I''m busy, my brother plays half life for every waking hour of the day, and I''m about to head off to the chaco. I''ll be back, leave some love.

Alex

Summer´s coming and I´m going Cuba for med school if all goes well. Makes things a lot easier.

Things are good here in Paraguay. It´s getting warmer every once and a while, and School´s nearing its end, which means I´ll be in Peru (hopefully) not too long from now.

I´m a little upset at Converse. My new All Stars have a hole in them. They´re suede for Chrissake. arg.

I´ve started writing a screenplay too. A jazz band in a totalitarian corporate state called home. I miss jazz band. Not so much fun having to imagine chord changes while you play. Oh well.

Paraguays crazy fascinating. So much poverty and injustice in this continent, and the government pretends to worry about the international markets and affairs, carefully ignoring the fact that it plays pretty much no role in the outside world, hardly even trading with anyone but brazil, and half of that´s contraband.

They´re filming Miami Vice down the street from my house though. Cuban med school kind of ruins my dream of a film/cinematography major, but we just can´t win ´em all can we?

I´m in Asuncion right now, some 4 or 5 hours from my home in Ciudad del Este. My ´brother´and I are visiting a family here. The mother runs a tight ship, and I´m not really used to that. It´s really weird being the guest and having someone else´s preferences forced on you. Not talking rules here, I can deal with that. When I´m ordered to change my shirt mid day, because I´d worn it to school, it´s just a bit strange.
School´s interesting though. Friday I went and chilled with the Ultimo año Informatica class. It was their last day of class, so they just dicked around all day. They made a pile of desks and chairs in the room, then tipped them over. It was just insanity the whole time. Throwing things at the fan, climbing on things and eachother, in the computer lab everyone did whatever, some playing counterstrike while others checked the email and messaged friends. It was a good day, followed by a party on top of someone´s apartment building.

Saturday was a lot of nothing. Paulo dragged me to a mall (a bad mall, but hey, it´s paraguay, I like the street shops myself). There he spent 10 minutes drilling the poor girl at the watch kiosk about the most ugly watches (I kept repeating "que feo" and making strange faces and indicating how large it was.) They were all overpriced too. 100 american for a digital POS you could pick up for 30 or less back home. The girl was patient though, and sipped her terrere.

We were supposed to eat lunch there. Paulo decided he was hungry at last and we toured the food court. He decided on an empanaderia, and bought us each 1 empanada with the money his mother had given us for expenses we´d have in the city over the weekend. He mourned the loss of the 3500 Guaranies (about 65 cents). He honestly thought that we were supposed to use the money to buy things for ourselves, and had big plans to buy all sorts of things with our 100 000 G( about 17 dollars). We ran a bit short of his dreams. I might note how incredibly insubstantial a single empanada is.

What can I expect of a 12 year old though? I would hope more, but sadly, I suppose not. I really wish he´d stop his campaign to bother me though. The constant noises in my ear, jabs in the stomach, asking me if I like the most unimportant thing, and then when it was actually something i didn´t like, asking me why not (for example, a pile of trash: "Alex, you like?" me:"no" him:"why not? Alex? Alex? Alex? Alex? ALEX? Alex, why not?") I never realized how much I value time alone. Not all the time of course, but when I´m working on things (my screenplay for instance) following a train of thought, characters developing themselves in my mind and suddenly I´m confronted with obscene noises in my ear and then I´m asked if I really do indeed like when he does that. I solidly negate it. No I do not. I´ve yelled at him about it twice now, each time when he kept it up for 15 or 20 minutes. Patience, even in the most stoich, it seems, has limits.

This is quite long now, it seems, and I´ll leave it hear, confident that few will read it as long as it is.

Wish me luck with Cuba, and thanks Kayte, for the idea. I´m sure we´ll make it there without losing sight.

Love from Paraguay,

Alex

Here I am again after a little over a month. Paraguay is fascinating. Its history is different than most of the rest of the continent and the population is very homogenous.

I really don't know what to write. The experience so far has given me new goals in life, and I hope to be able to reach them.

More or less, everything is good here. I'll write more if I can get rid of this "nothing really to say" mindset.


From Paraguay with Love
Alex

Here I am after a week in Paraguay.

As you may have noticed, I've reactivated my gallery. I can't keep up with deviantPolitics while I'm here, and I need an outlet for my pictures. All submissions for the next year will be digital, as I don't have a scanner.

Paraguay is lovely. Winter's just ending, and all is good. Ciudad del Este is a horribly dirty city, but it has its good points too. '

I've spent a lot of time watching Brazil from my balcony, thinking and writing. I think I've figured out what I'm going to do with myself when this is all over.

Adios for now,
Alex

This is the last entry I'll be posting for a while.

In a few hours I'll be on my way to Paraguay, with uncertain access to the internet. I'm afraid I won't be able to do much for the 7th, but I'll reactivate the gallery next time I log on if this has resolved itself.

Good luck to all of you, and °jark, don't let the man get you down. We love you.

Cheers,
Alex.



Here's the info from my last journal:

read this [link] now.

It appears $spyed has released some sort of statement, which jark has replied "Do not let yourself be fooled by rhetoric." Hold it true, and don't let the Man take the deviants down.

________________________________________ _


Hopefully you've all heard by now that °jark's no longer with dA. It's really becoming quite a disturbing situation in which the idea of community, apparently, has been set aside for capital gain.

The truth:[link]

Former staff member °euphoria has said this:

"It is my opinion that the management of this company, for the most part, lacks the most common qualities of integrity and honor. The focus of the CEO’s vision is not one of community or art, but rather commerce and capital. While these are not in and of themselves bad things, when they take over what really matters it becomes a problem and corrupts everything in its path."

`onestar and `krash have been coordinating the efforts for a Great Protest against the recent corporate actions of Dev. `onestar has proposed a day of deviation silence for August 7th ([link]). `krash on the other hand, has suggested everyone submit a yellow deviation, and comment on everyone elses yellow deviations ([link]). This community action is to show the powers that be that this is not how we want our dA to operate: Money first, Art second.

don't miss `justthorne's entry [link]



Staff members who've now resigned:

[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]


Please read `liquify's journal [link]
as well as °jark's [link] and don't miss `bookdiva's [link]


Goodbye for now.