Because if we were good at life, we wouldn’t need more school!
Alright, alright, I went to the Girl Talk concert in Santiago last month, I get it, quit trying to tell everyone how cool it makes me, because it’s embarrassing. That’s the best song from his new album, I think. And not because Miley Cyrus is in it, because we all know that Hoedown Throwdown is her best song, amirite guys?? <crickets, is left hanging> Aw. Speaking of how cool I am and of Miley Cyrus, did you know my comment is the second highest rated comment on her Hoedown Throwdown video (I’m Nickjaa)? It used to be the highest rated, until someone made a way crappier joke than me and got more thumbs ups. Now all the girls I would have pulled because I have the highest rated comment on a Hannah Montana Youtube video will hook up with “marchelle011″ instead. What do you mean that’s probably a girl? So you’re saying now the girls will hook up with me? You’re a good friend.
I think I stared at that picture for about 5 hours that night.
Speaking of concerts, those two Horcón hippies I mentioned last time, Diego and Ignacio, invited me to this ridiculous concert in the middle of a valley near San Antonio (a few hours from Viña del Mar) called Goa Gil (www.goagil.cl) and it was pretty funny, and now I have to write enough about it so that the picture to the right fills an entire paragraph. Ummm. We had to hitchhike half the way there and we camped for some of it too, I thought it was going to be like a folk festival but it wound up being a trance-fuelled rave, which I always thought I hated, but shit when you’re actually at this concert full of hippies you can’t be the stupidest looking person there when you dance. I think it was the first time I’ve ever really danced, without hopinh to make sure that the way I dance looks cool. Like it was all just expression. The music went for 24 hours so sometimes you’d be in the cafe, sometimes at your tent, sometimes in line at the rent-a-loos, but you could always just start and stop dancing out of nowhere and key back into the energy that everyone was fuelled by there. Like, plug into it, and just dance, growing out of the ground. Oh man, it was unreal. I always thought I hated trance music, but it really does put you in a trance. And people were sitting and meditating in front of the speakers, and others were fire twirling or doing that thing where they roll a glass ball all over their bodies while they’re dancing, I mean shee-ut.
See? No one is the stupidest looking dancer. What’s that? Is that me up front in the tan beanie? Not if any potential employers are watching, no, it isn’t. I’m barely dancing, but it had been going on for 12 hours at that point and I was cold and tired as ass. And totally fucked up.
Chile’s a pretty funny country, you know earthquakes still happen fairly regularly here, not big ones, but easily once a week or so you’ll feel a little shaking here or there, personally I like them when I’m in bed because it feels like Chile is rocking me to sleep, sometimes they happen in school and then we have a little earthquake safety talk. “The walls are your friends!” we say. Some of the kids have horror stories from the big earthquake that happened this year, one of the many kids called Benja and his whole family were at home when their entire building was destroyed, they had to climb out of the rubble through a teeny tiny hole, but the kid is still all smiles and sunshine. Sometimes in the music room, students freak out during my classes in the gym above them because of the banging and rumbling that can arise during a gym class. That earthquake was crazy! And then you get assholes going “Durr, hurr, the 33 miners were rescued after 33 days of drilling on 10/13/10 which adds up to 33, Jesus was 33 when he was crucified, OMGosh it was all about Jesus!” Because God clearly loves Chileans so god damn much after sending them their most fatal and damaging earthquake in the country’s history the very same fucking year of the mine collapse, right? Which he would have also engineered, right? The earthquake? No, the rescue was God, not the earthquakes and mine collapses he sends. That 33-talk is so patronising! Hey, your baby survived, God is great. Oh, your baby died, God works in mysterious ways, derp derp derp derp.
I finally got my wallet stolen, finally. Not there, here, in Patagonia. I’ve been backpacking since I was 17 and waiting for this to happen, 7 years of waiting, and finally: the day was today. I would have rathered it be at knife point than someone taking it from the overhead compartment while I was asleep on a bus, but we can’t always get what we want. It’s a little annoying because I’m in Pucón, the adventure capital of Chile, and don’t have the cash to do anything adventurous until my extra cash comes through in two days, but that just means I have juuust enough cash to sit here and blog while endless streams of people walk past the window outside carrying kayaks and abseiling gear <pops zit> I really wish my jacket hadn’t been stolen as well, though. That leather jacket is the best jacket in the entire world, and since I stopped eating meat after buying the jacket I don’t think I’m allowed to buy another one. What’s that? I can? Because they look really cool, and coolness is more important than being consistent with your ethics? You know, you have a really, really good point. We should hang out more often.
My friend Jason sent me this quote from some book about pankration, aka Ancient Greek Mixed Martial Arts:
In an odd turn of events, a pankration fighter named Arrhichion of Phigalia won the pankration competition at the Olympic Games despite being dead. His opponent had locked him in a chokehold and Arrhichion, desperate to loosen it, broke his opponent’s toe (some records say his ankle). The opponent nearly passed out from pain and submitted. As the referee raised Arrhichion’s hand, it was discovered that he had died from the chokehold. His body was crowned with the olive wreath and taken back to Phigaleia as a hero.
Holy shit! That’s the most badass story I’ve ever heard! Irrelevant to anything here, sure, but badass.
School’s out, man, it’s all over, it’s Monday and last Saturday was the graduation ceremony, holy, holy, holy. So this one’s over, and hey, sorry I haven’t posted that much. Actually, I’m not. Psyche. Blogging is a pain in the ass. But hey, it’s been a fun six months. My roommate Dema wrote this on Facebook the other day: “Today I did not have time for breakfast, thus I brought my porridge with me to school…Tomas a little 2 year old asked me 10 times what I was eating. Each time as if it where his first time asking and each time I replied as if it were the first time he was asking. Patience , understanding and empathy are worth cultivating …” I thought that was quite sweet. Sure, the kids are insanely adorable. I remember saying (ego-gasms from quoting myself) that I would need to be less distant and cynical to be a proper kindergarten teacher and I am proud to say that I now release peals of “Cuuuuuuuuuute!” at the drop of a hat when I walk through the school. Like these two kids to the left, Dara and Antonia, oh man, they’re so god damned adorable, Dara especially, you should see the way she runs, it’s like a horse trotting, it’s the same way that little Benja B runs as well but he’s the fastest kid in his grade, I swear, no one can catch him when we play tag in gym. Antonia next to her, I taught her Dad English for a few months, he’s a chemical engineer, Antonia playeda woodpecker in the movies we made and she looked just adorable. Simone’s male friend Corey came to Chile and at the graduation I was talking about the varying levels of adorableness with varying levels of squealing and released I’d become pretty paternal. Corey countered by saying I hadn’t become paternal, I’d become maternal, as even fathers dont shriek the way I do when I see a 5 year old-s drawing of me teaching gym class. I guess he was right. <lactates a little>
Best and most Chilean mortarboard ever
Graduation, right.
Look at their little hats. Eeeeeeeee! Graduation was great, and I guess I-ll put up more pictures of it later (for some reason the apostrophe key has stopped working.)it was great because I got free pie, but what it reeeeeeeeeally was was the culmination of more than a month of working on those god damned movies I mentioned last time, two movies I made with Roni the boss which added up to more than an hour of movie, movie movie movie, I barely taught at all for the last month and a half of the semester, and in the final weeks I was working weekends and even one memorable 30 hour day to get it all finished. I can-t remember if I mentioned the plots, the little kids movie is just a penguin whose egg floated away from Antarctica to the north of Chile and he has to find his way home by meeting lots of friendly animals and finding out what he is and isn-t and such, the big kids- play was like, umm <tries to find somewhere e can just copy and paste a description from> With the big kids’ play (“From Pluto, With Love”), a meteor from Pluto lands in Chile and some astronomers and journalists have to make it a body, like an empanada mouth, olive eyes, shrimp ears, etc. which he gets from various exciting parts of Chile. Meanwhile, the meteor has to learn the secret of life, and in the end it turns out the secret 
isssss…. love! Bam! As we wrote the end, the meteor (“Plutini”) has these masses of people turning up to find out what the secret is, and he tells them it’s all about loving one another – then a spotlight shines down from his father’s unseen spaceship and the meteor ascends skyward telling people to spread his message of love and… we accidentally wrote a massive Jesus metaphor. Whoops! We had to rewrite it a little bit, but not that much: here, why don-t you look at the final scene (the only one I managed to sneak onto YouTube) and tell me what you think. I bust out giggling every time I see the hugs, but I-ve been told this is mystifying to anyone who hasn-t seen the movie itself, so you-re forgiven if it-s just a big non-sequitur, even with my introduction. The crowd scenes are from Woodstock, the spaceship scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the beaming noise is from the original Star Trek series, the speech is from every cliche ever, etc etc. Holy shit, this scene took me days to put together. Days. I can-t believe how long movie making takes. The final product has subtitles, what the kids are saying is
2:45: “We’re gonna miss you, little brother.”
3:04 – “We’re… really gonna miss you.”
3:14: “That’s what friends are for” (sort of the film’s catchphrase)
Anyway, here it is, but be warned, it-s a tearjerker:
Aw, I-m gonna miss those kids. I-m never ever going to see them ever again, ever, ever. It was to keep myself from saying “Die fearlessly!” when I had to say goodbye to them all at graduation. They all get copies of their movies though, and I-m pretty happy that they-ll rewatch something I helped make for a long time. Maybe forever! If I was in a movie like that when I was 5 i-d still be watching it. Hmmm. Maybe they-ll never think of me ever again. Life, right?
Antonella lives across the road from us, and permanently has this scowl on her face. She's hilarious, and always yells things at me when I run past her building on my jog.
Naomi at the graduation, beautiful, hilarious. Like all of them.
I’ve said the goodbyes to my roommates, they kept saying we’ll all hang out together again, but I know we won’t. It’s easier to say you will, though. But we won’t. Why cling? Nice people, though. Kind of young, and female, but that’s no one’s fault, and they’re very well-meaning and spunky, they’re all about attacking the world, which is one of the coolest traits! I look forward to seeing what they become.
“Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.” – Albert Schweitzer. I have that written down for some reason. Not really appropriate right here, but I wanted to use it.
I need to write a poem about people who do yoga poses in photos. If only I wrote poems. You meet a lot of expats here who are the kind of people who do them, like these ones I know:
W… why? Why? I know they’re not candid photos taken during an hour-long session. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there, I was just doing my daily hour of pranayama.” Why?!?! These photos boggle my mind, truly. I want to write a thesis on them. Ah, I’m a prick.
Hey, I’m travelling for – huh, the apostrophes are working again. Hey, I’m travelling for 3 weeks around Patagonia and stuff and then I’m going back to Australia, because as part of my ongoing commitment to never commit to anything, I’m doing two master’s degrees in International Relations and Journalism at Monash – Australia’s biggest university! Biggest means best, right? Eh, sure. (I’m recycling jokes from old Facebook statuses? No, you’re the loser for remembering my old Facebook statuses, jerk!) That’s in Melbourne, Monash is, some friends from Nairobi live there now (Jon and Kate) (but not plus eight! AHAHAHAAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!111111) and also, I miss Australia, and think it would be cool to see a side of it I haven’t before, because I’ve only ever lived in Brisbane in that country, and I feel bad for neglecting exploration of my own country sometimes, you know? Melbourne is a totally different city. Also, this (don’t bother going to the description of the video, it’s spam):
does that work? You can just go here http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1944515 I think that movie is just a little funnier than it is depressing, so I like it. Plus, soon I’ll be too old to be able to go back to university, and I figure two master’s degrees will give me a lot of freedom. That way I can probably disappear into the jungle and live off my urine for a few years and still be able to get a job at New Idea or something when I come out. Also, I’m getting bored of travelling a little, I mean I’m just not soaking it up and being as wide eyed and enthusiastic about it as I used to be, so uni will be good to recharge that sense of, umm, wonder. Re-itch my feet, you know. Also, the last year has given me a surprising amount of experience writing articles, interviewing, and movie making, all of which I’ve found pretty fun. I did not expect to spend hours working with a green screen when I took the kindergarten job in Chile, but the editing software I learned to use will totally come in handy at school. And if journalism sucks (and most things do suck), I can just use the International Relations degree to get back into NGOs, or a job in PR at some prophylactic company in Bangkok or something. Hahaha. I love me some freedom. Well, here goes nothing.
P.S. I just got Facebooked by someone who found my wallet dumped in the middle of Pucon. Facebook is so weird!
Mission to Australia
Ahahaha. My friend JD’s cousin from southern California recently announced he and his friend have bravely volunteered to go on a mission to the faroff, godless land of… Brisbane, Australia.They’ve never even heard of Jesus there! They need to hear the word before they die, or they’ll go to Hell for it! My guess is that their church heard that Australia had elected an atheist, liberal, female Prime Minister and realised we needed God more than anyone.
This is their letter asking for cash to help them win our hearts and minds, I recommend giving it a read (below), it’s super funny. My favourite part is “We are not going to change their culture, but to display the love of Christ in their culture.” But will they bring us the concepts of irrigation and clothing??
Patriotic Festival, and some excruciatingly boring and structureless gibberish about stuff that’s happened during the two months after it.
If you don’t spend 19 hours a day on the internet like me, here are some examples of .gif files so you know what they are:
OK so those are gif files, now look at this:
Evan Roth, an enterprising artist with way too much time on his hands, has taken a healthy chunk of Girl Talk’s ADD classic Night Ripper and set it to a mind-boggling video made entirely out of animated GIFs that he found online.
Watching the result, titled “Cache Rules Everything Around Me”, feels like being punched in the face by the internet for 10 minutes. It’s heavy on cats, Ricky Gervais, and babies being kicked– but then, so is the internet. Watch it below.
INTERNET!!! I like the bit with Phantom Planet’s “California” at the 5.50 mark, Spock at 3.50 and Patrick Stewart at 5.30, and Tiny Dancer at 7.50 and both the Asian kids that dance to it, and, the whole thing. <wonders if anyone ever watches the videos I put up here> That video is ten minutes long, which means I’ve definitely spent over an hour of my life watching it, I should feel dirty but it’s Girl Talk, and “Feed the Animals” is the best album I’ve heard in like three years, so, I don’t know how to end this sentence, tits? Also this video is awesome. That one, underneath this bit. Would a colon help? Colon:
I did Jellyfish, Popcorn, Rainbow, Volcano and Xylophone here, ther est were done by my roomies
So this school I work at, yeah, allright. I’m still teaching gym and crafts, we’re almost all the way through the alphabet, last week I did X for Xylophone, it kicked ass, I had little sticks for the xylophone made of straws with a plasticine on the end, and sequins for the screws in the xylophone, it was boss. The school has mostly taken over my life, every time I use my bag on the weekends I pull out plastic bag semicircles (the heads of the J for Jellyfish craft I did) or pieces of corrugated cardboard that were meant to be mini popcorn boxes for P for Popcorn craft, where we popped popcorn in the kitchen, and we ate it and then glued it and ate it some more (the ones without glue on them) in the class, it was so rad.
Gym is pretty fun too, sometimes (especially for the big kids) you have to plan whole lessons from start to end, and other times (mostly with the little kids) you’ll go into the room with a plan and then just forget it and wind up playing tag with them all lesson. The other week I found like 20 biggish foam blocks in the closet and decided to use them in class (you can see one of them in the photo to the right). The little kids (ages 1 – 4) had a great time playing with them and making castles and towers, but when I tried it with a mostly boys big kid class they just threw the blocks at each other all lesson. Still learning! Sometimes when I’m trying to sleep I hear the children yelling and saying their little catchphrases in my head (‘He say me he not my friend never ever!’ ‘He no want to share! ‘he say I will never go to his house never ever!’ – how am I supposed to solve that one?’), the other teachers tell me they hear their voices at night as well, crazy. I dreamt I was watching/was in The Hangover 2 last night (I think after seeing some photos from it on the internet) and Zach Galifianakis’s character was crying with the same voice as one of the kids from school (‘Don’t let the beard fool you, he’s a child!’). I think the joke in the movie was meant to be that his character was like a baby, and in my dream I thought it was super funny, then I woke up and realised the children had snuck into my head and the school had gotten me again. Dammit, school! (*BRAAAAAAAAAHM*)
Also the school is doing an end of year movie for the parents, they will include one or more of the following: computer animation, claymation, kids acting, kids singing, a movie of a penguin trying to find its way home after global warming made its iceberg melt, a reenactment of the beach volleyball scene from Top Gun, another movie of a meteor of plasticine landing in Chile and being slowly turned into a person with things Chile is famous for/are proud of (grapes they use to make their famous Pisco alcohol, an empanada crust for a mouth, hair made from copper from the mine where the miners got trapped, etc.) Actually, it will contain all of those things. We have some kids play the miners – excerpt: “Talk about a rough two months!” “Eh, I’ve had worse.” “Seriously?” Anyway I get to write it, I’m hoping for it to be a spiritual successor of my China plays, though I probaby won’t be able to get away with as much tomfoolery this time, as a native English teacher will proofread it.But I’m definitely going to make sure in the closing musical number to tell the 4 adopted students that they’re adopted. Like in the final flourish, barbershop style, waggling canes and boaters: “Annnnd youuu’re aaaadoptedddd!” Ahhhahahahaha.
This Chilean miner on Letterman is fucking amazing, by the by. He speaks no English but still steals the show:
I’m also making extra pesos (hah, ethnic currencies) by teaching private English classes, some to a highschooler, some to a scientist, some to an engineer, some to a beautician. I hope to get some more classes, as I’ve realised Chile is hella expensive. I came here because Chile is meant to be the most politically and economically stable country in South America, but of course the price of all that stability that I actually don’t really care about is that stuff costs about as much as a first world country does, because Viña del Mar is totally first world. Anyway, stuff costs more because the quality of life is higher, holy shit, I should be an economist.
Speaking of spending money, my friend Jeff and his brother Jestin visited and we spent a lot of money. Jeff and me met in a hostel in New Zealand (that was literally between a strip club and a brothel) and we also managed to meet up in China and later in Utah. He has lived in Antarctica and I hate him for it. Anyway he visited, arriving three hours before my birthday – and partying at the beach with him and a bunch of people I like as I turned 25 was tiiiiite.
At the beach just after midnight: roommate Simone with Jestin and Rob's friend (ie. a random) About here Simone said: 'It's a shame Steve Irwin died, that's all Australia had.' Classeec.
At beach with Dema, the other roommate. 25 is one generation old, it's called that because I'm meant to have kids by now. I am a genetic failure.
Birthday, watching live flamenco guitar, hooray cliché s! I guess I could have just used this photo instead of the others, we're all in it. Jestin, Simone, Dema, Jeff, some asshole, Rob, his friend
Still during birthday: there is actually a bar in Vina del Mar called "El bar de Moe" (it means 'Moe's Bar,' you goddamned moron)
Also Jeff and Jestin visited Valparaíso (or ‘Valpo’), a very cool and slightly poorer (less sterile, ie. cooler) nearby town where the cooler teachers live that has badass graffiti all over it and is full of bohemians and hipsters and surprisingly sociable navy soldiers, because the Navy port is there. We think of Valpo as like Viña del Mar’s hipster older brother, who doesn’t have a job but has a cool motorcycle. Once we were in a Valpo bar and these dudes with white makeup came in and the music got turned down and they performed this little comedy skit about a dude knocking up two chicks, everyone laughed and then they went around with a hat and made heaps of cash. That form of busking is so freaking old! It’s like prostitution. In terms of its age, I mean. Buskers here are cool, sometimes they juggle or are clowns or acrobats or whatever, it’s badass. Sometimes they have no legs, so they don’t do backflips for cash, which is less entertaining. Anyway, this is Valpo:
Scarves, flat caps and funky belts are widely available in hipster-populated Valparaiso
Rotten commie rats
Note Buddha's exposed genitalia. Actually, don't.
It says "Turn off the TV. Live your life!" Freaking hipsters. "Turn off the TV, just listen to PBR! Support American Apparel! Listen to my mixtape! Agree with me on how much Kings of Leon have sold out!"
A funkyass cafe owned by a French archaeologist - the kind of weird stuff you come across in Valparaiso.
I love this graffiti. "Valpo la yeah! Yeh Yeah!" I think the fish is saying it.
I guess the Pope is a Rastafarian?
Dema thought this house was cute, but I thought it looked like a serial killer's.
Some weird inner-city gypsy playground we came across
Egyptian cult?
Valpo hipsters to the right
It says "Valpo" on his hood and stuff.
Anyway Jeff was here, wasn’t he. We also spent the weekend in Santiago, it was fun, and Santiago is cool. and We stayed in a sweet hostel and on the first night hung out with this dude Joe who I met on the flight to Chile who has phD in medieval history and teaches at a university in Santiago. He was the best tour guide and drinking buddy ever.
At some church at the top of Santiago - Jeff, Jim, Jestin and Joe (the medieval dude)
Missss youuuuuuu
Makin' some vegan spaghetti with Diego and Ignacio. We are very manly. Almost as manly as Ignacio's "Om" tattoo on his wrist.
The second night in Santiago we hung out with these randoms Dema, Simone, Casey and I met on a beach in this hippie village called Horcón, one of whom had a ‘psychic breakdown’ on the street in Santiago from receiving negative energies all week (“He feels feelings on a different frequency, you see” his friend explained to us). A few weeks later, they (Diego and Ignacio) came to Vina and we had a great time. It turns out that when I’m wasted, my Spanish is almost passable, which was a delightful surprise. Shit they said: “I want to say something. Can I have this moment?” “I give my life to the destiny. ” “Everything is perfection. It’s like all the atoms are aligned. I believe and trust this so deeply.” We spent part of an evening drinking and smoking in a playground we found near the beach, drumming on the climbing boxes, but leaving the playground boundaries to pee, I’m sure it was some kind of metaphor for the way I live here. This weekend we’re going with them to this absurdly hippie hippie festival (site slogan: “”Redefining the Ancient Tribal Ritual for the 21st century”) so that should be interesting. Anyway, I think I was trying to start talking about Horcon. Here are photos I ripped off from Casey’s blog:
We went to Horcon as one of many excursions we made for Chile’s 200th birthday celebrations (Fiestas Patrais – Patriotic Festival). Horcón had awesome empanadas, which are like these fried pockets of dough filled with cheese and/or mushrooms and/or whatever, it’s awesome. Kind of like a calzone, and allegedly very Chilean, as we ate many during the week-long festivities, as well as other super Chilean food like choripan (chorizo in little bread rolls (pan)), barbecue everything (asado), pisco (Chilean grape
"Chicha de tu madre" means "Yo mamma's chicha," which is a traditional sugary fruity wine that we had at a "ramada", like a big barbecue- and churro-filled carnival, which were in several spots across town during the week of fiestas Patrias
liquor), chicha (fruity wine), monte con huesillo (this awesome peach and husked wheat summer drink, like juice and cereal), completos (like Chilean hotdogs, always served with lots of guacamole and mayonnaise), etc. Yeah it was cool, because Chile was all like “Yeahhhh, we’re Chile and not another country” and I was like “heyyy, it’s Chile ovah heah.”
So many empanadas (piled on top of each other there)
Many BBQs
Fiestas Patrias at school. The kids dress like this all the time because they're Chilean, they weren't just doing it because it was Fiestas Patrias. Promise.
Boss got a dance school for people with Down's syndrome to come and dance the cueca for us, this really Chilean dance. Here is everyone joining in.
I let two kids called me “Super baby” for almost 5 minutes before I eventually sent them to timeout for it, I let them get away with too much sometimes but generally we have a good relationship. I don’t always have to run and get a head teacher anymore when a kid cries or when the entire class decides it would be hilarious if they were all pantsless at the same time, so that’s good. Most of the time when a kid is upset you can just throw them in the air and swing them
Genetically ingrained sarcasm
around a few times and they forget they were ever sad, but occasionally kids don’t care for it, like this hilarious 3 year old (right), who permanently has this sarcastic, non-plussed look on his face, even when being thrown in the air. It’s like he’s always saying “Geddaloadadis guy. This ain’t impressed me since I were two, ya baloney.” But usually throwing them around works, when that’s no good, I have to sit down and cradle them, stroke their hair, and they slowly stop crying and I give them a little kiss and pinch their cheek I get about as close to clucky as I’ve ever gotten, though I quickly douse the paternal hormones by reminding myself I took a vow of abstinence. Yeah, yeah that’s it, because I took a vow… <sobs silently> When kids are bad you can usually just count to three and they do what you want, the 10% of the time that doesn’t make them behave you put them in timeout. I think like, twice, a kid just didn’t care that he was in timeout and kept punching kids from his corner, I had no idea what to do. What comes after timeout? There’s nothing else! Timeout is the be-all and end-all of punishments! Some teachers make their kids meditate though. “Cross your legs and say ommmmmm!” For realisies. Kids are open minded and shit.
Now and then a brand new kid starts who has never been away from their mum for more than a few minutes, and they always completely lose it in a way that’s unlike any other way I’ve seen kids act. Like the kid isn’t just crying for their mother, it’s making noises like the possessed kid in the Exorcist, just like… like, “BEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. MAMAEHHHHHHHHHH MAMAEHHHHHHHH” and their body like just goes limp and they flail their little fists and feet, and snot and tears gush all over their face and clothes and the floor, like there’s so much emotion the body literally can’t even stand upright. It doesn’t help that the children always haze new students either, one was actually strangling another the other day, two year olds strangling each other. How do they know that’s how you kill someone? Some kid was saying to this new kid who was crying for his mum: “Where’s your mum? Huh? She’s not here!!! Hahahaha!” 2 year olds have a far greater cpacity for sadism than you’d think. Anyway, a tantrum is a fascinating thing to watch. There’s just no composure at all, it’s an explosion of this emotion, of… attachment. <insert contrived Buddhist-themed comparison to the grasping nature of our adult minds, insert wanking motion>
That crying kid is a little better now and chats to other students a bit, but he’s one year old so has nothing to talk about, because he’s never done anything, so he just goes to other students, “You have… mama?”
Other 1yo kid who looks and sounds like a chimpanzee: “<enthusiastically> Si!”
Danny: “And you have… papa?”
Chimpy: “<nodding enthusiastically> Si!”
Danny: “And… mama?”
Chimperoo: “<as though it’s the most amazing conversation he’s ever had> SI! SI! I totally do!!!”
What’s funny is how even two year olds dance when you put music on, I guess dancing is innate, like this instinctive thing in people? Like the other day I was playing some music quietly while we made plasticine rainbows (music helps centre jittery kids a bit, also John Cage (paraphrasing Gira Sarabhai) said ‘the purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences,’ so there’s that as well.) and then this song came on my ipod:
Awesome song, right. And this girl almost immediately just stands up from making her rainbow and starts dancing at the table, and then one and two and three other kids just, start dancing. Like the music made them want to move their bodies in tune. And dancing has been in every culture ever, right? Hah, dancing. You see parrots do it too. Hey, alright. So much is in song at school. This one be-lisped boy sings the one-word chorus from Justin Bieber’s Baby all the time in class because he knows I’ll always finish the song with impassioned gusto. I sang a whole verse the other day and thought no one was paying attention by the end of it, but then another kid picked up from where I left off: “I’m goin down… down.. down… down…” Justin Bieber has four year old fans? In conclusion, Justin Bieber has an army of highly paid people working to make his songs as catchy as possible and by God, they succeed!
SOOOO GOOOOD.
Have you seen this show “Community,” it’s so freaking good. You can watch it totally <mumble>legally here, especially this one, an awesome action movie parody episode (called “Modern Warfare” season 1 episode 23 if these links stop working, which they probably will soon, you want to look for it yourself on www.surfthechannel.com, http://www.free-tv-video-online.info/ , or www.tubeplus.com. I spit on your corpse, ad-supported television! Also in Community this Muslim character said of his burqa-clad cousin:”She’s wearing a burka. It’s a way for women to express their modesty. They’re like Islamic turtlenecks.” Freaking brilliant. Also recently The Simpsons has been really good, try this link (season 22 episode 2) and see if you don’t think this episode from this month is super funny: here or this. This episode talks heaps about microfinance, Dad! And has Mark Zuckerberg and Nobel Peace Prize winning microfinance guru Muhammad Yunus (I’m not linking his Wikipedia page, I don’t always do that, shut up.). (two full stops?) My Dad does lots of work with Opportunity International which is a cool microfinance/humanitarian organisation, also my Dad is on the committee to welcome the Dalai Lama in Brisbane next year, and also my Dad meditates for an hour every day too. He is a total badass.
You know how the whole universe obeys the laws of mathematics and physics? I think if you know maths, and craft things with it, like if you’re an engineer or a mathematician or a physicist, you’re totally like a god. Knowing all these intimate details of existence. Phew, I almost made a whole blog without unleashing my douchey philosophy gland all over my keyboard. But while it’s gushing (reaches for tissues) I wanted to say how freaking badass Plato is. Did you know in 387 BC (obviously is reading this from a book while pretending to know it from memory) the king of Sicily (or Syracuse, its capital) asked Plato to come visit and tell him how to turn his kingdom into a Utopia, but when Plato told him that he needed to either become a philosopher or stop being a king, he got pissed off and sold Plato into slavery, to be rescued later by one of his pupils, almost certainly during an epic battle full of witty one-liners and impalings, ended by walking away from an explosion in slow motion. “Now you’re dust in the wind,” he definitely said as everyone was blown up. The old Greek philosophers were total badasses, I love it. Now, who wants to make out with the dude who writes about hypothetical Plato-driven action movies on his blog? <crickets> Aw.
You know Socrates taught Plato and Plato taught Aristotle and Aristotle taught Alexander the Great? These are all 
important people, all very important, all linked. Yeahhhh. Aristotle had a cool idea of God, a God that reigns but doesn’t rule, more of a magnetic force, pure energy, than that anthropomorphic bullshit, he thought God ‘moves the world as the beloved object moves the lover.’ I thought this bit was interesting: “Aristotle’s God never does anything; he has no desires, no will, no purpose; he is activity so pure that he never acts. He is absolutely perfect; therefore he cannot desire anything; therefore he does nothing.” Hmmm!
Speaking of Greeks, Dema is my fake-Greek roommate (her blood is Greek but she’s never actually lived there) (but still sacrifices rams to Ares every Sunday, makes burnt offerings to Zeus, etc. My jokes are really funny.) and she is the stupidest person ever. Here are things she has actually said:
“What’s Seinfeld?”
“Who’s Mel Gibson?”
“Are most people gay? Are gays a majority?”
She also spells her name with a triangle. Because she’s Greek. Despite this crippling shortcoming, she is occasionally really insightful. I ripped on her for liking Twilight once, because the plots are stupid and the writing is infantile and the fans are creepy shutins. She shot back, “Yeah, well, you watch porn.” As in, it’s not as though everyone chooses plot and writing over attractive people and escapism 100% of the time. It was pretty brilliant, and I think Dema is really smart. She’s just fucking stupid.
The other Saturday we had a lunch with a couple dozen parents and their kids from school at this commune outside of Vina, where one of the (awesomest) students lives, the commune was started by architects and poets, and so there’s all this weirdass architecture and communal eating rooms and big open spaces that were kind of like deserts with flowers, it was the funniest place. For no real reason I walked home along the coast which took like 5 hours, but I went through these awesome coastal villages and weirdass markets selling metal Coke signs and old chunks of machinery (why would I want half of a rusty crank?) and saw some seals fighting on this rock, like a couple dozen seals. Haaa, my blog is about Chile.
Chile, dog. (high-fives self for awesome pun)
That song is damn catchy even without the cussing. It’s by the guy from Gnarls Barkley – did you ever buy their album with that Crazy song on it? Terrible shit. Rolling Stone put “Crazy” as their number one song of last decade. Wait wait, “Between Two Ferns” is awesome funny, this interview show with Zach Galifianakis (Fat Jesus from The Hangover). Ah, here:
I am cool, I AM COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Watch me copy embed links to media files I saved on a Wordpad file on my laptop to use on my blog!!!! … <coughs awkwardly, toes dirt> So, Chile. Hey, did you ever notice the Chilean flag looks like a super zoomed-in version of the American flag?
Cos there’s just one star and two stripes… ah fuck you. OK so I’m still living in Chile, I got a new roommate since the last
The best looking people in the world all under one badly insulated roof
time I wrote, her name is Simone, I hoped she would be cool and then she was, which is convenient, so I’m living with two super cool and super hot roommates, it’s a lot of fun and I’m lucky, as they are cool. <long pause, audience member coughs> <starts sweating, microphone feedback echoes loudly> Dema and Simone both teach art and life skills (which is like, teaching kids to grasp things and zip their jackets) (I’m not checking the last blog to see if I’ve already mentioned that) and I’m still doing gym and alphabet, last week I did G for Grass which was kind of retarded but this week we did J for Jellyfish which was cool, like I cut up plastic bags and ribbon for the body and tentacles, and the kids are all like ehhhh muchos burritos, donde esta mi tequila <tips sombrero, naps under cactus> (Chile is in Mexico, right?).
Also, these chicks (roommates) have never seen Dawson’s Creek and are obsessed with it, we finished watching season 2 yesterday and we’re renting season 3 soon .Can you believe Joey narced on her dad and sent him back to prison at the end of season 2? What a bitch! You know, sometimes I feel like I’m the only one that wants her and Dawson to stay together. They’re freaking soulmates! I don’t care that Dawson is asexual and floppy-haired, he’s where she belongs, you jerk! Who are you to stand in the way of soulmatedom?
So I’m learning Spanish, we have lessons 3 times a week, at first it sucked because my roommates are a good year ahead of me with language competence as I’ve never had a Spanish lesson before, but I bitched like a huge pussy and now she goes slowly for me and teaches me about numbers and colours while she teaches the girls about different tenses and making complex sentences and junk, so it’s working out ok now.
My fake Facebook fan page is the best, and least nerdy thing ever.
So I’m working at this school and learning about kids, they’re funny little things, they’re like little versions of people in that they do all the stuff we teach ourselves to suppress, like if you have a pimple they point and laugh and call you ugly, if they want something they just grab it, some of them have learned to not do these things but like.. they just function with their id, you know. I keep thinking of the word ‘covetous’ to describe them, like if they have something they’re sure as hell not giving it to anyone else, a kid asks to have it: “No! NO!!!” kid takes it: “es miiiiiiooooo!!!!” (“it’s mine!”) kid who took it: “He no want to share!”, you take it away from them because it’s time for class, they just start crying. And the really little ones, like the one or two year olds who can’t or don’t talk, all they do is sit there and not participate and put their mouths and hands on things, and you just have to let them do it, because it’s not like you can put them in time otu for being deliberately disobedient. And these little ones like all they know is like, I have a toy, someone just took it, now I’ll cry. It’s this super base emotion, wanting something and being sad when you don’t, like they want shit, grabby, attachment, douchebaggy segue into Buddhist teachings on detachment and finding happiness independent of external objects and influences, etc. etc. You know the drill. And some kids – I guess I should make a new paragraph
And some kids are straight up sociopaths, like there are kids who are really fucking cute, and they know they’re really fucking cute, they’ve figured it out and use it to their advantage. I guess I shouldn’t use their names on this blog (I know I’m not meant to put up images of them) (until I leave and I can’t get fired for it, anyway) but apart from pretending to cry to get out of trouble, which I’d say most of them have figured out how to do, there are a couple that not only cry to get out of trouble and to get attention but like, they’ll like, like there’s this one kid who is such a bastard, he’s always pretending to shoot kids (gunplay, and characterising anyone as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ being forbidden in the school) and he’s always roaring and pretending to be some random animal and attacking kids, and he always pushes people, but like.. he’s always in trouble for pushing, and like in gym you can see him deciding who to push while we’re running around, with these cold, calculating eyes, and he’ll run at someone and try to make it look like an accident, make it look like a glancing, accidental blow (that he accidentally does to 5 kids in a row), then you put him in time out and then he comes out and keeps doing it, I gave him his final warning and two minutes later he runs at this kid and shoulders her to the ground, I yell his name and he looks at me and suddenly grabs his shoulder going “Owww! She hurt my shoulder with her body!” Manipulative little bastards, it’s unreal. A lot of them are just evil. I kicked him out of gym and he cried, it was awesome. That kid has fleas, too, so, that makes me feel better.
I sound like I’m focusing on the negatives, because that’s what I just did, but nar it’s very cool, really. I guess I should mention all their adorable one-liners (except I don’t have any written down) but I more keep getting fascinated by the whole fact that we all used to be like these kids, I mean they’re fresh out of the womb, some of them are less than 2 years old, and like.. they grow, and junk… in the words of my little sister: “Yeah kids are weird, we grow from these little lumps that can’t do anything, then we start to be aware of our selves but are still pretty useless.” Little crying lumps that bite their tongues half off because they forgot they had one, then they can stand up properly and form words and then basic sentences and then complex sentences… I don’t know, it’s funny. I don’t know.
Chicks must think about babies all the time, they have two milk bags swinging from their chests 24 hours a day. Wouldn’t they always be like “man, I’ve got to get some babies for these, otherwise what was the point of growing them in the first place? And of all that menstruation?” I mean guys just have to have orgasms in things, that’s the whole drive, have sex then leave and have sex with someone else, the baby thing makes no sense to us, we just want the sex bit, but chicks, they’re all geared to raise little people, right? Every single time they look down, baby milk bags.
Let’s see, Viña, Viña is nice, very beautiful, we’ve been going out a bit, sampling local delicacies – wine with fruit and/or ice cream in it, fried pockets of things called empanadas… probably delicious meat dishes… I always feel like a cad talking about a place’s cuisine because just about everywhere’s signature dish is something with meat in it which I won’t have tried so I can’t really comment, I’m sure the meat dishes are lovely though. Anyway the booze is good, everyone drinks Pisco which is so alcoholic it tastes like anything does when it’s over 80 proof (alcohol), I refuse to say it has a specific taste, I’ll just say it’s vodkish. Man, this is boring. It’s about to get worse…
I’ve been doing looking at a lot of stuff on Islam lately, that’s some cool shit.
You know the Muslims say Jesus was the Messiah as well? But that he’s not God because of, well, for all those reasons above. I like number 6 reason why Jesus isn’t God, because Jesus ate, slept and prayed, so he wasn’t self-sustaining, so he couldn’t be a god, and also why would he pray to himself, he prayed all the time, if he’s God why is he talking to himself, and junk. It’s a lot of fun watching these Muslim things, they seem really contemplative about the whole thing, try to put lots of reason behind it, they research a lot and make God less anthropomorphic too… still on the Jesus not being God thing, apparently he never says so in Bible, and here are some quotes they mention from said book:
Isaiah 46:9 – I am God and there is none like me.
(Including Jesus!)
Mark 10:18 – And Jesus said unto him, “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.”
John 17:3 – Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
Whom you have sent, not who you are? You know the Bible never mentions a Trinity? Some part in 1 John mentions it but new standard Bibles don’t have that verse because it looks like it was added in, it can’t be found in records anywhere before 1200… that council of Nicaea was some crazy shit. Did you hear that part where the guy is like ‘some Christian said the Trinity is like three men in one carriage, that’s how it makes sense, and the Muslim guy is like “No, it’s like saying one man is in three carriages, it makes no sense! You can’t divide up God, dammit!!!”‘
“Whoops! I tattooed Islamic symbols all over my body and then found out Islam forbids tattoos!”
While I’m on this junk, did you know Christianity and Islam are geocentric religions? What’s the deal with that? And what’s the deal with airplane peanuts?
Why would you follow a religion that’s geocentric? I mean that’s a big thing for a holy book to get incorrect. People still argue Young Earth Creationism because you can always say scientists date things wrong but no one argues for a geocentric universe anymore, cos it’s pretty hard to ignore I guess. But why are those bits of the Bible/Quran fallible but the rest isn’t? And what’s with these people telling me that sometimes you have to think with your heart instead of your head when you ask these kinds of questions, or bring up this, or whatever? They know you can’t actually think with your heart, right? It’s an organ that pumps blood? Here’s what thinking with your heart, or your gut, or whatever, means : not caring if your motivations make sense, bypassing your intellect, not really minding about reason and logic, accepting contradictions/inconsistencies, seeking comfort instead of truth. Being happy with comfort instead of truth, that’s weakness- man up, pussy! You can’t allow something to influence you if it doesn’t make sense! Actions are so powerful, you know, people change the world, our actions are very powerful, so if you’re going to let something influence your actions, you have to make sure it makes total sense, that it holds up to scrutiny, right? Otherwise you might be doing it wrong, and people can change the whole world, what if you’re changing the world based off things that don’t make sense? Thinking with your heart? Fuck you. Like that asshole Kant. “I believe it because it doesn’t make sense.” Up yours, fackin Kant. What a Kant. I’m making his name sound like ‘cunt,’ you see, that’s the joke I was going for there.
Mind you an awful lot of good things have been done in the name of Christ and Allah though, like in Kenya World Vision and Islamic Relief were at all my meetings, both doing lovely things, more than one person lived where they would have died if these NGOs weren’t around, these religions are forces for good in mannnnnnny ways. So are good actions more important than suffocating faith with logic? Who says they’re mutually exclusive?
Sometimes I’m so ashamed of being agnostic, but like, I watched this:
and while I think Christopher Hitchens (smarmy atheist guy) won, about 45 minutes in the rabbi gives a pretty 
convincing argument against evolution, and like, what can we really know about the age of the planet and how we got here. I mean none of us were there, and scientific consensus changes all the time, it’s changed a zillion times in the last hundred years, and a bazillion times in the last ten years. I like the necessary humility you need in this world to admit that there are some things you don’t or can’t know, but I’d like to at least know something. Evolution was meant to be as close as we can get to fact but like, I guess you can never really know. Also you know you can’t even trust your own senses, you know colour doesn’t exist, it’s just how your brain interprets light, it’s not really there, it just is to you. I don’t even know if what’s before my eyes is the way it is. What is reeeal <singing operatically> whaaaaat (camera rises, spinning dramatically)
OK I think that’s enough on religion. Oh, and this is cool. OK that’s it.
Chile is cool, the general consensus is you can drink the tap water, everything has avocado in it, and there are boobs on the magazine stands right out in public, on the front cover in the street stall and everything, mannn. Eh that’s all I got. Here are some Woody Allen quotes I saved ages ago after I saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which was pretty good. Bye <^-^> lol 
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jacket?
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-The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife — a depressing thought, particularly for those who have bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there is an afterlife but no one will know where it’s being held.
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