General

reporting from camsack here, somewhere in buttfuck nowhere saskatchewan. we just got trapped in the most unreal hail storm, but the chateau held up strong (despite a salsa disaster). don showed us a grand ol time in wawa, jumped off some cliffs, took a gander at some dump bears, skinny dipped in lake superior then warmed up at a huge driftwood fire. we also spent a night in shilo manitoba, a military base that was fuckin bizarre, visiting friends of laura. and the whole shebang started in algonquin, where we canoed up a storm and got a stern talkin to for some uproarious flipcup.

the breakneck speed at which ian and i have been takin in as much as peru as possible has finally slowed down. we´ve been takin her easy in lima for a few days, surfing in freezing cold water, takin in peruvian history, and celebrating our successes with a bucket from kfc, which was rougher on the ol digestive tract than any of the local food we´ve had, which includes ceviche, ie little chunks of raw fish in a pile. tonite ian heads home and i head to buenos aires, sans my heterosexual life partner whom i have been relying on a little too heavily to speak spanish, plan trips, and generally do everything of importance. let the great experiment begin!

this past week, most certainly the lowpoint of my trip thus far, we took an ill-advised cheap over-night bus ride to arequipa, hopin to save a few soles. when we stepped on the bus and saw it packed with farmers with their huge blankets (and sacks of potatoes), murmouring about the ¨silly gringos,¨ we should have suspected something. turns out it was going down to -18 degrees that night, so needless to say, we froze our juevos off. winter in peru, well it´s still near the equator isn´t it? yeah i thought so too, turns out winter is winter, especially in the andes. thank god my mom bought me some new thermal underwear before i left, but i only packed one hoodie (which hasn´t been off for more than a few hours at a time, save our wonderful beach town excursion). the driver musta been freezing too, cause our bus ride from hell (frozen over) brought us into arequipa early, around 4am, giving us a couple hours extra in the fantastically smelling bus station before our tour to colca canyon. the world´s deepest canyon is something to behold though (grand canyon = apparently not so grand), as were the gigantic condors circling overhead. and arequipa itself, the white city, is pretty striking… i forget what we did there though…

oh oh, yesterday we went to this amazing shopping mall, and while i normally detest shopping malls with a passion reserved only for hootie (i have no problem with the blowfish, but i hate you hootie), this mall was a little different, all little booths full of illegal dvds, video games, and various clothing. my mom will be so proud, i bought dress shoes and shirts (dolce and gabanna, stolen i hope, but probably knockoff), as well as running shoes (will they ever be used? it´s doubtful). i also got another hoodie (the rotation back home will now be 6 days), a pile of dvds and ps2 games, and a duffle bag to carry all my ridiculously cheap loot.

well i´m off to buenos aires, wish me luck. if you don´t hear from me… just wait longer.

whew, the only grammatical way i can think of describing my trip right now is a long rambly sentence that just might express the ´every day seems about 50 hours long´ feeling im experiencing these days. let´s see how much i can remember, i know i left out our stop in trijuillo (which just so happened to be celebrating corpus christi day) last time…

so: since i last saw you, me and ian returned to lima for a night of dancing, cocktails, and a bottle of tequila we bartered to get from the owner of the cuban bar we were partying at with some of ian´s friends before we got on our 4am flight to cuzco where we began our epic 8 day ¨lares trek¨ hike appropriately titled ¨quest of the gods¨ in which our rag-tag group of british, scottish, german, swedish, obnoxious american (the fat one needed a donkey to get up the steep parts) and fellow canuck huffed and puffed for a few days through the high altitude mountains around the sacred valley, camping among the locals, llamas and el pacas, in places like ollaytaytambo, stopping for chicha (alcohol made from fermented corn or strawberry), guinea pig (a delicacy) and hot springs, eventually arriving at the awe-inspiring lost city of the incas, machu picchu, in which i brought the led out (zeppelin that is) to hike up wayna picchu (which overlooks manu picchu) to listen to a few new white stripes tracks (good choice on ´conquest´kukla, though 300 mph torrential outpour blues and little cream soda are my favourites) while beholding one of the wonders of the world before we headed back to cuzco to celebrate our victory over the andes with a well-earned night out at the pub, where a series of grande cusquenos (much better than the cristal) resulted in a wrestling match at the plaza de armas (the town´s main square), which i won — according to the peruvian man who gave my opponent the 3 count — with a stunning figure four leg lock, before we headed to the club for some dancing (alicia, i thought of you when mr jones unexpectedly came on), which left us too drunk to find our way home, but some kind policia saved us from the sketchy streets at 4am, finding us a cab that knew our hotel, where we took a day off before heading onward and upward to puno, from which we toured lake titicaca (still garnering a teeheehee at every moment), taking in the floating reed islands (the south american ingenuity never ceases to amaze) and lodging with a local family on one of the many stunning islands before returning to puno. then we had some ice cream and here i am!

hopefully the next update won´t be so far off, but everytime i get on the internet i waste what little time i have watching the white stripes on youtube. i can´t get enough of this new album.

the big bottles of peruvian beer which cost about 2 canadian dollars that is. not doing much for the wicked combination of cold (must have been the 4 flights of recycled air), sunburnt patches (it will all add up in the end…), and err uhh tap ass that im battling with right now, but the beautiful beach town of mancora we´re in is certainly making sick feel like paradise.

since lima (where we partied in appropriate south american fashion: all night), we went to huaraz, which is a mountain town in the andes. im not sure what my opinion of our adventure there is yet. its one of two, im sure you can figure out which was pre-summit and which was post-summit:

- glorious trek up a glacier to the top of a mountain for a majestic panorama view of part of the world´s tallest mountain range other than the himalayas

- 7 hour viet-cong death march with heavy spiked boots up to a 5800 metre summit for a lousy photo op.

only time will tell.
off to machu picchu.

edit: i forgot to mention that we started the trek at midnite (yes apparently midnite is not just for staying up past anymore, you can also wake up at midnite), which made it glorious for being a moonlit hike (i sang ¨good morning starshine to myself¨ quite a bit) with the sun eventually rising behind the mountains, but also intolerably cold.
edit2: thanks to a certain furry little polack (love you), i now have the new white stripes album on my ipod which i´m saving till im at the top of machu picchu.

instead, i got a 29% on one of the tests and now i’m in peru and clueless. luckily i have ian to do all the talkin, but the last 10 days when im on my own will be an experience. a solitary experience, with lots of gesturing and confusion. anywho, we’re in lima, and we went surfing with a friend of ian’s in the bitterly cold ocean. considering how close lima is to the equator you think it would be sweltering hot even in the winter, but alas, its like 15 and the water was freezing even with wetsuits. but no matter, we had a good time even if our hands and feet were purple by the end. now we’re headin downtown for a friend of a friend’s birthday celebration. cant wait to try as many peruvian beers as i can, making the 8 hour bus ride to huaraz tomorrow morning just peachy i’m sure. typically, a travel message like this would sign off with a phrase in the language of the current country, but i actually don’t even know how to say goodbye in spanish. its that bad. instead, i will leave you with the one expression i remember from first year spanish.

mon pero es fuego!

i think the religion vs non-religion debate is pretty useless. if it didn’t predate capitalism i would say it must be a dirty capitalist trick, but why is this still bringing us down? metaphor: we share 99.4% of our DNA with fruit flies. that statistic is in no way accurate, but regardless (irregardless?) it’s something crazy high like that right?* our basic building block, DNA, says we’re pretty much fruit flies except this tiny tiny tiny little code here. as humans, we share most pretty much everything. everything. we all like being really comfortable while we sleep, we all like a passionately satisfying meal, we all like having unexpected good times with friends, we all fuckin love candy, grandmothers, puppies, sunshine, music, trees, cute babies, the new arcade fire album, sex, and ice cream. even if one or two of those didn’t include you, you would still be totally psyched about the rest. and we all share a hatred for a lot of the same things too. arrogance, long lineups, itchiness, abuse, wet socks, unfairness, war, you get the point. but we always bicker about the little things. i guess cause it’s easier?

* ok its only 60%, but still!

it’s unfortunate as a species that we are so attracted to conflict. if we would concentrate on the worst issues, then maybe we would fix poverty and wealth distribution first and then maybe worry about something minor like race and gay marriage and gender. not that those issues are “minor” in any way, because they certainly are not, but that they perhaps pale in comparison to the bigger problems we face. maybe if we just stopped concentrating on the points that we don’t agree on, we could get down to some serious work on the points that we do agree on. no one wants poverty or inequality. so we haven’t figured out to get along as different races yet, i dont know why, seems pretty easy, but we’re gonna put that aside for the moment and get to work on poverty first, because that has a bigger impact on society (and facilitates racism). in fact, if we were to focus on poverty and economic inequality, we would do a lot to solve these other issues.

i don’t really believe in anything, but i believe in bob dylan

Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time.
But all the people can’t be all right all the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,”
I said that.

so when i read something like this, it alarms me, because i can see an entire rift break out as to how much you believe in your fellow man. the gist: christian mother writes a post on the freejesus.net forum about how her son came out to her, and she told him that she loved him but he was going to hell because he was gay, basically. the son reacts negatively, obviously, so the mother laments

What did I do wrong? I dont want to lose my son, but I fear I already have. I talked it over with his therapist, who had the ludicrous idea that homosexuality was unchangable and that trying to repress could lead to lots of psychological damage (I’ve dropped him and will try to be finding another therapist with more moral beliefs). I wouldnt be surprised if he’s the one who’s feeding my son all the homosexual propaganda about how its ‘ok’ to be gay. That, or how homosexuality has engulfed the media, making it seem ‘cool’ and ‘hip’ and how they were just another oppressed minority. You didnt have to worry about seeing two men making out on tv at my age! I dont want to sound like a fanatic, but Im worried what other effects will come out of this increasingly secular, immoral society obsessed with filth.

Am I too late? Or is it possible to save my son”

the son then killed himself. to which the mother replied, “I’m so distraught; I can’t stop crying! What did I do wrong? Is my son in Hell now for killing himself??” which is tremendously sad. because not only did this poor boy kill himself (most likely) because he felt unwanted and “sinful”, but the mother doesn’t even realize what she did to her son.

so the writer of the blog response is upset, he is angry with the mother, hates her, which leads him to conclude that “She deserved to die more than her son did. But even more than that, I hate fundamentalist Christianity.” bold statement, perhaps the seemingly clear-cutted nature of this event warrants such a harsh criticism of religion.

but then the comments on this blog post are worth a read, because it’s genuine rational (mostly) dialogue at its best. something that doesn’t happen enough these days it seems. for instance, and this is perhaps representative of the middle ground i feel as being caught between pro-religion and anti-religion:

Christianity is not a bad thing. The church of today and most of history seems to have missed the point. Jesus said we are all brothers. That’s why we should care for each other. We’re in this together. Christian, Muslim, Jew, Atheist, Gay, Straight, Conservative, Liberal, any other title you chose to give. It doesn’t matter. That’s what a Christian is. One who follows Christ. What did Christ do? Christ loved. I just wish more “Christians” understood that. That’s why you all hate Christianity. Not because it, in and of itself is bad, but because it’ message is so for distorted from the original that it is more recognizable amongst non-Christians than it is in the church. This is why the church of today has failed. This is why fundamentalism allows such wretched events to take place. This is why the church needs a change. This is why I’m sorry.

certainly, the christian right is extremely dangerous:

We now live in a nation where the top one percent control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, where we have legalized torture and can lock up citizens without trial. Arthur Schlesinger, in The Cycles of American History, wrote that “the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense—not only for their acquiescence in poverty, inequality and oppression, but for their enthusiastic justification of slavery, persecution, torture and genocide.”

The radical Christian right, calling for a “Christian state”—where whole segments of American society, from gays and lesbians to liberals to immigrants to artists to intellectuals, will have no legitimacy and be reduced, at best, to second-class citizens—awaits a crisis, an economic meltdown, another catastrophic terrorist strike or a series of environmental disasters. A period of instability will permit them to push through their radical agenda, one that will be sold to a frightened American public as a return to security and law and order, as well as moral purity and prosperity.

This movement—the most dangerous mass movement in American history—will not be blunted until the growing social and economic inequities that blight this nation are addressed, until tens of millions of Americans, now locked in hermetic systems of indoctrination through Christian television and radio, as well as Christian schools, are reincorporated into American society and given a future, one with hope, adequate wages, job security and generous federal and state assistance.

The unchecked rape of America, which continues with the blessing of both political parties, heralds not only the empowerment of this American oligarchy but the eventual death of the democratic state and birth of American fascism.

but again, we need to take the fruit fly theory and just concentrate on that massive proportion of things that christians and athiests both believe in. let’s forget gay marriage please, let’s focus on what jesus actually talked about, loving and looking out for each other. the golden rule and tithing are excellent rules; the world would be a far better place if everyone could live up to the example set by christians in those respects. and i know that it’s mostly religious groups who fund homeless shelters in the major cities of canada. to me that illustrates that despite there being many things i disagree with in the church, they get things done. and i like pragmatic, positive results action (sometimes i question why the hell i’m in academia…), so i cant stay mad at the churchies.

but i cant stay not not mad.

bill maher: “I don’t believe God is a single parent who writes books”

edit: if anyone wants to know how to make vibrant black and white photos out of colour photos, here’s what i do in photoshop cs2:

open a channel mixer adjustment layer (go to ‘layer’, then ‘new adjustment layer’, then check ‘use previous layer…’), check ‘monochrome’, then play around decreasing the red channel a bit, and add some blue and green. then open a levels adjustment layer under the channel mixer adjustment layer (under ‘layer’…), then tweak the levels. and then on the original picture layer, go to ‘image’ and then ’shadows and highlights’ to bring out more detail. and then if you wanna add back in some colour, just erase from the channel mixer layer (and probably up the saturation of that colour with another adjustment layer).