The American Cardboard Dream And The Mexican Realism

Baja Californians (Mexicans) reject American 'stick-built' housing construction, American heavy-watering landscaping and American no-cash-down mortgages. They build very slowly, in concrete blocks, ceramic roof tiles, paying cash as they go, planting cacti and other fat desertic plants. They basically enjoy their scenery the way nature made it: semi-desertic.
To them the American 'Dream Home' is 'matchsticks and cardboard', cannot stop a bullet (!) or even a toddler on his trike. On the outside it is packed with plants species that drink up like drunken sailors. And this is depleting the water tables and slowly drying up Mexican farms and cities too close to California. So that when the wildfires licked Mexico's border yesterday, pushed by violent Santa Ana winds, they had nowhere to go. The land in Mexico is rocky and mostly barren, the plants are all native, having thick water-gorged leaves, the houses all have mostly non-combustible shells. Here in Baja the 'bomberos' are truly a lazy bunch as there are few house fires.
An analyst on TV suggested that some of the arsonists in California are probably angry owners about to lose their house to foreclosure. This breed is unlikely to exist in a country where houses are built with cash.
Thanks, Mexico, for your school of realism, but don't you find it ironic that your Mexican sons in California have become the dominant landscapers and framers, stick-builders and sheetrock applicators? Thanks also for providing the Archimede Institute a few good arguments for the peculiar housing system it is about to export and build locally: low-cost prefabricated fire-proof ,earthquake and hurricane proof housing.

time of the gypsies

OUR HOUSE AT 4AM

FAMILY BABY SHOWER

WE GOT MARRIED THIS FEBRUARY

NAPPINGG

VALIDATION

El Mirador Circa Ensenada

We took our friend
Roberpierre to the Mirador on our way to Ensenada yesterday. We will take you on your next trip.

Heilunjiang Province 2112 Winter Olympics

I will post all the other photos as soon as I get to repair my computer and access the hard drives. This project was canceled after Beijing won the 2008 Summer Olympics, as the Olympic comittee will not grant olympics to a country that has had one within 8 yrs. The Weihu (Tiger) mountains are a wonderful area where we designed a 100 miles cross'country trail, a 50 mile snowmobile racing circuit and several hotels and tourist facilities. We were a consortium of Swiss and Canadian companies in the tourist, ski and building fields.

Oooooooooooooo!

Waiting for a distant friend from Canada who had driven from Montreal and I hadn't seen for 5 years. Also looking at the cruiuse ships nearby, coincidently the same boat we are to take next week for our Christmas cruise to Puerto Vallarte ( Remember the Oosterdam ? You can view that old blog with brand new old music by Mason Williams )

Merry Christmas Bloggers, Family & Friends

Click your mouse over the heads of the living beings card for some mood and music changes

Did You Know?

(Sorry for the bad plug-in reference in the last version. ) This came from the Rome TED meeting. I just added Tiersen's music (no relation to Dana) that speeds up nicely to it. Makes you think, something we don't seem to do enough of in our fake retirement. Check out Kurtzweil at the same conference

Pat's Yellow Bird in the BLue California Sky

From PLANES

Pat is a crazy engineer friend of ours who built the 'motorcycle of the sky' as he calls it, from salvaged WW2 plane parts. He races in the El Borrego desert with real motorcycles and quads...and wins all the time! Anyway the purpose of this blog is to show off the Picasa 3 upgrade's capacity to do photomosaics in just a minute or so, something that would take hours by hand. Check it out at Google 'More'.

Woody Guthrie and The Dust Bowl Refugees to California

Woody Guthrie, in this library of Congress recording of 1940, narrates and sings about the plight of the unfortunate mid-western farmers facing the repeating dust storms of the late 1930's, the great depression, terrible banks and the boll weavel pest attacking their crops. They left in droves for California where hey were looked down upon, exploited, settling down near river beds that flooded and drowned a thousand of them, picking up peaches for as little as one dollar a ton, picked, packed and crated. Most had no running water or sanitation, surviving on a diet of peaches and whatever they could fish out of the mostly dry river beds of Southern California. Hundreds of thousands of them, mostly forgotten today, dreamed about California where they were told that they would make $5 a day. This had to be before the Internet or snopes.com!. Thanks Woody Guthrie, you are a sweet man to remind us of all of them. It's been good to know ya!  Also my thanks for 7 photos by James N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California
 

(Below, a well-done YouTube of Woody singing)

Daniel Lavoie For Joan, Nikki's Vancouver Friend on Visit

Joan is from Vancouver (North West), a friend of Nikki from way back in Montreal (North East), is here with us in California (South West), wanting to move here permanently. She has asked me to post some music by Daniel Lavoie, a singer from Winnipeg (Central Canada), precisely where I was born years ago. I could not resist this video from a fan containing a recent quiet song and his famous 'Tu Vas Me Detruire'. Below, my favorite, a classic 'Ils s'aiment', people loving before, during and after catastrophes.

Amélie in the Dunes Nearby

Nigerian Letters To Nigeria. - #1: AMERICANS AND TELIVISION -

to: Doctor AKAO DOUE , ccb,at,bd, bs

     Minister of the Office of Nigerian Letters

Your Excellency,

I am very mostly thankful for the grant money that your office has accorded me to study abroad. It is not every day that a Nigerian of my humble origins has the chance to get an degree in amtropology from a American University. Since this sum of money came mostly from the numerous pleas that your honorable office has sent to generous email recipientors in the United States, I feel that these same people should in very fairness be beneficiaries of my studies.  So I have decided to redact and publicate my final thesis on the subject of them to which I give below a much shortened version thereof. This effort of me is to be helpful to them as much as to the Nigerian people who have more to do to be catching up to this greatest nation.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND TELIVISION

When first I spent one month waiting for your money transfer in a unexpensive motel of a small village in the province of New Jersey, I dutyfully did much spend time looking at the television appliance in my room in order to study the culture herein. I will confess to you that I must have turned the round plastic button several million times to ascertain the differencing in the programs. Here are some of my observations that I have listed in order of increasing utility to your Ministry that I presume:

• A white man with a strong black beard appears without a warning at all hours of the day to sell the viewing people soap, hooks,tools, insurance and all manners of objects. We need someone like him to redact a few of your benevolent letters to recruit more money from America. This scary man endowed with a high unagreable voice can sell anything and appears on almost every program for a few intervals of time each hour.
  .
• Several millions white handsome mans in America have problems with their penis not lifitng up when the moment is right. Many companies sell many medecines, but I know that our Nigerian unemployed brothers could with most hability perform the same, their penis being free of that shameful problem. Honorable Minister, Nigeria could create a school for these American man and hire our unemployed adult mans to teach the art and science of raising of the penis to them.  We cannot as a nation under God miss a business opportunity of that proportion with all of the skills endowed to our brothers by our Creator.
  
  
• American womans spend much of the day buying glass beads and other ornaments from many programs that use a microscope-camera to make the jewel appear to  filling the television glass window. We need programs like this as they are very successful, also because they use magic: every price has many number 9 in it which cause the womans to call a telephone number immediately. Our Nigerian woman like bigger beads but they could profit from a semblable activity while their mans go to drinking.
  
  
• American womans spend the afternoon listening to a handsome black woman called OPERA to know what to buy, what to read and what to believe. She would do well to recieve a letter from your ministery as I am told that she also has much money. A better idea can be of your honorable self to telephone to her offering a similar employment in our telivision. This way ourNigerian brothers could spending time out more to drinking or playing dice with their comrades.
  
  
• Another magician is another black man of the name OBAMA that has gaining a chance to becoming president. Several programs say he is the Messiah and one other program say he is the pariah, with many terrorists he palling around with. I dont know the verb 'palling' as it is not printed in the lexicon you have given me, but strangely the madam who asserted that is of the name PALIN. This research of mine is going on with that mystery coincidental for now, the missing letter 'L' and 'G' from her name.
  
  
• In America, everything comes in pairs, better statement would be in 'fighting pairs'. Coke fight Pepsi for carbonated fluids, McDonald fight Burger King for round meat buns, Cialis fight Viagra for penis potions, Obama fight McCain for presidency, Palin fight Clinton for high madam, Fox fight MSNBC for the description of black man OBAMA as Pariah or Messiah. The research of mine will long time be going on to that thematic, but I feel that we Nigerians could start 'fighting pairs' for distracting  our population from despotic lack of efficiency in our administrative leadings. 

• Lately, with the gasoline price going up up up every day Nigeria could benefit from example of America and start to drilling off-sure, a conviction of success as they are promotering on the telivision. We need to convince the Nigerian petrol people of this new technology of drilling off-sure to bring back the prosperious nation of Nigeria. More research for my ongoing thesis is needing to ascertain the meaning of 'off-sure', also a word not present in the lexicon I do  keeping by my bed always.
  
  
• Finalmently, I have greatest news for all our hard-working redactors of Nigerian eMails: America is a country where some people have sold a bridge to nowhere to the congressants in Washing-Town. I know it is hard for most to imagine a bridge with one ending suspended in nothingness, but nevertheless this has occured, significating that with minimal effort we can sell anything to Washing-Town. So let us direct more eMails to that village and collect the funs. Your effort will not be in vain and there is no real need to spend too much time redactionating these letters as Americans will believe anything that is either written down or viewing on telivision.
  
  

Much more needs to be analyzed from the great nation of America and therefore I will send your ministry periodical tranches of my intellectual findings on the culture and moers of Americans with, at the start of next week the chapter called AMERICANS IN SPORT and the week after that AMERICANS IN CHURCH and the week after that AMERICANS IN WAR and the week after that AMERICANS AND THE WORLD. This future reading is to be very fascinationing to the backwards people back home.
When my thesis is publicated trhoguhout (another difficult word not in my lexicon) the world, people will finally understanding the secret of American dominating the world.  To Americans life is a chess game where everything needs to be black or white, the board, the pieces and the players. They have created a dominant negro in boxing, golfing, basketballing and now are about to create one in presidenting by having the very black Obama fighting the very white McCain. We have much to learn from America on the absence of gray, the key to their success as my thesis will prove. More practically we should do the black-white dichotomy (yes! it is in my lexicon) in Nigeria immediately by my suggeting to your Excellency that if OBAMA wins Your Excellency should telephone the white McCain and have him elected as President of our black nation of Nigeria. This would be a modest albeit efficient step in the direction of the greatest nation on earth. 

Your Excellency, I need to concluding that I need more money for my effortuous work and will appreciate more donations from the authors of the successed Nigerian Letters of which, honorable Minister, you are the most respected leader and editor in chief.

I remain thus truly your humble beneficiary and for a parting word I say to you:

KEEP THE EMAILS COMING TO AMERICA, NIGERIA NEED THE MONEY AND THESE MUCH MORE EDUCATED PEOPLE NEED TO BELIEVING ALL THINGS THEY VIEWING OR READING ALL THE TIME

JIMBO LA POIRÉ, foreign-student in amtropology.

Our New Treillis Fenced Courtyard

This project was seeded with 9 leftover 4x4 posts given to me after I built a fence for Paul, my Carlsbad brother-in-law. Now we can dance around almost naked in our front yard with Chica, her ALWAYS naked under her nascent fur coat. She is a true Mexicana-Americana and has a knack for disconnecting wires and breaking lamps and perfume bottles at night. But you just adore her youthful exhuberance.

Avoid The Red Districts When Traveling.

From yourPhotos

This Newsweek map is hugely interesting. The red districts have voted Republican 7% or more than they did in 2004. We must assume that this extra zeal came from a combination of the following factors: distrust of Obama, distrust of the Democrats, love of McCain, love of Palin. Now we know that McCain was never a beloved Republican. Sarah did much better with the uneducated. Yet, since much of the Republican message was to paint Obama as a potential terrorist in disguise and the Democrats as the 'loonie socialist liberals, we can safely assume that the message was well received in those Appalachian rural districts that have nothing to fear but fear itself...and little knowledge to counter the outrageous assumptions they have been bombarded with. This is Rush Limbaugh territory.

By the same token the dark blue areas denote a violent rejection of this message as seen in ALL cities with a college or a library. Upstate New York,Vermont and New Hampshire being close to Canada do not fear socialism so much. Many of them get their kicks in Montreal and most of them buy their pills in Canada. By the same token most coasts have more contacts with the outside world, Europe and Asia. How could they fall for the simplistic xenophobic messages of the last Republican campaign. An oddity, the 'Cajun' districts are red, although coastal to the gulf of Mexico. However this quaint people travel very little and many harbor fears that black people have secret gun caches and are preparing a revolution against the white man. I know for having lived there for a few years. Arkansas has the reddest districts of all, a place where trillions of chickens are slaughtered each year. Could it be that these simple folks fear terrorists the most? a little chickenshit at heart, maybe? Strange enough that these are dirt poor districts voting for the Grand Ole Party of fat cats.

Or is it that the Republican thinking heads have painted themselves into a corner, the white trash dumpster of America. If you are intelligent, black, or liberal, or God forbid, all three, avoid any road that goes through any of these depressed areas. Above all, avoid any Republican that contributed to this embarrassing polarization of America. The Republican tapeworm is now hiding in the rotting gut of America, the rest of it well on its way to recovery, bluer than the California sky.

And here's another tip: seek these blue areas, ALL of California, west Texas, New Mexico, the Northeast, Minnesota etc...Nice normal people who know how to vote and try to not have sex with close cousins or farm animals.

mysteryvid