The World According to Nietzsche

According to Nietzsche,

"That which does not kill me makes me stronger".

Did anyone tell that to Christopher Reeves, perhaps he would have smiled a little more or waved his tongue in recognition. Perhaps Nietzsche wasn't such a smart guy after all. These philosophers are made up to be something special but aristotle was a raging alcoholic.

Big Weather In The Jungle

We all know that the Amazon is a tropical rainforest and I was very excited to come and work here but I never really understood the meaning of tropical rainforest. It can rain here for 12 hours overnight. The storms that sweep through here nearly on a daily basis are monstrous and the deluge can be enormous. It is a fact of life that all the creatures have evolved here to cope with this sort of phenomenon but I fear that humans think they can manipulate the environment here to be able to make a living in it, this is a delusional attitude to have and only total destruction of the forest will occur if they think they can tame it and grown crops and cattle, it is fragile and unstable. We had a minor flooding incident here which shows you how bad things can get, the river rose nearly 30 feet to flood the higher loading dock and this has never been seen here before, it is possible with an enormous downpour that we could even get the river to flood the plant but that would be a 1 in a 1 million year event but it can happen. It makes you feel so small and insignificant to witness the rain and storms here. The Amazon is quite special and should be left for the animals.

giant storm covering 25% of the land mass of Peru

Butthole Bleaching and Labial Trimming, Whatever Next

I have read some crazy things over the years but now reading how butthole bleaching seems to take the level of insanity one step higher. It now appears that porn stars with a darker shade of skin around the butthole think this should be changed and lightened and it made a perfect shade of pink. A salon in California of course now caters for the brightsmile of the dark starfish and along with a full waxing will give you the lotion to lighten your smile. You have to laugh don’t you, check out the article for yourself.
http://www.villagevoice.com/people/0528,taormino,65754,24.html

My New Toy Will Be The Shape of a Gun

I was blogging about the need for a gun in Costa Rica for those needy moments when nothing other than a bullet can say what you really need to say, especially to a robber with a knife or one with a gun or a irritating motorist even. so after trawling through the net i have found the tiniest .38 semi automatic gun in the world and for only $245 i think it is a snip. It is the Kal-Tec P32. This gun i have to have and will get a gunshop to import 2 directly for me and the wife as we need to have a matching pair obviously. In the web site it says the gun is for under cover police officers and licenced individuals, in Costa Rica i can carry a concealed gun without a licence as long as it is registered to my company and shooting robbers is actively encouraged. A couple of incidents spring to mind, 1 when a guy dressed in a Bin Laden mask was dancing around in the street pointing a real rifle at passing cars, a motorist shot at him through the windscreen nearly killing him, he got a stern looking at by the police, and when some Nicaraguan robbers burst into a farmers house and demanded he open the safe, he pulled a big gun from the safe and killed one and injured 2 more and the forth managed to get away with the money, again the police issued a raucous laugh at the dead and injured. My wife told me of a very funny attempted robbery by a gun wielding idiot recently, as he jumped out of the car he was in to rob a guy with a brief case, he tried to pull out his gun from his trousers and shot off his dick, he was arested at the local hospital where the police were actually waiting for him to arrive, probably laughing at him as he limped towards the emergency dick sewing on department.

the perfect gift for your wife on Valentines

I love Dentists

As an aging horse my teeth are starting to show their age also. My jaw weighed about 2Kg with all the mercury amalgam in it. About 8 weeks ago I developed a severe sensitivity to hot or cold drinks and it was really painful and it had me worried. I haven’t had a real problem with my teeth for many years and I hate the nagging unstoppable pain that it can give you. So as soon as I got back from Peru I went to the dentist and he only found a small slightly damaged spot that didn’t need filling and he recommended some anti-sensitising toothpaste, I wasn’t satisfied as I know this is a problem when you jump 6 feet in the air when you just sip some coca leaf tea. I demanded further investigation and he looked and poked about and said he could see nothing wrong with that tooth but I had a problem with about 3 other fillings that needed removing and replacing with the latest white epoxy twin pack resin that will last forever and still be around after all my teeth have decayed away and not even my skull exists. He had me convinced that that is what I needed, I sat and actually had 4 replaced and nothing done with the aching tooth. He told me to go back in two weeks to see how the pain was going. I paid what I thought was a small amount about $60 and when I got home all the white fillings looked great. I was hooked on this new addiction. I persevered with the toothpaste and actually it did work and the pain subsided slowly and I can drink without pain now. I went back after two weeks and I asked how much for the whole lower jaw. He said $120 and I said “ praise the lord and get to work”, I sat for 3 hours with my jaw splayed wide open and had all them horrible grey heavy things drilled out and a Hollywood style whiteness implanted in my teeth that actually illuminated the inside of my mouth like fluorescing fungi. Again I was further hooked, I had to work over Christmas but as soon as I got back I was into the dentist and said how much for the entire upper jaw. $160 was the reply. This was more work than a day so after two visits I had no more black ugly poisonous fillings left in my head. I was elated but a couple of days later I felt a lot of sensitivity starting to develop in the lower wisdom tooth area to the point I couldn’t bite on it and now after 4 weeks I am back in the jungle unable to eat in the left side of my mouth. I did ring and ask and he said this is a normal side effect with some people. It would just take time he offered to me. It even feels like a little toothache at nights and just feels funny and different. This is hardly surprising after he removed a total of 25 fillings. He had a nifty camera that he could stuff into my mouth and take a snapshot for the computer to show, he showed me how some of the old fillings leaked as he called it, meaning that food and crap could get behind the filling and decay the tooth and in two cases nearly resulted in me losing the tooth so he saved me from having more gaps than I have and stopped me looking like jaws. I wish I had more filling to have removed, perhaps I can have the good teeth filled with resin also.

Amatuer Dramatics and Life or Death Performances

We had the spectacle of murder live on prime time TV, quite shocking and horrendous and addictive to watch the amateur antics of the police in this case. A woman was being threatened by her Nicaraguan husband and she called the police thinking they would be able to handle this domestic dispute, by the time the police arrived so had the TV camera crew, who had gone to interview the woman. The woman was telling the TV crew her husband was threatening to kill her as he was jealous of something or someone. This was being said only 3 feet from the husband on the other side of a barbed wire fence, he was then seen telling her to come home or he would kill her there, all very chilling as you would imagine, the police arrive, 5 in total and only 2 had guns, but big guns, an AK 47 and a large pistol, it was hilarious to start with as they surrounded him in a field but he did have a huge knife in his hand maybe 8 or 10 inches long, a big fat police guy was trying to jump the fence with a Kalashnikov in one hand and a stick in the other, once her jumped the fence the peasant farmer Nicaraguan ran at him with the knife blazing, slashing the air like a Zorro sword, the fat police guy swat at him with the stick and then fell on his ass as he attempted to avoid having his throat slashed by the big knife. The frantic camera crew then caught the man running after another police man who also was crap at running in the long grass and also fell over keystone cops style, the peasant in his rubber farmer style boots was running like a gazelle and caught up with him and plunged the knife maybe 15 times into the prostrate policeman, this was gruesome to watch on the TV. He then ran after another policeman who was basically transfixed to the spot watching his buddy get stabbed to death he also fell ass over tit into the long grass and was flailing his feet about trying to kick the farmer Zorro away but failed and suffered about 7 stabs to the chest, you could hear a gun being fired here and there but nothing that was hitting the target. The next thing you saw was the farmer being handcuffed and then the body of an obviously dead policeman being carried away into a van, and the other limping policeman covered in blood. The decision to arrest a knife wielding Nicaraguan peasant farmer with unarmed policemen is very questionable and to surround him when no-one had a gun out to shoot him dead when he started flailing with the knife is also very suspect. This is what I would call a complete and total clusterf*^k, of a royal order and should be used as a training video for the local police force in what not to do.

I Really Am Important, Really I Am

Today I was shown exactly how important I really am. I arrived at the airport in Lima Peru and stood in line with all the other poor souls heading towards the dark jungle of south America and the line was going really really slow, so slow as to be not really moving and I also noticed during the hour long wait that the name of the Airline had also changed from the normal AeroCondor to something along the lines of LG or SR or something totally forgettable. As I was getting within spitting distance of the agent she said that’s it boys go home, I was shocked, as I thought they would have recognised me and waved me through. I garbled a terrible request for information in my pathetic Spanish and she asked my name and she said second flight in perfect Spanish, I asked what time and again in perfect Spanish she told me 12.30, so was annoyed I was being bumped until the second flight and went for a Macmuffin, which was terrible nothing like a burger more like sausage. I mailed a couple of messages telling all that I was being bumped until the second flight and then went back and talked with a few of the guys practising to get my Spanish more perfectly terrible. so at 12.20 all the guys got up and I assumed that they were going to stand inline for there tickets but no they had all got their boarding passes and I had nothing, they asked me why I didn’t have a pass and I said 12.30 check in they said no all have been given out your flying tomorrow, I went over the check-in desk and remonstrated with the poor girl, I demanded they take someone of the flight to get me on as I was important, I began to shout and almost started banging the desk as I could see my position was futile, she was calling people and using the radio and after 10 minutes she said with total finality, NO CHANCE, I was deflated, the other problem was that I couldn’t speak to anyone as it was only 2 minutes before take off, I resigned myself to another crappy sleep in Lima in a hot bedroom. I went back to my hotel and then back to the oil company offices and mentioned the appalling decision to fill the planes with cooks and cleaners and gardeners but leave the gas turbine engineer behind, thank god this is my last trip.

The Roads Are Getting Worse and I Need a Lot of Guns

There are only a few things about Costa Rica that constitute a problem with life, one being the hopeless government and corruption that squeezes the life out of everything that happens in Costa Rica, that in itself is a huge number of blogs that I may venture into sometime, another is the crime that is common in all third world countries and even starting to become a huge problem in the developed world as the criminal elite move in knowing that is where all the money is. The final and most pervasive on a daily basis is the shocking driving experience, the roads are appalling and in a quite ridiculous conditions with holes the size of a Volkswagon beetles and getting worse as the number of cars increases daily. The Pan American highway that snakes across the full length of Costa Rica is a mix of fantastic and F*§king dreadful.

This is a repaired bridge on the caribbean coastal highway, you can see all the way down to the water, and has been like this 3 years that i have been driving passed it.



This is the economic artery and the government debates it daily but it falls into worse and worse condition. This problem is compounded by the lack of traffic police who seem to be only interested in hiding and getting laid and taking bribes. They are totally invisible in all of Costa Rica which induces a belief that you will never get caught for any motoring offence and that all road signs are just advisory and not compulsory which I have now also adopted. So stop signs and lights are now also advisory and speed limits are the minimum, this makes for interesting driving and as to prove the folly of this the daily news and papers are full of the death and destructions of the poor victims of this attitude. I have mentioned before the shocking pictures on TV and papers of the dead mangled vitims of road accidents and murders quite openly displayed for all to ogle at. I casually drive through red lights after a quick cursory look in the other directions, speeding is compulsory at all times which I enjoy, constant pipping of the horn is also mandatory to let all know that your pissed off and need to piss others off, pipping at a red light to let others know your pissed off at having to stop at a red light, pipping after it has turned to green to let them know your desperate to go fast nowhere in particular. The other consequence of this is that everyone else is also in the same state of mind and even worse the criminals are also there with guns in the car. This had the effect of worrying me badly to the point of wanting to buy many guns myself, (Further explanations later), while pipping at a bad driver who pulled out in front of me causing me to have to slow down while speeding, I pipped my horn constantly for about 20 seconds while following him and and then overtaking him while speeding very fast, as I overtook him I looked and saw the passenger had a revolver in his hand pointing it up and looking at me with a look that only meant, pip once more and I will shoot you in the head. I went faster to get away. I went to the gun shop the next day to find out how I can get a gun to protect myself and kill other annoying drivers. As I have a business in Costa Rica I can buy a gun, register it in the company’s name and then use it myself. In the gun shop I was shown a full array of 9mm guns as that was all they had. All very expensive and all crap, they were huge semi-automatics that weighed about 3 kg and impossible to carry without the aid of a backpack, very silly guns but I was assured that I needed a 9mm to stop those pesky burglars (annoying drivers), what I want and will get is a 22 semi automatic that weighs about 6 ounces and I can carry in my wallet to just pull out when the day comes when I get held up at gun point in downtown San Jose and I can shoot the foreign mugger in the knee caps, so it stops him ever driving again on the streets of Costa Rica. The muggers are nearly all illegal Nicaraguan immigrants as there is nobody worth mugging in Nicaragua left. The other worrying thing about the Nicaraguan immigrants is the Mara gangs. They are all trained by the civil war fighters and are quite handy with Ak47 guns back home and in the US where they are setting up very murderous gangs who kill just for fun and pipping your horn. Plus dealing lots of cocaine which is where they make most of their money. So I am a typical driver now in this wonderful country and I am going to get a gun like everybody else and hopefully protect myself and perhaps get a medal for shooting dead a robber or burglar or bad driver.

Headline Latest News and What Great News It Is

I was told this week that finally i am leaving Peru for pastures new, the only thing is that i have to do 1 more trip to Peru and then i still dont know where i am going to end up. I am still very hopeful for the jobs in the middle east, especially Qatar. But who knows they may be just lining me up for retirement as my contract is up for renewal on May 1st just after I get back from Peru. But halleluya at least it is a sign that things can only get better. No more prison of the Amazonian jungle and no more nights with nothing to do and i may get some more interesting work rather than surfing the net all day. I think I will go to the beach and savour a few beers while I can before the lack of beer stikes me in the Amazon

Environmental Field Trip, Costa Rican Style

My wife is taking a masters degree and this involved lots of field trips around Costa Rica, I always go with her as it is a fascinating experience visiting wild and unusual places. Yesterday I went to a small farming town called Volcan, yes it is real and the town is basically in a valley and is all peasant farming. It is typical farming for this country, cattle and coffee, but as you are aware this is causing very bad erosion of the soil and huge torrential flooding whenever there is a large storm. All the trees were cut down over the last 50-70 years but it is the lack of tree cover that is causing the problems along with the horrendous action of the cattle on the ground and the coffee method of cultivation with no ground cover. We were meant to meet with the local association to look for some sort of solution to their problems. When we first got there we were a little early so a it was a very hot and humid day we went for a beer. We were greeted with an hand built shed that was meant to be a bar, it was hilarious in its primitiveness, the sign was a spray paint job but who cares. We were then welcomed by the local alcoholic, even though I can speak a little Spanish his slurring and country pronunciation was just garbled rubbish to me and he was asking me if I know “Miguel”, hardly likely, my wife was getting upset by his constant attention as we just wanted just a quiet beer, he was then gesturing with his hands and winking eye that he wanted a drink of my beer, not all of it but just a swallow, as though it was moonshine or something, I was almost in tears at this point, the owner of the bar was then shouting abuse at him and telling him he was going to call the police but this guy knew the local police stations was 50 miles away and ignored him, so he kept winking and asking for my beer and through my laughter I kept refusing and the owner then threatened to give him a beating unless he left, this he did accept and left pretty quickly. I could hardly stand up for laughing and I was wondering if the entire trip was going to be a country style farce. The meeting was for a presentation by the national reforestation society, they were going to answer questions and show some of the information that present landowners are already receiving money from it to plant trees. It was also attended by a couple of landowners from the valley a couple of visitors from the USA, a security guard from the local giant USA pineapple grower and a couple of retired folks from the town. The meeting descended into a rant by one guy about how very smart he is and how important he is and that the committee should be doing something. 3 hours of total crap was spoken. We were then offered by the security guard to show us the entire valley the following day, this we agreed to. We went to the local town about 20 miles away to find a room for the night and at $12 you cant complain, it was clean with cable TV and a new bathroom. We went for a meal at the local restaurant and nightclub, it was a wonderful wooden framed barn style building and very nice. All nicely laid out and we were after small snacks to keep the calorie count down as you can consume millions with fried rice and platanos and fried meats if your not careful. So we had seafood soup and the pickled fish, it is much nicer than it sounds and nothing like sushi, the little girl didn’t want anything then said she was hungry as she watched us eat, so we ordered a chicken sandwich for her. When it arrived it was actually bigger than here, complete with a mountain of fries and dressing and a giant bread sandwich somewhere amongst the fires. She ate a little of the half chicken of meat that must have been in there and Jenny and myself had to eat the rest, just what we didn’t want. So goddam full I could hardly have the couple of beers I wanted to take away the humid atmosphere for 10 minutes, but I did force them down anyway. We had to be up very early the next morning 5 am and then drive to Volcan for the trip. So after 6 hours sleep, very good sleep actually we got up showered under cold water, again a local thing, in this heat most don’t bother with hot water at all. We got to our meeting point with 5 minutes to spare and the local guard turned up in what looked like a scout leader uniform. Very short soccer shorts, a bright green t-shirt a red neckerchief and a small army style hat. He drove us up a dirt road passed many small poor dirt farms, with old people picking coffee beans and boys attending cattle and children littering the road near the houses. This is still a poor catholic country and the average family size is 3 children, far too many for this tiny country. We were getting higher and higher up the mountain but you could see that all the hills were bare of trees and where the cattle had destroyed the land and turned it into bare red earth that was eroding away. We. Got to our get off point and to where we had to walk and it was a bad broken cattle track, we were told that all one side of the valley belonged to a coffee farmer that went bankrupt 10 years ago and it has basically been abandoned and I asked why was there cattle on the hills then, he smiled and said that a rich local guy has been using it as his own land since, putting hundreds of cattle of the hills and maintaining the fences and just using it as he wants, this is how the country people carry on, he also told us that some guy comes into town and then takes people up to the hills and sells plots of land to people even though it isn’t his own land and they have no deeds for it, all very illegal and again a country thing, that is why so many people get shot dead in land disputes. So we have a land owner using another’s land to raise cattle that are eroding the hills, this is a problem that will never be solved, the cattle stop the regeneration of trees and destroy the soil structure. This problem of the torrential floods is a pretty easy one to solve but involves things that only the locals can control. The hills are naked as they say here, all the way up to the peaks of the hills and when it rains there is no control of the wash off, it just roars down the small creaks and into the big river and then this roars down until it floods over the flood banks in the town and floods all the houses. Without any local incentives for the farmers they are never going to plant trees and get rid of the cattle that are destroying the hills. I was shocked by the lack of wildlife in the valley, there were a few birds but nothing of much interest, we were told there were no mammals left, and I saw very few butterflies. The only animal we saw was a small snake, only just hatched by the size of it and as I was taking pictures the guard snatched it up and dropped it in a bag telling us he was taking it for identification.





I wasn’t sure he was telling us the truth but what could I do, it turned out to be a harmless Rose Bellied Litter Snake. We took about 4 hours walking up and down the valley and the weather was great so I really enjoyed it but it was depressing to see the state of this almost remote valley, total destruction of what once was a fantastic valley. We drove back home and discussed the recommendations we could make for the committee, I suggested sending a letter stating “Your Screwed”, but Jenny was equally pessimistic but a bit more diplomatic, it would take the concerted effort of all in the valley to make any difference and then the recovery would take 50 years. Time for me to get a tan then?