazing play by Mika Myllyaho. My first encounter with finnish literature (in translation, of course) and have definitely NOT been disappointed. A bit like "Women on the edge of a nervous breakdown", but with men instead of women. Would really love to seen this acted...

La complainte du progrès

Hehm... I'm just noticing my last posting was about complaining... Well, this one is about a lament. Haven't felt like blogging in the last few days, but was organizing my music this morning and came across this song by Boris Vian: perfect to fill in some space and deaden that sense of guilt...


Autrefois pour faire sa cour
On parlait d'amour;
Pour mieux prouver son ardeur
On offrait son coeur.
Maintenant c'est plus pareil.
Ça change, ça change...
Pour séduire le cher ange
On lui glisse à l'oreille:

Ah Gudule, viens m'embrasser, et je te donnerai...

Un frigidaire,
Un joli scooter,
Un atomixer
Et du Dunlopillo.
Une cuisinière
Avec un four en verre,
Des tas de couverts
Et des pelles à gâteau!
Une tourniquette
Pour faire la vinaigrette,
Un bel aérateur
Pour bouffer les odeurs,
Des draps qui chauffent,
Un pistolet à gaufres,
Un avion pour deux...

Et nous serons heureux!

Autrefois s'il arrivait
Que l'on se querelle,
L'air lugubre, on s'en allait,
En laissant la vaisselle.
Maintenant, que voulez-vous,
La vie est si chère...
On dit: "rentre chez ta mère"
Et on se garde tout.

Ah Gudule, excuse-toi, ou je reprends tout ça...

Mon frigidaire,
Mon armoire à cuillers,
Mon évier en fer,
Et mon poêle à mazout.
Mon cire-godasses,
mon repasse-limaces,
Mon tabouret-à-glace
Et mon chasse-filous!
La tourniquette
À faire la vinaigrette,
Le ratatineur dur
Et le coupe friture.

Et si la belle
Se montre encore rebelle
On la ficelle dehors,
Pour confier son sort

Au frigidaire,
À l'efface-poussière,
A la cuisinière,
Au lit qu'est toujours fait,
Au chauffe-savates,
Au canon à patates,
A l'éventre-tomates,
À l'écorche-poulet!

Mais très, très vite
On reçoit la visite
D'une tendre petite
Qui vous offre son coeur...

Alors on cède
Car il faut qu'on s'entraide
Et l'on vit comme ça
Jusqu'à la prochaine fois!

On Children

One day when i was a kid of 8 or 9 my mom came back from the grocer's shop and recited this poem to me and my brothers. She had written it on the backside of her shopping list, having copied it off a poster on one of the shop's walls while she was waiting for her turn. You know, one of those tacky posters with a sunset on the background and some text written in curly letters. It happened to be a fragment of Khalil Gibran's "The Profet":

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

These lines stayed with me for a long time, but it was only a couple of years ago, when a student lent me Gibran's book, that i discovered where they came from. The makers of the poster at the grocer's shop of my childhood had not bothered to mention the author, as i saw myself when it was my turn to go shopping. Yet, their spanish translation was faithful enough that when i came across the fragment in english, over 20 years later, i recognized it.

Then again today, while surfing on the net, i found Sweet Honey on the Rock's musical version of the text, and it brought the memory up again.

My mom did not have the opportunity to go to school beyond the 6th grade. She had to work from a very young age, and her parents couldn't afford, or didn't think it important enough, to educate her beyond elementary school. All her life she's had to fight against the disadvantages this meant for her. Her lack of a formal education could have made her deny it to us, perhaps, or become so obsessed with it that she pushed us towards the "good and profitable" fields of study, ways of life, worldviews...

Yet she and my dad always made it clear that we could choose what we wanted, even when it was obvious they didn't understand our choices. When i told them i was going to study literature they must have been scared shitless: that really is a starvation sentence in a small town in Argentina. When i came out to them (rather, when they figured out i was gay), the notion must have gone against everything they were brought up to believe, yet they dealt and are dealing with it. Two of their three children have emigrated, and the third will probably do so next year. If we miss them, i can't imagine how they must miss us.

Of course, parents have their own ideas about life and what's right, and you live by those when you're little... When you start to get older, some of their values and points of view have stuck to you, and even if you see things differently, there's a time when you're still sensitive to their preferences... Some of those you spend years trying to shed off, only to discover they've crept back on you when you least expect it.

I think about my mom going into that grocer's shop and coming across that poem on the wall. It must have truly spoken to her beliefs, for her to come back so excited and read the poem to us so enthusiastically.

Complaint

I saw this poster on a bus, and took a picture.


It's basically an add from the consumers' council here in Norway. The card says:

"To Vinedal Catering:
RE our wedding,
we just wanted to say that
THE FOOD SUCKED!
................Camilla & Anders"

And then the caption underneath goes:

"DISSATISFIED?
The Consumers' Council will help you."

Heheheh. Made me smile.

Not fair!

US policies cost Latin America years under dictatorships, economic & social crises... and all Argentina manages to get back is Barbara Bush's purse and cell phone??? Which, rather than being shared, the pickpocket will surely keep -- that is how politics always works in Argentina, anyway.

Mary

Ok, back to one of my pet topics. Seriously, i don't do it on purpose, but just now i found myself thinking about religion... and the virgin Mary.

Why was it so important that Jesus' mother was a virgin? Would either of them have lost any sacredness if she hadn't been? I mean, that a virgin conceived god's son is not so spectacular, given that he is almighty and all... Wouldn't it be even more miraculous if Mary hadn't been a virgin, people had known it, and still they had accepted Jesus as the son of god?

Also, i'm wondering, why couldn't god have used Joseph's sperm to fertilize Mary? If he didn't, did he cause her egg to have a full set of 46 chromosomes, rather than the normal 23? Or was her egg just a regular one, and god just made 23 additional chromosomes to simply appear inside it? What were the genes in god's Y chromosome, for instance? I mean, i know Jesus is the spirit made flesh, but the instructions to make flesh are contained in DNA, which is matter... Did god concoct his own kind of DNA just on the spot, at the moment of Jesus' conception, or did he copy it from someone else, from people already living or who had lived in the past? If the first, it would really be interesting to see how god's DNA looks like; if the second, who did he pick as model/s?

In either case, what kind of genetic traits did he pick over what others? Knowing how fractious people are, isn't it a bit careless to make the redeemer of all humankind look like the members of one group in particular? It'd have simplified things if he'd included a disclaimer, something like "don't fight guys; it was a random process; i did it with my eyes closed -- he just happened to come out male and caucasian".

Marcelo Tinelli & the Mapuche

Not the name of a rock group, i'm afraid.

Marcello Tinelli: a famous Argentinean TV presenter and comedian.

The Mapuche: the only indigenous group that, although seriously decimated and marginalized, managed to preserve its culture and language in Patagonia.

Marcello Tinelli: has bought thousands of acres in the Patagonic province of Chubut.

The Mapuche: 30 families live in this land, part of a community of around 700 individuals who, although there for centuries, still have no legal possession.

Marcello Tinelli: wants to build a mega tourist center (it would have a Mapuche name).

The Mapuche: have to go.

The argentinean government: does nothing, of course.

The argentinean media: not a peep.

Money: talks!


More info:
Universidad de Quilmes: http://extramuros.unq.edu.ar/03/art_moira_millan_3.htm

Recruiting campaign

Just checked my yahoo & msn accounts, and there's these new US army adds everywhere. A new recruiting campaign:

"Climbing a mountain is strong.
Landing a helicopter on a mountain is Army Strong!
There's strong... And there's Army Strong!"

Just google "Army Strong" to read more about this, if you're interested. I just wonder... Do they mean strong as in "brute force"? Have they thought of trying with other adjectives, too?

"Jumping off a bridge is dumb.
Jumping off a bridge because somebody tells you to is Army Dumb!
There's dumb... And there's Army Dumb!" (Unless you're into bungee jumping, of course).

Or what about this other one?

"Killing is wrong.
Collateral damage is Army Wrong!
There's wrong... And there's Army Wrong!"

But no, only strength in mentioned. Again, no creativity, no flair... The curse of the military!

Dream

Oh, i forgot to tell you about a dream i had yesterday night. I was running in a snowy forest, like the ones i'd seen during the day. I had white socks on, but the rest of my legs (at least) were bare. My feet only sank a couple of centimeters in the snow. Every few steps i'd jump and rise above the treetops, and then i'd come down again, without changing speed, just following an arch. The sky was dark, black, but somehow i could see the forest below me, and around me when i ran among the trees. It felt incredibly good, but the best part was... Well, i didn't really tell myself i was dreaming, but i had a thought like "Now i know how to do this, i'll be able to do it later, too!". I was damn sure i'd discovered something, like it was absolutely clear why i could do it now and not before. It was such a good feeling that when i woke up... Of course, i know i can't jump like that, but the good feeling stayed.

Trusty Thursday

Am writing from my room, back in Tromsø. Got up this morning at about 8:00 and decided to just head back. I could have continued north, but long distance buses run basically once a day (or at least, that's the case with the routes i considered), so that coming back would have taken almost as long as getting there, and moreover along the same track... Besides, still have over 4 weeks here. Better take another trip later, perhaps south, by way of Kiruna, as Anni suggested (will get in touch with you!).

Apart from that, not much to tell, really. Counted the time from the first glimmer of daylight in the sky to the last, and it's around 7 hours. Not that extreme. In fact, i'm actually afraid that i'll never get to experience days on end of absolute darkness. Bummer. I really wanted to see how that felt; instead, i feel a bit swindled. Why do they call it mørketida if it never gets totally dark, huh?

Anyway, on the way here i noticed the sun never got above the horizon, but around noon the clouds in the south were really orange and sparkly, and the tops of some mountains were illuminated, too, all in a pinkish color. It's a conceptual shock to realize that sunlight here is actually coming from below. You see it in the way the higher clouds are lighted, but lower ones are black, opaque.

Weird wednesday

Am writing on my laptop, will post on blog later. It's 8:52 on wednesday, and travelling up here is turning out to be more expensive and complicated than i thought. Not only are bus tickets quite pricey, but money seems to simply whoosh out through the neat double hole spelled by 'room' in 'room and board'. For instance, both in Nordreisa and here in Alta i couldn't find any free space at the couple of pensions and one youth hostel i walked to after getting off the bus. Apparently, there's quite a lot of tourism here at this time of year, and i should have made reservations... In particular, since wind chill was about -15 when i arrived yesterday night, i didn't get to check all the places i'd written down, and... Well, let's say that the only reason i can't really say i've been robbed is that the clerk at the reception wasn't actually holding a gun... Wouldn't have been surprised if she poked my eye out with her pen, though.

Tourist information office opens in half an hour; will ask them about bus schedules in Finnmark. According to what i found on the net, only way to get to Finland from here is through Karasjok, which i wouldn't mind visiting, except there is only one bus per day from Alta, and by the time it gets there, the daily connection to Finland has already left... Also, the only housing available in Karasjok seems to be this really fancy "Rica" hotel, which would again be heavy on the wallet... but which is also completely booked out for tonight, according to the website...

Dang it! I'd really like to visit Finland. Maybe i could even get to Oulu and surprise Anni... Let's see what they say at tourist info.

- - - - 0 - - - -

It's now 11:50 and am at Alta library. At tourist info they confirmed i do indeed have to overnight in Karasjok if i want to get to Finland. Bus leaves Alta at 14:20, arrives in Karasjok at 18:55, and connection to Rovaniemi is tomorrow at 9:25 (finnish bus company goes by musical name of "Eskelisen Lapin Linjat" and their time table is labeled "aikataulu" which i don't really know the meaning of. "Time table", perhaps? Anyway, i love this abundance of vowels! It's a good change after consonant-heavy english & norwegian).

Guy at tourist info was friendly – and cute as hell! Big fat wedding ring on his finger, though. Funny how rings can be read as "KEEP OUT" signs... Perhaps that's the way they're supposed to function. Digression aside, he gave me this magazine with data about accommodation throughout Lapland, and it turns out there are places to stay in Karasjok other than the Rica Pocket Rippers from Hell Hotel. I rang "Annes Overnatting Motell og Hytter", and a single room at their place costs 300 kroner per night, which is not that bad. They're not near the bus station, but the man who answered said i should call him back when i'm about to arrive, and he'll go pick me up. Very nice of him, isn't it? Also, the whole conversation was in norwegian, and managed to say and understand everything i needed to! Am still in shock.

After that, i walked around the city for a little while. The temperature on the big digital panel outside one of the shopping centers reads -5, but again, it's quite windy today. There are very few people about, but i don't know if it's because of the weather, or simply because few people live here.

Couple of tableaux that made an impression: construction workers at a building site, going about their business in the sub zero air. Imagine having to work outside for months on end at such temperatures! I've seen this in Tromsø, too: road works that don't stop even when it's very cold, or snowing a lot. And yes, i know that noticing this kind of stuff says a lot more about where i come from than about life here. "There is no bad weather, only bad clothing", the norwegian saying goes, and although i've been hearing that for years, it's only been here in the north that it's finally sank in: people truly live by that rule!

Also, on my way to the library, i noticed an ambulance very badly parked right in front of a supermarket doorway, blocking it. I wondered if there'd been some kind of emergency inside. Then, from the library window, i saw the supermarket doors slide open, and out came the two paramedics, one after the other, dressed in red and fluo-green overalls with "Helse Finnmark" stamped in big white letters on their backs. They seemed to be in a hurry, each carrying a white styrofoam container... that obviously held their lunch. Before getting in, one of them spat on the icy sidewalk. This last gesture in particular seemed very undoctorish to me, but after all, why shouldn't a doctor spit? As long as he doesn't do it on his patients...

The library is very well stocked, and has a cozy atmosphere. I'm sitting at a table by a window from which i can see a forest of naked trees, rocking in the wind, and snowy mountains in the distance. I imagine some would call this landscape bleak. For me it's magical, though. Rough, but beautiful. And best of all, the feeling of being contained in this little pocket of warmth. It seems incredible, almost impossible, that nature should allow it.

- - - - 0 - - - -

Ehm..... How dumb can a person be? More to the point: how dumb can I be? It's 15:06 and i'm indeed NOT on my way to Karasjok, nor will i continue to Finland tomorrow. Half an hour before the bus was to depart i decided to take a look at the map on the magazine i got from Cute Guy at tourist info, just to check the geography i would be moving through. As i was munching on my brødskive med øst and sipping from a warm cup of gløgg, i noticed on the map an unobtrusive black dot labeled 'Grensen', which of course, means 'Border'. "Good command of vocabulary, Mariano!", i said to myself, while my mind wondered how many passengers would be on the bus tomorrow, and how long the identity check would take...

...And that's when i remembered i don't have neither my passport nor my norwegian identity card with me. DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guess this travel-on-a-whim thing only works if you pack at least some brains. Lacking that, one should at least have two bodies, so that one of them can kick the other's ass, which is exactly what i wanted to do to myself for a while there.

But, it passed. Yeah, i'll miss on Rovaniemi and Oulu (sorry, Anni!) but at least the system here is that one buys tickets on the bus, so i didn't lose the $. Plus, i'll be back some other time. Promise.

An additional upside is that i've walked to Bossekop, a little suburb of Alta, and found a nice little lodge to spend the night in, all rough-cut wood panels and overlooking the Alta fjord. They have a sauna, too, so i'll go there before dinner, then for a drink at the pub below. There's also this movie i downloaded while in Tromsø, "Crustacés e Coquillages", which i may watch before going to bed.

Tomorrow... Well, i don't know. Either keep going, or start going back...

Alta

Just arrived in Alta. Spent most of the day in Nordreisa, walking around, sitting at a cafe and reading. There's very few hours of daylight, and am not really well equiped to go hiking, but went a little way into a forest, following the cross country ski tracks someone had made. Totally silent, as if there really weren't anybody else around. Felt as if the trees were daring me to go among them and try to find my way out again...

Anyway, i should have come better prepared. If i had a very, very thick sleeping bag i'd spend a night out, just looking at the sky. It is very clear tonight, and one of the breaks the driver took on the way here coincided with the most amazing northern light i've yet seen: spread out from horizon to horizon, green, but shimmering with waves yellow, red, and almost blue, shifting shape, sprouting spikes...

Tomorrow i'll spend sometime here, but in the afternoon i'll get on a bus and go somewhere else. Maybe cross to Finland or Russia? I don't know if the inland bus lines operate in winter, but there's this city, called Rovaniemi, that i've wanted to visit since i watched Medem's "Los amantes del círculo polar". I'll have to ask.

Gotta get off, they're charging me by the minute!

On a whim

There's the norwegian course end-of-year gathering in a couple of hours. No more classes, and i've no plans till mid december. So, i've just put some clothes in my backpack and after the gathering will go to the bus station and hop on a bus to... somewhere. Will be back in a few days.

Vi sees!

El aromo

de Atahualpa Yupanqui

Hay un aromo nacido
en la grieta de una piedra.
Parece que la rompió
pa’ salir de adentro de ella.

Está en un alto pelao,
no tiene ni un yuyo cerca.
Viéndolo solo y florido
tuito el monte lo envidea.

Lo miran a la distancia
árboles y enredaderas
diciéndose con rencor
"pa’ uno sólo cuánta tierra...

En oro le ofrece al sol
pagar la luz que le empresta
y como tiene de más
puñao por el suelo siembra."

Salu, plata y alegría
tuito al aromo le suebra
asegún ven los demás
del lugar en que lo observan.

Pero hay que dir y fijarse
cómo lo estruja la piedra,
fijarse que es un martirio
la vida que le envidean.

En ese rajón el árbol
nació por su mala estrella
y en vez de morirse triste
se hace flores de sus penas.

Como no tiene reparos
tuitos los vientos le pegan,
las heladas lo castigan,
l’agua pasa y no se queda.

Ansina vive el aromo
sin que ninguno lo sepa
con su poquito de orgullo
porque es justo que lo tenga.

Pero con l’alma tan linda
que no le brota una queja,
que no teniendo alegrías
se hace flores de sus penas.

Eso habían de envidiarle
los otros, si lo supieran.
Que no teniendo alegrías
se hace flores de sus penas.

Alfajores de maizena

I'm pooped. Just got back from a party. Didn't stay long, but long enough to get a little tipsy, i suppose. It was the birthday of a friend of Quade's. Kristi or something like that. They'd taken over the laundry room, so there we were, squeezed in among the machines, shoving each other and trying to talk over the music, the whirr of the dryers and the slushing of water in the washers.

Anyway, i've spent most of the day trying to make alfajores de maicena. My mom used to make them for all our birthdays when we were kids, and i thought i'd kill two birds with one stone: make some for the party tonight, and some for this other gathering there is on Monday, to celebrate the end of the norwegian course.

This is the recipe:

100 g. butter
150 g. sugar
2 egg yolks
1 egg white
grated lemon peel (half a lemon)
150 g. corn starch (maizena)
60 g. flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
250 g. de dulce de leche
3 tablespoons grated coconut

You basically beat the butter together with the sugar till you get a creamy mix. Then add the yolks, egg white and lemon peel, beating all the while. Sift in the starch, flour and baking powder, mix, and then start kneading with your hands until you have a nice, homogenous dough. Let it rest for 15 minutes. Then you sprinkle some flour on the table and stretch the dough over it with a rolling pin, till it's about 1/2 cm thick. Cut out circles with a drinking glass (you pick the size; just make sure they're all the same, and that you end up with an even number of circles).

Place these "cookies" on a baking sheet (don't forget the baking paper beneath), and give them 15 minutes at medium heat. You should take them out just as they begin to change color. Let them cool before you peel them off the sheet; otherwise they might break easily.

Make a 'sandwich' with two cookies, by spreading dulce de leche (Hapå, if you're in Norway; don't use too much!) on the flat side of one, and then sticking it to the flat side of another. Some of the dulce de leche will come out on the sides; that's all right. Now roll the cookies around in the coconut and it will stick to the edges, and voilá! Alfajores de maizena.

I hadn't made these in a long time. Had to consult with my mom to check that i remembered the recipe right. Plus, it took me a while, because i multiplied by five (otherwise would have gotten some 20 alfajores; way too few!). Tja... They turned out ok, but it was more fun to watch my mom make them. The excitement! To eat bits of the raw dough, spoon out the last of the dulce de leche from its jar, get up at siesta time, in the heat, and tiptoe to the kitchen to steel a couple of freshly made alfajores from the fridge...

Argentinean TV spot

This one's only for those who can understand spanish. Sorry for the publicity bit at the end, but this REALLY reminded me of home. Argentinean men tend to be exactly like this! (yeah, ok, generalizing is wrong, but i've seen it in person!).

The war against terror in Argentina

My dad sent me this funny e-mail. It's a spoof, obviously, argentinean in origin, but it says a lot about life in there...

Washington DC, CNN Special, 11.07.2006, 11:30 a.m.

Secret documents recently made public by the FBI revealed that Al Qaeda had planned to sabotage the Summit of the Americas that took place in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in November of last year. Osama Bin Laden had ordered two experienced terrorists of his organization to hijack a plane and crash it against the Casa Rosada (Argentina's equivalent of the White House), in repudiation of George Bush's attendance to the summit.

According to the records of several secret services offices, the two terrorists arrived in Ezeiza International Airport on Sunday, October 30, at 21:45, on an Air France flight from Paris.

However, their mission meets obstacles from the start, as the terrorists find out that their luggage has been sent to Santiago de Chile by mistake. After some five hours of form-filling and being redirected from office to office, unable to communicate with anyone due to their poor command of Argentinean Spanish, the two individuals are advised to return with an interpreter the following day. They leave the airport at around 3:00 on Monday.

They take a taxi to the city center. The driver, upon noticing that they are foreigners, drives them around for three hours and finally abandons them near the shanty town Villa 31, where three criminals (presumably in league with the taxi driver) rob them at gun point.

The two radicals have managed to retain a few dollars hidden in pouches on the inner side of their belts. They bribe a truck driver with some of it, and the man agrees to take them to a less inhospitable part of the city.

On Monday at 7:30 am, and thanks to the guerrilla training they have acquired in Afghanistan, they manage to jump onto a train and arrive at a hotel in Plaza Once. Subsequently, they rent a car and head again for the airport, determined to hijack a Boeing 747, as planned.

However, since route 39 has been cut by piqueteros, public employees and teachers on strike, the two men are delayed a further three hours. When they finally get to the airport, they are involved in an altercation with the car-rental company, as their insurance policy does not cover the severe dents nor the broken windshield which resulted when the pair attempted to push their way through the strikers' march.

Since they are denied entrance to the airport unless the damage to the car is paid, they return to the city at 12:30, looking for a money exchange office. They do not realize they have been given false banknotes until they drop one in a beggar's tin can, and he spits in their faces.

Finally out of options, the two men have to give up on their original plan and decide to settle for Aeroparque Jorge Newbery. Although equipped only for national flights and thus housing much smaller airplanes, it is within walking distance, and they head towards it at 13:25.

When they arrive there at 15:10, they find themselves in the midst of another protest, this time involving the workers of Aerolíneas Argentinas, who are complaining about new regulations proposing to cut the leg room in the pilot and co-pilot seats so that a new row of passenger seats can be added. The only plane on the runway is one belonging to Aerolíneas' rival company, Austral, but due to a strike of the oil industry it has no fuel in its tanks.

Thought part of the mob of passengers and workers that is wreaking havoc in the airport hall, the two men are among those arrested by the airport police. Taken to Police Station number 54 in the Caballito area, they manage to escape after recovering from the effects of the tear gas and the concussion suffered by one of them at the time of the arrest. The time is 19:00, which coincides with guard turnover at the aforementioned station. Apparently, bribing is also involved in the incident, although it is unclear what the two men could have offered the corrupt policemen, as they no longer had any money with them.

A waiter at a famous restaurant reports two foreign men "dirty, beaten-up and walking funny, kind of bow-legged" begging for scraps at closing time that evening, but the next ascertainable notice of the would-be terrorists is on the morning of Tuesday at 4:30, when they arrive to Hospital Casa de Mayo with a severe case of food poisoning. As there are no beds available, they are driven to four other hospitals, and finally admitted in Hospital Regal at 9:40.

They are released on Sunday at 17:30. Though each of them is missing a kidney, they are now in possession of some cash again, having made a deal with the head physician at that health center.

Since by this time the summit is over, they attempt to leave the country. They buy a bus ticket to Asunción del Paraguay, but when the engine breaks near the city of Rosario, the bus is broken into by a band of highway robbers. Excepting underwear, all passenger possessions are taken away.

In pain, hungry and desperate, they fall asleep in the hallway of an electro-domestics warehouse in a Rosario suburb. Taken in by an ONG with hidden Catholic roots, they spend the next three months at a rural community in La Pampa, where they are fed and allowed to work in exchange for learning and reciting the psalms.

As they recover their strength, they manage to escape and in May of this year walk into the Central Police Station of Buenos Aires. As foreigners lacking documents, they are deported, mysteriously avoiding further physical abuse. "They said they were carriers of an extremely contagious kind of STD", reported an officer.

Washington congratulated President Kirchner on the country's excellent security. "Although the two men managed to get away" said A.D. Ashley, head of the FBI, "the deterrent measures deployed within all levels of Argentinean society make of that country a model to be followed by our allies in the war against terror."

On Greed

Watch this one.

Another Funny Video

Heheheh... I laughed my butt off with this one.

Another one

Well, it just seems like supposed plans of mine keep being blasted into the air -- by non other than me, of course. POWERRRRRR!

Yesterday evening i was talking to my friend José, who's getting married in Uruguay in march. We were talking about how nice it'd be to take a trip in the Patagonia in January, before he ties the knot... And i realized the idea fits perfectly!

I'll be finished with my intermediate norwegian course in December, then go to Spain to spend xmas and new year with my brother. After that, off to Argentina for six months! Will spend a good deal of time with my family, plus travel, attend the wedding, maybe get a little involved in anti-mining activism...

Bought the tickets already.

Now i have to go to the u and give them back the piles of books i'd been taking out. It's gonna take at least 5 trips...

Phew!

SNORE!

I talked to my teachers today. Told them exactly what i wrote in here over the weekend. They weren't too happy about my quitting, but not nasty, either. I suppose it's unconventional, but it feels like the right thing to do right now. Can, the guy next door, said i was just being lazy; i liked his honesty. Not that i agree with the judgement, but i suppose it can be seen that way. I'm definitely not planning to just sit and twiddle my fingers for the next year and a half; i just don't want to go ahead with this masters program.

I also hope i won't have to live on fish alone, either, as Minge suggested: fishing bores me, and i'd probably starve before i catch any.

Wondering: by quitting like this, am i setting a bad example for my ex-students? I know some of you guys read this... Funny how i used to worry that my not quitting something was a bad example (smoking) and now quitting something else still causes that kind of reaction in me.

Wondering: is the patronizing, ego-inflated attitude behind such a reaction something that comes with being a teacher, or is it just me? As if my actions had such influence over the decisions of people that can think and reason by themselves!

Anyway, it's late. Going to sleep.

Coming out

Interesting video:

http://www.insideimdancing.com/blog/2006/07/my-closet-is-only-full-of-clothes-now.html#comments

A guy talks about his experience coming out to his parents.

La luna llena

La luna llena salió a las dos de la tarde.
La luna, llena y presente.
La gorda luna llena recién salida.
La luna llena salió en el noroeste.
La luna llena sobre las montañas nevadas.
La luna llena, blanca.
La luna llena y el sol aún sin ponerse.
La luna llena y blanca y el sol que hacía rosa la nieve.
La luna llena a mis espaldas.
La luna llena y yo viajando en bus.
La luna llena ahora en el cielo oscuro.
La luna llena, que parte el fiordo negro en dos.
La luna llena que borra las estrellas.
La luna llena que me llena la ventana.
La luna llena que me llama.

Decisions, decisions...

Hmmmm. I think i'm gonna leave the masters program at UiTø. I want to stay in Tromsø, and continue with my norwegian lessons, but the whole point of me taking a couple of years away from Flekke was that i was tired, and that i wanted to do something different, and relax... But here i am, squeezing my brains trying to understand this very technical stuff, spending hours in front of the computer, writing essay upon essay. Interesting as it all is, it's definitely not what i want to be doing right now. So, ha det bra.

Of course, it's not as easy as that. I have to start looking for a new place, 'cause if i'm not a student at the u, i can't keep living in the cheap dorm; i have to quit my norwegian classes at the u and change to the course taught at voksenopplæring senteret, because the one at the u is for students only; i'll have to find some kind of job in town, too, so as not to eat up all my savings; then there is the move to organize...

Doesn't sound very relaxing, either, but here i am, and these are the choices. Yup, i think that's that for the masters. Thanks for all the fish.

The Language Instinct

I'm reading this book by Steven Pinker. Check out this passage:

Consider an alleged atrocity committed by today's youth: the expression I could care less. The teenagers are trying to express disdain, the adults note, in which case they should be saying I couldn't care less. If they could care less than they do, that means that they really do care, the opposite of what they're trying to say. But if these dudes would stop ragging on teenagers and scope out the construction, they would see that their argument is bogus. Listen to how the two versions are pronounced:


The melodies and stresses are completely different, and for a good reason. The second version is not illogical, it's sarcastic. The point of sarcarsm is that by making an assertion that is manifestly false or accompanied by ostentatiously mannered intonation, one deliberately implies its opposite. A good paraphrase is, "Oh yeah, as if there was something in the world I care less about."

Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

Dr. Seuss

And NUH is the letter I use to spell Nutches
Who live in small caves, known as Nitches, for hutches.
These Nutches have troubles, the biggest of which is
The fact there are many more Nutches than Nitches.
Each Nutch in a Nitch knows that some other Nutch
Would like to move into his Nitch very much.
So each Nutch in a Nitch has to watch that small Nitch
Or Nutches who haven't got Nitches will snitch.

La buona novella II

This is another fragment of de André's "Good News". In it Mary tells Joseph about her conception of Jesus.

"In the womb of the temple, wet and dark dark,
the shadows were cold, incense-swollen;
the angel came down, like every evening,
to teach me a new prayer.
Then, suddenly, he unclasped my hands
and my arms became wings.
When he asked me "Do you know the summer?"
I ran, for a day, for an instant,
to see the color in the wind.

We truly flew, over the houses,
beyond gates, gardens and streets.
Then we slid among valleys in bloom
where grapevines hug olive trees.

We came down there, where the day gets lost
looking for itself in the greenery.
The angel spoke, as if praying,
and at the end of each prayer
he counted out a vertebra in my spine.

The priests's long shadows
pushed the dream into a circle of voices.
I thought to escape with my wings from before
but my arms were naked, and i could not fly.
Then i saw the angel become a comet
and the severe faces became stone,
their arms, the outline of branches
in the still postures of another kind of life:
their hands, leaves; their fingers, thorns.

Voices from the street, the sounds of people,
stole me from the dream and gave me back to the present.
The image vanished, color was extinguished,
but the far away echo of short words
repeated the strange prayer of an angel.
Maybe it was a dream, but it wasn't sleep.

"They'll call him the son of God."
Blurry words in my mind,
vanished in the dream, but present in my womb."

And the words, tired,
dissolved into tears.
The fear in the lips
was collected in the eyes
half-closed in the semblance
of a calmness
that is actually burning up, waiting
for an indulgent look.

And you slowly placed your fingers
at the edge of her forehead:
when they caress, old people
are afraid of being too rough.

La buona novella

Fabrizio de André is my favorite italian composer and singer. In this fragment of "The Good News", an album he made in 1970, he has one of the thieves crucified with Jesus talk about the 10 commandments.

"You will not have other gods beside me"
has often made me think:
others, from the east,
said that it didn't make any difference.

They believed in someone else
and they didn't hurt me.
They believed in someone else
and they didn't hurt me.

"Do not use the name of the Lord,
do not use it in vain."
With a knife stuck on my side
i screamed my suffering and his name:

but maybe he was tired, maybe too busy,
and he didn't hear my pain.
But maybe he was tired, maybe too far away,
i really did it in vain.

"Honour your father, honour your mother
and honour their staffs, too."
Kiss the hand that broke your nose
because you were asking for food:

When my father's heart stopped
i didn't feel pain.
When my father's heart stopped
i didn't feel pain.

"Remember to sanctify the holidays."
It's easy, for us thieves,
to go into the temples that vomit psalms
of slaves and their masters

without ending up tied up to the altars,
our necks slit, like animals.
Without ending up tied up to the altars,
our necks slit, like animals.

The fifth says "You must not steel"
and perhaps i've respected it
by emptying in silence the swollen pockets
of those who had stolen:

but i, lawless, stole in my name;
they did it in the name of God.
But i, lawless, stole in my name;
they did it in the name of God.

"Do not commit impure acts"
that is to say, don't waste your seed.
Make a woman pregnant every time you love her
and thus you'll be a man of faith:

then lust is gone, and the child remains
and many are killed by hunger.
Maybe i've mistaken pleasure for love
but i haven't created pain.

The seventh says "do not kill
if you want to be worthy of heaven."
Look at this law of God, today,
three times nailed to a cross:

look at the death of this nazarene
and still, not a thieve less dies.
Look at the death of this nazarene
and still, not a thieve less dies.

"Do not raise false testimony"
and help them kill a man.
They know divine law by heart
and always forget forgiveness:

i have denied God and my honour
and no, i don't feel pain.
I have denied God and my honour
and no, i don't feel pain.

"Do not covet what belongs to others,
do not covet their wife."
Say that to them, ask those few
that have a woman and something:

in other's beds, warm with love,
i didn't feel pain.
Yesterday's envy is not over:
tonight i envy your life.

But now that night and darkness come
they take the pain away from my eyes
and the sun glides beyond the dunes
to rape other nights:

in seeing this man, dying
i feel pain, mother.
In compassion that doesn't give in to resentment
i have learned love, mother.

(For the italian original, you can go to http://www.frascolla.org/FDA/t04.htm ).

Conversation

-Do you know what time it is?- i asked.
-I was just reading a book- he answered.
-What is it about?- i tried.
-Wow! It's almost three! Gotta run to class!- and off he was.

Idiom

Why should someone shit bricks when they're scared? I'd become scared if i shat bricks, not the other way around!

La Traviata

Here's a fragment of Verdi's La Traviata. The melody has been ringing in my head all day long. Thought it'd be nice to translate it and post it here:

Folly! Folly!
A vane craze this is!
Poor woman,
alone,
abandoned,
in this populous desert they call Paris.
What is there to wait for, anymore?
What must i do?
Just seek pleasure
and perish in the turmoil.
I must be always free,
stumble from joy to joy.
I want my living to flow
through the paths of pleasure.
Both when the day is born and when it dies
enjoyment is always to be found.
To delights always new
must my thought fly.

Hvorfor ikke?

Someone had written this in the snow outside my house:



I can think of many answers:

Because the snow melts.
Because someone will step on it.
Because more snow will cover it.
Because the snow plough will plough it away.

But the one i like most is:

Indeed! Why not?

I imagine how it must have felt, to dip a finger in the snow and carve the words out. Who cares what becomes of them?

Voices in the head

Does it ever happen to you that you hear other people's voices in your head? Like you carry those people inside you?

Seriously. Sometimes, when i'm wondering about a situation, or experiencing something particularly intense, or when i have to take a decision, i can distinctly hear what such-and-such friend or relative would say about it. I don't call them, either. Their opinions just pop up and vanish, and i'm left with that nice feeling one gets after a surprise. Yeah, i'm thrilled by the unexpectedness of it, because sometimes i totally disagree with what they say. I would argue with them about it, but they're gone before i can grab them.

This morning, while i was freezing at the busstop, my grandma, dead 11 years, told me i should have put on a scarf. Just like that, out of the blue -- or the grey, as it was actually very overcast and snowing. Then zap!, she was gone, and i realized i couldn't even remember how her voice really sounded. She used to fuzz about our clothing like that, when we were kids. I hadn't thought about her in a while.

It'd be nice to think that we carry inside at least pieces of the people who are or have been close to us. Whether we got along or not. Of course, my skeptical mind says that when i hear these voices, i'm simply having my brain play a game, assigning identities to my own points of view, for one reason or another. I'm very fond of my skeptical mind, and trust her a lot.

Yet, i like the poetry of the other image, the possibilities it opens. If i have people in my head, then maybe i'm in other's people's heads, too... Even inside the head of the people inside my head... And the me inside the heads of the people inside my head has other people inside his head, and it's all like a matrioshka doll, except that instead of dolls people's heads hold universes within themselves.

If i could communicate at will with the people inside my head, they might tell me "look, i don't have time to argue with you, i have all these people inside my head i need to talk to". As it is, i just catch glimpses of their interiors, and that's why thankfully there's also a universe outside of our heads, with people i can talk to and get near to and love... And yet be as far from knowing their internal universes as i am from knowing my own. On the other hand, if i didn't know them at least a little, i wouldn't be able to imagine what they would say in my head, which is heartening.

Got to go to norwegian class. Don't bother to call the insane asylum, as i already did. They're reinforcing their straight jackets, and coming for me this evening.

Homework

Due in 6 hours. I suppose i should have started a little earlier. As it was, i just took a verbal laxative and let it all flow out... You can tell, i'm sure.

QUESTION 2: The Critical Period
One of the arguments for the biological foundation of linguistic knowledge is the notion of critical period. First, explain what is meant by critical period and provide examples from the natural world to demonstrate your point. Then explain how the notion has been expanded to apply to language and what kinds of arguments have been used to do so. Finally, give an evaluation of the validity of this argument in relation to language.

As the name implies, a critical period defines a limited window of time within which a certain event or chain of events must occur, and outside of which they cannot. When applied in the field of First Language Acquisition, as proposed by Wilder Penfield (1959), Steven Pinker (1994) and others, "critical period" refers to the idea that there exists in people's lives a time beyond which a native-like acquisition of language becomes impossible.

The implications of this concept will be elaborated and explored later in the paper. As an introduction to that, however, it is important to consider other natural processes, taking place in the animal world, which must be accomplished within a critical period. The fact that they are biological is fundamental to our analysis, because if an analogy can be established between them and the process of language acquisition, an argument can be made for the presence of an implicit, biologically based 'ability' for language in human beings.

As noted by Thorpe (1958), one very clear case of the existence of a critical period within which a capability must be "initialized" in the animal realm is that concerning the chaffinch's command of its singing. This bird, which is capable of producing a characteristic and very systematic song, will never properly perform it unless it hears it before reaching maturity. Likewise, as pointed out by Lorenz (1970), greylag geese can only be imprinted, and their imprinting changed, within the first 36 hours of their birth; after that, it becomes impossible.

Thus, although the susceptibility to being imprinted and the ability to sing a specific song are physiologically inherent in these creatures, it is apparent that both must be cued and stimulated during a certain, early period of their lives for the innate potentialities to properly manifest themselves. Other processes presenting these characteristics are the acquisition of binocular vision in children (Almli et al. (1987)), which fails to appear if not used between one and three years of age, and of the vestibular system, at least as far zebrafish go (Moorman et al. (2002)).

These facts, although they clearly attest that there are critical periods which bear on the manifestation or lack thereof of genetically coded capabilities in other animals and even in humans, do not directly prove the theory about the existence of such a period for language acquisition. Nevertheless, they serve as a point of analogy and make evident the fact that it is exposure and/or exercise of certain organs or innate abilities that determine their functioning or manifestation in later life.

Incontrovertible evidence for the existence of a critical period in language acquisition could be provided by a comparative study of adults who had been exposed to language at different stages of childhood and adolescence. If, regardless of environment, intensity of exposure and teaching methods, an inferiority in the language command of those who were exposed later could be detected, it would become very difficult to think of theories that accounted for this fact other than the critical period one.

Fortunately, language is such an undissociatable part of being human that most children are exposed to it from birth, in one way or another. So called feral children, who have been kept away from all human contact from a very young age, are very rare – only a hundred or so have ever been reported and, indeed, it has proven very difficult for them to acquire language. However, the isolation they suffered resulted also, almost invariably, in an inability to acquire other traits that are usually thought of as inherently human, like walking "properly", or in social behavior difficult to judge other than as impaired by any cultural standard. Whereas these facts might indicate that language is not the only process with cognitive associations that is sensitive to a critical period, often they have also served to cast doubts on the mental health of these children (Newton (2002)). Thus, it has been argued that the reason for their failure to acquire a proper command of language lies in innate brain defects, and not in an expired critical period. Nevertheless, it is equally possible to argue that, even if such children were to show differences in brain activity and/or development in the most modern medical tests, we would be hard pressed to say whether the damage was a birth defect or a result of failure to meet those critical windows with the appropriate input.

A case in point is that of Genie, who was isolated, restrained and punished if she made any noise until the age of thirteen and a half. Being the most recent and dramatic case of a feral child, mention of her is very common in all language acquisition literature that deals with the critical period theory. Although the same questions are pondered as to her possible brain defects, a particular fact about her allows us to finesse this discussion: Genie had practically no language at all when she was discovered, yet she soon learned many words, and began to string them together; however, these sentences were very short, and contained very gross syntax violations (Pinker (1994)). She never got past this stage. A similar case is that of Chelsea, who only at 31 got a hearing aid to compensate for her deafness. Though provenly normal at the emotional and neurological levels, she was never exposed to any form of language till then. And like Genie, although she quickly acquired a rich vocabulary, her syntax remained extremely bizarre (IDEM (1994).

The facts examined to this point support quite strongly the view that a critical period exists, if nothing else, for syntax acquisition. The human brain seems to include a 'skeleton' on which syntax is to grow, which must be exercised within a certain age. Other indications of it are found in the study of deaf children who begin acquiring sign language at a very early age from deaf adults who only acquired it in their teens (Singleton et al.(2004)). In these cases, the children are better able to absorb the correct grammatical rules and set parameters to the right value, even when they have no interaction with other second generation speakers. This means that when exposed to language at this age, but not later, they are able to pick right from the inconsistent input around them.

Even more revealing are those studies that have explored the transition from pidgins, which tend to be mere collections of vocabulary that do no have any organized grammatical order, into creoles, which do. Pidgins are usually created when adults that do not share a common language are thrown together and must find some means of communication, but the first generation of children that is born into a pidgin-speaking society (or, presumably, introduced to the pidgin within the critical period), almost instantly transform the haphazard collection of words into a creole, rich in grammatical rules and consistent with them. This happens whether the original pidgin is spoken (Bickerton (1992)) or signed (Kegl et al. (1989)), all of which indicates, once more, that children are "geared" to take advantage and be aware of syntax in ways that adults are not.

As for other aspects of language acquisition, such as phonetics and pronunciation, it seems that a critical window of exposure can also be assumed. For instance, it has been noted that, if s/he is exposed after a certain age, the speaker will always have an accent identifiable as non-native, whether s/he is a first or second language learner (Oyama (1982)).

Authors such as Pinker (1994) argue that if introduced to it after the age of six, children's ability to acquire a native-like command of a language, be it first or second, is compromised. If after puberty, normal first language acquisition is unexpected, and if the learner already possesses a first language, the new one will not be as perfectly known.

Personally, I am satisfied that, at least as far as the acquisition of syntax is concerned, there is enough evidence to speak of a critical period. I believe that this is the core of the argument, anyway. After all, the critical period theory, together with the poverty of the stimulus argument, are important mostly in that they support the idea of a Universal Grammar innate in all humans. In this sense, what is important is to prove the existence of a critical period for the first setting of the principles and parameters of a grammar. It may or may not be possible to fully reset those principles and parameters to accommodate a second or third language after a certain age, but this is not so relevant. The same goes for pronunciation, because if a critical period exists for the acquisition of it, this will point, in my opinion, to a set of innate capabilities different from those underlying UG

The Spanish Ministry of Defense?

Wow! This sitemeter stuff is really cool! Apparently someone from the Spanish Ministry of Defense just visited my blog. Maybe to check that i'm not a security risk?

Mad TV Skit

So, i've discovered youtube... You'll probably be seeing a few of these videos on my blog, now and then. This one i watched on the blog of a fellow argentinean, and the people next door asked me today what i was laughing so loud at yesterday night...

Dance Monkeys, Dance.

This is a neat one...

Slippery slope

I saw two people slipping on the ice today. Came very close to being number three a couple of times, too. Buying a pair of those rubber things with spikes to attach to shoes seems a necessity here.

On the other hand, i was waiting for the bus today and noticed that the whole area around the bus stop, including a stretch of sidewalk up and down from it, are not only free of ice but totally dry. Same thing on the other side of the road. I bent down to touch the ground, and yes, it's warm. Heating elements under the pavement, i suppose.

Now that i think of it, i've seen such dry patches around the city, particularly downtown. One more factor that underlies Norway's high energy consumption, no doubt. Of course, it is either spend on that, or on mending broken bones and dislocated joints.

On cosmetics, again

Back to the topic of people's obsession with beauty products, M. sent me the following link yesterday (it's in danish, but if you took norwegian ab initio, you should be able to get the gist of it. If you don't, be thankful):

A special kind of facial cream

I didn't know they were doing this kind of research at this egregious alma mater of mine, and it's hard to believe someone would buy such a product. Although, on the other hand, people have been buying creams with collagen for years now, and they get that compound from placentas.

Hey, wanna make some money? Sells us your placenta after your baby's born! S/he doesn't need it anymore, and it can help smooth some wrinkles off somebody's face somewhere.

Night storm

It's still snowing, and very windy. Under the cones of light cast by street lights the snow passes fast, thick, torn from roofs and treetops, as if the world is crumbling into dust. Most of it feels gone, already, turned into a haze that makes the dark air syrupy. Eddies form on the downwind side of buildings; a snowplough driver has taken a break and is having a smoke outside, protected by the bulk of the machine. She seems content, in a thoughtful mood, but satisfied.

Just went out

Just went out to get lunch. As i was arriving back, it stopped snowing. This is what the facade of my student residence looks like today:

A 250 ton monster

"Candidate (20e) wins when DEP is dominated by the others", "LIN ranks higher than MAX, thus the violations that do occur are not fatal" and "This discussion also serves to introduce evidence of a conspiracy between substitution and deletion"... Fragments from a yellow mystery? A sumo match commentary? An article about sexual abuse in the military? Hardly. Just excerpts from a couple of articles i'm reading for my phonology class. I'm expected to produce their abstracts and present them in class.

Apparently, phonologists love to personify their study subjects. Yet, considering that what phonology studies is how different sound features interact in human speech, it is disorienting to think authors would go to the bother of giving human traits to processes that are so inmaterial. Plus, why complicate things with metaphores? Isn't this stuff unintelligible enough already? Granted, drawing comparisons can be helpful sometimes, but in this case i just find them distracting.

"Candidate (20e) ended up leading the mission because of his interpersonal skills. He proved to be the only one able to get the other finalists to act in a coordinated manner, and since such coordination was the only way in which the cruel DEP could be defeated, everybody accepted his dominance. Massing 250 tons and towering over the city's skyscrapers, DEP was created to test that those citizens aspiring to replace the mayor would really risk their life for the welfare of their hometown."

That's more like it! But i'm sure this is not the kind of abstract they are after.

Reflections

I enjoy looking at reflections. I agree with Borges: mirrors make you believe they are gateways to other universes. Windowpanes even more so, as you can see both what lies behind them and, superimposed on that, another place, ghostly, both there and not there. Mannequins with paralytic smiles modelling the season's latest, and at the same time buses and cars and people scurrying in all directions; the warm bustle of a university entrance hall and likewise an open, gray sky, leaves falling from tree branches and a dot in the distance that turns out to be a helicopter.

And then, if you focus, you meet your own eyes, your choices. Perfect imitators, those others, but each different.

Two realities coincide on the reflective surface, and for a few seconds or minutes they are both cordinated. But as soon as we move out of the frame our paths diverge, and while i bend down to tie my shoelace, he's done something totally unexpected, like bumped into a rhinoceros or adjusted his breathing pack in order to take a walk on the surface of his planet.

Maybe he gives me the finger, too, and i just can't see him doing it.

Mining

Meridian Gold is a multinational company with base in Canada, interested in exploiting an open air, gold and silver mine in Esquel, Argentina. It promised employment for 300 workers, but a group of neighbors started a campaign to bar operations. Since the separation of gold and silver from their ores requires the use of cyanide and arsenic respectively, people were worried about the possible contamination of rivers and ground water. They formed a neighbor assembly, organized peaceful protests and finally convinced the communal authorities to call for a plebiscite. The voting options: yes to the mine, no to the mine.

In turn, Meridian Gold organized "information events" designed to convince the constituency of the supposed safety of their intended enterprise. Barbecue, training shoes and other gifts were offered to those attending, a strategy that has been common in the political past ("past"?) of Argentina.

In any case, people ate the barbecue, accepted the shoes and other gifts and in march 2003 went to vote. 75% of the municipality's voters showed up, a record high. Of all ballots, 81% went to "No to the mine". This should have been the end of the matter.

"A people who do not sell themselves cannot be bought", said an inhabitant of Esquel on TV. But there is always a but, and money has its weight, particularly when there is a lot of it to go around among politicians and corrupt union workers. You may not want to be bought, but you might still be sold. Of course, again, one may wonder why ethically enlightened nations allow unethical companies based on their soil to conduct such unethical business with such unethical partners.

In any case, and since we are talking about corruption, consider the following facts:

1) Meridian Gold's work plan would mean an extraction of gold from the Esquel mine equivalent to 2.5 billion dollars in 10 years. Silver production is not included in these calculations.

2) Law 25.161 states that the argentinean nation may only receive a maximal 3% in commissions from any company exploiting mineral deposits within its borders. These commissions will be calculated on the value of the mineral as it is extracted from the mine, which is always much lower than after refinement. Incidentally, the same laws say that the argentinean state can exploit mineral deposits only through private companies (it still would have to prove to me that it would do a cleaner job, but at least it'd have more incentives to do so. In any case, this fact does give an idea of the thinking behind such laws. Let's encourage investment by all means, right?).

3) In round numbers, and assuming that the value of the gold, as extracted from the mine, were equivalent 2 billion dollars in 10 years, the part corresponding to the state would be some 60 million dollars. However, since the 3% figure is only a maximum set by national law, Chubut province (where Esquel is) has legislated that 2% should be enough (Provincial Law 004018). We are down to 40 million dollars.

4) Another couple of interesting national laws that help illustrate the situation are 23.018 & 24.490. In order to favor exports from Patagonia, the state will reimburse 5% of the value of such exports to the exporters. This would mean that Meridian Gold would be receiving 125 million additional dollars.

THUS, ARGENTINA WOULD BE PAYING 85 MILLION DOLLARS TO MERIDIAN GOLD SO THAT THEY CAN TAKE 2.5 BILLION DOLLARS AWAY!

And this is without taking into account other "incentives", such as a 100% deduction of prospecting expenses (law 24.196), the promise that taxing will remain constant for 30 years (same law), and a long etc.

Going back to the situation in Esquel, here are the developments after the plebiscite.

The company promised to respect the decision, but started lobbying for exploitation again shortly after. Public resistance continued and, finally, on july 14th of this year the province proclaimed a moratorium on mining in the Esquel area... for a period of three years (hoping that it will be long enough for people to forget?). Then, this month, the argentinean subsidiary of Meridian Gold took six citizens of Esquel to the federal court, accused of making public a recording of a 2003 meeting of CEOs and consultants of the firm. In it one of the executives is clearly heard saying: "the people of Esquel must not know that we intend to bend their will".

You can find more information about all of this on:

www.noalamina.org (Spanish. This is the site created by the Esquel neighbors.)
http://www.anred.org/article.php3?id_article=1786 (Spanish)
http://www.nodirtygold.org/esquel_argentina.cfm (English, but a bit dated: 2003)

If you want to hear the company's side of the story, here is their website:

http://www.meridiangold.com

You can phone them at their headquarters and ask them (phone is the only choice, as the only e-mail they publish on their website is for you to contact them if you want employment):

Meridian Gold Inc.
9670 Gateway Drive, Suite 200
Reno, Nevada 89521
Telephone: +1 775 850 3777

Also, to learn more about mining investment policies in Argentina, you can go to

http://www.inversiones.gov.ar/documentos/mineria.pdf

You can check there that i'm not exaggerating. Again, unfortunately, this is only for Spanish speakers.

Finally, here are some people you can call:

Matilde Lenzano: +54 2945 453713
Lino Pizzolon: +54 2945 453679
Silvia Pérez: +54 2945 454811
Chuni Botto: +54 2945 452521

These are some of the Esquel inhabitants in the neighbor assembly. The one i talked to is Silvia Pérez.

Huh?

"Although we cannot find that a fundamental right to same-sex marriage exists in this state, the unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated under our state Constitution," Justice Barry T. Albin from New Jersey argued, in passing a state court ruling that does... exactly what?

Does he mean find as in when you're looking for something, or find as in "pass judgement"? If the first, duh! Gay marriage is nowhere to be found. At least not in that constitution he refers to towards the end, which is where i supposed he would have looked. If the second, why can he not pass judgement on it being a fundamental right? "The unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated", but marriage is one of those rights, isn't it?

Maybe he meant that the constitution must be interpreted to say that denying such rights is inconstitutional, even though it does not expressly allow homosexual marriages. If so, it needs to be changed to include them.

OK, 6-7 for clarity. As for intentions, let's give him the benefit of the doubt.

Beauty marks and the such

Yesterday i watched "Some like it hot", with Marilyn Monroe. Neat movie, but minds work strangely, and since mine is very weird --as it's been amply shown here-- it started mulling on the beauty mark Marilyn had above her lip. From there it locked on to the words "beauty mark" themselves. Why not simply "mole"? What is it about a mole that creates beauty? Placement? Maybe. I have a mole on my neck, but haven't been asked to star in any movies, so it probably doesn't qualify... Shape? My mole is lumpy and not totally round, with a couple of hairs coming out of it. They do say beauty is in the eye of the beholder though, so if you're interested, remind me to show it to you next time we meet.

Anyway, back to real beauty marks. I've read somewhere that two or three centuries ago they were the rage in France, particularly among the high classes. Except they weren't real beauty marks, but fake ones. Both men and women would glue bits of black taffeta to their faces in the hope of heightening their looks. But isn't a mole, by definition, an imperfection on the smooth surface that the skin is supposed to be? How could fake moles make them more beautiful? What the heck were they thinking?

The french aristocracy of the time has such a bad reputation already (i mean, their heads ended up being chopped off, so they must have been quite nasty) that i'm sure nobody would mind my interpretation: they thought themselves so perfect already, that they wanted to pretend they had imperfections, pretend being the keyword. "Hey, look" they were saying with their bits of black taffeta. "I'm so perfect that even my imperfections are fake."

But, as it turns out, i'm wrong. I got on the net and the story is quite different. Before i go on, and in case you're wondering, i do have much better things to do (i.e. homework) but it's boring.

In any case, the fashion of sticking bits of cloth to the face originated in England in the XVIth century, not in France. In that country and at that time, people would use not only black taffeta, but all kinds of fabric, and even leather, all dyed different colors. They'd plaster themselves with several pieces at a time, cut out in various shapes. It seems that smallpox was rampant, and these patches were supposed to cover the not-so-beautiful marks the sickness left behind. That it later became a fashion even for the unscarred is not so surprising, given the monkey-see-monkey-do monkeys that we are.

Me, if i'd had to choose, i would have worn the carriage and horses. Rather that than making a hole in my nose and hooking a bit of metal through it.

www.one.org

Have you been to this website, yet?

www.one.org

Great campaign. Sign up!

More

27 hours of continuous snowfall, so far. We're up to 50 cm already. This means no more rain till at least april, i hope.

Faces

Thinking of faces. What are they? When you're a child you draw them as an oval; then you attach eyes, a nose, a mouth. Ears, too, if you're really into details. That's why Mr. Potato head is such a popular toy, i suppose. We're obsessed with faces. We love to attach things to them, to guess their story. If you're shy you avert your eyes, as if looking away from a face made your own disappear.

There is no other part of the body we decorate more: rouge, lipstick, earrings, shaving, waxing, filing away of cheekbones, whitening tooth paste, facial soap, piercings, base, depilation, nose-hair trimming, silicones for the lips, rimmel, glittery dental caps, eye-shadow, mint drops, artificial eyelashes, haircuts, lip balm, wigs, nose jobs, facial scrubs, liftings, anti-wrinkle cream...

Yet we don't consciously think of faces all that much. I guess that as we grow up we become used to them. We learn to see them as a whole. Only sometimes you pull back, and you wonder why a nose is where it is. You're taken aback, your analytical mind hits static.

The mouth, smooth and red, tiny vertical lines on lips, and where the lips meet, an angle, as if a hinge. The mouth is not round. Sometimes there is that fuzz that grows above the upper lip, those creases that converge on the toothy gap, fractured as if river canyons that run to an inland sea. The tongue, why wet? The nose, no such thing as a cute one: all grotesque, mountains and caves on a smooth plain. The ears, atrophied things that do not move, misplaced, the wings on Mercury's sandals. The eyes frustrating, not windows of the soul but a reminder that you can never get past them, you can't ever really get in. The forehead that goes on and on, a wasteland, twin to the cheeks.

A skewed view

Legs: the twin appendages that grow out of the ground till they connect with the hips. Regularly and alternatively uprooted, they may allow the hypothetic wearer a motion of some kind.

Coffee: the perfect drink for the insomniac. It unnaturally extends wakefulness, so that when its effects wear off the organism is truly exhausted and sleep can be easily achieved.

Canned guacamole dip: a paste made of soya oil and maltodextrin designed to taste as nearly unlike avocados and tomatoes as scientifically possible.

the moon: generic name for the luminiscent circles or sickle shapes that are occasionally cut out of the sky when it turns dark.

boredom: the irresistible desire to do nothing.

The prediction

I don't remember the exact circumstances, but when i got to Guangzhou and attempted to buy the train ticket to Hong Kong, they would not take my money. Somehow it wasn't possible for me to get any until i got to the Hong Kong side, but i couldn't get there without it... So, i stood in the platform, smelly clothes and huge backpack on my shoulder, and explained the situation to some passersby: do you speak english? could you please pay for my ticket, and i will give you back the money as soon as we arrive?

Finally this guy stopped, looked me up and down, asked me a few questions about myself, and agreed to help me.

We started chatting on the train. He was cantonese, 40-something, i guessed. He asked me what i was doing in China, what my occupation was, where i lived... Then it was my turn to ask. He said he worked for some kind of organisation, Maharishi something-or-other. As he talked i realized Maharishi was a new age institution or group: he talked about energies, life lines, predestination... I don't exactly remember, either. This was 15 years ago, after all.

He was helping me, and he didn't seem to be proselitizing, so we had an animated conversation. However, when i tried to ask somewhat critical questions about some of the stuff he said, he didn't seem to like it very much; i figured he'd be happier if i just let him talk, so i only asked enough to keep him going. At some point (i don't know how we got there) he was reading my palm, and that part i remember very well.

He said i am the eldest of three brothers --i am--, he said i was born in march --i was-- and he said i would die in a catastrophe at age 34 --i stared at him.

"Really?" i asked after a couple of seconds.

"Well, one can never be completely sure, but as far as i can tell, yes. There will be a big disaster, and you'll be one of the victims" he said.

"And is there any way i can avoid it?"

"No. [Destiny something or other]"

I was remembering this stuff yesterday afternoon, as it was the 34th birthday of a guy at the uni today. Maybe i should have waited to write about it till i turned 35 myself, but what if that catastrophe gets in the way?

Not that i'm very worried, really. He himself said i shouldn't, and that i'd meet the woman who'd be my wife in the following weeks.

Some yummy crumbles of that pie

(by Don McLean)

A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.
And i knew if i had my chance
That i could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while.

Did you write the book of love,
And do you have faith in God above,
If the bible tells you so?
Now, do you believe in rock 'n roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance
Real slow?
Well, i know you're in love with him
'Cause I saw you dancing in the gym.
You both kicked off your shoes.
Man, I dig those rhythm 'n' blues!
I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
But i knew that i was out of luck
The day the music died.

A room with a view

Check out this link out:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3491667610082638914&pr=goog-sl

It is a video that Thomas B. made by splicing together pictures taken from a window in Andresen building. He apparently took them during the same time of day throughout a few weeks in the fall of 2004: this beauty is the result. I came across it in a link on the college's homepage. Hadn't visited in a while, was nice to be back.

Thanks, Thomas.

Aural clues

I'm in my office. I close my eyes and i can know:

how much it's snowed by the almost mute quality of the sounds made by cars in the street outside; that Kwame hasn't peed in a long time because the splashing in the toilet goes on forever; that the air i'm breathing has come to me through tubes, by the whispering of the ventilation system; that my chewing of the gum in my mouth pushes aside the saliva that covers it over and over, by the squelching sounds produced every time i sink my teeth in it; that there is some kind of spring underneath the keys on the computer's keyboard, because i hear them twang faintly when i release them.

Madre de lejos

Que estoy sola me dice mi madre
Sola de mañana y de tarde sola
Y de noche. Que estudio italiano
Que enseño pintura y lavo los platos
Pero las alumnas son viejas cornejas
Y los platos son platos y no les hablo
aún.
Que quiero salir, manejar otra vez
Que desde aquel accidente no lo volví a hacer
Quiero afuera y quiero gente.

Y yo que de lejos la veo
Desde este país para acá del teléfono
Siento que su vida se me achica dentro
La extraño y extraño los años que tuvo y no tuvo
Por pobreza de niña,
Por matrimonio joven,
Por cinco hijos ya a los veintiséis
Por cuidar a su madre
Por quiste en matriz
Por educación de niña que le dice
Que debe sacrificar todas sus perdices
Por sus hijos, por su casa y por todos
Que vos venís última, después
De los otros.

Que salga le digo que valga
Que tenga y que haga
Que merece que necesita
Que debe y que no debe
Y ya estamos otra vez
En una novela de la tele.

Y ella que si, que tanto,
Que lo hará, me dice
Que quiere
Que ya habló con mi padre
Que el año que viene.

La vida de mi madre
se me achica dentro.

Lost opportunity

I think i may have just missed a job opportunity... It happened like this:

I'm checking my e-mail just now and there's a message from Per, one of the professors at the linguistics department. He says he needs an interpreter who can do italian-english-italian simultaneous translations for all day tomorrow. There's this cook who's arriving from down there, and they need to communicate with him. Someone told Per i speak italian, so if i get the msg today could i please give him a call at such and such number, no matter the hour? I'd be paid, of course...

It's 11:00 pm, sunday night... Am excited about the possibility, but the message was sent in the morning. What if the guy's in bed already? Anyways, i decide to call. He sounds glad i did, but tells me they've already found someone else. Nevertheless, it's good to have my number, he says, in case the other person doesn't show up. He asks about my italian and i honestly admit i'm no native speaker, but that i know i can manage. "Do you know much about cooking, then?", he says.

I don't intend to, but burst out laughing. I mean, in the past two months i haven't used the kitchen for anything other than boiling water, defrosting pizza, and cooking rømme graut (once)! With this thought in my mind, i giggle stupidly for a few seconds longer; silence on the other side. I finally catch my breath: "Well, i can identify ingredients. Don't ask me to put them together, though...".

"Hmmmm, good. Keep your phone with you tomorrow, and we'll give you a call you if we need you, ok? Thanks for answering to my message."

"Thank you for the chance", i say, and we hang up.

Somehow i don't think they'll call me. Seemed like in order to translate cooking, you need to be a cook yourself. Either that, or to sound a little less hysterical on the phone.

Allegory

Ian and North Kathy want to start smoking. I want them not to. I smoke myself, so i really have no authority to say anything to them, but i'm big and burly and i could kick the shit outta them. That's my leverage. If anybody asks, i'll say that i'm older, more mature, and that i know how to smoke responsibly, whereas they don't. They could ruin their lungs and those of everybody around them.

Physical bits

We leave behind physical bits of ourselves throughout our lives -- no need to go into details here, but when you think about it, all of it put together probably weighs more than the body does at death. Yet it is that body that we focus on: we either embalm it and/or entomb it in little funereal cities within cities, or we spend a lot of caloric energy to turn it into ashes. Why not lay it underneath a tree, to feed it quickly to life, or recycle it in some other fashion? Fifty or one hundred kilos is a lot of organic matter.

We don't like to think of death. We think it is obscene.

I suppose it is, to some extent, but like so much else, it is also its context.

PBL weeks

I miss them.

Zero

Have you seen the add campaign for Coke Zero? Big bold letters that say something like "REAL TASTE, ZERO SUGAR" and underneath that, different captions: "Then why not action movies with zero romance?" or "Why not a girlfriend with zero headaches?" or (my personal favourite) "Why not two girlfriends with zero jealousy?".

G-E-N-I-U-S! I mean, the way this kind of publicity focuses on us guys! Consider the reasoning behind it: girls are already so freaked about their physical image that they'll always buy low sugar sodas anyway, so you don't have to convince them of anything. They'll buy this Zero stuff even if the add campaign were purposefully trying to alienate them -- which it doesn't really, right? After all, everybody knows that guys hate all that mushy romance crap, and that we'd go out with two or more girls at once if we could. Boys will be boys, ikke sant?

So this campaign is really positive, as it puts the dots on the i's and lets us all know where we stand. Guys like me will feel thankful for the reassurance and sense of belonging provided: that i can't get my mind off my girlfriend's boobies while she's concentrating on the latest chick-flick, or that i want to hump her and her best friend too (possibly together), does not make me a freak... That's what we men do! ("Besides, man, i wouldn't be cheating. I do love them both!"). As a token of our gratitude, boys and men everywhere will buy Coke Zero. Girls and women will chug Zero down, too, while dreaming of becoming slim enough to have the possibility of being two-timed jealouslessly.

Real doo-doo, Zero sense.

The attack of latitude on convencional wisdom

The sun rises in the --south-- (if ever) and sets in the --south-- (if ever). At noon the sun is never directly above your head, but most probably at eye-height and blinding you while you're waiting for the bus.

Compuesto y sin novia

de Miguel de Molina

¡Ay! Tuve una novia modista
y un mal amigo me la quitó,
y tuvieron tres churumbeles
con la cabeza como un farol
y el guardia de los padrones
dijo "¡qué espanto! ¡qué atrocidá!
Cabeza de esta familia,
¡qué muchas de ellas!
¿quién lo será?

Con la modista
no me he casao
y del quebraero de tres cabezas
¡yo me he librao!

"¿Y por qué no te casas niño?"
dicen por los callejones.
Yo estoy compuesto y sin novia,
porque tengo mis razones...
Esposa, suegra y cuñao,
diez niños, y uno de cría
que la feria, que la gripe,
que tu mare, que la mía...
Son muchas complicaciones;
Soltero pa' toa la vía...

Ahí me encuentro yo al matrimonio
tos los domingos en el café,
con las caras 'e avinagraos
porque se aburren como un cipré.
Los niños rompen las tazas
y con la fuerza de un albañí,
le meten a pare y mare
la cucharilla por la narí.

Con la modista
no me he casao
y del tormento de la cuchara
¡yo me he salvao!

"¿Y por qué no te casas niño?"
dicen por los callejones.
Yo estoy compuesto y sin novia,
porque tengo mis razones...
Esposa, suegra y cuñao,
diez niños, y uno de cría
que la feria, que la gripe,
que tu mamá, que la mía...
Son muchas complicaciones, hombre.
¡Que a mí no me trinca nadie!
¿De dónde voy a atracar yo?

¡Que no me caso, vamos!
¿Les parece poco la muestra?

La casa de mis amigos
es un pellizco de habitación
y por eso duermen de noche
las tres cabezas en el balcón.
La casa se bambolea
con aquel peso fenomenal
y pitan las chimeneas
como los barcos por altamar.

Con la modista
no me he casao
y del terremoto de San Francisco
¡yo me he salvao!

"¿Y por qué no te casas niño?"
dicen por los callejones.
Yo estoy compuesto y sin novia,
porque tengo mis razones...
Esposa, suegra y cuñao,
diez niños, y uno de cría
que la feria, que la gripe,
que tu mamá, que la mía...
¡Qué monada! ¿Verdad?

¡Soltero pa' toa la vida!

Senryuu

泥棒を doroboo o
捕えてみれば toraete mireba
我が子なり wagako nari
------------------------------(Senryuu Karai)

My dad told me today about a situation in a school in my hometown. Apparently students, while celebrating the beginning of the summer vacations (two months in advance) vandalized school property and caused damages for several thousand dollars. The administration reacted by distributing sanctions, and parents have taken the school to court.

Catching him
You see the robber
Is your own son.

Well, i guess you should let him get on with his business, then.

Determiner phrases

This is really cool. We talked about it in the syntax class last week.

Imagine the phrase "The five dead flies". Since this is english, the word order is "determiner >> numeral >> adjective >> noun". No other sequence is possible. "Flies five dead the", for instance, makes no sense at all. You might have something like "Five of these dead flies", but then the meaning is different, and you have that little "of" there, which you didn't have before.

In a language such as spanish, however, the order is different. You have "determiner >> numeral >> noun >> adjective", that is to say, "Estas cinco moscas muertas". "Determiner >> numeral >> adjective >> noun" is also permissible, but is not the 'original' form. It doesn't always sound well. If you want to test this, ask a native speaker to choose between "Estas cinco moscas muertas" and "Estas cinco muertas moscas". You'll see.

Other languages, such as yoruba, have as their order the exact opposite of english: "noun >> adjective >> numeral >> determiner". They say something like "Flies dead five these".

Now, if you tackle the problem from a mathematical point of view, there are 24 possible orders in which you might arrange these 4 elements (4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24). Yet --and this is the surprising bit-- among the more than 7000 languages spoken now or in the past by human beings, only 14 of these 24 orders are attested.

Furthermore, there's this guy called Guglielmo Cinque who managed to come up with a system by which, departing from one of these orders, you can derive the other valid 13, but not the 10 'wrong' ones. This method is consistent with the rest of syntactic analysis, requires that one starts always from the same, unique 'underlying' order and, what's more, nobody else has been able to come up with any simpler or clearer system that does the same.

This seems to be telling us that only a certain number of operations are possible in the brain with regard to languages. It suggests that language is indeed something that we can learn, but that it can only exist as defined by certain rules and parameters already present within the human brain.

Neat huh?

Been reading all morning...

...and i don't understand even half of it. I hope we'll get some good explanations in class today, or i'm fucked.

Lazy... I'm lazy for fee-ling so lazy-y-y-y...

Am supposed to read a pile of articles for tomorrow's classes, but can't get myself to do it. I think i'll just take a shower now, set my alarm clock for 4:00 am, make myself some tea, get in bed and watch a movie.

Surrounded

Diamond Valnøtter, Konica, Leitz, Tine, Sony, Fujitsu Siemens, Bic, Pentel, Weetabix, Cachamai, Nora, Coop, Ricola, Santa Cristina, Dan Sukker, Osram, Lerum, Gillette, Lancaster, Rocío, Nivea, The Body Shop, Vapo, Adidas, Colgate, Idun, Mr. Lee, Royal, Hasat, Seltin, Patak's, Poppeli, Clipper, Twinings, Creative, TDK, Binaca, Johnson & Johnson, Define, Paco, ReaLime, Bialcol, Imsdal, Quechua, Scholl, Penol, Pilot, Lipa Mill, Intex, TinyDrive, Weetos, Toro, Dovre, Aceca Inc., McIlhenny Co., Nitedals, Rollerblade, Milano Uomo, Tee Jays, Tommy Hilfiger, Vitaplex, Ultimo, Fabrizzi, ICA, El Corte Inglés, Christian Dior, Marco Polo, WBÄ, Mares, Jelly Belly, Pasofirme, Thinsulate, Chiruca, Linyi, IKEA, Canon, Philips, Garrity, Duracell, Exide, Citrucel, Spar, Berocca, Glade, First Price, Albus, Bayer, Boots, Luis Trombetta, Inti, Tylenol, Collett, Iodosan, Nico-Hepatocyn, Paramed, Digestan, Roemmers, Weiga, Tarragó, Kleenex, Maxell, Calvin Klein, Ocean, Val Venosta, Santa Maria AB, Coca Cola, Artsana, El Reloj, KAI, Brossa, Wrigley's, ACO HUD AB, Kangaro, Nitedals, Stanley, Tartan, Benchtop, Mitsubishi, Plus, SHF, Post-it, Festo, Masel, Staedtler, La Iride, Tomado, You, Punto de Origen, B & C, Sportyear, Marshall Field's, Sveico, Bantex, Ralph Lauren, Janus, Mack.

All in here with me, within a 2 meter radius. Plus, those brands that sell components to the brands that have sold me the products i've bought, plus those whose brandname i can't see because they didn't put it in (i.e., the company that built the walls around me), plus books, each with their editorial house (they must count as brands), plus other brands i must have missed because no way i'm gonna spend my evening going through all my things just to check out where they're stamped.

The only non-brand things i can see around me are: a hand-made teabox that Yanina's mom gave me, my mate cup, some lychen-covered rocks i put on my windowsill after a mountain hike, my body, a moth on the ceiling, and the darkness outside the aforementioned window. Oh, and some dust on the floor, which i haven't sweeped in a while.

Of these i must probably discard the teabox and the mate cup, because some branded tools were probably employed in their crafting. My body has had so much contact with brands it probably wouldn't be where it is now if it weren't for its relationship with them (i mean, birth in a hospital, a couple of surgical interventions, glasses, reading Penguin Books, planes, blah blah). Some of the dust is also dubious in this way, so only the rocks, the darkness and the lychen are left.

Must get myself some higher-order plants to accompany the lychen, so that i can be more in touch with the un-branded world. I'll go to the forest behind the bolig and dig out a pine sapling -- with my bare fingers, of course. Then i'll chew out the center of a log and plant it there.

Oops! Forgot: can't use my fingers nor my teeth. Dang!