http://youtube.com/watch?v=XrT0gAbRqyw

The following joke is making the rounds. Here it is in translation from Spanish:

Hugo Chavez and his chauffeur were going down the highway when suddenly a pig crossed the road, right in front of them. The chauffeur slammed on the brakes but was unable to stop in time, and killed the pig instantly. Chavez ordered his chauffeur very authoritatively, “Find the owner of the pig and tell him what happened: a Bolivarian Accident!”

Three hours later, the chauffeur returned, unsteady on his feet. In one hand was a bottle of aguardiente and in the other a box of Cuban cigars, his hair and clothes all messed up. “What happened?” Chavez asked his chauffeur, who answered:

“Well, the owner of the pig gave me this bottle of aguardiente and these cigars, his wife made me the best food you ever had, and his beautiful daughter made love to me three times, completely wild sex…”

“Well, what did you say to him?”

“Friend,” I said, “I’m Chavez’s chauffeur, and I just killed the pig!”

Here’s a look at a traditional dance from southern Colombia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNC3wKmz0C8

Most city folk would laugh that this is hopelessly out of date, but some aerobics classes use the music and steps to burn fat, and the dance is still practiced in the countryside (especially near the town of Huila, after which it is named).

The British government is claiming up to 1500 white people have converted to Islam and are now part of al-Qaeda.

To the people of Britain:

Soon it won’t be just “those dodgy brown people” getting locked up without charge and tortured. This is the next logical step towards the creation of a fascist state in which all citizens live in fear of the secret police, and neighbour reports neighbour for crimes real or imagined, and thought crime is punishable by torture and death.

To the government of Britain:

If 1500 white people really are engaged in a secret war against you, has it occurred to you that maybe it’s because they don’t like having their freedoms taken away from them? Ignore a terrorist and he will fade away. Fight a terrorist and he grows powerful. If this report is really true then it’s your own bloody fault, and you get what you deserve.

Bizarre story of a Perth girl invited to spend Christmas in Colombia and winds up getting kidnapped.

Could be true. The paramilitary protection racket in Santa Marta makes productive employment fairly pointless, leaving thuggery the most profitable way to get ahead.

Both are mosquito prophylactics.

An excellent question, your highness.

This is a great idea. Type in your details and it will automatically generate the form letters you need to request your FBI file under the Freedom Of Information Act.

They can also provide you will letters for the NSA, CIA, DIA, etc.

The FOIC exists as a form of public redress against excessive government secrecy. By demanding your FBI file, even if you don’t think you have one, you are doing your part to remind them that the government is for the people, and not the other way around.

There is a particularly annoying form of flea present in the mountains of Colombia, and, I presume, elsewhere in the Andes. It jumps onto you from the surrounding brush and burrows just under the outer layer of your skin. None of my guidebooks make any mention of it.

I take my exercise walking to the Three Crosses here in Cali, and find myself the frequent host to this annoying parasite.

You’ll first notice such a flea by a small, red sore that won’t go away. The sore will look like a pimple you’ve scratched, red and small and exposed. After a couple of weeks to a month you’re going to be wondering what it is. Probably one of these mountain fleas.

Tea tree oil is effective. If you spread a dab of tea tree oil on the spot it will kill the flea and the bite will heal in a day or two.

More effective seems to be drowning your fleas. Go swimming for ten minutes. Be sure to submerse your entire body, including your head in the water for as long as you can. This will kill the fleas.

I used this technique to kill off my fleas last week, only to discover one living in my ear — there was just enough air trapped in my ear canal to keep it alive. So I stood in the shower holding my ear open for several minutes and that seemed to do the trick.

What happens when you put a frog in boiling water?

Let’s find out.

Check it out.

The students should have risen up and torn those officers limb from limb and scattered their bleeding arms and legs across the campus green.

Here’s some more footage, close up.

Check out the smile on the cop’s face after tasering the guy.

America is over. Go home.

Dear Department of Homeland Security,

I am a threat to the security of America. I am writing to you to request that, for the safety of America and its citizens, you add to me to your No-Fly List.

I am a terrorist you see. I believe in America.

I believe in freedom. I believe in individual liberty. I believe in privacy. I believe that the government that governs least, governs best. I believe that the government should leave its citizens alone.

On all these counts I am clearly a threat to the security of America. Only the unthinking automaton, the great unwashed and brainwashed, the cud-chewing herd are not a threat. Those of us who think and write are a threat to the established order, because we question. We want to know why.

Why is America spying on its citizens? Why is America listening to its citizens’ phone calls, collecting every email ever sent in gigantic databases at a huge facility just outside of Washington DC.?. Why are there massive phone taps on every undersea cable leading into and out of America? Why does America require that cell phone operators be able to triangulate 95% of their customers, or face heavy fines?

Why is the government watching us?

Because of terrorism, we are told. Terrorists want to destroy our freedom.

But it is not terrorists who are taking away our freedom. It is the government of the United States of America.

A people that give up essential liberty for temporary safety, said Benjamin Franklin, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

I am guilty, and for the safety of my fellow Americans I therefore must insist on my immediate inclusion on your no-fly list. I am clearly a threat to the ongoing security of America.

Thank you, and I look forward to being denied boarding at the earliest opportunity.

Kind Regards

Jens Porup

Half an hour ago at around 21:10 local time a tremor shook, or rather gently wiggled, most of Cali for twenty seconds or so. Can’t find any news reports about it yet, but I expect it’s a continued regional aftershock of the much larger earthquake last month in Peru.

Well if you’re still a slave to the Microsoft Empire (close ally to the Starbucks Empire — yes, the world really is ruled from Seattle) then you’re stuck using Microsoft Word.

I’m sorry. Really I am. Tummy rub?

Back up, better plan — Sun Microsystem’s ODF plugin for Microsoft Office.

Microsoft Office uses a proprietary document format unreadable by other programs. If you’ve got documents saved in .doc format, the only people able to read your files will be those who have a copy of Microsoft Office. This forces other people to pay Microsoft money just so you can exchange documents. This is a form of coercion: Microsoft’s technical design damages your freedom to choose a competing product.

By using Sun’s ODF filter for all your documents, you’ll be able to interchange documents with people who prefer to use office suites like OpenOffice that use ODF, the ISO-approved document format standard.

For that matter, why not download Sun’s ODF filter, use it to convert all your documents to ODF format, and then erase Microsoft Office from your hard drive? You need never pay for office software again. Just use OpenOffice.

I don’t follow American football much these days. Eight years after I left the U.S. those funny helmets, walking meaty chemistry experiments, not to mention a stupid plot line, all make me want to laugh. I find it hard to care anymore.

Now it’s in the news that some guy I’ve never heard of named Michael Vick has been dogfighting in his spare time. He is being indicted and faces a prison term.

The question I want to ask is: are you for fucking real?

You’re going to put a human being in jail, destroy his career, destroy his LIFE because he caused injury and death to DOGS?

If I cut a tree down you gonna throw me in prison too?

Let’s get something straight here, folks. Animals ARE NOT PEOPLE. They are ANIMALS. Senators in the god-for-fucking-sake U.S. Senate are on the floor denouncing this “barbaric practice”. Well guess what people, LIFE is a barbaric practice. Nothing lives unless something else dies, and that includes you and me. We kill animals and plants because they are interesting and tasty and edible and maybe sometimes just for the fun of it.

Guys: get your heads out of your fucking asses, bitch slap your pushy girlfriend/wife/mother/all of the above and tell them this:

Michael Vick did nothing wrong. Leave the man alone. Hell, let’s televise some of this here dog-fighting. It can’t be any more savage, brutal or boring than watching him play football.

Today’s word for the day is “zancudo.”

Zancudo is the Spanish word for the stripey tiger mosquito, the one that carries dengue. The news today here in Cali is that the dengue previously confined to the fringes of the metropolitian area is now making serious inroads into the city itself. The health department has trucks spraying in the streets against zancudos and is conducting house-to-house inspections.

Will it make any difference? Some, probably. It’s another reminder, though, that Cali sits lower in the mountains than Medellín and Bogotá, which are spared at least this particular plague.

Here’s a travel trip for adventurers in Panama and Colombia. According to a British traveller I met on the street here in Cali the other day, firehouses in these two countries will happily give you a free bed and a hot meal if you’re an overland walker or biker.

Backpackers up and down the Gringo Trail in South America have invariably heard of, if not read, Rusty Young’s Marching Powder. It’s the story of his friendship with a British inmate in Bolivia’s San Pedro Prison, where inmates buy their cells, and some of the best cocaine in the country is produced.

I recently came across a yellow, crumbling paperback copy of Charles Nicholl’s The Fruit Palace. It makes Rusty’s Big Adventure seem tame by comparison. With the spirit of gonzo in his blood and copious amounts of cocaine up his nose, Mr. Nicholl goes to Colombia to write The Great Cocaine Story.

The time is the early 80s, and cocaine has wrapped its champagne tendrils around the brain stems of New York and London’s finest, and Nicholl’s publisher wants the scoop. The lengths he goes to and the risks he takes are astonishing — talking his way into a meat-packing plant in Bogota he suspects is a front for cocaine trafficking, bussing into the Chocó and then boating downriver to Buanaventura on the Pacific Ocean (a very dangerous thing to do, even now), and ultimately getting involved in smuggling a briefcase of 100% pure cocaine out of Santa Marta.

The Fruit Palace appears to be out print. No matter. It received many printings during the 80s and 90s and, though never quite a bestseller, there’s plenty of used copies floating around out there. It is essential reading for anyone interested in South America.

The truly successful politician has his finger not only on the pulse of popular opinion, but on the throbbing pulse of History. He can sense Destiny. He is not so much creative as an opportunist who knows what History demands, and provides it. To Fulfill Destiny you must first know what it is.

France’s new President, Nicolas Sarkozy, seems to be know exactly where he stands in History. His Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is quoted in the 22 July 2007 online edition of the New York Times as saying:

“France is a country that thinks,” she told the National Assembly. “There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory. We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves.”

This is Oswald Spengler’s prophesy coming true in as crisp and exact a way as he could have possibly imagined in his master work, “Decline of the West.”

For readers look for a synopsis see my essay “Is There Nothing Left To Say?”.

Today is Independence Day in Colombia. No big deal, really; no fireworks, no general jubilation, just a few military parades, and that’s about it.

Of course an Independence Day for a country that is essentially a regional puppet for the US government is never going to really fly. Independence? What independence? All the orders that matter come from the US embassy complex. Government Palace is just a proxy.

Here in Cali the celebrations will be marked by the replacement of the water mains. Yes, for 48 hours, starting last night, 80% of households in this city of several million will be without running water until Saturday night at midnight. At least it’s for a good cause — the mains have to be replaced to finish construction of the new electric trole bus system, which should go a long way toward preventing Lima-like pollution in the future.

Some things you can only see in Colombia. There I was, walking to the supermarket yesterday, when I came across a small, blocked off street with men and women practicing marching. They were four wide and six deep and a man in front carried a white flag held forward at a 45 degree angle.

Walking past I got a good side view of the four women in the bunch. Groowr. Stiff-backed, head high and chest out, oh so chest out, they were all short and skinny and fake titties out to here to keep them afloat when the Titanic goes down.

Only in Colombia.

Update: The Colombian Air Force made a big showing last Friday, demonstrating the very latest in military technology.

Where’s the Black Sheep Squadron when you really need them?

Thanks to Danny Hancock for the photo.