New Year's Eve! (Show 'em how we party in Spain)

Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Prospero año y felicidad

Happy Hanukkah too. Not surprisingly given its embarrassing history, Spain does not have an official Hanukkah song, so we'll go with this....

Feliz Hanukkah
Feliz Hanukkah
Prospero año y felicidadukkah

مرري سهرستمس إن أربس تو! (تهس إس فر يأ أمر)

سعيد عيد الميلا Amir

AND....(newly added to the fragments-of-foreign-languages bank)

καλά Χριστούγεννα!

Okay, well anyway, I just felt like I should put something up for the festivities. Please feel free to send money by check or PayPal in appreciation of our friendship (assuming we are friends) or (if we're not) out of the goodness of your heart, because you can take my word for it, respected person with money; it is going to a good cause. Amen.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Aaron

Navidad

I'm going to Greece for Christmas!!! WOOOOOOOOO!

Finally managed to get my act together and buckle down, so everything's set. I'll be there on some small island for 7 days, come back to Seville so I can spend the New Year with friends (2 of whom happen to be my new "bosses") at their country house. Should be good times. And then, with luck, we'll be going to Amsterdam for a few days to see what the city has to offer.

Belatedly Updated(ly)

New big things. Found a job, found a team, started working, started playing, girl is leaving (she's not staying) but life is good and goes on, the horse continues forward, galloping rapidly and I'm here, by the river, having the time of my life (and protecting my liver--don't worry parents).

I arrived 15 minutes late to my only class today (Anthropology of Development) on account of the damned #5 bus only to find an empty classroom. Then a straggler (one of the older women--late 50s, I would guess) told me that our professor decided that we should go to the bar instead of having class. Naturally, I was disgusted and offended by this suggestion. So I went to the bar, where I found the rest of the 20 of us, and stood outside drinking beer and talking about important things (none of which were actually important), enjoyed the wonderful weather (20 degrees celsius here during the day, in December!) and then came home for lunch.

First semester's been a blast, and though it doesn't really end until the end of January, most of the kids from my program (all but 5 of us) are leaving before Christmas--about a week. I'll especially miss one. Her leaving is not exactly a small thing. Like I said, life goes on. That's what I'm telling myself, and I think I'm doing a pretty good job believing it. For whatever reason, it seems somehow easier to see the upside of things here. Maybe it's a survival instinct--not much in the way of serious emotional support available--but whatever the case, I'm not complaining. Life is good, and hopefully long, and there are ever more and more adventures making themselves known. Speaking of which, I should get myself out of the house. Chelsea's birthday dinner tonight @ a great vegan restaurant in the Alemeda--should be good times and good wine. Always good company.

Thanksgiving

On this hallowed day
which Providence has given us,
I just want to take a moment to
thank all of the noble savages out there for your
most noble sacrifice.
Let me buy you a drink, Red
(as a sign of gratitude).

What's that? You've already got one?
Your own bottle of Mohawk?
Oh my goodness!
In that case, I'll take this one
for the both of us.

I've heard it said that
You can take the savage out of the plains
and the plains from the savage,
but you can't take the savage out of the savage.


So on this wonderful day
Drink up and give thanks
to our most noble savages
and their most generous,
Red Delicious
sacrifice.
Amen.


Hey! Save me a piece of that apple pie, dammit!
--

Brandy

Sometimes I wonder sometimes I wonder,
endangering my well-being in doing so.
Why we starve amid surplus
and kill killers
and hang leaders
Ignore the hungry, so inconvenient.
Fuck the poor
And shit on the righteous,
Self-righteous stump-speeches
And political polling
Television ratings
Tax cuts
Must change the producers
into consumers.
This is progress.
Fuck the consumers, we’re over-consuming.
Give birth
Consume to sustain
[develop]
'Need to sustain consumption rates,
Rates, rates, rates,
And this rape goes unpunished
while grams put fathers in jail
and we say justice has failed,
but they strive for jail;
'better than the neighborhood hustle.
[Have you seen Philly lately?]

We get hustled more every day
while snoring in our creaking beds, raining,
Dreaming dreams of sex and death, and exams unprepared for.
The Dream is a nightmare and I’m thrashing violent in my sheets
But I can’t wake up.

Somebody please
call Oprah
and ask her what to do.

Worth a Look: Radiohead - Creep Acoustic with flash animation

I feel like a total tool posting this on my blog (note: this is not an adolescent cry for help), but I'm a fan of this song, and the animation that goes with it does an excellent job of capturing the sentiment. Handelsman says: 2 thumbs up. Worth a watch.

Here's the youtube link (or you can look at the bottom of the page--it's probably already there):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JsHKoJM8uv8

A sudden heaviness from who knows where.

I retreat into myself for warmth and companionship

but come up empty-handed

and cold

[Is all that we see or seem...]




This morning I arrived at my door at 6 a.m.
alone again
and layed in bed
until 9 a.m.
and wondered, in between foreign dreams,
How?
A rhetorical question.