Bariloche, Argentina

If anyone is wondering what Casey Affleck is up to, I can tell you with absolute confidence that he´s posing as an Irish backpacker and running around Argentina with two of his buddies who are so sunburned from a long day on a Chilean volcano that they´re shedding more flesh than a leper colony. Two days of banging around this vacation town with those guys has been entertaining and fun but hasn´t yielded any fantastic stories -- it´s been more like watching a Three Stooges marathon on The WB.

One of the dogs from El Bolson followed me here.

There are three bars in this town and all of them are Irish pubs, which rather dismayed the Irish lads. Last night one of the Irish pubs had a flamenco band with dueling guitar players decked out in full-on tight bodysuits with flared sleeves who absolutely blew the roof off. There´s a tune which is kind of like the Latin American "Cissy Strut" that I´ve heard everywhere I´ve been, but last night´s version took it to a new level.

This is the paragraph about housekeeping: Time is starting to run short down here. If anyone in Seattle needs or knows of someone who needs a roommate or a subletter for a few months in early 2006, please let me know. I should be back in the rainy city Thursday, December 15, but will be leaving the following Monday, the 19th, for Christmas Recovery in Michigan, returning to the rain again on the 28th.

Something that has been left out of these entries due to the fact that I´ve gotten so used to it that it no longer seems remarkable:

Toilets. I think I touched on the TP issue earlier, but what I haven´t mentioned is the fact that sewage systems down here are very delicate and can´t withstand repeated flushings of toilet paper. To solve this problem, every bathroom in every city in every country has a sign asking you to kindly place your used toilet paper in a little plastic garbage can rather than flush it down the toilet. This was very difficult for me to do at first and I´ll fully admit that I cheated for a while. You eventually fall into line, though, and now it´s second nature for me.

If the picture isn´t clear to you, or this all sounds confusing, I´ll break it down: Your shit-stained toilet paper goes into a little bucket with everyone else´s shit-stained toilet paper. I´d wager to guess this never happens in the U.S.

So if I visit your house in the next few months and, upon my departure, you find some vile, nasty, filthy stuff in your garbage can, please forgive me. I´m a creature of habit.

I suppose that wasn´t the best story to tell following my plea for a place to leave.