On Colombia

My friend Luke and I just got back from a ten-day trip through Colombia. I plan on writing more about our experiences, but in the meantime check out some of Luke´s pictures here.

Casinos are guarded by Dementors

In the world of Harry Potter, "Dementors" are the undead guards of a magical prison. Their particular gift is being able to suck the happiness out of a place and, provided proximity, suck out your soul without killing you.

When I turned twenty-one, my buddy Luke took me to one of Shreveport's glitzy casinos. I quickly lost twenty dollars. More quickly, however, I discovered casinos to be what I imagine as my own personal hell.

Therefore, looking back on last Saturday night, I continue to scratch my head as to why I followed the rest of my friends to the casino attached to Hotel Quito, where a visiting friend of Annie's was staying. I walked into the casino and was immediately dizzy - as on the Red River, a flood of noise and lights and smoke and soulless people inundated my senses. I immediately told everyone I was leaving and then dizzily bounded out the side door, inside just long enough for most of the happiness to be sucked out of my body.

My friend John tells me that because of the rapid-fire angle changes on television shows and commercials, Americans are trained to have their occipital lobe overstimulated. That information, plus the fact that I watched about thirty minutes of TV a week as a kid, might go a long way to explaining my aversion to stimulant-suffused casino halls. So, while I understand the potential economic benefits of casinos and have no illusions about their impending disappearance from the Shreveport or Quito skylines, I think I can safely say that I'm finished with them. When I need a scare, I'll just go pick up Harry Potter.

Death in the Afternoon

Last Sunday, I went to my first bullfight - my first real Spanish bullfight, at least. Every year, for the fiestas of Quito, the city brings in from Madrid and Sevilla the world`s best bullfighters to satiate Quiteños´ homicidal palate. What I didn´t anticipate was developing a homicidal palate of my own. Despite whatever tree-hugging and animal-loving tendencies I may have inherited from my mother, I loved it (as soon as the nausea from the first kill had passed).

Thanks to Craig, who had been an avid bullfighting fan in Spain, we actually had a clue what was going on. The progression went something like this: first, at the sound of the judges´ trumpets, the bull comes out of the chute to be goaded by a handful of what I took to be the spandex-clad equivalent of rodeo clowns. Those are followed by two picadores, guys on armored horses with long poles that they stick into the bulls´ necks. Thus piqued, the thousand-pound beast faces two more clowns on foot with hooked, flower-covered, meter-long poles. They also aim for the bull´s neck, jumping away from the horns at the last minute.















Then, once the bull is bleeding and panting, out comes the brave torero. He waves his cape around for a while, goading the bull to exhaustion, then finally plunges his sword down through the bull´s neck and into its heart. If he hits his mark, the beast collapses and is finished off by another round of clowns. If he does extremely well, he is gifted with some hacked-off part of the bull - an ear, two ears, or a tail.

Not exactly the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs, right?

N.B: if you´re reading this in facebook, you`ll have to head to my blog to see photos.