Yanqui Doodle

SWEPT

2008-06-11T23:47:00.000-07:00

Sunday evening march through filtered out

Music groups

the winter layers.

Long sweaters, people linger in rose brisk

capilary tinge of triumph

hushes us backwards at the day

door rubble cluttered in.

Car weaves the street

people opened up a clock,

crawling railroad

tracks the pasture opened up

English Teaching in Buenos Aires, Argentina

2008-05-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

BEFORE YOU GET HERE

The best thing that you can do to prepare yourself is to study up on grammer and teaching techniques. If you are not familiar with the basic concepts of english grammer I recomend taking an online tefl course with the modest cost of $300. I recomend an online TEFL course as opposed to the month-long in-person one because the month long courses are a waste of time and money. It will take you at least 2 months of teaching here in order to break even with the $1000+ that you would spend on the course.

BUSINESS ENGLISH IS BORING

Through an institute you will be teaching students who work for large companies like Verizon or Tide Bleach. The students´classes are therefore paid for by their employers.

Business English is really boring. You have to teach vocabulary words that have to do with their jobs, the economy, how to write emails. Students are sometimes technical writers who have you proofread work they’ve done which explains to another technical writer in the united states how to navigate their compay´s Intranet.

Business students generally prefer conversation-based classes. They will be satisfied with their classes soley for the fact that you are a Native english speaker and can hold an interesting conversation. Business english classes are usually 1:1.

YOU WONT GET RICH WITH AN INSTITUTE

You should expect to make anywhere between 18 and 25 pesos per hour if you are employed by an institute(1 usd = about 3 pesos). For Argentinian standards this is a decent hourly wage, but keep in mind that with each hour that you spend teaching and getting paid, you should plan on spending an additional hour for lesson planning and traveling between classes. These things you dont get paid for. The majority of teachers choose to work for no more than 30 hours per week. It can be done though- a friend of mine teaches for 60 hours.

If you are planning on staying here for 6 months and show that you can speak English proficiently, institutes will probably hire you. There is clearly an under-supply of English Teachers here in Buenos Aires. If you know where to apply to the institutes listed below, you should have no trouble in finding a job.

TEACHING PRIVATLY

If you have the materials and experience to do it, private teaching is a much better option than working for an institute. You can carge anywhere between 25 and 40 pesos per hour and problably won´t be doomed to teaching only business english. You can also choose which types of students you would like to teach by being wise about how and where you choose to market yourself.

Get outside of Belgrano, Palarmo, Downtown and San Telmo. There are tons of people in this city who are passionate about learning english who live outside these sorts of neighborhoods that are gentrified. Engage yourself in the porteño lifestyle by getting to know the people in your neighborhood. Your students tend to be the same people who you have also met as friends. Simple paper ads on telephone poles can help you find students and internet marketing is also an option.

YOU HAD BETTER BE IN LOVE WITH THIS PLACE

Despite the simplicity of finding work, I do not recomend teaching english unless you are planning to stay at least in Buenos Aires for awhile. You are wasting your time and your students´time if you treat english teaching as a pastime acitivity to partake in between cities.

Though you do not need to know Castillano in order to teach english, but there is no reason why you should not devote as much of your free time to learning it if you do not areadly know it. You are in Buenos Aires for godsakes, get to know the language and you will feel even more at home.

English teachers should excell at week-long drinking spells and scraping by during daylight in order to work. If you are an idiot who has the tendency to walk into street without looking both ways, you will get killed. You have to sit for lengthy hours in office buildings that are open and large and cubicle filled, quiet, vacumed hotel carpet, floor by floor elevator entryways.

WHERE (NOT) TO APPLY

Good Institutes
ABS: info@abs-international.com.ar
English Training System: englishtraining@ciudad.com.ar
LenguaLab: eugenia@lengualab.com.ar
LV Studios: victoria@lvstudioweb.com
Professional Language Service: pls@pls.com.ar
Warick Consultancy: karina_neira@warwick.com.ar

Shitty Institutes
American Forum: direccion@american-forum.com
Dublin: info@dublin.com.ar
EuroLanguages: info@eurolanguages.com.ar
Language Affairs: languageaffairs@fibertel.com.ar

Pattern Recognition

2008-05-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

Buenos Aires is in its steady dip into fall. leaves on the ground, the homeless who sleep within the ruts of closed store-fronts now sleep with blankets,

people in the street are short-nerved, in more of a hurry, more on the subways where each morning we pack on into eachothers´armpits, pressed into the intimate limits of physical confinement.

river of footsteps at floodstage off the subway throgh the clicking gates up the stairs and in an instant to the roar of city

small sidewalk overworked bus squeel car horn

warm exhaust, intersections filled at stalemant

lack of patience. people who walk and weave within their own agendas, broken sidewalk, rubble, magazine stand with porno all over the place

cafe cups to-go on trays as waiters run them through a block or accross the street.

Forida ave. pedestrian mall shopping center that stretches the length of downtown. wide enough for lanes of cars but full with the motion of footwork. is a non-stop line of quilts spread where people sell maté goards, purses, plastic bracelets, small figurines ect.... stuff mass produced.

on either side stretch trendy storfronts: mcdonalds, cd stores, clothing, jelrwy, frappachino, banks ect..

begging mother with infant child in her arms: sprawled out, bloated, limp.

another child alone leaning against a magazine stand with bright white speckles over his skin,

A couple who has crashed dozens of wine bottles into a pile of sharp-glass scraps. The have turned their storage trunk sideways as an elevator for her to stand on 3 feet above the ground. .

The boyfriend takes off his hat and turns it upside down, explains to the crowd that he and her are poor and they rely on performace in order to get by, that they live in a hotel and without the money night by night, they would be sleeping on the street.

The girl jumps. she lands in the middle of the pile of glass, specks fly outwards into the street and at our feet. she cringes, looks like the is going to scream. people throw money, others are not interested and continue on their way.

The couple continues to do tricks like this into the glass, things progressivly painfull.

a police officer in a bright orange vest leaning against a wall

A trained eye, appearance of order when all that it is is a refined kind of pattern recognition, choosing from the multitudes.

2008-04-20T16:58:00.000-07:00

I have been led astray by the street noise and a money-hungry lack. I went wandering through the neighborhoods i knew until i didn´t know where i was. I am not suprised anymore. I have been consumed. blocks of tall buildings. Unwilling and unready to articulate. Eventually it will come.

Protests in Buenos Aires, 3-26-08

2008-03-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

For the past 2 weeks, people have staged massive protests throughout the country´s rural areas. Citizens have acted in response to newly elected president Christina Kirschner's economic decision to raise the export tax on Argentinian meat and grains. Christina would like to keep commodity prices affordable for Argentinians. In order to do this she has chosen to raise the taxes for those farmers and ranchers who choose to export their commodities. By doing this, she has made it impossible for Argentina´s small-scale farmers and ranchers to make a viable living by doing what they do.

At this moment there is a huge movement to end the nationalization of these sorts of these industries. Over the last 2 weeks, farmers and ranchers have held massive protests through out the country. They have effectivly set up road blockades in order to stop trucks that are bringing goods into Buenos Aires. Their production has nearly slowed to a stand-still. Producers are dumping their meat and grains out in a refusal to sell them until Christina reverses her decision.

The protest has been widely sucessful, as sortages of meats and dairy products are apparent through out the country. In Buenos Aires, nearly all of the meat-shops have had to close because of their lack of supply. Wherever you can get meat, it is not worth buying it because it is so expensive.

Residents of Buenos Aires have largly taken the side of the farmers and ranchers. They are not only in support of them, people have a ferocious contempt for Christina´s failed policies. On Tuesday night the sentiments of the masses culminated into a near-riot through out the city. In a flurry, Christina put together a sub-par speech in which she claimed that she was governing for "all of Argentina". She confirmed her stance that she will NEVER give in to "extortion".

Christina´s speech only served to inferiorate people more. By 12:00 am the entire city was erupt with rhythmically sounding car-horns, old women who were leaning out their windows banging on pots and pans and entire crowds of people that slowly grew as they congergated in the center of the city, Plaza de Mayo.

I filmed the video below during the early hours of Tuesday evening, before Christina gave her speech. I watched protest grow as a constant stream of people arrived into the plaza, all banging pots and pans. At the same time, a group of youth from a rural part of the Buenos Aires province also arrived and swarmed themselves into the crowd. As stated, I left before the plaza ¨blew up¨with angry citizens. What follows is a clip of the protests as they were just begining.

The farmers and ranchers have drawn support from a wide range of social classes, both urban and rural. The pricipal demonstrators in Tuesday´s protest were largly business-suit men and women who arrived after finishing work downtown. A friend described to me the emblematic sight that he saw of a businessman without a pot-top and pan to bang who instead chose to bang his leather brief-case against the riot-fence in Plaza de Mayo in order to make noise. Also within the crowd were young students, neo-nazi sympathizers, entire families, infentile children, and citizen-journalists like me, who captured the events with shaky hand-held cameras.

Since Tuesday evening, protests have continued, but on a smaller-scale and under the front of groups with more paticular causes, such as "La Liberation del Sur", which held a protest in the plaza on Thursday afternoon which attracted two to three thousand people. Outside of the city, in Provinces such as Jujuy, Entre Rios, Cordoba, picketers continue to blockade roadways in order to prevent the shipment of meat and grains. On Thursday afternoon, Cristina appeared to be more symapthetic to the cause of the demonstrators. Also, meetings between Cristina´s government and union members also began again.

Protests in Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires. Tuesday, March 26 2008

-Still interested in what is happening in Argentina? Here are some links of professional reports from newspapers and magazines:

-(ok i am currently working on the blog, will post these in a few hours)

Things that I have learned from Porteños: Tip #1

2008-03-15T17:24:00.000-07:00

If you are getting towards the end of a night of partying and have an opened glass bottle of beer that you would like to save for for the next day (or the day after, or the day after that), all you have to do is put a spoon inside of it upside down and store the beer in the refregerator. Yes, sounds strange, sounds insane, but it works. I don´t know how but it works.

Is there any chemists or physicists who are reading this? I think that these sorts of dignified people might have a better idea why such a thing would work.

Here is a step-by-step visual explaination in case you don´t know how to read:

STEP 1) Drink beer freely and hopefully happily. Stop drinking when you do not want any more beer. If your beer is empty, stop reading this article, it is irrelevent for you. If you there is beer left in your bottle, continue on to step 2.

STEP 2) Find a small spoon. These can usually be found in your kitchen drawer. Any spoon will work as long as its handle fits through the mouth of your beer bottle.

STEP 3) Place spoon upside-down in beer. Place beer in a refregerator. Close the refrigerator door.

STEP 4) Wait for a very long while. Think nothing of the beer that is sitting with a spoon in it inside your refrigerator. After 1, 2, 3 or even 4 days, stop waiting. Open the refregerator door and find your beer.

STEP 5) OH MY GOD! There is a beer with a spoon in it in the refregerator! it is cold! It is Bubbly! I am going to drink the whole thing right now!

STEP 6) If you still have not finished the beer, continue steps 1 through 5 repeatidly until you do.

Things that you want to say to others that you have done if you are visiting Buenos Aires for a very short period of time

2008-03-08T14:57:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the most popular things to do while visiting Buenos Aires.

-San Telmo on a Sunday. The San Telmo market is a huge market through one of the streets most historic neighborhoods. There are hand-crafted arts and there is tons of street music. If you happen to be in Buenos Aires on a Sunday, you HAVE TO do this.

-Recoletta Cemetary. this is a cemetary that is filled with the graves of really rich people who´s familys built huge house-like structures and statues for their deceased relatives. Also where the body of Eva Peron is burried. if you are in Buenos Aires for more than 2 or 3 days, this is also a must do. (this is better to do on a saturday or sunday since there is also a market here on these days)

-Plaza de Mayo. This is a plaza that is located in the middle of downtown Buenos Aires. This is the most important spot in regards to the political history of Buenos Aires. The Pink House, Argentinia´s national capital building, is located here. In the 1960s Eva Peron gave her speeches from the balcony to screaming crowds who were standing in Plaza de Mayo, it is where people protested during the ¨dirty war¨ (Argentina´s genocide), it is where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people met after the stock market crash of 2002. Check out Plaza de Mayo and do some reading about it beforehand. I would recomend checking out "My Buenos Aires Travel Guide", written by Sandra Gutrejde Suarez (included in my links section). She has an excellent blog post which describes the geography and history of Plaza de Mayo.

-the obelysk. At the intersection of 9 de julio (apparantly the widest street in the world) and Calleo there is a huge phalic obelysk that commemerates the first raising of the Argentinian flag. Its not that neat but you probably want to say that you saw it.

-Linea A of the subway system. Ride it somewhere. The subway line was made in the early 1900s and they still use the original cars that are all wooden and antique looking with swinging lamps and stuff. really cool. not alot of toursts ride the subway.

-the touristy and colorful part of la boca. this is a must. It is what Buenos Aires is most famous for (in a pop-cultural sort of way)

-Teatro Colon (Columbus Theatre). This is one of the best teatres in the world. There are shows all of the time and you can take a tour of it if you want to.

-MALBA (museaum of Latin American art). This museum has the best collecion of Latin American contemporary art in the world.

-Museau de Belles Artes- not an incredible collection but it is huge and it is free and it is right beside the Recoleta Cemetary

-Tigre. a small town only a 1 hour train ride out of Buenos Aires. It is a marsh city and nobody has cars. They all drive boats to their houses. There are also boat taxis that drive up and down the ¨roads¨.

Most importantly, geek out at Argentinas Travel Guide (argentinastravel.com). It has alot of information about things that are off the beaten path. it is written by expats living in Argentina. This is the best resource for Argentinian travel.

Plaza de Mayo 14/2/08

2008-02-23T22:15:00.000-08:00

After a protest for Casino: which I will elaborate on later

Bomba - San Telmo - 10/2/2008

2008-02-11T15:07:00.002-08:00

Carnivál Buenos Aires

2008-02-11T15:07:00.001-08:00

Bariloche at Sunset

2008-02-11T15:07:00.000-08:00

She whips her truck around a corner and it goes rocking back and forth

A man in a cowboy hat and hand-held video camera. He points it at his wife as they are walking towards the sunset.

The girl who reads intently, toes squirming in the ground.

An el-camino, hip-hop beats, people on skateboards popping allies beside.

A German Shepard that looks dead, splayed out in the middle of the road

The patch of lawn is filling fast with people´s quilts

Three birds in a single line as they fly across the lake

Mountains as they lose their light, look more sillouette

Clouds that flair above

Cars continue to make that turn and gun their engines uphill.

Corral, Chile

2008-02-01T13:42:00.004-08:00

It was the reinactment of a battle between Spain and Chile. The remains of fortresses that were used to hold off the encroachment of Spain. The residue of awaiting eyes at cannons, hard rock walls with only ocean clashing at the other side. It was formal and thrown together: teenagers who dressed like soldiers who had once fought at the same age over 200 years before. People stood with cameras, leaning over balconies.

In SchoppDog

2008-02-01T13:30:00.000-08:00

Antique tennis rackets, movie posters, fishing nets, a suitcase with stickers are all hung up on the wall. There are only families here. Waiters move between like screen door flies that cannot find direction to exit out the room. I swear I´m in America.

The Futelefú Story

2008-01-23T16:55:00.000-08:00

Roco, who met me at the Argentinian border to take me to Futelefu seemed nice at first, he laughed at me when i started frieking out at border control and wrote my name and country of origin and date of birth all in the wrong blanks, and he volentarilly filled it out correctly for me and even signed it for me!

When we got to futelefu he dropped off all of the other 5 or 6 passangers at their doorsteps, he knew where they lived, kissed each on the cheek as they left the van. I asked him to drop me off at the doorstep of the officina de trourismo and tried to strike up a little bit of conversation. He said nothing

and instead of the officina de tourismo he brought me to the doorsteps of a locotorio that had techno music blaring and this dude waiting for me who was wearing a gulligins island hat, a wife beater shirt and board shorts.

When i open the car door he was immediatly in my face, in english ¨are you looking to go rafting, i can give you a really good deal¨ ¨tomorrow?¨ ¨we have some of the best rafting in the world right here¨ ¨cmon man where are you from?¨. i finally had to tell him ¨dude i dont want a fucking raft trip!¨ and he left me alone about it.

We talked for a few minutes. his name was Blue, he was a raft guide from New Zealand and he told me about how he had been stranded in Futelefú for over a week with no money at all unless he sold raft trips to people which he had no luck at because the company he worked at did not auctually have any rafts. He did not find this out until the day that he auctually found people to take on the river. His boss had to tell them all this embarresing news.

Nonetheless selling nonexistant raft trips is the only way that Blue has a chance of making any money in this town. It is therefore the only way that he can get out of it.

He lives in a borrowed-broken tent in a cow pasture without a toilet so he has to shit in the cow pasture with his girlfriend who works at a bar and soley gets paid a 15 percent commision for each beer that she sells which on a good day amounts to just under 1 usd per hour. They spend every cent of her money on food rations which consist soley of 2 dried biscuts a day and butter.

It was after Blue told me his story that i looked into my wallet and realized that all i had was 10 argentinian pesos and that the only ATM in town took all of the major credit cards except for visa. I had a visa. The next-closest ATM was one-hundred miles away.

So i went to the cow pasture with Blue and set up my tent. Here Blue told me the rest of his story:

Previous to living in Patagonia, He and his girlfriend (Sophie) had been guiding raft trips in Mexico for 2 years. After they recieved job offers to guide for a company in Patagonia, they scraped their money together and bought a pair of airline tickets. They arrived in Southern Chile and found that somebody else had taken their guiding spots and there were no more jobs for them with the company.

They went traveling by bus in search for other jobs. in other parts of patagonia and eventually arrived in Esquel (southern artentina) about two weeks ago. While in the Esquel bus terminal they left behind a backpack which contained 1000 dollars (the only money that they had). They got a call a day later from somebody who said that he had the briefcase. After the stranger divulged this information he hung up the phone. The briefcase appeared in the bus station 2 days later with everything inside except for the money.

The two of them then scoured internet looking for job opportunities, found one for guiding in Futelefu. Without other options for the moment they picked up their stuff and and moved to Futelefú. They came to the town with no money on themselves. All that they had was 300 dollars in Sophie´s checking account. She had not bothered to take any of the money out and unfortionaly her check card was also a Visa.

The bus drivers did not take credit cards and were not willing to transport them anywhere unless they paid first. Sophie and Blue were thus stranded in Futelefu with no money at all. Sophie therefore got her job at the bar.

I went to hang out at the bar that Sophie worked at. It was filled with 10 to 15 old and dirty men who were all drinking the same type of canned beer and watching Sophie with cat-clock-eyes as she moved around the bar in her skirt. She did not get off of her shift until 5 in the morning. She did not even bother to collect the money that she made for the night because it was so little (somewhere between 6 and 7 usd for 10 hours of work). She said that one of the guys puked all over the bar and she had to clean it up. Another kept grabbing her ass.

Roco (the bus driver who transports people from the Chillean border to Futelefu) also owns the raft company that Blue works for and the property that Blue and Sophie are living on and his wife owns the town´s locotorio. Roco is an asshole. He has offered no help to Blue or Sophie and according to Blue has only been trying to make money off of off them by charging them 10 usd a night to live in his cow pasture. He finally changed his mind and let them stay for less. Roco has made no offer to transport either of this to Esquel in order to get money from Sophie´s credit account.

It is apparantly true that Futelefu has some of the best rafting in the world and Blue told me that this is the main reason that they seeked employment there. They wanted to check out the river, do some recreational floating of their own. Blue and Sophie are still to float the river.

Roco was going to Esquel today for business purposes and therefore offered to bring us along if we all paid him money. I of course jumped on the opportunity, Blue and Sophie were going to go but they said that they were sick of giving Roco money. They said they are going to hitch a ride tomorrow, that as long as they get out of Futelofu they will be fine because Sophie has family members with money who can lend them money so they can fly back to mexico. I insisted that they left with me today but to no avail.

My original plan was to go to Esquel to get money and then return to Futelefu with Roco so that i could catch my next bus tomorrow, but as i was waiting for Roco to pull up with his van i got the shivers and loaded my backpack and decided to bag the whole rest of the plan and get as far away as Futelefu as i can and never come back. I hope that Blue and Sophie are going to be ok but there is really nothing that i can do for them if they dont want a ride away from that evil town.

-Blue and Sophie

Lago Jacob

2008-01-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

-Descending into Lago Jacob

-The pasta that we had for breakfast was warm and delicious

Ryan, Kacey and I were akoken by Chelsea who was screaming
¨Shit! Shit! Shit!¨because her and Nathan´s tent had been leaking all night long.

Nathan was nearly hipothermic. The tarp that we had put over our backpacks had blown off. Everything we owned was drenched.

We had to retreat to refuge in a a cabin that was full of 70-some grade school children. One of the women who worked there lit the fireplace and let us hang our clothes to dry.

Kacey immediatly immersed herself within the midst of screaming children. We took pictures as proof of her ¨students¨ in order to show her parents that she really did visit Argentina for the educaional opportunity.

Nathen was huddled, arms around his knees, shaking erraticly beside the fire with no warm clothes to wear.

Chelsea was wearing mall shoes.

Ryan had his mud-drenched sock hanging on a hot dog stick. He was holding it in a way that resembled a flag that had some sort of soft-felt pecular meaning, an invisable country that we claimed without intention of proving that it was real.

-Kacey and her ¨students¨

-Nathan nearly hypothermic and warming up with Mate

-One of Chelsea´s mall shoes that she went backpacking in

Sundaying in Puerto Madero (from 12/16/07)

2007-12-27T22:59:00.000-08:00

Street musicians scattered along the peer, people strolling between. A pre-dawn glare. Six drumers with base and snare. Each of them with a set of symbols that shatter with the rhythms of their dance.

They have conquered silence. They empower the mothers with toddlers who are dancing too.
Mothers with barbaric arm-fling pelvic twists then squating to the ground.

I am making perfection out of this instant. It is garnished with greatness. Family-farming. High culture happiness. A beer bottle polluted lagoon.

But I am alone right now. Drinking a beer and a guy approaches and asks if he can have a drink of it. I say yes because this sort of thing is normal and I dont want to be an asshole, but he and his friend want the whole entire thing. After a series of concessions that i make in the conversation I realize that I am a stupid foriegner and his friend walks off with my beer. I am a stupid foreigner. What else is important?

Only sometimes this is the way.

Graphiti En Ave. De Mayo Dispues La Manifestacion Para Trabajadores De Casino

2007-12-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

¨30 años y sigue las impunidada¨ ¨Basta de experimentar en animales¨ ¨cenasa=muerte¨ ¨no a la heterosexualidad obligitoria¨ ¨trabajo estudio y cambio sociadad¨ ¨aparicion con vida de Julio Lopez¨ ¨No pasaran¨ ¨Veganismo eticacion el planeta¨ ¨estado asesino¨ ¨y Julio Lopez donde esta?¨ ¨Periodico el espejo¨ ¨fuera sionistas de Palestina y el Libana¨ ¨A 30 años los pices seguen escribienda¨ ¨Juventud Argentina¨ ¨Viva la rebellion popular¨ ¨Aparicion con vida de Julio Lopez¨ ¨30,000 razones para seguir luchando¨ ¨Patriz si, Coloniz no¨ ¨Armenia vive¨ ¨Prensa tortilleba¨ ¨las calles son nuestras¨ ¨Basta de Sakeo y muerte de pueblo¨ ¨Basta la impunidad. Carce3l ya a los genocidas¨ ¨Tomemos el conirol sobre nuestras vidas¨ ¨por la revolucion y la socialima¨ ¨Prohibido fijar carteles¨ ¨de los 30,000 razones justica popular¨ ¨basta de salojos huracan¨ ¨masculinidad es dominacion¨ ¨sus ganacias son nuestras enfermidades, Basta de contaminacion capitalismo¨

Cosas Para Hacer Si Necessitas Monedas Para Un Collectivo

2007-12-26T21:01:00.000-08:00

-Quadate cerca de la bolitera de un subte y espera a las personas que no queran sus cinco centavos de vuelto.

-Hace un disface de Santa Clause. Para ese busca en la calle ropa roja y blanko. Dejate crecer una barba que sea blanka y muy larga. Vestite y lava las ventanas de los autos que esten espirando en simaforas rojos. Es muy importante que digas ¨ho ho ho! Feliz Navidad!¨ repetedamente.

-Podes conducir auna unicycleta si te sientas 2 metres arriba del piso y hace malabares 3 mechetes, mientras usas solemente un pie para conducir la unicycleta.

-Preguntale a un amigo para centavos.

-Si tenes una computadora y algo para imprimir, es muy facil preperar una carte del gobierno que diga que tenes una disibilidad. Con una truchada como eso, podes entrar a una collectivo gratis, sin preguntas del conductor.

-Robo a otra persona, pero solemente exigile las vientecinco centavos que necessisitas. No robes una polocia, ni un hombre muy grande, ni un niño.

Assembly

2007-12-10T20:26:00.000-08:00

This moment is spawning into itself.
There is time left in the day,
enough that the sun continues to burn the crowd
into particulars.
Vendors mingling
trays of beer that they carry above their heads
through the people
who are holding flags and waving them
under the sound of fireworks
without the their light that is outspoken by the stronger light of day.
Loudspeakers, moving movie screens with changing images of attendees who are standing in the crowd. Everything is taking place directly outside the nation´s capital building
on a stage somewhere with some man screaming
who is too submerged with people for me to see who he is.
The function is for Christina Kirschner, who assumed the presidency yesterday. She is now Argentina´s first female president.
Right now this is unimportant to me,
it is a function for Christina turned tribute
for the Justisalista party, Eva Peron, Democracy.
While I am standing here I am not speaking, I know nobody here,
I am sending invitations to friends with insistant text messages

But there is no way to invite
into an instant that
blooms towards some
while others pass it by
and wait
until it is fixed within compartments,
a treasure box:
torn open bedroom when a string of light
strikes through curtains, objects
and their abandoned actions of disarray.
I am making assumptions right now.

The Flash Thought Selections that People Make as they Walk By

2007-12-09T19:35:00.000-08:00

Leaps of fath are determinate
land breakers that send my
sights into motion. A decision I make
when I feel life in your hands
is boundless but stagnant in sudden flight, imagination,
foot stomping on the floor of a bar.

I meet people and am trying to bridge that gap.
Right now I have broken past
that weekly orchestration that I am used to now:
Drummers who lead a march
through Defensa Avenue, accross the entirity
of the San Telmo market.
The gathering of drummers is a ritualistic dancing past,
a solidification of something that already is,
a presence that is more perminant than the surfaces of stationed vendors
since the drummers are moving at the pace
of the mulling crowd.

La Radio Publico in La Boca

2007-12-01T20:56:00.000-08:00

La Radio Publico de La Boca is one radio station of many within Argentia that has been created by factory workers. The stations bring new sorts of commerce and income into these factories. Along with the economic benifits of these stations, they also serve as a medium for public expresion and community inolvement. Most of these stations can reach an audience within the radius of a mile. The content of the majority of radio programs is therefore catered to the respective communities that each station exists within. The radio stations recieve a small amount of public support, but the majority of funding comes from the D.J.s themselves, who pay a fee of 100 pesos for a month-long set of weekly programs.

I think that this is a great program because these factory workers are able to bring money into their communities. Most of these communites are impoverished since their once thriving industrial base no longer exists. It is therefore important that new mediums of communication are available. To create an awareness and an identity within a culture that has otherwise been abandoned by companies which have moved their factories to other areas which are more economically benificial.

A few of my friends have a weekly radio spot at a station in La Boca. Their program generally consists in discussion, poetry readings, skits and music. When I was on the program with them they spent about a half of an hour talking about The International Porno Festival which took place in Buenos Aires. Blackman (on the right) was in attendence at the festival and he gave more than a lengthy account of his expieriences there. Not all of the conversation potions of their programs are this absurd but when 5 Argentinian men are conversating together is usually this sort of thing that they end up talking about. Manual (center) has a continuing radio skit which he writes for the program. Most simply, it is about a Grandfather (who by the looks of it is more than 400 years old) who tells storys of his past to his ¨little shit¨ grandchildren. When I was on the program, Manual was nice enough to write a spot for me within the skit which turned out to be a very bad idea. Since he told me this only five minutes before the program started, i was was unprepared and therefore stumbled over and basically butchered all of my lines. At the end of the skit, as a sort of appology to his audience, he assured them that my charictar was going to be killed off during the next episiode.

Street Music

2007-12-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

Caramel, Uruguay

2007-12-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

Las Calles Grandes en Buenos Aires Son Peligoroso

2007-11-29T20:16:00.000-08:00

Hace un mes, aprendí que no puedo confiar otras personas quienes cruzan calles grandes. Estaba caminando por el parque de San Martin cuando nessisité cruzar El Aviende Del Liberador. Era con dos otros personas que paracieron conocer el lugar and cuando era un buen tiempo para cruzar la calle. Cuando la señal en nuestra directión cambiaba a verde, un groupo de 15 personas empecieron a cruzar por la otra lado de la calle. Tambien, los dos personas a mi lado empecaron a cruzar. No existia una senala peatonal. Por eso, fui con los otros personas en la calle. Cuando estaba en el media de la calle la señal cambió a rojo. Autos y collectivos empecaron a avanzar en los dos directiones por yo. Necessití correr en frente de una collectivo y dos taxis que casi me golpieron. Cuando estaba en el otro lado de la calla todos los personas alla me vian como si fuera un idiota sin una cabeza. En ese momento me di cuenta que habia tomado un mala decisiona. Nunca en mi vida voy a tener confianca en los decisiones de Argentians que son cruzando las calles.

At Parque Del Centenario

2007-11-28T20:33:00.000-08:00

Birds flying, flocks, people feeding them.
They are a nuesence in a day long chase of mating season
buzzing by your head

there is a circle of six drummers
who have been banging mallets for as long as i have been here.

two women, sprawled in the grass, tanning in their bra and underwear

a man in cargo shorts, with a fanny pack, skate shoes
is laying mangled, face
down beside his toppled bike

the wind is rising, people are putting
their shirts on, moving from
the grass, walking, inhaling the benchings
surrounding a pond

for a second the drumming has
stopped. I can now hear the jazz
with a non-distinct origin
inflating the park birds
pulse of sirens
low end engine roar.

beside me there are a pile of bikes,
five people practicing
the coreography for a movie scene with martial arts.
it is smooth like a dance: one kicks high,
the other
ducks and slide-kicks low.
There are five people doing this,
a constant rotation with two groups of two.
They are side by side moving to their own music.
none of them are wearing shoes, the only girl
is in a tank-top.
She has frayed hemp bracelelts around her ankles.

a man with the materials for a business suit
is laying arms akimbo
mummified in the grass.
His jacked is neatly folded by his side.

a women has come and sat at my bench by my side.
She is very pregnant.
She is watching the edge of the pond.
After she has been there for long enough she rises and continues on.

In the evening rush

2007-11-20T19:42:00.001-08:00

Giant room
white-light hum of linolium fresh
reflections, escelator belts.
I am not addapted to these artless walls,
the lack of movment. We are grazing
as we wait.

The subway is empty
it rattles
strings of light strike seats.

Above ground, in Plaza de Miserere
evening has dropped into the air.
the night-time procession

of vendor disassemblence, buses
spilling people,
streets that lurch and red-light honk

the sun that spills from residue
like something that has passed.

Weekend at Villa Hesson

2007-11-20T19:42:00.000-08:00

It was a dream. It was filled with us six. We were up 24 hours straight. We were on the beach in the middle of the night, blanket huddled, blowing wind. We were body warmth, changed our possitioning until all of the blankets were built into a barrier that was breaking the wind. We passed around a bottle of diluted whiskey, the waves swept.

At parque Chacabuco

2007-11-16T18:17:00.000-08:00

Thick with the mass of bodies. It is impossible to tell a tale without drawing conculusions: snipping off everything that is hypothetical until the body of it is either compressed until it breaks or is spread too thin.

The day is an opened vault, spilled sunlight, sidewalks, pool glimmer. Everybody is revolved around a park bench.

There is a woman with a stroller and two children. She has to lift the stroller over each step of this park that is built of stairways. She wants to be back home, too many sun-drenched tiles, she can´t see straight. Then she is hit by a soccer ball! She collapses to the pavement, even though it barely hit her. She is laughing now. The child who hit her is laughing too.

A swimming pool that is empty, children are playing baseball in it, or is it hockey?

A tree with graphiti on it.

A running track that is full of people, one man is running with street clothes.

A group of teenagers smoking joints under a tree.

Dogs chasing each-other.

Everything is moving and i cannot sit still: a wind rushed pick and grab. These instants I inhale briefly, as if there were too much air, I am having trouble breathing. A clock-tower´s hands are motionless at 8:28.

Florida Avenue, Buenos Aires

2007-11-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

Florida Ave. A group of people dressed as Native Americans
playing flutes over prerecorded drum and base electronic
music in order to sell an album that they apparently made.

A pedestrian street for hardcore shoppers who are always holding shopping bags that are full of clothing and knick-knacks, the crowds move at an annoyingly slow pace since nearly everybody on the avenue is looking to buy something. This is the only part of Buenos Aires that I get flustered, need to escape the head to head contest of mid-day traffic. Half of the people within the mass are trying to sell something. Mostly it is people who stake out spaces within the crowd and hand out businness-card sized fliers: free tanning salon sessions, fast-food discounts, business clothing, ready made vacations, hookers. The people with flyers for hookers are the worst. Usually he is an adolescent who has barely broken puberty, and he lays it on hard, he will not leave you alone until you walk two full blocks ahead with him at your side. He is attempting to be your friend, tells you why you need to go to a whorehouse, right now! It is only after you have ignored him, acted as if i did not speak english OR spanish, crossed a street, then he will leave you alone, will move onto the next person with more desperation.

Puerto Madero: election day

2007-11-01T17:14:00.000-07:00

Everybody has voted, is strolling through: families, couples. There are dancers, they have attracted hundreds of people to watch- a michael jackson impersonator to ¨billy jean¨. People love it, are clapping to the beats. A little farther down the walkway: hip hop music, tango dancers, children running, a ferris wheel, adolescents making out, strollers, food vendors. Fading day light accross the lake, swans, sirens, music: all over the place there is music, hip hop, reggaton, tango, afrobeat. People laying on the hoods of their cars. Moving, I am moving through.

Shoeless Joes

2007-10-30T23:57:00.000-07:00

I am eating a cheeseburger at the only american bar in Buenos Aires. It took two hours to get here. There are 8 tvs, each is showing a different football game (American Football!) and i cannot get enough of these chatty businessmen who just finished closing a deal with Nike and Telephonica. I could not be happier for them, but frankly I dont give a shit. We are Detroit Lions fans. I am here to watch football. They are here to watch football. There is no place except for this bar. We are blabbermouths when the Lions score, a psychosis of nonsensical words. We give eachother five, but not five, this guy in the corner (perfect hair, skinny and tall) insists on giving ten, plus ten shots and also a kazoo. Erupting, we are members of a circus.

This happened at Shoeless Joes
Uruguay 1175, Buenos Aires

San Telmo on a sunday

2007-10-22T21:37:00.000-07:00

The san telmo weekend market, a road closed pedestrian mall where bands play sporatic shows and venders have layed out their quilts in the street. There are antiques, plastic action heros, mate goards, lots of mate goards, jewlrey, paintings, peacock feathered pens. There is a constant crowd moving through, half pace. There are more tourists here than there are locals, half of the poeple were speaking english, one lady with a giant microphone, mp3 player, headhphones and a camera. she was standing in the road trying to flag down a taxi without any luck and she seemed to be getting angry.

Street-Side Timed Display

2007-10-22T21:30:00.001-07:00

The worn out sun sits like lazy shoproom light at night, metalic walls and one bank vault to place things. The walls are glass, shared, people who poke and tap at it, they smear their noses against it, pass with children loud and a child screams after the popped balloon sets him off. There is nothing to satisfy, a river, flood that fills alot of ears. It is a sticking point for some who cant stand the straight the chaos of his pronouncement.

A police officer who is passing circles around this single indistinguishable restaurant that he was hired to gaurd. His peering eyes, a passing girl, his compartmentalizations: her breasts as she streamlines past. She pays no sort of notice to him and he makes no effort to hide the gaze of his gaping eyes.

I am trying to be extravigant right now- people who act in ways that i can´t get over, the shock effect, with barriers drawn, entertainment of pushing against glass. Outside lies the currency of stereotypes, the unreal made real because it has been written about
There is a feather fallen, a wheel-paste, an archive in the street, a thousand acts, opinions, I cannot keep track of my own hands.

(Poetry)

2007-10-17T20:31:00.000-07:00

Subway flow, we are in the mix. A hallway closed tight, crowds thick, strewn, stairs, small door where we enter up from underground, A new location, falling daylight, dampened world. Rush hour, whirlwind pick and grab. With percision we weave through crowds as if we are the only ones there. This is a mess, there are children, white gown uniformed, out of school. The sidewalk cannot fit them all and they are in the street as cars are passing, swerving, stomping, honking- drivers outraged at coincidence. This is day rush, a red faced madness. The family seekers, dinner maker wives who wait and can´t get home- multiplied into millions, horns, exhaust, wafting ¨hallejuha!¨

above the buildings sits the greenish air of atmospheres. A halo that rides low, fits firm, drifts away with wind.

In the evening it whirls circles around rooftops, against walls, bursts of misfit drifts. Like the sound of cracking backs is the reason a child wakes for warm milk at 2am. An invasion of this space made personal, kept upright no matter how small it gets. The walls are thin, are shared, are stained in the place of the past armchair of a man who lived here years ago.

A Pathetically General Description of Parks in Buenos Aires

2007-10-14T19:38:00.000-07:00

There are tons of statues from the 18th and 19th centurys that honored the triumpth of conquistidors, but are now splattered with spray paint, dried urine and shit from flocks of birds which seem to be getting bigger by the day. The birds seem to like all of the old ladys who throw out handfulls of rice, or bread crumbs. The other day i saw a pigeon that was perched apon an old lady´s lap as she was petting it. it was very cute, and a little bit strange.

There are many parks here, and they are very precious since they have such a large versitility of uses. In the mornings they are frequented by elderly people who have dogs which they never clean up after after they shit on the sidewalk. By early afternoon all of the park benches are taken up by couples, of all ages, who make out all day long. After school there are children everywhere who play games with no particular structure that i can understand- one of which is a mix between soccer and frisbee and climbing a jungle gym. By the time that the sun sets, there are hookers all over the place, pickpockets and drug dealers. By midnight most of the parks are empty and if you decide to go hang out in one you have a good chance of getting robbed. The best time to go to a park in Buenos Aires is on a weekend. On the weekends all of the types of people who I have already mentioned are in the parks at the exact same time.

My Blog Manifesto

2007-10-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

THIS BLOG HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MONEY