In Transit

I am in Barcelona on my way to Paris or Munich and then to Florence to meet Rebecca on the second of august. I´ll be in Italy for my birthday. Isn´t that cool? Maybe the Mafia will throw me a party.

Man, I feel Like a Woman

Last night at the hostel we had mexican for dinner, and you couldn´t eat unless you dressed in drag. It was a pretty humorous night, and parts of it were a little scary. But I must say, I make one sexy senorita. I´ll post the lushious photos up as soon as I can.

The event was accompanied by music from my trusty iPOD. It kicked off with “I´m too Sexy” by Right Said Fred and then moved on to songs such as Young Hearts Run Free, When Doves Cry, Shake Your Ass, etc…

I leave for Barcelona on Tuesday as I make my way towards Italy to meet my sister Rebecca. We´re going to travel italy for about 9 or 10 days together starting August 2nd. And thanks to BrokenSeason I laughed harder today than I have in weeks.

Questions Asked

The last few days have been very long. The hostel has been extra busy, so I´ve had to stay up extra late. It is hard, if not impossible, to comfortably sleep in Granada in the heat of the day. This means I am tired and my brain is short circuiting. I thought I´d try something different (inspired by Solomon_Grundie), ask me questions - anything - and I´ll answer them to the best of my papal ability.

Questions Answered

Ten minutes after posting my last post, my mom sent me an e-mail with the answer to the big question…

” opposite of a salutation is a valediction– hence the salutatorian is supposed to greet the audience and the valedictorian is supposed to bid them farewell.”

Talent In A Can

This is a series of photographs of the graffiti a local artist does here.

That is the incredible spray paint mural in the Rambutan common room. Isn´t she beautiful? I mean, have you ever seen a table that sexy before?

A piece hidden at a construction site.

 
This guy must make his own pinup calendars.

Imagine what he could do in Crayola?

 
Nicely done, but who does a spray painting of a kid doing school work?

 
This looks like the beginning of a cigarette ad. Or an ad for medicine to control your herpes (sorry).

Looks like the final boss from Gradius III, doesn´t it?

Too bad some idiot sprayed over it.

Poop free, and Proud.

I went to bed at 5am. I got up at 5pm. The kittens have learned to climb into my bed. They wake me by doing kitten kung fu on my bed. Kitten kung fu, thankfully, does not involve pooping.
Yet. One did pee on a traveler earlier today.

You Make Me Sick

You people make me sick.
Desserts are supposed to be fun people.
Why in the hell would you eat Peanut Butter ice cream?
What kind of sick person are you? Do you take chemotherapy for fun? Peanut Butter is the same stuff you put on celery, which is horrible. Have fun. Eat ice cream that has nuts, marshmallows, chocolate, etc… in it. Unless you are deathly allergic to nuts, which you can ignore if you feel like cashing in that insurance policy.

You probably eat muslex for breakfast, followed by prunes for old people. Next, you spend hours on the toilet waiting for that daily movement. Only pessimists eat peanut butter ice cream. And only optimists eat pessimists (but we wait until after the pessimist have had their daily muslex/prune induced movement).

When you go to rent a movie you don´t rent the worst movies. You rent the best ones. The fun ones. Same goes for hookers. If peanut butter was a movie it would be one you demanded your money back for. It would always cling to the back of your mind, like it does to the roof of your mouth when you eat spoonfulls of it.

Jason, my roommate, owes me $7.39 for late fees at Hastings. Lost in Translation and Down with Love. No, we didn´t rent them for us. Rather, Lauren and I had a movie night, and then Jason and Jenny borrowed the movies with a vow to return them on time.

$7.39 owed to Hastings does not mean on time.

Some OSU student explain the new OSU O-Key thing. I´ve been out of the loop.

I´ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

I bought a coconut.
Last night, when I went to sleep, I discovered Johnny had put the coconut in my bed. The coconut looked especially sexy in the underwear, blonde wig, and sunglasses Johnny had put on it.

I need Jolene Blalock. There is no way I´m settling for a coconut again. An application is available for those females or coconuts interested in filling said position.

For the first time in my life I met someone who knows how to play the card game Fan Tan who isn´t from our family. Anyone else out there know how to play?

Obscene Jokes To Play On Grandparents

The International Council of Seth, founded and headed by me, officially removes this Seth from being a Seth. Lawyers have contacted him with a cease and desist order stating that he must quit using the name because he is damaging people´s perception of it by being a lame sappy song writer. Also, he eats peanut butter ice cream.

Steve Jobs can go Jobs himself.
Apple is a corporation with a knack for great products and shitty follow through. Why the hell should my “on the go” playlist erase when I dock it with my computer. Why can´t I erase songs from it? Why can´t I change my iPOD options in iTUNES unless the iPOD is plugged in? Shouldn´t I be able to remove songs from the “on the go” playlist? Where is the microwave function?

We played the lyric game last night. I won, because I use rare words such as “oceanography.” Call me a bitch, but hand me my trophy when I kick your ass, because I can even sing a song with that word in it: Captain Jack´s “In the Navy.” DDR education.

A drinking game officially sucks if you can´t explain it in sixty seconds or less.

I don´t drink at the Hostel at all, though I have the option, because I figure they appreciate not having a drunk manager. The last night manager drank all the time. Every other night someone plays a drinking game. Some of them are ridiculously complex, which lead to the sixty second rule.

I respect people who make good decisions, such as Wenonahgurl.
I respect people who have guns because they can shoot me on a whim.
By that logic, good and guns must be the same thing.

If you get hit by a bus in Spain, you cannot sue the bus company at all. In Granada alone there have been over 500 bus-pedestrian accidents since January. In other words, if you see a bus within a half mile of you, hide. Apparently the spanish word for bus means “people magnet.”
I do.

I need a movie, a huge bucket of refillable popcorn, a refillable coke, and someone to go get the refills. An application is available for those people or coconuts interested in filling said position.

My Dad says my Mom is a real Spelling Machine

The Xanga spell checker sucks.
Everytime it doesn´t catch a spelling mistake, my mom catches it. Such as monastery and monastary. She used to be a copy editor. I don´t mind that she corrects me though.

When you greet someone it is a salutation.
What is it when you tell someone good bye?
Is there a fancy word for telling someone off?

Why is it called a wild goose chase? Are wild geese that hard to catch? Or perhaps wild geese don´t exist. Why would you chase one. Geese are mean. Really mean. Like fat kid without cake, ice cream, candy, and buttermilk mean, but meaner because the geese can fly. And I´ve never seen a fat kid fly - even if he was mean. Have you?

Girl Slept With For Her Sake (from the Onion.com)
TULSA, OK—University of Tulsa sophomore Ben Stoll was gracious enough to sleep with third-year law student Rosie Andriessen Monday. “Rosie had been acting insecure and needy all evening, so I figured I’d help her out a bit,” said Stoll, who met Andriessen last year through common friends. “She probably thinks she’s too chubby. It must be a big boost for her to have sex with a guy like me.” Stoll decided not to call Andriessen the next day, nor to return any calls she might make, so as not to get her hopes up.

Jess, the day shift person, doesn´t speak any spanish. Anytime someone calls who doesn´t speak english she yells, loud and slow, “CALL BACK LATER!” Talking louder and slower makes someone more fluent in english.

Words Formed To Make Sentences

My parents are great. They often wonder where all the crazy thoughts in my brain come from, but they enjoy them and laugh while signing the asylum paperwork. These are a few snippets from their last email…

“Seth,

I love it when you post pictures; I love it because I get to see you and because I get to bask in the glory of a DSL connection. Like you haircut. Has anyone mistaken you for a skin head? That is not derogatory, I like the cut, but just wondered.

Horseradish tooth paste would also be manly, very.
People did used to wipe with corn cobs. How about that?
And to keep up the spelling crusade it’s monastery with an e. Dad is running through your playlist on his computer. We have gone lightening swift through the Beatles and are on Dylan, right now. Ah my favorite, Black Diamond Bay

Love, Mom

ps - Does the post office feed the kittens along the way?
Send me a black and white one.”

It is humorous, informative, uses a semi colon, and taunts me that they got high speed internet after I left.

“You are probably annoying because I have an erection.”

Notice: This post contains quite a few pictures. Sorry for those of you with slow connections.

Postcards

Spain remains great, and the kittens under the bed are starting to pounce each other and they´ve learned to crawl out of the box. Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up to kittens pouncing each other in the middle of the room.

A few of you have informed me you got your postcards. Hopefully all of the postcards make it. One lucky reader will recieve a kitten from me duct tape him to a post card and send him state side. It is legal.

More Architecture Connections

This morning at breakfast I was chatting to Rosie, a british architecture student, about architecture. Eliza, another traveler, was listening in when Rosie and I started talking about our favorite architects. Rosie named hers, and then I named James Cutler as mine.

James Cutler is a brilliant Seatle area architect, who my OSU architecture friends will remember came last semester and talked about one of his most well known projects, Bill Gates’ House.

When I said James Cutler, Eliza’s jaw hit the ground. Eliza’s response was “He is my dad.”

She says if I make a trip to Seatle she can take me to her dad’s studio, meet him, hang out, maybe visit a few of his projects, etc… I am ecstatic!

Lumberjack Product Improvements

Tom´s of Maine makes a wide variety of products, such as Fennel flavor toothpaste. Fennel flavored toothpaste is pretty manly, but they could easily achieve more manly, ruggish, lumberjack type products with a little more hard work. For instance, instead of fennel, why not Flanel flavored toothpaste.

Damn, you know you are rugged if you use Flanel flavored toothpaste, cedar shingle toilet paper (especially manly if you use the two ply kind), gasoline based cooking oil, or a porcupine quill dish scrub. And if you are that rugged you must be a real chesticle touting lumberjack.

I Want To Ride My Bicycle

Speaking of such things, our man Lance Armstrong looks as though he will win his sixth Tour de France. I always follow the Tour de France closely, and I am following it even more so after having read his autobiography, which was an easy read and only took a day. This would be the first time a person has ever won six and the first time anyone has ever won six in a row in the one hundred plus years of the Tour.

He is tough. He eats little kids for breakfast and wipes with cedar shingle toilet paper.

Harry Plunder

I read the first Harry Potter. The book might entertain a fifth grader, but it lacks imagination, suspense, and challenging vocabulary. Actually, I loved the book and can’t wait to get my hands on the next one. I simply wanted to get your attention.

Pick up the newest copy of the New Yorker magazine for a wonderful article about all of the puncutation and grammatical mistakes in the book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves.” If you read the book you have to read that article.

There were perfect copy bootlegs of Spider Man 2 available here in Spain two days after the movie was released in American theaters. I’ll check tomorrow and see if “I, Robot” is out.

Little Kids and Coupons

In a conversation the other day we ended up talking about training your four or five year old to purchase feminine products for you, so as a man you don´t have to be seen doing such a thing.

Imagine working at wal-mart when a four year old girl with a candy cigarette in her mouth walks up, puts a big box of tampons on the conveyor belt, looks up at you and says “Yea, I ovulate.” Then throws her candy cigarette on the floor and smashes it with her foot.

For some reason I can see Rachyl doing this as a little girl. Or even now.

Dribblings

Some people refer to woman as being pregnant. “In the Off season” is accurate too.

I bet in Japan a lot of construction workers have arguements such as…
Ninja Worker:”We need to knock out that wall.”
Ninja Foreman:”You cant! That is a load bearing rice paper wall.”

“Al Queade hires P.R. Consultant just to shoot him”

“My house is burned but I can see the sky.”

Sunset Celebration

Each evening we go up the hill from the Hostal Rambutan, sit by the old Moorish wall that protected the city before it fell, and watch the sunset over the mountains. Wouldn´t it be weird if after the sunset, it came back up for an encore?

The thing in the left is the camera´s strap.

The thing in the left is my head.

Alhambra

The Alhamabra is the tourist attraction of Granada, which was the last stronghold of the Moores to fall (or the mookes if you are a seinfeld fan). Here are some of the photos from the vist there…

Fiona in a door way.

Canon Fodder Pope.

If you can come up with a funny caption for this, I´ll put it here.

Winner: Mercutio68: “Centuries later, the Alhambra was reclaimed by Moores disguised as tourists.” We also would have accepted “Centuries later, the Alhambra was reclaimed by Moores disguised as buildings.”

Beautiful garden pathway.

The thing in the left is my arm. This was before I cut my hair super short.

Fiona eats plastic bottle caps apparently.

Only the Lego corporation could have made a more amazing ceiling. Or Michelangelo.

Fiona sitting after she had caught on fire… okay, perhaps she didn´t catch on fire, but it makes the picture seem more exciting.

Random

Paragliders taking off. The people on the top of the hill are there to laugh at the sight.

I found this rock on the beach which gives proof God has quality control inspectors.

The thing on the left is the wonderful Sarah playing with the kitten named Melan

My chess pieces basking in glory after I stomped Chris.

The Abandoned Monastary Entrance. God is still there, but don´t look for monks there.

A construction sign that was literally translated. Babblefish the top sentence from spanish and you will see exactly how they got the phrases.

Another sign.

This a beer bottle with flower in it in the middle of a plaza. Every day I walk by the small plaza and there are new flowers in the bottle. Sadly, there is never beer in the bottle.

Flamenco.

The Bullring in Seville. That is Dan in the right hand side. Not a bull.

Me outside the Alacazar in Seville, which is infinitely better than the Alhambra.

Remember the commercial for the hair salon my friend was in… Well, this is during the filming. Like I said, the commercial doesn´t make you want get a hair cut.

This is the view of the Alhambra from the Hostal Rambutan´s porch. The green things are trees.

Request: Tony, Can you e-mail me the “A Dead Tony Is Fun” essay I wrote?

Girl Amuses Many

Most of the people coming to the Hostal Rambutan are cool savvy travelers. Then on occassion a stupid person arrives. We are all greatly entertained. Alieta, a current guest, is trying to rival the stupidity of garden tools, and she is doing it with a passion and conviction unmatched. She will succeed.

For instance, I witnessed this converastion…

Alieta: Where are you from?
Fiona: Mexico City. My parents are moving to Brazil. So Brazil is my home. I go to school at the UBC (University of British Columbia) in Canada.
Alieta: I didn´t know they have a branch of UBC in Brazil.

A few days ago our friend Johnny´s apartment was broken into and someone stole his passport, plane tickets home, eurorail pass, pocketwatch, etc… Of course he was pissy about it. And I witnessed this conversation…

Alieta: Let me tell you about when I had some things stolen.
Johnny: Please, seriously, don´t talk to me. Alieta proceeds to tell extremely boring, uninteresting story that ends with the line… ¨And that is how someone stole my earrings. I know how you feel, Johnny.¨

Edit: They were not expensive earrings.

The fact that he didn´t upper cut her over the railing into the cactus patch below was an amazing feat of self control and should earn him a place as a Saint.

Musings of My….Muse

Someone offended the germany girls last night with a bad holocaust joke.

The Hostal has a cat. She has kittens. They sleep under my bed, which is nice. I wake up and hear them meowing, which is quieter than if they were mowing. Sometimes when the mother comes in through the window at night she lands on my head. I don´t think she´d like it if I did the same to her. She is a sweet cat, but kind of slutty. Not that I´ve had sex with her or want to have sex with animals at all, but this is her third batch of kittens in a year or so.

Abbey, you should be happy because I started reading ¨Skinny Legs and All¨ by Tom Robbins.

Tom Robbins is an author. Tom Collins is an alocholic drink.

¨Ham on Rye¨ by Charles Burkowski is the must bitter sweet, depressing, funny book ever. I finished it in little over a day. Not many books catch my attention that way. Reese, You´ve got to read the book because it will remind you of Vonnegut´s style.

Recently I realized I´m dyslexic. There is a whole slew of words I spell backwards all the time. Such as mom, dad, noon, racecar, and elephant. I´m concerned.

Our family was headed to the OKC airport one day. We pulled into a gas station and when we got inside a lady came in and said ¨Someone has stolen my car!¨ My mom looked at her and said ¨Do you know who stole it?¨ It was one of the funnies things I´d ever heard. I love my moM dearly, and I knew what she meant to say, but it came out wrong. Damn, I spelled Mom backwards again.

I could never run a watch shop. I am always five or ten minutes late. I would always be opening the shop late and that would be bad advertising.

I couldn´t carry nuclear launch codes in a brief case attached to my wrist. I am to self concious that people would think I liked to have kinky sex with leather objects that lock.

Currently the internet cafe is playing The Love Shack, by the B-52s. Leaving a bar a few nights ago the final song was Piano Man. We stayed for an extra round and sang along. Really loud.

Trip Quotes!

Quotes are a wonderful thing. They help us remember moments. Some of these quotes aren´t politically correct or very polite, but damn if they weren´t funny at the time. And even now.

A sign in a hostal read…
¨Warning Police. Thieves operate on beach.¨

Johnny: ¨I used to have a pocket watch (as I checked my pocket watch for the time).¨

Robin: ¨That was smart. She brought her own seat (referring to the lady in the wheel chair).¨

Spanish guy: ¨I don´t kiss just anyone on the cheek.¨
Madeline: ¨I don´t knee just anyone in the groin.¨

Person (i forget who): ¨I knew a girl who had a pro-life tatoo on her ass.¨
Me: ¨What did it read ´Enter here so I don´t have to become pro-choice´?¨

Fiona: ¨My father is Mexican and my mother is Scottish.¨
Me: ¨Where did they meet? At a Tex-Mex bagpiping festival?¨

Spanish Guy: ¨A penis is a wonderful thing.¨
Fiona: ¨You MUST pronounce the H in Happiness.¨
Spanish Guy: ¨HaPenis is a wonderful thing.¨
Fiona: ¨Better.¨

Comfortable Hospital Bench

In Cadiz I ended up on a park bench by a hospital with Britney, a professional dancer for music videos, asleep in my lap at 4am. I think I was probably the first person she was ever near who didn´t try to get in her pants or make out with her.

I was simply there because I wanted to make sure she was okay because she was going to wander the streets drunk off her ass. Wandering the streets at night drunk until you fall asleep is not a good idea for a female to do. I was glad when she finally decided to stop walking and sit down. That is when she fell asleep in my lap.

On occassion I would look around and there would be some weirdo eyeing her. They didn´t make me nervous. I´d broaden my shoulders and stare at him. He would walk off. Once a car pulled up and turned off the engine.
That made me nervous.

The two guys simply stared at me.
I glared back.
They started the engine and left.

She finally woke up around 8:30am, and I lead her back to her room at the Hostal.

I shutter to think what would have happened if I hadn´t stayed there.

I know I could hold my ground if I needed to.
Nobody fucks with the Pope. lol.

That last line is an allusion to The Big Lebowski for those of you not in the know.

Granada

Note: I´ve sent postcards to everyone who asked for them. I mailed them off a while back, but it takes them forever to arrive. Let me know when you get them though.

I was lazy today (like everyday), but enjoy the update…

Robin, Dan, Fiona, and I arrived in Granada, Spain on friday and have been having a blast. One of my favorite sites so far, the Al Hambra, is here and I´ve spent lots of time exploring it. Washington Irving wrote his book Tales of the AlHambra while living in Granada.

If I´d been a Moore I´d have invinted the elevator because there is no way I´d walk up the steep hill to the Alhambra every single day. Or once I got up I´d have never come back down. When I say steep hill think of vertical cliff in burning sunlight.

Speaking of which, there are no elderly people in this town. I think they have been naturally selected out by the stairs here. The stairs have grips, but the edges are the slickest stone you´ve ever fallen off. and I think they wax them or something. I am constantly almost falling off them and breaking myself.

Call Me Day Sleeper

Dan and Robin left on Sunday, but Fiona and I stayed because we were offered jobs as long as we stay here. The jobs don´t pay but do get us free room and board at the Hostal Rambutan, which is a tiny hostal on a hill overlooking Granada. It isn´t in any of the guidebooks, which means it is filled with the best kind of travelers.

Under my bed is a box of kittens about 3 weeks old. I love it because during then night the mother cat wakes me up as she goes in and out the window to tend to them. Plus I like waking up and playing with them in the morning.

The owners are preparing to open a second hostal in the city center. Fiona has a job painting in the afternoons, and I run the Hostal Rambutan at night. My shift is 8pm to 8am, but I don´t have to be awake the whole time. I go to bed around 2am.

My job conists of getting beer and wine for the travelers, checking people out at night and in the morning, and letting people in after hours. I also clean up and lock up. Rebecca, the manager, is thrilled to death to have a reliable hardworking trusthworthy night employee. During the day a Canadian girl named Jesse is in charge of the hostal

I am enjoying it a great deal. The food they serve is wonderful which makes the work worthwhile. Instead of shit toast as they serve at every hostal I´ve been to so far, the Rambutan serves gorgeous brown waffles with honey and heaps of whiped cream on them. This morning there were cherries on the whip cream because I picked some in an orchard (cherries is what i picked, not whiped cream… the whiped cream trees aren´t in season for another month).

I figure it is nice to simply sit here a bit and not be spending money. I don´t think I´ve spent more than 30 euro my whole time here so far.

Paragliding and Cherry Picking

A brazilian named Alexandrous lives at the hostal and takes people on day trips. Yesterday I went on a day trip with him and three australians. We went into the Sierra Nevadas and swam in a gorgeous deep blue mountain lake, swam in a river fed by snow melt that was freezing but refreshing, and ate our fill of cherries in an orchard.

The Australians had come along to go paragliding (which i am not going to do because it costs a small fortune) with Alexandrous. He runs a paragliding company in Brazil and has incredible experience. He flies his paraglider for four or five hours a day. Because we got to the takeoff summit late there was only time for one australian to go in tandem with Alex. It was beautiful to watch. I got to drive the car back down and meet them at the landing site. I had the car in neutral the whole way down and was still having to put the brake on to avoid speeding.

Talking to Alex he told me he has gone as high as 2300meters. His longest single flight was over seven hours, and his farthest distance was 300kilometers. Incredible.

Hot Women Dancing…Dancing Hot Women…Hot Dancing Women…

Today they are shooting some commercials at the Hostal, which has been entertaining. The commercials are for a hair salon and feature spanish models dancing very seductively in skimpy outfits. I have no idea what that has to do with hair, but if they are trying to sell sex appeal they are doing a great job. Needless to say all the guys have been at the hostal all day long… for some reason they simply won´t leave.

Soccer Hoodlum Me

I had my hair shaved reeeeeaaalllly short because I was waking up really sweat at night. Cutting my hair has solved that problem. The air here is incredibly still and hot. Anyways, I bought a swedish soccer jersey which I´ve been wearing a lot, and several people have mistaken me for a Swedish soccer player which cracks me up. I think I´ll start telling people that I am him and sign autographs for them.

That is all for now.

Oh yea, when I went to go to bed last night someone was having sex in the other bed in the room. So I stayed in a different bed in a different room.