shitty deal

The last week hasn't been so great for me. My notebook is missing. Sketches, doodles, Spanish lessons, lousy poetry and somewhat better prose, notes from museums and sketches from ones which didn't allow photography, lyrics, musical ideas including a few nearly completed pieces in letters or messy tabs or both, art ideas and thoughts, quotes from novels and nonfiction that I wanted to remember and that I wanted to think on later, project ideas, geek notes, contact information, some diary stuff (though thankfully not all of it)... all of my creative output from the last three and a half months, gone. I know where it was: I'm anal about this book, and it and one novel were left in a hostel in Otavalo, I'm sure, when I repacked before running for a bus. Two friends went back to look for it, twice, and it's not there now. Three months, gone. The day before yesterday I got ripped off by a scamming bar manager, pushed around by an asshole statesider, then treated like shit by someone who I thought was a friend in a way that enhanced the actions of the manager and the statesider. Three days ago I got ripped off by a guide. Promised horses that would want to run, I got a mare with a greying mane and my friend's horse refused to even trot without being switched in the flank repeatedly. My saddle had buckles in a stupid spot - I think it was a child's saddle - meaning that my thighs got bruises where they touched it, making galloping impossible and trotting only possible in an uncomfortable and unsafe position with my thighs off the saddle. What was supposed to be a three hour ride with maybe an hour of checking stuff out on food was seven and a half hours, with maybe a half hour on foot. It ended up costing so much that my friend and I didn't even have enough for our busses the next day. What I like about horseback riding is galloping and being in touch with the horse, not having to convince it to walk at all, not being able to feel it underneath me, and riding in pitch black which was dangerous for it and I. And today the first version of this post got deleted because control-C, while IE claims means "copy", actually means "delete and don't allow ctrl-Z to bring back." Also, I hate Quito. And there's been lots of other small things that've just sucked but that aren't worth typing in. So. I have a blog. No blog is complete without some measure of emo whining. Here's hoping the quotient is full. /whine

photos

There's about a hundred photos up on my flickr. I haven't got time to actually write stuff up for them now, sadly. Also, older photos are apparently no longer available. Huzzah. Short version: wish I'd known that at 200 photos, old photos start being hidden. Old posts might now have links that don't work, I apologize. Anyways, new photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tothefront

FARC protests

Anti-FARC protests were in every major Colombian city yesterday. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/world/americas/05colombiaweb.html?em&ex=1202360400&en=18b1dc0346d81a93&ei=5087%0A http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0206/p25s01-woam.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7227532.stm

spidernews

The Mondo Spider was on the Discovery Channel. And I have no way to watch it, as apparently if your IP is from Colombia you don't get to use that online service. I damned well hope it's still working when I get back, though. In the meantime, the eatART opening is this Friday. http://www.eatart.org/ has some contact info if you want to go. Hint: you want to go.

More photomabos.

In Tsuraku, parrots were the only non-bug wildlife we saw (that I can recall, at least). Then we found out that they were vaguely tame and regularly fed by the neighbours. The other parrot that the neighbours sometimes fed. I'm really sad, I messed up the field of focus on this. I thought I'd focussed on his head, but I guess the camera refocussed afterwards, so... not bad when it's not at 100%, but not amazing. Hiking down from one of the Banos miradors, I interrupted these two, and got a little voyeuristic. On the coast of Ecuador there's a national park called Machililla. I rented a bike and headed there from the nearest town, down this road: There's an archaeological reserve in the park called Agua Blanca. It's not terribly amazing, but there were about a hundred goats crossing the road to there. I like rocks. (On the beach in Machalilla.) This cactus seems to grow all over the place randomly. This shot was taken in Machalilla, but two days ago I was walking with some friends along a river in Colombia and we came across one with a deep red fruit on it. We plucked and ate it, and it was rich and delicious. Also, it was covered in tiny pointy needles, which were somewhat less tasty and somewhat more painful. A shot from a cliffside walk in Machalilla: More scenery from Machalilla: I'm really choked about this shot. I'd been shooting birds, and thought I'd left the aperture at a setting which I clearly hadn't left it at. This was shot wide-open. At f8.0 or f11 this would've been a great shot. Damnit! It's hard to tell (since I can't post-prod it) but this crab was practically glowing it was coloured such a bright and vivid orange. More pufferfish shots from the Ruta del Sol. Check out his nasty looking teeth, especially: Ruta del Sol barnacles: There were a LOT of birds on Ecuador's coast. A bunch did this weird, oscillating dive where it looked like they turned into skip ropes being twitched. I'll put a video up eventually and you'll see what I mean. There were also pelicans, and islands. Wreckage! This boat fascinated me. I haven't seen many wrecked boats outside of Nova Scotia. More wreckage: More boat: This washed up one night when we were in the super touristy surf town of Montañita. It had more meat, but the vultures got to it. Note the egg by it's head. The turtle was probably killed by local dogs, and the eggs were mostly dug up by crabs after dogs opened the hole. These guys were getting dressed outside a museum in Guayaquil. I asked this one, and she was delighted to have her picture taken. The group is called Circus Taller, which in Spanish means Circus Workshop. Monkey. Need I say more? A fertility charm very similar to the rightmost one in this collection was part of the inspiration for the graf piece. Carvings of shamanic figures vary wildly across S. American cultures. Some are anthropomorphic, some are humans with animalistic features, some are just strangely styled. I liked this one, particularly. When we came out of the museum, the clowns rounded a corner and we walked right into them. They grabbed Em and started dancing with her, and I threw my camera in my bag (wish I'd snapped one of Em with them first!) and jumped into the fray. After a bit we extracted ourselves and I started snapping. In hindsight, I should've been shooting at ISO 200, since though it was a bright day and I needed at least a shutter speed of 1/200 to keep things crisp, a bit more depth of field would've been nice in many of these. One of my faves: This guy got dragged in the same way Em did, but after a bit of protest he got pretty into it: So cute! Here's most of Circus Taller (which translates to Circus Workshop), though the backdrop sucks. They didn't want to move, understandably, but they wanted a group shot. Funnily enough, afterwards I was packing my bag and chatting with Em, and this little kid comes up and asks for a photo with her. Not with the clowns, jesters, drummers and stiltwalkers who are a few metres away. No, with Emily. Aaaand that's the 38 pics I get to upload to Flickr this month. And it's only the 5th or so. But hey, highspeed and a major city. Love ya, miss ya, and stay healthy.