I am reading again, this time Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, and Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence. Coincidentally, I saw yesterday that Lady Chatterly’s Lover has been named 2nd Sexiest Novel of All Time on Playboy Magazine’s list of The 25 Sexiest Novels Ever Written. It just beat out another book that I recently read twice, Tropic of Cancer. Too bad the list only goes to 25…I was curious whether the editors of Playboy thought Beowulf or Canterbury Tales a more erotic novel.
Archive for May, 2006
I just can’t keep this under wraps any more. My time in Argentina is drawing to close and I am going back to the U.S. to accept a position with Wolfram Research, the company responsible for a piece of software called Mathematica. Apparently they were in the market for some young talented people with a technical background and a severe case of paranoia. I am (only) half joking of course, since I am referring to my original contact with the company. Since then, there has been a seemingly unending series of phone interviews, a mention of flying out to their headquarters in Champaign for an interview, and finally, an offer from them without meeting face to face yet.
Needless to say, I am tremendously excited about joining them, since everything about the company is first-rate. (Their web design is particularly outstanding, as every page is both easy to use and beautiful.) But, I am conflicted about leaving Argentina. I still find Buenos Aires the most stimulating place I have visited, and I know I have only scratched the surface of what I could discover here. Of course, I have already made the decision to leave, so the only thing to do is spend my remaining time as valuably as possible. I even have a rough schedule of what’s going to happen. Like most good plans, it has an important step that is all question marks and ends with “Profit” and some exclamation marks.
Now-June5: Wrap thing up down south, say goodbye to friends and move out of apartment
June 5: Fly from Buenos Aires to Chicago
June 5-8: Sort through my crap in Concord House basement. Throw some away; keep some.
June 8: ?????? (Need to transport stuff from Chicago to WV, but how??)
June 8-15: Continue to sort through all my stuff, now gathered in one place. Also, visit family I haven’t seen in a whole year.
June 15: Travel to Washington, DC for Wolfram NKS Conference
June 16-18: NKS Conference.
June 18: Fly to Brown University for start of NKS Summer School.
June 18-July 7: Summer School
After July 7: Profit!!!
We here at joebolte.com would like to take this oppurtunity to apologize for the last couple of posts, which did not meet the exacting quality standards that we have set up for ourselves. We recently had to let most of the editorial and fact-checking staff go, and our quality has suffered as a result. The spelling and factual errors have now been corrected, but only slowly will you regain your trust in the top-notch reporting and editorializing that this site produces. For instance, who first thought of dressing men in tuxedo pants, bowties, and cuffs, but no shirt? It seems to have been wildly successful, since every ad for male strippers I have seen features them in this get-up, but where did it come from? These are the sort of hard-hitting, incisive questions you have come from our site, and the kind you can continue to look forward to in the futue. Once again, we apologize.
So part of my guilt about skipping ahead 6 months in my blog timeline is alleviated by my discovery that my friend Leslie has been blogging about some of our collective mischief. She has been writing about things here in Buenos Aires quite bit on Buenos Ay-ya-ya-res. Since this blog is about me and not her, I’ll link directly to the posts that detail things we actually did together.
I would also like to make one small correction, which is that despite not being mentioned at all in the Tierra Santa post, it was in fact my idea to go there. I forgive you Leslie.
Update: I am in fact mentioned in the post under my assumed name around Leslie, Rueben. There is also a picture of me sitting on a sheep and sharing the warmth of a plastic fire with a vaguely middle eastern looking manequin. Heartwarming.
1. I’ll respond with something random I like about you.
2. I’ll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I’ll name something we should do together.
4. I’ll say something that only makes sense to you and me (or just me).
5. I’ll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I’ll leave you a quote that is somehow appropriate to you.
7. I’ll ask you something that I’ve always wondered about you.
The only catch is that you have to post on your own online space if you have one. Happy commenting!
A Pun that Relies on the Slang Term “Bread” for Money
Published by May 16th, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 CommentsRight now, I am eating nothing but a loaf of bread. It’s a joy to eat bread this good, and I haven’t enjoyed bread like this since leaving Chile. Although Argentine food is considered superior to Chilean cuisine, even by many Chileans, the Chilean bread is always fresh-baked, barely sweet, barely salty and always delicious. I got the bread at Jumbo, which is the biggest grocery store I have ever seen, and it only seems bigger compared to the nieghborhood markets that are so common here. I would have also bought a jar of Skippy extra crunchy peanut butter, but the cashier pointed out that the 50 peso bill that I planned to use was a shoddy counterfeit. It was printed on bad paper and didn’t even have the watermark that you should always check for. I remember exactly where I got the bill, at a tanguería on Saturday night, but I don’t suppose you can just go back to a place with a counterfeit note and exchange it for new one. I’ll just have to try to use it pay for everything I buy, and act surprised until it works. I think it’ll be a while.
I asked my co-worker Fede where would be the cheapest place to buy some gear from the Boca Juniors and the Argentine World Cup Team. He said that
Caminito, the main street through Boca would be best, since there were that’s where the greatest concentration of stores for knock-off athletic gear is located. I think it would be fun to pay for a counterfeit official jersey with counterfeit official currency, but if I have learned one thing in this country, it’s that liars and cheats are always on the look-out for their own. 
As you can tell from my many hand-wringing posts below, which promise other posts in the future, I have been anxious to get back to writing on the blog for some time now. The thing that has been holding me back is a belief that I owe my readers a summary of everything I have been doing for about the last six months, since I left off blogging about my life regularly, and posting more about things that momentarily caught my attention. That summary is probably never going to come, especially if I were to wait to make it while I keep living my life and accidentally generating new blog entries. So I figure the best thing to do is just start again right from where I am right now, and fill in what I can remember in the time I can spare. Hope you enjoy the new entries above!
