Internet Café Woes

This is the first installent of a blitzkrieg series that will be titled "Internet Café Woes". I'm writing this series because in the past it has been extremely difficult to write about anything with a shred of consistency, and since I A) go to internet cafés a lot, and B) Never do anything worthwhile while I'm there, it seemed like a good idea.

That said, I am currently at an internet café in Popayán, Colombia. Popayán is about 7 hours from the Ecuadorian border, which is where I am heading tomorrow. With any luck I will be in the southern hemisphere sometime tomorrow evening, a place I have never been. The thing I am most excited to do once in the southern hemisphere is flush the toilet, since apparently the water will spin in the opposite direction as it does here in the North. Apparently there is some kind of Simpsons episode about this in which Bart prank calls a kid from Australia and then gets arrested by the police. I often question my maturity level.

But here actually IN the internet café there is a slough of activity. The guy to my right is resting his chin in his left hand and looks bored enough to die. The owner of the café is excitedly typing away while simultaneously DJ'ing the reggaeton tunes that are being broadcast throughout the cafe. So, I guess maybe a "slough" of activity was an overstatement. In retrospect, this place is about as lively as a funeral home.

However, I like to think I am currently adding a dash of my own gringo flair to the establishment, even though, other than the fact that I am the only one here that speaks fluent English, my gringo flair is waning. The highlight of my attire is a fake Nike sweatshirt that I recently bought in Bogotá, which certainly does not speak traditional gringo decadence. In other news, I am clean shaven, something that hasn't happened since the spring of 1985. I realize that some of you might find this disturbing, which is why I will be doctoring all photos of myself on Photoshop with a fake beard before they go on Facebook.

Now the internet cafe seems to be coming out of it's shell. The gel headed DJ has put on a non-reggaeton song by Bob Sinclair, and I have a new neighbor directly to my right. She looks to be about 14 and from a quick glance I see that she has approxiamately 400 more MSN Messenger friends than me. This fact seems to be stressing her out, due to the fact that her chicken peck style typing skills do not allow her to adaquetly keep in touch with all of them. I, on the other hand, can type quite rapidly with my refined "home row" technique, and currently have 2 buddies online. What's up now, mo'fucka?

I was hoping that after this internet cafe experience I would be hungry, but it's not proving to be the case. Yesterday, Neil and I shared a pizza that was roughly the size of a ferris wheel, and every since haven't felt more than a dull aching in our stomachs. Neil is back in our hostel, where he is accompanied by the usual mix of travelers. One of them is the guy in charge, Colin, and one of them is a guy from The Netherlands who has the sense of humor of a tire iron. I don't know what it is, but all Dutch people seem to have a terrible sense of humor. They do not grasp sarcasm. It took Pascal, a guy on our boat from Panama to Colombia, a week of me saying "It's really starting to let up" during torrential downpours before he realized I was being facetious. Of course, as soon as he caught on, he began to try to fashion jokes of his own, which always foundered horribly. It would be semi-overcast and he would say something like, "It's really starting to get cloudy," which would prompt all of us to look at him like he had just tongue kissed his grandmother. I actually saw one of the girls in our group strike her head against the boat's railing after one joke attempt.

Well, I have just surpassed the hour mark on this computer, which means it's time for me to leave and "seize the night." I hope all of you are having a wonderful evening, far far away from over-zealous 14 year-old online chatters and Dutch comedians. If we could all only be so lucky.

-Boosh Clown

p.s. seriously no pun intended in the whole "lively as a funeral home" remark, although I am quite pleased how that turned out.

Song of the Day: Mr. Grieves by The Pixies