Stop and Wonder

In just under 3 weeks I'll be back state side. I'm starting to feel the sense of excitement that I've come to associate with moving. Pulling up roots and moving is similar to riding a roller coaster. If you've never ridden one it might freak you out. Who knows if it's safe? How does everything work? After a few rides though those worries fall away and the thrill of something new and different is all you look for.

UPDATE: This was on the frontpage of CNN this morning: Girl's feet severed on ride at Six Flags. I hope that's not a bad omen for our move.

I figure I ought to update you on the different projects and things that have been going on here before I forget or I get caught up in moving. Christine is really the one still involved in the humanitarian work. I sit in the house all day working on web pages trying to save up for the move. Moving to a 3rd world country is easy, but going from a $75/rent to something 10 times that much takes some saving up.

One of the things Christine really wanted to do was get the schools we had been working at some sets of the same book. The kids here never practice reading and the only way to do it as a class is if everyone has their own copy. It's pretty sad when you see these kids that are 15 and 16 having to sound out each syllable before they recognize what word it is.

Using her new connections at the Casa Pastoral she was able to find people in the U.S. with the ways and means. I'm not sure how many sets are coming, but I know that there's going to be so many they're going to both the boys' and girls' schools as well as one of the villages. The kids aren't going to be allowed to take the books home, which is really for the best. I'd like to think they'd take care of them, but I've seen where they live and one good rainstorm or bad older brother and it's gone.

The girls' school is getting the first sets and Christine put the girls to work making pop-up thank you cards. Arts and crafts have really been the only way I've seen to truly get the kids involved and excited. Anything to stimulate their creativity and imagination is worth its weight in gold here. Sometimes its pretty hard to keep them from copying each others personalizing of stuff. If you show them an example and yours happens to have a blue circle on it, no matter how many times you tell them not to copy you, half of the projects will have blue circles if not more.

The Casa Pastoral also does this thing where they give out fertilizer to farmers. It's a very unsustainable form of aid and the farmers are now totally dependent on it. Nothing is happening so that these farmers won't not need more next season. The main reason they need the fertilizer is because all they grow is corn and beans and corn is one of the hardest crops there is on soil. They also don't compost or do any of the things that responsible sustainable farming involves. Darren tried to teach them how to compost but when the Casa Pastoral is just handing out bags of fertilizer no one cares to learn about composting or growing anything different.

Thats really just a microcosm of the whole problem of international aid. I'd like to believe that the IMF, World Bank, and WTO were really trying to help these people but nothing I've seen leads me to that conclusion. Aid is given but the poor are taught to rely on the aid and so their situation never improves. If anything they're hurt by this, just like animals in zoos never learn how to hunt or take care of themselves, if they're released into the wild without training they die. Its the training side thats completely lacking here. Give them fertilizer but show them how to do the other things and then only give them less and less each year.

I also wanted to include this video of a guy working a loom here in El Salvador. Weaving has always amazed me, i just don't understand how it works. It's hard to imagine coming up with such a crazy contraption. It almost seems like he's playing some weird instrument.

On a completely unrelated note we helped one of the people at the Casa Pastoral get a cheap plane ticket to the states. I think we saved him $300-400 on what he'd previously been told by the airlines. Anyway, he was so happy he invited us to his father's day celebration in one of the villages called Las Delicias. His father-in-law is one of the few farmers who actually grows all kinds of different things like yucca, tomatoes, some grains I'd never heard of, etc. He apparently got a lot of land after the war, apparently he was playing both sides.

It's difficult to ask people here about the war without feeling like intrusive. The main thing is that the U.S. was the main reason it drug on for so long and was so deadly. If they hadn't been supporting the military and its hold on the government they would have quickly fallen to the rebels. So especially if they were rebels they're wary telling a gringo about the part they played. Alejandro's father-in-law was pretty forthright though and even showed us his radio from the war. He was obviously a rebel but said he didn't use a gun, he was an "arbiter", which in my mind means he was playing both sides. That would also explain all the land he got after the war.

Also, I'm pleased to report that I'm up to $4.84 from the google ads on the site. Although I have to say it would probably be more if I talked more about plastic surgery, laser hair removal, and gold bricks. Ads for humanitarian organizations and causes only seem to be paying out the minimum. I don't really mind, plastic surgery ads would creep me out, better to advertise something I agree with. By the way, I only get money when you click on the ads, so find something nice and help me out ;-).

Posted by Tao at 06:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3421) | TrackBacks (0)

I first went to Costa Rica about four years ago and it was at that time that many Costa Ricans were protesting the possible privatization of their communications company, at the same time teachers were protesting their pension fund being slashed. Apart from the graffiti I didn't actually come face to face with the demonstrations until several days before I left on my six week trip. The teachers were marching from the capitol to another city nearly 20km away and I was on a bus that going that same way. Well, needless to say it was a hot 30-45 minutes on the bus until we got around them. It didn't occur to me that they were intentionally blocking the highway.

The last day on my way to the airport I learned that blocking the highway wasn't just something that they happened to do while marching it was a tactic in and of itself. As we actually had a flight to catch it was more than just a little frustrating for us. Luckily we had a resourceful bus driver who ducked around off ramps to get around the protest and get us to the airport in time. I remember thinking at the time that it seemed like a good way to turn people against your cause.

Yesterday the group that Christine works for organized a protest against the dams the government is building, among other things like mining and water privatization. Basically, we blocked off an entire lane of the Pan American highway at a major intersection, effectively blocking another major road.

I'll get into the techniques and my list of things that would make it significantly more effective in a minute but I think it's more important to discuss what exactly they were protesting. The government has plans to build at least two new major dams on top of the two they already have. These new dams would flood quite a large area of land and displace an untold number of people. Considering that El Salvador has the population density of Japan but instead of living in cities they all live in the country side, especially along rivers, it could be a lot of people.

The other two dams are used to generate electricity for the country, which I'm not against really. I think that if it were done properly a lot of people could use the stored water behind the dam during the rainy season to irrigate their crops. That's really the best time to grow stuff because it's so sunny. However, I don't think they use the stored water that way and really they ought to be using solar power, we're in the tropics for pete's sake.

In my opinion the main issue here is recompensation. The poor displaced people will be getting nothing or very little in return for their lost land. The issue is that after the civil war the government was supposed to give out parcels of land to the poor. However, ARENA, the military side's party, has been in charge of the federal government since then and has been quick to dole out the parcels to its supporters and completely halted giving land titles to the FMLN supporters. Thus the government won’t have to pay those people for their flooded land.

The other issues at hand were the gold mining companies being given free reign and no pollution restrictions. The rivers that they are dredging are quickly being contaminated with mercury and other nasty things that the poor have no choice but to drink. One of the things that strikes you when you're here in El Salvador is how many deformed people there are. You'll probably see more in one day than months or even years in the U.S. Of course, a lot of those effects are from the unregulated use of DDT for so many years, but the mercury poisoning is going to start having an effect in the form of Minamata disease.

I haven't heard any hard details about the water privatization. That's really one of the frustrating things about the protesters here. They don't do much if any research on the things that they're protesting. That's why I can't tell you exactly what the dam will be used for, how many people will be displaced, who is going to benefit, etc. The leaders just seemed to be assuming that every major government project was evil, which isn't that terrible of an assumption here. It's also probably the reason their only chants were, “No to the dams, No mining, No to water privatization!”

When Christine and I got there we immediately wanted to help so we set about handing out the flyers they'd printed to the stopped traffic. Most of them didn't seem too thrilled about the whole thing. I think that's the effect sitting in 30 minutes of traffic because of you does to people. We probably handed out a thousand or so before the whole protest ran out. We could easily have handed out 10 times as many.

The flyers were pretty ridiculous it was a half sheet of paper printed on both sides in size 12 font. There was one heading that may have been in 14 point font. The problem is most people here, if they can read, can't see very well and are intimidated by that much writing. The other thing is that actual text of the flyer was all about Jesus and how he would be against the dams and would want the people to keep their land. It had nothing really informative about the facts of what was going on with the dams, arguments for and against, etc.

They had the same problem with the banners they had made. They tried to fit 3 sentences on a banner, which were so cluttered I couldn't even read them from 10 feet away. On top of that they were holding them parallel to the single lane we had open so unless people could read them in the instant they were driving by, they might as well have been blank.

One other problem I had with the whole thing was that they drove in a big truck to carry these large speakers, a gas generator all to amplify their voice when a simple megaphone would have done the trick and actually been of better quality probably as the microphone kept cutting in and out.

Anyway, that was a lot of criticism but I really do think they're doing the right thing. I just want them to be more effective at it. Pissing off thousands of people and not effectively telling them why you're wasting their time seems counter productive. Christine mentioned that it would be better to spread out around a big city at stop lights, I think she's on to something. Of course they would be missing out on the solidarity building that the centralized speaking provides, but there's no reason not to do both.

Posted by Tao at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Last Wednesday the city held an Earth Day parade. It was really a march for action to do more about protecting Berlin from disasters, specifically landslides. I was pretty impressed that people were marching with signs saying "Protect the Environment" and wearing costumes as flowers, armadillos, whatever they could think of. It all seemed very out of character as I've never lived in a place where the people take their environment as much for granted. Sure, the U.S. has its problems but people value their parks and are at least mildly informed and concerned about the environment. Needless to say it was refreshing to see here.

The parade went all the way up to Brisas Del Sol(Sun Breezes), the little community where the most of the damage and deaths occurred. We marched into the provisional hospital area set up at the school where several speakers delivered their calls to action. Mostly they said that the government isn't doing its job to protect them and its an outrage.

The most interesting part was when Don Tomas, the english teacher at the girls' school and also a member of the city hall, read an update on the situation and a letter they were sending to the President and the Congress. Currently the death count is at 5 with 1 still missing, but theres not any real hope for the missing person. There were 9 homes totally destroyed and another 60 with partial damage. There are around 60 people still living in the Catholic church and they're looking at building provisional housing for them until the rainy season is over. At which point I suppose they'll go back and rebuild their homes where they can get wiped out next season.

The letter was an exercise in absurdity to me. You see, the ARENA party has the presidency and a few more seats than the FMLN in congress. Last year Berlin elected an FMLN mayor and its no secret that ARENA doesn't equally divide up the funds among the municipalities. Nonetheless, the letter went on to rail against the president and DEMAND that they do something or anyone else who gets hurt or dies is their fault. They then went on to say that they want $2 million dollars to fix the problem although they aren't even sure what they are going to do to solve the problem.

I've heard that they brought in an engineer to look at the situation and he said there was nothing that could be done. So they've been drafting up plans to buy a whole new piece of land and build all new houses for these people. There are probably 80 houses in this community, and I guarantee someone else would just move into them if they were abandoned. The other thing is that anyone with a little common sense can see that there are a number of relatively small things that could be done to make the situation much better and decrease the chances of major damage and deaths.

First of all, the drainage is ridiculous. They built a solid cement "bridge" that blocks the natural path of the water. That caused the water to push around it and come into peoples houses and was almost certainly the direct cause of the destroyed house and killed father and son that I posted a picture of in the last entry. They simply need to dig out the quebrada and make it easier for the water to come through in a controlled manner. That simple and would cost nowhere near $2 million. The other thing they could do, apart from abandoning the entire community, is abandon the first row of houses closest to where the land rises dramatically and landslides would be the most harmful. Then demolish them and build a barrier out of the rubble. Thats a couple days work on a bulldozer, simple enough. Anyway, thats what I'd do if I were mayor.

Interestingly enough, the current mayor was the one who bought this plot of land for the homeless people that were living in shacks along one of the roads into town. He helped bring in NGOs which then built them cinder block homes. Of course, now they blame him for putting them in harms way. My opinion is that I'm sure the mayor didn't put them there with that intention and it seems very callous and ungrateful to think that way. The same guy is now trying everything he can think of to help them.

Posted by Tao at 02:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

In honor of May Day and El Salvador's Labor Day I've decided to voice my thoughts on immigration. I had almost anticipated having a more pro-immigration view after having lived here, but I've come to an altogether different conclusion. It seems to me that immigration is having an altogether negative effect on El Salvador and I'm sure it's just the same in just about every other third-world country. I believe it's positively impacting the U.S. economy, but causing societal fractions at the same time.

So here's how it plays out in my mind. El Salvadorans benefit in the short-term from immigration by having remittances, or money sent back to them from relative in the U.S. However, the money coming back is a crutch. Little of that money goes to infrastructure. In fact, most El Salvadorans are more likely to buy a TV than to invest in their home, clean water or even in another way for them to make income of their own. So they're not developing anyway to replace their dependence on these relatives, who sooner or later will get tired of sending money, as many already have.

The next major problem is that of the "brain drain". The brightest and most promising young people are the first to leave. They don't see any future here and just want out. The explosion of cable TV in just about every home has made the problem that much worse. The kids see the wealth, exaggerated wealth on top of that, and then compare that to their own life and country. You wouldn't believe the lengths people go to for TVs either. They will carry car batteries for miles on top of their heads to get them charged in town just to watch this junk.

On the other side of the border, the U.S. is basically stealing these immigrants' labor for pennies on the dollar. It's well documented that slavery is extremely profitable. So this leads to a boon for the U.S. economy, especially in the unskilled labor sectors like agriculture. As if they needed more help on top of their subsidies.

The flip-side is that these workers have to hide themselves from the "legal" society and eventually end up forming large ghettos. The problem is that now there is no reason for them to integrate with the rest of society. Why learn the language, customs, and civic duties even if you are legal, when you can pretend like you're in your old country? By separating themselves, they alienate themselves from the "legal" citizens and become a target for blame. I guarantee as soon as there is a big depression the U.S. immigrants are going to become a major target for blame and confrontation.

So now you want a solution. The current debate is basically, does the U.S. let them in? How many of them? For how long? etc. This misses the root cause of the problem altogether and is typical of American approaches to problems who's actual solution is unpalatable to the elite and really most Americans unwilling to make sacrifices to live in a more just and caring world.

So how do we find the root cause? Well, it's easy. You just start asking questions. Why do people immigrate in the first place? It's because there aren't any jobs, or at least jobs that pay a fair wage where they live. So then, why are there no decent pay jobs in those places? There's no money in the economy they live in. Any foreign investment is simply to take advantage of them by offering them low-wage jobs that are difficult at best to live on. Low wages means that little money is being left in the countries economy and the only reason the company came to that country was probably only because the government gave it some serious tax exemptions.

A long story short. It comes down to the fact that people would not immigrate to the states if they did not have to. They would much rather prefer to stay with their family in a place where they understand the customs and traditions and are generally comfortable. They only move because the United States and other developed countries are hoarding the wealth and using things such as "free trade", which allows unfair advantage to well-established businesses with large amounts of resources, to stack the odds in their favor to keep it that way.

The only way to solve this is by creating a more just distribution of wealth in the world. It would involve the "haves" sacrificing their power and luxuries for the "have-nots" so that we can all become "have-somes". This would go far beyond solving immigration, but it would almost certainly eliminate or severely reduce terrorism, child and spousal abuse, drug abuse, violence of many kinds, theft, illiteracy, ignorance, I could just keep going. Could you imagine the outpouring of good feelings towards the "haves" who sacrificed for their brothers? All for trading in their 80" plasma screens, BMWs, and Diamonds for something slightly less comfortable and flashy.

Now I know most people just think this is a nice dream, but that'll never happen, blah blah blah. And you're right, as long as people don't want it to happen, it won't ever happen. I think most of the reason people feel like this is because they've never seen any real change in their lives and don't see how it could be any different. So really it's just a side effect of a lack of imagination and desire to help others.

My point is that we really miss the point when we talk about immigration as the actual act of people crossing the border. It's about WHY they want to cross that border.

Posted by Tao at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

It occured to me recently while reading "Running with Scissors", watching the movie and then subsequently reading "The Kite Runner" that a book will always deliver the experience of an author better than any movie or non-documentary ever can. Even an actual documentary bends the reality of the experience simply by its existence. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the heisenburg uncertainty principle, but simply put it means that we can never know for certain anything because the act of us observing it changes it. It's the same thing when you introduce cameras into a situation, and anyone who has been filmed can attest to this.

The next best thing is for an author to simply experience the situation in its entirety naturally and then write about it later when they have time to process and think about the details and wording to best evoke the situation in their own mind and eventually others minds. If you try to take it another step further with film you often end up overlapping the author's perception with the perception of directors, editors and actors in the final product. None of whom experienced what the author did. It's basically a second hand interpretation, now matter how sincerely made. Documentaries are good at informing people who do not read on the basics of a time and place, but can never be as direct as the written word.

Now, I've been translating a little bit lately and let me tell you, if it got translated a second time there is no telling how it would sound. Surely the greatest example of this is the Bible. As if translating it several times was not enough, there have also been rulers over the years such as Constantine who have destroyed entire sections of the Bible because it would have interfered with his plans. That's editing with a vengence. I sincerely believe if Jesus himself had written the Bible like Muhammad did with the Koran AND no one had mangled it to their own ends that we would be living in a different world today.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: don't be a fool, stay in school. You can't believe everything you read, but you also can't trust what you watch either. It makes me look forward to working on the library back down in Berlin. I know my old comm. Prof Kackman would be proud of this post, but man do I loathe that guy.

Posted by Tao at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been getting a lot of questions about how it feels to be back in the U.S. and what I miss about El Salvador so I figured I'd just go ahead and post it. I think a lot of people expect that I would come back and be amazed by the excess and plain shininess of the U.S., but to be honest it's exactly how I remember it. I could still vividly imagine every gas guzzling, suit wearing, fast food eating detail of what life was like here and not much has changed. I guess I'd intially would have described it as just coming home from vacation and missing where you'd just been visiting, namely the tropical climate. As the days have gone on more and more differences have come to my attention.

The first thing started in the airport in Atlanta where my flight was delayed 6 hours due to nothing. I was sitting with some people from Jackson, the majority of them being obese, and they just went on and on about different BBQ places. I just thought how eating was just a hobby for these people. My only addition to their conversation was when they started praising big d's bbq whom I recently finished a website for. They couldn't believe they had a webpage.

I was starving after the first 4 hours sitting around the airport, but I just couldn't bring myself to buy fast food. I've eaten from time to time in El Salvador, but it felt dirty and wrong to me now. Before we left Christine and I also decided to go back to our non-meat low-dairy diet. I say diet, not in terms of losing weight, but as in we eat a diet of this or that for purely healthy reasons. Animal protein is the source of cancer, for those of you who missed my review of "The China Study". Anyway, we figured if we could make it while we were here, then we can make it anywhere.

One thing I've come to feel more strongly about is how small communities like mine in El Salvador get sapped dry of their money. I think it would make a big impact if they'd only spend as much as they could within their own economy and less at coporate retailers that just ship the profits out of the country. I guess it boils down to disliking corporations before I went down and now I just plain despise them. It wasn't just living in El Salvador that made my feelings more intense, it was watching documentaries like "The Corporation" and "The Money Masters" and then just reading articles on-line about communities using their own money to stimulate the local economy.

Yesterday I had an experience that brought me several new realizations. I'm currently filing paperwork to start my own business: "Stop and Wonder Web Development"...you may have noticed. Christine and I have had several run-ins with Central American bureaucracy which I would describe as a form of blunt force trauma. I'd done some research on what I'd actually need to do while here and it all seemed rather easy. So my dad dropped me off at the secretary of state's office, which apparently files business licenses for every type of business except my lowly sole proprietor one. My fault, bad research, so I walked across downtown Jackson to City Hall, and then I was directed to another building, where I filled out the single page application and then waited for the woman to finish her conversation about Jerome's new haircut. I was then sent upstairs to zoning, where they looked through some big maps and produced stamp for my application. Then it was back down to the first desk. Sure, now we're just going to send the fire department out to inspect your office(which is the back storage closet in the Computer Co-op). Then I can come back and finish the remaining hoop jumps. The realization is, all governments are bureaucracies. If I had to guess I'd say it was intentionally set up that way to make jobs for the elected officials' friends.

After that little fiasco I walked around trying to find a bank to exchange my foreign money. I knew there was a big trustmark downtown somewhere that I'd heard would do it but couldn't remember where it was exactly. In El Salvador I have no shame in asking for directions, but having to ask them for somewhere in my hometown made me cringe. I'm not sure if it has to do with the language barrier in El Salvador acting as a sort of security blanket making it feel less real, or if it's just the fact that I look like a gringo who should have absolutely no idea where he is so it's not hard to play the part. It feels like it's a little of both. Long story short, the bank wouldn't change my money because I don't have an account. Gee thanks.

I didn't have a ride home from downtown so I had planned on taking the Jackson public bus system which runs straight from there to the Co-op. I've never ridden the buses here, but I'd seen them out and they seemed like new quality ones. I decided that rather than sit at the bus stop, I'd walk until one caught up with me. I probably walked over 2 miles before one caught up with me 200 yards from the Co-op door. If I had been in El Salvador I wouldn't have made it more than a block or two without one passing me, especially considering I was on the main thoroughfare through the city. Maybe there's a plus to people not being able to afford cars. I read somewhere that if you factored in the cost of the pollution, a gallon of gas would cost over $11.

Overall, it's been nice to see my friends and it'll be nice to see even more of them in Austin, but I probably could have done without this trip. After the vacation to Honduras and Costa Rica I was ready to settle in and start up our projects again, but now I have to wait. I'm certainly doing some useful stuff with the new business setup, bringing the cat back to get neutered, and helping my dad get caught up after the vacation. It still just feels like I'm running errands and not getting down to brass tacks.

PS - If you're looking for a good fight I guarantee you can win, try flying your cat into the U.S. without innoculation papers. The U.S. doesn't require them although every single customs agent on both sides of whatever border will think you do have to have them. It'll turn into a long battle with you eventually being proved correct, but don't expect any "oh, wow, sorrys", it'll be more like an "ok, move along".

Posted by Tao at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

I've just spent the evening watching a movie called "The Money Masters" and I felt like it exposed a major root of injustice in the world. The more people that know about it the better, so I'm going to pass on what I've found out or you could simply watch this shorter movie clip I found on YouTube of another similar documentary. You can also go to this website: Secrets of the Federal Reserve for more information.

Basically, the Federal Reserve, is neither Federal or a Reserve, but called that to trick the american people. The bill passing it into law as our central bank was snuck in. Three senators in 1913 waited until everyone had left for the Christmas recess and been promised no more voting would occur during that time, but 3 senators stayed and "passed" the bill on a voice vote, just the 3 of them.

The origin of this scam goes back to long before the time of Jesus, but the way it's set up now really began in England. Goldsmiths, by their nature, became the bankers. They would hold on to your gold and give you a paper receipt. The receipts were far easier to carry and trade than the gold, this was the beginning of paper money. The Goldsmiths began to notice that it was rare for much of the receipts to be exchanged for gold. So what they did was they started printing out receipts for gold they didn't have and started lending that out at an interest rate. This little beauty of a scam is now known as "fractional reserve banking".

The Federal Reserve literally prints money out of nothing, then the government essentially borrows the money at an interest rate by selling them government bonds. The answer is simply for the government to print it's own money, which has been done many times throughout history and has been accompanied by times of great prosperity. I guess most people believe the government IS making it's own money, like I did. This is an enormous power, and it has been well documented, but little publicized that the Federal Reserve is responsible for causing ALL of the great depressions in our country's history. They simply call in the loans and then when people default they gobble up their property for pennies on the dollar. The wealth doesn't disappear, it just gets put in the international banker's pockets. Our government allows this to happen because the bankers fund their campaigns, directly and indirectly by giving loans to corporations who then lobby and fund the politicans. The reason it's not well publicized is that the bankers learned long ago to buy media and politicians to control the situation.

If all of that weren't bad enough, these bankers promote as much war as possible, because war is the greatest single way of making debt. The more debt, the more interest, and so on. Many times they initiate the wars themselves, then fund both sides to increase the amount of debt and length of the war. The American Revolution was started because the Central Bank of England, run by the same people, restricted the money flow and so forced the government to tax the American colonies more heavily. The Federal Reserve actually funded the rise of Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, and Saddam Hussein. James Garfield was assasinated after coming out against the Federal Reserve, Lincoln planned to continue printing his own greenbacks in opposition to the bankers, and Kennedy was assasinated immediately after signing an executive order stripping the Federal Reserve of it's power.

Anyway, I feel like these international bankers may be the root cause of a huge amount of suffering in the world and reason we can't seem to have peace. I want to study it further, because it's still somewhat confusing to me. All of the documentary videos I've seen are fairly old and almost too specific for me to wrap my head around it, I'm interested in maybe making a small updated and easier to understand animation or documentary. But then...where would I get funding? Do you guys think its worth doing?

PS - You can sign an on-line petition to abolish the Federal Reserve and begin printing our own money here.

Posted by Tao at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

   First of all, Merry Christmas! It doesn't feel much like Christmas here what with it being in the mid-70's every day. I think it was actually colder when we first got here in May. You may notice a underwater theme for our tree: yellow submarines, sea horses, and pineapples...they make good underwater housing I hear. We'll be spending Christmas here in Berlin and I thought I might feel homesick, but it just hasn't happened. It might be that my family is coming to down to see me right after Christmas that makes it so easily bareable. In fact, we'll be going scuba diving for new year's, which is one of the reasons for the tree decoration. That said, this will probably be my last real post before we leave on the 26th. I do plan on posting a neat video slideshow I made for Christine's life skills class before then though.

   So every morning I wake up and the first thing I do is sit down at the computer and go to www.thehungersite.com and click on all of the tabs to donate food, books, child healthcare, animal food, several square feet of rainforest, and even mammograms from the money the sites generate off of advertising. I often stop and think about that bowl of food or wonder what book it is that I've managed to donate to some child somewhere. It's a ritual, a habit, but a good one. Where rituals go wrong is when those participating have forgotten why they are doing them.

   I've never been a religious person. I find things awe-inspiring and beautiful, and I don't need or want someone to explain it to me. I believe that morals are not something that has to be carved into stone and taught. People know how they feel and also have the ability to empathize and know how they would feel in another person's place. I believe thats all that is required for natural morality.

   It seems the reason most people are religious is out of an inherent desire to do good, because simply put, doing good things, making others happy, relieving suffering, those things make us feel good. It's a win/win situation. Religion is just an organized way of doing that, because teamwork allows us to accomplish greater things than could ever be done individually. Of course there are other reasons for being religious, simply the need to be accepted by a group of people, but I like to think that inherent desire is at the root.

   A little over a week ago El Salvador and many latin countries celebrated the day of the virgin of Guadalupe. I had assumed that all of these virgins I'd seen were all just THE virgin, but I've been wrong this entire time. The virgin of Guadalupe was a virgin that appeared to a boy on a hill in Mexico, how he knew she was a virgin I can't say. This was around the time the spaniards were raping and pilaging and the virgin gave this boy a message, she said that everyone should accept the europeans and accept Catholicism. The virgin by the way was an indigenous woman, although you wouldn't guess it from her pale statues. Anyway, the message was miraculously spread far and wide and helped the spaniards convert much of latin america.

   The 20th of December is not the actual day the virgin appeared, but the day that she stomped the devil back down to hell. The night before everyone lights fires outside and sets of fireworks, which down here are basically small chunks of dynamite and gunpowder. Incidentally, firework production is a booming business for child labor here, who else could fit their tiny little fingers in them to pack down the powder for 40 cents a day. It was pretty enjoyable, although I had to wonder if the virgin would approve of the tire fires in her honor.

   The next day people dress up "indigenously" to honor her. Mainly they just dress up the children because I think the adults are too embarassed for the most part. However, another part of it which I find really sad is that I don't think they even understand what indigenous is to them anymore. I'd seen little boys dressed up with white clothes with patches on them before but I'd basically assumed they were dressing up as clowns. The girls put on way way too much make-up and wear bright spanish-style dresses. I know their hearts are in the right places but I feel like it's just another sad reminder of the successful cultural invasion thats taken place.

   Anyway, I was tricked into attending a mass at the Catholic church in town. I had been told we were just going to the park for a celebration. While we sat there and I tried to understand what was being said through the horribly distorted loudspeakers I got gradually more and more frustrated. I could tell that everyone was simply repeating the same rituals mindlessly. I thought of the hundreds of people spending their time on these rituals that had lost all meaning. I have no doubt that it's like that around the world. The incredible waste of time and energy that could actually be used to resolve the problems that these people were coming to church for.

   So these people mill about day after day, say their prayers, obediently listen and sing along, when all of that time they could be building houses for the poor(themselves) or schools, or teaching each other better ways to farm, or doing any number of things that would take actual steps toward relieving suffering and all of those inherently good things that lie at the root of their religion. I'd have a lot more respect for religion and religious leaders if there was a lot less praying and a lot more action.

   I guess the point I'm making is that it's easy just to do things because you've been doing it that way for so long. We have to be vigilant in asking ourselves why we do the things we do. Curiosity and questioning are the things that keep our eyes open and we have to make that the ritual. Amen.

   I'm done with preaching, it's time for some sacrifices. This wouldn't be any kind of a post if I made a play on ritual killings and didn't produce, so here's some blood-letting for you. The neighbors slaughter a pig every week or two and Christine asked to kill it, don't ask me why. I used to be somewhat squeamish around stuff like this, but that's almost completely faded now. It's obviousy nowhere in the picture for Christine. In a way I feel stronger now that it's gone, but I also don't know that I like being accustomed to it either. Sorry for the sideways video, it's too big of a pain to turn it.

   Christine has also started a new soccer career. A couple of the girls from the ecology youth group asked her to play on their all-girl intramural team and man did she kick butt. It was an all-ages league and apart from her they had youngest team. She only played in the last 3 games and they won 2 of them, but didn't quite make it to the finals. However, she made an impression on some of the other women who invited her to play on the girl's team for the whole city.

   From left to right is Dinora, who needs to learn to pass and guard, Fatima, who needs to quit kicking the ball so hard, Raquel their top notch goalie, her baby, Christine, and Clara bella. You may have noticed that at 15 Raquel is somewhat young to have a 2 year old baby. If you knew her step-father you might also notice that the baby bears a striking resemblance. It's one of the tragic and disgusting things about this country. The repressed sexuality leads to a horribly high rate of child molestation and outright rape. The even more horrible part of the story is that the step-father still lives with them and her mother acts like nothing happened. It's shocking to me how far people will go to avoid conflict in this country. Once again, I imagine it stems from the war, but that's no excuse.

   Anyway, I'd like to leave you on a less depressing note and since no post is complete without the ambiguously gay duo on their favorite perch, here you are.

Posted by Tao at 08:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)

   This entry has been so long in coming that the amount of things I would have to write was so overwhelming I didn’t have time to do it. A catch-22 of sorts, or perhaps more of a black hole effect, but either way it’s getting done. While I know I had mentioned a video blog post previously, I think I’ll save that for another shorter installment.

   So I guess I wrote about a month ago and I ended my last entry as the school bands were kicking into high gear for their parades and competitions so I’ll start there. We headed up to the park in town around 9am, which is considered late. We still got there before the bands started playing, but not early enough to get a good seat. Unlike normal parades where the bands march the route and play and then stop near the end in front of the judges’ table to show off, they skip straight to the judges’ table and then follow their parade route for literally two blocks, where they turned a corner and literally disbanded. So unless you were able to cram in around the judges’ table, which we weren’t, you didn’t get to see the real showy stuff.

   Another thing which we hadn’t anticipated was that every kid in the band, including cheerleaders, color guard, and random dancers all had really overdone costumes. Not only that, but we were told that they have all new outfits made every year. It really kind of disgusted us in a way. They say that one of the biggest expenses for kids to go to school down here is being able to pay for their school uniforms, which I don’t think should be a requirement anyway. So these kids in the city have nice instruments and brand new uniforms, while the kids in the country side a mile or two away don’t even have books much of the time.

   A week after that they held the departmental band competition in Usulutan, which is the big city in our department of the same name. We took a couple of girls from our ecology club on a separate public bus just to get them out of Berlin. We’re trying to broaden their horizons a little, let them get a taste of the world outside, even if it’s just a bigger version of their own city. It was a pretty big deal, one girl threw up because she had only ridden a bus a few times.

   It was fun watching all of the bands compete, it was obvious that some of the gimmicks that had probably won someone 1st place in the past and were now a must have since everyone else was doing them; lifting girls up on the big drums or throwing candy to the crowd or what have you. It also made me feel lucky to be in Berlin, turns out as bad as I thought our bands were, they could have been worse. In fact, the high school band that practices across the street from our house took home 1st place in their category. That would probably mean more if they hadn’t made so many categories that just about every school got 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. They really have a hard time hurting anyone’s feelings here. I still say it was our "Berlin's Bands are #1" sign that put them over the top.

   We had a terrible snafu after that competition ended. We had taken a public bus in, and told the girls how much they needed to bring for the fare, but they apparently hadn’t brought enough. So rather than tell us and have us pay for them and be a little upset at them, they disappeared into the crowd to try to catch a ride on one of the school buses. Needless to say we were pretty horrified that we’d lost them and split up looking for them. I eventually found them on the kindergarten’s bus, but then we couldn’t find Christine, and by the time it was all said and done with the girls took the free bus home and Christine and I were stuck waiting for a public bus

   We did however manage to catch the girl’s school’s bus, so we got a straight free ride home. It was especially lucky for our friend Dave who had been waiting at our house for over an hour. We had some miscommunication because my cell phone wasn’t letting me check my voice mail, but who knows how long he would’ve had to wait if we’d had to take the public buses.

   Dave was in town for a Peace Corps soccer game. Peace Corps has men’s and women’s team that go and play different volunteer’s community’s teams. It just so happened that Darren had invited them to his village this weekend, so Christine and I took the opportunity to go check out his site and hang out with some friends.

   They also happened to be a little short so Christine and I both played in the games, which turned out surprisingly well for Peace Corps which doesn’t have a winning record to say the least. The girls team won 5-3 against the barefoot 6th grade team, ooooh, in their face. Christine even scored once, but she was bringing it as you can see from the picture. The guys team actually played the adult male team and if it hadn’t been for a salvadoreno guy that played on our team we almost certainly would have lost.

   Basically the whole village came out to watch, it’s a really big deal to have so many gringos and gringas in such an out of the way place that I’m sure they’ll remember it for a long time to come. Although, what exactly in particular they’ll talk about I can’t say.

   That night our friend Jessica crashed at our house and we whooped it up with a couple other new Peace Corps volunteers that decided to stay in town and check out the laguna the next day, which I hear they enjoyed. We had some good conversation that night and I lent Jessica a copy of the China Study, so we’ll see what she thinks, she’s a pretty hardcore omnivore.

   As far as projects are concerned we’ve started our world map at the boys’ school. We’ve almost got it all drawn, we’ll probably finish that up tomorrow and then we can start painting. I’ve been a little disappointed in the turnout to help with it. The boys who volunteered to do it never showed up or if they did, they did so only once. They just said they couldn’t draw and even after we explained that we weren’t asking them to make up new countries just to copy what was in each little square of the grid we’d drawn they still didn’t want to do it. Almost all the ones who did do it, did it very sloppily as if by doing so they could point to it and say “see, I told you I can’t draw”.

   Anyway, once we start painting I have a feeling a lot more kids will show up. I’m a little concerned that they’re going to be sloppy with that as well though. They were slinging the blue paint around when we were painting the ocean, getting all over the place, even after I taped off the edges they crossed it repeatedly, not to mention the oil based paint they got on their school uniforms. I can only warn someone so many times.

   One thing with the world map that’s already rewarding is all of the kids that come by and are just fascinated by it. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard kids say “wow, El Salvador is so chiquito”. If the most that comes of this is that the kids realize how big the world is and it sparks some interest in seeing more and getting out, then that’s great.

   Christine is having a lot of luck with her life skills lessons to our landlord’s 6th grade girls’ class. She gets all kinds of participation, kids ask questions, and listen. I think about the same classes I tried at the boys’ school and it’s like another world. I feel like the men and women’s spheres here are so different it really does seem like working only with girls you can accomplish a lot more. No matter what I teach the boys, they are far more concerned about what the other boys think than whatever I tell them. I think that’s why the gang problem here is so bad.

   The girls on the other hand are actually willing to take advice and are concerned about improving themselves and their station in life, in general anyway. I think she’s also targeting the right age group, because by 8th grade most of the kids have entered this “too cool” stage where if they listen or learn something they’re a nerd, or whatever facsimile they have of nerds here.

   We've also helped the boys' school get a replacement computer monitor with our friend Jared's help. It was more than a little disappointing when it wouldn't turn on after we got it to the school as you can tell by the look on my face, but turns out it only needs a new cable. The director wanted to call all of the students in to thank us before we'd even tried it, I'm sure glad we talked him out of it. I mean, he sure would have looked silly with that that saw through his head.

   Apart from all of that, we’ve been doing really well with our ecology club. I’ve given some really good lessons on geology and volcanoes recently. I’ve started bringing in my laptop to show them pictures of what I’m talking about in a powerpoint slideshow. If a picture says a 1,000 words in your own language, its probably worth 2,000 of my spanish ones.

   On the theme of volcanoes we took some of our kids to the laguna, which is in the crater of a volcano. Some of them had been there before but once I started showing them rocks that were hardened lava and explaining why there was sulfur there they really got into it. I was fielding all kinds of questions about this and that.

   We also dispelled the myth that there is a mermaid in the laguna that pulls young men down to the bottom and drowns them. We showed them all of the clay in the bottom of the laguna that explains why they get held down and drowned. It probably doesn’t help that most El Salvadorans can’t swim. We also explained that the reason it was only guys that had drowned was because they’re the only ones who try to show off how brave they are by swimming in it anyway. By the end of the day all the girls had their shoes off and were walking around in it. Granted it was only along the edge, but they’d gasped earlier in the day when I walked out in it.

   While we were up there we also tried to show them how to play kick ball, but since most people here don’t even know how to play baseball or softball it was pretty difficult. We gave up on it after awhile and went back to Ultimate frisbee which they’ve all grown to love.

   Our next project with the kids is to try to build some of those paper mache volcanoes and set them off at a parents reunion to show them what they’ve been doing and learning. We’ll probably bring in some of their artwork and other stuff too. We have to get on it though since school ends Nov. 7th. I couldn’t ask for a better birthday present.

   We won’t actually be here for my birthday though since Christine’s parents are coming down to Belize at the end of October. They’re leaving on the 5th so we’re thinking we’ll stick around there for my birthday on the 6th. I’m planning on getting scuba certified there. I never really had that much of a desire to do it, but now that I’m going to do it I’m actually looking forward to it a lot. Maybe I’m just looking forward to a vacation of any sort.

   Speaking of vacations my Mom and Gary will be coming down at the end of December for a week. We’re going to meet them in Honduras and head out to the island of Utila in the bay area. There’s supposedly pretty bad crime against tourists on the mainland, so we’ll just have to stick to the beaches and coral reefs on the islands. There’s supposedly really good scuba diving and snorkeling there as well and it’s one of the only reliable places to find whale sharks. I’m not really sure how I’d handle being in the water with something that big even knowing that it only eats algae.

   Speaking of gringos, we’ve got two new ones in town. There’s a new Crisis Corps volunteer here. Crisis Corps is for ex-Peace Corps volunteers who go on 6 month assignments to places that are in crisis like during the tsunami and after katrina. We were pretty disturbed to know we were in a crisis. Apparently after the 2001 earthquakes a large fault opened up on the big hill overlooking Berlin. There’s a good chance it could cause a big mudslide here and so the new guy, Zach, is a geologist helping them figure out the situation. He says they’ve got a machine up there that measures tension from one side of the fault to the other and will let them know if the landslide moves any more than 20cm and stays there. When he asked them what happens if it just went all at one time, they just looked at each other, and then said, “that’s a good question”. Another problem is that the alarm that it sets off is only on the machine. It doesn’t have any way of alerting the people down below. Brilliant!

   Where we’re located it’s not too dangerous, but some places farther up the hill could be in some trouble. I think right now he’s just looking at trying to cover up the fault to keep all the water off the slide plane, sounds like a pretty good easy plan to me.

   The other new gringo is Bill, he’s taking over Bob’s spot at the Casa Pastoral. They basically do work in the rural villages around the city. They set them up with a church who sponsors projects in their adopted village and then send a group of people down once a year or so to check it out.

   Anyway, Bob was a really nice guy, but the new guy Bill is awesome. He really seems to have a good grasp on sustainable development and like us, believes that education is one of the main keys. He’s asked us to give him some spanish classes a couple times a week to supplement the ones he’s getting from a salvadoreno and he also asked us to be translators when some of the church delegations come down. He’s also offered to take some of our ecology kids to see this protected forest with spider monkeys in one of their trucks. That’s going to be great because it’ll save us a ton of money and be a lot faster. In general though he seems to have less of the hand-out mentality that Bob had and we think he’s going to be great.

   I guess the last thing I wanted to talk about was my soaring web design business. I’ve got jobs stacked up which is great and I really enjoy doing it, but man does it take up all of my free time. I just finished this webpage for a $150 million school bond initiative in Jackson, Mississippi. Right before that I did a web page for this bar-b-que restaurant inside a giant tepee shaped building and my next project is for a mushroom farm. Before you ask, it’s shitake mushrooms, geez.

   So anyway, once I actually get paid for all this work I’ll have my credit card all paid off and we’ll be living quite comfortably down here. It’s really the way to do it. Live in a 3rd world country but get paid like you’re in the 1st.

   Well, thats all for me. I told you this was going to be a big one. I hope you enjoyed it, drop me a comment, I really enjoy them. I’m always tickled when someone I don’t personally know leaves one. Hasta luego y que le vaya bien.

I almost forgot your Mr. Pink fix.

Posted by Tao at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

   Seriously, and not to mention our so-called civilization on this planet. For a long time I’ve thought that the root of all the great problems of our world boil down to selfishness. Greed is what gets most of the attention, but that’s really just a subsection of general selfishness. We can be selfish by doing things just to make our lives easier in other ways, choosing paradigms that allow us to feel guilt-free. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I am an unselfish person, but I can sit here and tell you that I try my best to realize when I’m doing something selfish and stop it.

   This post stems from some recent books that I’ve read and plan on re-reading that every single one of you should read. They were both sent to me by my Dad and if I could send each of you a copy of them I would. The first one will most directly impact your immediate life and the lives of those around you. It’s called The China Study by T.Colin Campbell. It explains in simple terms the mountains of scientific evidence that point to animal protein as the leading promoter of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer and the majority of the most common and sinister diseases that seem to be plaguing our society. He was able to actively turn on and off cancer growth by changing the diet of mice. 23 of 24 type II diabetes patients no longer had to inject themselves with insulin after 3 weeks on a whole foods/plant-based diet. Heart disease can actually be reversed with a diet.

   It seems to be a common misconception that we need as much protein as we can get and the best and pretty much only place to get that is from meat. This is completely untrue. In actuality we only need about 5% of our diet to be protein to replace the protein that our body wears out. The average American eats a diet of about 20% protein, the vast majority of which is animal protein. Unknown to many people, plants have more than enough protein to cover that 5%, depending on the plant of course. In fact, plant protein even in large percentages is harmless, but any diet with over 10% animal protein is in serious trouble.

   The China Study was this giant health and diet study that was done in China(shocker), where the experiment done with the mice was basically compared to humans, and it was found to be exactly the same. The thing is that in China they don’t or didn’t until recently eat very much meat and so there were extremely low rates of cancer and heart disease. The people they did find with high rates of cancer and other diseases of affluence were the wealth Chinese.

   Now this is the part where I get back to the selfishness that I was talking about earlier. If I were to go out on the street and tell your average American that he/she could avoid Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Alzheimers, Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer, and basically all of the major killers in our country simply by eating a whole foods/plant-based diet the response I would get 90% of the time would be this. “You mean, I’d have to give up cheese, milk, and steak? I’d rather enjoy myself now and just not live as long than give all of that up.” While it’s absolutely their right to do that, they are completely ignoring every single person that cares for them. It is completely selfish to trade years of having your loved ones what you painfully and slowly dieing so that you can enjoy the flavor of some food that you like. We have to realize that just because we like something doesn’t mean it’s good for us, and we ought it to ourselves and the people that love us to make the best decision. I’m sure that heroine users really enjoy heroine, does that mean that they should do it?

   So, that’s the first book that could save your life and potentially many peoples lives if you go so far as to encourage others to read it. Because I can not do it justice with a page of text, you need to see the graphs, the charts, the conclusive evidence that says, this is why you’re going to get cancer if you don’t change your lifestyle. Sure, it would be nice to not have to give up things that give us some brief fleeting happiness, but the extra pain-free years you can spend with your loved ones should more than make up for it. Not to mention the weight-loss and overall sense of well-being and health. In case it’s not clear, I’m through with meat, eggs, and dairy. I’ve toyed with the idea before, but now that I’ve had the case laid out clearly to me, that’s it. Does it mean that I’m going to be picking through ingredient labels looking for the slightest sign of them. Absolutely not, I’m simply going to avoid the food that clearly contains large amounts of them, it’s really just as simple as that. My diet has much more variety now and I don’t feel that I’ve given up much in the way of flavor. I am however looking for vegan and vegetarian recipes. So if you’re sitting on some, hit me up.

   The second book may save your life as well, but on a planetary level. It’s called Plan B 2.0 by Lester R. Brown. He basically goes through all of the major problems that we face as a planet, explains their causes and likely outcomes if nothing is done. It’s very informative and puts facts and clear explanations to all things such as global warming, falling water tables, the looming oil crisis, poverty, and overpopulation. I have to say that the first half of the book is fairly depressing. The problems seem so monumental and the mind set necessary to change course is just not there in our world. We have this sense that the world is in trouble, but the individualism that capitalism promotes has us all so focused on our own lives and problems that there seems to be no way to really organize and do something cooperatively, which is really the only way it can be solved.

   I’m going to get to selfishness a little bit faster on this book because it just seems to stare you down. We like to tout our individualism, especially in the west, as this badge of freedom. While the world would be a horribly boring place if everyone were the same, we should understand that the things we own are not what make us individuals, simply being and thinking in the ways that come naturally to us are all the individualism we could ever need. I feel that capitalism in general breeds this unhealthy form of individualism, and instead of sitting somewhere on the middle of having both a sense of self and a sense of community we are pushed by advertising and an enveloping mentality that we are what is important. Not the community. This is selfishness.

   I think that currently the only way people will begin to act on a global scale is when the problems cause such catastrophic effects that they invade so many people’s personal life bubbles that they will all recognize that they have something in common. They are a community whether they would like to forget it or not. This is unfortunate because while we may learn a valuable lesson, it will undoubtedly be at a great expense and there will be no guarantee that the problems will be solvable by that point.

   So let me get back to the book. He doesn’t call it Plan B for nothing. He shows that we have well within our means to solve virtually all of these problems. He roughly estimates that it would cost about $160 billion/year to begin to reverse the processes we have set in motion. This is a very minimal sum considering the U.S. spends $460 billion/year on the Military alone. Frankly, I think that if you ignore the Military/Industrial complex for a moment, that the most effective way to fight a ‘War on Terrorism’ is to take the fire out of their argument. How could they justify attacking a country that is actively and effectively eliminating poverty, illiteracy, and inequality? It would be the best money the Military had ever spent; the problem is the money would not be going into their own pockets.

   To sum it all up then, you owe it to yourself and the people you love to read The China Study and you owe it to the World, including yourself and the people you love, to read Plan B 2.0. If you like them and feel at least a fraction as strongly as I do about them, then you’ll pass along your own review to friends and family. Start the revolution!

Posted by Tao at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry I don't have time to write a really in-depth entry, but I´ve got to get back to the training center in a few minutes. This is going to be a little more vulgar than the last few, simply because I need to start living up to my "blogging like no one is watching" theme, and it´s reality. Now that you've been warned, on with the show.

The first day I met my host family I was bombarded by a ton of questions. The first and major one was whether I believed in god or not, to which I replied "por supuesto" or of course. I didn't get into what their definition of god was or anything like that. The other main thing they wanted to know about was novias or girlfriends. They just couldn´t understand that I would not have one or that I would break up with one to come here. That kind of relationship takes precedence over everything here and I have to say that their addiction to telenovellas or soap operas isn't helping that. Anyway, the single 30 something woman, María, told me about the crudest thing I could've imagined right after I told her I didn't have a girlfriend. She lifted her hand and told me that her hand could be my girlfriend, then chuckled a little, but there was also a seriousness in her eyes. I was so shocked I just feigned ignorance and told her I didn't understand even though I got every single word.

This brings me to another similar and disturbing subject, which is purely a theory of my own creation. It's a theory behind this machismo culture here, specifically the cat calling and whistling. Now as I've mentioned in previous posts, I have absolutely no privacy, which I'm sure goes for the vast majority of everyone else here and in a lot of other latin countries where machismo reigns. This lack of privacy is not conducive to...lets just say, sexual release of one form or another. So instead, the sexual frustration and hormones just build and build and manifest themselves in a more aggressive sexuality. I'm not saying this is the sole reason for machismo, but I´m almost certain its a factor. I have to say, I've gradually caught myself staring at women here more and more over the last few weeks. I'm not to the point of whistling or anything like that, but lets just say I´m starting to get a little more of their perspective.

Posted by Tao at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)