"mascara" en CSI

I better watch out!!!

thank goodness i work in bolivia, not mexico.

eleciones

hoy, la gente de bolivia votan.

the democracy center's reports.

and of course, how it relates to wrestling.

aaa 09: Installment 2

I woke up early in my big king size bed, to ee delivering me hot chocolate and croissant. i begrudgingly worked on the diss proposal for a few hours (methodology is complete), then finally in the afternoon i tore ee away from his musings on the workings of hegemony on the food network and we made our way to the marriott.

there, i briefly met up with the texan, then wandered off to a panel with ee to see riley. riley's paper was quite good, but the young man who followed him was painful to listen to. we skipped out. ee went to the book exhibit and i saw the texan again, and stopped to chat. at which point the lazy-eyed-texan also appeared. an uncomfortable conversation ensued.

time was drawing near for pine's epic honduran resolution vote so i wandered off to the business meeting and found a seat on the side. not long after i realized i was just down the row from the dumpling, and moved over to sit near her. much business was conducted including the official "goodbyes" to old board members performed through song by some old anthro dude with a guitar. the entire (250+) quorum was invited to sing along (to everyone's detriment). eventually, it came time for the big show...the resolution. immediately, an amendment was proposed by charles briggs to explicitly condemn the results of the recent election and call on the US government to not recognize the results. it passed unanimously.

and then things got a little funky. some dude (presumably honduran) read aloud what seemed like a 20 minute long letter from some honduran anthropologists condemning the resolution as among other things, imperialist. it accused some (honduran?) anthropologists of voluntarily leaving the ministry of culture. it suggested honduran anthros were not consulted in writing the resolution. bunny (a 90+ year old anthro) commented we needed to have a plan for implementation. the (presumably honduran) dude again stood up to clarify that he did not write the letter but agreed with it. someone asked rosemary joyce a question, which she did not understand, but setha low (aaa prez) clarified that robert's rules of order stipulate the question could not be restated. alas, we moved on to pine's empassioned (as usual) and frantic (as usual) plea that these honduran anthropologists represented not all honduran anthropologists, and there were plenty more academics in honduras who had been persecuted. she gave a number of examples. finally, a venezuelan woman stood up shouting, crying and suggesting we stand in solidarity, not with honduran anthropologists, but the honduran people.

the question was called and we VOTED to vote. it was confirmed. then we VOTED on the question (being whether to pass or not). it passed the (now iffy) quorum. but this second vote does not mean that the resolution passed. oh no. it simply means that it is now eligible to be put be VOTED on by the entire AAA membership. yes, 3 votes to make this happen. who knows when we'll know for sure.

After all this, I met up with the So Ill kids, Gerry, Yata-Tanaka, & Juancho. we had some tasty food, and came up with brilliant questions for Gerry (the primatologist among us) to ask in cultural sessions. Gems included "Can you explain how this is related to hegemonic ideologies of transnationalism?" and "One word. Intersubjectivity. Think about it." Later bryan suggested throwing in the word "Linkages." after dinner we wandered over to Finn's and drank a few beers with bryan and channell, who was getting on my nerves. Futurama eventually joined us, and she was actually quite pleasant to be around. We eventually wandered back to a king size bed and passed out with plenty of room between us.

a little andean candy

a picture of a luchador wearing a Manfred Reyes mask (Reyes is 2nd in the polls-after Evo-for the upcoming Bolivian Presidential election)

(from Wall Street Journal Photos of the Day)

aaa 09: installment 1

I bring you this message from a luxurious king sized bed off of rittenhouse square, philly's ritzy neighborhood.

it is practically noon and i am still in bed (though I've been working on a paper for 2 hours) wrapped in a fluffy hotel-provided robe, sipping free Ghirardelli hot chocolate. i have been gchatting my companero who is doing something similar (though at least he's showered already) in the next bedroom of our incredible aka suite.

but yesterday was quite a good one. i woke up before the sun rose and picked up ee for our drive to the city of sibling love. we got in, checked into the hotel, parked the car, and had a terrible breakfast of strangely flavored non-fat-frozen-yogurt and awful coffee (at least that's how ee reported on it. i of course, did not partake).

then off to the marriott to register. ee's first panel was right away, and i tagged along. speaker #1 spoke about Bolivian marketwomen's subjectivity within neoliberal formations (sound vaguely familiar?). It wasn't anything new to me, but now I know I need to get in touch with her. Most importantly, she was recovering from the flu and almost passed out during her presentation, so someone else in the room had to finish reading the paper for her. a few more papers and then tonsilitis-infected ee just gave a brief description of his research before commenting on the awful conference theme/session title employing the "End/s of Anthropology"

After the session, I met another audience member who will be on my panel on Saturday, who studies trans activism in Mexico City, along with Susan Paulson, a long-time Bolivianist. ee & i then walked to trader joe's and got some supplies. after dropping the foods off at aka, i went back to the marriott to see spaulson's presentation on humor and the familia galan in La Paz. she was using some disidentification theory which got me excited. and a few other presenters opened my eyes to some new theory i should look at. but most excitingly, when i walked into the room before the presentations began, she shouted out to me "hi nell!" and introduced me to stuart rockefeller, another bolivianist.

i left directly after that panel for e patrick's performance of sweet tea at Penn. there i also ran into jackson5 (with whom i re-exchanged phone numbers) and riley from radical intersections. as i waited for the perf to begin i glanced through the aaa program and found siu gerry's name. a few text messages to my wife later, i was in contact with him, and now have plans to meet up (after 5 years). i saw the perf, drank some free wine, then headed back to center city to meet mcneil for some whiskey. upon arriving in the midst of a torrential downpour, i discovered he was well into his 5th hour of drinking, and some painful karaoke had just begun, so we decided to brave the elements and walk back to aka to drink some free booze with ee. some watermelon vodka and 4 mini-bags of popcorn later he trekked home (to the travelodge) and ee & i passed out in our respective king size beds.

day 1=success.

grasa y la policia

i promised beards, but instead i bring you pishtaco!

la antropologia de las barbas

i know its been a while. and i've got nothing for you right now.

except.

the promise of.....



"toward an anthropology of beards"

lo hice

ok, so that dilemma of the day thing didn't quite happen...

but i'm sitting here eating homemade ice cream (a birthday gift from ee), and am thinking about self-sufficiency. when i learned to knit & crochet this summer i joked that it made me one step closer to completely removing myself from the capitalist system. and not that i ever really intend to go off the grid, but there is something so fulfilling about having control over how exactly you're inserting yourself into commercialist systems. yes, this is just the control freak in me rearing her ugly head.

but i'm quite proud of things i've been doing lately that help me to claim a sense of agency where i didn't before. knitting scarves, crocheting hats, screen printing t shirts, making ice cream, brewing beer, growing veggies, mending shoes. and of course the usual sewing and flyer making.

there's nothing profound here. i suppose my point is there's a certain contentness that comes from making something that i never get from buying. Sure Sharon Zukin may say that we are in an age where shopping is a profoundly social process in which we claim or invent identity. But I'd like to think there is an admittedly smaller, but strong number, that is more in line with Halberstam's notions of queer time and space. we are working under the radar, creating our own identities along avenues that are decidedly anti-consumerist (along with plenty of other anti- s) despite the fact that i covet a $300 coat, and drove a car to school today. little steps i suppose. i'm no saint. but at least i've successfully boycotted whole foods for the last 8 days.

la musica del jc

i saw the black hollies saturday night. in planning to go, i worried that the six years that have passed would be enough to forget faces. that i'd be just another former neighbor like clint shoyman or a passerby like "jk's sidekick." my fears were confirmed when, though jong said he'd put me on the list, the doorman shook his head and looked at me as if to say "honey, i get that trick all the time, and i'm not falling for it." but after coughing up $10 and making my way inside, i was greeted with profuse apologies, and a shocked looking justin angelo yelling "nells bells!"

dj dusty shadows circa 2003

and thus began my nostalgic daydream in which i began to fall in love as we sat listening to a fuzzy ella fitzgerald eminate from the turntable while drinking wine and eating jong's eggplant rolatini. in which i awoke after a night at Guillo's to the sounds of Two Tough Guys, and arose to fully embrace my unemployment. in which the bridge & i would walk to the bar later known as el camino and consume 5 free rail cosmos in an hour, later drawing pictures of our stomachs with crayons depicting two doritos swimming in a pink sea. in which we all developed a strange attraction to biography channel programs on serial killers. in which i didn't have to worry about my name being on the list at maxwell's.

but these warm memories of brisk fall nights fail to capture my true feelings of those times. rhino has philosophized on the hegemony of memory, and this is certain a case for study. those were the worst of times. unemployment and then practically dehumanizing employment, academic disappointment, disagreements that should have indicated failure long before i acknowledged it. but at the same time, perhaps that is what made the good times so good, and the experience as a whole so intense.

those years in the jc were awful years, peppered with close friendships, crazy antics, belonging in unlikely places, sleepless nights, flaming bars, silly notebooks forever lost to the white star gods, and the feeling of truly being in a neighborhood. i suppose that's the last time i really felt like i was home. i haven't been back in almost 2 years, and i'm sure things have changed. i suppose the condos at the end of pavonia are complete, and PJ's somehow functions without the guz. but it still feels like i could defy frost and return home there. like i could walk by 7s and strike up a conversation with any of the smokers. like the high scores on the photohunt machine at uncle joe's might still be dominated by those using the quadrant approach. like the guys at the 7th and erie liquor store would still make quips about knowing how often i'm there. like something called rye coalition still exists. like i could show up at hamilton park and play some ball or take a nice stroll down coles, pausing at 130. indeed, i still remember the first time i pulled up to that apartment, with jk & the fiend holding a parking spot for me. that was the beginning of something definitive in both its complete depravity and its utter transformative qualities.

130 coles

and looking back from here-where i am happy, and get to reminisce with old friends-makes it all worthwhile i suppose. as i said in "Beneath the Surface" (by former JC resident, Scammell) memory is how we cut up the long runon sentence of our lives to derive meaning. it tells us who we were and thus, who we are. it is the way in which we define ourselves. i am no longer that same nells bells that moved onto the futon on coles street, but that will always be part of who i've become.

pina

i had my first shared cup of pineapple of the semester. it wasn't quite ripe, but taste aside, its good to be back.

manana

manana regreso a EEUU.

here is what i'm looking forward to:
vegetables. salad. real healthy food.
good non-yellow mustard.
real vegetarianism
putting toilet paper in the toilet.
not worrying about when the hot water's running out.
not worrying about the shower electrocuting me.
summer.
walking a block without steep uphill climbs
traffic that pays attention to lights
drinking water whenever i want
not worrying about if there's anyone home to let me in at night
cheaper cheese

here is what i will miss:
$1.50 glasses of wine at fancy french restaurants
saltenas
the luchadoras
the chilen@s
ramiro's thoughts about what i should be studying
scarf weather
el sol andino fuerte
the spirit of latin america
a good excuse for not replying to emails
comeraderie among gring@s
random people lying and saying my spanish is good
fresh $0.07 bread
living in SoHo-cachi
fireworks for no reason

i'm sure there's more for both lists. leaving is always a weird feeling. on one hand i want nothing more than to be back in the land of endless hot water, needless neoliberal regementation, and healthcare debates, but its hard to leave too. in a way, i'm very glad the chilen@s are leaving tomorrow too (though i'll miss the other 2). i guess i always just feel there's so much more to be done. i haven't cracked the surface. i don't really understand. i just have to remember that's not a failure, its just an appropriate end to round one.

now, off to buy some cheaply made tourist trap gifts.

P-farm

Total bummer, dude.
Here's why...

time to start learning arabic...

it seems female wrestlers in iraq are the new rage.
and i've only got about 7 minutes of my first luchadora interview transcribed. the work just keeps stacking up.

renewal

“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” - Paul Theroux

Most anthropologists (at least young ones) know this. This is the price we pay for the “glamour” of grants to take us to far away places(1) where we are adopted(2) by the natives(3) and given(4) special things to eat(5). We eventually write books that make our lives seem so out of the ordinary(6) and interesting(7). But the truth is, we are lonely like everyone else. We doubt ourselves, and cry at night, and miss loved ones and wonder why we didn’t just become comparative literature majors back when we had the chance.

Most days I look around La Paz and wonder how I'll spend a year here. Not to say that its awful: I actually quite like the weather. There's always something going on. I really like my neighborhood. I could sit in plazas and talk to people for hours. Life is cheap and good food is easy to come by. But its not home. Its a lonely place. And part of it is the language, but I always feel disconnected. Alien. I mean, I should feel out of place. I do not belong here. I am not a resident and not a tourist. I have no place.

But on friday nights, the city seems to open up. Granted, these are among the few nights I've places to go, people to see, things to do. But there's a glow to the city en viernes. A warm, yellow, homey glow. And people laugh, and the music is soothing, and the pisco sours taste like they should.

And tonight, in particular, I discovered some things. I was a little early for my dinner date (I was the 3rd wheel on the date), so i walked arounId sopacachi, and suddenly, unexpectedly, the sky was alight with fireworks. I've never been overly taken by fireworks. Even as a fairly young child I remember being bored with them. As I've grown older, I think this has disappointed a number of my friends. But fireworks at the right time can be magical. Not every night at 10 pm at Disney. Not at sundown on the 4th of july. But when fireworks pop up unexpectedly during otherwise magical moments, everything falls into place.

So eventually, the fireworks faded and I made my way to the Alianza Francesa for dinner. I still arrived ahead of my dates, but got a table and looked over the menu. For some reason I've never really liked french onion soup (on the menu of course, as sopa de cebolla con queso). But after a hearty french-oniony dinner party this winter, I thought I'd give it a go. and it was marvelous. I gobbled it up as I slurped Peru's signature beverage (I had to have one in honor of 28 de julio!).

I walked home content with good friends, food, beverages, and a city that, at this moment at least, felt like it could become home someday.

(1) or our own back yards
(2) or tolerated
(3) or the local residents & institutions
(4) in exchange for money
(5) usually just the bland local cuisine
(6) or alienating
(7) or trying

esta enferm@

so, i've been sick the last few days and therefore doing a lot of reading. mostly from Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Analysis of White People (Hartigan 2005) (review here), but today also an as-of-now unpublished paper a friend is writing on post-accord politics in guatemala.

In OT, Hartigan attempts to focus attention on the fact that classism within "whiteness" reaffirms and solidifies the hegemony of whiteness. Though I take issues with some of his approaches (which I fully intend to write about here eventually), he also makes some excellent points. One of which reminded me of a few films made by d'vine around election time.

Hartigan writes (p. 157) about Time reporter Steve Lopez's investigation of Southern whites' reasons for voting for George W. Bush in 2000. "More often than not, when I asked people "Why Bush?" it was as if they had zinc deficiency. The smile would freeze, the eyes would cloud, and all signs of intelligence would fade." Hartigan comments, "This image reproduces the most enduring images of rural poor whites: faded or absent intelligence, stemming from some sort of indelible physical deficiency."

Now, as a disclaimer (#1), i think that d'vine is a fantastic professor, advisor, humanitarian, activist, writer, and person in general. But my point is he is falling into a common trap in which it is ok to disrespect certain types of peoples' opinions because they don't quite jive with the ways in which the upwardly mobile, urban, liberal, well-traveled, lucky ones think. And I'm not condoning the racism and other -isms present in the narratives in his short films. But I also think the particular way they are framed (and perhaps edited) contributes to disrespect. And I think the second film illustrates particularly well the way in which the filmmaker (and presumably viewer) are positioned as morally and intellectually superior to Noe. We are invited to approve of and commend him for his decision. Had he decided differently, we would be invited to judge him disapprovingly.

(disclaimer #2-these videos were not intended to be "neutral" ethnographic accounts, but rather campaign tools, and i'm sure, if dr.vine were to conduct true ethnographic work on such people, the results would be stunning and beyond reproach)

now, back to the texan's article on Maya Guatemala: He explores reasons that many Maya seemingly contradictorily back right aligned political movements. In reviewing literature on similar topics he writes that many authors give important counterpoints to pervasive racist ideas that ignorant Mayas are tricked into aligning themselves with right wing politics.

So my point here is that in some ways this illustrates Hartigan's idea that phenotypically "white" but otherwise degraded individuals and groups are treated in similar ways to racialized "others" in different places. Obviously, all is not the same between rural Southern whites and the Maya of Huehuetenango, but I think the questioning of political affiliation without thick analysis is dangerous.

lucha blog

its weird when you show up in your own google reader.

cuy

i just wanted to point out that i made this comment 3 weeks ago...
(you think you're so clever otto-ok, maybe you are, just behind the times)

suspicions confirmed

mas preguntas

i'm having one of those days. nothing seems right.

who the hell am i to be doing research?
do i really want to do research abroad?
do i really want to do research at all?
how the hell am i going to get any sense of what's going on here in a month?
how the hell am i going to get any sense of what's going on here in a year?
how the hell am i going to write a dissertation proposal?
how the hell am i going to write a dissertation?
do i really like this whole "academia" thing?
am i really cut out to be an anthropologist?
am i ever going to get over my shyness?
am i ever going to get a handle on spanish?

...definitely one of those days that asks questions.

que quieres?

i am convinced of one thing: people who tell me my spanish is good want something from me.

usually money or sex.

shoeshine boys and creepy 35 year old men from cochabamba say "Tu espanol es muy bien"

bullshit.