alex garin's lame blog

2011-10-20T15:14:00.009+09:00

Shit! my videocamera has been pinched by a Chilean slum dweller. He snatched it away from my wife while I was petrified in horror. She put up a pretty good fight and maybe I could have harpooned the bugger in the dick while he was distracted with the loot. Let's make a long story short and say I didn't. Now I'm out of a camera.

How am I supposed to blog about shit now, with words? I got banned from Washington Street last time I took to words and here I am being forced into the sketchy practice again! How does that saying go, a picture is worth a thousand words? Well... a videocamera can crank out tons of pictures! More importantly, I can't edit Bad Brains into the shitty text I'm going to have to write here.

I studied writing as an excuse to mess around and slack off for four years. Am I actually going to have to use what I learned in college now that my camera is being used to document drug related violence? Dickens, I should have tried a bit harder in chemistry class and stuck to studying plants and fish. That way I'd have an excuse for scratching such a shitty blog on the walls of the internet with such a dull rock.

proud owner of a cannon digital elph

2011-10-16T20:04:00.007+09:00

Here I am farting around in Barcelona while on the brink of failing my Cambridge CELTA course in 2010.

A lot of people in my life, including some Cambridge teacher trainers and a handful of relatives, have warned me about slacking off... and I listened to them most of the time, but nothing good ever really came from it.

I mean, sure I've got to make money in today's shitty little interconnected world. We can't just go around sunning out butts like some big-eyed house cats. As regrettable as that fact is and, as much as my lawyer profits from it, it's true.

Maybe you can take comfort this old Chinese story about a little wood tree that was planted next to this huge, majestic oak. Maybe reading it'll help you figure out your life. You're probably in for a big waste of time, but hell you're already trawling around the internet, one of the most useless things ever to exist, so what the hell? Here it goes:

monks slacking off

Nobody knows how the two managed to take root in the same riverbank, but everybody was sure that the mighty oak's roots would soon choke the gnarly, feeble little stink wood and have it shrivel up.  People in the village used to admire the oak because they thought it was pretty useful, which it certainly was.  They could climb the thing; hide contraband in it's woody bark; lover's would grope around in its shade and so on.  I guess everybody was pretty impressed by this oak tree, but nobody ever really paid attention to the stink wood unless they had to "drain the lizard," so to speak.  

Things were going pretty swimmingly for the useful oak tree.  One day Mr. Law came to visit the riverbank.  He was the sole proprietor of a wood mill in the village and had connections inside of the village council.  A hunchback pulled him to the soggy ground by the riverbank on a rickshaw.  Word about the useful oak had spread thick around the village. Mr. Law thought he could use the tree better than anyone else there.  After a thorough inspection, Mr Law. told his workers that the oak was damned useful, but he couldn't stand the odor and the gnarly and knotty physiognomy of its pitiful neighbor.  The mighty oak was scheduled to be axed after all of the contraband inside of it was cleared out and seized by the provincial authorities.  The stink wood was left alone on the riverbank.

Chop, chop, chop.  The mighty oak was no match for Mr. Law's underpaid lumberers.  Its pulpy flesh was cut into a dozen or so pieces.  Its roots, pulled out of the ground and examined for traces of fungus.    

The oak was sent off to be made into chop sticks, tongue depressors, bird figurines and god knows what else.  

Meanwhile, the stink tree still lumbers on in the same vacant lot.  Its dull leaves point upwards to meditate on the sky and everything it can pull out of the sun.

So there you go. I hope you find more meaning in this little story than you do stretchers, which there are a lot of. Maybe you feel a little stupider coming out of it than you did coming in, but I'm not going to give a shit and start pulling my hairs out about it.

2011-10-15T17:41:00.001+09:00

2011-10-12T12:14:00.002+09:00


"Those were drunk messages last night. I hope you didn't take them seriously."

It's always fun to see what my old friends have been doing, especially when they get drunk, get on the internet and threaten to kill me for being a "liberal worm." And I can always count on Larry here for some great surprises. One time he hopped into a car full of drunken lady strangers and was forced back out with claw-marks all across his face. Hey, the little dude might not be the stallion he thinks he is, but a horse that can't be broken is a horse that I'll always admire. Keep on trottin' horsey, and let me know when you're in the neighborhood.

2011-10-06T19:40:00.004+09:00

2011-10-02T10:21:00.009+09:00

I saw Ronald McDonald when I was in Bangkok last year. He told me that it was good to see another foreigner and said he was there on a spiritual retreat. Here he is trying to overcharge me for a six-piece chicken nugget set. I didn't buy his story about being there to find enlightenment and those praying hands didn't fool me either. Later, I saw him blasting wheelies on a souped-up dirt bike in the middle of Nana Plaza. He must have been going 100 kilometers per hour on the thing. The two bony prostitutes who clung to him were screaming in terror. Ronnie was laughing because, I guess, he thought screaming prostitutes are funny : ^ (

2011-10-01T15:44:00.001+09:00

Fuck dolphins! This here zebra eel is the cutest animal in all of the the oceans. Sure, dolphins might be able to whine at each other through their blowholes, but this little guy can communicate with the sheer force of his cavalier personality. This guy was asking me if I wanted to have lunch with him later on that day. I turned him down, though, because I wasn't very sure about his motives.

2010-07-06T12:40:00.010+09:00