floundersgreatadventure

Here’s a little note to the President of Colombia Manuel Santos. Hey Mr. President how’s that legacy thing going for you know where you get the Farc to agree to peace. The last I heard they said they didn’t want to give up their weapons they were afraid someone might shoot them. Mr. President I don’t want to upset your dreams but it looks the farmers in your country are a little pissed off at you about how little they make and how much the buyers of their goods make. Even the Farc has gotten in on the protest telling the farmers that they’ll be happy to send man and guns to help them. I think Mr. President a better legacy for you would be to bolster the economy and help some of the poor people get a piece of the dream instead of selling it to rich folk. You ride around the country talking peace while making statements the police and the military are ready to fight any violence buy the farm protesters. Have you given any thought to the idea that maybe that many police and military shooting gas grenades at the farmers is just escalating the violence. Probably not huh most politicians always think there way is the best way and since any other way may cut into the money your supporters are making I guess we’ll just keep on going the way it’s going until someone does something really smart or really stupid. This is Flounder looking for happiness CIAO in Medellin.

Have you guys read the articles saying that the CIA is admitting that Area 51 exists? Sort of anti climatic don’t you think everybody knew it was there you couldn’t get a flea threw the security surrounding the place and now they say yeah it was there all the time. Their saying it was used to test spy planes, well we all knew that from the Discovery channels stories on Lockheed aircraft and Boeing and the Black Bird jet. I find it amazing that the Government specifically the CIA thinks all American are stupid and only believe what they tell them. I’m not going to say that I believe their hiding Alien technology there but it would surprise me. One thing the CIA is good at is keeping secrets from Americans I mean the rest of the world might find out but not the good old folks in the USA. It’s really funny if you’re an avid reader of News stories how much that the Government thinks we don’t know is out there for us to read. Yeah I know some of it really is BS but there’s so much out there that some of it is true. The Government doesn’t care that it out there anymore because people find the truth harder to believe than a simple lie, I guess that doesn’t say much for us. I read a lot of financial stuff and political stuff from Rolling Stone Mag. as well other sources I find reading guys like Matt Taibbi to be rather enlightening and I believe if just one percent of what is said is true well than American are really stupid and the future looks grim for us. Well this is a thoroughly depressed Flounder saying CIAO from Colombia

Well we didn’t write anything yesterday because we couldn’t think of anything to say. Today we decided to just do a Misc. blog you know a little of this a little of that so here goes Nacional won their game 4-0 yesterday Medellin plays later today. The people across the road threw a party yesterday and today the volume switch was pushed to high at 1am and stayed there until about 1pm today it’s a good thing Jeff doesn’t own a gun. Nothing else is really happening OH the US lost a gold medal in the 4×100 sprint relay when they screwed up the exchange. Tomorrows a holiday but it doesn’t look like they will be doing anything I wish they would ,having both Jeff and Ruby in the house all the time is making me crazy. This is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin.

Here’s a another quick Olympic note a young lady from Colombia won the gold in the triple jump and very proudly stood at attention while her flag was raised and he national anthem was played. Not only that she knew the words and sang along never flinching or moving around or smiling for the camera that she knew was there. Maybe that’s what sports is supposed to be about.

Are the Olympics still relevant? That’s a very good question I mean you have the world championships every year in all the so called Olympic sports. So who really cares what happened in the Olympics? I mean it used to be a really amateur sport until the US started losing in Basketball and the Russians dominated Hockey now they’re taking out Greco style wrestling, which was supposedly an original sport. Today Olympics are nothing more than a huge tourist trap that showcases professional athletes. I believe if you’re going to keep them around you should go back to the original system which was that the athletes were amateurs. Look what they did to probably the greatest Olympic Athlete of all time Jim Thorpe he played in one semi pro baseball game during a summer was paid the equivalent of around .50 and they stripped him of his medals. For those of you who don’t know who he was it was in the 20’s or 30’s where he won both the Decathlon and the pentathlon at the same Olympics. That feet has never been duplicated again. In today world he would have been paid thousands for playing baseball and would have still been eligible to compete in the Olympics. So think about this and maybe we’ll talk about it again this is Flounder saying CIAO from Colombia

Apparently we had an earthquake yesterday in Colombia; well you could have fooled me. On the norm we feel an earthquake about once a month down here, you know like California, you might feel a little shake buts that’s it. Yesterdays was anywhere from a 6.4 all the way up to a 7.3 they said it shook buildings in Medellin, I can’t believe it cause nothing that’s what we felt. It was located about 59 miles of the west coast and I just don’t understand why we didn’t feel anything I mean when we get a real bad thunderstorm down here it can vibrate the walls. Maybe it was a slow news day and they just wanted to make the story exciting. But our TV news said nothing about it if I hadn’t seen it on the internet I would not of known about it. Well that’s all I got right now this is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin.

Have you ever thought of living in a world where there was no electricity, cell phones or any kind of phone, no TV nothing? That could happen if somebody decides to set off a few EMP’s (Electric magnetic Pulse) or if there was a nuclear war. Nuclear devices when exploded can cause EMP’s the effect would be like going back to the dark ages. You can’t fix something once it’s been effected by an EMP its insides are effectively fried beyond repair. It would take years to be able to start building basic machines, in the mean time there would be no way for authority to communicate what was going on. More than likely man would revert to anarchy and tribes would be the norm. People would be afraid to travel anywhere not they could go far anyway. To give you an idea look at all the movies about the day after an apocalyptical event and you’ll get some idea, only in reality it will be much worse. Man left to his own will turn savage faster than any wild animal that has been tamed. We are by nature destructive and self serving so I suggest that nobody ever decides it would be a good idea to eliminate all technology. This is Doomsday Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin.

I didn’t want to start the week off with nothing but negative news so here’s some positive stuff. Yesterday was the last day of the flower festival in Medellin most of you probably don’t know this but most of the flowers you buy in the flower shop aren’t grown in the US. The most familiar one is the rose the United States now imports over 90% of its rose’s, but down here growing thing is still a big occupation. The families all build these displays and then put them on their backs and carry them the length of the parade which is about a mile or two. They are also competing for various prizes which can translate into income for them the fowling year so there’s incentive to do their best. Do to Ruby’s hand and some miss communication with Nacho we didn’t actually go to the parade but instead watched it on TV. The parade was also scheduled to start at 2PM and ended up starting around 3:30 and we were going to leave around 9AM to get a good spot which would have meant standing around for five hours or so. Some of the people carrying these floats range in age from 10 yrs to 70 or so years. The weight of these things goes from around 25 pounds for the kids to 80 or more for the adults and as Jeff says better them than us. But it does give you an idea how important this is to the people and hard their lives really are. Well I might be back later but once again this is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin.

The weekend news from down here was a little unexpected the police arrested in two days 1372 drunks 279 in the capital of Bogota. This is only the ones they got on main roads and includes taxi cab drivers and bus drivers. As I’ve said in the past drinking and soccer appear to be this country’s national pastime. This reminds of how they used to put Holiday death tolls on the news and we had some pretty big numbers back in the day. I think the police down here should take a look around the world especially in the United States to see how the problem is being handled. Of course the big problem down here is apathy by the police who only react after the TV news has shown some horrific major accidents caused by drunks then for a little while they respond to public outcry this also keeps peoples mind off the other problems in the country. I beginning to think that the main reason Colombian people are considered to some of the happiest in the world is their not sober enough to see their life as it really is. This is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin.

Today we’re going to talk a little more about how the computer age is depersonalizing the world and preventing us from fully developing our imaginations. Let’s start with how just about everything in your house can be controlled by your smart phone while you’re in the car or on the train. You can set your burglar alarm, turn on your air conditioner or set it to a new temperature. You can set recording devices to record your favorite soap opera or sporting event. You can even open your door for your girl friend if you running late. We can keep going turn on the stove, oven, and dishwasher just about anything electric in your house and you don’t have to be there or get out of bed. Telecommuting is making so you really never have to leave the house all the major stores and markets will take an order over the internet and deliver it to your door. Now as to depersonalizing your world face to face conversation is becoming obsolete. Both Jeff and I have seen two people walking down the street together and rather than use their vocal cords to talk to each other they would text. Now that’s all fine and good but how do you know what that person is really like if you fall in love are in love with person next to you or are you in love with their electronic persona. We think if you watch every movie where computers are replacing natural selection with their choice and you say that can never happen. Take a look at yourself and see how much communication you do face to face and how much you do by computer or smart phone. You know smart phone is a good name for the device because it’s controlling you so obviously it’s smarter than you. This is a non smart phone owning Flounder saying CIAO from Colombia.