January 2012
4 posts
3 tags
Piracy Will Never Kill Music
Saying that piracy will kill music is like saying that urban gardening will kill food.
It’s like saying that fucking for free will kill prostitution.
It’s like saying that walking will kill the automobile.
So, you anarchist foot-walking, free-fucking, urban-gardening bastards, stop getting things for free and instead pay giant corporations for them! Please! Before it’s too...
6 Claves Para Aprender Inglés (Nuevo Libro--Ya a...
madridingles:
Buenos días a todos! Mi nuevo libro 6 Claves Para Aprender Inglés está ya a la venta exclusivamente para kindle de Amazon.
El libro trata de las habilidades que necesitas para hablar y entender el inglés y los pasos que puedes tomar hoy. Esta guía es indispensable para el estudiante del inglés, explicando las mejores maneras de practicar y aprender vocabulario y gramática además...
3 tags
Thoreau: "Beware of all enterprises that require...
From Chapter 1 of Walden, by Henry David Thoreau:
“A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet — if a hero ever has a valet — bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them...
3 tags
Heart of Darkness
I reread Conrad’s Heart of Darkness over Christmas.
It’s one of those books you have to read when you’re at university studying literature. Or maybe I read it in high school. I don’t really remember. Mostly, I remember it being a book about nothing. One of those books that I pretended to like at the time, because I was a literature geek and I knew I was supposed to like...
November 2011
1 post
5 tags
4 Fun Spanish Proverbs
These are four of my favorite Spanish proverbs, not because I necessarily agree with the sentiments they contain (well, actually I do) but because they’re so different than the type of proverbs used in the United States. Hint: there’s a lot more vagina in Spanish folklore.
Strange, considering that statistically, the US has almost 7 times the number of (human) vaginas that Spain...
October 2011
2 posts
Don Quixote de la Mancha, Capítulo XIII
Y, así, me voy por estas soledades y despoblados buscando las aventuras, con ánimo deliberado de ofrecer mi brazo y mi persona a la más peligrosa que la suerte me deparare, en ayuda de los flacos y menesterosos.
5 tags
WatchIt’s funny how Americans are getting class-conscious all of the sudden. After spending all of Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton, and Bush Jr (that’s just 7 presidential administrations, a mere 28 years!) deluding themselves into thinking that everyone was a member of the upper-middle class, finally they realize that actually, they’re getting shafted. As soon as the consumer credit dries...
September 2011
8 posts
2 tags
El Molar, Foothills of the Sierra
El Molar is a small city in the foothills of the Sierra, about 45 minutes north of Madrid. A couple of friends of mine just moved up there, and I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days seeing the town and the sights.
Photo by Lucia Moretti design.
The main tourist attraction in El Molar are a number of bars known locally as “cuevas” up on a hill on the edge of town. These...
4 tags
Progressive Democrats, 1896
“There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it”
Cross of Gold Speech, William Jennings...
Verb Lists: Infinitives and Gerunds →
Or check out the immense collection of verb patterns articles on my ESL website! You’ll be glad you did!
P.S. A shoutout to Scottsdale Community College. I’m a native Scottsdalean myself, actually.
elsi:
Do you imagine passing your EFL test? Or do you imagine to pass your EFL test?
If you don’t know, better study these lists: verbs followed by infinitives; verbs followed by...
8 tags
10 tags
4 tags
Santander, Cantabria
Santander is a port city in the Cantabria region in the north of Spain, known mostly for the bank of the same name that was founded there. It’s not a typical tourist destination, but has a lot to offer the visitor in the form of fresh seafood and great beaches in and around the city.
Cliffs, close to Faro Mayor lighthouse. All photos by Lucia Moretti Design.
A lot of Spanish coastal...
August 2011
16 posts
3 tags
Islas Cíes, Galicia
Las Islas Cíes are two islands in the mouth of the Ría de Vigo in the region of Galicia, Spain’s rainy northwest. They are considered a natural park and you can only spend the night by reservation in the campsite. Only 3 people live on the islands permanently. The beach linking two of the islands (Playa de Rodás) was voted the best beach in the world by The Guardian in 2007. Photo by Lucia...
3 tags
Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
You’ve got to hand it to a guy who writes a social novel these days, especially one that’s almost 600 pages long and sprawls across four decades. Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom must have taken some balls to write.
For those who haven’t read it, the story follows archetypical socially-conscious nice guy Walter Berglund through his troubled marriage, starting in the 1970s...
David Noël: Ten Job Application Mistakes →
I’m glad to see this from a PR person confirming that I’m not just a horrible spelling nazi!
I see a lot of résumés for my job as a Spanish translator, and I’m always surprised and dismayed when someone gives me an original with typos or bad punctuation. I always think, “Maybe this is why you’re unemployed.” There are so few jobs out there where attention to...
Aprende Más Inglés! - madridingles.es: 27 Phrasal... →
madridingles:
I’m proud to announce that Amazon Kindle has released the English version of my ebook, 27 Phrasal Verbs that You Should Know.
Cover by Lucia Moretti Design.
Like the Spanish version, it’s a practical guide to learning the most common phrasal verbs, with many examples and…
4 tags
Why Class Warriors Are Still Licking Steve Jobs'...
This is an interesting article from the Economist. Why does everybody love Steve Jobs, while they despise other billionaires?
On a related note, I am amused with the new trend of hating on the rich. It’s an interesting departure from days of yore, when everyone assumed that the rich were just harder-working better people. Ah, to go back to those innocent days of 1998!
Clinton! Now there...
Vallecas is changing...
You know what we have now? A small independent bookshop! Right in the middle of all the Chinese supermarkets and secondhand junk shops, a tiny bastion of gentrification. Just a few blocks from the dilapidated gypsy houses! Even fewer blocks from the methadone clinic!
Apparently, the neighborhood is being taken over by people who read. Books. You know who reads books? Elitists!
This shit is gonna...
The Depths of Stupidity
Apparently, I used to have a blog on Blogspot. I wrote two entries in spring of 2008 and then forgot about it. One of them is pretty good. It’s about going back to Phoenix after my first year in Madrid, and re-encountering my ex-girlfriend, who was (and still is) dating an angry lesbian who thinks she’s the next Ani DiFranco. Here’s the story:
…
The Depths of Stupidity
A...
3 tags
From Eazy-E to Jay-Z: Rap as Poetry
The first rap song I ever heard was Eazy-E’s Nobody Move, a song about the disgust a man feels when he discovers he’s attempting to rape a transvestite while robbing a bank. It was middle school, on a friend’s Discman before class.
I was not terribly impressed. I liked music that was somewhat offensive, but Eazy-E was taking it too far for my 12-year-old self. It made me a bit...
3 tags
Rob Delaney Bought Some US Stocks →
I’m not sure who Rob Delaney is. Some sort of Twitter celebrity, it would seem.
He’s right about most of his points, and buying an index fund of American stocks certainly isn’t a bad idea. I have one, and I’m just a hard-working 28-year-old expat who isn’t even a twitter celebrity.
However, he’s being pretty naive when he says, basically, ‘I don’t...
4 tags
What the Fuck Is Up With All These?
I can’t even figure out how these people are trying to fuck me over, but I imagine they must be… They’re “liking” everything I publish these days!
2 tags
The Uneducated Rabble
In high school history class, we learned that our founding fathers put a system of checks and balances in the constitution.
They were worried, the story went, that democracy wasn’t really a good idea. They thought that giving the uneducated rabble the right to vote would lead the country to some sort of idiocracy. That charismatic leaders would be elected by the poor semi-literate rubes in...
5 tags
SlutWalk Madrid?
I just found out about the SlutWalk movement from the best hobo journalist in America. Thanks for the heads up, Will!
Apparently, Constable Michael Sanguinetti (a Toronto police officer of Italian origins) started the whole thing by telling a group of law school students that to avoid being victimized, “women should avoid dressing like sluts.”
Apparently, the movement is sweeping the...
4 tags
God gives us our free agency. He gives us the...
I just ran into some friendly mormon missionaries out there in the barrio. They seemed like nice enough fellows, but not particularly well-informed about Mormonism. My extensive wikipedia reading allowed me to ask some questions that really stumped them.
In the end, they told me I should talk to God and ask Him if I should become a Mormon. God, apparently, is pro-choice. He wants us to choose...
July 2011
15 posts
theholyprepuce asked: Thanks for the tip about the Burial of the Sardine - the widows look outrageous. I see that Goya did a painting of the festival in 1819.
May you sell many, many books.
May you sell many, many books.
arthistorycq asked: Another Arizonan (Tucson native) teaching English in Madrid. Hello neighbor!
3 tags
27 Phrasal Verbs ebook
My new book about ESL is out on Amazon Kindle. 27 Phrasal Verbs que debes conocer is a bilingual book that helps intermediate level students of English to learn and master phrasal verbs, generally one of the most difficult aspects of English for non-native speakers.
A phrasal verb is a verb with a preposition that changes the meaning, for example, keep on = continue.
I’ll be making a pdf...
5 tags
Uh, what was that Warren Buffet quote again?
Something about how “Yes, there is a class war, and it’s the rich who are winning.”
Take a look at this article: apparently if the rich were being taxed at 1960s levels, the national debt would disappear rather quickly.
Oh well, enjoy your austerity plans, motherfuckers.
4 tags
Dear People Who Argue with Others on the Internet
Something I see very regularly on the internet is bothering me more and more. Two people get in some kind of argument. One of the parties commits an error of spelling or punctuation. And the other jumps up his ass like a wedgie, as if the whole argument is invalidated by a person not knowing that recommend has a double m.
I’ve done it, you’ve done it, and we’ve all done it. But...
3 tags
5 tags
Participating in Mediterranean Culture
Check out the sleek elegance of this rabbit. I’m making Coniglio alla Cacciatora, an Italian dish with white wine, tomato, fresh herbs, garlic, and this friendly little fellow, all chopped up. They sold it to me with most of the organs still inside; since I didn’t know what to do with them, I threw them out.
With the way things are going, we’ll be eating anything we can get...
10 Hottest Jobs for 2011 →
You’re goddamn right I’ve got a HOT JOB. In fact, I don’t just have one hot job. I have TWO OF THOSE MOTHERFUCKING HOT MAMAS. Jesus! My jobs are so fucking hot they’re burning your pubes right the fuck off! Y’all better step the fuck back, or else you might lose your junk!
Read ‘em and weep, motherfuckers. I’m an overseas English teacher and a Spanish...
Happy 40th to the Stanford Prison Experiment
The Stanford Prison Experiment is celebrating its 40th anniversary. In this article from Stanford Magazine, you have interviews with some of the participants, now all boring middle-aged white folk. For example:
One thing that I thought was interesting about the experiment was whether, if you believe society has assigned you a role, do you then assume the characteristics of that role? I teach at...
4 tags
Walking in Madrid: Valle de Lozoya and Rascafría
The beautiful Valle de Lozoya is way up in the northern part of the Sierra: the only bad thing I can say about it is that it’s so far from Madrid.
Stepping off the bus in Lozoya is like entering a parallel world, it feels like stepping back in time—it’s lightyears from Puerta del Sol, even though it’s still within the boundaries of the Madrid community.
The town of...
Tony Robbins Thinks Women Should Work Harder
Well I’ll be damned. Old Tony Robbins posted this on twitter about how women who spend six hours a day sitting down die earlier than those who spend less than three hours.
The implication? Women should spend more time on their feet: mopping, cooking, or standing behind a man (out of sight, of course) holding a parasol over his head.
Mr Inspirational is showing his true colors, as the...
Put This On: Menswear and Media →
What struck me about this article was this paragraph:
One of the important things to recognize here is that traditional media failed the public long before blogs were even around. The death of the public intellectual happened arguably in the 1980s or 1990s, and that’s just in social commentary; it happened much earlier in the arts. Where we used to have Bertrand Russell and George Orwell, we now...
lustfullyintoxicated asked: hey! im living in mataelpino atm and i cant figure out the freaking bus times! how does it work please?? xxx
June 2011
16 posts
2 tags
Walking in Madrid: La Pedriza
One of the most popular spots to go walking around Madrid is La Pedriza, about an hour north of the city by bus. It’s a natural park around the source of the Manzanares River, which flows through the rocks making a series of natural pools. You can swim a little bit and walk along the river, and some people go rock climbing.
Photo by Kadellar, CC Attribution Share-Alike 3.0
How to arrive:...
1 tag
My Top Songs for 2011, Part 1
1. Afroman, I’ve Been Hustlin’
Afroman has a sense of humor that most rappers lack. The story is the same rags-to-riches as others have told, but he puts more emphasis on the poverty and struggle of life in the ghetto, without much sentimentality. Cute and cartoony, yet somehow still inspiring. Many of his other songs are actually quite pornographic, comparing his penis to an...
3 tags
James Joyce's Ulysses, Chapter V: Lotus Eaters
So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over his brow and hair. Then he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the sun in...
4 tags
James Joyce's Ulysses, Chapter IV
“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.
“Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her...