This is the second time I wrote this damn thing... when will I learn my lesson about Internt Explorer?

The Man himself
I start my post today with a picture of Lee ‘Mr. America’ Iacocca. I noticed a distressing lack of pictures of Lee in American media prior to my departure, and I am attempting to correct that. Not just another corporate suck, Iacocca was an Italian-Catholic in a world dominated by WASPs, and by becoming a corporate powerhouse he helped turn asshole white protestant businessmen into asshole white businessmen more generally. Hats of to you, Pioneer Lee (I actually don’t ordinarily wear hats, but I’ve been meaning to get one so I could take it off out of respect). And for my readers who think this Iacocca thing is weird or unfunny, as far as I know I only have two readers, and I’m convinced that Heather will find this funny, and that my Dad will love me no matter what. Maybe once I get a cord to do it I’ll start posting pictures I’ve been taking.
I’m in Arequipa, but first let me say that the boys who run the internet cafes in Peru seem to think they can play loud, annoying, 8-bit ringtone music in their cafes to the annoyance of their customers. Which, I guess as long as they all do it, they can, cause where else can I go? Plus, given the lack of annoyance over the Miami Vice fiasco, as far as I know I’m the only one who’s bothered. Anyways: Arequipa. It’s a beautiful city. The old center is built almost entirely of sillar, a white stone quarried from a volcano (El Misti) nearby and used exclusively for Arequipan architecture. The plaza de armas is even nicer than the one in Pisco (no surprise, since Arequipa is 10 times bigger), and is full of pigeons so tame that if you sit down they’ll sit down next to you (and they’re fun to run through, they all fly up together in a mass flock, thousands of them, it’s really cool. You know for years biologists were puzzled as to how large flocks of birds stayed in formation, how the one in the back knew what the one in the front was doing, since they would move together almost instantaneously, even in flocks of hundreds or thousands of birds. Some scientists even postulated super-luminal, faster-than-light communication. Then a chaos mathematician had the idea that that wasn’t necessary: if the two birds behind the lead bird follow it’s movements, and the birds behind those birds follow those movements, then that pattern could continue all the way to the back, giving the illusion of instantaneous communication without any fancy methodology. Low and behold, biologists now think that is indeed how large flocks move together; each bird pays extremely close attention to just the birds in from of it to stay in formation); at night there is music and acro-balancers and ice cream vendors and old men (more old men); the plaza is surrounded by old cobblestone streets, which are surrounded by sillar arcades (I love that I can use architectural terms in context here. Until I was 16 I thought arcades were where video games were, and until now I never actually saw one). The surrounding area is comprised of low-rises, also mostly sillar, many with interior courtyards that empty into shops or houses. The city is like a treasure hunt: at night the shops close their doors and bring in their signs, so houses are indistinguishable from shops. It gives it a bit of an eerie feeling actually, like a big long hallway of locked doors. And some stuff is only open at certain times of day, so the internet cafes I’m sure I saw that afternoon are gone that evening and I’m wondering if I’m lost again. And like I said, the interior courtyards are full of other shops, and thanks to a lack of signage there is no end to stuff to dig out (which seems like it would be annoying for people who aren’t like me that have lots of time to spare. Maybe there’s a lot of word of mouth? The shops are a lot like in other poor countries, maybe 15 square feet selling one thing: this is a newsstand, this store sells snacks, this store sells weights for scales, etc.) There are a ton of taxis here. Sitting at a corner restaurant I counted the cars going by, and I figure 2/3 to ¾ of the cars are taxis. And of the ones that aren’t, you have to discount the buses and tourist vans before you can figure the number of private cars.
I went to my first South American market here yesterday, it was so much fun I had this big dopey grin on my face the whole time. I was the only gringo in there, and I went in to shop for a hat (to take off out of respect for Mr. Iacocca), but ended up wandering the stalls for an hour, looking at cheeses, pigs feet, fruit stacked 15 feet high, most which I didn’t recognize and some of which I only saw at certain times of the year, like starfruit, and potato vendors with two dozen kinds of potatos, and then this old lady started feeding me olives, and she had like 15 kinds of olives, and I didn’t know what I would do with a bag of olives but I bought some anyways. And wool and watches and stereos and shoes, and fortunately for me I know how to ask where the shoe store is thanks to Quintin Tarentino, and the hat store is basically the same thing, just take the noun and add ‘ria’ to it and you have the store, so hat is ‘sombrero’ and hat store is ‘sombreria.’ Oh, I guess you drop the last noun. What am I, a Spanish teacher? Anyways, Donde es el sombreria? (I can’t find the upsidedown question-mark right now) I didn’t buy a hat (they were a bit pricier than I had thought and I didn’t have much money on me), but the ladies got a laugh at my expense listening to my Spanish and had fun making me try hats on anyways.
I went to a park today that had a bunch of animals caged inside, like monkeys, hawks, parrots, and some long-nosed mammally looking things with ringed tails I didn’t recognize. They all looked pretty stressed out, pacing their cage, or in the case of the hawk flying the 1 ½ feet from its one branch to its other branch. At first I though it was sad, but then I remembered that the Seattle zoo was even worse 25 years ago when all the animals lived in indoor concrete boxes with no windows. At least these guys got to be outside. Which probably means that in another 25 years the Peruvians will be way ahead of us in zoo technology. We’d better get congress on this. Call Ted Stevens. He’d be on board. After all, a zoo is not just a big truck that you put something on (if you haven’t seen Stevens talking about the internets and net-neutrality, you should. It’s on you-tube on a daily show. Just search ‘daily show Ted Stevens’ I bet that would work. It’s worth it).
Actually speaking of innovations, the Peruvians are way ahead of us in the world of pastries. Do you like jelly donuts? I do (I’m particularly fond of white butter-cream filled with chocolate icing. I know, it’s deep-fried sugar filled sugar, but if you’re ever buying donuts and wonder what one I would want, now you know). But have you ever eaten a jelly donut where it’s all plain donut, and then one big bite of filling? Or where the filling gushes out the side and your hands get all sticky and oogy? I hate that. But let me tell you, I was eating a little cornucopia shaped philo-dough pastry filled with this caramel stuff the other day, and I ate the first one from the back, to prevent spillage, only to notice that the back was hollow – and empty. Then I realized that since it was funnel-shaped, as you ate from the front the filling would fill the hollow area in the back, ensuring even filling distribution without getting your hands sticky. Brilliant! Sure enough that was the case as I enjoyed my second pastry. I’m telling you, the Peruvians have got us licked in pastry technology. Better call Lee Iacocca. It sounds like the US pastry industry might need a bailout soon.


The Ford Pinto: Envisioned by Lee, made possible by Congressional loan guarantees, and powered by an explosive design!