What a Long Slow Month It's Been

Actually, that's not so true.
The post-carnival malaise of life in BQ has been absolutely digestible, tasting of lemon-square cookie/cake bars and featuring some serious clicks in the upward direction temperature-wise.
I know very little about global warming, other than it is a pain-in-the-ass, and nowhere is this more true that BQ.

It's really getting hot here.

A few things have been happening though in the last few months which have virtually nothing to do with the weather.

First of all, Gio had hisself a birthday, which we celebrated out in a vacation pad halfway between BQ and Cartagena. Nobody enjoyed it quite like Dinky, as nobody else really fancies the thrill of chasing after coconuts.

Secondly, my best bowling pal from the Tamba-Cho days, Bryan, and his beautiful Minnesotan/Texan wife, Dana, came to Colombia for a few days; so, we went bowling, of course, and then went to Cartagena, where there is no bowling, but there are mustachioed tin men in yellow-lit plazas.

Speaking of Tamba-Cho bowling here's a blast from the past from JJ's Club in Kyoto. One and a half stars-worth!



Finally, it's getting hot. Hot I say. Hot. And the Huskies just won the Pac-10 championship and are on to the dance. GO DAWGS!

stay cool, out there, enjoy your daylight saved.
Kisses
FPPInternational

Captains Carnaval

Once again, Carnavals have arrived full force in BQ.



Which means, among other things, chaos, chaos and more chaos...



This year, I must admit, for the editors at FPPInternational, the flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak, and few events have been attended and even fewer given attention. Are we getting too damn old for this silliness?

News Haikus # 19, Conan the Destroyer

Five years ago, when the head offices of FPPInternational we still FPPDomestic and based in NYC, some pals came to the big apple for a visit. A whole bunch a touristy shit was seen and done and, among other things, we four Washatonians (spelling?) agreed that a trip to see the Conan O'Brien Late Night show would be a cool way to kill an afternoon. He was, and I think still is, our hands-down fave talkshow host (if I can speak for Chili, Strando and The Weatherman--That's them there, in NYC).



Anyway, we got into studio and watched the taping of an episode. It was a good time, and although freakishly tall, thin, pale and coifed, Conan seemed a true class act.



Lately the shakeup at NBC has proved that estimation correct, and the estimation that his late-night rival Jay Leno is a complete douchebag. Anyway, The staff here at FPPInternational are collectively saddened at the end of Conan's tenure at the Tonight Show and we swear we will never ever watch a minute of The Tonight Show with Leno, unless Neil Young is on there singing a duet (triet?) with Willie Nelson and Elvis Presley.

Seems I am not the only one. Other folks think Jay's a fuckstick as well. Check out Jimmy Kimmel...



So, until then, adios Tonight Show, Johnny Carson's empire is now a shitty little G-rated monkey show featuring a whiny, Buick-jawed turd....

Haiku...
Spin, spin Johnny. I
Hope Ed is drunk, 'cause Tonight
Will never be worse.

Digital Malaise

We offer you our sacrifice, Oh Holy Techno-splat...

A final comment on the January 2010 Adventure in Southern Colombia...So. The trip to the Amazon over, we mounted our 737 to get back home....But not before realizing that neither of our cameras would work anymore.

That's right. After wrestling with four TRONEX batteries purchased in Leticia before heading into the jungle (I swear TRONEX was all they had at the "supermarket" in Leticia. I wasn't just being a cheap-ass), which didn't ever power up the camera long enough to get a picture, after all the events were catalogued, both of our camera completely pooped out, at roughly the same minute, and to this day neither of them will start up, and that's using non-TRONEX batteries. So, our adventure complete, it seems that the gods of digital digitalosis decided to punish or reward us for our sins or virtue.

Either way, we're gonna have to get ourselves some fancy schmancy new picture taking device.

Hope all is well,
Kisses,
Fpp

BTW...Carnivals arrived in BQ this last week in the shape of a drunken old lady using a vacuum cleaner bag as luggage. The mayhem is thick in the air like carrot cake.

Hearts of Darkness in the Southern Hemisphere, Days IV and V

Polishing off our Amazon adventure meant a leisurely stroll through the Jungle, checking out trees, plants, bugs, animals, and air that can kill you.

The return trip to Leticia was uneventful, and really really slow



The final movement in our Super-southern adventure was to go canopying with our best friends, 300,000 mosquitoes. It was a nice little capper and we got back to our hotel, showered up and left the Amazon for more familiar climes. So long to the Jungle. Back to work. etc. etc. etc.


Sorry about the lack of audio here, you will have you find your own, inner Sammy Hagar.

News Haikus 17. The Haitian Spin

Sorry to actually post something from these idiots, but...





O'Reily wants to know what China has donated. The Chinese were the first nation to respond when this thing went down. They had aid workers on the ground in Haiti in hours, beating the American response team by about an hour. I am not saying the Chinese are the greatest things since sliced pie, but why does everything with these dipshits (O'Reilly & Rush, not the Chinese) have to boil down into a contest ending with "America beats everyone, but Obama still apologizes to the world?"

Ah, Rush, you make O'Reilly look sane. "Three days. And when he came out, after those three days, he was clearly irritated that he had to do it. He didn't want to do it."

or "He lives for serving those in misery."
How in the hell did a bastard who helps people in need ever get elected President of the United States?

Something Rush doesn't seem to get...
What Exactly was Obama supposed to say about a failed plane bombing? What he supposed to threaten to find the rest of the guy's pants and burn them too? The Christmas pants-burning terrorist attempt was OVER within seconds. There's not much a US President can do once the event is already over.
Rush and his cronies seem to like presidents who make grandiose statements about stuff they can do nothing about (see George W. Bush), instead of presidents who respond to events that can be responded to. Anyone remember Katrina? Remember Bush's 'response'?
No one was in danger of being blown up from the Nigerian pants burner two minutes after he tried to blow up the plane, which leads me to believe that some knee-jerk response to such an event is ineffectual, unnecessary and probably, way too late anyway; whereas, people are still in the rubble down there in Haiti (up there for the staff at FPPInternational), and this merits a timely response.

And, by the way, how nations respond to calamities can be checked...

And, by the way, Haiti isn't the only natural disaster in recent times, check out Cuba on this one, and Djibouti, they offered 50,000 bucks to Katrina relief. Djibouti. They don't have $50,000.


And from even deeper down the nutjob tank



My favorite line there is "They got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you, if you get us free from the French.' True story. And the Devil said, 'Ok.'"

HAIKU:

Rush Responding to
Haitian 'quake is like a Don
Rickles Eulogy.

Hearts of Darkness in the Southern Hemisphere, Day III

The Adventure in the Amazon continues with a morning paddle into the shiznit. The guide said, "we're going to go look at some lilly pads." Awesome. Lilly pads. Ok. Whatever, it's early and I just ate a bunch of eggs. I'll go look at some Lillypads. Lillypads were the least of what we saw.

Nothing says "wake up and breathe in the morning freshness," like fire ants and screaming monkeys.

FPPInternational Sports editor LaFlaca was good enough to shoot some footage of me paddling us through the jungle, and I was good enough to paddle. And since my Sony Vegas software went kerplunk and stopped working about six months ago, I edited some of the video and pics together using a trial version of a piece-of-crap software that I downloaded. I did not care for the program at all, but I did like the little video, so I uploaded it, even though it has that goofy title "purchase now" BS throughout.



Really, though, this was one cool paddling adventure, unlike anything else I have ever done. The sense of being absolute away from everything that one knows is positively thick in the air. Alice never made it this far into Wonderland and the Mad Hatter would have been positively aghast and in a tizzy, rabbits and cats being the least of his concerns.

Bienvenidos alla jungla.

After the paddle back to the pad and a lunch of fish (of course), we went out and caught some piranha, using little cubes of beef on hooks on sticks with four feet of fishing line on them. The deadly little buggers flipped around in the boat like farts in skillets (to quote my grandmother) and were consumed at dinner.

The vicious little monsters have virtually no meat on em at all. But eating a piranha is like reading "The Most Dangerous Game" with a class of eighth graders. General Zaroff's bed is indeed soft and we do not remember having ever had better digestion.

Hearts of Darkness in the Southern Hemisphere, Days 1 and 2

For the first time since 2001, The editorial staff at FppInternational hopped over the equator.


To celebrate the new decade, the FPPInternational jokers voyaged into the dark netherlands of Colombia, the Amazon. But the Amazon is a monster, you say, where oh where did the FppInternational staff venture to? Worry not, intrepid readers, in Colombia, your Amazon choices are pretty damn limited. If one examines the little map here, a handy trapezoid bugger hanging off the bottom of the country will be observed. That, my friends, is the Colombian river-front property on the Amazon. And that is where we went.In doing so, we actually spent most of our time in Peru and a snippet in Brazil. But we were never officially anywhere but Colombia, and man did we see some jungle stuff. In fact, the editors at FPPInternational are almost 100% in agreement that the Amazon is the single coolest thing in Colombia, if not in South America.

Day one involved getting into Leticia, via Aires and Bogota, getting ahold of some amigos, planning the next four days, and getting some sleep. All this foolishness was accomplished and on the morning of January 7th, we yumped our little yimmities onto a little wooden craft and took off on a three hour tour into the jungle, and out to our new digs.

The ride on the boat was very cool, then very very cool, then downright amazing.

You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby, and you're gonna take some pictures.

We arrived at our pad

and had some lunch and met our pals. Then, after an hour's siesta went out on the river for a little swim in the big brown and some dolphin spotting.

"Dolphins?" you say, "On the amazon?"
You're damn skippy.

The river is absolutely rife with dolphins, both gray and pink. And FPPInternational sports editor La Flaca, was simple gaga over the slipperly porpoises and their sunset antics.

However, the little buggers were sure hard to catch on film, especially when the batteries in camera 1 were completely depleted. That's Ok, more tomorrow.

Aires II-IV, The Other Flights and Capital-City Capers

All right, so the Aires folks treated us badly on the way to Bogota, but would their nefarious dealings with team FPPInternational.com persist? For the answers to this and other Bogota related questions please keep reading



Ok. So the first flight was a bit of a pain-in-the-ass. Aires, however, did recover their reputation a bit.

Flight II, Bogota to Leticia...
This one I love. Tuesday night in Bogota, after our Embassadorial Adventure, La Flaca got a text message on her phone saying the following day's (Wed. Jan. 6) flight to Leticia would be two hours late. The text asked her to call a number which is impossible to call on anything except a home phone for confirming our rez. Eventually, thanks to the helpful staff at Bellissimo Italian Trattoria in Bogota, we were able to get ahold of Aires. After confirming everything for the now 1 pm flight, La Flaca asked, off the cuff, why the flight time was changed. "Weather," the woman said.
wait...
weather?
On a cloudless, breezeless night, weather? Fifteen hours in advance, these people changed a flight because of weather?
That's some serious fucking Doppler.
BTW, the next day at 11am and 1pm, the weather was fine. and the plane was an only an hour late (2 pm). Oh, and we were in the dead-last row this time, not second, and we sure-as-shit didn't exit out the back door this time. Oh, and La flaca's seat didn't have a seatbelt.
Consenus...
Aires Rocks!

For some reason, the flights back were less interesting, and this morning, EARLY this morning, on our Bogota to Barranquilla return-em home flight, we were in the first, yes, you heard right, first row, and the damn thing was on time, and the front door worked, and I was the second guy off the plane.

Home Sweet Home

Kisses
FppInternational

Oh, and as far as Capital City Capers go, after much back-and-forth, and hither-and-thither, The entire staff at FppIntenational is now permitted to enter the United States without a hitch, although features editor Dr. Dinkus Reichlin Phd. will have to mind his damned p's and q's.

The Aire up There.

A couple months ago, the three major Colombia airlines (in order of size and prestige: Avianca, Aero Republica, and Aires) had a big ol' fare war and we, being dutiful citizens, fired a couple shots ourselves, securing a couple trips BAQ to Bogota in October and BAQ to Bogota to Leticia (the Amazon) in January. Well, it´s January, and after a couple hitches (well, one hitch, the price for changing our dates went from A. free to B. eleven dollars to C. three hundred dollars, in the span of about forty minutes) we finally embarked on journey number two. Journey number one having involved an extra two hours added to our wait in BAQ on the way down.

Anyway, on an oddly foggy January fourth morning we went to the airport to fly to Bogota, the capital of Colombia. Because of the fog, the plane we were waiting for went to Cartagena instead of BAQ. Goddamnit. So, finally, the fog clears, the plane shows up, and our pal Becky gets off of it. She isn´t happy, and wants to go home. We get on the plane.

Have I mentioned that we're meeting friends in the Bogota airport to get some apartment keys so we have some digs for the next two days?

It doesn't matter though, cause the dude with the keys is waiting for our jet, and, because it went to Cartagena, it's about two hours late, again.

So we land in Bogota, everyone is a little irritated with Aires because of the delay, but it's a sunny day and the birds are singing. Then the jackasses at Aires can't figure out how to get that damned gate thing to line up with the door of the plane. We backed up. They tried it again. We went forward again. No dice. Shit! We sat in our little itty bitty seats (Row 2 by the way, the closest I have ever been to being the first SOB off the plane, I was stoked!) for forty minutes. Until finally someone opens the back door and pulls up some stairs and buses us (buses us, seriously, about fifty yards. No shit) to a door. Did I mention that for the first time in my 100 plus flights I was in one of the first two rows and was almost guaranteed to be one of the first ten assholes off the plane? So, Aires fucked that up for me, which is ok, I still have my dreams. To make a sad story short, we arrived in Bogota, unharmed, but still have three flights to go, Bogota to Leticia, Leticia to Bogota, Bogota to Barranquilla, all on Aires. I am expecting to make it home just before Easter.

Kisses from the Colombia Capital,

FppInternational

2010 -- Year of the Dog (Bite)

So, 2010 started out interestingly enough.



Walking Dinky in the late am, after a pretty uneventful New Year's Eve, the Editor-in-chief of FppInternational was surprised by a red Chow Chow off his leash half a block from corporate headquarters. The owner of this Chow Chow was running after it, yelling. The Chow Chow, named, we found out later, Leon (or Lion in Spanish) ran towards FppInternational features editor Dr. Dinkus Reichlin, Phd. in a manner that suggested Leon wanted to engage in less-than-civil discourse. So, the quick-thinking FppInternational editor-in-chief lifted the features editor into the air, to avoid the hostile canine takeover. Leon, unappreciative of Fpp's move, chomped his cursed teeth into our editor's leg.

So, a trip to the emergency room and a tetanus shot later, all is well at corporate headquarters. And really, isn't this better than a hangover?



Happy New Year, buy some iodine.

BTW... I am writing all cool and stuff now, but Goddamn was I mad at the time. I yelled and swore and made a big amount of ruckus when that damned beast was finally tied down.

Dinky was oblivious to the fact that he almost got mauled by a 60 pound cougar-like monster, and I think he's pissed at me that his morning walk was shortened.

Take care, enjoy your 2010.
Kisses,
FPP

News Haikus 16. Muffed Air Bomb

Goddamnit. Remember the shoe-bomb guy back in Dec. of 2001? Remember before the shoe bomb guy when going to the airport didn't mean you needed to have clean socks on? That shoe bomb guy was responsible for me having to take my shoes off in the airport.



Now we have this other jackass from Nigeria. And thanks to him now there are other levels of security, longer waits and no moving around the plane when it's zipping about. The New York Times just informed FppInternational of new flight restrictions being initiated by Homeland Security... Things like staying in your seats when the plane is in US airspace.
I have a small bladder, dammit!

No laptops on your laps.
Well what the fuck are they called laptops for?

Anyway, here's my damned Haiku, written above Mexican airspace.

Homeland Security
Playing defence, watching the
layup, then jumping

BTW...If you only have time for one link choose the Nigerian jackass one, it's pretty well done.
BTW2...Forty posts in 2009. Returning from the brink of disaster to bore you all over again.

The Holiday Surf and Sun

Like past Xmases, we commemorated the re-unification of various idols and the commercial celebration of the populace's ability to spend spend spend by spending the day at the beach.
Same beach, same Xmas.



Only this year, of course, Dinky came along to bark at the water and poop in the sand.

This Xmas has been quite adventureless, what with me having a cold and all, which ain't fun.

The staff at FppInternational would like to officially hope y'all are having a great holiday season and ask you to join us in a prayer to elicit something exciting in the near future for said staff, so these damn posts pick up a little.

Really, how many dog pictures can people look at before there is some sorta bloody revolution?

Join 'em

If you can't beat 'em, wear the goddamn hat yerself.

No longer battling the dog.

News Haikus 15. Tiger, Buy The Tail.

One month ago the editors at FppInternational had the following reasons to like Tiger Woods: 1. He's the greatest golfer in the world.
How much "liking" that gets from FppI: .005%. We do not care about golf. We do not care about golfers. It's a boring frustrating game for fat, rich old men.

2. He's a complete corporate whore, shilling everything from Buicks to Nike feces to Anal Lube.
How much "liking" that gets from FppI: .00000001%. He's a class-A douchebag.

Consensus: Fuck Tiger Woods.


Now however, Tiger has become a more, shall we say, interesting character on the world stage. There are now things about him to be liked. For example:
1. From now on when you have a smash up with your rig, you can tell the cops when you'll be willing to talk to them. "Yeah, sure, officer, I would love to come down to the station, but I am playing with my Wii. I'll come along in three or four days with my lawyer to explain why I drunkenly smashed into that Dunkin Doughnuts." Thank you, Tiger. You have established a great president there. I will deal with the authorities now only on my own terms. Awesome.
How much "liking" that gets from FppI: 22%. We can all be Tiger, we can all tell the cops to get bent while we figure out some bullshit exit strategy.

2. Mr. Wholesome Disneyland Gosh and Heck gets to bang cocktail waitresses all over the free world. There's nothing wholesome about me. I get to do some really crazy sick shit with goats and midget trapeze artists from the former Soviet Union
How much "liking" that gets from FppI: 44%. We don't have to worry about anything anymore, not any morality or religious/socially instilled ideas of respect or decency. We get to do whatever the fuck we want as long as we can afford it. Which for the editors at FppInternational means watching Cinemax after 11:45 pm.


Tiger is now up there with Dick Butkus, Lawrence Taylor and Lou Pineda. He's on the fast track to becoming a decent guy.

So, when Tiger was leaving Australia (no doubt after a liason with a Kangaroo cocktail waitress), he was talking about how great his life was and all that. Then, a scant few days later, he's deeply sorry and needs time to consider his actions. SUCH BULLSHIT. He's only sorry he got caught. And got caught like such an asshole too. I hope his wife really beat the crap out of him.



BTW. This Taiwanese thing is awesome beyond description.

HAIKU:

I am rich and known.
I do anyfuckingthing.
Swedish chicks are tough.

Feeling Guilty

Feeling Guilty about not posting since the Carter administration, FppInternational.com now features back-to-back December posts.

OK.
So, basically the lives of all the employees here at FppInternational have been revolving around one little brown and white thing over the last seven months. No, not Good Luck Fucking that Chicken, nor Driving in Jamaica. Our journalistic lives and integrity are solidly centered on all things Dinky. But just how many goddamn pictures can be taken of a stupid dog?

If my wife has anything to say about it, plenty.

So, we had the brilliant idea of getting either reindeer antlers or a santa hat on Dinky and taking some pictures and sending them out at Christmas time and all that. I don't think the antlers were in the house for 24 hours before they were eaten.
The hat at least made it a couple days, but has yet to actually sit on the sneaky little bugger's cranium.





So, happy holidays, and don't expect too much from Colombia this year, as all gifts are eaten or smashed or peed on by the time they are wrapped.

Kisses
FPPInternational

Holidays 2009, The three-month Blog.

Ok, kids, like the sequel to Twilight, this post is well worth the wait.



Well, I guess not. Like, New Moon, this post is gonna suck. It seems that three months have come and gone with nary a BQ Gringo event. Our basketball team got beat a bunch, and we didn't dress up for Halloween. We are, however, still alive, and as the holidays approach with their delicious vacation time, the Editors at FPPInternational promise new, exciting and ground breaking news from BQ.
BTW...seems Tiger Woods has a penis that he likes to show off to lotsa girls.
and Micheal Jackson is still dead.

That's all for now.

Fpp

News Haikus #14 .....That Chicken

I just ran across this in the Huffington Post...

Probably this newsman from the Big Apple is already out of a job. If so, FPPInternational is hiring. Journalistic integrity is such a rarity these days.


the expression on the female newscaster is the greatest thing in the universe.Ernie Anastos is my new favorite guy. More favoriter than Burt Reynolds and Lawrence Taylor combined. Haiku...

Health Care, shmealth Care, who
Cares when we have quotes like, "Keep
Fucking that Chicken."

Just Something, Anything.

We are still alive here in BQ. Although to call this existence 'life' is to make the phrase "live it up" an apt description for learning grammar. Anyway, although we are not cool or adventurous or exciting or robbing banks or filleting walleye in an autumn windstorm-rocked skiff with a jack-knife, we are alive and recently went to a wedding. We danced at the wedding, which is better than staying at home watching TV. When FPPInternational has some news to report, you'll be the first to know. Michael Jackson is finally underground. It took two months for some reason.

Return to "The Paint"

Technical difficulties...
So, fifteen months into operation, the handy-dandy twisty-screened little HP notebook with the fancy-schmancy Photoshop on there decided to become a sleek black paperweight. One afternoon the screen went all zippy zappy and La Flaca said, "Hey, the screen's going all zippy zappy."
Computer guy said, "It went all zippy zappy? Hmmm. Lemme look. This thing's toast."
Two weeks later we are back on the old Compaq here, at FPPInternational headquarters, relying on 2004 technology, which can be frightening. This thing was built before the Democrats controlled the house and senate, before Lady Gaga, before any of the seventy-eight thousand Micheal Jackson tributes. So the next few posts will have a very Flintstones-type feel to them, until we can step back into the second half of the first decade of the new millenium. And, maybe most importantly, we are once again using Microsoft's Cro-Magnon standby program Paint to crop the photos. Welcome back, red-eye! God help us all.



Oh yeah, I am back at work. Dinky got a bath today, Amber came back to BQ for a visit, and Hugo Chavez is still ranting about some sorta bullshit next door.



Kisses from the past,

FPPInternational